Is a rabble run media becoming a possibility? And are artists in the vanguard or blocking the way? The AV media arts festival in the North-East of England last month suggested the ambivalence of artistic interventions into state and corporate broadcasting. Report by Anthony Iles and Josephine Berry Slater

The BBC's Live Sites 2012 program is set to roll out 60 big screens in urban centres around the UK by 2012. Considering the vague agenda currently guiding their use, Richard Wright asks whether these big screens will ever open themselves to creative use or simply remain giant TVs controlled by giants
 

Overview of the exceptional extent and intensity of class confrontation going on in Mexico beneath the election circus.  From Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/ross07012006.html

'Mexico on the Brink : there's a riot going on'

By JOHN ROSS

Mexico City, Mexico.

For all those who walk London's streets wondering whether brekky has been spiked; for all those who think the millenniumdome is really an enormous hallucinogen; for all those who think the mayoral candidates are from Mars, Matthew Fuller has a surprise. If you see scary surrealism in today's London, wait for the magic realism of tomorrow.

Agnese Trocchi looks at the history of pirate television in Italy and sees the rise of a new organisation in the TeleStreet network

Coming soon to a screen near you, Genoa: The Movie. Actually, probably not.

JF reviews Them: Adventures with Extremists

In the attention economy, the media compete aggressively for our eyeball time. Bill Thompson investigates the latest memetic strategies.

Cooper James on Election 97 at the BBC

Now that the dust from the election has settled, it's time to look back and try to discover just why it was that after 18 years in the coverage wilderness the BBC managed not only to win on May 1st, but to rout ITV and score their biggest election victory since 1812.