Public Media Showcase

Thankfully, Gustav has racheted down, but with more storms on the way, the extraordinary social media community that emerged over the long weekend to provide information to storm victims and volunteers has expanded its focus. Now dubbed the Hurricane Information Center, the network currently has more than 540 members, all creating and debating communications tools for disaster response.Read more...

New distribution technologies such as Snag Films and social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter could help social-issue filmmakers reach viewers and build networks of public action. But will they? And if they do, does anyone still need public broadcasting? According to a recent survey, the answers are yes, and yes.Read more...

Finding it excruciating to watch Gustav creep ever-closer to the Gulf? Channel your anxiety into knowledge and action over at the Gustav Wiki, where volunteers are tracking the storm and aggregating resources for assistance, relocation, donations, volunteer housing, ham radio communications and more. The wiki was based on a similar shared resource built during Hurricane Katrina; volunteers are needed to help update info.

In one of the longest and most highly-anticipated build-ups to a presidential election in years, PBS has launched "Vote 2008," a website that aggregates and highlights the best public media coverage of the 2008 election. By gathering video, news, and online tools from national programs and local stations, PBS Vote 2008 can bring in-depth election-related content from PBS' trusted news and public affairs producers to light in a new way.Read more...

We're excited to present the second in a series of field reports produced by the Center for Social Media as part of the Future of Public Media project, funded by the Ford Foundation. These reports examine innovative media projects designed to foster public knowledge and action. Virtual worlds such as Second Life are proliferating online, attracting millions of users and creating new spaces for creative public media experiments. Innovative non-profits have begun to establish a presence in these alternate worlds, hoping to build community and engage visitors in much more personal and visceral ways than websites, blogs, and discussion boards allow.