MODULE #4: Talking with DOTCOM Special Guest Josh Levy (March 2 - March 16)

Meet Josh Levy!



Here is Josh's brief biography:

Josh Levy is a writer and web strategist exploring the intersections of technology, politics, and activism. In addition to being managing editor of Change.org, he has been a frequent commentator on the use of the web in the 2008 election as associate editor of techPresident and Personal Democracy Forum. Levy was a blogger and podcaster for National Public Radio's Sunday Soapbox, and his analysis has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Salon, NPR, ABC News, AOL Politics, and XM Radio, among others.

Our next two week MODULE CHALLENGE/CONVERSATION:

After reading our DOTCOM interview with Josh, below, please ask one question to Josh (right here in the COMMENTS box) about media, blogging, social change, and citizen action here - and feel free to add to the conversation as it unfolds.

1. What social issues are most important to you? Why?

Since the work I do involves a deep awareness and interest in almost two dozen social issues, from Autism to Homelessness to Genocide, a lot of issues are important to me. But one issue has come to the forefront lately: sustainable food and agriculture. The food we eat -- and the way it's produced -- is going to be one of the biggest problems facing our world in the next century. The current industrial agriculture system exists to produce huge amounts of food for both humans and animals, but to do so it destroys the environment and makes us sicker.

The reasons behind this are long and complicated, but the result is that I've become more and more interested in local forms of agriculture in which all of the food we eat is grown in the surrounding areas. If we can encourage the growth of small farms and local economies, we may be able to beat back one of the biggest threats to the climate and our health.

2. How have you used technology and citizen media to raise awareness about important social issues?

I've been trying to figure out how to use technology for social issues for many years - the key phrase is "figure out." We're all continually learning about the best ways to use technology to make the world a better place.

For me, the process started with my interest in using blogs and wikis in the classroom to encourage collaborative forms of learning. That led me to documentary video, which I studied in an MFA program in New York City. But as I played around with video I found that I kept wanting to work more on the web. I was particularly interested in the social functions of the internet: the way we can use it to form groups, organize around issues, and engage in politics and civic life.

This interest led me to create the Bronx Blog Project, in which I taught English-language students from the Dominican Republic how to blog and recorded the lessons on video. Then I created a website that collected all of the participants' blog posts, the videos I’d shot of their classes and of time at home, and interviews with the students. The idea was to create an ongoing online documentary that was itself a part of the education process. It was moderately successful.

The goal was to help the students develop a sense of community-building and advocacy. I’m not sure that happened, but by the end most of the students seemed to have a better understanding of the social web.

Since then, I’ve focused on blogging myself, mostly about technology and politics. With Change.org, I've helped build a network of blogs that focus on specific social issues. I’m still very interested in the ways that blogging and other kinds of online conversations -- like those that take place on Twitter and Facebook -- can be used for social change.

3. In what ways have you encountered opaque media or highly moderated media messaging in your work? How have you overcome this?

Because we work on several specific social issues, we also work with many nonprofits who are advocates for those issues. While I greatly respect that work that these nonprofits do, many of them are still struggling to adapt to the openness of the social web. Because many of those organizations are structured in a very top-down way -- meaning that even the smallest decisions are made at the highest levels -- they are resistant to the bottom-up nature of the web. As a result, their blogging can be very formal, reading like a press release, and their videos not very engaging.

Because of this, we’re always working with nonprofits to help them connect to online communities, mainly through initiating and sustaining conversations with activists and building communities.

4. How has media stereotyping (perceptions propagated the media) impacted your work? Specific examples?

The Bronx Blog Project was in part a response to media stereotypes of immigrants, and the conservative politics that often go with them. Social media gives people the chance to create their own narratives and to promote those narratives among a wide network of people. By helping people learn how to do this, I felt that I was helping them learn how to combat negative stereotyping.

Another example comes from our End Human Trafficking blog, which is always fighting stereotypes about sex and prostitution. Our blogger, Amanda Kloer, tries to push back on those stereotypes by turning them upside down, for example posting a series of “Red Light Special” posts that uses the language of sex trafficking to help sell goods that actually help trafficking victims.

5. What are some of the biggest challenges you've confronted as you've tried to inspire action on important social issues, particularly using technology as the tool?

The biggest challenge as been realizing that blogging or shoot video are not on their own forms of political empowerment. Early on, I went in to some projects with the assumption that just teaching people how to use social media tools, and having them create their own media, will grant them a social and political consciousness, and they’ll automatically want to form groups and advocate for issues they care about.

In really, things aren’t that easy. Being aware of your political situation, and wanting to change that situation, is dependent on hundreds or thousands of things and requires an education and a desire to engage in one’s community. Just learning how to shoot a video camera or write a blog isn’t going to get you there.

6. How do you stay motivated in your work?

Everything in my life seems to be connected to the work that I do, so motivation is never a problem. I’m very involved in politics, so working on social issue blogs and documentaries is a natural an extension of that.

I’ve found that the best way to stay motivated is to do focus on the things that you believe in, those things that get you out of bed in the morning, the things you want to change. If you’re satisfied with things as they are, why do anything at all? The best kind of work is about making the kind of difference you’d like to see in the world.

7. What concrete steps would you encourage young people to take as they work to serve their communities and their world?

First, join up with the groups that are engaged in the issues you care about. If you want to stop the genocide in Darfur, connect to groups on Facebook or Change.org or elsewhere that are interesting in stopping it. Use Meetup.com to meet people face to face (the best kind of group). Go to Google Groups and join a group there. If no group exists, create it.
Second, learn about the issues that affect your immediate community: your street, your neighborhood, your city. Go to community meetings and learn how people get organized and get things done. Organizing is the key component to any social or political work, and the fundamentals haven’t changed much, even if the tools have.

8. What advice would you give young people with an eagerness to change the world?

Don’t be seduced by the lure of shiny new tools. Twitter is fun, but Twitter won’t change the world: people will. Behind any fun technology or new invention are real, live people, and it’s the people that make them important. So the next time you think that video will the change the world, or blogging will change the world, remember that it’s always people, organizing with other people, that change the world, and focus on them. The internet helps us organize better than ever before, and it certainly can be the engine behind social change. But the actual vehicle is you and your colleagues.

9. Other advice? Personal insights? Illustrative examples of effective citizen media?

The site/project that first got me interested in using social media for social change was Global Voices (http://globalvoicesonline.org/). It collects blog posts from around the world written by journalists and dissidents, and functions as an avenue of free speech and political expression for people living in repressive countries. Also, it's run by some brilliant people who fully understand the potential of citizen media and are among its biggest advocates. The minute I discovered I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

In my work I've tried to emulate the successes and avoid the pitfalls I've encountered. I think that's good advice no matter what kind of work you do -- there's no shame in copying someone's good idea, as long as you add your own spin on it and use it was a way to learn.

One of the things I love about working in online media is how process-oriented it is; unlike a film, which is a finished, fixed product, a successful social media project develops over time and continues to adapt and innovate. So if your project doesn't at first succeed, keep working at it, include more people in it, and eventually you'll have something you can be proud of.