Dr Stephen Harrington

New Media, New Texts?

Polylogical communication: Some trends...

• Changing emphasis of creativity.

• Vernacular/‘Folk’/amateur/everyday creative culture.

• Unsteady definitions of authorship.

• Strengthened networks, weaker heirarchies

Changing emphasis of creativity:

See 'Remix Culture' (next week)

‘Folk’ creative culture:

• Massive increased opportunities for vernacular, convivial, ‘everyday’ creativity .

• Participatory media (unlike 20th Century media)

• From a ‘Sit-back-and-be-told culture’ to ‘making-and-doing culture’ (Gauntlett)

• Result of dramatically lowered barriers to entry.

• E.g. ‘Escape from City 17’

Escape from City 17:

• Live-action/“Machinima” hybrid

• Uses Half-Life 2 game engine to generate SFX in filmed production.

• Also appropriates existing content (e.g. Riga Panorama from Wikipedia)

• Produced by the ‘Purchase Brothers’…

• … for just $500.

Unsteady definitions of authorship:

• Blurs traditional notions of production and consumption

• ‘Produser’ (Bruns)

• “User-led content production”

• E.g. YouTube: few (no?) lines between audience and producers

Strengthened networks, weaker heirarchies:

• Increased value of/ability to leverage the network/crowd, due to new capabilities.

• “…collective intelligence of the network – the fact that a million people will always be smarter than 20 people” (Herz, 2002)

• E.g. Wikipedia

• Games

• Music Industry:

• Serious profit decline for ‘Big Music’ (heirarchy)

• ‘Triple J Unearthed’ (network)

• “Harnessing the hive” (Herz, 2002) ??

So then…

How is this disrupting the status quo?

Some Implications:

• Journalism

• Role of "citizen" journalists

• Audiences bypassing traditional (hierarchical) approaches to 'news gathering' (hint hint)

• Branding

• How can brands retain "control" of their image in this chaotic environment?

• E.g. Shell 'Let's Go' campaign

Some Implications:

• Ethics

• (How) can this chaos be regulated/controlled? (Hint… hint…)

• ‘A rape in cyberspace’ (i.e. real/virtual blurred)

• Possibility of "informed consent"?

• Larger/global consequences for ethical breaches?

• Star Wars Kid

• Lamebook

Some Implications:

• Economics

• If “Users Add Value” (O’Reilly) in Web 2.0… then who should “harvest the honey”? (Herz)

• The original content creators?

• The re-mixers/re-users?

• The site owners?

• YouTube bought by Google for US$1.65B in 2006

• Where’s the users’ share? (coming now?)

• Is this ethical? (Hint… hint…)