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The Long Tail of Online Religious Extremism

Athens.
The next speaker at WebSci '09 is Kieran O'Hara, who begins by noting the perception of an increase in the activity of extremist groups on the Web, but with very little clear actual evidence supporting that perception. (Extremism is defined here as living in great tension within an embedding society.) How do extreme ideas - for example of a religious kind - spread on the Web?

One approach to this is to view this - with David Hume - as a marketplace of religious ideas, in which the most extreme are the most visible. But against this, Adam Smith suggests that there is also a drive to the centre in the contest of religious ideas, with the aim to attract a larger number of followers. There may be, in fact, a church/sect cycle, and Kieran points to the Mormons as a former sect which has become an established church, while new more extreme splinter groups have also hived off from this church in recent time. Religious moderation means a lower cost of participation for church members, while extremism means higher costs, but also greater cohesion and contribution from the smaller number of committed supporters.

The Web of Trust and Distrust

Athens.
Up next at WebSci '09 is Patricia Victor, who begins by noting the growth in recommendation systems, including, for example, the advanced functionality on Amazon and in other e-commerce applications. Some 60% of Netflix users, for example, base their viewing on recommendations, and Netflix has offered a US$10m prize for an algorithm that improves its recommendation system by 10%.

There are two classes of recommendation systems: systems which are content-based and systems which are collaborative filtering-based. The latter focusses on similarities in the rating behaviour of users, and trust-based systems are often based on such algorithms. Epinions offers such a social trust network, and also allows users to evaluate other users by placing them in their network of trust, thereby conferring particular importance on these users' trust ratings. This also alleviates the 'cold start' problem with new users; it provides more reliable and accurate recommendations and leads to a kind of trust propagation through the network.

Reputation Systems and the Mobile Web

Athens.
For the first round of paper sessions here at WebSci '09, I've chosen a session on trust and distrust. Having just watched people juggle USB drives for the best part of 15 minutes, we finally start with a presentation by Dave Karpf. His interest is in the Web's impact on collective action for Internet-mediated organisations - and he suggests that the emergent mobile Web wll be of particular importance in this context.

Mobile Web-enabled devices enable new forms of collective action; rating and reputation systems attach track record data to individual participants - when the two meet, this has potentially radical implications for what uses become possible. Reputation in this context refers to complex, context-dependent community assessments; it plays a crucial role in solving collective action problems, and introduces what Axelrod has called a 'Shadow of the Future': they lead people to do well for others as they make visible the contributions of each participant (and introduce possible future repercussions for those who fail to put in). This is visible for example in communities like eBay or Slashdot, which both promote positive and sanction negative contributions through their reputation systems. Even Google's PageRank can be understood as a reputation system: PageRank measures, indirectly, reputation.

After a Lengthy Silence...

Never go on holidays... Looks like a few days into my holiday on the Sunshine Coast, one of the electrical storms sweeping through Brisbane these days knocked out the server, even in spite of various forms of surge protection. Ah well - a motherboard replacement and some serious fiddling with Linux later (massive thanks to Nic Suzor for pointing me to the tip that enabled my successful necromancy), here we are again.

And while we're here, I might as well note that the audio and Powerpoint from my Interactive Minds presentation on 27 November are now online. I'm afraid the audio quality is, shall we say, 'for collectors only', but here it is, for what it's worth. This end-of-year IM event aimed to highlight trends in 2008 and predictions for 2009, and regular readers of this blog will recognise a few of my recurring obsessions. Many thanks to Jen Storey for the invite.

Futures for Advertising

Sydney.
The last afternoon at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress begins with a panel session on the future of advertising. Paddy Douneen, National Advertising Director for Fairfax Integrated Solutions, is opening the debate by highlighting the difficulties established media companies are having in shifting advertising from traditional to online spaces, especially given the uncertainties of the current economic climate. He says that advertising in some traditional media is still very strong, especially now that car manufacturers and department stores have increasing backlogs of stock to clear because consumer demand is slowing.

The Challenge of User Demands for Conventional Broadcasting Models

Sydney.
My talk was next at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress, and seemed to go down pretty well - I had been somewhat worried about getting booed off the stage by the broadcasters in the room, seeing as I was pointing out the dark clouds on the horizon for them. Here's the Powerpoint, and the paper is online, too - hope the audio recording worked, too! the audio turned out a little noisy once again, but it's better than nothing...

Social Media: Current Developments

Sydney.
Following on from the last two very informative sessions here at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress, we have a social networking panel. Akamai's Stuart Spiteri kicks off by asking about the impact of continuing change, and Andrew Cordwell answers that this is indeed difficult. For MySpace, local people talking about local issues will always continue; the challenge is to build on this in a more global fashion, and to connect these levels. Francisco Cordero also points to the importance of continuing to develop the technology.

Bebo: Facts and Figures

Sydney.
Next up here at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress is Francisco Cordero, General Manager Australia at Bebo, a social networking site which is big in the UK and has recently moved into the Australia/New Zealand market in a more substantial way. Indeed, the promo DVD that Francisco is showing here still has a strong British accent, in contrast to the MySpace promo we saw in the previous session.

The DVD compares Bebo profiles with users favourite music and media to a typical teen's bedroom, incidentally. It also highlights the made-for-online drama series Kate Modern as an online marketing tool, which was used to promote new bands, for example. The Bebo term for brand engagement with Bebo users is 'open media' - even though the DVD promises in the same breath that brands control content, distribution, user experience, and advertising.

MySpace: Facts and Figures

Sydney.
We're now starting the second and last day of the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress here in Sydney, and I'm speaking about the impact of online media on broadcasting around noon. We begin with Andrew Cordwell, Director of Sales at Fox Interactive Media, though, which runs sites such as MySpace, IGN, Rotten Tomatoes and Ask Men. Globally, there are 122 million users on MySpace, with 300,000 new sign-ups per day and some 8 million users online at any one time.

New Business Models for Social Media and Hyperlocal Media in Australia

Sydney.
We're now starting the post-lunch session here at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress. The speaker is Tony Surtees, CEO of Australian regional broadcaster Prime's digital arm iPrime. He begins by noting that complacency is the enemy of innovation - and for that reason, starting new businesses during times of recession is actually very appropriate, as this added pressure means that complacency goes away.

By way of a very funny video from Bring the Love Back, Tony suggests that consumers have changed, but advertisers haven't. Time investment and advertising spend on different media no longer match - online advertising significantly lags behind take-up, while newspaper advertising remains significantly above circulation figures. Additionally, of course, people increasingly multitask (especially also between TV and online). Each time new media are introduced, we begin consuming them, but we consume them in multiple, different ways.

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