EVENT: Innovation Forum: Soapboxes in cyberspace: how can the media facilitate debate online?

Innovation Forum: Soapboxes in cyberspace: how can the media facilitate debate online?

I’m pleased to be able to announce the second Innovation Forum event, being organised by Nico Macdonald with some small input from me. Nico and I are collaborating on a Future Media Summit and these events support our research, develop debate and the roster of issues we’ll cover as well as giving us some insights into formats that can work over and above the traditional lots-of-people-in-a-hall-with-powerpoint paradigm (that’s frankly exhausting just to contemplate!).

Nico says:

The recent debate around the call for a Blogger’s Code of Conduct highlighted the growing importance of the online ‘political commons’. Historically the political commons has been shaped by political parties, civic organisations, and news and current affairs media. Increasingly people cleave to the latter for engagement, but its ability to facilitate a political commons — from the BBC’s ‘Have Your Say’ to the Guardian’s Comment is Free — is not yet proven. Is this a challenge of business models or technical constraints? Lack of understanding of users or failure to design the right kind of spaces? Or the product of broader social phenomena we have yet to understand? We are taking the debate offline — and invite you to come and contribute.

The Guardian are kindly hosting the Forum at their newsroom so I’m looking forward to that. There’s a £15 charge to cover wine etc afterwards, but I do have 3 tickets available as freebies for the needy/budget-less: give me a good reason for a freebie by email!

Once we have people registered then we’ll be soliciting questions in advance (Question Time stylee) so that we can ensure that the debate is focused, sharp and covers the role that the media can play in facilitating online debate – rather than having a general ‘jam’ about blogging and UGC (zzzzz).