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Proposal from knightcontest.com

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Chinese-language platform for community journalism

Primary Contact Name

Ms. Oiwan Lam

Describe your project

To transform Hong Kong's most influential Chinese-language citizen media website, inmediahk.net, into an engaged citizen reporter community with a hyperlocal environment and a full range of social networking tools so that users can collaborate on their citizen reports through a virtual and interactive newsroom. We expect the model will be promoted to other Chinese virtual communities, especially in Mainland China and Taiwan. Evaluations of the successes and failures of some prominent citizen websites (such as Backfence and newassignment.net) suggest that Web 2.0 social networking applications (like those provided in sites like Facebook, etc.) are crucial for building a hyperlocal conversation environment and sustaining an engaged-citizen community. Based on our own experience as well as observing other projects, we believe it is difficult to sustain volunteer involvement in citizen reporting and civic action without providing opportunities for participants to network and communicate with one another - both online as well as offline. Since inmediahk.net was launched in 2004, our networking and community-building features have not been well-developed. The project seeks to combine a citizen media content management system (CMS) with hyper-local interaction and social networking or “friending” tools, so that members of the community can go beyond individual reporting, to active social networking for collaborative reporting as well as facilitating dialogue with a wider internet community (including other media sites and blogs). As our website is in Chinese, the new model, once built, can be adapted to other Chinese communities easily. We already have strong connections with bloggers, wikimedians, and other citizen media communities in mainland China and Taiwan. We intend to take an active role to promote this citizen reporter community model to local NGOs and other Chinese communities via blogger conferences and international independent media networks.

Primary Contact Email

owlam@yahoo.com

Organization or Business Name

Who would want to use it and why?

The first group of users would be the 800 citizen reporters and 5,000 registered users in inmediahk.net. In the past three years, our membership has been growing and the website has become more influential with its engaged reports. However, its Web 2.0 features are limited, users cannot form sub-groups for collective reporting and discussion is not well-linked with the larger Chinese-language blogging and BBS community. A new platform can not only help users to form social network and ac hoc groups for collaborative reporting, micro contribution on news and information but also help to bring in ideas and discussions from other sources and create a diverse and open conversational environment. Upon experimenting with the new model, we would promote it to local NGOs and citizen groups in Taiwan and China.

Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?

I am applying on behalf of a team which includes the executive members of Hong Kong In-Media and editorial members of inmediahk.net. The former is a local non-profit organization promoting independent and citizen media, well connected with local academic and civic circles. The latter, supported by Hong Kong In-Media, has become a most vibrant local citizen journalist site in Hong Kong and Chinese speaking world within three years. Its citizen reporting has inspired a number of new citizen media websites/initiatives within the greater Chinese community. Moreover, our engaged citizen reporters have actively combined citizen networks with civic action, which together with their reports, have prominent effects in formulating local social agenda and policy reform (such as policies on historical and cultural preservation). The idea in this proposal has been approved by both organizations as a most important undertaking in the coming two to three years and the organizations will mobilize resources to support the web development. Our technical support would come from computer science students and graduates from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and consultants from Taiwan and Mainland China, who are familiar with CMS (such as drupal and wordpress), mash-up applications, etc. In the past three years, we have developed strong networks within Chinese virtual communities (such as Social Brain Foundation in Mainland China, blogger communities as well as independent media groups in Taiwan and Malaysia). Such network will help us to promote the newly developed tool. Moreover with the help from globalvoicesonline.org, the new model and its generated content can be promoted to a greater global audience. As for myself, I am a founding member of Hong Kong In-Media and its present chairperson. I am also a member of the editorial in inmediahk.net and the Northeast Asia editor of globalvoicesonline. I have experience working in mainstream journalism, Asia based non-governmental organization and have studied and worked in Taiwan and Mainland China.

U.S. State

Country

China

What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?

We will start the process by bringing a community of citizen journalism leaders (active citizen journalists and programmers) in the Chinese speaking world to a workshop for discussing and working out a concrete plan for the new Chinese citizen media platform. The workshop team, acting as consultants, would test on the platform and give feedback to the programmers for developing the Chinese platform, to be implemented in inmediahk.net. This process would help to bring together a community of practitioners in Chinese citizen journalism and hopeful would become a network for promoting grassroots journalism practices and new tools in the Chinese speaking world. Moreover, inmediahk.net will serve as a show case for this collaborative and interactive citizen reporting tool. As Hong Kong In-Media will be developing its own NGO ISP service in Hong Kong this year, we will actively promote the new platform to local NGOs (such as labour unions, youth and student groups as well as woman organizations). Local universities, especially journalism departments would also be our potential targets for disseminating the new tools. We also expect our technical consultants from Taiwan to help upgrade the Taiwan NGOs and new media circle with this tool. We will also demonstrate and promote the Chinese platform via public functions such as Chinese blogger and new media conference and persuade citizen media with similar nature to share their data base for setting up a greater Chinese citizen media network. The promotion of the tool would also serve as advocacy for citizen journalism practice as a form of participatory and deliberative democracy. We would open our source code and set up a website (in English) to encourage the adaptation of the tool to other languages.

How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?

The initial evaluation would come from our own website: inmediahk.net. Apart from traffic flow and growth rate of users, we would consult with our users through online questionnaires about the structure, interactive setting, friendliness, design, and etc. of the new interface. We would also organize face-to-face focus group meetings with our citizen reporters to get their feedbacks on the new platform. A consultation body composed of bloggers, internet entrepreneurs, programmers, media activists and professors from journalism and new media department would be formed at the very initial stage through a practical workshop to oversee the process and give regular suggestions on the project. As for the greater Chinese community, we would try to find out how many NGOs, websites have adapted the platform. And how many citizen media websites agree to share their data and form a citizen media network.

Web site

http://www.inmediahk.net

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge

$128000

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

Professional journalism is usually individual endeavor. For citizen journalism, as most of them are amateurs and engaged in journalistic work in leisure time, collaboration would help them to do more in-depth journalistic work. Friendship within the circle would also help them to continue their work. However, most of the citizen media CMS, do not provide a good platform for interaction among individuals and formation of ac hoc group for a specific topic. A virtual newsroom among citizen reporters where people can meet, inform and work with each other on journalistic topics will help to develop a stronger and sustainable citizen reporters community for socially engaged reports. As there is already a long list of new media tools in the Internet, we need a platform that allows us to embed their resources for realizing a multi-media citizen journalistic practice. We also need a platform that can accommodate more micro contribution of news and information (for example via twitter). In Chinese speaking world, most of the citizen media initiatives are either individual effort or support by local grassroots NGOs. Most of them lack resources for adapting and localizing CMS or mashing up with other new media tools. If we manage to develop a Chinese platform, with flexibility for citizen media websites to adapt, it can help their works. Moreover, the development and promotion process can facilitate a network among leaders and practitioners of Chinese citizen media for other potential collaborations, such as data sharing and cross border citizen reporting.

Total cost of project, including all sources of funding

$220000

What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general

Firstly, in recent years, among the Chinese speaking world: Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and Mainland, citizen journalism has become a growing force to engage with social issues and policies. It has created a new space for social actor to realize participatory and deliberative democracy and expand the public sphere. In the recent 2007 Chinese blogger conference, grassroots journalism is a main topic. However, at present, much of the efforts are individual based. And among the citizen media organizers and practitioners in different Chinese speaking world, there are very few opportunities to share their experience. As a Hong Kong based organization, we are well connected with grassroots media organizations in China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia; and because of the “One Country Two System” we enjoy relatively more freedom in advocacy works when compared with our mainland counterpart. Such geographical and political position allows us to be a hub in connecting with the Chinese grassroots media organizations on new project, collaboration and regional advocacy. Secondly, with the development of internet multimedia tools like youtube, twitters, podcast, etc. citizen media have far more potentials than the past. However, for most of the existing citizen media initiatives, the platforms are usually orientated towards a single media. Influential sites such as coolloud.org.tw (in Taiwan), my1510.com (in Mainland China), min-jian.com (in China) and inmediahk.net (in Hong Kong) are all focused on written reports. Their strength come from their concern on social transformation, but they are usually fallen behind in technological upgrade for delivering their idea when compared with individual bloggers. With our concrete experience in citizen media work (for three years), our awareness of the needs of the Chinese citizen media community and our existing network with citizen media practitioners across different Chinese communities, our project has the potential of developing into a R&D section for the future development of Chinese citizen media.

Expected amount of time to complete project (in whole years):

2years

How will people learn about what you are doing?

As our working team is consisted of members from Taiwan and Hong Kong, they have their own network for spreading the details of the new platform. Our consultants will also help to promote the project via their blogs, conference, teaching, etc. Moreover, our organization connection with websites and organizations such as coolloud.org.tw (from Taiwan), social brain foundation (from China) and globalvoicesonline.org would help us to spread words among bloggers, netizens and new media practitioners. If we get the newschallenge award, it would become a big event among the Chinese citizen media and blogger communities, and most probably it would catch the mainstream media attention. In the past few years, there are critiques about mainstream media’s practice, such as self-censorship and commercialization in different Chinese communities and citizen media has emerged as an alternative practice, the new citizen force hasn’t been formally recognized as a significant sector of the civil society among the mainstream general public. The award will be regarded as recognition and a vote of confidence on the development of grassroots journalism in the Chinese world. And the news will generate a lot of resonance and support from Chinese netizens and civil societies.

Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.

We have just bought in a new server for hosting our various websites this month (Nov 2007). Pretty soon, we will start to do web-hosting and provide some technical support for local NGOs, grassroots organizations and individuals. The business is to sustain ourselves financially and help local NGOs and grassroots organizations to develop their own media. Our technical set up and our supporting staff and volunteers would also give back up to this project. At present, (although we haven’t announced our plan yet), two groups have approached us for consultation and technical back up for their website. One is a woman organization (Association for the Advancement of Feminisms) they have a local woman resource website: womenresources.org; another group is formed by professional reporters from Macau, they want to build up a new media website by adopting inmediahk.net organizing model. Once we have the new Chinese platform ready, we would actively promote it to local NGOs circle. We will announce our plan in December and start a public fundraising. This Chinese community media platform project would be a significant part of our citizen media R&D.

Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?

We have discussed the projects with a number of individuals, organizations and websites. Below is a confirmed list of our working partners: Individuals: Chang Yu-chang (TM): a Taiwan blogger, consultant for esouth.org: he would be a major consultant for this project and give advice on multi-media mash up. Charles Chuang: a founding member of drupaltaiwan.org and help the open source to localize in Taiwan; he has help many NGOs in Taiwan to adapt a drupal CMS: he would be a major technical consultant. Isaac Mao: the Chair of Social Brian Foundation: he will be a major consultant for our “marketing” and “promotion” of the new tool in China. Rebecca Mackinnon: a founding member of globalvoicesonline.org and a professor in the new media and journalism department in the University of Hong Kong. Organizations and websites: Hong Kong In-Media and inmediahk.net (Hong Kong based) have endorsed this proposal and will give human resources and financial backup for the project. The interlocals.net, a project under Hong Kong In-Media, can help promoting the platform among its partner network (including: coolloud.org.tw from Taiwan, Roland Soong's EastSouthWestNorth [zonaeuropa.com], gyaku.jp from japan, Media Culture Action from South Korea [gomediaction.net], etc.). Globalvoicesonline.org will also help publicizing the project and promoting the platform through their network.

Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?

When we formulate this proposal, we have taken into account of previous experiences in this area and try to get the practitioners involved. Chang Yu-chang and Charles Chuang have been helping Taiwan community websites, citizen media and NGOs to localize and adapt Drupal (e.g: http://www.coolloud.org.tw/). However, because of the lack of resources and the organization inertia in written media form, the adaptation is minimal; the multi-media settings and mash up of tools are very limited. It is rather difficult to experiment with an existing citizen media website on new technical tool, unless the organization is very conscious of R&D work. In this project, we have pulled in Chang and Charles, so that when we have the new platform ready, they can also adapt it in the existing NGOs circles that they have been working with. Isaac Mao has been helping individuals and groups in Mainland China to built and adapt new media tools. For example, he helps to push for the adaptation of wiki into a collaborative citizen webagazine: memedia.cn. We are glad to have him in this project. In Malaysia, there is an organization called SEACEM which has been helping NGOs in South East Asia to adapt new CMS. The organization is self-sustained and it gives very strong back up to the development of civil society in the region. Their experience is a very precious reference for our future development of the project.

What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?

If we manage to get the award, we would form a new non-profitable company with a working team and consultation body to carry out the project. Apart from the project, the company will give support for local NGOs and grassroots organizations on internet media. We expect in the long run it can turn into a R&D section for the development of Chinese grassroots media in Asia. Inmediahk.net will become as a showcase for the new platform. We would also actively publicize the platform via our organization and consultant network and demonstrate the platform in Chinese new media and blogger conferences. We expect some organizations and websites from Taiwan and China will adopt the model through our consultants’ connection. A network of Chinese grassroots media practitioners would be formed and we expect that after the project, they can continue to exchange information and develop future collaboration on cross-border citizen reporting, advocacy and development of Chinese citizen media, etc.