I've been listening to the live webcast of the Blogging, Journalism & Credibility conference at Harvard.
I'm actually trying to implement some of the theories that the participants are talking about by combining independent investigative documentary filmmaking with open source techniques of content development.
It is really exciting to listen to it because I think that The Echo Chamber addresses many of the hot topics that came up during the conference -- issues that I've been writing about a lot of them over the last couple of months such as:
* Viewing Objectivity in new ways -- Anomalies with the "He Said / She Said" standard.
* Using Transparency to explain subjective judgements and to get a closer approximation to the truth.
* Using Transparency to improve Credibility -- Posting Transcripts
* Incorporating Audience Participation in the production of Media.
* Focusing on the empowerment of audiences to create their own meaning instead of feeding them the "truth" or just focusing on the bottom line.
* Overcoming Confirmation Bias where audiences only seek out information that reaffirms their pre-existing beliefs -- Principles of Transparency can be used to reach new audiences.
* Using the unlimited space constraints of the Internet to defy traditional media logic.
* Shifting cultural and political power to bloggers and citizen journalists and away from the static filtering mechanisms of the journalistic and political institutions.
* Desiring a new objectivity paradigm that covers a larger range of perspectives -- What I've called "Integral Journalism" and have tried to accomplish by interviewing such a diverse range of perspectives.
* Differentiating between Blogospheric Credibility vs. Truth Credibility.
I think that Marshall McLuhan's aphorism "The medium is the message" is very applicable to The Echo Chamber documentary -- In other words, a new communications paradigm that combines independent filmmaking with the blogosphere will probably make a much larger cultural impact than any of the specific messages within my film.
The realization of new ways for people to make meaning will have a much more lasting and profound effect than the content or substance of this project. I don't claim to have come up with any of these ides -- I'm just trying to synthesize all of them into this project.
I've been taking notes and I'm waiting to see if anyone produces a transcript so that I can site exactly who was saying what.
I would like to align myself with some of the participants that are at this conference, and then launch EchoChamberProject.com to the larger blogosphere within the next month or so.
People are looking for practical answers these macro solutions, and this project could serve as a micro petri dish for implementing a lot of these concepts.
If I catch this wave of interest, then I could potentially get aligned with some of the best and brightest thinkers on this new communications paradigm that is slowly evolving.