Snurblog blogs

Fighting the Cleanfeed Filter with Evidence of Its Futility

Snurb — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:34:35 +1100

For a goverment which on its election made so much noise about making 'evidence-based' policy decisions (as opposed to the naked ideology of the previous mob, particularly in its declining years), Senator Conroy's decision to impose his 'cleanfeed' filter on the Australian Internet is a deeply disturbing sign. There's much that must - and will - be said about this pointless, futile, and undemocratic filter over the coming weeks and months, no doubt, and Catharine Lumby's piece in The Punch and Google Australia's statement today are a very good start.

Rather than adding my own expression of dismay and outrage at the sheer stupidity which Senator Conroy's decision represents, though, I'll simply point to the work of my colleagues in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation. Authored by three of Australia's most eminent media and communication researchers, here's some actual evidence which provides a much better basis for policy-making than whatever misconceptions and flawed assumptions have led the Australian government to believe that Internet censorship should be a policy priority in a country whose communications policies have suffered more than a decade of complete neglect and incompetence under the previous government.

Please tweet, embed, bookmark, link, and otherwise share this document (available at Scribd) widely.

Social Media Volume 2: User Engagement Strategies

Snurb — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:36:54 +1100

I'm very happy to report that the second part of my Social Media report for the Smart Services CRC has now been released, again under a Creative Commons licence. Volume 1 is still available here, and provides a general overview of the state of the art in social media; in doing so, it also points to a number of key social media sites which represent important developments in the field.

Volume 2 is divided into two parts: Part 1 offers background information that is crucial to the development of an understanding of how communities work and what motivates their participants to contribute, while Part 2 converts that understanding into a series of strategic recommendations for profit and non-profit organisations aiming to develop a presence within the social media environment. There is probably nothing here that will surprise long-time followers of social media developments - instead, the report aims at those individuals and organisations who feel the need to develop social media strategies, but have yet to establish a full understanding of what makes online communities tick, and of how to engage with them.

Two New Book Chapters on Produtzung

Snurb — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:25:21 +1100

I haven't yet had a chance to note my latest two book chapters on produsage here - both in German, and following on from conferences in Germany which I spoke at in 2008 and 2009:

The reader Prosumer Revisited, from the Prosumer Revisited conference which I attended earlier this year, contains my chapter "Vom Prosumenten zum Produtzer", which argues that the 'prosumer' is no longer a useful term to describe the changes in participation and content creation which are occurring today, and provides a concise overview of produsage, or Produtzung, as an alternative. Probably a little more clearly than I did in my conference presentation itself!

Remembering the Fall of the Wall

Snurb — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:09:53 +1100

Twenty years ago to the hour I sat in an army bus of the (West) German Bundeswehr in the town of Dannenberg, stuck in a traffic jam caused by (East) German Trabis exploring their new-found freedom to travel. My unit was posted right on the border to the East, charged with listening in to radio communications of the East German and (more importantly) Soviet forces in the GDR, and we were on the way to our radio tower, but that morning we felt extremely redundant. Sitting in traffic that morning - a most unusual experience in sleepy Dannenberg -, stared at from below in our olive-green whale of a bus by the disbelieving eyes of our long-lost compatriots, remains my most vivid memory of the day after the Berlin Wall (and all of the walls separating the two German states) opened. Five years ago I published my memories of that time.

New Reviews of the Produsage Book

Snurb — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:46:38 +1100

(Crossposted from Produsage.org.)

I'm delighted to note that three new reviews of my book Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage - by Verena Laschinger, Alan Razee, and Erin Stark - have been published over at the Resource Centre for Cybercultural Studies. RCCS editor David Silver kindly also asked me to provide a response to these reviews, which point to a number of further avenues for research into the produsage phenomenon that I hope many of us who work in this field will pursue.

Blog Mapping and Beyond...

Snurb — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:19:48 +1100

It's been a good week already - on Monday I've received notice that we've been successful with a major research grant application in this year's ARC Discovery round. The three-year project for which we're receiving $400,000 from the ARC, with my esteemed colleague Jean Burgess as the postdoc researcher, will extend the existing work on blog mapping which I've been engaged in for the past few years and take it to a new level - beyond capturing 'only' what happens in the Australian political blogosphere, we'll be working to get a much more comprehensive picture of Australian public communication online across blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and perhaps even Facebook. None of this would be possible without the fantastic work of our colleagues Lars Kirchhoff and Thomas Nicolai at Sociomantic Labs in Berlin, incidentally, so a very big thanks to them for their massive contribution so far - we're looking forward to the next three years... Below is the abstract for the research project (and no doubt I'll post more about it here as we get going in early 2010) - and there are various articles and presentations covering our blog mapping efforts to date elsewhere on this site.

New Media and Public Communication:
Mapping Australian User-Created Content in Online Social Networks

Understanding the ways people contribute to and use the Internet for a wide range of purposes is important to Australia's future from both a social and an economic perspective. Effective, evidence-based policy depends on developing a vastly improved understanding of the current level of Australians' online activities and interests. This project provides crucial, detailed baseline data on the social, cultural and technological dynamics of Australian online public communication, which can inform further government initiatives to strengthen the country's digital economy and to maximise civic engagement through media participation.

The Impact of Design Features on the Social Network Formations on Twitter and Plurk

Snurb — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:17:42 +1000

Milwaukee.
The final speaker of this final session at AoIR 2009 is Raquel Recuero, who shifts our focus to Brazil and its adoption of Twitter and Plurk (another micromessaging tool, but one which has a horizontal rather than vertical logic and enables replies within the message - Google Wave-style, it seems). How is the appropriation of these different social network sites influenced by the conversations that these platforms enable; how do the conversations reveal different types of social networks?

Raquel's study examined the conversational structures in these sites using social network analysis, but also engaged in content analysis and ethnographic research. Of the two sites, Plurk makes it easier to track continuing conversations, but there is less multimodality; there are often more participants to conversations and more recurrent participants (at an average of nine), conversations are more coherent and synchronous, and extend over more conversational turns (at an average of 15). On Twitter, the process is more disruptive - it is difficult to keep track of conversations, and they are less synchronous; conversations have an average of only two turns, and indeed there are fewer conversations in the first place, with fewer participants (at an average of two).

Fighting Gender Stereotypes in the Polish Blogosphere

Snurb — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:12:28 +1000

Milwaukee.
The next speaker at AoIR 2009 is Katarzyna Chmielewska, whose focus is on Polish-language blogs, especially by Polish women. In 2006, an advertising agency created a controversial public service advertisement in Poland that was featuring a hospital delivery room with a birthing scene during which a vacuum cleaner is born, to suggest that too often consumer lifestyles are preferred to having children; this was highly controversial in Poland and was seen as emblematic of the then ruling coalition's ultra-conservative 'family values'.

Gender and Race Differences in Email Use for Family Purposes?

Snurb — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:08:46 +1000

Milwaukee.
The next speaker at AoIR 2009 is Briana Fox, whose interest is in how gender and race shape family email networks. Are there perceivable differences in how families email amongst themselves that can be explained through such factors, and in the perception of such networks by families from different backgrounds? There is a perception that email in general serves to distance families, that there are no good social relationships which can be conducted through it, or that by contrast the multiple media now available for communication strengthen family ties. Further, gender-based studies show that women email more and rekindle old friendships and relationships; they are also more responsible in general for managing family relationships. Finally, there is very little information on the impact of race on online communication patterns, beyond observations of a general digital divide (at least still in the early 2000s) which makes white users more likely to be online.

Twitter as a Technology of Immediacy

Snurb — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:04:42 +1000

Milwaukee.
The first speaker in this final session at AoIR 2009 is Taina Bucher. She argues for an understanding of Twitter as a technology of immediacy - in this case, of immediacy in time, enabling users to cease the time and take action. Our being in time is characterised by the scarcity of time in the 24h society; Twitter reacts to that by encouraging short messages and resourceful communication that give shape to concise messaging.

What does such a communication tool indicate about the society of which it is a part? It claims to be a service that enables users to share and discover what is happening anywhere in the world; this is a technology of immediacy for mediating the momentary and immediate. This can be explored in the context of the status update box: a box for writing, for filling in and creating moments.