Nick Rawle, working the skyride photobooth

Last Sunday I had the pleasure of being part of the Citizen’s Eye inaugural community media hub for the Leicester Skyride and BIKE film festival at the Phoenix Square Digital Arts and Media centre. To on-lookers, they were probably wonder who the people wearing the “community media reporter” t-shirts were, as we gradually starting to take over chunks of the Phoenix’s foyer and cafe-bar over the course of the weekend. There was an insane amount of content produced, as reported by John Coster (editor of Citizen’s Eye) in his latest Soar Magazine column:

“The team created 51 filmed interviews for YouTube, took over 450 photos for the Flickr Photostream and carried out seven Ipadio interviews. All of them can be seen or heard from the Citizens’ Eye website. The Community Action Photographers had a great article in Wednesday’s Leicester Mercury and all their best photos are in a Sky Ride gallery on the website.”

BBC Leicester have also used their photos in a Sky Ride gallery and the Community Reporter, James Black, interviewed the East Midlands Special Olympics Cycling Team and the story appeared on CNN report.”

I had been in conversations with John for a while now, relating to his bigger plans for the London 2012 Games and my research into independent media centres for mega-events. For me, I felt that the purpose of Sunday’s activities stemmed beyond the simple of encouraging people to get on their bikes (although there was enough people there to promote the usual positive messages of sport). There are a couple of things that a independent media hub can do for corporate/national events which I’m going to discuss below.

The Phoenix Square

Leicester’s digital media centre, Phoenix Square, has been getting enough bad press of late, as the management have asked the city council for a £250,000 bail out for the £21.5 million publicly funded centre. There has been much debate online about the visibility, foot-fall and marketing of the centre, which was built to replace the existing Phoenix cinema in the (again, much debated) “cultural quarter” of Leicester. A simple change initial SkyRide route (a five mile cycle around Leicester city centre, where cars were forbidden for one day only) dragged 12,500 people from Abbey Park (on the outskirts of the city) past some of Leicester’s “sights” – including the Phoenix Square (which wasn’t originally in the brief) – resulting in many of the people I spoke to saying that this was the first time they had visited the cinema and understood what it was about. Although it can be debated (or moaned about) until the cows come home, the simple fact that forward and creative planning – as well as working with existing events, the Phoenix managed to hijack some of the attention given to that event- even if they were a little unprepared for the sheer amount of people who came through their doors! There is nothing to say that this can’t be done for other events (not just sporting) in Leicester such as the Leicester comedy festival, the marathon, Leicester Pride (which is happening this weekend), the Leicester carnival and Diwali (to name a few!). This also goes for any other town and city. It’s reclaiming corporately sponsored/organised events and confusingly marketed cultural activities back to the community which already support them.

It’s not really about the Internet

What I find about taking part in activities such as this, is that it is completely removed from what I consider “social media” to when I am sitting at my desk on my own, browsing tweetdeck as I work. In fact, the social media tools were secondary to the process of just feeling part of something. Although at times it can be a bit daunting to just join in with a movement that essentially believes that everyone can do as much or as little as they please (freedom, what does that feel like?) – there is something nice about spending your weekend working with others to capture stories and take over from the more traditional means of promoting events. You could argue that the skyride team (sponsored by Sky TV) were never going to write a critical or bad word about the functioning of their event – and their focus is going to be on the sponsors and the talent (like the British Cycling team) rather than their “audience” (everybody else). Changing your focus is what is important, and even though there probably isn’t going to be a major news story out there (that the Olympics may provide on a daily basis), the act of archiving and reporting from different perspectives is something which is often missed when engaging with traditional media. Also, it’s great to see kids young as 4-5, marching up to people to grab an interview about their story, rather than just relying on the predictable reporting through press releases and crafted antidotes. There is room for both, of course, but even just hanging out there feels like the scouts for media geeks.

Practicing for the Olympics

My time in Vancouver during the Winter Games, working with the likes of True North Media House and W2 Arts and Media House, has really inspired me to work closely with potential media collaborations for the London 2012 games. Citizen’s Eye have already done so much work within the community, such as the numerous news agencies for those who feel disenfranchised in society, or their weekly community media cafe meet-ups, or the training offered using BBC Leicester’s facilities or getting young engaged in politics and journalism at a young age, and writing about it at an advanced and interesting level through their Wave supplement in the Leicester Mercury. All of this feeds into a bottom up process of providing a voice for the community, rather than the select few deciding the news frames on their behalf – as well as working with (rather than against) existing media organisations.

John makes it clear that we are working towards a common goal of recruiting 2,012 citizen reporters for a 6 month period in 2012, working towards reporting and covering the London 2012 games (from Leicester, through trips to London and networked between other media hubs in the UK) – this fits in with the #media2012 framework that we are working on in our Olympic media research at University of the West of Scotland, whilst reflecting on the alternative legacies (such as the protest, independent and digital media legacies) of Vancouver and previous games.

Here is me having a quick chat with John last week about all this:

The launch of the #Media2012 blueprint (part of the Abandon Normal Devices Festival) is on the 4th of October at the Cornerhouse (the plans in details are on Andy Miah’s (my PhD supervisor’s ) website)- we’d love for you to join us in Manchester. You can register by sending an email to hello@andfestival.org.uk

(Should also mention that I will be talking about #Media2012, my work in Vancouver and Citizen’s Eye at the Coventry Social Media Cafe (at Warwick University) on the 17th of September. In you are in the area, please drop by and say hello! More details about #cvsmc are available on their website.)

Posted via email from Jennifer Jones’ PhD Notebook

For the #tagginganna project, I was looking for a way to display a historical record of comments collected from students using Digress.it (a plug-in for wordpress which allows users to comments on paragraph levels of documents) to comment on a piece of literature from their coursework. Although it would be straight forward to just show the comments within the digress.it blog itself, I felt in terms of presenting results in a format which could be used for blogs and conference presentations, that something different was needed to display the main focus of the research project in a attractive, but useful way.

After reading Ana’s post revisiting timeline software, I saw that this dilemma posed an opportunity to try out some of the tools which she had demonstrated. After playing around with Temporis (Free to trial, but only with 20 items and a watermark), and having limited success (as the comments provide more dimensions than simply an event – better used for simpler, text only events) I decided to go with BeeDocs Timeline 3D – a Mac only program which allows for pretty looking time-lines which can be optimized for mobile, keynote, video and print.

As we are in the process of working with the #tagginganna results, I’ve used some of the comments from the University of Leicester Social Media Policy to demonstrate the tool and the different things you can do with it.

Importing data:

The best thing (and what made BeeDocs attractive to me) was the multiple ways in which data could be automatically inputted into the system. As well as using tools such as itunes and iphoto, which I guess is for building slideshows and entertainment focused presentation), Timeline 3D allows for the user to input data via RSS feeds, which is very useful when pulling in data from the Internet. This, on its own, created a ready made base to work on your data.

Limitations

RSS is a great device for pushing out information as it is happening, so if you are aware of your game plan, you can be proactive in your data collection to make your data presentation easier – Unfortunately, what RSS can’t do is guarantee that it’ll pull in feeds in their entirety. Like the issues with twitter data collection, some times the best way to manage and handle data in this case is to do it manually – relax, this is social science, and I understand that there is a method to working with RSS in this case (normally involves a little more technical knowledge, and again being proactive with data collection) – but for the casual user, TimeLine 3D makes it easy to switch between timeline and list mode to add to the timeline for what RSS can’t do.

Inputting Data

Adding to the timeline is as simple as filling in a spreadsheet and the software takes care of ordering and arranging the entries. The entries can also have a photo added to them to make the data look a little bit more interesting (I haven’t done this in this case, but using the Flickr blog as an example, you can see that it looks much more interesting.)

Displaying completed timelines

There are a few different ways in which to display the final timelines, the first being a simple .pdf

Download now or preview on posterous

timeline.pdf (16 KB)

This works well for short timelines with few events, especially if you are using them in word documents or blog posts. The data which emerged from #tagginganna, although was over a short time had many entries, some of which were minutes within each other so needed a alternative way of displaying the data. TimeLine 3D allows for the creation of videos, highlighting each point, which can be used for presentations or for further viewing of the results in context. Here is a short video I made of a selection of comments from the social media policy. (You can alter the time spend on each comment, as well as the quality – I deliberately sped this up just to demonstrate the software!)

Download now or watch on posterous

UoLSocialMedia.m4v (2061 KB)

Conclusions

I used the paid, full version of the software (available for $40 for the year) – which allows for the creation of video documents and unlimited entries into the timelines. Although I had some teething problems with the RSS, I look forward to trying out the tool with some of the social media data I collected during Vancouver, especially that of which occurred over shorter periods of time (like the closing ceremonies from the Winter Olympics) – as the task delegated was to prepare for a conference presentation, I think Timeline 3D provides a glossy, but also easy to use way in which to generate presentation material. I see it as a luxury, rather than something for everyday use – but I think it is worth the investment to get timelines just right. There are also a number of free timeline resources available on the web listed on Ana’s post.

Posted via email from Jennifer Jones’ PhD Notebook

On the 20th of July, I was invited to host a workshop at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (BIAD) Research Summer School about using Social Media to promote research. As promised, I’m sticking the presentation online so that those who were there can get a little bit more information based on the discussions that were had during and after the session. 

For more up to date (or dynamic) information, I use delicious frequently to save and share interesting links – feel free to connect

Posted via email from Jennifer Jones’s Posterous

On the 19th of July, Birmingham City University hosted a seminar on “Measuring the Unmeasurable” – a discussion led event to explore the meaning and the measurement of digital participation, focusing on the areas of reach, breadth and depth set out by the Digital Britain report. The event was targeted towards academics from broad “digital” media and cultural studies and policy makers, activists, community media workers and social media advisers.

Alongside presentations from Paul Watson (Director, Digital Economy Hub for Inclusion through the Digital Economy), Catherine Bunting (Director of Research, Arts Council England), Alison Preston (Senior Research Associate, Ofcom) there was also a panel discussion including Nick Booth (PodNosh) and Vishalakshi Roy (Senior Business Develop Manager, Audiences Central).

The afternoon session included a workshop breakout session which allowed participants to discuss the measurement of reach, breadth and depth further. This was a broad and open-ended session – which is reflected in the terminology around the digital participation plan itself. I was asked to facilitate the workshop on Depth, which is defined in the Digital Participation Plan were as follows:

Depth of use refers to using social networks and content creation and sharing, including user-generated content and self-publishing.

Depth of use will be monitored through levels of confidence, understanding of types of content, perceptions of personal benefits both economic and social, and knowledge of risks and how to mitigate them.

The Depth workshop turned out to be the most popular of the three terms (which makes for interesting discussion within its own right) – and as the session was so busy, it was quite difficult in the time allowed to have a focused discussion with larger numbers. Instead, the group of 30+ was split into smaller groups to discuss the group proposed issues of motivation, accessibility, funding and attendance.

After 20-30 minutes of discussion, groups were asked to then write down on post it notes measurement of successes and measurement of challenges relating to their chosen topic. Unsurprisingly, there were few measurements of successes – with much of the focus being made towards the challenges of measuring the depth of digital participation through solely looking at user generated content and social networking.

As there was so much to be discussed, in a rather short period of time, what can be said is that there is a definite pull towards “depth” research. I’d associated this particular type of research as being majorly qualitative (or as one speaker referred to as being “informal” research) where much of the questions and challenges posed were incapable of being answered using statistics or survey data. We were referring to case studies relating to our own separate industries, with many cross overs between personal reflections and conversations with those who are affected with the issues suggested. From this, I personally enjoyed seeing the indirect request for more qualitative research (but I am interested in ethnographic practice (;) – and the links between being innovative with funds and resources to avoid being sucked in the box ticking trap. The larger goal of getting different sectors to talk and work together was reinforced across the group.

What I did promise was to share the notes and scribbles from the session so that those who attended the depth session could unpick my handwriting and use it within their own reflections. I’ve added them below as part of a flickr slideshow for this purpose:

More to follow…

At the MeCCSA PGN Annual Conference (30th June – 1st of July, 2010), I presented a paper on Vancouver 2010 and Independent Media on the Mediating Sports on Screen panel. I sought to present a paper which explained the Olympic context and how the movement could be used to situate discussion relating to emerging media technologies and to explore media networks and communities which can emerge around existing mega-events. My key observations, which I hope to articulate further within my literature review over the coming months, looked at how mega-events are produced, consumed and distributed, reflects on the position in which the “citizen” journalist occupies within the media landscape and if (and how) they share and reflect on knowledge gained from the experiences of operating as an independent media outlet – i.e. is there such a thing as an “alternative” legacy? Collecting, archiving and assessing social media data produced (or discussed?) around mega-events is also one of my key aims to explore through methodological discussion, something I am already working on with my PhD colleague Ana Adi for a paper that we intend to present at the ECREA International Communications conference in Hamburg this October.

My presentation is below:

Posted via email from Jennifer Jones’s Posterous

This is the record for the UWE’s symposium on User Generated Content (blog here: http://accessareas.wordpress.com, http://dcrc.org.uk)

The development of the idea of ‘User Generated Content’ (UGC) in the first ten years of he Century demands serious critical attention.  As one of the three core research themes of the Digital Cultures Research Centre, we believe UGC represents a key realm of inquiry. Access All Areas focuses upon the first stage of this analysis by mapping the use of the term and its historical development. UGC has different inflections in the media fields of Television and Journalism and is different again in the discourse of participatory or social media and Web 2.0, and, of course, whatever these technologies become through their use and development.

Introduction to Day – Prof Jon Dovey

User generated content field has settled down a little bit, today is a project for mapping the field and beginning to think of the questions and areas that we should be thinking critically about.

First panel: 9.30-11.00

Janet Jones, UWE:  The BBC and UGC: Turning the News Chain Upside Down

The untouchables, working on a local Bristol project with the BBC. There has been a big contraction in local titles and televisions. ITV is wobbling on the boundary of abandoning local news. News media may be forced along a path which could corrode the scope and diversity of civil society – Andrew Currah, 2009

The current crisis is creating opportunities. “Things are getting better because they are getting worse.” – reinventing journalism from the bottom up (Utopian vision)

DB report came with a warning – p151 impact of content revolution is demolishing existing structures before they had a chance to reinvent themselves. Sudden dismise in the regional news sector.

News needs competitions to stay relevant. We could not invent the BBC nowadays. The cultural revolution needs to happen by supporting their public. BBC is extremely vunerable to criticism. Most of it’s credibility is build from the top down.

“The Digital Upset” – Traditional and Safe vs Difficult and Scary

Hyperlocal media publishers, passionate about their area but frustrated about existing operations. Community orientated – Bristol focus but over the whole country.

DB report p150 – “They show that grassroots media can provide an accurate, reliable popular source of news and information without regulation or subsidy.” – are an army of amateurs filling the void that regional news left behind – can they do it without subsidy.

JJ argues that these groups are very vulnerable and fragmented stage right now. Some are driven by campaigns, activism or motivations. Where is the trouble? De-professionalism – there is a passion but news value can be lost. The BBC can add value to the bottom of the pyramid. Local stories grounded in local knowledge – this group is never really exploited by the BBC news teams. The BBC may be ignoring a rather rich source of news.

There is a major attitude problem – the BBC sees themselves as the top of the caste system and struggle to interact with the bottom of the pyramid. Slowly they are thinking about embracing the situation.

A solution: The BBC is in the strong position to take on a meta mediation role. The grassroots area is very vulnerable and if the BBC wants to use this source there should become a catalyst to this space.

Jessica Crombie, WaterAid – Voices from the field? The democratization of communication and the challenge to NGO evidence

Begins with LiveAid – representation of reciprocity of aid as a silent voice. NGOs have been trying to break this stereotype.

The research is a form of ethnography. The ethnographer is capturing the material but the narrative is in the hands of the participants. Traditionally the research for narrative gathering for NGO campaign is set before the researcher begins, they must fit the campaign and the stories outside of this are simply not captured. Citizen journalism changes this as stories/narratives exist because the participant is simply there. NGOs are looking for opportunities to look at this story telling device to create more “believable” narratives in the field. Combating compassion fatigue.

Case Study: Guardian Project in Katine http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine

The concept is about giving the community a voice, however the ‘voice’ is mediated by a journalists and JC argues that the device is patronizing and did not match the readers expectations. The site removed discussions after complains. There was a tension between the project and the participants. The Guardian had to step in and mediate the expectations.

Case Study: Kakuma News Reflector – Refugee Free Press, created to give the community a voice and develop a platform of debate of refugee affairs.

“In exercising a refugee free press, we speak in respect of human rights and the rule of law in order to create a more open society in refugee camps and to develop a platform for fair public debate on refugee affairs.”

http://kakuma.wordpress.com/

Restrictions include a level of literacy – we expect to see the image of the refugee camp, but we do not expect the power to influence decision making and community organisation.

Case Study: Ushahdi http://www.ushahidi.com/

The platform allows for anyone to aggregate information to create a crisis response.

<p>What is Ushahidi? from Ushahidi on Vimeo.</p>

One to many to many to many – using data to target response. NGOS needs to think about changing their funding model as they will be a growth of similar projects as the control of representations change.

Amanda Degand/Christine Habersin, University Catholique Louvain (Belgium) Journalists who Boycott User-Generated Content

Case Study: ihavenews.be – A channel directed by citizen generated media.

A problematic press dispatch – media hijacking and hoax stories being sent by journalists to test the system. The information now arrives in the editors inbox and there is a level of mediation.

Participative culture: “one should be careful with launching claims of novelty when discussing cultural participation..” (Carpenter, 2010) – Roots in public journalism in the eighties.

The user is supposed to generate journalistic content, however the UGC is lead by a press agency. There are not free topics.

Trust in the mainstream media is declining – trust as a theoretical framework for studying UGC.

UGC – sense of belonging, virtual community – hypertextual structure, source credibility – expertise and previous knowledge – hybrid roles – producer and consumer of information.

1st part: Methods – ethnography. 60 days of immersions in 11 Belgium newsroom. 2 days, 11 interviews.

Results: + find excuses, request from the media and the public. Receive more information and faster so UGC is good. – no human filter, not informed of UGC role, no distinction between traditional news rooms and UGC source. Decredibilized by their peers, victims of unfairness.

UGC could be prejudicial to agencies, could create a loss of time – 1 information out of 50 is a good one so journalists wonder if moderation is worthwhile.

2nd part: Methods – online search comments, 8 websites, blogs, forums and 70 reactions. Surveillance or sanction. 5% of corpus were reactions of journalists. Most engaged reacted to topics.

Results: Writing adapts to its support. Personal pronouns, I (42%) We (18%) – “I” was the most used pronoun, followed by we – identifying with the community. Thematic content analysis on comments – two emerging topics, agency function and participative system (19%) and Denouncing profession (17%)

The content had a increased focus of sense of humor, sarcasm, the awareness of a filter presence. Lucrative focus.

Q&A – Chaired by Prof. Jon Dovey

Q: How can journalists actually change their practice and their culture? Will it change on its own or will it be dragged kicking and screaming?

JJ – In the professional newsroom is very unlikely to change, but there is a need to be specific about ways to support user generate content. To change dramatically could cause them to lose their brand, their authority.

JC – From evidence gathering perspective, it’s ok for critical and challenging and there should be an awareness for the different voices, consume different views points and allows audiences to make of it what they will – rather than spoon feeding opinion.

JD – Trust generated through debate rather than through authoritative position.

CH – UGC is not going to away, can not be ignored but ways of forming bonds between users and institution.

Q: Is this articulation of trust, is there a danger in this transitional position that trust is formed through financial influence than through debate?

JJ- If local media could be developed from a position that doesn’t lose their firm grounding they’ve established. This is a different tier of UGC, talking about citizen media agencies and there should be a supportive element from the institutions to the agencies in order to spread and support the investigation skills.

Q: The self correction nature of the internet – the fears of wikipedia has dispersed to an extent (for example) – should devices such of semantics and wiki editing be an important factor when thinking of this topic.

JD – There needs to be a bigger habitat of variety and enough of the users for the self correcting mechanism to work.

JC – There needs to be a volume so circumstances of event balances out, example of Haiti.

Q: It will be interesting to find out what will happen when the paywall appears, there will be a reaction from the UGC perspective as it shuts down the access to content…

JJ: I’m not sure that Murdoch has got it wrong, if he can make it pay online, even with 5% of old community, he will make more money. He thinks his brand is strong enough to survive it. Although we would love to see him fail…

JD: Meta question, what will happen with the big media debates – BBC, Murdoch – not at all convinced that there is this enviable move to the wiki/semantic web as big media is not disappearing. 40 percent of youtube content is just recirculation of film/tv content. There is something else going on that we may struggle to articulate. We have no model for understanding this.

Q: All discussion still have old ideas of commercial and economy of the media still has residence now – things that exists way before UGC.

JJ – all down to the funding model, the tories won’t fund the alternative model. Halfing the money going into the system.

JD: Where is the money in UGC?? This economy we are fascinated by relying on free labour. Economics is another big question. How are people going to get paid and resource quality UGC – no answers at the moment.

Session 2: 11.30-12.30

Mandy Rose, UWE Creative Arts Fellow – Tools for Conviviality: Participatory Documentary

Research is what happens when web 2.0, social media comes together with documentary. What is the role of the producer when facilitating the voices that come together in that space? A move from the director as the creator/owner of totalizing meaning to the facilitation of participant observers of their own life.

The postindustrial world, post scarcity, this interest in people being agents in their own life through mediated communications – relevant to what is happening just now.

Example of collaborative piece from 1841 – a quilt constructed by many women on boat trip. Meaning produced from multiple authors. The trip as a facilitator, the need to get something done.

Mass observation as a tool to understand participation culture, anthropology of the self. Set up in 1937, group of people who write diaries about their every day life (archive in University of Sussex – began in late 50s and restarted in 1981) – totality through self-authored diaries.

1993 – Video Nation Shorts – Bringing together a group of 50 people across the UK, remit to record aspects of their lifes on video, inspired by mass observation. The business of tools: Camcorders (training was required – technical and forms to shoot) – the beginning to experiment in digital storytelling. Using tools for self-observation – the telling of life stories.

2005 – Youtube. Responding to memes. Many, many copies. Investing the world with meaning. Problem solved as camcorders as an assessable platform – “everyone can invest their world with their meaning” – it’s not as simple as that. Henry Jenkins participation gap is alive and well. Not everyone is comfortable with putting their meaning in the public domain – lack of comfort with the protocols of participation. A confidence of creativity. Refers to Wesch’s Anthropological Study of Youtube:

Recent examples of participation culture – Mapping Main Street http://www.mappingmainstreet.org/ – taking advantage of social media to construct what it American main street means. Working in a space that recognises the limitations of participation, using audio and radio partnership. Using a universal topic with a strength of feeling – local, emotive topic that people feel strongly engaged with. Contributions from submissions but also contributions from local community facilitation.

Until tools are at the stage where anyone can use them, there is a role for facilitation.

Sandra Gaudenzi, London College of Communication: User-generated Interactive Documentaries: An emerging genre

www.interactivedocmentary.net

SG Definition of interactive documentary, open for debate however it is a starting point: Any project that intends to document the real and that does so by using a interactive digital technology.

Framework- web documentaties, mobile phones, outside the screen, locative technology – might not even use a screen – if you are interacting with it, through the content of the digital device, that could be an interactive documentary.

If the user generates the content of the documentary, so that the director/producer is not the only author anymore – is it cohort? what models exist? which work? what are the consequences?

How do people collaborate on the web – the open source model is main influence – Eric Raymond “The Cathedral and the Baazar (1998):

The three models of collaboration he suggests:

-the benevolent dictator with his co-maintainers

- the voting committee

- the rotating leadership

The benevolent dictator with his co-maintainers

Case Study: The Digital Revolution

Benevolent Dictator: The BBC Production Team, UGC: Choose name of series, comment & debate, send segment of the remixed video, use open source BBC footage for edu purposes => mind crowd-sourcing in pre-production phase.

Case study: 6 Billion Others (2008) by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Benevolent dictator: Yann and production team, UGC: Add a video or a text answering the same questions that the team proposed to the interviewees – and be part of the final people mosaic “peer-production” in distribution phase. (exhibition and website) When the project finishes, that is when it starts becoming open for participation.

Case Study: RIP: A remix manifesto. (2007)

Case Study: Rider Spoke by Blast Theory UGC: All audible content: each user records his/her answers to Riber Spoke’s questions on a server (via GPS) All content is UG during the distribution phase. (but not open source) A way of documenting your relationship with a city without using video.

The voting committee:

Only one example.

The Echo Chamber (2007) Kent Bye

Collaboration: all users can upload interviews and rate videos on the archive. Consent by vote: it was never finished. Does it work?

The rotating leadership:

No examples to knowledge, does this mean it is not possible?

Conclusion:

1. Interactive documentaries are moving out of closed hypertext narrative and experimenting with web 2.0 participation.

2. once the user is involved into the creation of content we add the problem of authorship to the one of the narrative experiences.

3. Most actual user generated content interactive documentaries is Eric Raymond’s “benevolent dictator” model.

The type and positioning of collaboration changes the project:

1. Collaboration in pre-production: the user is the funder – is it ethical? Can/should the user/funder influence the content?

2. Collaboration in production the degrees of authorship of the user – is the user participation meaningful? how open can this be?

3. Collaboration is the distribution phase: the open work – the endless database, the lifetime of the project, narrative logic versus mosaic logic.

Session 3: 13.30-15.00

Jon Dovey, DCRC: An Archaeology of User-Generated Content

Community access media – Utopian moment of media (pre-thatcher). Democratic media was a definite part of the struggle – long march to democracy through media literacy.

Bringing to the conversation – Value. What is value to the system? Where is the value of the lolcat – the revolution of fans becoming production, economic through commerce, political who gets to win.

2nd web bubble – marketing speech. Economic mechanisms being overturned. UGC grabbing eyes away from the public sphere. Creating confusion times.

One set of alleged values are the virtues of social media, the democratic culture. All we are able to establish today is the historical views and reactions to the UGC landscape.

Early discussions of democratic media from the 1970s. Understanding the activist traditional of a call to arms, Frankfurt school. Returning to texts to attempt to understand what these movements were important.

Access to media in the age of scarcity has provoked the digital economy in the age of media plenty.

Media utopia statements – rhetoric to access and co-creativity. Flickr, wikipedia, wordpress. The emphasis on the ordinary, the lack of technical skills. Replicated in academic literature. Reflected in snake oil salesmen (shirky, wellbeater, tapscott). The focus on “everybody” – who is everybody?

Do people really want to be creative? Do they have the confidence? How many people have access? This notion of everybody of mass access is the 21st century is the equivalent of Habermas public sphere. Not everyone affords the lifestyle.

The enclosing image of the sphere is too narrow – think about it as a rainforest. Arguing for a different type of topography. The few nodes will become highly connected nodes and the preferential network will rule. A few big trees get to grow strong. Barabasi, 2003 – complete lack of democracy. Fascinated by the experience, need to be critical.

Media Praxis – highly critical of the field.

“Just as they are not masters of the lands upon which they walk, the meo colonized people are not masters of the ideas which envelop them.”

The system will not create democracy – we still need to be aware of the ideology.

Tony Dowmunt, Goldsmiths College: “A True Reflection of who I was at the time” : Authenticity and Artifice in video diary confessions

The notion of video diaries. The wobbly camera has become popularized by the medium. The video diary is compromised. The appearance of reproducing and the feeling of closeness to the presence of the film maker. Keeping alive the balancing act of media and authenticity. The potential of the diary form is closely aligned to conveying the presence and the process of the film making.

The awareness of the piece to camera and the feeling that throughout that the user is going to be watched.

The video diary as a method of bridging the gap between public and private.

Andrew Clay, De Montfort University: No Laughing Matter: The Downfall of the Downfall Parody

The remixing of the clips from the film “Downfall” – referring to the downfall parody, or the Hitler finds out meme. Informed by Henry Jenkins convergence culture. The take down of the clips and the copyright issues. Worth more trouble than it is worth to monitor the uploads. The issuing of the cease and desist and the selection of take downs and those who degrade other companies such as Microsoft xbox.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/downfall-hitler-meme

The companies decision to take down the meme is seen as being a party pooper, they could have build fan pages, websites to host remix competitions – did not do any of these things.

“Fair use” is a grey area in American legal system. Parody is seen as acceptable – it comments on the work. Satire, on the other hand, comments on something else.

There is little transformation to the Downfall clips apart from the subtitles – they do change the whole new meaning of the text. Creating humour from elsewhere, topical news.

Case study: Talk Swindon, Xbox Live (most watched), Changing Giles Coren (removing the a). 

The videos are not amateur practice working with professional – not helpful to think of it this way. Playbour (Kuchlich, 2005) “attention resources” (Stigler, 1994)

The value we create is information as a commodity – the adoptions of computers and digital media contributes to new ideas of consumerism. Little time for reflection as the media speeds up. Being exploited in a complex process.

We’ve been users in the everyday life, we’ve always been mediated, we’ve always been technology – new media studies come from intensification – not the newness. (Grusin, 2009)

We are either made by the content, or make ourselves into content – we’ve always been this way, but it feels novel.

Brandon Hardesty reenacts the Downfall youtube clip.

Q&A: Session 3

JD – The last clip is interesting because he returns the clip to the original performance, drawing the meme back to the original film.

Q: From post-modern perspective, video diary – drawing attention to the medium by editing, what are you trying to do, draw attention to post-production – and is there a contradiction with something that is meant to be ‘realistic’ but there is a selfawareness in the edit cuts?

TD: In the context of the film, it is situated in a 60 minute film – hoping to establish the feel through piece to camera – it is perfectly possible for the actuality to exist – and we accept that films are “made”. There will always be contradictions and some may be answered.

Q: Is there a sense that this is a mediated rhetoric, 20th century idea that we can do what we want with our tools, but things like DownFall, lolcats, Dave Cameron poster gives us a way to give us something to say.. we are used to the mediums.

AC: We want to socialize, and technology and the way we do it changes – and that is what makes it feel new. What we need to work through is the infrastructure to allow that the flowering of democratized media is allowed to develop value..

JD – .. and what kind of value are we making? People can be talking rubbish, totalizing position – the value of voices talking back to the media can have a value and could be capitalized. Many different kinds of value.

MR: Semiotics, what it means to use the media – and then the import to the subject matter which is trivialized, the further it is away from the original media, makes it quite funny. Taking framing, analyzing, and working out if it is a valuable genre. Critical media literacy. Feeding back to the creatives – what works and what doesn’t – Big brother for example has shot the confession to death. An awareness of mechanisms that we weren’t in the pass and we carry the duel perception. The perception of being watched

JD – if you find a set of tools that work, that will enrich your life. – who are the audience – I’m doing it for my world, but it might go viral and I’m always aware that it might be seen. Content generated users.

AC: UGC suggests it is all about content – but turning it around suggests that content produces users. The commodification of people – a symbolic thing. the medium produces the users. The active audience

JD – What does the term “content” actually mean? Really a product of a post media scarcity age – a system which needed content. More system than there was content. Before that we just called it programs, data etc

AC – Mystifies what is really going on.

MR – Reality television as a mechanism to fill hours on expanding television networks.

Q: A desire to make the medium invisible, but have we came back round to look at the affordances of the medium?

AC: It is linked together with our embodiments of the media -there is content, audiences – it is really just a framework to think about our embodied with technologies and media.

TD: Discussing a public space which projects confessional videos on a wall, we put highly personal stuff on youtube but really projecting it in public.

Q: What if the idea of the user is red herring, but instead it is all about publics? It doesn’t matter what the “something” is but it is about participation within that something? There is no choice, there is just an illusion of choice.

AC – the dream of web 2.0 is based on the participation model – the content is irrelevant, it’s the medium..McLuhan principles.

Q: Worked on Sat programs, buy programs that used to be on mainstream tv or not very good shows – all content from youtube is supplied by the user. When they start to make money from the user, it is a different context from the tv buying in content to put it there.

AC: Can’t cast aside the big media, Sony looking for ways to pump youtube into a TV. There is a notion to push audiences back into the role. Still a battle.

JD: Final thought, we are already mediatised subjects, true as observer- but in the position as artist, producer, there needs to be a push to be better than others – the value.

 TD: Proposed technological utopia of web 2.0 – politics change things, not technology.

Session 4: 15.30-17.00

Emma Agusita, UWE/Knowle West Media Centre: Platform futures

Investigate how community/youth media practice could inform democratic practices and agendas. Working as a community media facilitator since 2001, catalyze new thinking within informal education sector.

Community media definition – common characteristics:

- Dedicated to the principles of free expression and participatory democracy

- Made by and for members of communities and networks

- Made by and for members of communities and networks

- Are non-commercial, non-profit, low cost and small scale

- Reflect community need and interest

- Contribute to social change through social action

Community media and informal media education as a forerunner for what we may consider the concept of user generated content. Whilst community media used to be the poor relative of broadcast media, it’s now being pushed to the forefront as the mainstream are beginning to see a use for it. Examples – BBC Blast.

Case Study: Knowle West Media Centre – a social enterprise charity, based in an area with high ranking level of economic and social deprivation. Opportunities for young people to develop creative, educational and social potential.

Platform futures sought to investigate the value of new media in the day to day media practices of young people.

Critical, active methodology- the young people became co-researchers of the project. Online participation saw value in peer to peer learning. Social media became both the tool and the subject of the research,

Outputs of the projects: Platformfutures.weebly.com / mediamashup.weebly.com

Daniel Ashton, Bath Spa University: Positioning participatory production: User generated content and Professional Production Futures

There seems to be a celebratory effect of the technologies – ideas of digital revolution Martyn shes to critique and unpick the gaps in these ideas and move beyond marveling UGC and instead think about where it situated.

Areas of academic scrunity:

- Blurring of production/consumption

- Integration of UGC and social networks into business practices

- Peer production as ‘architecture of control’ to influence and share forms of consumption.

The UGC platforms are permission based, social, measurable and adaptable. All areas for critique – especially the idea of open and the illusion of connectivity.

Consumption as production:

- all users are potential producers and potential consumers. Prosumption – the consumer determines the result (Tapscott and Williams, 2006) Engaging conversational dialogue – personalised content. Youtube as an example.

What is at stake – it is vital that contemporary scholarship considers the relationship between content and commerce. What are the economical motivations?

Broadcast media has reterritorised these platforms and social spaces. Underpinning of capitalism. Need to be aware of potentially ignoring the consequences of economic motivation.

Information is a commodity. Manovich (2001) shift from linear narratives to ephemeral nature and shift to databases. Important pattern emerging. Giving up large amounts of small bits of data.

The motivation is about maintaining social links and letting the network know that we are here. It’s happening everywhere and to gain access we need to give over information about ourselves to be part of the network. The outcomes are targetting advertising – as an example.

Social networks as markets – “phatic” culture – integrated into new monitization processes. Unwittingly handing over data. Muller calls this the “conducer” – the Facebook social graph function. Extracting and aggravating data. More contextual.

Unfortunately the final panel discussion did not save correctly on Posterous so I do not have a record of the discussion. The DCRC team were recording the full day for podcast to be released at a later date so the panel will be available there. For more information and to read the speakers’ abstract, please refer to the Access All Area Blog (http://accessareas.wordpress.com) and the DCRC page (http://www.dcrc.org.uk)

Posted via web from Jennifer Jones’s Posterous

It’s been a week since I made my presentation at the UWS research student poster event last Friday and as promised, I am concluding the experience by writing up Part 2 of my reflections. Overall, the event was an excellent opportunity to meet other PhD students from my school and from other departments in the University – as well as being asked questions about research work from professionals and academics in the wider community. The posters were part of a greater event which included the 3rd year students presenting papers in the morning. There were over 80 posters in total, ranging from sociological projects about Glasgow gang-culture to Science projects about electromagnetic fields, and lasted for roughly 4 hours.

There were a couple of observations which I felt can make or break a poster event if you are considering applying for one:

You are where you stand:

As I was number 81 of 82, I was tucked away at the dark end of the room. The way that the event was organised, many people passed around the central posters (which were lit by natural daylight) and didn’t venture down to the bottom of the room. If you have a choice, get there early and make sure that you pick a place where it is easy for your poster to be seen. No matter how bright and simplifed you make the initial design, it goes out the window if there is small things making it difficult to draw people to your area.

Who are the audience?

Although the event was advertised as an opportunity for research students across the University to present work to a general audience, I it was felt that there was a bias towards scientific research. This was predicted due to the nature of UWS’s other departments and in terms of interdisciplinary research, I totally agree that there should be more realistic opportunities to network (with the intention to work with) people from different fields. As the judges for the competition were from industry relating to engineering and science, there was quite an obvious divide between them and “us” (social scientists) – mainly in what was considered an appropriate poster. As this was my first presentation of this nature, I couldn’t believe that it was seen as a “good thing” to cover a page in really small and hard to read text – basically a research paper blown up to A0. Working towards future events, it would be interesting to attend MeSSCA’s Poster event to see what would happen in a media-specific audience.

Forget the competition – instead network and meet others

I’m very keen to work with people from other disciplines, but I’m not entirely convinced that there is one straight format to pull the WHOLE university’s research community together. Nevertheless, I managed to connect with others after the event who I wouldn’t have met if I did not attend. This was the most valuable of experiences and from this it is hoped that we could come up with ideas to create events which suit our topics or look towards research seminars where we take turn to present our work to a mixed background audience.

In sum, it was a valuable event to attend and although I did not feel as if my school was fully represented in terms of feedback and discussion, it was still a good space to explore ideas and have PhD work challenged and critiqued. Furthermore, I hope that the contacts made will result in future projects and knowledge sharing. Lastly, I’d hope that similar spaces could eventually opportunities to present innovative methods of results and presentation displays; I’d like to see more opportunities for PhD students at UWS to present and disseminate their research.

Over the weekend you might have heard me tweeting constantly about creating a poster for University. Unfortunately this poster was not made from coloured card, highlighters and glitter glue (media studies yey!), it was for the upcoming postgraduate event at my university (University of the West of Scotland) where I will be presenting next week.

A few people have asked me about it in real life – as well as taking advice from my colleague Ana (who wrote her own reflections from her poster presentation in 2008 and a more recent resource a few days ago). I used the University of Leicester poster presentation guide (prepared by Stuart Johnston in SSDS) as a guide and starting point for the project. It is an excellent (and open) resource for anyone who hasn’t got the first idea where to begin at presenting their research on a poster (me then..)

As I have not presented yet, I have decided to split this post into a two-parter; firstly reflecting on the poster creation and then concluding with reflections from the event itself.

I have attend two poster events previously – one when I worked in alumni department at the University of Leicester, where the alumnus sponsored a prize at the festival of postgraduate research – and secondly as part of a greater event on interdisciplinary practise at Loughborough University. This is the first time I have presented as a delegate.

The idea of a poster presentation session (at least in a PG context) is to allow for the students at the University to present their work in an environment outside of their usual environment and to be exposed to the practise of communicating their work to a wider, generalised audience- they tend to be formed across campuses and departments, and the audience who participate tend to be coming from a non-specialised background. The poster needs to be eye catching enough to attract the attention of the people walking past – and it should be clear enough to read at a distance – so no clutter, dodgy fonts, etc. (Same rules are powerpoint presentations.)

Download now or preview on posterous

2010.04.25PosterPresentationOlympicFINAL.pdf (5944 KB)

The poster I am presenting is centred around my fieldwork in Vancouver – although I have attached the poster to  this entry, I will try and use any discussion time to clarify concepts around emerging/converging media/communication platforms, talk about preliminary experiences and observations and generally focus on the Olympic lens of the research project. I have made an active decision to avoid talking about technology or social media as a forefront focus as it tends to provoke one of two reactions:

1) “That internet is not for me..” (Switches off)
2) “You’re not doing the Internet properly..” (proceeds to tell others about how they use the web)

Certainly these discussions are worth having (perhaps) – but from experience, they tend to cloud and distort the rest of the project before getting to the meatier part of the research context. Furthermore, as it is general audience, I don’t want to spend too much time discussing technology (unless it is in the pub afterwards) Lastly, I’m in the process of articulating ideas around technology, morality and demotic behaviour – and I’m not quite ready for articulating that area just yet.

By cutting out the focus on technology altogether, I hope to be able to talk about elements of the Olympic media framework which is not purely sport, or part of the international spectacle – instead thinking about how the forthcoming games will effect our own lives and what others might expect to encounter during the run up to London 2012. It is through this context I will attempt to frame discussions relating to changing media landscape, rather than the other way around. I hope they find the information about alternative Olympic messages as fascinating as I did when I found out about them.

That’s the plan anyway – I will update in a week’s time to reflect on the presentation aftermath. I hope that it might be a useful resource to future PhDs, like Ana’s and Stuart’s were to me.

Posted via web from Jennifer Jones’s Posterous

On the 27th of March, I was asked to give presentation on citizen media and the Olympics at Nottingham Media Camp II. I felt this was a good opportunity to begin working with Vancouver data and to try out new ideas (especially those related to the Olympics and the London Games) in a space which was not purely focused on academic presentation. Thanks to @pcmcreative and @philcampbellfor the livestream capture.

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