A Live Broadcast on Swine Flu from a World Where Germs Can’t Be Transmitted

"Live from the AUC Virtual Newsroom: The CDC on Swine Flu." Broadcast quality video from the May 16, 2009 live event with the CDC in the AUC Virtual Newsroom produced in collaboration with Ill Clan Animation Studios.

This morning, Thursday June 4, 2009 Lawrence Pintak (co-director of the AUC Virtual Newsroom project with Dancing Ink Productions) appeared on CNN to discuss President Barack Obama’s speech from Cairo, Egypt.

A Live Broadcast on Swine Flu from a World Where Germs Can’t Be Transmitted

On Saturday, May 16, 2009, the AUC Virtual Newsroom featured Glenn Nowak and Jay Bernhardt of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), members of Global Voices and journalists from 12 countries in a discussion about Swine Flu and the transformation of media. Walid Al-Saqaf, represented the journalists and bloggers. Al-Saqaf is the former editor-in-chief of the Yemen Times and currently the Founder and Administrator of YemenPortal.net. "There is something about Second Life that is good and that is that you can never get contaminated by any disease even though you meet millions of people," said Al-Saqaf, to the audience in the virtual newsroom, in Cairo and on the web.

Lawrence Pintak, Director, Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at The American University in Cairo (and newly appointed Dean of the Murrow College at Washington State University) who hosted the event said, "This has been an adventure for all of us ... One story that the whole world is dealing with these days is swine flu. Here in Cairo, the government has ordered that every single pig be killed. That’s something the WHO and other experts oppose. So we thought it appropriate to use this unique virtual bridge to allow our group here in Cairo – and bloggers participating in this event around the world – to learn a little more about how to get to the truth about the disease in order to better educate their audiences. For that, we have turned to the Centers for Disease Control."

Overcoming Limitations on the Free Flow of Information

Rita J. King, CEO and Creative Director of Dancing Ink Productions, moderated the panel: "Before the event, we met with many of the participants to discuss the free flow of information they wanted to achieve. The CDC is new to social media but is setting an example among government agencies. The journalists and bloggers are from 12 different countries. Some are dealing with various limitations in the struggle to deliver accurate, meaningful information to their respective audiences."

King, who is also an investigative reporter, is the author of "Big Easy Money: Disaster Profiteering on the American Gulf Coast," and co-author of the newly published book, "Race, Place and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina."

Joshua S. Fouts, Chief Global Strategist at Dancing Ink Productions offered, "This event once again demonstrated the power of digital culture and in this case digital diplomacy to create new opportunities for cultural dialog across time and space."

A New Approach to Global Dialogue

While this was the first time the CDC has participated in a live broadcast from Second Life, the agency already had a headquarters set up within the virtual world when they were invited to participate in the broadcast from the AUC Virtual Newsroom.

The CDC has recently started to explore the use of social media and provide links and resources for an increasing number of followers. Currently, @cdcemergency has over 240,000 followers.

Many of the bloggers and journalists who had been new to Second Life for the Inuagural Broadcast from the AUC Virtual Newsroom arrived to the event customized, familiar with how to communicate and navigate within the space.

The broadcast was streamed live to the internet by TREET.TV (watch entire archive here), and anyone watching from around the world could watch the broadcast and communicate in live real time chat with event moderators and participants in Second Life.

Glenn Nowak, Director, Division of Media Relations, Office of Enterprise Communication Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Jay M. Bernhardt Director, National Center for Health Marketing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both already had avatars.

Jay Bernhardt, who heads the social media operations told the audience, "I recommend people visit the CDC social media website On that site it lists a lot of different things people can get access to. Some are subscriber based like Twitter feeds for example and you can sign up for any or all of our Twitter feeds, which obviously can be mobile enabled."

Glen Nowak offered these thoughts on the fact that people around the world rely on the CDC's data, "What we're trying to do with people living in developing countries when it comes to things like novel flu viruses or other health threats is we're trying to raise awareness of what the health issues are. We're trying to give people a perspective. We're trying to give them the information we have about how much a threat this does pose."