Dresden
My next session again involves Mark Latonero, speaking on remix culture. (I missed the session's previous presentation, on the World Trade Organisation.) Mark describes the delegitimising force of traditional copyright industries, but notes the rise of alternative modes which involve the active production of content by non-traditional producers operating outside the status quo production processes, in a user-based, bottom-up, and grassroots mode. Remixing embodies a set of social practices that are indicative of digital technologies imbued with an ideology of freedom. Are remixers aiming to transcend the constraints of space and time? What are their cultural characteristics and personal identities?

This paper is again based on interviews with creative commons content producers who were winners of the Wired remix contest. Overcoming space and time constraints, interacting with others through the distribution of remixed content, and empowerment through access to new technologies were all common themes in their responses, but using remixing as a means of entering the mainstream industry is also a common goal - so there is not necessarily an overt aim to overthrow the established music industry (and thus copyright industry) structures. At the same time, remix artists feel themselves to have a 'lack of greed' as compared to artists in the traditional industries.

The HIV/AIDS NGO Hyperlink Network

The next speaker is Michelle Shumate. She begins with an overview of common definitions of globalisation, as changing the spatial and temporal constraints in which global organisations operate. Her focus here is on the NGO sector, on 'globalisation 3.0', that is, globalisation from the bottom up through networks of smaller organisations and NGOs. In a basic way, such networks can begin through hyperlink networks; in this context, hyperlinking is a strategic communicative choice which often indicates association and conferred legitimacy. This is a low-cost choice of interorganisational cooperation, then.

What, then, are the patterns of hyperlink networks in HIV/AIDS NGOs and INGOs (international NGOs)? What theoretical mechanisms might best explain the patterns of these ties? Michelle identified a number of INGOs, then used Google Links To to identify NGOs which link to them, and further used a Webcrawler to identify the links between these sites. Sites were further examined for their geographical location and the scope of their activity. She found that ties within regions were greater than between regions, except for Northern NGOs (those within Western Europe, North America, and Australia). Approaches to predicting the network would be to investigate the presence of reciprocal ties (following a social exchange theory), of authorities (social capital), and of hubs (social capital again).

Overall, then, there appears to be a growing disparity between Northern and Southern NGOs, and NGO globalisation might be driven by connectedness related to 'rising stars' in these hubs, who gain international reputation and legitimacy, rather than more broad-based interorganisational collaboration. Reciprocity appears to drive this, too.

Global News Flow

Shawn Powers now presents a meta-analysis of global news flows - a study of recent work in globalisation research which sampled global media research and categorised them in a number of ways according to media focus, methodology, type of research, and dialectics used in the work (global/local, production/consumption, national/international, and new/old media). Of these, global/local and national/international were most prominent, while the production/consumption dialectic has become more prominent only in the last couple of years (perhaps as a result of the increased interest in Web2.0 and similar terms) - and Gazette, Journalism Studies, and the International Journal of Cultural Studies were by far the most active journals in the field.

More interesting are the connections between dialectics. National/international and global/local as well as new/old media and global/local were likely pairs, while new/old media and production/consumption and production/consumption and national/international were least likely to be combined. Shawn suggests that this means that new/old media dialectics are undertheorised, and that further integration is needed to synthesise communications research with our understanding of networks as they relate to globalisation. Further, the dialectical approach leaves out a connectivity/disconnectivity dialectic, as well as the political economy of new media.

Technorati : ICA2006, NGOs, creative commons, globalisation, remix, research
Del.icio.us : ICA2006, NGOs, creative commons, globalisation, remix, research