User-Generated Media

IranElection

Often when I’m asked to speak on Church 2.0 I compare the parallels between Web 2.0 and the Church. One thing that I usually point to is user-generated media (such as blogging, podcasting and uploading videos) and user-generated ministry – when people actually take ownership of a ministry, take the ball and run with it.

Over the last few weeks it’s been fascinating to watch the user-generated nature of how people are voicing and showing support for Iran on tools such as Twitter (in the picture seen above). Though the foreign press was kicked out of the country, the people have let their voice be heard via social media and social networking tools. Again, I’m amazed by it.

If you’re not familiar with it, as you can see above, many people have changed the color of their avatar or Twitter picture to one that is green in someway. Green shows support for a free Iran. Below is a blog post that documented the show of support as it started a while back. Click on the picture to read the blog.

Last night I followed the Texas Rangers baseball game via someone’s tweets. What a time to be alive. What are your thoughts on user-generated media?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 5:00 amand is filed under Church 2.0, Communication, Random Thoughts, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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19202 ResponsesUser-Generated+Media2009-07-08+10%3A00%3A16Greg+Atkinson to “User-Generated Media”

Patricia Tice Says:
July 9th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
At the moment it feels dizzying to keep up with it. This is a dramatic sea-change in the way we interact with the world and those in my generation are loathe to follow because they have yet to understand how human interaction is modified by the digital age. They are suspicious that something valuable may be lost. Those suspicions are not unfounded, but there is also much to be gained.

I work as a transportation engineer and planner. We look at the movement of people and goods across time and space. We have a vague conception that this digital world is going to change the way the world moves, but questions of scale and penetration remain. I'm not sure we're going to have a good idea of how things change for several decades. I'm seeing a farm type mindset replacing a factory mindset and that is somewhat comforting. The two worldviews are still competing generationally.

We'll see.

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