Gießen.
My own keynote at this Web 2.0 and politics conference here in Gießen is next, in a session which discusses the possible impact of blogs, citizen journalism, and other forms of online political participation on wider political processes. My own thoughts as presented here build to some extent on the article I published in Information Polity earlier this year, and also draw on recent Australian examples (the role of Possums Pollytics in the Australian election campaign of 2007, and the new GetUp! project Project Democracy). I've posted the slides below, and will add the audio when I can the audio is now online, too.

Gießen.
I've made the trip to a very cold and foggy Gießen in central Germany for a conference on what could be loosely described as the political dimensions of Web 2.0: "Das Internet zwischen egalitärer Teilhabe und ökonomischer Vermachtung". I'll be speaking later this morning, but we begin with a keynote by Karl-Heinz Ladeur. All of this will be in German, so blogging it in English will make for an interesting experience...

He begns by pointing out that new media are understood first through the paradigms of the old - TV dramas were filmed theatre, TV news were a reading-out of print news. The same is true for media law; it tends to transfer and tinker with old approaches in order to deal with new media, more or less successfully. This also foregrounds the individual, and places the medium as a means for the individual to communicate - which is not necessarily inappropriate, but takes focus away from the development of independent, indigenous principles in new media forms. (Another example is how long it has taken for arts publics to be treated differently - e.g. in terms of decency and pornography - from other publics. The juridical treatment of political publics is a further example here, as is the treatment of the private matters of celebrities.)

Hannover.
After the excitement of AoIR 2008 in Copenhagen, I've travelled south to Germany for a few more events, and to catch up with my family here in Hannover. Before getting to Hannover, though, I've spent a couple of fabulous days as a guest of the Hans-Bredow-Institut for media research at the University of Hamburg. My host there, Jan Schmidt, invited me to speak at the university as the first talk in a lecture series on Web 2.0, and I think this won't be the last collaboration between us. I'll add audio for the talk later, but for now, here are the slides: Here are slides and audio recording (slightly noisy, sorry):

Copenhagen.
It's the final session here at AoIR 2008. I've come in a little late for Lisa McLaughlin's presentation; she's been working in Malaysia to examine the Multimedia Super Corridor project which incorporates the Cyberjaya (technology) and Putrajaya (administration) districts.

The project was initiated in 1996 with much fanfare, but met with limited success as companies approached to develop representations there were initially reluctant to do so as the availability of a highly skilled technology workforce was doubtful. There was also strong skepticism about the project from the local community, not least because the building of the MSC required the displacement of existing communities of Tamil plantation workers. If knowledge societies require 'fast subjects', then these existing communities were now pushed into a position of 'slow subjects' providing menial services to those working and living in the MSC.

Copenhagen.
The post-lunch session here at AoIR 2008 begins with a paper by Ronda Hauben. She notes that 2008 is the fifteenth anniversary of the publication of Michael Hauben's seminar article on the 'Netizen' concept - a concept emerging from Michael's research that spread rapidly and widely, and (especially in Asia) still has a great deal of currency. The concept had a great deal to do with the fight against commercialisation of the Net which was prominent then; today, for the same reason the concept has been suppressed to some extent by those interested in a more commercial Internet.

Copenhagen.
I spent the first session of this second day at AoIR 2008 as a member of a panel on academic publishing - I didn't blog this, for obvious reasons. This second session starts with a paper on "Transcoding Place" by Vicki Moulder, in the overall area of social design and media convergence. How do communities enact agency in this space, especially given that digital social architecture is a fluid system, unlike conventional physical architecture?

Designers and creative professionals have a responsibility and are able to cause real change in design; this is especially important in the context of the changes brought about by media convergence. Can meaningful online agency (e.g. tagging and uploading content to YouTube and other social media sites) compare in any real sense with activism on the streets? Vicki and her colleague Jim Bizzocchi examined this question in the context of the Crude Awakening event at Burning Man, comparing the semantic structure of a face-to-face event in the Nevada desert (attended by some 45,000 spectators) with its video documentation (which was uploaded to YouTube by numerous users within hours of the event).

Copenhagen.
The final session of this first day of AoIR 2008 begins with James Owens, whose focus is on online news and democratic communities. Interactive technology enables the production of new social formations, but can also reproduce existing social formations; this can be related especially also to local community formations. James is interested in three Chicago-based Websites (of the Tribune, a citizen journalism site supported by the Tribune, and the local Indymedia site), and is interested here especially on whether such sites promote or prevent social fragmentation.