[alt-media-res] latest draft of esrc practitioner fellowship application - deadline in ten days, please feed back!

[zoe]

http://alt-media-res.clearerchannel.org/private/index.php?title=Second_call_out



http://alt-media-res.clearerchannel.org/private/index.php?title=Second_application



it needs cutting by about a third in length.... and probably making more
realistic/clear as well....

any input vv welcome!



xxx



a) Background information:

Name of applicant: Zoe Young

User organisation: Eyes on IFIs

Contact: eyes at ifiwatchnet.org, 020 7723 2875, 100 Bayswater Road, London W2
3HJ

Research project you will be working with:

Alternative Media and Public Action - Organising the Global Alternative
Networks

Type of fellowship: Policy/Practical Application

Start-date and duration: 1st January 2007, for three months

b) Your objectives during the fellowship,

Our objective during the fellowship is to work with online video producer
and user groups to help each other understand the dynamics of specific
independent media networks that they are (or could be) part of, facilitating
them to use organisational tools such as media RSS and work processes that
can increase the targetted reach, networked nature and utility of their
work.

Internet TV is coming of age, though it remains an evolutionary front line
with as many false starts and potential dead ends as creative ways forward
for media democracy. At the same time, movements for peace with ecological
and social justice have been using the internet strategically to transform
popular understanding of environment and development issues. Our research
has taken us deep into the world of online social justice video networks and
the tools they are developing to freely exchange electronic media in ways
that until recently were (more or less) inconceivable.

The processes we have found and begun to engage with could create a network
of issue-focused media RSS feeds of unprecedented value to a targetted group
of campaigners, educators and others working locally in specific fields
relating to sustainable development, globalisation politics, protest and the
international financial institutions. The long term goal is to create a
service - a portal to diverse channels of independent online video that are
searchable (or organised) by theme, subject matter, length, producer etc.

"How is non-governmental public action organised in the alternative media
sector? How does it differ in the North and the South?" Our objectives for
this fellowship involve a practical application of the answers we are
finding to these questions with relevance to online video projects, with a
focus on facilitating the accessibility of internet video critical of
International Financial Institutions (IFIs) to start.

Background:

[http://www.ifiwatchnet.org IFIWatchnet] is an independent online network
for the cross publication of materials produced by Northern and Southern
organisations that are critically focused on IFIs. It is now co-ordinated by
the Third World Institute (www.item.org.uy) which is based in Montevideo,
Uruguay. In 2004, London-based Zoe Young founded 'Eyes on IFIs'
(http://www.ifiwatch.tv), a video database integrated as a component of
IFIWatchnet. The proposed fellow is not only co-ordinator of IFIwatch.tv,
but a researcher, writer and film maker on IFIs, and in 2005 she won an
inaugural Beyond TV 'Misty' award for video activism. She works in
collaboration with the Bretton Woods Project network of UK IFI watchers
(brettonwoodsproject.org), the UK Indymedia video network, the Clearer
Channel initiative (www.clearerchannel.org) and Transmission network of
online social justice video projects (www.transmission.cc). It is in this
context that she is in a position to reach out to NGOs, community cinemas,
universities, and other media users and draw them into the emerging networks
of online video sharers developing standardised metadata for
subject-specific media RSS feeds.

The added value to project and programme goals include:

Facilitating teachers, librarians, researchers and others to access our
critical window into these networks; exposing the range of online video
materials accessible through IFIWatch.tv and related projects; tackling the
North-South resource and access differentials shaping that range and its
usage; enabling academics, NGOs and others to disseminate their media
through these networks; building constructive relations with IFIWatchnet and
Transmission network participants - a primary audience for findings from the
project; and synergising outputs from this research project with those of
other NGPA-assisted projects, for example "Accounting, Governance and
Accountability in NGOs", "Friends of the Earth International: Negotiating a
North-South Identity" (FOEI is an active participant in IFIWatch.tv),
"Non-Governmental Actors in New Governance Spaces: Navigating the Tensions"
and "South-North Non-Governmental Networks, Policy Processes and Policy
Outcomes".

The added value to user group include:

Zoe Young is directly engaged in fundraising, liaison and negotiations with
colleagues in IFIWatchnet to further integrate their new audio-visual 'slice
' of the network, while at the same time focusing the attention of the
Transmission network of online video publishers on the practical media needs
of issue-focused organisations and individuals; using IFIwatch.tv as an case
study portal to online media. In this role she will raise, discuss and where
appropriate apply the insights gained from the various elements of the
research project: eg. interview findings, meeting outcomes, case study
assessments. With a participant fellowship she would be enabled to engage in
the micro-process of developing the potentials of these networks in a manner
targetted with the benefit of the research outputs.

By raising the usefulness of ifiwatch.tv to academic and media circles, this
fellow would act to promote dissemination of video materials accessible
through these networks to academics involved in teaching and research. Thus
the fellowship aims to apply understanding gained in the project to assist a
targetted non-governmental network itself to engage new users including
students and academic researchers, thus contributing to IFIWatchnet's work
to open up International Financial Institutions' activities to greater
public understanding. This can help enhance the effectiveness of
non-governmental public action for just and sustainable development
internationally.

c) Estimated budget: £8,000 over three months, to cover

£1,000 to research, create and disseminate guidelines and toolkits to meet
needs identified during the user fellowship period: particularly guides for
users and contributors of online material to standardise their metadata and
thus exchange relevant material automatically with other networks also
adopting these standards.

£2,000 contribution to ongoing costs of technical development of a video
sorting mechanism in an emerging intelligent RSS aggregator.

£1,000 to run workshops for invited members of university libraries and
media departments, ifiwatchnet participant organisations, environment and
development NGOs and interested journalists, introducing the guidelines and
toolkits and working through any political or practical problems arising.

£4,000 for the fellow's subsistence and travel.

d) Planned activities and outputs (e.g. workshop, report, series of briefing
papers, strategy paper, new methodologies of practice, training materials,
media output etc)

We intend a range of outputs oriented towards facilitating two-way processes
of information exchange, learning and skills-sharing between alternative
media producers and researchers, while publicizing the activities and
outputs of user group(s). Outputs will include:

1. Three or four workshops to propose common metadata standards between a
limited sub-group of oinline video publishers and users, and gather feedback
on what outputs would be of greatest value to users in the academy, ifiwatch
network and beyond.

2. Development of a toolkit to facilitate academic, journalistic and
campaign networks within and beyond the UK to participate in the emergent
standards for metadata used in video RSS feeds.

3. Publicity and launch for basic information and training materials in new
methodologies of practice for researchers and users engaging substantively
with independent media networks like Transmission and specifically
IFIwatch.tv. This might include, for example, guides and demonstrations of
how to use specific online forms and metatagging frameworks, also how to
find help to upload and download video materials.Training will receive
particular focus with the distribution of standardised lines of code to
enable standardised metadata submission to RSS feeds along with online video
and development of materials aimed at demystifying online video networks for
new users.





Is it now easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of
capitalism?

******************************************************************
Films about International Financial Institutions: http://www.ifiwatch.tv
Writing on the Global Environment Facility: http://www.newgreenorder.info
http://shootingpeople.org/cards/zoe      skype name: zoeyou
tel: +44 (0) 20 7723 2875   mobile: +44 (0) 7931 316 970
zoe at esemplastic.net, eyes at ifiwatchnet.org, zoeontheroad at hotmail.com
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