Application information is available at http://www.issuenetwork.org.

Please send applications to: participant@issuenetwork.org

**Call for Participants**

The News about Networks

Workshop by the Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam

Supported by the Ford Foundation's portfolio in media policy and technology, part of the Media, Arts and Culture Unit, New York. A co-production with de Balie Center for Politics and Culture, Amsterdam.

Dates: 10-14 November 2003
Location: de Balie, Amsterdam
Deadline for applications: 14 September 2003
Send application to: participant@issuenetwork.org
Workshop website: http://www.issuenetwork.org
Who should apply: Advocates & Academics
Participant acceptance notice: 19 September 2003

Application details below.

Introduction

The Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam is organizing a workshop for researchers, advocates, and grassroots organizers in the field of media democracy, communications rights, and media policy. The Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam, is dedicated to creating and hosting political tools for the Web.

Over a five-day period, the workshop will provide an immersion experience in Govcom.org's work in a media laboratory, where all participants will be invited to use state of the art information tools created by govcom.org and its collaborators. The participants also are invited to present and share their own tools and knowledge.

Much of the workshop will revolve around using the Issue Crawler, server-side software, developed with OneWorld International (London), Aguidel.com (Paris) and Recognos (Cluj-Napoca) that locates, analyses and visualises networks on the Web. Some of the questions one may ask are:

--What are my networks? What is my relative standing within these networks?
--Which types of organizations and agendas dominate these networks?
--Do the organizations in these networks recognise each other's work? Do they (instead) rely on news coverage as a sign of recognition?
--Which parts of the networks hold together if one takes out funders? Do they hold together if one takes out other agenda-setters, be it (big) media or intergovernmental organizations?
--How relevant is media coverage to the overall effectiveness of my organization? Do NGOs take up issues depending on the press coverage of the same issues?

To answer these questions, we will undertake network location exercises, and enquire into the extent to which the networks we find are dominated by the agendas of (big) media, funders, intergovernmental organizations and/or NGOs.

Workshop Substance

One of the greater paradoxes, even tragedies, of NGOs these days is a continued reliance on measuring the value of their activities by press appearance. Despite the rise of independent and internet forms of 'news', many NGOs still rely on (commercial) press coverage as demonstrable evidence of organizational or individual worth. At the same time, reliance on the press, and a media strategy, may raise questions about integrity and authenticity. The workshop takes up some of the larger dilemmas inhering in activist and NGO activity today: the extent to which NGO work is driven by the coverage of its work. Similarly, and related to the question of coverage is another potential impact of the news on NGOs. Do NGOs take up issues depending on the press coverage of the same issues?

In asking the extent to which NGOs are beholden to the press, both in terms of self-representation and in terms of issue selection, we also would like to know whether it matters. That is, is coverage of itself or of its issues related to an NGO's standing in its network? The networks may have other means of distributing standing, and other ways of choosing issues. Indeed, we may find that NGO standing and issue selection has little to do with the leanings of the press.

The Network News workshop is dedicated to understanding relationships between network work, issue work, and news work. To this end, we will grapple with some methods and techniques in tracking the resonance of issues in the news, of network issues in the news, as well as the resonance of news within issue networks. The lead question for the workshop reads:

Is NGO standing - in its networks - significantly related to its appearance in the news?

To answer this question, a number of exercises are to be undertaken.

1. Network location. In which network or networks does the NGO appear?
2. News-in-the-network. Is news (and, more importantly, newsworthiness) a significant feature within the network?
3. Standing and coverage. Is an NGO's relative standing in the network related to its practice and display of newsworthiness? Are NGOs driven towards seeking coverage by the network?
4. News strategies. Is newsworthiness an organizational feature to be recommended to actors in the network? Or is it futile?

The workshop will also feature the introduction of an automated news monitoring system, using RSS (rich site summary) technology. Press trackers, under development by anderemedia.nl and govcom.org at issuenews.org, capture streams from leading news organizations. At the workshop we would like to analyse these streams for NGO and NGO issue mentionings (or anything else one may wish to track). In doing so, we will be able to perform a second check about the extent to which organizational and issue standing within the networks we find may be related to press coverage.

Format of the Workshop

The format of the workshop intersperses the following:

1) Introduction and Software Training
2) Talks and Demonstrations by the Participants and Cartographers
3) Software Use and Feedback on Findings
4) Designer Map-making
5) Individual Analysis and Presentations of Results
6) Discussions of texts from the Reader
7) Public Presentations

A presentation - The News about Networks - will be made upon conclusion of the workshop, on Friday evening, the 14th of November. The presentation is held at de Balie and is open to the public.

A public debate will take place on Wednesday evening, the 12th of November. Though as of yet unconfirmed, the public debate is expected to feature a presentation on one of the more advanced forms of information politics, 'Pre-mediation'. Applying the notion to the Iraq War, we are interested in understanding the extent to which the premediation of the Iraq War - summed up in the concept of PreWar - produced a sense of war's inevitability.

The media laboratory has facility for laptops with cabled ethernet connectivity. Wireless network to be confirmed.

Application Details

Please apply. To apply, please send a biographical sketch, a one-page description of the questions and themes you would like to see addressed at the workshop as well as the answers to the questionnaire below. Please send these 3 items to participant@issuenetwork.org by 14 September. Space is limited.

The answers to the questionnaire allow for the advance mapping of the issue areas, as well as advance issue news monitoring. The criteria of acceptance to the workshop is the mutual fit between the applicant's analytical desires and expectations, and the capacities of the analysts on hand.

The workshop is free of charge. Participants should cover travel and accommodation expenses. We can help you find accommodation. For accommodation and other queries, write to Catherine Somze, Govcom.org Workshop Producer, catherine@issuenetwork.org.

The Ford Foundation has made available five Workshop Fellowships for US-based participants. Application information is available at http://www.issuenetwork.org.