Citizen Journalism

Citizen journalism is a favorite subject of mine. In particular the relationship citizen journalism has with traditional modes of journalism is of interest to me. In her article 'If you had been with us': mainstream press and citizen journalists jockey for authority over the collective memory of Hurricane Katrina", Sue Robinson discusses this contentious relationship with regards to the media coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Robinson focuses on the way in which citizen journalists were able to critique and interact with professional media coverage, serving to bolster or undermine what was being presented by mainstream media. I am also interested in the effect digitization has on media content. I suspect there is a sense in which most online journalism (aside from that which is a direct copy of another established medium- ie the herald online) is considered somewhat amateur and therefore suspect. Based on personal experience, journalistic authority seems to be more easily undermined when it is presented in digital format. Robinson's article drew my attention to the idea that the opposite could also be true in some instances, and for this reason I've decided to look deeper into the subject for my research essay.

See: Sue Robinson (2009). 'If you had been with us': mainstream press and citizen journalists jockey for
authority over the collective memory of Hurricane Katrina. New Media & Society. Vol. 11(5), pp795-
814.

Collective Behavior

As I previously touched on, the internet and in particular applications of Web 2.0 create greater possibilities for the democratisation of Habermas' public sphere, but there are also debates surrounding the quality of material actually entered into the internet. Chu briefly mentions this in her article 'Collective behavior in YouTube: a case study of 'Bus Uncle' online videos', but Chu's area of interest concerns an emergent new order of collective behavior ushered in by the internet. Rather than adhering to the confines of Habermas' definition of the public sphere, Chu's study of collective behavior embraces cultural practices that may sit outside of rational, informed debate, but within a 'public space'. The article centres on a case study of the mash-up video's created by users of YouTube in response to the viral video 'Bus Uncle'. Chu analyses this collective response as it sits within cultural practice and the changes therein as a result of new technologies. This is of particular interest to me, I have long wondered whether the amateurish or flippant nature of some internet practices makes them less important or worthy of study. Despite the tone of my previous comments on the subject, I think Chu's 'collective behavior' and 'public space' are both under-analysed aspects of digital culture, and for that reason this may be the area I choose to explore in my critical essay.

See: Habermas &
Donna Chu (2009). Collective behavior in YouTube: a case study of 'Bus Uncle' online videos. Asian
Journal of Communication. Vol. 19(3), pp337-53.
Maggie Griffith and Zizi Papacharissi (2010).

Podcasting!

I completely forgot to comment on my experience of podcasting in class last week. This was a totally new experience, one I don't expect to repeat in a hurry. I was amazed how much work (3 1/2 hours to be precise) went into that precious minute and forty seconds worth of actual podcast. I think that my fear of the machine overwhelmed me here, I pretty much just said my piece then nervously ran off for a coke which turned into a sandwich. Editing was even worse and I'm still none the wiser how any of what happened actually took place. All in all though the experience was really fun, a great challenge, and hugely eye opening. Hats off to anyone who podcasts, you must be incredibly dedicated to put that much effort into a brief audiovisual clip.

Mp3

I didn't get quite enough of a chance to discuss the issues brought up in my reading this week because of the rushed nature of our podcast. I'd like to redress that because I think that Sterne's article "The Mp3 as a Cultural Artifact" radically changed the way that I perceive Mp3s. As Sterne points out, much of the literature devoted to the Mp3 has focused on the Mp3 as a container technology. This is largely due to the furor surrounding illegal downloads, in this respect the Mp3 is a technological container whose properties make it ideal for illegal file sharing. But as Sterne points out, this ignores the cultural significance of the Mp3 itself beyond its function. I had never considered this proposition, to be perfectly honest I'm an Mp3 kleptomaniac and had never even considered it in any other context than my listening pleasure and the ongoing moral panic about illegal file sharing. But Sterne's article made me pause to consider the cultural impact of the Mp3 and the Mp3 as a cultural artifact. Sterne certainly puts forward a convincing case. As he rightly points out, the Mp3 has radically changed the way we consume music. It preemptively decides for us what we don't need in order to have a satisfactory listening experience in a distracting environment. It cuts out any data it considers to be superfluous to this end and delivers a product designed not to give us a full experience but a convenient one. It also compresses musical data to be conveniently sent across distances in small amounts of time, and to operate in a limited bandwidth environment. Put together, all these elements show that rather than being simply a container technology, the Mp3 is a sophisticated little piece of software that has fundamentally changed the way we hear music in order that our listening experience keep up with our own cultural shifts such as the development of Web 2.0 and ever increasing multitasking/time poverty. If anyone hasn't yet read the article I strongly suggest you do so. After reading Sterne's article I went and listened to an old fashioned cd and was truly stunned, I'd had to listen to this particular album more than a dozen times in Mp3 format and thought I knew it back to front, but hearing it played off a cd AND in an undistracted environment I couldn't believe just how different it sounded. It certainly proved to me that the Mp3 had drastically changed how I hear music, coupled with the transferability of the Mp3 across distance and systems I have to agree with Sterne; the Mp3 does seem to be a cultural artifact in its own right.

See: Jonathan Sterne (2006). The Mp3 as cultural artefact. New Media & Society, Vol. 8(5), pp825-42.

Blogging Again

Another blog post about blogging, apologies, but blogging seems to be the only type of digital activity I've been actively engaged in for some time. You'll notice I didn't manage to write another post, tag anything else etc as I had hoped; digital promises seem particularly hard to keep. I will be completely honest and confess my ignorance on the subject (and all things digital), up until last year I had never even bothered to read a blog let alone write one. I continue to be amazed by the seemingly infinite array of blogs populating the internet, and it seems that the blogosphere shows great promise. If we were to take Habermas' view of the public sphere, then the blogosphere would seem to be an almost Utopian arena for democratic political voice. But will it fulfill that potential? It seems that in the blogosphere, as with most digital developments, where there is great promise there is also a problematic reality in equal measure. A key case in point would be political blogs. Very generally the concept of the blog could prove to be an aide in change in politics. Individuals may have greater agency to speak their own mind and get their thoughts and opinions disseminated among a much larger audience via blogs than may have ever been possible in the pre 2.0 era. But as the technology has been taken up and utilised we have seen that rather than being a means of more democratic political change, political blogs have tended towards being echo chambers, simply reinforcing existing ideas among groups of like minded individuals. Of course this is a gross generalisation and there have certainly been instances where blogs have delivered on their potential helping people to exact change, but this seems to be a mere drop in the political blogosphere ocean, a blip on a vast radar. Their potential is further undermined by the social economics surrounding them. At the end of the day, with the number of new blogs emerging at any given moment, the majority of blogs will garner little if any attention, and simply be lost in the endless flow of the internet. When I add to this the final and most crucial problem with blogs- that many are simply seemingly pointless, vacuous textual noise (Perez anyone?), my hope for the real world value of the blogosphere becomes almost nullified. I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but very generally speaking there are a lot of blogs about a lot of nothing getting lost in a lot of information out there. Does this mean they aren't a valuable tool? Certainly not, many people enjoy the entertainment value of the fluff floating about the blogosphere. I myself have even become addicted to seedy world of the cupcake blogosphere- a dark underground movement of sugared dainties all exposing industry secrets in the hope that the rest of the world will make better cupcakes. But I have this feeling that perhaps the fantastic possibilities of the blogosphere will largely remain just that, vain possibilities, and wasted resources.javascript:void(0)

See: works by Jurgen Habermas.

Pithy Waffles

Too much to discuss this week and apparently too little space to do so. In an effort to stick to the unofficial mandate that blogs fit in the space of a screen I'll break topics into separate posts. I may even tag a few which is utterly foreign (I am, by the way being prompted to do so by blogger which has given me the helpful examples of "scooter", "vacation" and "fall"?!). I find the nature of blogs and blogging rather fascinating because it is still a fairly new medium. Even among the relatively small group that is FTVMS 712 it was clear that opinions on the subject are varied and far from concrete. So what are the characteristics of a "good" blog? Personally I don't like blogs that sound overly authoritative or impersonal, http://www.realgroove.co.nz/Blog.aspx is a perfect example of this. The tone sounds like lofty critics delivering information to the uninformed masses, as such you'll notice that they rarely receive feedback, in fact I have a feeling that nary but a few die hard fans even read it. In short I like blogs that at least appear to do away with the top down style and foster something of a community spirit.

This is clearly not always the case though. In Paul Hodkinson's 'Interactive online journals and individualization' he discusses the contemporary theory of blogs being linked with the trend of increasing individualization in relation to the British goth community. His study was clearly not exhaustive since he followed only members of a particular community who had recently shifted from an online group forum to a blogging service targeted at individuals. In this case respondents did seem to gain more of an individual voice on the blog site as they were no longer confined to discussing matters of specific interest to the Goth community. They were also free of the group sanctions imposed in the group forum on members who offended, on the blogging site participants felt free to express themselves and self sanctioned under the belief that an individuals blog was their own space to say what they pleased. Only the desire to receive feedback on postings drove the participants to shape their posts in a fashion they thought would garner interest. This would prove to be the most interesting aspect of Hodkinson's research; because of interactive features available on some blogging sites such as the ability to respond to another member's posts, the Goths maintained strong ties to their community in the blogging forum despite the obviously individualistic aspects of blogs and blogging culture.

This did not surprise me since it seems to be something of a practical reality on most of the blogs I do read now. While much scholarship has been devoted to the increasing sense of individualization on the internet due to new developments such as blogs, Hodkinson's article was refreshingly less black and white on the subject. It seems that there is still room for online communities to coexist alongside individualization, but with accommodation on both sides of the equation being necessary to facilitate the relationship.

See: Paul Hodkinson (2007). Interactive online journals and individualization. New Media and Society. Vol.
9(4), pp625-50.

Digital Media

As you have probably gathered, I have a conflicted relationship with digital media. On the one hand its part of my job, I've painstakingly been cataloguing 20 years worth of a magazine, on the other hand it took me 9 months to learn ctrl click on a Mac mouse. Truthfully though, that's what makes this such an exciting subject. The newness and adventure of a subject that hasn't already been completely mined of all it's intellectual gold is far too tempting to pass up.