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Where is Web 2.0 in Ukraine?

Ben Colmery shares this excerpt from his ongoing adventures training journalists as part of the EJC’s New Media Initiative for Ukraine, sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“When something like this happens twice, it starts to look like a pattern. And I hope it becomes one, because I love this crazy country. And, if you follow the right path, there can come a point when you realise you are strangely and uniquely qualified for something like developing media in Ukraine. I can’t imagine there are a lot of us out there.

I am working with Internews-Ukraine, to teach journalists how to use Web 2.0 tools to expand their web presence and advance their new media skills. There will be three sets of two-day trainings, the first in Kyiv, the second in Lviv, the third in Donetsk.

I am particularly excited about this Donetsk training. I’ve never been out East, even though I lived in Ukraine for over two years. And I feel that you haven’t been to Ukraine if you haven’t been out East, just like you haven’t been to America if you’ve never been to Alabama.

Since I’ve never been there, it makes sense for me to offer up some preconceptions and even prejudgments. Picture coal miners, factories, crumbling apartment buildings, bitter old ladies speaking in Russian, oligarchs, and the feeling that the fall of the Soviet Union wasn’t so long ago. At least, that’s what I’m picturing. I’m also picturing that people won’t be as friendly as they are in the West, especially when I start dropping some Ukrainian on them. Can’t wait. Especially since I get to ride some overnight trains to get there. That’s a whole blog post itself.

These two days of training are focusing both on how to think about Web 2.0 tools and the basics of using them, with emphasis on how journalists can use them. Of course, as the American new media expert, I get to sling the American perspective. Day one, they get to learn the fundamentals of Web 2.0. Things like the ideas of two-way communication of content, sharing, linking, building online communities, and how all of this can be used to market oneself as a journalist.

Then, we get into tools themselves. Blogging, of course. Since LiveJournal is the No. 1 blogging platform in Ukraine, we are focusing around LJ. I’d prefer showing WordPress, but that hasn’t caught on yet. And, for people just starting out with blogging, it makes sense to show them where most bloggers already are.

We’re also teaching Vkontakte, and showing examples of how journalists are using Facebook. I’d prefer it was just Facebook, because to be honest, Vkontakte is the runt you throw back. You can only do a fraction on it of what you can do on Facebook. But, it’s the top site, period, in Ukraine, so Vkontakte it is.

Early indications from the training are that some of our trainees think Vkontakte is mostly for young people to goof around on and share silly pictures, and not really something for journalists to conduct serious business. Of course, I’d like to point out that McDonald’s figured out a long time ago that if you target young people, they develop lifelong habits, and begin to think of your brand as something familiar, kind of like going home.

Of course, Twitter is on our list, as well. And Twitter seems to be getting the same treatment that Vkontakte is getting, at least by some of our trainees. I love this about Twitter. It is the easiest tool to use, and the hardest to understand.

Ah, Twitter, so powerful, and yet so misunderstood. Journalists who know how to wield you will gain a significant edge on those who don’t.

Coming into this whole experience, I had to really think about what it was we were really doing with this training. This isn’t just about new media vs. old media.

There is a complete paradigm shift here in Ukraine. Ukraine is a country emerging from a long and brutal history of authoritarian control of information, secrecy, and propaganda. Information was long the real currency of the Soviet Union. People had money, but there was nothing to buy on the shelves. You needed information to know who had the goods that you could then buy with your money. So, information was horded, and exchanged like a commodity.

In my experience in Ukraine, a lot of people still relate to information this way. The idea that information should be free, and not hidden from sight, is still the first blade of grass desperately fighting its way through the last of Spring’s blanket of snow. Or, to keep the metaphors going, Jefferson’s idea of knowledge being like a lit candle doesn’t seem to have caught on yet.

So, as I was thinking about what to train about Web 2.0, it hit me that really what I was here to train was pushing the thinking of letting go of information completely, opening it up for all to see, making it as visible as possible, spreading via the people you trust to well beyond that circle of trust into the far reaches of your friend’s friend’s friend’s friend’s friend’s casual acquaintance-who knows where the turtle ends.

To a Ukrainian, this might be like walking out the front door naked. And I am here to encourage people to feel as okay as possible about this. Fascinating.

We’re training YouTube, because how can you teach the “ABCs of New Media” without video? When something as silly as a “dancing lesson” can attract 120 million viewers, largely by word of mouth, there are a tremendous amount of people you could reach as a professional purveyor of information (aka, journalist). But then, I am going to have to convince people who normally write words for a living to suddenly jump out of their seats and shoot some moving images for their stories. Only a matter of time before someone hits me with, “How do you expect me to do this when I am not getting paid to do it and I have no time?”

Isn’t that the big question?

Along with video, there’s also podcasting: “Now you want me to make some kind of radio, too?”

Well, only if you want to know the ABCs of new media. Maybe they won’t be as big in Ukraine, but podcasts are pretty big in the US. And, it’s a great way to give people more content easily, such as the full version of an interview. Aren’t there times when you would rather listen to the actual interview, what they were actually saying, and not just read the journalist’s written take on it? And, is there any chance that in Ukraine, people will download podcasts to their mp3 players, and listen to them on their way to work, in the car, on the subway, etc.? Sure is catching on in America.

The tool we are showing them is podfm.ru. It is a site where you can easily upload an mp3, create a player that you can share with people and embed on your site, rate, tag, search. But the best thing? It’s all in Russian (which makes it fun to teach when you aren’t fluent in Russian).

To generate these mp3s, we are also showing them how to call someone over Skype, and record the conversation for free using Pamela.biz. The added benefit here of teaching Skype is that it gives journalists a chance to make free online phone calls-computer to computer-for their interviews. And phone calls are things journalists do a lot of, so why not make them free?

And all of this fits under the umbrella of social networking. How do you teach journalists social networking? They aren’t social networkers, they are people who report information, right? Their job is to ask questions and do research, and then report it. Right?

I think all of that is changing. I’m of Jeff Jarvis’s mindset: “Our job is not to deliver content or a product. Our job is to help them make connections with information and each other,” particularly as it pertains to journalists, which Jarvis contends, “was, long ago, the job newspapers saw for themselves.”

Social networking with these Web 2.0 tools is what this is all about. And journalists, being paid researchers and communicators of everyday information, are the right people for the job.

Now, to convince some Ukrainian journalists that this is their job and that these are their tools.”

Tags: facebook, network, new media, online journalism, twitter, ukraine,

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