Ideas for trusted collaboration
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/occupy-facebook/2/
J. ----------------
``One challenge that all of the new efforts face is a very difficult one for non-centralized services: ensuring that members are trustworthy. That's critical for activists who risk injury and arrest in all countries and even death in some. To build trust, local and international networks will use a friend-of-a-friend model in Knutson and Boyer's projects. People can't become full members on their own as they can with social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
`You have to know someone in real life who sponsors you,' said Knutson.''
This idea troubles me in some indefinite way I can't really pin down. It seems to lead to the inner circle model of decision making. It has hints of an underground when the whole point is to be as above ground as possible.
The Arabs have struggled with this problem of who is advocating what and whether or not to believe or trust what's said. Then in more dangerous places like Syria, the citizen journalist forms some kind of collective sense, through uploaded videos to outside news channels like AJE. This puts the decisions of what to show, up to an editorial staff. The problem with AJE is it's addicted to conflict. If there is no battle, there seems to be no story. They do make up a little for this with their weekly series. I can never get enough of Marwan Bishara on Empire.
Some of these conflicting directions showed up during the December 2008 attacks by Israel on Gaza. The international press was kept out and the only information was generated within Gaza. This was done mostly by paramedics and bloggers who followed them and kept notes to post as daily journals from eye witnesses. IMHO, this spontaneous development put alternate media on the political map of possibilities.
The on-line news channels I visit daily (Demo Now, AJE, RT, and sometimes France 24) have their strong and weak points. AJE and RT run weekly extended reports and a lot of independent short media productions. None of them have the resources in reporters, camera crews, and money to travel, to really cover the US.
So this is where I see an opening for OWS movements. Develop citizen journalist networks and make on the spot reports with whatever media you have, then uploaded to AJE and or RT.
I think the various OWS movements need to develop a trusted relationship with alternate media channels, more than they need trusted memberships. In a way using trusted media to carry the no doubt conflicting messages, always already democratize the total effect.
My experience last winter watching Egypt unfold was very high impact journalism---addictive. As a total experience, it was already democratic since the collective mass will was evident. What wasn't clear where the divisions within Egyptian society. I had to study up a little on the more nuanced background, especially on the Muslim Brotherhood and its internal conflicts.
On the other hand the videos of the panel discussion at Bluestocking Books was a great watch because it illustrated and articulated the divisions in more nuanced form.
So then in sum we (and OWS) need several types of coverage: the action, the arguments, and the longer more nuanced discussions and background information. These already divide well into various journalist writing and media formats.
I use LBO for several related reasons: immediate news posted to the list, longer discussion and argument, and then the LBO newsletter for deeper background. Pen-l works pretty much the same way. I also enjoy the occational dirty talk like Zizek's theories on shit, and various speculations on body hair and other items, which actually do have ideological meaning where I might least expect to find it.
CG
PS. I do understand the worry that there are unfriendly strangers out there as well as disagreeable factions who may warp the collective spirit we are trying to build. But these counterforces usually reveal themselves in their words and actions. Really it's an age old problem that I don't think is much of a threat as long as the collective we stay as open, thoughtful, and sincere as possible.