Share, Share Widely
Also, how do you manage contributions in these projects - there are real differences in how open some of these sites are, how much the content that is submitted is edited. These questions all contribute to the success or failure of a site. Slashdot seems to have worked because in spite of the clear presence of its editors they do not interfere all that obviously - while they choose the initial articles which are published, commenting remains open and anyone can have their say. Some sites like Kuro5hin and Plastic even put the editing of articles themselves into the users’ hands.
In sites where every article must be edited and approved first, this will likely be seen by the users as yet another hurdle to jump through, and in addition the process will take time, so that these sites are less likely to respond quickly to current events. These setup options certainly affect the success of a site, and in cases where users contribute or co-create content these are key issues to be addressed.
TS: In a recent discussion Clay Shirky pointed out that “Wired” had to shut down their entertainment and music online fora because users launched anorexia and cutting support groups in these online spaces. People gave each other moral support and hints on how to stay anorexic. There are many similar examples. This raises interesting moral issues.
www.endbegin.org
AB: There have been a number of interesting phenomena around the relationships between such ad hoc social networks and the commercial interests which put these networks in place. A similar issue I have recently become aware of has played out in massively multi-user online role-playing games (MMORGs); some of the things that groups of users get up to in these games, while a clear example of distributed creativity on part of the users, are deemed not to be ‘in the spirit of the game’ and are shut down by the games companies. To give you a benign example, I have just seen a ‘music video’ which was intricately choreographed, staged and shot entirely by players for players within the Star Wars Galaxies online game (see reference). These are very innovative, very creative uses of the technology, totally against what the game is really about, and so there are significant problems with the games companies not knowing what to do about them, not knowing whether they want this kind of interaction to take place within their games.
furplay.com/swg/content.php?content.1 (Cantina Crawl videos)
TS: On a recent blog entry you quoted Ted Nelson saying that “the present computer world is appalling - it is based on techie misunderstandings of human life and human thought, hidden behind flash user interfaces.”
AB: Indeed - at the very least it is important to make computers much less intrusive, much less visible in the way that people work. This is partly simply a technological issue, but particularly in academia it is also about how we use technology. For example, at Queensland University of Technology where I work there is an ongoing drive to make learning and teaching much more learner-centered rather than teacher-centered, and teaching technology has a very important role to play here.
www.qut.edu.au
We currently work on a project at Queensland University of Technology in which we set up systems to support much more collaborative and creative engagements with knowledge and information. How do you make it easy for students to use systems like blogs and wikis? How can these cooperative technologies improve their learning experience? It is not enough to simply put these systems in place and to go through blogging and wiki exercises - rather, the presence of such systems and the different conceptualization of and engagement with knowledge for which they stand change the entire learning and teaching experience. It changes the way lectures are (or should be) delivered, and the way people engage with the material.
I have been using a wiki in one of my classes (using the MediaWiki system, see reference) and I have come to the point of thinking, ‘do I need actually need lectures as such or can I change the delivery structure of the course on the whole into something that is much more like a wiki, that resembles a networked knowledge structure - rather than imposing a linear structure from week one to week 13 which presents to students a supposedly unified history of new media technologies?’ Linear structures may be useful to some, but they do not accurately represent the multifaceted field of new media studies (or any other field of knowledge, really) any more; I need to find other ways to present the whole width and breadth of information to students and to work with them through this and move into their own areas of interest, in a much more flexible network structure. In the course, students in each semester both use the wiki as an information resource, and then collaboratively build on and extend it. An encyclopedia of new media terms and concepts, it is published to the Web as the M/Cyclopedia of New Media (see reference).
wikipedia.sourceforge.net
newmediawiki.ci.qut.edu.au/index.php/Main_Page
wiki.media-culture.org.au
We are also setting up a multi-user blogging system (using Drupal), with the intention of ultimately being able to provide a blog for each student throughout the duration of their degree. This would enable us to get away from only using blogs in specific courses, which again would be a teacher-centered approach, and rather to take a learner-centered approach which enables students to log their own experiences throughout their time at university, regardless of what course they might be relevant to.
In the university blogging is great especially for first year students who find themselves in the middle of a new environment. Blogs allow them to share reflective journals, and throughout their academic careers these blogs are useful as they help students to self-monitor their academic development. Additionally, of course, people can also share their information and experiences, and collaboratively develop content. We are also looking to develop peer-assisted study schemes in which blogs by second semester students inform students in their first semester.
In the process students gain advanced information and communication technology (ICT) literacies which empower them. This is crucial: the new forms of interaction which are emerging across the board at the moment require some very different skill sets, and as teachers we must make sure that students are able to gain these skills. Students need to adapt to participate in these collaborative open content systems, and to become familiar with notions of distributed creativity - especially in the current environment where information, knowledge, and creative industries are accounting for an increasingly large share of the economy in most Western nations.
In this environment we are seeing a general trend away from pure consumption, and towards participation - from shows like Big Brother where audiences are actively involved in directing further developments, to games like The Sims, where now some 90% of all in-game content has been contributed by its users, or to the involvement of fans as quality assurance in the filming of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We witness a blending of consumption and use, of using and producing which has begun to happen in recent years. I call this new form of active content co-creator a producer.
But this ability to be an active participant or produser is not only necessary from a career point of view: it is also increasingly a prerequisite to being an informed and active citizen.
(this interview was conducted as part of WebCamTalk1.0, a project by The Institute for Distributed Creativity, www.newmediaeducation.org)
Acknowledgments:
Axel Bruns gratefully acknowledges the help of Peta Mitchell, who provided him with an iSight camera and laptop for the WebCamTalk 1.0 presentation.
References:
‘Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality’ by Clay Shirky
www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html
Axel Bruns, “Community Building through Communal Publishing: The Emergence of Open News” published in Mediumi 2.1 (2003)
www.m-cult.net/mediumi/article.html?id=203&lang=en&issue_nr=2.1&issueId=5
Axel Bruns, “From Blogs to Open News: Notes towards a Taxonomy of P2P Publications” presented at ANZCA 2003 conference in Brisbane, 9-11 July 2003
www.bgsb.qut.edu.au/conferences/ANZCA03/Proceedings/papers/bruns_full.pdf
Bibliography on Blog Research
blogresearch.com/ref.htm
Re-blog
reblog.org
Edublogs Weblog Award
incsub.org/awards/index.php?p=5
Drupal - Open source content management platform
drupal.org
VoiceOver IP (free, cross-platform)
skype.org
Association of Internet Researchers
www.aoir.org
wikipedia.sourceforge.net
newmediawiki.ci.qut.edu.au/index.php/Main_Page
wiki.media-culture.org.au
Axel Bruns
Dr Axel Bruns teaches and conducts research about online publishing, electronic creative writing, online communities, creative industries, and popular music in the Creative Industries Faculty of Queensland University of Techology, Brisbane, Australia. He is a founding editor of the premier online academic publication M/C - Media and Culture www.media-culture.org.au, and of dotlit: The Online Journal of Creative Writing www.dotlit.qut.edu.au
His book Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production is forthcoming from Peter Lang, New York, in 2005. It analyses a major new genre of online news, information and discussion Websites including Indymedia, Slashdot, and the growing range of news-related Weblogs and provides a wide, systematic perspective on gatewatching and open news. He is currently editing Uses of Blogs, a scholarly collection of articles on blogs and blogging, with Joanne Jacobs; this book is forthcoming from Peter Lang in 2006. More information on his research can be found on his Website at
snurb.info.
Trebor Scholz
molodiez.org
distributedcreativity.org
NewMediaEducation.org : Webcamtalk with Trebor Scholz (USA) on Saturday 16th of April at 16:00
Kiasma ground floor seminar room.