Andy Carvin is an American blogger and former senior product manager for online communities at

National Public Radio (NPR) National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...

. He accepted a position at First Look Media in February, 2014. Carvin was the founding editor and former coordinator of the Digital Divide Network, an online community of more than 10,000 Internet activists in over 140 countries working to bridge the digital divide. He is also an active

blogger A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...

as well as a field correspondent to the vlog

Rocketboom Rocketboom was a daily vlog produced by Andrew Baron in the format of a newscast with a comedic slant. Since 2004 Rocketboom has presented oddities, vlog excerpts, social and political commentary. The Rocketboom weblog and Apollo Pony featured s ...

. Carvin lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Biography

Born in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most p ...

and raised in Florida, Carvin graduated from Northwestern University in 1993. While working for the

Corporation for Public Broadcasting The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is an American publicly funded non-profit corporation, created in 1967 to promote and help support public broadcasting. The corporation's mission is to ensure universal access to non-commercial, ...

in 1994, he authored the website EdWeb, one of the first websites to advocate the use of the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

in education. In 1999, he was hired by the

Benton Foundation The Benton Foundation is a nonprofit organization set up by former U.S. Senator William Benton and his wife, Helen Hemingway Benton. Their son, Charles Benton, served as chairman and CEO until his death in 2015. The Benton Foundation was the own ...

to help develop Helping.org, a philanthropy website that eventually became known as Networkforgood.org. At the December 1999 US National Digital Divide Summit in Washington DC, President Bill Clinton announced the launch of the Digital Divide Network, a

spin-off Spin-off may refer to: *Spin-off (media), a media work derived from an existing work * Corporate spin-off, a type of corporate action that forms a new company or entity * Government spin-off, civilian goods which are the result of military or gov ...

of Helping.org edited by Carvin. In 2001, he organized an email forum called ''SEPT11INFO'', an emergency discussion forum in response to the September 11 attacks. Following the

Boxing Day tsunami An earthquake and a tsunami, known as the Boxing Day Tsunami and, by the scientific community, the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake, occurred at 07:58:53 local time (UTC+7) on 26 December 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of northern Suma ...

in 2004, he created the RSS aggregator Tsunami-Info.org, and served as a contributor to the TsunamiHelp collaborative blog. He also joined Global Voices Online in the end of 2004 In January 2005, Carvin began advocating mobile phone podcasting as a tool for

citizen journalism Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, a ...

and human rights monitoring; he called the concept "mobcasting". Utilizing free online tools including

FeedBurner FeedBurner is a web feed management service primarily for monetizing RSS feeds, primarily by inserting targeted advertisements into them. It was founded in 2004 and acquired by Google in 2007. Services Services provided to publishers include traf ...

Blogger A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...

and Audioblogger, Carvin demonstrated the potential of mobcasting at a February 2005

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher l ...

blogging conference and at The Gates, the

Central Park Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West Side, Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the List of New York City parks, fifth-largest park in the city, covering . It is the most visited urban par ...

art installation created by the artist

Christo Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935–2009), known as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, were artists noted for their large-scale, site-specific environmental installations, often large landmarks and ...

. He later demonstrated mobcasting as part of a collaborative blog called

Katrina Aftermath Katrina or Katrine may refer to: People * Katrina (given name) * Katrine (given name) Meteorology * List of storms named Katrina, a list of tropical cyclones designated as Katrina ** Hurricane Katrina, an exceptionally powerful Atlantic hurricane ...

, which allowed members of the public to post multimedia content regarding

Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina was a destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 fatalities and $125 billion in damage in late August 2005, especially in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time the cos ...

. For Carvin's work on mobcasting and the digital divide, Carvin received a 2005 TR35 award from Technology Review, awarded annually to the 35 leading technology innovators under age 35. Carvin has also been honored as one of the top

education technology Educational technology (commonly abbreviated as edutech, or edtech) is the combined use of computer hardware, software, and educational theory and practice to facilitate learning. When referred to with its abbreviation, edtech, it often refe ...

advocates in eSchool News magazine and District Administration magazine. In May 2006, Carvin began serving as host on a blog called Learning.now on

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educati ...

. According to Learning.now's website, it explores "how new technology and Internet culture affect how educators teach and children learn. It will offer a continuing look at how new technology such as wikis, blogs, vlogs, RSS, podcasts, social networking sites, and the always-on culture of the Internet are impacting teacher and students' lives both inside and out of the classroom." Learning.now is part of PBS TeacherSource, PBS' educator website. In September 2006, Andy Carvin became a staff member at

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...

as their senior product manager for online communities. An avid Twitter user, the popular revolution in Tunisia in late 2010 caught Andy Carvin's attention when the microblogging service "seemed to explode" with messages about an uprising. Carvin had traveled extensively in Tunisia, had many contacts there, and was able to develop others. Carvin's curation of Twitter feeds as well as traditional wire services have generated a great deal of interest in the journalism community. He has given interviews about his news curation of citizen journalism on blogs, journalism sites, as well as mainstream media sites. In March 2011, Andy Carvin and his Twitter followers utilized

crowdsourced Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digit ...

research to debunk false stories that Israeli weapons were being used against the people of Libya. By April 2011, ''

The Columbia Journalism Review The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (''CJR'') is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its contents include news and media industry trends, ana ...

'' dubbed Carvin a "living, breathing real-time verification system" and suggested his might be the best Twitter account to follow in the world. '' The Washington Post'' called him "a one-man Twitter news bureau". His hometown paper, '' Florida Today'', published a profile describing him as having "global impact" and saying he provided "a unique window into the unrest sweeping across the Middle East." A few days before a foreign policy speech on the Middle East by President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

in mid-May 2011, the White House contacted Carvin and asked for him to co-host a Twitter interview chat with a White House official. Although NPR had refused to allow the White House to specify particular reporters in the past, Mark Stencel, NPR's managing editor for digital news, granted the request, saying that Carvin was "uniquely suited" for the role. Carvin was a recipient of the Journalism Awards: Special Distinction Award, Knight-Batten Award for Innovation for his Twitter reporting, July 2011
Link
On August 21, 2011, as armed fighters rolled into the city of Tripoli, Libya, in a bid to oust Muammar Gaddafi from his 42-year rule of the country, cable news stations in the U.S. appeared unprepared to cover the breaking news event, but Carvin tweeted over 800 times, "recording the oral history in real time." He was profiled in

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

's '' The Guardian'' newspaper as "the man who tweets revolutions". '' The Daily Dot'' recognized Carvin as second only to online

hacktivist In Internet activism, hacktivism, or hactivism (a portmanteau of ''hack'' and ''activism''), is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. With roots in ha ...

group

Anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anony ...

in his influence on Twitter in the year 2011. In its writeup of Carvin, the ''Dot'' compared him to

Edward R. Murrow Edward Roscoe Murrow (born Egbert Roscoe Murrow; April 25, 1908 – April 27, 1965) was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He first gained prominence during World War II with a series of live radio broadcasts from Europe ...

, whose radio coverage of the London Blitz established him as a household name in the United States during World War II. On January 25, 2013, Carvin conducted an AMA on Reddit to promote his new book, ''Distant Witness''. Carvin donated the iPhone he used to tweet during the

Arab Spring The Arab Spring ( ar, الربيع العربي) was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in Tunisia in response to corruption and econom ...

to the American History Museum.

Biography

Notes and references

External links