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ThinkSocial Awards: CitizenShift "Media for Social Change"
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Name: CitizenShift
Nominated Category: Organization
URL: http://www.citizenshift.org
Area: Media, Advocacy, Social change
About:
Redesigned in 2009, CitizenShift is a web platform that encourages participants to explore social issues through films, photography, articles, blogs and podcasts. It’s “media for social change,” as the citizenshift.org web site says.
Description:
Run by the National Film Board of Canada, CitizenShift inspired by a National Film Board initiative in the 1960s that involved communities in the documentary filmmaking process. Unprecedented for the time, the initiative, called “Challenge for Change” asked questions about community organizing and what role film can play in participatory democracy.
Flash-forward to now—and the social media age—and CitizenShift now enables an even greater community to share and debate their views in an online forum. Everyone is encouraged to participate, from regular citizens to filmmakers to multimedia artists. CitizenShift also has a French-language sister site, Parole Citoyenne.
Current featured media on the site includes a video called “Food Space” (about food distribution and security), news on a showing of a documentary made by high school students about Cambodian massacre survivors, and a dossier on cyber-bullying.
Visitors to the web site can also browse the different media by contributor, topic (such as gender, health and youth) or dossier. In terms of dossiers, which are like interactive folders on one topic, it’s possible to track which ones are still “in development” or start your own on a new topic.
A particularly interesting dossier is one on “American Politics Through a Canadian Lens,” especially for people who may have never considered then Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s famous words in a 1969 National Press Club address: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”
Recent contributions and comments are highlighted on the main page of the web site, as well as recent activity from members’ blogs on the network as well as a multi-contributor, community-run group blog. CitizenShift is active on Twitter and Facebook, and the organization also offers CitizenShift podcasts and newsletters.
The Basics:
WHO: National Film Board of Canada
WHAT: CitizenShift seeks to engage participants in conversations that will encourage social change – via provocative videos, blogs, articles, podcasts and photos.
WHERE: Based in Canada.
HOW to get involved: Check out CitizenShift on Twitter and Facebook, and participate in its multi-platform discussions. Members can contribute media to the site, and comment on what others have shared.
What other people are saying:
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Posted in: Non-profit, awards, organization | Tagged: advocacy, blogs, Canada, citizenshift, cyber-bullying, facebook, media, photos, podcasts, politics, twitter
