Copenhagen.


Finally we move on to Aylin Aydogan here at COST298. She, too, points to the changes associated with the rise of Web 2.0, and especially the emergence of user-generated content. Views of these changes as positive developments are hardly new, however - earlier Web-related developments were similarly seen as progress. Today, however, changes are very clearly driven by users and their motivations, and this is shifting the relationship between users and media organisations.

Past research in this context has focussed especially on the impact of citizen journalism and news blogging on news organisations; Aylin's study adds to this in the Turkish context. (She's taking a long time to take us through the existing work in this field, though - I wish she'd get to her work!)

Copenhagen.


I've made the trip to Ballerup again for the second day of COST298 (my last - tomorrow I've got to travel back to Germany). We begin with Ike Picone, whose interest is in user motivations for participation in produsing the news. Ike begins by extending the produsage model to a two-dimensional structure (from production to usage, and from passive to active; 'old media' are therefore largely passive and comsumptive, while many Web media forms also remain consumptive, but are more active (passive and active could also be translated here into 'lean back' and 'lean forward', then).

Copenhagen.


The third speaker in this session at COST298 is Funda Başaran Özdemir. Her interest is in the use of alternative news Websites in Turkey - in particular, of the labour movement site Sendika.org. Traditionally, monopolies of knowledge have determined what qualifies as knowledge and how it it disseminated; they derive their power from mastery of complexity, the control of raw media materials, and their performativity, speed, and the ability to afford high costs. Opposed to such strategic interests are tactical initiatives which insert themselves into the cracks and exploit temporary opportunities.

Athens.

The politics session at WebSci '09 continues with Elias Athanasiadis. Following Dan Gillmor, he notes the promise of new media for (political communication), and describes this as a transition from a top-down broadcasting model which has engendered politica apathy, mistrust, and citizen disengagement - or what he describes as 'skin-deep politics' - to a bottom-up netcasting in which interactivity, interconnectedness, the compression of time and space, and the disintermediation through phenomena such as citizen journalism creates the potential for citizen empowerment and (re)engagement.

Time to catch up with a few publications - my recent work is featured in a number of new collections:

Mobile Technologies: From Telecommunications to Media, edited by Gerard Goggin and Larissa Hjorth, collects some of the best papers from the Mobile Media 2007 conference (which I blogged about at the time) in Sydney. Looks like a fabulous collection, and I'm delighted that an article by former QUT Visiting Scholar Liu Cheng and me about SMS news in China has been included. We're looking especially at the experience at Yunnan Daily Press, where Cheng led the roll-out of SMS news functionality, and we're including some staggering statistics about the growth of Internet and mobile use in China as well (I wonder how they'll be affected by the global financial crisis...).

Sydney.
The final Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress panel for today shifts our focus from broadcasting to (print as well as online) publishing. Hugh Martin, General Manager of APN Online, opens the discussion by noting the long history of developing online counterparts to print newspapers (and the slightly shorter history of doing the same for magazines). He points to the recent announcement that the Christian Science Monitor is soon to cease its print version, moving entirely to an online newspaper, while magazine publisher Condé Nast has a very hard time working out how to make money online.