News Release: Google Moderator

*NEWS RELEASE*

Avaiki Nius Agency has set up Google Moderator for Pacific Islands
Journalism Online ahead of this year's "crucial" biennual convention of the
Pacific Islands News Association in Port Vila, July 2009.

Google Moderator allows members of the online forum to suggest issues they'd
like to see discussed at PINA 2009, just four months away," says agency
editor Jason Brown.

"As with PIJO and the Pacific Freedom
Forum<http://www.pacificfreedomforum.blogspot.com/>,
the PINA moderator forum is a way of bringing democracy to media processes
within the region, adding a layer of formality to policy discussion
around media accountability systems.

*CITIZEN PARTICIPATION*

"PIJO members are free to ignore the forum, as is PINA, but adoption of
Google Moderator in the US signals that this approach carries serious weight
in how the future of the planet is decided over the next four years."

Google Moderator has been approved by the Obama administration as a step
towards formalising citizen
participation<http://www.google.com/search?q=%22citizen+participation%22&rls=com.mi...>in
US democratic processes.

Issues being discussed informally across the region include:

- The future of the PINA Secretariat - is it time to get out of Fiji
- Public Broadcasting - was privatisation a strategic mistake for island
states
- Journalism in crisis - new models for old media
- Climate change - media engagement responding to threats of sovereign
extinction
- The basics - how many journalists ignore codes of ethics
- Violence against women - rethinking the role of media
- Institutional memory - what happened to all the old PINA resolutions
- Trade - digging into doubts over being "bullied" into globalisation
- Corruption - extending the fight to web2 gov2

Brown says that there has been a pattern of the "real" issues being ignored
at PINA or shunted aside to last minute debates that go nowhere.

*CHILLING EFFECTS*

He suspects a problem in the past has been from the chilling effects of aid,
in a reluctance to offend sponsors including leading donors like NZAID and
AusAID.

"Playing it safe is no longer an option for PINA or any organisation
representing the media industry across the world's biggest feature.
Journalism is in crisis not just in the islands but worldwide, including New
Zealand and our neighbour Australia. Timelines around climate changes have
imploded over the last 12 months. Global capitalism has collapsed under its
own greed at the same time. Newspapers are disappearing by the day,
thousands of journalism and media jobs with them," he says.

Journalists, especially, need to build on passive observance and reporting
by contributing to regional debate, building networks of support and voting
on suggestions, even if
anonymously<http://www.google.com/support/faqs/bin/topic.py?topic=15799>,
he says.

*LEADERSHIP*

"PIJO and PFF are examples of web2 enabled information leadership by the
region, encouraging transparency, and accountability by allowing peer review
commentary.

"Both bodies thus find themselves in the curious position of regional
leadership, there being no similar vote enabled forums in Australia or New
Zealand, or indeed anywhere else to my knowledge," he says. By comparison,
for example, "New Zealand journalists have met once in the last 20 years."

"Simply by participating, island journalists and their supporters can
inspire and influence meaningful change globally."

*INVITE*

As follows, details for the PIJO moderator forum. Members should feel free
to invite others.

*formalising suggestions for PINA 2009 Port
Vila*<http://moderator.appspot.com/#15/e=35c0b&t=35c0c>

Informal discussions concerning the future of PINA are ongoing across the
world's largest feature.

As a support group, PIJO members have an opportunity
here<http://moderator.appspot.com/#15/e=35c0b&t=35c0c>to
semi-formalise their views by participating in this forum, including
anonymously if they chose, with their ideas, questions and suggestions.
Members can then vote on which they like best.

This is non-binding on PINA but may be used as a measure of how accurately
the association reflects input from the industry. Below is *background *to
the moderator forum, from Google:
. . .

Citizen participation that scales: a call to
action<http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/citizen-participation-that-sca...>
3/24/2009
07:44:00 PM
At Google we hold weekly town
hall<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_hall_meeting>-style
meetings with our founders, CEO, and guest speakers, which always feature a
Q&A session. Managing Q&A is a unique challenge with an audience of
thousands, in offices around the world, who inevitably want to ask more
questions than we have time to answer. To help address this challenge, we
developed Google Moderator <http://moderator.appspot.com/>, built on App
Engine <http://code.google.com/appengine/>.
Moderator gives participants a way to submit questions and vote for the ones
they want answered. And thanks to the scale that App Engine provides, this
application can now support tens of thousands of people at once. This gives
everyone the chance to be heard in a way that gives priority to the issues
that matter most to the broader group.

As you may have heard <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjJm_Hzc6Yg>, the
White House is hosting an online town hall meeting on Thursday and has asked
people to submit questions for the president and vote on which ones they
think he should answer.

We think technology can be a force for greater accountability and access
between citizens and their elected officials. We're excited that the White
House has chosen to use the power of cloud-based applications like Google
Moderator and App Engine to scale the president's direct dialogue with the
American people.

To take part in this experiment in citizen participation, please visit:
http://WhiteHouse.gov/OpenForQuestions<http://whitehouse.gov/OpenForQuestions>

Posted by Vic Gundotra, Vice President, Engineering

Permalink<http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/citizen-participation-that-sca...>
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*...*<http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/24/white-house-using-google-moderat...>

. . .
*FURTHER INFO:*

jason brown

editor:

ANA avaiki news agency
http://avaiki.nius.googlepages.com

project JPK - TVNZ
jabr...@tvnz.co.nz
www.jpkupdate.blogspot.com
tagata pasifika
tvnz
100 victoria street west
po box 3819
auckland

contributing editor:

PIJO pacific islands journalism online
http://groups.google.com/group/pacificmedia

PFF pacific freedom forum
http://groups.google.com/group/mediafreedom
www.pacificfreedomforum.blogspot.com

+64 2102484560 mobile
+649 9167058 office direct
+649 9167552 facsimile