Rita J. King in her recent interview with JD Lasica.

While at the June 2009 140Conf, Rita J. King was interviewed by long-time Online Journalism guru, JD Lasica about the ethics of cultural collaboration, online identity and the evolution of journalism with the advent of social media. Lots of great nuggets inside. Take a look

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DIP will be presenting Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds on September 8

DIP is pleased to be among the featured speakers at the upcoming O’Reilly Media Gov2.0 Expo. Rita J. King and I will be speaking on the changing landscape for Cultural Diplomacy and discussing our case study “Digital Diplomacy: Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds.” Our project explores how project explores how foreign policy can augment existing physical world engagement with Islamic communities worldwide by utilizing complex, nuanced opportunities provided by 3d Immersive spaces.

Follow us @ritajking or @josholalia on Twitter for updates or @ reply us to let us know if you’ll be there.

How big can you make an inch?

DIP is delighted to announce that 1000 INCHES IN LOVELAND is live! We can’t wait to see how Loveland grows…

While the economy continues to slip, efforts to transform it, like 3D Squared's work in Metaplace, explore how we can recover.

NPR Reported today: “President Obama said Thursday he is ‘deeply concerned’ about unemployment. The remarks to The Associated Press came after the Labor Department said U.S. businesses shed 467,000 jobs in June and that the unemployment rate increased to 9.5 percent.” (Website, Shadow Government Statistics says it is actually more like 17%.) For a more detailed examination of why the President has reason to be concerned, see this dramatic series of charts on The Big Picture, illustrating long-term predictions of how the devastation on the workforce is likely to continue well into 2010.

Amidst this sturm und drang, innovative efforts to transform the economy are moving forward. Just last week, our favorite non-profit 3D Squared completed its capstone Digital Workforce Intensive in Lafayette, Louisiana. We have written about the work of 3D Squared before (see two April 2009 articles, “How I Became a Virtual World Believer” in VentureBeat and “Digital Workforce Initiative Transforms Gulf Coast Job Prospects” in the Carnegie Council’s Policy Innovations magazine).

Recent coverage of last week’s Digital Workforce Intensive ran in the Louisiana’s The Advocate, and was picked up by a number of blogs including gaming blogs GamePolitics.com and Destructoid. “With 97% of teenagers playing, games are the future of learning, work and human collaboration.”

As Rita J. King put it in her April article:

This approach could be revolutionary for Louisiana because the number one reason students drop out is lack of engagement with the educational system—they simply aren’t interested. They are definitely interested in games, and are motivated to learn when lessons are framed in relation to games. In learning how to collaborate on the creation of games, students are being prepared for related collaborative opportunities, such as participation in the state’s increasingly robust mixed media and film production industry and the creation of simulated virtual training environments.

In learning how to design games, kids are also learning the most important skills to compete across sectors in the 21st century. Creative collaboration and fluency within the digital culture are modern necessities. Most importantly, people can work within these fields from their own communities without feeling the necessity to leave and find work in cramped urban centers.

[Originally published on DIP's Dispatches from the Imagination Age.]

By Rita J. King

At the #140conf in NYC yesterday I served on a panel moderated by Joshua Fouts, Digital Diplomacy and Cultural Collaboration. 44 tweets and retweets were generated by the comments, and I received several requests for fielding ethical questions related to the use of Twitter as well as the publication of Twitter names in a major publication. I wrote a statement prior to the panel, and while I didn’t deliver directly from the written comments, that statement, which sums up my position, is pasted below:

Twitter’s #iranelection demonstrates that the digital culture is tied irrevocably to the physical world. The digital is real.

The developing ethics of cultural collaboration can help us avoid turning this magnificent tool for greater understanding into an instrument of further destruction through misinformation, a tragedy made all the more ironic for its motivation: the desire to meaningfully connect with others or, in the case of #iranelection, to participate in the world’s first digitized revolution.

Understanding issues related to anonymity and the creative construction of digital identities is critical. In 2001 I wrote a cover story for the Village Voice, “Terms of Service: Sweaty Scenes from the Life of an AOL Censor.”

“Just as playing Dungeons & Dragons doesn’t turn a kid into a wizard, pretending to be a homicidal maniac on line doesn’t make a man a killer. But what it does make him is one of the greatest ethical dilemmas facing modern society.”

Last night one of my friends called after midnight because she needed to know how to use Twitter so she could follow #iranelection. “What is RT?” she asked. “What is RT?”

“It means retweet,” I said. Then I explained the hashtag, and the etiquette of including handles in a retweet, and editing to stay within the 140 character limit.

“People are switching their locations to Tehran,” she said, “to protect protesters.”

I’ve been hearing people suggest this constantly in the last day, but is it the right thing to do? It might serve a purpose, but won’t it also deliberately obscure the ability of Iranians to communicate with one another? And won’t it give the impression that more Iranians are tweeting at a time when many people have reported that Iranians they follow have stopped?

Is switching your location to Tehran if you’re really not in Tehran ethical?

“But people are dying,” my friend said. “Look, is it unethical for a person in Second Life to create an avatar that can walk if that person is really in a wheelchair in the physical world? In that case, lying serves a purpose, to transcend limitations.”

I do not believe that creating an environment in which a paraplegic’s avatar can walk is the same as listing one’s location as Tehran. Human beings are well capable of suspension of disbelief, which amounts to trusting one another to create a collaborate narrative that highlights the most authentic aspects of how we see ourselves and one another, to explore, to push the boundaries of what it means to co-create the mixed-media, mixed-reality world in which we live.

Twitter is important. Clay Shirky just gave a TED talk to the State Department, and the State Department asked Twitter to postpone a shutdown to keep more Iranians communicating.

TED founder Chris Anderson said,”Spend half an hour looking at the #iranelection stream on twitter and browse some of the vivid individual accounts of what’s happening on the ground. Then see how a massive number of non-Iranians have begun declaring their solidarity. Feel nothing? (Are you human?!)”

We will move from here toward augmented realities and telepresence. We cannot go backward from this evolution in human consciousness, but the road ahead will be dangerous as the shift occurs. We are forming a sense of global ethics that sits like an overlay map on a three-dimensional framework of different rituals, customs and systems of belief. We are doing this together.

Live from the AUC Virtual Newsroom: The CDC on Swine Flu." Broadcast quality video from the May 16, 2009 live event with the CDC in the AUC Virtual Newsroom produced in collaboration with Ill Clan Animation Studios.

On Thursday June 4, 2009 Lawrence Pintak (co-director of the AUC Virtual Newsroom project with Dancing Ink Productions) will appear on CNN to discuss President Barack Obama’s speech from Cairo, Egypt.

A Live Broadcast on Swine Flu from a World Where Germs Can’t Be Transmitted

On Saturday, May 16, 2009, the AUC Virtual Newsroom featured Glenn Nowak and Jay Bernhardt of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), members of Global Voices and journalists from 12 countries in a discussion about Swine Flu and the transformation of media. Walid Al-Saqaf, represented the journalists and bloggers. Al-Saqaf is the former editor-in-chief of the Yemen Times and currently the Founder and Administrator of YemenPortal.net. “There is something about Second Life that is good and that is that you can never get contaminated by any disease even though you meet millions of people,” said Al-Saqaf, to the audience in the virtual newsroom, in Cairo and on the web.

Lawrence Pintak, Director, Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at The American University in Cairo (and newly appointed Dean of the Murrow College at Washington State University) who hosted the event said, “This has been an adventure for all of us … One story that the whole world is dealing with these days is swine flu. Here in Cairo, the government has ordered that every single pig be killed. That’s something the WHO and other experts oppose. So we thought it appropriate to use this unique virtual bridge to allow our group here in Cairo – and bloggers participating in this event around the world – to learn a little more about how to get to the truth about the disease in order to better educate their audiences. For that, we have turned to the Centers for Disease Control.”

Overcoming Limitations on the Free Flow of Information

Rita J. King, CEO and Creative Director of Dancing Ink Productions, moderated the panel: “Before the event, we met with many of the participants to discuss the free flow of information they wanted to achieve. The CDC is new to social media but is setting an example among government agencies. The journalists and bloggers are from 12 different countries. Some are dealing with various limitations in the struggle to deliver accurate, meaningful information to their respective audiences.”

King, who is also an investigative reporter, is the author of “Big Easy Money: Disaster Profiteering on the American Gulf Coast,” and co-author of the newly published book, “Race, Place and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina.”

Joshua S. Fouts, Chief Global Strategist at Dancing Ink Productions offered, “This event once again demonstrated the power of digital culture and in this case digital diplomacy to create new opportunities for cultural dialog across time and space.”

A New Approach to Global Dialogue

While this was the first time the CDC has participated in a live broadcast from Second Life, the agency already had a headquarters set up within the virtual world when they were invited to participate in the broadcast from the AUC Virtual Newsroom.

The CDC has recently started to explore the use of social media and provide links and resources for an increasing number of followers. Currently, @cdcemergency has over 240,000 followers.

Many of the bloggers and journalists who had been new to Second Life for the Inuagural Broadcast from the AUC Virtual Newsroom arrived to the event customized, familiar with how to communicate and navigate within the space.

The broadcast was streamed live to the internet by TREET.TV (watch entire archive here), and anyone watching from around the world could watch the broadcast and communicate in live real time chat with event moderators and participants in Second Life.

Glenn Nowak, Director, Division of Media Relations, Office of Enterprise Communication Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Jay M. Bernhardt Director, National Center for Health Marketing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both already had avatars.

Jay Bernhardt, who heads the social media operations told the audience, “I recommend people visit the CDC social media website On that site it lists a lot of different things people can get access to. Some are subscriber based like Twitter feeds for example and you can sign up for any or all of our Twitter feeds, which obviously can be mobile enabled.”

Glen Nowak offered these thoughts on the fact that people around the world rely on the CDC’s data, “What we’re trying to do with people living in developing countries when it comes to things like novel flu viruses or other health threats is we’re trying to raise awareness of what the health issues are. We’re trying to give people a perspective. We’re trying to give them the information we have about how much a threat this does pose.”

140Conf Twitter Conference

I’m pleased to be moderating a panel in a few weeks at the upcoming June 16 & 17, Twitter-themed “140Conf.” We blogged extensively last December about how the Israeli Consulate of New York was hosting a Twitter press conference as a new venue for public diplomacy outreach. Since then, governments, non-profits and NGOs have expanded their cultural outreach efforts using Twitter. Our panel will be exploring how Twitter is used for digital diplomacy, public diplomacy and cultural outreach.

Panelists include (with pictures from and links to their Twitter selves, natch):

Andrew Kneale from the British Council.

@andrewkneale's twitter page

Andrew Kneale is the Transatlantic Project Coordinator at the British Council, the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. Based in Washington DC, he joined the British Council in 2006 working first in education before taking up a role developing Transatlantic Network 2020 — an intercultural dialogue project aiming to bring new energy to the transatlantic relationship, and build coalitions of young European and North American influencers to take collaborative action on global issues. Andrew previously worked at Qorvis Communications — an independent public relations agency in Washington, DC. He is originally from the UK, but moved to the US when he was a teenager. Andrew holds a BA in Political Science and Psychology.

Michael J. Friedman from the US State Department.

@americagovprint twitter page

Michael is Division Chief of Print Publications at the U.S. Department of State, Public Diplomacy division. He leads a team that supports U.S. public diplomacy by creating book length manuscripts, article anthologies, poster shows, and other materials that “tell America’s story” to an international audience.

Evan O’Neill from the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. (You can also find Evan twittering here.)

@gpi's twitter page

Evan O’Neil is managing editor of Global Policy Innovations magazine. He has been with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs since October 2002. During this time, he worked on the Council’s Empire and Democracy Project, coordinator of the Fellows Program, and on numerous publications.

Rita J. King, CEO and Creative and Creative Director of Dancing Ink Productions.

@ritajking's twitter page

She has authored or co-authored numerous reports on Digital Diplomacyvirtual worlds for public diplomacy and cultural dialog. Her work has been widely profiled, including by CNN, The New York Times, the BBC, The Chronicle of Higher Education, MSNBC, NPR, the Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times. For seven years while working as an investigative reporter, Rita’s primary focus was reporting on corporate culture. This work culminated in her report, “Big, Easy Money: Disaster Profiteering on the American Gulf Coast,” followed by a civil rights quest with the president of the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development across the Deep South. She now specializes in strategic development and creative content for a new global culture and economy.

More information about the 140 Conf can be found here. Thanks to Jeff Pulver for the invitation and hosting the conference.

Screenshot of the CDC Event in the AUC Virtual Newsroom

Special thanks to Texas Timtam and Starr Sonic of Treet.TV for their quick turnaround in delivering the video from Saturday’s CDC conversation on coverage of the H1N1 (Swine Flu) virus. The video is about 60 minutes long. In coming days we will provide a shorter, YouTube-friendly report.

Two versions are available for viewing:

* high quality video for web & mobile devices;
* HD 720p for computer, large screen or home TV set-top box viewing