I work for a new online community called vocalo.org, a public radio initiative that works like YouTube with user-generated content, but is attached to a 50,000 watt FM station. Folks have been calling radio stations since they first went on the air, but our community submits content and determines what our on-air broadcast is about. They're able to do this as easily as leaving voicemail (virtually no barrier to entry) or through produced pieces uploaded to the site.
We're not quite to the point where we're breaking stories ahead of traditional news media in our area (Chicago and Northwest Indiana), but we have had several submissions that were able to go much deeper into local news events and capture more of the human emotion behind them.
These kinds of technologies have the power to increase transparency in our everyday lives and create media spaces that promote real democracy. The comments here are telling: we're able to have more informed opinions about events that are halfway across the world because we can see events that are captured and shared by average citizens. A traditional newscast on the same subject would not be nearly as powerful, and that newscast certainly wouldn't allow a community to create media-based responses.
We're not quite to the point where we're breaking stories ahead of traditional news media in our area (Chicago and Northwest Indiana), but we have had several submissions that were able to go much deeper into local news events and capture more of the human emotion behind them.
These kinds of technologies have the power to increase transparency in our everyday lives and create media spaces that promote real democracy. The comments here are telling: we're able to have more informed opinions about events that are halfway across the world because we can see events that are captured and shared by average citizens. A traditional newscast on the same subject would not be nearly as powerful, and that newscast certainly wouldn't allow a community to create media-based responses.