New Article in The Journal of Healthcare, Science and the Humanities: "Using Virtual World Journalism for Health Education"

Readers may be interested in new chapter by me, which was just published today in the latest issue of The Journal of Healthcare, Science and the Humanities called "Using Virtual World Journalism for Health Education" which describes Rita J. King's and my work with Larry Pintak (now Dean of the Washington State U Murrow College), Wael Abbas (renowned Egyptian activist) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as they tried to educate the global public on the H1N1 (Swine Flu) virus. JHSH is published by the Navy Medicine Institute for the Medical Humanities and Research Leadership in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution. Our virtual newsroom project was funded by a grant from USAID while Larry Pintak was still at AU Cairo.

The publication is free to download here. My chapter, is on page 119.

[The Journal of Healthcare, Science and the Humanities]

Tweet to tweet combat: @RitaJKing and @Josholalia

Visual.ly showcases data visualizations and presently has one test you can do with your own data: see how you stack up against a celebrity. I chose to pit myself against @Josholalia. The results are intriguing!

I'm a "workaholic" (it's true, I'm like a pack horse) and he's a "techie" but we both have cheeky grins and there's evidence of each of having an "obsession" though thankfully, the infographic stops short of revealing what that might be. Our top shared interests include @KatelanFoisy and @wello.

Rita J. King in Scientific American: "Technogenic Disasters: A Deadly New Normal for the Media"

Rita J. King has a new article on Scientific American, "Technogenic Disasters: A Deadly New Normal for the Media". Here's an excerpt:

The role of the media is not to find and repeat two binary views, neither of which is very helpful except for understanding the outer limits of an otherwise extremely complex issue, but rather to investigate to find the truth through gathering and contextualizing as much data as possible. This is very much a lonely, boots-on-the-ground experience, and it’s a necessary precursor to aggregation and curating news. Without the initial fact-finding process, there’s nothing to aggregate.

Over time, as data is gathered and analyzed, it is the role of the media to spot anomalies in the pattern and to contextualize, against the framework of an ongoing exploration, the implications for the people who are affected by technogenic disasters. Sometimes a disruption in the pattern is obvious, like when an earthquake and flood lead to nuclear meltdown. But often, the long, slow, cumulative issues related to the by-products of technology aren’t so evident at first glance.

Understanding how technogenic disasters affect people in the short and long term requires patience and the development of simple, reliable community hubs where people input their own stories and data. Achieving this will also require greater emphasis on science communication, which is currently my main professional area of focus, so that complex ideas can be clearly communicated to the people impacted by them.

[Scientific American, "Technogenic Disasters: A Deadly New Normal for the Media," by Rita J. King]

Hello and Goodbye, Len Sassaman

The late Len Sassaman at the 27th Chaos Communication Congress by Alexander Klink.

It's always a strange feeling--Facebook recommends someone who has 43 friends in common with you and yet you've never heard of her. Or you first hear about someone because suddenly, the Twitter stream is filled with references to that person's tragic death.

Today, I first heard of Len Sassaman. I follow people on Twitter who had suddenly discovered that they'd lost a friend to apparent suicide. I learned the cause of death by clicking over to his wife Meredith L. Patterson's Twitter feed. I wanted to send her a message of condolence but what's the right thing to say to a complete stranger about the worst grief she may ever experience in 140 characters or less?

I don't know you, Meredith, but my heart is with you right now.

Since the death of my friend Mac Tonnies I've become an inadvertent spokesperson for the digital graveyard and its inhabitants. Like Mac Tonnies, Sassaman seems like the kind of person who had a lot of very philosophical and practical ideas about the relationship between humans and technology.

It's just strange to find out on Twitter that you've lost something you didn't know you had.