A miracle and this works; otherwise...

1. Radio Social Media: local enough to MATTER Click to Listen

2. I’ve chosen radio as the subject of this slide show on Social Media in part because it seems adaptable and user friendly Listeners viewing or Viewers listening? Familiar, easy to use, available, social, robust, meaningful, and localized to serve small groups with particular interests that may be outside and hungry for media that speaks to THEM

3. Radio can give voice to disparate groups. Can familiarize by voice where appearance may drive people apart.Voice crosses age, literacy and language lines and can respond instantly in tone and volume to sooth, comfort, persuade, excite , teach and hold attention.Radio can be a space for sharing experience, mixing and cohering.

4. Commercial Radio Broadcasts to WHO????? Authentic, Actual Community? Much available on commercial radio is loud, annoying, serves a model audience that is inauthentic or underestimated and seen as receptive to mindless shock appeal. TheaterLicedei Unique groups go UNREPRESENTED Meanwhile Meanwhile Under Served BLABLABLABLABLABLA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoDlmW_-bI0&feature=fvsr

6. loudspeakers on a moving truck, boom-box on a skateboard, “talking beer can” technology, discarded Tickle-Me Elmo’s , any small playback device or cheap radio with a few adaptations.

7. Truly local broadcasts require very little upfront investment or sophisticated equipment. Capturing and distributing voice may work best at small scales. Highway 36 north of Kikino

8. Advantages to Radio: Learning how to be “heard” is a useful. Barriers can be more empowering than simply posting whatever on Facebook (for instance) and presuming that qualifies as participation in the social dialog—value is still measured by effort. Radio has presence and physicality. Studios actually exist. People with skills work there. Voice is human. So native to us that the monstrously complex learning of language is usually set aside for childhood. Early on radio created a new platform and reach for voice, music and “news”. Newspapers, storytelling, entertainment converged in a medium that narrowed as it grew and now seems to be pushing broadcasting towards conversation with listeners through blogs, tweets and a general attempt to rejoin the community. MP3, podcasting and high quality portable digital recorders lend voice to the ambient activity of being. Fidelity of new recording equipment adds dimensionality to background noise—odd notion but as foreground seems to become ubiquitous-sonic-poo, background and small-voice can shine out. [A very poorly worked out observation]. As someone from a family of hearing impaired individuals I’m directly aware of the muffling of voice, the casting out from the group and the tricks involved in pretending to understand rather than annoy by asking for clarification—the slow process of disappearing and becoming a non-participant (too slow to respond, always breaking the flow; like the kid who couldn’t catch, the impatience that hurts). There’s something about the realm of voice that’s very precious that sits at the core of social media. Stephen Pinker stated there are no “ignorant languages”. Languages that lack expressive power and comprehension—don’t know how to say themselves—do not exist. By extension, there really are no ignorant conversations either.

9. Our hypersociality comes about because information is a particularly good commodity of exchange that makes it worth people’s while to hang out together. …It seems clear that we do use our faculties of social cognition to ration our conversation to those with whom we have established a non-exploitative relationship; hence the expression ‘to be on speaking terms’. Language, therefore, meshes neatly with the other features of the cognitive niche. The zoologically unusual features of Homo sapiens can be explained parsimoniously by the idea that humans have evolved an ability to encode information about the causal structure of the world and to share it among themselves. Our hypersociality comes about because information is a particularly good commodity of exchange that makes it worth people’s while to hang out together. Our long childhood and extensive biparental investment are the ingredients of an apprenticeship: before we go out in the world, we spend a lot of time learning what the people around us have figured out…. Humans depend on culture, and culture can be seen in part as a pool of local expertise. Many traditions are endemic to a people in an area because knowhow and social conventions have spread via a local network of information sharing. Language as an Adaptation to the Cognitive Niche Steven Pinker http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/papers/Language_Evolution.pdf

10. As Ferdinand de Saussure pointed out, a word is an arbitrary sign: aconnection between a signal and a concept shared by the members of thecommunity. Steven Pinker ibid Radio can be a vehicle for words SUN Sky Prairie Fence Roadside SHARED SPACE emptied by distance, ready for the sound of voices forming words

11. Affordances of Radio Voice is ancient: Though language difference may divide, voice in use is THE universal affordance. Radio facilitates this. Access: As a universal coding system, language affords access to virtually all resources. Voice and text access the human creators of the resources. Radio facilitates voice by broadcasting to all potential receivers. Receivers aren’t passive, they select from different sources which adds choice to the affordance of access. (Except where I live, only 2 stations can be received on the AM or FM band—both are junk though variety can be had through satellite and the net). From very early in life, humans have access to language, and to each other through voice which is enhanced by meaning-supports like facial expression, gestures and tone. Humans are very good at extracting meaning from voice alone: for instance, people can indentify falsehood in voice long before it would be caught in text.

12. Affordances of Radio Presence: Humans are “tuned” to attend to spoken voice: to draw meaning and to project meaning. Voice openly declares presence. Radio practitioners are often called “announcers”, which may neutralize presence as they are declaring not for themselves but for others. Not sure how speaking the words of others disembodies, but it does, like text, create a not-quite-present effect. “ Here, so says this script, I AM!” Expression: Potential on radio for declaring “this is who I am” is way higher than, say, Second Life. There is a separation between speaker and the words by being processed through the medium of radio. The suspension of disbelief is relevant here. As with Presence above, radio is still not the real thing, but the dynamic qualities of voice do make radio a more directly human vehicle for messaging than second-lifer action figures with their low-resolution images and minimal facial expressions.

13. Affordances of Radio Creation: Before we were “enabled” (read “obliged”) to enhance everything with song, dance and thrilling Technicolor imagery, you could let people imagine willy-nilly from what you were saying. Now that we need to specify how exactly our audience “gets-it”, radio might be at a disadvantage. Interaction: Radio stations do interact through call-in shows and posting web sites. It can be argued that this form of interaction is restricted, edited and not very authentic. If “interaction” is judged as voice enabled by effort, how interactive is the content on most of the net? Interaction has to have some sort of scaling system to be valued. A “peep” heard round the world is still a small noise. Aggregation: Features of voice and language can be collected, edited ,changed into song or sermon, poetry or curse to facilitate or distribute under-standing. This isn’t aggregation though . Because radio is rather transitory or ever-becoming . I might have to go with radio as a reverse aggregator: a song may draw an emotion from a listener; a speech may draw a “lost” memory. This is a somewhat unpredictable process though people do have “favourite” stations and shows, so maybe there’s a generalized deliberation here to “extract” certain feelings or replicate moods or thought trains? A radio station could aggregate things of interest to a particular audience in a general, impersonal level.

14. Rubric

15. Rubric Why this particular tool?: I worked in radio years ago so it’s familiar and comfortable. There’s low literacy here and radio fits into the oral knowing styles common here. Isolation has made this place very self-referential and though the net is popular, it’s out of context, “away” and doesn’t have any knowledge handles to grasp. Context and support for future work/personal use: Unsure of the exact role radio will play in future projects. I have an image of education as performance or public art—I believe many in this course have that feeling which is the driver behind trying out non-traditional learning tools and facilitation resources? Access to the joy of learning has been in the clutches of the educational industry long enough.

16. Rubric Pros and Cons associated with use of tool: CON: Expensive to set up; monopolized by private interest; extensive licensing needed to broadcast. PRO: Can be unapologetically “local” giving a sense of here-ness that the WWW lacks; listeners become less passive about content when it’s directly about them—activates interest, participation, ownership and responsible use; right now, radio seems oddly subversive to the mythos growing around the net: “We don’t really know what the net is, but it must be important because it’s the future. Isn’t it?” Presentation comprehensible in sync and asynchronous modes: Recording and delivery as downloadable pod-cast make it available anytime / anywhere. Discussions could be asynchronous by logging into voice recording utilities, texting, answering machines.

19. Affordance? [not sure what this would be called] Requires knowledge of bicycle operation; screwdriver to download onto destination platform and imagination to achieve full effect. Infrastructure precautions: may not reach optimum speed on muddy or pitted surfaces. AS seen on RADIO Achieve realistic sound effects by blowing air out of pursed, moistened , lips or by attaching standard playing cards to rub against wheel spokes while in motion. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR Press HERE for the effect you choose

20. Sources Center for Social Media at American University - PDF report PUBLIC RADIO”S SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERIMENTS: http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/files/pdf/public_radio_report3.pdf Language as an Adaptation to the Cognitive Niche - Steven Pinkerhttp://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/papers/Language_Evolution.pdf Public Radio Exchange (PRX): http://www.prx.org/about-us/what-is-prx The Moth http://www.prx.org/the-moth#allstations VoiceThread demo : http://voicethread.com/#home.b409 The Radio Manifesto -addressed by young people from around the world to radio broadcasters everywhere http://www.worldradioforum.org/manifesto/RadioManifesto.pdf From: The Radio Manifesto - PART III - ANNEXES INDIA, Butterflies Broadcasting Children (BBC), Butterflies Organisation of Street & Working Children, New Delhi. You can listen to radio everywhere; we cannot watch TV while working but we can listen to radio while working. Not everybody can read books. For TV, electricity is required, but it is not required for radio. CAMEROUN, Petit Bonando group Adults would be more affected if they were to hear children talking of their experiences, and in this way they would become aware of the fact that the child is a sensitive being in all these situations. GUINEA, Kindia Children’s Radio Group, Konakry. In order for children to be able to express themselves on the radio, they need to be sure that they are not taking a risk. It is very important that they are given responsibility and that they have a role to play in the world of adults. With youth journalists, more children would listen to radio; in fact no one knows better how to talk about the problems children face than the children themselves.

21. Sources Other clips: Berkeley Centre for Globalization and Information Technology http://bcgit.berkeley.edu/index.html IT and DiasporicCommunites How IT sustains transnational relations; issues of digital marginality; sustainability of diasporic identity; and virtual diasporas. IT and Development How IT can be used in the process of economic development, in delivering services to remote villages, in providing access to information in rural areas, in enhancing the performances of public administration and in alleviating poverty in general. Music: Luther Allison, “Give Me Back My Wig” (Taylor, Eyeball Music, BMI). From: Crucial Slide Guitar Blues VOCALO: WBEZ Chicago (since suffered from cut-backs; may be a technology-savvy audience but they’re politically powerless) WBEZ is launching Vocalo, a new over-the-air and online station where content is created by its audience. At Vocalo—a portmanteau of the words “vocal” and “zocalo,” the Spanish term for public square—listeners upload reports, conversations, music, and more to a Web site that serves as the online platform and destination for a community. The best Web content will be transmitted over the main analog channel. Hosts will navigate listeners through eclectic content while noting the voices and stories of the Chicago regional culture. Vocalo is aimed at a younger, more diverse, technology-savvy audience that Chicago Public Radio has not yet been fully able to capture. http://www.current.org/radio/radio0708malatia.shtml