Tuesday, December 4, 12:30 pm
Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor
Citizen video in Southeast Asia has exploded in recent times, and has come to play a significant role in national and regional politics. As in other contexts it has documented spectacular events, spearheaded campaigns and uncovered scandals. More broadly citizen media and networked publics are shifting the balance of power both in the media and the political landscape.
Like China and India, ASEAN nations are experiencing rapid growth and the online and citizen media space is only set to grow in media production, audience and importance.
Whilst broadband access in the region is still often constrained to urban areas, citizen video is also being taken up as a political tool from those on the economic and political fringes. Initiatives such as Citizen Journalists Malaysia and EngageMedia are working to develop strategic networks of new citizen video producers.
In this discussion, Andrew Lowenthal, co-founder and Executive Director of EngageMedia, will outline their approach to video4change and their work in the region, in particular looking at West Papua, (a remote region of Indonesia that has been waging an independence campaign for more than 40 years), the development of regional, cross-border and multilingual video networks, and the effect and possibility of the internet and online media to generate new post-national political configurations and collaborations.
About Andrew
Andrew Lowenthal is Co-Founder and Executive Director of EngageMedia, an Asia-Pacific human rights and environmental video project begun in 2005. EngageMedia builds the capacity of video activists and campaigners to strategically use video and online technologies by building open source technologies, creating networks and conducting trainings.
EngageMedia also undertakes a number of research initiatives that look at the uses and effects of video as a social change tool. Current research partners with the MIT Center for Civic Media to explore the impact of 'video4change', another, with the University of Western Sydney, explores the citizen translator in the networked public sphere.
Andrew has been working in the field of media and technology activism since 1998. His work traverses the fields of new media and video production, NGO management, network building, research, media and technology activism, software development, and project and event management.
Andrew was active in the Indymedia network from 2000-2006. From 2006-08 he worked with the UK based Tactical Technology Collective as their participatory media project lead, editing the NGO-in-a-box series of free software packages and the more recent Message-in-a-box.
A past life as a video maker saw his works screen at the Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Art, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and the National Gallery of Indonesia.
Links
- http://engagemedia.org
- http://papuanvoices.net
- http://engagemedia.org/videochronic