Provisionally approved 6/18/ 02
MEDIA AND COMMUNITY BUILDING
Level II
RATIONALE: Communication, in all forms, is crucial to building and maintaining communities. From the beginning of recorded history, different forms of communication technologies have played important roles in uniting and empowering communities. While traditional definitions of community tend to be geographically based, more current definitions are based on social dimensions such as interest, class, ethnic/cultural group, gender, and race. In the current period, there are a growing number of community and labor activists who seek to use media and communication technologies as community building tools for professional associations, labor unions, and political movements.
Particularly as these technologies become more affordable and accessible, they become useful, if not indispensable, tools for even the smallest non-profits and community-based organizations, to be utilized in the service of organizational development, community building, constituent mobilization, influencing public opinion, and other social goals. People interested in community building, therefore, need to develop a working knowledge of communication infrastructures that will enable them to become not just educated consumers of existing media but skilled producers, equipped with the expertise to tell their own stories and mobilize their own constituencies, as well.
Students must demonstrate a clear understanding of the roles that traditional and more recently developed forms of media and communication technologies have played and can play in building and maintaining healthy communities. These media and communication technologies can be used in dialogue, outreach, education, organization and mobilization crucial to fulfilling what the CPCS mission statement spells out as "foster[ing] the public good and aid[ing] the transformation to a more just society." The knowledge of different options offered in today's multimedia world, and the ability to determine which of these are most applicable to a given community building project are important tools that students can use in this regard.
COMPETENCY: Can compare and contrast a range of existing models and best practices in the use of media and communication technologies as tools for community building, and discuss their application to community projects and/or organizations.
CRITERIA:
1. Discuss ways in which media and communication technologies have contributed to building healthy, dynamic communities.
2. Identify and describe a range of media and communication technologies that can be used in the service of community building.
3. Discuss the promise and challenges of the digital convergence of audio, video and computer-based technologies in relation to community-building efforts.
4. Discuss how media and communication technologies can be used by communities facing cultural exclusion, low-literacy, language barriers and/or disability.
5. Assess and critique examples of the use of media and technologies in community building efforts and describe the elements of "best practices" in these examples.
Portfolio Links: You are expected to use the Level II Communications Portfolio writing standards as guidelines for any writing products prepared for the criteria of this competency. At a minimum, writing must demonstrate Level I Communications Portfolio standards.
STANDARDS:
1. For Criterion 1, the student should select two well-known issues or events one historical and one contemporary and discuss the role of at least two different media in facilitating or inhibiting communication and community building in each case.
2. The range of media and communication technologies should extend from simple newsletters and the use of local area networks to more large-scale efforts, utilizing community-based as well as commercial mainstream mass media. Students should be able to describe particular examples of three technologies such as Internet-mediated communications (e-mail, listserv, or website), direct mail, telephone solicitation, billboards, leaflets, printed bulletins or newspapers, radio, and/or television. Descriptions of these technologies should include a description of what they are, how long they have been in use, how costly they are (in terms of human labor, money, etc.) for a community-based organization to use them.
3. The student must describe issues faced by communities dealing with digital convergence such as over-crowded, strained infrastructures with more bandwidth-intensive media and the efforts made to improve the speed and volume of these networks such as wireless technology, DSL and cable modem. The student must research two issues one obstacle and one success and discuss the implications on community building that each presents.
4. The student must identify and discuss two examples of community building efforts that have addressed issues of cultural exclusion, low literacy, language barriers, and/or disability.
5. The student must analyze and critique two case studies of "best practices" one from a prepared source and one constructed by the student, based on a site visit, interviews, and observations. These case studies should cover the following items:
a. The name, origin, and purpose of the community group or organization
b. A history of its use of different media technologies, with descriptions of each one, and how the organization tackled each one, the costs to the organization of using that technology (in terms of time, labor, money)
c. A discussion of which resulted in positive outcomes (in the eyes of the organization and/or of the student) and which resulted in negative outcomes
d. Critical analysis from the student: What would you have done differently and what do you suggest the organization consider for the future?
Examples of Demonstration:
1. Prior Learning: Demonstration of this competency through prior learning would entail documentation of work on a project similar to the one outlined above, such as participating in a media or outreach campaign, or an internal organizing or capacity-building effort. The campaign or effort should be one which took advantage of at least three clearly identifiable media or communication technologies and which addressed at least one of the frequently excluded populations identified in Criterion 4 of the competency. Documentation should be fairly extensive and should include examples of the implementation of the campaign or effort (i.e.: newsletters, mailings, web pages, radio PSAs, etc.) The student should then compare and contrast this effort with a similar project (from direct observation or from the literature), reflecting on its original objective(s), the strategy developed to address it/them, the media and communication technologies used, how one or more of the populations listed in Criteria 4 was included and/or addressed, and an assessment of the overall effort.
2. Independent Study: A student who wants to demonstrate this competency through independent study may proceed by reading a text on media and communications technologies, as well as a number of specific studies of the implications of media and communications technologies as they relate to community building. The texts should be approved by the evaluator. Then, working alone or in a group, a student may undertake an independent study project that would:
a. Identify a community-building effort: such as a union trying to organize and also build up public support, or a neighborhood group trying to gain adherents and lobby public officials and the public in general, etc.
b. Review how at least three similar efforts have used different media and communications technologies both in the present day and in the past and write up a three-to five-page summary of those efforts, making reference to the literature reviewed above.
c. Establish an internship with the organization to monitor the implementation of their strategy, keeping a regular journal with at least eight one-page entries, to chronicle the successes, challenges, failures, etc.
d. Write a final, three-to-five-page paper analyzing every step in the process and concluding which aspects were the most successful, where unexpected outcomes emerged, and what might have been done differently.
3. Course: Complete a CPCS course addressing the competency or an appropriate transfer.
4. Field Project: To demonstrate this competency via a field project the student can work with a group or an organization currently involved in using media and communication technologies in a community-building effort. As part of this project, the student should familiarize him/herself with ways in which these media and technologies can be utilized, with an emphasis on addressing the needs of underserved populations and the particular challenges of convergence. The student should then compare and contrast this effort with other similar projects.