Snurb's blog

Copenhagen.
I spent the first session of this second day at AoIR 2008 as a member of a panel on academic publishing - I didn't blog this, for obvious reasons. This second session starts with a paper on "Transcoding Place" by Vicki Moulder, in the overall area of social design and media convergence. How do communities enact agency in this space, especially given that digital social architecture is a fluid system, unlike conventional physical architecture?

Designers and creative professionals have a responsibility and are able to cause real change in design; this is especially important in the context of the changes brought about by media convergence. Can meaningful online agency (e.g. tagging and uploading content to YouTube and other social media sites) compare in any real sense with activism on the streets? Vicki and her colleague Jim Bizzocchi examined this question in the context of the Crude Awakening event at Burning Man, comparing the semantic structure of a face-to-face event in the Nevada desert (attended by some 45,000 spectators) with its video documentation (which was uploaded to YouTube by numerous users within hours of the event).

Copenhagen.
The final session of this first day of AoIR 2008 begins with James Owens, whose focus is on online news and democratic communities. Interactive technology enables the production of new social formations, but can also reproduce existing social formations; this can be related especially also to local community formations. James is interested in three Chicago-based Websites (of the Tribune, a citizen journalism site supported by the Tribune, and the local Indymedia site), and is interested here especially on whether such sites promote or prevent social fragmentation.

Copenhagen.
The next session at AoIR 2008 is on the civil society. Paul Nixon and Antje Greber are the first presenters, and begin by addressing the question of how to define civil society in the first place. This is related to traditional conceptions of the public sphere, of course. One definition is of civil society as aggregated interest formulation, accumulated in a community of associations.

In a democratic society, civil society and its organisations form the third sector (in addition to government and public administration, and for-profit businesses and corporations). This third sector also contrasts with the private sphere. There are also views by which in a corporative state, civil society organisations are providers of social services; additionally, civil society organisations allow for more particpation in the policy-making process, protest and monitoring, advocacy, community building and democratisaton, etc.

Copenhagen.
The post-lunch session here at AoIR 2008 starts with Paul Emerson Teusner, presenting on the presence of emerging religious movements in the blogosphere. How do authority rankings in the blogosphere affect the standing of such religious bloggers? Paul focusses here on a sample of 30 blogs in the Australian blogosphere, examined between July and October 2006.

This is backgrounded by the rise of Web 2.0 and its growth in user-led content production, of course, as well as by the merging of public and private spheres through social networking technologies. However, the effects of these phenomena are not so strongly felt in the religious blogosphere as yet - traditional religious authorities have not yet been replaced by any form of user-led religiosity, in other words. What is common to the blogs studied is an understanding that any culture war between Christianity and secularism has been lost, so the focus is not on missionary efforts but simply on developing a sustainable arrangement with the secular mainstream.

Copenhagen.
The first keynote speaker at AoIR 2008 is Mimi Ito, well-known from her work on mobile media. Today, she presents early results from a different research project, however, on youth participation in networked publics. This ethnographic research involved a significant number of interviews, group meetings, diary studies, and surveys, as well as observations of activities and outcomes. This, then, investigates activities as embedded in a broader network ecology.

Mimi points out the growing availability of tools for creating and modifying creative content, and to publish, share, and distribute such material, and how in the process professional and amateur media content creation are being 'munged' together. In the middle of scales from consumer to producer, from personal communication to mass media, and from gift, barter, and dialogue to commodity exchange there are plenty of interesting things happening - but how are youth learning, socialising, and communicating in such networked publics?

Copenhagen.
After some drama getting here (note to self: Qantas may be in trouble at the moment, but avoid Scandinavian Airlines like the plague), I'm now in Copenhagen, and we're about to start the programme proper of the ninth annual Association of Internet Researchers conference. Although the presentation by Dr. Hala-Seuss which runs in a parallel session was very tempting, I'm starting the day in a session on wikis. Timme Bisgaard Munk is the first presenter, presenting on his study of the Danish Wikipedia.

I'm spending the morning at the 2008 Arts Libraries Society of Australia and New Zealand conference, at the Queensland State Library. I'm afraid I'm only here for the opening keynotes (one of which I'm giving) - my hectic schedule for this week between overseas trips doesn't give me any more time to see what else is happening.

The first keynote speaker this morning is Kathryn Greenhill from Murdoch University, presenting on the possibilities of Second Life as a platform. She begins by taking us on a flight around Info Island - the central library island in Second Life - and follows this with a quick explanation of what Second Life is and how it works. The aim here, she notes, is immersion, not just information.

So, last Saturday I went to the Future of Journalism event in Brisbane (and spoke on one of the panels). Contrary to my usual practice, I didn't live-blog the event - panel-based events are notoriously difficult to blog. Here, then, are some reflections on what I saw - adding to comments already posted by Mark Bahnisch, Marian Edmunds, Cameron Reilly, and Bronwen Clune, among others.

The event began well, with Margaret Simons setting the theme with her usual insightful comments. Her observations about the troubled economic future for the journalism industry (and here, especially newspapers) are perhaps nothing new to most of us (though still not necessarily fully appreciated by many journalists themselves), and the bleak future that this malaise points to especially for in-depth, costly, quality investigative journalism has been discussed in some detail already (including by Jason, Barry and me in the Club Bloggery series), but it was a useful framing for the panels to follow.

I've previously posted the call for expressions of interest in PhD scholarships in the new Smart Services CRC, working on topics related to social media and audience and market foresight. In addition to these PhD positions, I'm now also looking for a part-time Research Assistant for my own project within the CRC, which deals quite directly with the further exploration of user-led content creation (or what I've called produsage) and its possible application in commercial contexts by the CRC's industry partners. Below is the blurb for my project, to give you an idea of what I'll be embarking on:

Report on Social Drivers behind Growing Consumer Participation in User-Led Content Generation

Exploration of social drivers behind the growing consumer participation in user-generated content, encompassing the structural, operational, and social configurations of leading social media environments. In particular, it will examine the individual and social motivations for user participation, and identify the content and service needs of participants in these environments. The report will highlight opportunities for generating and cultivating social networks of active users around commercial sites and products, and outline appropriate practices in managing and moderating such networks; for enhancing commercial content and advertising effectiveness by harnessing user participation and contribution; and for enhancing user experience through the provision of targeted commercial content and services to the user community. It will present structural and social guidelines for successfully and sustainably interweaving commercial and user-produced content and services.

Well, with the Future of Journalism now safely behind us (the event, that is - some reflections at Larvatus Prodeo, and also here later this week, hopefully), it's time to look ahead to other upcoming conferences and talks. I've posted some information about some of these on the Produsage.org site already, so here's a quick summary only. You can also track my progress through these upcoming events at Dopplr.com.