Streaming Media

The next paper at the "Compromised Data" symposium is by Jean Burgess and me, and explores the more difficult forms of 'big data' research we're rarely conducting at present because the political economy of data access is weighted against specific approaches - in the specific context of Twitter research. I'll upload the slides and audio for it as soon as possible - for now, consider this a placeholder! Slides and audio below:

The third speaker in this AoIR 2012 session is Sharon Strover, who begins by noting a racist YouTube video which complained about Asian students in the UCLA library and rapidly generated a substantial number of response videos; this can be seen as a form of civic engagement which must be distinguished from political participation.

Online spaces generally aren't very good at sustaining Habermasian qualities of political discourse – reciprocal, open, equal and rational discussion – but rather enable the formation of ephemeral groups which actualise interaction through content production and consumption in networks of information flows. This does not usually …

Gothenburg.
It’s the last day of AoIR 2010, and the first session I’m attending starts with Jan Nolin, whose interest is in filesharing. He describes this as Internet-based cultural consumption (IBCC), in order to move away from terms like filesharing, peer-to-peer networks, and other more limited concepts. IBCC is a broad and inclusive term, then (though excluding user-led content creation) – it includes societal contexts, technological and economical choices, social relationships, and political and legislative contexts.

IBCC has been important in shaping the Net – it has been in a tug of war pattern between legislation and technology: increased …

Hamburg.
The next speaker at ECREA 2010 is Pere Masip, whose focus is on the multimedia content of Spanish online newspapers. There is a growing presence of video on such sites, indication new content as well as business models. Why and how is video used on news Websites, then? This study examined the Websites of three of the biggest Spanish newspapers, as well as of the most visited online-only news site in Spain.

Between 14 and 17% of stories on the three newspaper sites had videos; just over 10% of the online-only site. Such videos are mainly integrated with text …

Singapore.


The next presenter at ICA 2010 is Aymar Christian, who continues our focus on YouTube: his interest is on music videos on the site, and he argues that music video remakes shared on YouTube are almost always fair use. User-generated music videos (riffing on official videos) are amongst the most popular genres on YouTube, following in a long tradition (also incorporating professional work, such as the Weird Al videos); music videos and their remakes stand in a postmodernist tradition that may critique representation and reject standard Hollywood narrative (not least also characterised by the emergenceof MTV.

Singapore.


The next presenter at ICA 2010 is Limor Shifman, who shifts our focus to YouTube and notes the rapid increase in the number of videos shared on the site (some 2000 more by the time this presentation is finished). There's a massive amount of people spending a massive amount of time on creating such videos - many of whom draw on existing videos by imitating and replicating them. YouTube videos which are taken up in this way are memes.

Memes are understood as similar to genes, reproduced by copying and imitation and undergoing subtle mutations in the process. The Net has further multiplied and accelerated memes; it is a paradise for memes (and for people who research them). Some such memes spread with no significant variation (Susan Boyle's Britain's Got Talent performance is one such example), while some serve as the basis for extensive user-generated parody and derivation.

Hong Kong.


The final session for this first day of The Internet Turning 40 starts with a paper by Louisa Ha on the use of multiplatform TV by students. Video is now consumed using TVs, computers, iPods, DVRs, DVD players, and mobile phones, but what are the patterns of such consumption and how does the usage of one affect usage of others? How is this related to different personal factors (gender, etc.), especially for user-generated videos? And how satisfied are the users of these different platforms?

Louisa undertook a national survey in 2008 of some 210 (US) college students in six public universities, 91% of whom watch online video (22% watch TV for more than16 hours per week). 47% were early adopters, having watched online video for more than three years at that point; they mostly came across such videos through surfing or (in 25% of cases) through peer influence. Online, 48% watched user-generated videos exclusively; 34% both user-generated and repurposed videos. Key sources here were YouTube (nearly 100%), Facebook, and MySpace, and mainly comedy and music entertainment videos.

Leuven.


The next session here at EuroITV 2009 starts with another presenter from Alcatel-Lucent, Danny de Vleeschauwer. He notes the growth in catch-up television (CuTV), through initiatives such as the BBC's iPlayer or the ABC's iView - so that content is no longer consumed at exactly the same time (though still concentrated in a key period of time). This changes the requirements for IPTV: it can no longer operate under a broadcast or multicast model, but must now employ a unicast model which delivers a unique stream to each tuned-in viewer.