How do you bring the citizen voice into conventional media? Giving Social Media Meaning
by Rob Paterson
At KETC, the public TV station in St Louis, we like all other media outlets have been struggling to find out how to bring the voice of the “citizen” into what we do. We need to find out how to use the huge potential of our citizens to deepen and make more meaningful our attempts to help St Louisans help each other cope with the financial crisis.
Our starting point is with the young. They are the digital natives and it is their future that is most at risk and they are the people least likely to watch Public TV. We lose them at 8 and they tend not to return until they are 50 plus!
The young are our great under-served group and so make our best target for trying to make a positive change.
Of course most young people are very experienced users of social media. Much more experienced that most of the folks at KETC. BUT what we know how to do very well is to
- Tell a story
- Edit video and sound
- Have a big megaphone – we have the official “air”
So we have been trying a few experiments with the Flip Camera – we have lent some Flips to groups of younger folks and given them an assignment – We asked them to comment on what was The American Dream today for them. You will see that this has become a very difficult question to answer now. What dream? Seems to be a common point of view.
We then worked with them to turn their material into the best 3 minute epics that is possible and then put them onto our “Air” – we have put the rest onto our YouTube Channel.
It’s early days. But our hope is that this might be the beginning of a “social media school” where we build a cadre of young people who can take their existing skills in social media and become better story tellers, expert editors and have a growing reputation in our community. Equipping them to make a difference.
Here is the launch program that will show you how we are going about this.
Here is the YouTube STL American Dream Channel
Watch this space as we expand our project to help people find help in the Mortgage and the Financial Crisis.
