a comment on Stephanie's blog

Answering 'Citizen Photojournalism - a form of Produsage.'

I very much enjoy your style of writing; you manage to be concise, thorough, while still remaining personable. This post captured my attention because I wrote my own on citizen journalism - it was interesting to read about the same concept, from a photographical point of view. Your post had a really readable form, it flowed from one concept to another nicely. The titles throughout helped, too.

In regards to what you posted: I would have liked to see more of an emphasis placed on the negative connotations of citizen photojournalism in regards to professional journalism. You state that ‘professionals still exist but are competing with the amateurs.’ I would be interested in hearing both your perspective, and scholarly perspectives, on whether traditional photojournalism is under threat from amateurs. I know that in regards to citizen journalism, there is a strong voice that feels that media journalism is under threat, many a dire prediction of the death of journalism, etcetera. An equally strong voice assures the doomsayers that news media will always be needed, if not just to be the standard setters for ethical, unbiased, reputable reporting. Is this the case for photojournalism?

You seem to be optimistic and quite certain that the citizen photojournalism movement will only grow: ‘Give it a couple of years and we will all be walking around with cameras in our hands.’ What will this mean in regards to professionals? Will they be displaced, replaced? Why will we possibly need traditional photogs if everyone can be a photojournalist? You reference Dan Gilmour’s article ‘The Decline (and maybe Demise) of the Professional Photographer.’ I feel you could have utilised this article a little more, expounded further. Do you think that professional photographers have a place in the fragile Web 2.0 ecosystem? It would have been interesting to read an exploration of this.

another student blog comment

Responding to 'What is Second Life?'

I found this post massively interesting, engaging and thorough; I enjoyed your concept of secondlife as a second chance.  Even though I have not played the game before, I’m still familiar with elements relating to secondlife that you discussed so concisely: hiding behind a virtual character, finding success in the online world when it’s lacking in the offline world, etc.  I’m glad you clarified that secondlife is also seen as a social tool and a niche online community, in a sense, and THEN made your statement regarding secondlife as a second chance.

Even as a non-player, this post was fascinating.

I would have liked to see more exploration, and more of your view, regarding your conception of the virtual world as a second chance.  Do you think that it’s healthy for users to “hide away?”  In a sense, I can understand WHY a player would choose to do so, especially ones that “have no interest in how the real world runs,” as you said, but it’s difficult for me to accept that this is healthy behaviour. 

You state that secondlife “builds confidence on users who lack self confidence.”  Does this confidence have real worth though, if it's all generated in a virtual world?  “Secondlife hides the negative appearances or internal behaviour.”  Again, I can understand why a person struggling socially or personally would want to “configure a new behaviour and appearance” online, but in the long term, I feel this is damaging rather than healing - masking a problem through a secondlife persona, and effectively ignoring it.  Feel free to disagree with me!

a comment I left on a student's blog

In response to 'Why do online communities organise themselves?'

I appreciated this blog for its conciseness, briefness and directness. A very thorough, clear explanation of how and why online communities develop and grow. However, I would have liked to see more of YOUR perspective here - a bit more exploration and analysis, rather than straight explanation perhaps.

In the lecture Axel outlined both the advantages and benefits of online communities. Your post seems to solely discuss communities in their IDEAL form. In my opinion, your post would be strengthened if you outlined some of the negative aspects and possible tendencies of online communities, for example, their potential to be insular, or 'echo chambers' (Axel, 2008). I am interested in hearing your thoughts on the negative aspects of online communities.

When does information become scholarly? You said 'an answer can expand and grow into a term that could be used scholarly.' Do you think evolving information circulating within and through a community is always reliable? How are we to judge the validity of information? Your post could have moved in this direction, going on to explore how communities evaluate quality, which I feel would have been a natural and interesting progression.

References

Week Six lecture notes

you might as well get penguins to write a novel!

While researching for my online communities post, I came across this comment by user Amirhossein, which immediately captivated my imagination, and which I thought I could expand on:

If technology can have a collaboration-oriented meaning, why can't art, music, thoughts and so forth?  If we want to start thinking outside the box of Web 1.0, we should shift towards collaborative attitudes rather than original ones.  We can have collaborative arts as well, a shared inspiration.  What if people are to make a drawing, rather than a person?  Can people contribute melodies to a music track to make a masterpiece?

The concept of collaborative art, or Wiki Art - the harnessing of a shared inspiration, is at once fascinating and intriguing!  My initial response to Amirhossein was that it would be an interesting experiment in open source creative collaboration, but I did not believe that a masterpiece could come out of it.  The idea of Wiki Art led me to Wiki Writing; as a creative writing student, I was interested to see if collaborative writing had ever been attempted.  Not in the Wikipedia sense, which is non-fictive, open to be written, edited and approved collaboratively, but in a creative fiction sense.  Is it possible for a community to write a novel?

I wandered through Google, and found a community that tried to do just that on A Million Penguins, which is the brainchild of Penguin Books and according to the main page, is 

a collaborative, wiki-based creative writing exercise... An experiment in creative writing and community.  Anyone can join in.  Anyone can write.  Anyone can edit.  Let's see if the crowds are not only wise, but artistic.  Can a collective create a believable fictional voice?  Or will too many cooks spoil the broth?

SO interesting!  'A Million Penguins was launched on February 1, 2007 and was open for two months.  The entire book is online, all 1030 pages of it, contributed to and edited by 1500 people!  The scope of it is incredible.  The novel itself is broken down into seven discrete sections, and one bizarre section called 'The Banana Section.'  Not suprisingly, the book is incoherent, a complete mash-up of form, plot, content and structure.  It is self referential: from the novel itself, 'The man was clearly mad.  No rules? It would never work! You may as well get penguins to write a novel!'  There is no real sense of accumulation, and it does not follow a logical or linear pattern.  What IS clear is that the authors themselves were almost continually frustrated; in some sections, authors use the characters as thinly veiled mouthpieces to communicate to and argue with each other.  The dominant tone of the novel is comic, if not just for the obvious chaos and author frustration.  It's farce-like, exhausting, a perfect example of creative anarchy.  'A Million Books' wasn't free of vandals and graffiti artists either - at first it was plagued by porn, and then by bananas.  The 'Banana Section' is a bizarre section which compiles all the chapters which were hit hard by the Banana Bomber.  There are continual, ridiculous, hilarious references to bananas, and at many points in the section the author/s gives up on any sort of plot development, however illogical, and lapses into BANANA BANANA BANANA BANANA! 

What I found interesting was the strong sense of community and accomplishment all authors felt.  From the Million Penguins official blog:

It has been an amazing experience.  I feel sorry to be losing this odd community and hope that there will be clusters who stay together and write together (user Joanna Howard).

... opening this experiment up to the world caused problems (but) the importance of this experiment was in the freedom of expression.  On the whole I found respect and collaboration.  On the way maybe Penguins community found its good identity through 'natural election' (user Neri). 

An author can be inspired from their surroundings, experiences and by their community, but writing is ultimately led by the writer, and not the community.  I'm not sure if there was ever a good chance of a 'collective creating a believable fictional voice,' just because believable writing needs to have a strong, constant voice.  Good writing, I find, is fairly subtle, weaving through and lending itself towards a build-able climax.  The author needs to have control of their story, and even if the characters develop such strong personalities that they seem to be making their own decisions, the author still needs to own his characters.  This can't happen collectively.  The experiment might have been more of a success, stylistically, if there was a smaller literary community involved - in regards to a novel, a large-scale community will not work together to form collective knowledge, like Wikipedia, as a novel is the product of a singular inspiration and will not work in this form (Vershbow, 2007).

As a novel in and of itself, 'A Million Penguins' was worthless, although I suppose it's hard to judge against the established form of writing, as it is an entirely new form.  As a social experiment and a study into collaborative writing, and writing in general, it was utterly fascinating... a 'novel' experiment (bddm, tsss).  I wish I had been involved in the process, because the strong community bond and sentiment formed throughout is amazing, admirable.  From user Joanna Howard's blog:

For the past three weeks, I've been ankle-deep in wiki.  I've witnessed writers enter full of hope and storm away again in despair, and an equal number stay to wallow with exhilaration in the steam intensity of group creativity. 

The wonderful richness of different cultures contributing to this has been a moving study and intimacy of experience and vision.

References (accessed May 11):

http://www.oreillynet.com//cs/user/view/cs_msg/91750

http://www.amillionpenguins.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

http://www.amillionpenguins.com/blog/

http://gawker.com/387731/penguin-books-proves-the-entire-internet-cant-write-a-novel

http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/02/a_million_penguins_a_wikinovel.html

http://amillionpenguinsanddmu.blogspot.com

citizen journalism

The concept of citizen journalism is simultaneously fascinating and terrifying.  I feel a certain trepidation as I try to understand where its come from, and where its going to go.  Before our Week 9 lecture, I wasn’t aware that I was aware of citizen journalism.  Now that the term and movement has been named, explained to me, and explored so concisely, I can understand that I’ve been exposed to countless examples of citizen journalism, mainly through the form of blogs and pamphlets.  As an audience member and writer, I’m amazed at the depth and brevity of the citizen journalism movement, its seemingly spontaneous rising, the amount of passionate debate generated by it, its possibilities.

A definition of the term I agree with, appreciate for its simplicity, and which I will use for the purpose of this blog comes from this YouTube video.  Lisa Williams describes citizen journalism, quite simply, as journalism that is done by non journalists, or people committing random acts of journalism.  Basically, the citizen journalist movement embraces the idea that the readers are now participating in the authoring of the content (Williams).  This ties in with Axel’s produser theory, which is that on the Web 2.0 platform, the consumer now equals the producer.  An online example of this theory in practice is OhmyNews.com, a Koran collaborative online newspaper, with has more than 26, 000 registered citizen journalists all producing news from the bottom up, in a direct challenge to established media outlets (Kahney, Wired. 2003). 

I think it’s this sense of challenge that mounts my feeling of wariness, my slight discomfort.  A small part of me, the panicked, nervous part, sees the rise of citizen journalism as a threat to established journalism, while another (I hope, bigger) part of me simultaneously appreciates the idea of the individual voice, through citizen journalism, getting more leverage (Dan Gilmor).  I’m aware that my latent feelings of trepidation are close minded and elitist, fueled in part by arrogance.  As a creative writing student wanting to move into journalism, I am protective of my future craft.  I know that I am not a professional writer, so I am not directly offended.  I have years and years to go before I can say that I’m a professional, even ‘good’ writer, but I’m proud to be studying in this field.  The assumption by some that a blogger whacking away at their computer is on the same level, journalistically, as a professional writer who has studied their field and has years of experience, is slighting.  

Andrew Keen, author of ‘The Cult of the Amateur,’ argues that journalists “follow a set of standards, a code of ethics.  Objectivity rules.  That’s not the case with citizen journalists.  Anything goes in that world (Vargas, 2007).”  As much as the concept of citizen journalism makes me a little uneasy, I can see the narrow-mindedness and naivety of Keen’s argument.  I have a firm belief in the power and shared intelligence of the community, and I think it’s safe to assume that as with anything in the digital literacy, the community will organize quality in a way that means only reputable, professional citizen journalists will be garnered attention.  

I feel a bit torn.  I’m making a conscious effort not to come to the panicked conclusion that citizen journalism means the end of traditional journalism; in doing so, I know that I will be ignoring the exciting possibilities generated by the citizen journalism movement.  It would be ridiculous of me to assume that one cannot exist without the other, I feel that a far better way of approaching the existence of both citizen journalism, and ‘big media’ journalism, is in a way that is symbiotic and mutually beneficial.  It’s important to accept that one of the main concepts behind citizen journalism that mainstream media reporters are not the exclusive center of knowledge on a subject - the audience knows more collectively than the reporter alone (Glaser, 2006).  ‘Storming the News Gatekeepers,’ argues that journalism is enriched through the perspectives of everyday Joes and Janes, who offer more voices, more texture to public debate (Vargas, 2007).

I’ll try not to panic.  I’ll try to be open-minded, to welcome the possibilities of bottom up journalism and “competition from the very public we serve (journalist Kenneth Neil).”  In the words of Dave Gillmor, who has expressed my thoughts more eloquently than I could hope to: 

"I hope we don’t lose big journalism, but want to see it as part of an ecosystem where all kinds of things from sole bloggers in deep narrow niches to what we have today…where it’s symbiotic as opposed to entirely competitive."

References (accessed May 10):

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=58iZpMRclwI

http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_29175_1

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2003/05/58856

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/26/AR2007112602025.html?

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/09/digging_deeperyour_guide_to_ci.html

online communities

I have finally realised that I am a member of several online communities, and have been for quite a while now.  This wasn't some momental realisation that happened in a pivotal instant; rather, my conception of my belonging happened steadily, slowly.  The knowledge that I belong, and my understanding that I have made choices to both belong to, and align myself with several communities is lingering somewhere in the back of my brain as I trawl through the World Wide Web.  I can't read ONTD or it's quirky, slightly tasteless offspring ONTD Trash anymore, without recognising in some part of me that I have chosen to belong to these worlds.  I am an active publisher in these worlds.  I am a contributor of content, I interact on a 'many to many' basis.

I find it all fascinating.

Our Week Six lecture, 'Online Communities,' was particularly interesting to me, and fueled the slow ember of knowledge burning away in me.  Axel Bruns, my lecturer, and author of 'Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage,' discussed the many benefits of online communities, all of which I agreed with.  The reason I didn't realise I belonged to an online community, is because my joining it, and affiliating with it, was so easy.  I stumbled across a page.  I started to read other peoples contributions, I laughed, and i kept coming back, eventually starting to make my own contributions.  In my offline world I have to make physical, set decisions and actions to join a community; I have to sign up to a soccer team, or to join a Lit discussion group.  On an online platform, all I have to do is browse, until I find an online community based around one of my interests, in the case of ONTD, pop culture and a dual sense of bitterness towards to it, and addiction to it. 

Through my interaction with various online communities I engage with, I can see demonstrated some of the benefits of online communities Axel discussed.  From the lecture: online communities transcend the limitations of being a physical body in a particular physical space - I have the world at my fingertips, and anything I want is open to me.  As Axel said, the strength of online communities lies in the ease of finding other people and communities with which I have a shared interest, rather than having to find these people in the offline world.  If I join an Australian hip hop forum, for instance, I can be assured that I have a common interest with all of the joined members, with enhanced possibilities of further mutual interests.  Online communities gather people together, the community shares it content, and that content becomes much more powerful.

The sense of belonging and community is liberating, warming, and I feel, is what drives people to make the Web contributions they do, largely pro bono contributions which in turn, makes the Web function as it does.  Mark Glaser from blog MediaShift points out that the Web is largely powered by volunteer work.  He uses the examples of Ebay's user generated content or Flickr's vast array of user submitted photos, all user submitted, all adding incredibly commercial value to these for-profit companies, yet submitted for free.  The layperson does not get any monetary compensation for doing this work, so why do it?  Glaser interviewed a woman who acts as a forum moderator for CNN Interactive.  

'Many volunteers in online communities do it for the love of the conversation and connections, and are willing to give up their time to make those communities more interesting and pleasant places to inhabit.  I believe in the power of the Internet as an experience beyond just sucking up information - it's always been the interactivity that gets me going, and whether I'm paid or not, that's the part that keeps me interested.'

This sense of community and belonging then, is what motivates people to make the contributions they do.  

Matt Haughy, founder of popular group blog MetaFilter, told Glaser via email that in the early days, he had to make many of the posts himself, until the momentum and growing community propelled the blog forward.  

'Since then, I think the strong sense of community - the sense of belonging and getting something out of the participation is what drives people to contribute.'

 (Glaser, 2006).

Psychologically and socially, we require a sense of belonging to be active, useful citizens, and the Internet is one platform from which we can get that.  From our Week Six lecture, according to Axel, strong online communities lower barriers of cultural and social participation, in a sense democratizing cultural participation.  Members of these online communities are citizens, and they are active in creating a grassroots online community, which, when they work to the best of their ability, are a platform across which communities can gather, share and evaluate information, working across community boundaries with each other.  It's this sense of community that brings people back, and keeps them coming!

References (accessed May 5):

Week Six Lecture notes

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/03/your_take_roundupsense_of_comm.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_of_community

Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0

Before I start concentrating on any one subject, I would like to provide a succinct definition of the 'Web 2.0' I've been hearing so much about, drawing heavily from Tim O'Reilly's definitive article 'What is Web 2.0.'  O'Reilly actually coined the term - google it, and you'll get more than 9.5 million results.  Crazy to me, considering that before this unit, I hadn't thought at all about the growth and development of the Internet, the 'next generation' of the Web.  I'm completely immersed in Internet culture, and this had all been happening around me without my realising it.  

There is a wealth of information on Web 2.0, and people from all around the world are willing to offer up their opinions on it.  They can, on a global platform, within the Web 2.0 framework.  One thing I like about the Internet is its use as an open forum for discussion and debate.  I like being exposed to the opinion of the interested layperson.  There are 166 comments, for example, on 'What is Web 2.0.'  Several people provided their definitions for Web 2.0, one I particularly liked, and which I'll adopt for the use of this post, coming from user dejudicbus:

'Web 2.0 is a knowledge oriented environment where human interactions generate content that are published, managed and used through network applications in a service oriented architecture.'

This diagram clearly demonstrates the main differences between Web 2.0 and its unpopular cousin, Web 1.0.  Obviously, it demonstrates that in the space of ten years the amount of users of the Web has leaped from 45 million to over a billion global users - amazing, considering that my mother remembers people talking about this newfangled 'Internet thing,' and how it would never take off.  Mainly, the diagram makes clear what I think is the most important feature of Web 2.0; the amount of user generated content as opposed to published content, leading to greater collective intelligence - the 'knowledge orientated environment' dejudicbus mentioned.  

The differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 are shown in this succinct comparison presented by O'Reilly:

Web 1.0 was about reading, Web 2.0 is about writing

Web 1.0 was about companies, Web 2.0 is about communities

Web 1.0 was about client server, Web 2.0 is about peer to peer

Web 1.0 was about HTML, Web 2.0 is about XML

Web 1.0 was home pages, Web 2.0 is about blogs

Web 1.0 was about portals, Web 2.0 is about RSS

Web 1.0 was about taxonomy, Web 2.0 is about tags

Web 1.0 was about owning, Web 2.0 is about sharing

Web 1.0 was about IPOS, Web 2.0 is about trade sales

Web 1.0 was about Netscape, Web 2.0 is about google

Web 1.0 was about web forms, Web 2.0 is about web applications

Web 1.0 was about screen scraping, Web 2.0 is about APIs

Web 1.0 was about dialup, Web 2.0 is about broadband

Web 1.0 was about wires, Web 2.0 is about wireless

Web 1.0 was about hardware costs, Web 2.0 is about bandwith costs

User Jordan also adds that

Web 1.0 was about them, Web 2.0 is about us.

 

I like that!

Additionally, this Web 2.0 directory lists sites that are on the 2.0 platform.  Lots of interesting stuff!

EDIT:

I've just started to grasp the concept of Web 2.0, and the possibilities of Web 3.0 are already starting to be explored!  This comprehensive article by Jonathon Strickland, 'How Web 3.0 Will Work' was recently made popular on Digg, and is well worth a read, as is Resourceful Idiot's recent article, 'Explaining Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0.'

References (accessed May 1):

http://joedrumgoole.com/blog/2006/05/29/web-20-vs-web-10/ 

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html?page=5 

http://web2trends.blogspot.com/search/label/Web%202.0%20Directory 

http://www.resourcefulidiot.com/2008/05/explaining-web-10-web-20-web-30/ 

just incidentally, because the idea of blogging irks me for some reason...

Why am I here?  What am I doing?  Would I be doing this if I didn't HAVE to?

A part of me thinks it's quite egotistical to blog.  What is so important about MY words, that I need to showcase it on a public platform for others to read?  I don't feel quite right, here in the blogosphere, just because I don't feel as if I have anything interesting or useful or different or amazingly insightful to add.  I will be addressing issues relating to my university unit, Virtual Cultures, and all that I'll have to offer are my paltry opinions.  Inconsequential opinions.

As far as I can see, a blogger would have to be supremely confident in their opinions and their online identity to start a blog in the first place, much less with the the expectation and desire for it to be read.  Either that, or lonely; wanting to leave their footprint in the virtual world, however much it will be stamped over.

I'm interested to see whether I get "hooked" on the blogging thing, or if I do it just for the sake of achieving a passing grade.  I think I'll enjoy reading about what interests me, in relation to Virtual Cultures... electronic literature, etc.  Actually writing the blog and seeing my words on the screen, I think, will be a different matter.

this here 'internet' thing...

I can't remember the last time I've been in a bank, because online banking does everything for me.  I can't remember the last time I physically walked into a video rental place - Netflix, baby.  I don't use maps anymore because whereis.com.au will tell me exactly where to go, and how long it will take me to get there.  I haven't let 'my fingers do the walking' through the Yellow pages in years, I let them do the typing instead.  When I flick through New Idea or Famous magazine and am looking at pictures I saw on the Net days ago, I know that celebrity gossip magazines, to me, are dead, gone the way of cassette tapes and Lindsay Lohan's career.  Sites like ONTD are my crack, keeping me updated on the hour to hour happenings of celebrities I know far too much about.

Basically, the World Wide Web is wonderful, wonderful place, a system of 'interconnected computer networks linked by hyperlinks and URLs' I use very regularly, but hadn't thought too much about before this unit.  I hadn't even thought about how much I value the Web and how much I would suffer if it were suddenly taken away from me.  I don't have an 'active mind' regarding the Internet.  I love it, I use it, but I don't think too much about it.  I've never considered the concept and implications of 'virtual cultures' before, even though I'm thoroughly immersed in a few.  To be honest, it's hard for me to get too excited about topics like net consumerism, hyperlocal socialization etc etc.  I like to critique celebrity baby names and Britney's weaves on the internet, not think deeply about it.  It is an embarrassing truth and one that I'm not proud of, but true nonetheless.  To me, the World Wide Web was a shallow place existing mainly for my entertainment, and I'm amazed at the depth and brevity of it.

I thought I would steer this blog towards topics that have interested and excited me, within the Virtual Cultures framework.  As a second year Creative Writing student, the impact of the internet on journalism in regards to citizen journalism was particularly interesting, as was the existence of 'e-lit.'  Prepare for more blogs related to these!

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet