Summary

News

About

Overview

The nonpartisan 501c3 nonprofit, onAir Networks oversees the management of the public onAir hubs and networks. onAir Networks has an exclusive license to use the onAir software platform from onAir Tech corporation.

onAir Tech corporation, in addition to the development of its Knowledge and Information Sharing System (KISS), also supports groups and organizations seeking to have a custom onAir. Particular emphasis is on custom hubs that share many of their posts with one or more public onAir hubs.

Supporting onAir

Individuals and organizations can support a hub in many ways including:

• Donating to onAir Networks;
• Sponsoring a post, category, or entire Hub
• Purchasing an Advocate membership and curate your own posts

Select the Information icon in each hub’s site header to find out how to support a hub.

GMU Acknowledgements

George Mason University faculty, students, alumni, and staff have been instrumental in developing the onAir software as well as our initial networks. The following Mason Patriots have made significant contributions (most of the profiles were created while they working on onAir Networks projects):

Todd Gillette, GMU PhD Neuroscience, 2015; Tim O’Shea, GMU BA Government, 2019;  James Lillard, GMU BA GLOA, 2021; Aram Zucker-Scharff, BA English- 2011 and BS Information Technology;  Ben Murphy, Schar 2023; Shuaib Ahmed, BA Volgenau- 2020;  Jordan Toledo, BA Government- 2020; Ani Prakash-GLOA 2024; Joe Kubicki, Schar 2024;

Over 50 interns from Mason academic units including from the Volgenau School of Engineering, Schar School of Policy and Government, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Honors College. have participated in this work, most via a 6 credit, 20 hour a week internship programs.

Many GMU faculty members have assisted in developing US onAir including: Maria Dworzecka, Robert Weigel, John Casey, Andrzej Manitius, Gary Kreps, Lourdes Fernandez, and Jennifer Victor.

Mason staff who contributed to US onAir include: Will Rees, Paras Kaul, Jim McLean, Thea Kassas, and LeighAnn Skeen.

Representatives:  Mason Fairfax’s state delegate, David Bulova and US House member, Don Beyer have been most helpful in the development of the US onAir network.  We greatly appreciate their special efforts to provide ongoing support for Mason students especially with the aircasts and in person events they participated e.g., here is a one minute clip from a 27 minute interview aircast with Don Beyer.

Networks & Hubs

Key Hubs & Networks under development are:

• The Positive Futures hub at future.onair.cc and the People’s Internet hub at peoples-internet.onair.cc.
• AI onAir network with a current focus on the AI Policy hub with the top hub at ai.onair.cc,
• US onAir network with 50 onAir state hubs and a top United States onAir hub at us.onair.cc.

Future plans include launching six main onAir portals: Nature onAir, Health onAir, Science onAir, Tech onAir, Society onAir, and Nations onAir, with their subsidiary networks and hubs.

We are looking for relevant, non-profit organizations to oversee onAir networks and hubs.

• Each onAir network uses the onAir software system and has a central Hub (e.g. US onAir National Hub) and related sub-Hubs (e.g. 50 state Hubs like the Virginia onAir Hub).  Initial Hub content is aggregated from publicly available sources e.g. from wikipedia and government agencies and freely viewable by everyone.
• Each Hub’s administration and curation is led by one or more university-based research centers or academic programs with affiliated associations, NGOs, and government agencies.
• Anyone can become an onAir member. Your voice matters onAir and  it’s free. We encourage high school and college students and the interested public to participate in online and aircast discussions and collaborations as long as they follow a hub’s guidelines.
• Our  first onAir networks are focused on how to support democracy around the world starting with the US and India networks. We have also begun networks around other key grand challenges such as climate change,  immigration, and cybersecurity.
• Each network is supported by individual donations, foundation and government grants, and sponsors. In addition, profile posts of organizations and individuals can be curated by the identified person or group for a monthly fee.
• OnAir Networks collaborates with its university partners to convene in person events like the Meet the Changemakers Day at GMU. These events will give students, faculty, and the public an opportunity to learn about and meet with researchers and research centers as well as federal, state, and local policy makers and other changemakers.
• OnAir networks is a nonpartisan, 501c3 nonprofit that assists its network curators with fundraising and accounting as well as provide technical and management support.

onAir Membership

Becoming an onAir member is simple and free.  All that is required is your first and last name, your email address and your zipcode. You can also identify the issues you would like a hub’s curators and authors to address. When you submit your email address to become a Hub member, it is your option to have your address displayed.

OnAir membership is currently by invitation. When open to public in the fall, go to this post to become an onAir member..

 Becoming an onAir member will enable you to:

• Curate posts and moderate post forums;
• Be a producer, host, or discussant for an aircast;
• Comment on posts in any onAir Hub;
• Qualify to be an onAir Chapter member e.g. Students on Air @GMU;
• Intern with onAir Networks
• Participate in special events like Meet the Changemakers Day.

Guidelines for Curation & Moderation.

We are dedicated to maintaining respectful, engaging and informative conversations.  See this post for more information on our Guidelines for Curation & Moderation. Our nonprofit partners can customize these guidelines with the approval of onAir Networks.

In addition, all public content is under under the Creative Commons NonCommercial license which permits content sharing and adaptation as long as proper attribution is given to its author(s) and is used for non-commercial purposes. See this post for more information on this license.

See this post for more information on our Terms of Service.

Privacy Policy

Simply visiting an onAir Hub does not expose your identity publicly. When you submit your email addresses and name for any purpose, that data will only be used by onAir Networks.  onAir Networks will not sell your information. You also can, at any time, request that your information be removed from the onAir system. Such requests will be honored within one business day.

For more information on our Privacy Policy, see this post.

Over the past four years, George Mason University alumni, students, faculty, and staff have been developing, administering, and curating the US Government network of 50 state governance and election hubs and central US Government Hub. The VA Government Hub has been the model state hub for how to add state representatives, committees, and other state government content including aircasts with representatives and candidates (e.g. here is a one minute clip from an interview aircast with Don Beyer – congressman from Virginia’s 8th District).

Curating a post and administering a hub is simple and intuitive requiring no programming experience. Any onAir member, with guidance from hub administrators, can curate an existing post on a hub. In addition, onAir members can also start and curate new posts, moderate forums, and produce aircasts as long as they adhere to a hub’s curation guidelines. OnAir members can also start and curate, for a fee, a post that does not need to adhere to a hub’s guidelines. These posts will be clearly identified and can include copyrighted content (not under our Creative Commons license). To author your own post, contact your hub’s administrator (see address in Hub’s footer).

If your university organization would like to curate a Hub in an onAir network, contact the network (see address in central network hub’s footer). Post curators will be provided with a free @onair.cc email address, if requested.

Benefits for University Organizations

1.  Gain increased visibility and interaction with several audiences – especially your and other university faculty, students, staff, and alumni
2.  Connect with and influence federal, state, and local policy makers
3.  Recruit new students, faculty, and affiliates
4.  Attract new funding – from individuals, foundations, grants, corporate sponsors
5.  Establish ongoing communication with audiences – via onAir posts, aircasts, post forums, and in person events
6.  Help create and support the Go-To online place for communications on your organization’s focus

onAir Curators

Over the past four years with the help of George Mason University faculty, staff, and alumni, onAir Networks has been working with over 60 interns majoring in government, global affairs, communications, and the information science.  Former interns are now working on creating Hub networks for India, Taiwan, and South Korea to support democracy.

We encourage student interns to integrate their internship with their intern courses for credit, class projects, capstone projects, and research work. Many of our interns have taken 6 credit internship or capstone courses.  Most work is done online and unpaid.  Some of our recent interns have continued working withonAir Networks in management positions.

OnAir interns who commit 5 hours a week or more will receive a Profile post where they can include their resume, projects, video interviews, and other information about their interests, skills, and experience helpful to gaining employment and networking opportunities.

See this Democracy onAir internship post for more information.

OnAir networks is also developing a number of other networks including:  Climate Change, Immigration, and Cybersecurity and will be establishing internships for these and other networks.

onAir System

OnAir is a dynamic, web-based platform for Knowledge & Information (KIS).

• The onAir platform supports the development of onAir Hub websites and onAir Hub networks that aggregate and display posts curated by onAir members.
• All onAir Hubs are hosted on the “onair.cc” domain .
• OnAir  Hubs aggregate and promote the best, publicly available knowledge about a topic and its related news, events, resources, people, and organizations. OnAir Hubs also provide a variety of tools for Hub member engagement including forums in each post and aircasts (livestreamed zoom discussions).
• OnAir posts, by default, are under the CC-NC (Creative Commons-Non Commercial) license and can be shared with any other onAir Hub and automatically updated from the original post
• OnAir Networks provides its Hub organizers and managers with the support and guidance to make their Hub the go to place for their topic. OnAir Hubs can be customized by their administrators. OnAir also provides whatever design, development, and content support that is required.
• OnAir also develops and monitors the curation and moderation guidelines for the Hubs and manages the finances for each state hub. OnAir will share sponsor and other revenues with its hub administrative and curation partners.

The onAir is a dynamic, browser-based  Knowledge & Information Sharing System (KISS). The onAir platform supports the development of public and custom onAir HUB websites that display posts curated by onAir members. All onAir public hubs are overseen by our 501c3 nonprofit onAir Networks and the nonprofits we work with on each hub.

• All onAir Hubs are hosted on the “onair.cc” domain;
• OnAir  Hubs aggregate and promote the best, publicly available knowledge about a topic and its related news, events, resources, people, and organizations.
• Multiple Hubs on a similar topic can be organized as a NETWORK of hubs.

Our first two beta networks are focused on Artificial Intelligence (top hub at ai.onair.cc) and Government and Politics (top hub at us.onair.cc) with 50 onAir state hubs.

1. The core onAir element is the post. Every post can aggregate information from multiple sources. For example, this Senator Kirsten Gillibrand post  incorporates content from her government and campaign websites, YouTube videos, Twitter feed, News items, and other external sources such as Vote Smart, Congress.Gov, and Wikipedia organized in a persistent, easily accessible table of contents. Every post can appear in multiple categories within a hub as well as shared with other hubs. Shared post content is automatically updated wherever it is displayed. 
2. OAir hubs on any topic can be easily created, administered, and curated without any programming knowledge. OnAir Hubs are portals that organize the most comprehensive and publicly available content on issues, projects, people, and organizations.
3. OnAir Hubs have multiple ways of bringing together experts with each other, with students, and with the public to discuss best practices, new ideas, and innovative solutions. Every post has a forum that enables persistent, ongoing discussions on various topics as well as a place to ask questions and make suggestions, tell stories, and add endorsements. In addition, OnAir supports professionally produced, livestreamed Zoom interviews, panels, town halls, and other discussion formats without requiring video expertise and displayable in posts and social media. OnAir also provides students with training on how to coordinate in person events like our Meet the Changemakers days.

Content

Any web user, on a laptop, desktop computer or smartphone connected to the internet, can easily access content on any onAir Network hub for free.

All Hub content is under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license which permits content sharing and adaptation by nonprofit organizations as long as proper attribution is given to its author(s) and is used for non-commercial purposes. Content and moderation guidelines reinforce our commitment to fact-based, comprehensive content and civil and honest discourse.  See Terms of Service for more information on how you can re-use Hub content and view Hub disclaimers.

Simply visiting a Hub does not expose your identity publicly nor will onAir Networks sell your information. See our Privacy Policy  to learn about how we don’t use cookies, track your usage, or sell your email address.

You can watch aircasts in forums, debates, town halls, and interviews. Aircasts are Zoom meetings with featured guests and audience participation that are livestreamed to the public. Aircasts are recorded and archived in onAir Hubs and YouTube channels and shareable on social media and websites.