Berkman Luncheon Series >

apr
12
2011

Mediactive: Using Media in a Networked Age

Dan Gillmor of ASU & Berkman Center Faculty Associate

Tuesday, April 12, 12:00 pm
Griswold Hall, Room 110, Harvard Law School
RSVP required for those attending in person to Amar Ashar (ashar@cyber.law.harvard.edu)
This event will be webcast live at 12:00 pm ET and archived on our site shortly after.

Mediactive: Using Media in a Networked Age

We're in an age of information overload, and too much of what we watch, hear and read is mistaken, deceitful or even dangerous. Yet  we can take control and make media serve us -- all of us -- by being active consumers and participants. In a networked age, we are fully literate only if we are creators as well as active consumers, and the Internet has given us the tools to be both.

As Berkman Fellow Clay Shirky, a renowned scholar of information and the Internet's influence on our modern world, says in a foreword to Mediactive: "Dan doesn’t make upgrading the sources, or the gatekeepers, or the filters—or any other 'them' in the media ecosystem—his only or even primary goal. Dan wants to upgrade us, so we can do our own part. He wants us to encourage media to supply better information by helping us learn to demand better information. And he wants us to participate as creators."

Dan's method starts with bedrock principles, for consumers and creators. He offers tactical advice as well, and looks at key modern issues surrounding policy, law and social norms. At every step he encourages an ethical and honorable approach, because trust is part of the foundation for useful and reliable information.

Mediactive is more than a book. It's a project designed in part to explore what a book should be in an interactive, networked age. it exists on paper, on the Web and in several e-book versions, with more to come. Dan will be updating all versions on a regular basis.

About Dan

Dan Gillmor, an internationally recognized author and leader in new media and citizen-based journalism, is the founding director of the new Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship and the Kauffman Professor of Digital Media Entrepreneurship at ASU. [more...]

Links

• Mediactive