Media and Information

Sources
Module 5
Which information Sources (i.e., indigenous, library, Internet,
mass media) do you prefer to use for the following topics? Why?

1. Human genome project?

2. The cultural practices of the Lumads of Mindanao
3. The current state of the tourism and hospitality industry in the Philippines
4. Political Conflicts and strife in different parts of the world.
5. Human Expedition on Mars.
6. Agricultural Practices
7. Recent Events in the last decade that changed the world
8. The Asean Integration
9. Most Promising careers for graduates of senior high school
10. The trends in the mobile application industry
11. The history of the Bangsamoro
12. Human Organization and behavior
13. The global Phenomenon on Korean pop
14. Paralympics
Indigenous Knowledge and Indigenous
Media
A rather unconventional source for
information is the so-called indigenous
knowledge (IK). Indigenous knowledge is
defined by Warren (1991) as the knowledge
that is unique to a given culture or society.
IK contrasts with the international
knowledge system generated by
universities, research institutions and
private firms. It is the basis for local-level
decision making in agriculture, health
care, food preparation, education, natural
resource management, and a host of
other activities in rural communities. –
Warren (1991)
• Indigenous knowledge is relayed either through
people media (Which are the persons involved in the
use, analysis, evaluation, and production of media and
information) or through indigenous media. The Asia
Indigenous Peoples Pact or AIPP defined indigenous
media as media:
… Owned, controlled and managed by indigenous peoples in
order for them to develop and produce culturally appropriate
information in the languages understood by the community by
utilizing indigenous materials and resources, reflecting
community needs and interests, visions and aspirations, and
independent from vested interests groups. It is highly
participatory, involving the community members in planning,
management and production.
Also known as community media, indigenous
media is any form of media that is created and
controlled in the community, for the community,
about the community and by the community
(either a geographic community or a community
of identity or interest) [and] is separate from
commercial media, state-run media, or public
broadcasting.”
Characteristics of Indigenous Media:

• Oral Tradition of Communication

• Store information in memories
• Information exchange is face to face interaction
• Limiting the transfer and access of information over
long distances and
• Information are contain within the boarder of the
community.
The AIPP observed that “the ASEAN media
landscape is generally characterized by an urban-
centric media system in flow, content,
consumption, and ownership that limits
indigenous peoples’ access to media and
information and news coverage of their own
issues and conditions. “Some of the observations
of the groups includes the following:
• Flow of information starting from metropolitan areas,
tending to be one-way as no effective mechanisms are in
place for media organizations to gather news from rural
indigenous areas.
• Distant locations of many indigenous territories and poor
infrastructures as big obstacles to indigenous peoples’ access
to information from mass media.
• Complex biases and serious lack of interest in the lives of
indigenous communities in news coverage and selection of
mainstream media.
• Privately owned mainstream media catering more interests
of urban consumers rather the needs of rural communities,
particularly indigenous ones.
The Library as Repository of Information
-Libraries to be places “in which literary, musical, artistic,
reference materials (as books, manuscripts, recordings, or
films) are kept for use but not for sale”.
-Libraries are considered to be stewards of information
collection.
-The main role of a library is to organize and provide you
access to information.
-Modern Libraries are connected to the internet to provide
library users of a myriad of sources and data bases from
various places in the world.
Pros and Cons of the Different Types of
Media as Sources of Information
• Books
• Pros – Portable/Transferable information
- Affordable by volume, depending on size of print run.
- Enduring medium that can last for many years
- Ideal for content that may not change drastically over time (historical, academic works,
catalogues of cultural artifacts/works of art)

• Cons – “Print is dead” or is it?

- Costly typesetting and design.
- Costly publication in multilingual editions.
- Expensive storage and shipping.
- Prohibitively expensive reprinting/revising of outdated information.
- Environmental issues
• Magazines & Newspapers
• Pros – Loyal (but shrinking) readership
- Target a Geographical area
- Can be shared with others
- Inserts and leaflets attract attention

• Cons – Newspaper valid only for a day

- Message can be lost (Most papers have more than 60%
advertising)
- Magazines have niche audiences
• Cinema
• Pros – Reaches may demographics, literate or
illiterate
- Can be entered in local/international film
festivals and competitions for further
exposure.

• Cons – Expensive production

- May or may not hold interest/attention
• Think of yourself as a program monitor/analyst in a television
network. Your job is to watch the programs of the network in a
particular timeslot or segment of the day. The head of the program
monitoring division assigned you to watch a prime time soap opera of
your network and the soap opera of competing network in the same
time slot. You were asked to write a report comparing two programs
in terms of theme, content,target audience, and advertisements. The
report must
• Be between 500 and 700 words;
• Be logical and critical
• Be professional in tone
• Suggest ways on how two programs can be improved in terms of
content and production value.
• Radio
• Pros – Trusted medium with loyal followers.
- Community radio has loyal audiences interested in local
activities
- National broadcasters can carry messages for
nationwide events.

• Cons – Niche market: stations cater to specific types of

listeners
- Audience will tune out
- Background medium (hard to hold attention)
- Difficult to incite action (hard to remember broadcasted
contact details or website URLs)
• Television
• Pros – Quickly spreads the message on different channels
times of day.
- Improves credibility.
- Best suited for large-scale communications activities.
• Cons – Expensive
- Short message that must be repeated to sink in.
- Advertisements can be skipped through PVRs
(Personal Video Recorders).
- Traditional TV is less watched by younger people
• World Wide Web
• Pros – Main point contact between user and
audience
- Acts as a hub for all other activities/content
(audio/Video/text/events/social media
aggregator)
- Easy to access from multiple platforms
- 24/7 interaction with target audiences
• Cons – Perceived difficulty to set up
- High cost maintenance (constant updating)
- Information control
• Social media
• Pros – Reach the correct audience through
hashtags/following relevant groups.
- Attract large number of people in short time.
- Drive traffic to other communication actions.
- Bring people together.
- Gather information about target.
- Easy feedback
- Place for real-life experiences to be exchanged
- Give voice to timid people
• Cons – Very time consuming to engage directly with
followers
- Need to keep content fresh across platforms to
stay visible
- Cannot control the message or how people react
to online contents
- Campaigns can get hijacked by detractors
- Bad news can go viral
- Mistakes can happen in real time wit thousands
of witnesses
- Negative feedback cannot be ignored
- Do not capture tone
Evaluating Your information sources
When information suits your needs, it is considered of
good quality. To measure information quality, you may
consider the following aspects.
1. The information provided by source is credible and
reliable. One aspect of judging credibility of
information is the reputation of the source. The
authoritativeness of the information and the source
must be readily verifiable; otherwise, the information
may not be useful.
2.Breadth and depth of the discussion on a topic is also
consideration. The extent of the research done by the source
to organize the information is an indication of rigor and
judiciousness. A lazy source is one who is content on providing
secondary and tertiary sources as well as popular and less
academic information.

3. The information can be cross-referenced. This means that

the information can also be checked in other sources and can
be supported by them.

4. The manner on how the information has been dealt with by

the source is ethical and legal.
You are a video reporter for an online news portal. Your
executive producer assigned you to interview an elder of a
certain community. Your task is to produce a news feature
using the interview and this will be uploaded in the news
portal. The video will deal about relevant concepts that you
know about indigenous knowledge and indigenous media. The
video must not be shorter than 8 minutes and must not be
longer than 12minutes. Your audience are online users who
visit the news portal for their new consumption. The video
must adhere to the principles of video production, must be
highly interesting, and should use text, audio, and visual
elements that are culturally sensitive to the indigenous group
that the interviewee belongs to.