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…)