With the Master’s program beginning to heat up, it’s been a while since I’ve done any writing. Currently, I’m working on an independent study researching citizen journalism and the role it plays in the traditional media environment, which I hope to be able to post soon.
In the meantime, I’ve gone out and checked out some of the city, with the aid of my trusty camera. Please check out my (always updating) set on Hamilton here.
From The Millstone – August 30, 2012
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In the early evening of Wednesday, the United States President Barack Obama got a chance to answer questions directly from voters (Democrats, Republicans, and undecideds alike). However, this wasn’t your basic open forum at a debate, town hall, or rally. No, President Obama sat down at a laptop in a room in Charlottesville, Virginia, and answered questions from anonymous askers on the online social news site, reddit.
Shitty_Watercolour, a popular reddit user, welcomes President Obama with one of his works.
Fresh off the heels of a rally at the host city of the University of Virginia where Obama appealed to the youth vote, he further showed his dedication to the youth vote with his reddit Q&A, colloquially known as an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on the site.
For those unfamiliar with the site reddit.com, it’s difficult to explain. The site is an open-source social news site, where users have the ability to post photos, links (to newspaper articles, websites, etc.), or start discussions in one of thousands of “sub-reddits”. Other users then have the opportunity to comment on the original post. The sub-reddits each have a different focus (the list is endless, ranging in everything from US politics, to funny images, to city-specific reddits like Ottawa, to hobbies and jobs), with one dedicated specifically to these AMA’s.
The AMA’s have quickly become a kind-of hidden secret for politicians, as Obama is not the first to face the reddit hive. Previously, the likes of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, Colorado representative Jared Polis, and others have taken to the web to answer questions.
When Obama went up, the site went crazy with excitement (even leading to the site occasionally crashing.) The AMA has received over 19,000 comments at the time of writing, and that number will likely only grow as those from other parts of the world continue to log on and see.And while Obama dedicated 30 minutes out of his busy campaign trail to “be real” with the reddit community, the question of its success is hard to determine.
From The CIS Blog – August 23, 2012
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With Ottawa’s historic Lansdowne Park under construction in preparation for future CFL and NASL teams, the Gee-Gees football program will have to say so long to their home stadium for the upcoming season.
While the closure of the stadium for the upcoming year was no surprise, it was just announced in the past week where the Gee-Gees will host their OUA opponents. And it’s been called out-of-the-box and out-of-the-city thinking.
Yes, the Gee-Gees will spend 2012 playing their home games at (drumroll, please) Beckwith Park, just outside the town of Carleton Place. The field, technically located in the hamlet of Black’s Corners, is located approximately 50 kilometres from the campus, and translates into about a 40-minute drive.
While the university is offering shuttles to and from games, the idea of riding a bus for 40 minutes to the middle of nowhere may not have the same allure as the usual university football experience — and when I say the middle of nowhere, I do mean it.
From The Sputnik – March 30, 2011
“Do you believe it is time for Brantford women to represent sisterhood, strength and sport with passion and commitment?”
For Tasha Buscombe, that time has come.
Buscombe, also known as Stella Flash, is the co-chair of a new local roller derby league that started with a Facebook campaign that asked women in the Brantford area if any interest existed in bringing the sport to the city.
Now, in the spring of 2011, the Belle City Roller Girls are recruiting players and practicing in preparation of the upcoming summer schedule that will see Belle City travel across Ontario for competition.
Roller derby is a sport that has taken off in recent years, which Buscombe feels could be a result of an increase in movies about the sport.
One example of this is the Drew Barrymore and Ellen Page hit derby movie “Whip It,” which helped bring international attention to the sport. It seems to have worked. Buscombe says that the past two years have seen new leagues pop up across southern Ontario, from Guelph all the way down to London. In fact, the league out of Hamilton which was just established in 2006, is Canada’s oldest.
Buscombe says that the idea to bring a team to Brantford started at the grassroots level, where she just went to members of the community to see if interest existed.
A young Ugandan boy sits in the dark, describing the death of his brother, who tried to escape from a rebel group operating in that nation. The boy fears for his life, after watching his brother’s throat slit, and says he would prefer to be killed than be abducted by the rebel regime.
This was social media’s version of the “shot heard ‘round the world.” Invisible Children, a U.S.-based not-for-profit organization, spread their Kony 2012 project and video across Facebook.
It outraged, upset, and shocked viewers, who “Liked” and shared the video at a rate never before seen. Within less than a week, the video had received over 80 million views.
The focus was Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a militant group based in Uganda. It discussed Kony’s numerous human rights violations, especially focusing in on the LRA’s use of child soldiers. It ran with the tagline, “Make Kony famous,” a call to make the arrest and capture of Kony a priority of Western governments.
It showed images of the director’s son learning about Kony, and shows them in comparison with Jacob, the Ugandan boy who was terrorized by the leader. It sparked outrage in the hearts of those who watched it.
The video went viral. But, the reality is the movement ran much deeper than that.
As some users across the globe simply watched and spread the video, millions joined in on the sentiment of making Kony famous. University campuses across Canada and the United States set dates for public screenings of the film, while April 20 was declared a day of action for supporters promote the cause publicly in cities across North America.
It seemed a textbook example of clicktivism: the idea of taking social activism online. Kony revealed the ways individuals and organizations harness the power of social media to get increasingly apathetic young people involved in a social movement.
But, in the days and weeks that followed, criticisms of Kony 2012 became the real story. Suspicions of Invisible Children, the facts presented in the video, and co-founder and director Jason Russell quickly overshadowed the original message of the film.
At the forefront, along with the criticisms, was the debate around the actual, practical advantage in using Facebook and other social media platforms. Many media critics questioned how involved and engaged Facebook users who shared the video were. To some degree, the video became a farce.
For example, the Peak newspaper at Simon Fraser University ran a satirical piece that claimed anyone who shared the video on Facebook would receive an honorary degree from the school’s International Studies faculty.
Meanwhile, users of the popular social news site reddit posted maps of Africa, and asked Kony supporters to point out the location of Uganda.
The anti-Kony campaign ignited a debate about the role clicktivism plays in engaging young people in social change: is it activism, or simply slacktivism?
My apologies for the long delay in getting another post up. It’s been a rather busy last two months.
The following is a piece that I wrote for a course last year. Given the assignment to write about a certain place in Brantford (however, restaurants, bars & stores were excluded) I decided to take on a rather challenging subject – the historic, beautiful, and tragic war memorial.
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A Canadian flag atop a long silver pole whips in the wind, blocking out all noise from the traffic on the busy intersection behind me.
Flowerbeds line the interlocked path that I am descending, though today they are empty and covered in a thin white sheet, evidence of the Canadian winter that just ended.
As I get closer, the eyes of the four women and three men standing tall in front of me seem fixed on me, or perhaps the armouries across the street.
Of course, that’s impossible. The lifelike and life-sized bronze statues–four of which signify the importance of women during the war, while the other three are replicas of soldiers from the army, the navy and the air force–have been frozen in these spots since being unveiled 18 years ago.
Between them, engraved into the towering grey structure, read the words: “They Lost Their Lives For Humanity.” Along the ground below the statues lies another flowerbed, which on Remembrance Day is filled with wreaths of all colours paying tribute to fallen soldiers; but on this February day, it sits empty.
Atop this foundation stands the focal point of the memorial: a towering slab of grey limestone rising upward, cutting into the clear blue sky.
From The Sputnik – February 15, 2012
Despite the recent defeat of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the United States, its sister bill is creeping its way through the Canadian House of Commons.
Bill C-11, better known as the Copyright Act, is a federal bill that would change the way that consumers can interact with digital media.
One of the main provisions of the bill surrounds digital locks, which could restrict a customers access to DVDs, CDs and e-books.
The bill is being lobbied by companies associated with the entertainment industry, which has drawn numerous critics who argue the federal government is playing to appease corporations rather than citizens.
While those in the music industry claim that digital locks are necessary for the economic stability of the industry, Michael Geist has spoken out against the validity of these claims.
Geist, a law professor and chair of Canada Research in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has been rallying against the bill through his blog since it came back in front of Parliament.
He argues that Canada is one of the leaders in music sales, ranking sixth in the world in digital music sales.
Essentially, digital locks are a tool which prevent consumers from using purchased media across different forums.
For example, someone buying an e-book for an e-reader would be limited to using solely that e-reader to read it. Digital locks would prevent the consumer from shifting that content onto a computer or different e-reader, and Bill C-11 would actually make doing so a criminal offence.
The same situation applies to transferring downloaded music from a computer to a MP3 player.
Marc Laferriere, the federal NDP candidate for Brant in the 2011 election, spoke out about this exploitation of consumers.
“Anytime we update our platform device, we’re looking at having to buy content again,” Laferriere said. “I don’t think that’s the interconnectivity, or the multi-use way that technology should be going. I think that if I buy something on my iPad, I want it to play on my computer, I want it to play on my TV, and if I update my iPad to an iZad or whatever is the next reiteration, having to buy Ghostbusters 2 seven times is not my ideal way of going through life as a consumer.”
Kyle Brown 