Mosaiko

Social Media, Greek Style

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does social media mean in a country where most people still don’t have easy access to broadband? That was the question on display at the “New Media, New Content?” conference at the Hellenic Audiovisual institute in Athens on October 7, sponsored by the U.S. Embassy’s cultural program Mosaiko. The conference, held the day after highly-charged elections, brought more than 350 students to listen to Greek and U.S. speakers. Almost all of them had Facebook pages; almost none used Twitter; and most were trying to figure out what new media means for their job opportunities as communications students.

For me, the most interesting part of the day was listening to Greek researchers on the challenges of the new media. Speaker after speaker talked about problems familiar in the U.S., and still new (or new-ish anyway) in Greece (and, probably, other countries of the size, level of economic development, and digital absorption level of Greece). First, people are worried. Prof. Liza Tsaliki’s research on children’s attitudes toward the Internet showed that they imbibed substantial anxiety and concern from their parents about the dangers of the environment. Most showed a fairly high fear of losing their privacy, and tried to minimize the problem with a welter of aliases. Second, nobody knows where the new economy is. Web news aggregator Panayiotis Tsantilas is struggling to find a business model to support the service; Greek advertising is a pretty small base. Prof. Andreas Veglis notes that Greek mass media have barely put a toe into the social media water—though they’re not too far behind other international mass media. They’re not sure what the value of any such investment is.

Third, people want to play. Prof. Dmitris Charitos showcased a geolocative scavenger-hunt type game conducted with college students, who braved technical challenges and had, if video documentation is to be trusted, a very good time. Fourth, where’s the public? The public role and responsibility of media—for public information, as a platform for democratic participation, as a cultural resource for an open society—was a notion still to be made vivid in a new media context. Indeed, Prof. Stelios Papathanassopoulos said, “We don’t have public media like that here.” He’s right—in fact, in most parts of the world, people don’t have the same kind of public media systems, or constitutional protection for freedom of the press, or even sometimes a culture that explicitly endorse public participation in and oversight of government. But no matter where you are, if some media in the society don’t function to provide people with the knowledge they need to act as citizens, then you’re lacking a basic tool for building an open society. These days, you can make those tools with open-source applications.

Links:

http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/blogs/future_of_public_media/social_media_greek_style/