Some Long-Overdue Updates

Sorry: it’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog. Largely, that’s because I’ve been so busy with our work on the Mapping Online Publics project – see the project blog for all the latest information. Following the various natural disasters we’ve endured – in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, to begin with –, that work has focussed for the moment especially on the use of social media for crisis communication, with plenty of outcomes already. In particular, this includes our two most recent presentations:

• “Social Media Use in the Queensland Floods”, at the Eidos symposium in Brisbane on 4 April 2011
• “Tracking Crises on Twitter: Analysing #qldfloods and #eqnz”, at the Emergency Media and Public Affairs conference in Canberra on 12 April 2011

Slides and audio from both presentations are now online here – just follow the links above.

In the meantime, I’ve also received my copies of a special issue of the New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia which I’ve edited with Jan Schmidt, on the theme of “Exploring Produsage”. We’ve managed to cover quite a range of themes – for more information, see the Produsage blog!

And there’s more coming up, too. Next week, I’m heading over to Austria, where I’ll present a keynote at the Conference on e-Democracy (CeDEM) in Krems – this will incorporate some of our work on the use of Twitter during the Queensland floods, as well as some reflections on the online community around WikiLeaks. What can we learn from the rapid formation of highly active online communities around these acute events that we may apply to the development of stronger citizen engagement in e-democracy activities? I’ve now uploaded my slides for the keynote – audio to follow next week, hopefully. And expect the usual conference blogging…

And after Krems, I’m heading on to Vienna to conduct a seminar on our Mapping Online Publics research framework for the study of social media communities at the University of Vienna. As an extension of this, I’ll also present a public lecture on the continuing challenges for mainstream journalism which emerge from active, participating audiences – not least also those using Twitter and other social media platforms, of course. Slides for that presentation are also online now – audio to come later, too.

And there’s plenty more coming up, too – the week after I get back from Austria, I’ll speak at the Cooperative Research Centres Australia conference in Brisbane, and I’ve got a presentation at the National Public Sector Digital Media Officers’ Forum lined up as well. We’ve also got a few additional research projects starting – but more of all of that later!