July 12, 2010
Social Media and Political Mobilization: A Conversation with Egyptian and Hungarian Bloggers
Central European University, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Annenberg School for Communication at University of Pennsylvania and Internews organized a Webinar that brought bloggers from Egypt and Hungary in conversation with each other as well as an international audience of media scholars, development practitioners and communication academics that included the participants of the CEU 2010 Summer University course on media development and democratization.
Questions they discussed included: How are blogs altering the political and social fabric of countries with troubled political systems or political systems in transition? What role are social media playing in mobilizing citizens, and what’s the extent of its reach? Is it a main player or a supplementary tool? ? What impact has the proliferation of social media usage had on mainstream journalism?
July 14, 2009
Webinar: "Journalism, New Technologies and Media Development"
As part of the 2009 summer course on media development, the CMCS, the Annenberg School for Communication and the Hungarian telecommunications provider Magyar Telekom hosted an interactive web seminar – or “webinar” – on the ways new technologies are changing journalism, the media, and the information landscape.
The “webinar” featured a discussion with James Deane, director of policy for the BBC World Service Trust; Persephone Miel, Senior Advisor of Internews and a fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University; András Benedict, developer of iwiw, the largest and oldest Hungarian social networking site; and practitioners, researchers, and journalists in media development who participated in CMCS’ summer school.
The two hosts, Susan Abbott (Annenberg School for Communication) and Kate Coyer (CMCS) brought in other participants and presenters via Skype, including Iranian specialists to discuss the post-election demonstrations there, while over 100 people around the globe watched the video stream of the event online and participated in the simultaneous online chat forum.
Read more or view the video and chat stream.
April 16, 2009
Reporting with the Mobile Phone: The Role of Mobile Technology as an Information Platform in China
The Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and the Communication University of China organized an interactive seminar on mobile technologies in China. The CMCS was one of the official participants.
The event offered a unique opportunity to hear scholars and technologists from China and the US as they discuss and debate on the following topical questions:
- How are mobile phones becoming a platform for the delivery of news and information, particularly by established news organizations?
- In what ways can cell phones provide innovative mechanisms for news gathering and news diffusion by local and national newspapers?
- How can journalists, innovators, and media development implementers better contextualize mobile technology among past forms of new media?
In this event, it was possible to actively participate in the Q&A sessions of the seminar via on-line participation in chat-rooms. The web-event was followed by a brief wrap-up discussion amongst local participants at CEU. More information about the webinar can be found at the Annenberg School for Communication website.