[Nettime-nl] News about Networks workshop (De Balie, 21-24 juni)

[geert <geert@xs4all.nl>]

Making Issues into Rights? exploring the depth of "Rights" and "Justice"
networks

The News about Networks workshop by the Govcom.org Foundation,
Amsterdam.

21-24 June 2004
de Balie Center for Culture and Politics
Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10 (Leidseplein)
Amsterdam
Workshop site: http://www.issuenetwork.org

All queries: Catherine Somze, govcom.org workshop producer,
catherine@issuenetwork.org

A Govcom.org co-production with de Balie, with support from the Media,
Arts & Culture Unit within the Ford Foundation's Knowledge, Creativity &
Freedom Program.

A limited number of Ford Fellowships available (see below).

Workshop Introduction
The Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam is organizing a workshop for public
interest groups, advocates, activists as well as academics researching
media justice as well as communications and information rights. The
workshop is dedicated to exploratory analysis into the depth of the
communication between and among these networks.

The Govcom.org Foundation creates and hosts political tools for the Web.

Over a four-day period, the workshop will provide an immersion
experience
in Govcom.org's work in the specially constructed media laboratory at de
Balie Center for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam. All participants will
be
invited to use state of the art information tools created by govcom.org
and its collaborators. The participants also are invited to present and
share their own tools and information.

Much of the workshop will revolve around using the Issue Crawler,
server-side software, developed with OneWorld International (London),
Aguidel (Paris) and Recognos (Cluj-Napoca) that locates, analyses and
visualises networks on the Web. We also will make use of novel
techniques
to monitor and analyse the news through Google News and RSS readers.
Textual, semantic and other data analyses may be undertaken.

Some of the questions one may ask are:

- What are my networks? What is my relative standing within these
networks?
- Which types of organizations, agendas and terms dominate these
networks?
- Do the organizations in these networks recognize each other's work and
issues?
- Which parts of the networks hold together if one takes out funders? Do
they hold together if one takes out other agenda-setters, be it (big)
media or intergovernmental organizations?

Workshop Substance
The migration of 'rights' into more and more issue spaces may be
attributed to the roominess of the Universal Declaration, the successes
of
the human rights field as well as the urgent issue re-formatting work
occurring regularly in NGO networks. NGOs, instead of getting their
issues
from the news, are continually migrating across issue networks, forming
partnerships with other actors and terms. "Justice" and "rights" are two
of the more recent issue reformulations, with the coinage of such
notions
as communication rights, information rights, Internet rights, media
justice and information justice.

The health of an issue, and the network forming around it, could well be
gauged by an issue's migratory patterns. When and why do NGOs
reformulate
and attach themselves to issues?

In particular, we are interested in the implications of making issues
into
rights issues. What are the consequences for NGOs and their issues by
choosing the rights frame? Is such issue work temporary,
context-specific,
or opportunistic? Are 'rights' organizing new networks or destabilizing
current networks?

Movements of issues across networks may have further consequences. Do
issues decline without specific terminological innovation? Does the
movement towards 'rights', in particular, prompt human rights to defend
its issue space against intruders? When is an organization taken
seriously
by the issue space it wishes to join? Can new rights and justice
networks
prosper without the human rights network?

News about Networks Workshop series

The Communication Rights and Media Justice workshop is the second in
series. The first News about Networks workshop has been dedicated to
understanding whether NGOs may operate effectively without a commercial
press strategy. Does the rise of NGO Internet-based networks, in
particular, imply an end to the reliance on the press to resonate the
message? Can networks alone mobilize other organizations and key players
to act on important social issues of the day? In short, can NGOs do
without news?

The workshop proceedings, entitled "All-American Issues: Seven Stories
from the Homeland," are available at
http://www.issuenetwork.org/node.php?id=46.

De Balie's workshop URL:
http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp?articleid=4473&podiumid=media%3Cbr%20/%3e

The News about Networks is part of a larger workshop program, "The Life
of
Issues," at http://www.govcom.org/workshops.html.

Workshop Format

The format of the workshop intersperses the following:

1) Introduction and Software Training
2) Talks and Demonstrations by the Participants and Analysts
3) Software Use and Feedback on Findings
4) Designer Map-making
5) Individual Analysis and Presentations of Results
6) Discussions of texts from the Reader
The media laboratory has facility for laptops with wireless and cabled
Internet connectivity. Bring your computer.

The workshop begins promptly on Monday, 21 June at 10am.
The workshop concludes with a public presentation on Thursday, 24 June
at 8pm.

The workshop organizer is Richard Rogers.

Workshop Key words
Alternative media
Communications rights
Community media
Democratic media
Freedom of expression
Freedom of information
Independent media
Information commons
Information justice
Information rights
Media and democracy
Media and globalization
Media justice
Media regulation
Mission-driven media
Privacy
Radical  media
Software patents
Technology standards

Workshop Applications
To apply, please send a biographical sketch, a one-page description of
the questions and themes you would like to see addressed at the workshop
as well as the answers to the questionnaire below. Please send all three
items to participant@issuenetwork.org by 1 May 2004.

The answers to the questionnaire allow for the advance mapping of the
issue areas. The criteria of acceptance to the workshop are the mutual
fit between the applicant's analytical desires and expectations, and the
capacities of the analysts on hand.

Workshop Fee: The workshop fee is ?275.

Ford Fellowships available

The Ford Foundation has made five fellowships available for the
workshop.
The fellowship is available only for U.S.-based advocates, activists and
academics and covers travel, accommodation and workshop fee. Applicants
should work in one or more of the following areas:

Communications rights
Community media
Freedom of expression
Information justice
Information rights
Media and democracy
Media justice
Press freedom
Privacy
Software patents
Technology standards

To apply for a Ford Fellowship, please send a biographical sketch, a
one-page description of the questions and themes you would like to see
addressed at the workshop as well as the answers to the questionnaire
below.

Please send all three items to fellowship@issuenetwork.org by 20 April
2004.

Questionnaire (in english, en Franais, en espanol, auf Deutsch)

All workshop participants are asked to submit answers to the following
questions.

1. Name your issue/research area(s), e.g., Climate Change, Media
Justice, Indigenous Rights, Ancient Forests, Spectrum Policy, low-power
FM.

2. Name the most significant organizations per issue area(s), along with
their Web addresses (URLs). Please separate URLs with a comma, and use
'deep pages' wherever possible, i.e.,
http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/campaigns/intro?campaign%5fid=3938
(the Greenpeace Ancient Forests page), instead of www.greenpeace.org

3. List the most significant sub-issues, terms, slogans, individual
names per issue.

4. List the 3-5 most important conferences in each issue area, for the
past year, the current year and next year, along with the web addresses
(URLs).

5. List the 3-5 most significant web-accessible documents in the issue
area(s). Provide the exact web addresses for each document.

6. List (no more than 10) the organizations in that issue area(s) that
you have had the most direct email contact with in the past 6-12 months.

7. List the most significant news sources for your work and the web
locations for these sources.

*Please return the answers to the questionnaire to
participant@issuenetwork.org. We kindly request that you return the
answers in english as well as your own language.

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