Up until recently, Prague-based Econnect, a civil society association facilitating communication through the internet, broadcasting news clips via its website. Most of the these were simple text articles, some had pictures. Now, Tomáš Tetiva of Econnect says they are changing their approach and going for ‘new media’.
The civic association Econnect was founded in 1991 in order to enable other non-profit organisations in the Czech republic to communicate easily with one another, as well as with the public, using information and communication technologies (ICTs).
Webcasting was done by all major media organisations in the Czech republic. But it just doesn’t seem to cut it anymore. Maybe a quick flashback will help to understand why.
News in the Czech Republic
During the communist era, the news production and dissemination situation was clearly defined. There was no media market, no pluralism of the press and to put it bluntly, no free media at all. The internet and new media were not born either.
“What we had was two TV channels – broadcasting in Czech and Slovak – under government control, one state radio station, half a dozen daily newspapers and some magazines with non-political content,” recalls Tetiva, at that time still a child. All media were under strict censorship. That state of affairs slowly started falling apart at the end of the 1980s.
The end of communism fundamentally changed the media landscape. A ‘media big bang’ hit the Czech market and an ocean of information at the beginning of 1990s started flooded citizens.
“At the moment we have one TV station with public legal status (four channels), two private national-wide TV stations and plenty of regional TV studios,” Tetiva says. Another boom in TV broadcasting can further be expected with the conversion from analogue to digital technologies. The situation is similar with the radio broadcasting and the print media market. They are increasingly becoming huge and stratified.
New media & webcasting
New media outlets were first launched at end of the last millennium. During a couple of years, all media ran their own internet version. At the beginning of 1999 Econnect also launched a news portal, with focus on civil society.
Media and news-oriented associations first got their online presence going by simply adding text, followed shortly after by pictures to create additional value. But with growing and qualitatively superior internet access for many in the Czech society, all new media got the opportunity to offer some multimedia content. This in turn made them more attractive to a larger public. Recently, an online TV was even launched.
New media for civil society
Econnect’s newest baby is called “New media for civil society” and it is their answer to this contemporary trend of developing newscasting and communication to be carried though the channels of ‘new media’.
There are two key objectives in this project. “The first one,” Tetiva points out, “is to develop our news casting portal so that it can easily carry multimedia output -video and audio recording, on-line streaming of internet-related events and more.”
The second fundamental point of “New media for civil society” is to hold seminars and consultations with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) focused on practical instruction about what new media are and how they can be used in the strengthening of the Czech civil society and NGOs.
Using multimedia opens up the sky of communication and offers effective tools for making the distribution of information less cumbersome and more attractive for the recipients.
“An integral component of the project will be to produce the groundwork material for the NGO seminar on how to use new media,” highlights Tetiva. This material will be made available to other users via the internet, which relates to the fact that the project is also focused on the cultivation of an understanding and skill sharing. Gathering experiences about how working with new media in the non-profit sector works will be emphasised. “We plan to create a multimedia archive, where such output will be archived and made available under a separate website,” specifies Tetiva.
The Toolkit – a system used for the news casting and for managing the entire Econnect server – will be further developed and updated so as to enable publishing of news reports, supplemented with new media output.
A commitment to free and open source technology
As far as free and open source software is concerned, Econnect will use a LAMP platform on its web server (LAMP stands for “Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP” and refers to a set of open source solutions used to administer a server and run a website).
On Econnects desktops, GNU/Linux-based solutions are in place, along with a central server and thin clients. They mostly use standard open source applications such as Fedora, Firefox and OpenOffice. Tetiva adds, “The reasons why we chose open source applications are obvious and common – independence from multinational corporations like Microsoft, more economical solutions and simpler maintenance.”
Econnect has been supporting the activities of and cooperation between NGOs, civic initiatives, and individuals who advocate for sustainable development, human rights, social justice, the conservation and development of cultural values, and active public involvement.
Econnect provides these people with information and communication technology, internet services, space for presentation and information services.
