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Pictures

Marius the giraffe

Apparently hell hath no fury like the public, when a giraffe is euthanized. I get it giraffes are cute, the long eyelashes and goofy expression, but as many others, I doubt that a smaller more boring animal – let’s say a water hog, would have sparked the same outrage as the euthanizing of Marius the giraffe.

Witnessing the autopsy yesterday, I was impressed by the professionalism and the efficiency of the zoo staff. There was an air of scientifically accuracy and decency about the whole thing. Unsentimental and “this is how nature works” and I believe it, when the zoo states how this was the decent thing to do (read the statement here).

It’s fair to be against zoos, of course, and I think British PETA wrote a balanced statement about exactly that (read it here) but to refuse to make money from their animals by selling them and … read on

Blog Posts

Will electronic voting machines cause digital exclusion?

The following essay was written as part of my Master’s degree at King’s College, London. 

30 January 2013 Danish Minister for Economic and Interior Affairs, Margrethe Vestager introduced a bill permitting electronic elections in Denmark (Vestager, 2013a). The bill was rejected by parliament 13 March, to much surprise for the government (Kildebogaard, 2013a) (Bredsdorff, 2013), some prominent politicians,  even mocking both IT experts and opposition using the hashtag #jordenerflad (the earth is flat), calling them technophobes, who live in the future.

What I found striking following the debate and reading the hearing statements was how technology was the main focus, government arguing how technology would help people with disabilities, while opponents mainly focused on, the lack of, IT security and stability.

The debate on who might risk being or feeling excluded by electronic elections and how this might effect democracy, was limited, nearly absent.
In this essay I will discuss … read on

I like...

Ira Glass: what makes an interesting story

Listening to This American Life host Ira Glass talking about, what makes an interesting story makes me regret, we didn’t talk much more about this in journalism school:

Making stories that are constantly saying: look how different this is, than you would think, look how interesting this is, look how much more interesting, this is than you would think it, constantly searching for stories where there would be little surprises all the way through, all along, what that’s doing is reasserting that the world, it is reasserting the world to its proper size, you know, reasserting that the world is a place where surprise and pleasure and joy and humour exists, it makes things hopeful, you know. This is my problem with most radio and television news, it is that they make the world seem less interesting than they are.

If you for some weird reason haven’t listened to every … read on

Blog Posts

Crowdsourcing the constitution to unify Iceland

As part of my master’s degree in Digital Culture and Society I wrote an essay in January about “how the use of media technologies can help strengthen the feeling of community of the Icelandic People in the process of crowdsourcing their constitution”.

Though I don’t believe the (flawless) solution to modern democratic governing is involving the public in every process, in my opinion the risk of peer pressure is overwhelming, I do admire how well thought through and thorough the Icelandic crowdsourcing project was.

Therefor I was sad to read how the Icelandic government this week overturned the publics desire for change and thereby risk to damage the public believe in democracy for many decades to come.

If you want to read more, you can find my essay here: Crowdsourcing the constitution to unify Iceland

A bit of background

Post the financial collapse in 2008 the Icelandic people went to … read on

Blog Posts

Robert nomination for A leaf falls to the sky

Since 2008 I’ve been working on a documentary together with my friend Anders Birch. In august we finally finished it, got accepted at CPH:dox and this sunday we got nominated for a Robert award for best short documentary. We are of course both happy and proud (and a wee bit surprised).

Unfortunately there isn’t planned any viewings at the moment, but we’re crossing our fingers that telly  *looking at you DR* will show it – as we (stating the obvious here) think the story is important. The documentary is called  “A leaf falls to the sky” (Et blad falder til himlen) and has the writer Knud Romer as main character in a story about life and death, growing up –  and most importantly about how we in our society treat the elderly like they don’t belong, like it’s okay to store them in facilities – “care” homes, like … read on

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Open Gov 3.0

Beth Noveck former deputy chief technology officer for US open government and author of the book Wiki Government, teaches a course at NYCWagner in Open Government. They’ve just posted the syllabus, and there’s lots of great inspiration, for those of us who can’t be in NYC this term: Government 3.0: Rethinking Governance and Re-imagining Democracy for the 21st Century… read on

I like...

Introduction to McLuhan

As part of my MA studies I’ve been forced encouraged to read a lot about/of McLuhan and technological determinism. Some of it good, some great, some “in the future you should cut down on the LSD”. I’d never really had a reason to study his writings and to spare others from reading the real sh**e once I’ve collected some of the videos and writings I found most interesting:

Easy to read Playboy interview with McLuhan from 1969

“Marshall McLuhan the man and his message” – one hour documentary, introduced by Tom Wolfe from 1984:

Marshall McLuhan – the man and his message

Marshall McLuhan – full lecture: The medium is the message – 1977:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Marshall McLuhan – the global village – a short introduction – quite impressive for someone who didn’t live to see the internet take off and worth watching if you’re interested … read on

On the road...

Austin – Emo’s (closed)

emos

Rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay: Burlesque, rockabilly, lesbian guns ‘n’ roses copy bands, straight rock – they’ve all played at Emo’s: Johnny Cash, Queens of the stone age, Green Day etc… read on

On the road...

Austin – small burger joint

austin

Small burger joint by highway 343 at the other side of the road from the Alama Drafthouse Cinema. They served one of the best burgers I ever had.… read on

Pictures

San Francisco

… read on

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About me

Nice to meet you, my name is Didde Elnif

I'm currently doing a PhD and teaching digital journalism, radio and digital sociology at University of Southern Denmark. Previously I've been head of programme at a conference called New Media Days (DR) and I've been digital editor at Dagbladet Information - head to Linkedin for more work/edu related info. If you want to get in touch send me an email at didde@elnif.dk or ping me at twitter.com/elnif

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Didde Elnif, tel.: +45 22177500, mail: didde@elnif.dk