Cultural Diplomacy and the Interconnectivity of Digital Media

By Judy Muller (Journalist & Reporter for ABC, NBC, and NPR)

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News literacy is the clearest path to breaking down all kinds of barriers. We have something called ‘Intersections Los Angeles’ which is a blog site we have at USC that invites the community of South LA- which has been tragically underserved by the media in LA- to tell the stories of South/Central Los Angeles, and we have enlisted people, e.g. students in schools and people in the community, to become bloggers on that site, so they are not only readers of the site, but they’re invested in it. That said, there is a digital divide where a lot of kids don’t go to houses that have computers at home. They get them at school, but that’s not the same thing. They aren’t looking at their iPhone every day, they aren’t on an iPad, and that’s a huge gulf; we do have to fix that. Everybody has to be down on the same community discussion, and they can’t do that if they’re not wired. In this age, we all have to be wired; we all have to be connected.

- The Berlin Freedom of Expression Forum; Berlin, Germany, February 28th- March 2nd, 2012