[FoME] Democratic Public Sphere Program of the Social Science Research Council

[Christoph Dietz]

Von der Mailingliste "WSIS CS-Plenary " (World Summit on the Information Society - Civil Society Plenary), 24.3.2006:


Hi all,
As colleagues of mine working in relevant fields, I wanted to give  
you all a heads up on the new project I'm working on related to media  
reform and democracy.

The Social Science Research Council (http://www.ssrc.org), a  
distinguished non-profit that supports social science research in the  
public interest, has hired me as the program coordinator of their  
"Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere" program (http:// 
www.ssrc.org/programs/media/ ).

My job will be to help bring together media reform advocates with  
media researchers so they can collaborate more effectively together.   
There is apparently a huge need for better coordination and  
communication among activists and academics in the field of media  
reform.  Our main mechanism for facilitating this will be the launch  
next month of an online "Media Research Hub" that will support a  
broad community of media reform actors with various tools for  
collaboration and information sharing.

It's a rather dramatic departure from my United Nations portfolio of  
the past 10 years or so. But I will remain engaged with international  
public policy issues, which is wonderful.  And I will get to work on  
cutting-edge stuff like the effect of the blogosphere on traditional  
media, broadband access to underserved areas, community wifi, low  
power FM, and lots of other cool new media areas.

The good news is that we have the funding to support various  
activities such as sponsoring targeted research, supporting interns,  
and organizing physical meetings to link key actors.  But as a first  
step we are going to want to make sure that we are linking to the  
most relevant and active networks of media reform activists and  
academics. If you have suggestions for networks and coalitions that I  
should plug into, particularly outside of the US, that would be  
really helpful.

(Note that my new work contact details are below.)

Regards and Do Stay in Touch,

Rik

Rik Panganiban
Program Coordinator
Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere
Social Science Research Council
810 Seventh Avenue, 31st Floor
New York NY 10019
PH: 212.377.2700 x 644
FX: 212.245.4232
email: panganiban at ssrc.org 
Web: http://www.ssrc.org/programs/media