Newfoundland writer, actress and comedian, Mary Walsh, finally chimed in on the Canadian election with her character, Marg! Princess Warrior, this week with her Marg Brings Change campaign. Made famous on This Hour has 22 Minutes, Marg has been smiting politicians with her foam sword for many years and her love for Stephen Harper is legendary.
“Don’t waste time turning in your neighbours on the barbaric Harper hotline; send some real ‘cents’ to Ottawa instead,” advises Princess Warrior Marg Delahunty.
“Prime Minister Harper didn’t want to save Syrian refugees, our right to privacy or democracy, but he did want to save the penny. Unfortunately, like the cent, Harper will take a while to get out of our system so let’s send a load of cents to Ottawa now — and on October 19.”
Joining the ever-increasing crowd of prominent Canadian musicians, writers, artists, scientists, social activists, unions, environmentalists and the millions of Canadians who want change this election, Marg urges Canadians to help her bring change to Harper.
“I’ll give Mr. Harper our two cents,” Marg promises Canadians. In a campaign launched today entitled, Marg Brings Change, the Princess Warrior has created a video calling for Canadians to click on the virtual cent on her website www.margbringschange.ca ; she vows to match every click and every share with a real cent. Later this month Marg will personally deliver everybody’s two cents to Mr. Harper.**
“And vote!” the Princess Warrior commands. “Vote anything but Conservative! Don’t make me come back and smite you!”
**All money will go to aiding Syrian refugees in Canada.
Watch the Video, Click the cent, Share widely and Help Marg bring your two cents to Ottawa!
Visit www.margbringschange.ca
or the Facebook page: Marg Brings Change
https://www.facebook.com/Marg-Brings-Change-1474903259506286/timeline/
Trolls Be Gone? Knight, Mozilla, NYTimes and WaPo to the Rescue
The Knight Foundation announced funding Thursday to build a free, open-source tool to help newsrooms “turn comments into community,” in partnership with the New York Times, Washington Post, and non-profit Mozilla.
This might matter far beyond news organizations. Townhalls are vital to democracy — and are sorely lacking.
“This isn’t another commenting platform for publishers; it’s a publishing platform for readers,” Greg Barber, director of digital news projects at The Washington Post, said in the release.
News media once served, albeit inadequately, as platforms for debate in our global villages, providing op-ed pages, letters to the editor and call-in radio and TV programs. Many of those platforms vanished as outlets moved online, and were replaced with comment sections. They’re not nearly enough. The New York Times‘ moderated comment section is, almost uniquely, superb. Most media comment sections are virtual versions of cage fights, infested with anonymous trolls. Without resources to hire moderators, many media outlets have resorted to Facebook, insisting that commenters identify themselves with Facebook accounts and — bizarrely, in my opinion — turning control over to one massive American company and creating a host of accountability, censorship and privacy issues.
I think the promise of social media for “townhall” sharing of information and discussion has faded. As the companies that own the platforms have become publicly traded they are — no surprise here — aggressively commercial. Not only have ads become pervasive but, as our ProPublica post yesterday explained, the privacy of citizens is compromised. In addition, some social media companies now not only charge journalism outlets to share posts with users who “like” pages, but they now essentially compete with journalism Pages with their own news feeds, like Facebook’s “FB Newswire” which shares content posted publicly by Facebook users.
The joint project announced today cannot meet all needs, and it will not replace massive social media — but it could play a major role in raising the bar or, as Alberto Ibargüen, president and CEO of KnightFoundation said, “elevating civil discourse.”
“The Web offers all sorts of new and exciting ways of engaging with communities far beyond the ubiquitous –and often terrible — comments sections at the bottom of articles,” said Dan Sinker, head of the Knight-Mozilla Open News initiative.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will donate $3.89 million to the online community platform, which aims to be freely available to any and all news organizations. The design aims to allow “readers to submit pictures, links and other media; track discussions; and manage their contributions and online identities. Publishers will then be able to collect and use this content for other forms of storytelling and to spark ongoing discussions by providing readers with targeted content and notifications.”
An excerpt of the release:
— Deborah Jones