Advisor

Dr. Andrew Cline of Rhetorica.net gave a presenation about this project at the Missouri Broadcast Educators Association conference this past weekend.

Cline writes on his blog:

What I'm doing is charting how the process of running an open-source documentary film project created a social network that led producer Kent Bye, of The Echo Chamber Project, to critically examine more than just the immediate needs of his film.

The title of his essay is Negotiating the Story Online: Social Networks and Critical Pedagogy in Broadcast Journalism

Cline says that he'll post some excerpts from the essay here within the next couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to reading his observations.

Yesterday, Dr. Cline posted his analysis of The Echo Chamber interview with Jay Rosen.

He also posted a blog pointer to this site and gave an ECP plug in his latest podcast, which sent a spike of activity my way.

We had some good follow-up discussion about a number of points that Dr. Cline brought up. Dr. Cline is already starting to pick up some of the same themes after analyzing two interviews. He makes the following two claims:

Claim: The press experienced the emotion of inevitability in regard to the build-up to war because of its structural inability create a debate independent from civic institutions (e.g. Congress) and powerful civic actors (e.g. President Bush).

Analysis
Open-source project: The Echo Chamber
Interview: New York University Journalism Professor Jay Rosen
Running themes [tags]: 1. Perceptions of the danger Iraq posed to the U.S. and the Middle East. [danger]; 2. The voice of debate: who was covered; who was ignored. [voice]; 3. Motives of political and journalistic actors as portrayed by those actors. [motive]; 4. Arguments for war as given and portrayed. [argument]; 5. Journalistic practice in regard to covering political and journalistic actors. [practice]; 6. Relationship between the public and television news. [public/TV]

Here's a quick review of the five themes I'm following in my long-form analyses of the interviews and the tags [tags] that will indicate each (subject to change):

1. Perceptions of the danger Iraq posed to the U.S. and the Middle East. [danger]
2. The voice of debate: who was covered; who was ignored. [voice]
3. Motives of political and journalistic actors as portrayed by those actors. [motive]
4. Arguments for war as given and portrayed. [argument]
5. Journalistic practice in regard to covering civic actors (including journalists). [practice]

Analysis
Open-source project: The Echo Chamber
Interview: CBS White House Correspondent Bill Plante

This is the first of my analyses of the texts of the interviews for The Echo Chamber project. As such, it will be a bit more sketchy than those to follow because each analysis will build on previous ones. My job is to look for the threads of the thought that create a web of knowledge across all the interviews. No web exists in fact. I will be creating it based on my application of disciplinary knowledge (rhetoric) to the texts. Because this is an open-source project, anyone may analyze the interviews for themselves and create their own webs. Together we will create meaning.

I identified 5 themes. The commonality among these themes is persuasion--political and journalistic. Further, each theme deals with epistemological concerns, i.e. how the political and journalistic actors know what they know, who may know it, who may speak, how they may speak, who may be heard, and how this collective knowledge may be evaluated and disseminated. Nothing in this first interview challenges the standard metaphor of journalism as lecture. The epistemology here fits the culture's noetic field and standard journalistic practice:

1. Perceptions of the danger Iraq posed to the U.S. and the Middle East.

EXAMPLE: "And what brought it back to the fore in the debate about the war in Congress was the widespread belief, promoted by the government, that we were subject to attack again."

2. The voice of debate: who was covered; who was ignored.

EXAMPLE: "Reviewing some scripts from that period, I noticed that in mid-March we still had the Democrat leader of the Senate, Senator Daschle, complaining about the rush to war without the completion of arms inspections. And he was certainly not the only voice, so Congress wasn't silent. That's first thing. Nor were media -- Congress wasn't silent, nor were critics of the idea of war who were also heard in the media. Perhaps not to the degree that government's message was heard, but they were heard nonetheless."

3. Motives of political and journalistic actors as portrayed by those actors.

EXAMPLE: "Members of Congress, particularly members of the House, are extraordinarily sensitive to public opinion because they run every two years. Therefore even many of those who had personal concerns or reservations about the war were listening to their constituents, and very concerned about how they would feel. And didn't feel that the constituent concern that they heard outweighed what they considered the inadequacy of the argument. That was the situation in Congress."

4. Arguments for war as given and portrayed.

EXAMPLE: "The argument focused on the weapons of mass destruction. The argument was also heavily influenced by the notion that Iraq might somehow have been connected to, if not to 9/11 at least to the shadowy terrorist network which promoted jihad and 9/11."

5. Journalistic practice in regard to covering political actors.

Hey Andy,
I started to respond to your e-mail, and then I decided to continue this conversation on the ECP site.

Now that I have Drupal up, we can start communicating more on the site. I wrote a blog entry called "Expanding from Windows into Cafes and Bridges" where I said:

Up until now, EchoChamberProject.com has served as a window for the production of this film for transparency's stake. It can now take it to the next level by treating it more like a cafe where conversations can happen within the internal blogs. It can also now serve more as a community of practice where this virtual space can be used more for collaboration.

Dr. Andrew R. Cline of Rhetorica.net has completed his first analysis an Echo Chamber interview with his perspective the Bill Plante interview. He posted it on his site yesterday, and I'll repost it here as well.

Analysis
Open-source Project: The Echo Chamber
Interview: CBS White House Correspondent Bill Plante

This is the first of my analyses of the texts of the interviews for The Echo Chamber. As such, it will be a bit more sketchy than those to follow because each analysis will build on previous ones. My job is to look for the threads of the thought that create a web of knowledge across all the interviews. No web exists in fact. I will be creating it based on my application of disciplinary knowledge (rhetoric) to the texts. Because this is an open-source project, anyone may analyze the interviews for themselves and create their own webs. Together we will create meaning.

The Echo Chamber Project has secured its first advisor from the Academic world.

Dr. Andrew R. Cline is an assistant professor of journalism at Southwest Missouri State University and a specialist in rhetorical analysis and web-based journalism.

Cline has agreed to provide his journalistic and rhetorical insights throughout the post-production process of The Echo Chamber documentary. Specifically, he will provide comments on The Echo Chamber interview transcripts and give feedback throughout the treatment, scripting, and editing phases of this independent film.

I have been contacting potential advisors and producers over the last couple of days in order to get a strong foundation for the post-production and distribution phases. Having a strong and experienced team around the project makes a huge difference in the final product. It will also open a lot of doors down the road.

I have been talking to professors in the sociological academic community who are interested in the project as well as some independent film producers that I’ve met in my film festival travels.

The producers want to see a trailer (anywhere from 4 to 10 minutes) -- I have been receiving more and more interview transcripts back from my volunteers which will help me parse down the 38+hours of material into a coherent summary of what the project will entail.

Today I secured my first advisor for the film.

Brian Newman is going to help guide the project through the post-production phases. He brings a wealth of knowledge to the project, and I'm very excited to have him involved.

This Brian's bio taken from the website of his current employeer:

Brian Newman was recently named executive director of National Video Resources, and is responsible for oversight and strategic direction of all NVR programming, development and operations. Prior to joining NVR, he served as executive director of IMAGE Film & Video Center, producers of the Atlanta Film Festival, and as market coordinator for the Independent Feature Project in New York City. Mr. Newman also served as assistant coordinator of Media Arts for the South Carolina Arts Commission, managing the Southern Circuit film tour. He brings expertise in audience building, marketing and community outreach.