Creative Industries

Milwaukee.
OK, I'm soldiering on for the last of today's sessions at AoIR 2009 - can't wait to get back to my room and sleep off this illness, though. Hopefully I'll feel better for my session tomorrow! This session is on theorising Web 2.0, and we begin with Jacob Thomas Matthews. he begins by questioning Web 2.0 as a term, and suggests the collaboative Web as an alternative way of describing this phenomenon. Either way, this is often described as a substantial cultural shift which may lead to the emergence of a new participatory culture which empowers the user.

OK, taking time out from reporting on the Transforming Audiences conference briefly to address another matter (and in order for this post not to be swamped by day two of the conference and the upcoming conference blogging from Vienna and Cardiff, I may repeat it in a week or so): the next round of PhD applications at QUT is coming up, and this time we're especially calling for prospective PhD students who are interested in working on research projects in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, in collaboration with our various industry partners. There are some fantastic research opportunities here - specific areas, and contact details for the various CCi researchers, are listed below:

Queensland University of Technology
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI)
Research Higher Degree Project Opportunities

September 2009 Scholarship Round

If you are considering applying for a scholarship in the current September round to pursue postgraduate research studies you may wish to consider connecting with projects we have in development here at the Centre (CCI) and pursue your studies with us at QUT. These projects will link you with industry, government or other partners in order to enhance your networks, the applications of your research, and potentially open up career opportunities as a result of your studies.

I'm currently developing an ongoing research relationship with the ABC's fabulous Pool.org.au site for user-generated content - and as a first step in this, I am now looking for a researcher to work with Pool staff at the ABC in Sydney. The successful applicant will participate in overseeing and coordinating the activities of the Pool user community, and examine practices and dynamics within the community. (More information on Pool and its future development are available in a recent ACID report.)

Initially, this will be a part-time (two days per week) research assistant job from September to December 2009. On the basis of this lead-up work, we also expect the researcher to submit a competitive application for a full-time PhD scholarship from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCi) at QUT, on a project negotiated between the researcher, the CCi, and the ABC which further extends this community research and applies its insights into strategies for the further development of the Pool site.

Brisbane.
Susan Ward is the next ANZCA 2009 speaker, and focusses on talent agencies - she begins by distinguishing between internationalisation (trans-border flows of goods and services) and globalisation (the creation of global audiences, and global forms of organisation and a global functional integration of processes). This is visible especially in the context of international trade fairs, which are used to conduct business transactions, disseminate market intelligence, facilitate networking, promote an awareness of industry innovations, establish the identities of participants,and promote common assumptions and a common business culture.

Brisbane.
The next speaker here at ANZCA 2009 is Sal Humphreys, presenting on the knitting Website Ravelry as a social network market. Discussions of intellectual property, distributed participation, and user-generated content have struggled to keep up with these developments: social economy is intertwined and interconnected with commercial economy, and there are serious questions about when participation becomes exploitation.

Social network markets characterise these ideas as emergent, and provide a useful basis for their theorisation. Mass media theory also fails to align effectively with these new interactive environments. HOw is power distributed, who has agency, what is the role and impact of institutions in relation to these environments?

Brisbane.
The next session at ANZCA 2009 is a panel session discussing the future role of public service broadcasting, focussing on Australia's multicultural broadcaster SBS. This is introduced by my colleague Terry Flew, who notes that SBS is a distinctively different type of public broadcaster, making a very specific contribution to multiculturalism and citizenship.

The first panellist to speak is Stuart Cunningham from the CCi. If SBS had to be invented today, he says, it wouldn't be - today's media environment is fundamentally different from that of the 1970s and 1980s from which it emerged, and today there is a plethora of media channels available to citizens. Additionally, the role of public broadcasters has changed fundamentally - the culture wars of the past decades render a government intervention for the development of a public broadcaster to promote multiculturalism inconceivable today. Protection and projection of public culture is no longer an unproblematic public goal.

Hamburg.
The final speaker for Alcatel-Lucent Foundation / HBI 2009 is Gabriele Siegert from the University of Zürich, who summarises the conference. She begins by noting the unwillingness of citizens to continue to pay for media, and suggests that changed orientation in media organisations will necessarily also change the content of the media - product placement, for example, will necessarily affect the content within which products are placed.

There are two key areas here: the structural changes in advertising, for which product placement is one phenomenon - it is a sign of a new logic which is present well beyond television entertainment. However, this new model will not replace more conventional advertising; not least, it has yet to be researched in full.

Hamburg.
The next speaker is Dieter Klumpp, Director of the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation, host of Alcatel-Lucent Foundation / HBI 2009. Changes in what is considered to be quality content are driven by changes to the entire media sector - old media are perhaps being substituted in part by new media, but the demand for information has not grown as quickly as the availability of content, so this is nowhere near a full substitution. There is a suggestion that the public is being atomised, that it is fragmenting, and what quality means is ever more difficult to identify.

Hamburg.
The next speaker at the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation / HBI 2009 conference is me, speaking about produsage and appropriate approaches for business to cooperate with produsage communities. Here's the Powerpoint with audio soundtrack; audio to come as soon as possible:

Technorati : Alcatel-Lucent 2009, business, collaboration, community, pro-am, produsage, user-led
Del.icio.us : Alcatel-Lucent 2009, business, collaboration, community, pro-am, produsage, user-led

Hamburg.
The next speaker at Alcatel-Lucent Foundation / HBI 2009 is Volker Agüeras Gäng from Politik-Digital.de , a new online platform which has recently focussed especially on a Dutch policy programme to support digital pioneers. He begins with a statement by Ariana Huffington, saying that journalism will not only survive, but flourish: users surf and use search engines to identify, and collate quality content which is updated on an ongoing basis. This new model is based on the networking and interlinkage of content.