Trebor’s blip video lecture - Embedding Social Media in the Liberal Arts Classroom

Trebor on slideshare

Notes as I browsed the slides (generally in the order as they where presented)

micro-blogging

A Twitter poetry slam that may tie in with the PP2 studio APC project, PROD.

http://twitter.com/poetry
tweetworks
yammer
lulu – self publishing

Student video journalism africa trip competition. Includes essay with video clip and use of YouTube.

Video essays on YouTube UC Irvine Liz Losh course YouTube on YouTube
Is An “Academic Blog” An Oxymoron? – Liz Losh – part one
Liz Losh’s blog virtualpolitik
Liz’s Digital Rhetoric website
Amusing – 22 short films about Grammar

sharewidely “Sharewidely supports collaborative research in the area of new media art and education.”
Screenflow – looks like one up on iShowU (need to check it out and compare)
Stanford University open hours office on facebook – an open office time made available on facebook for students to drop by and chat.
Seesmic used for video discussions of readings
Trebor on librarything.org a place to provide readings, reviews etc for students and researchers.
Social Media Classroom
Zoho creator – for “reading and sharing a large number of articles” – includes summaries from students as a collection on a particular reading or readings
A reference for the LP project.
Google Lit Trips

This site is an experiment in teaching great literature in a very different way. Using Google Earth, students discover where in the world the greatest road trip stories of all time took place…

twtpoll
tweetgrid – real-time updating dashboard of tweets

authors @ google and YouTube mix

netvibes use as a way to bring all education together into one customised interface – browser window.

friendfeed
mogulus video live streaming used for archiving university lectures

Oxford Internet Institute: webcast

Here you will find webcasts of the Internet pioneers, scholars and regulators who have spoken at the Oxford Internet Institute, covering areas such as: social media, internet regulation, safety and security online, e-government and democracy, civil society, open access, e-learning, citizen journalism, and the future of the Internet itself.

Blip.tv used to videocast lectures – Trebor’s blip channel

One of the advantages of online distribution which I can control is that I don’t have to permanently fix the book’s contents. Like contemporary software and web services, the book can change as often as I like, with new “features” and “big fixes” added periodically. I plan to take advantage of these possibilities. From time to time, I will be adding new material and making changes and corrections to the text.

So, like an rss feed I will need to go back for updates.

There is no content on the web!
on the web, content is a king (stripped naked)
content is everybody, content is communities…
content is creating accounts
sign in, sign out, log in, log out
passwords, more passwords…
content is social, content is friends, fans
content is connecting, networking, linking, traffic…
sharing, embedding, uploading, downloading…
content is comments…
searching, searching, searching
content is naming, tagging, categorising
favourites…love this track!
content is channels, playlists, slideshows, sets
organising…content is management…
content is piracy, bootlegging, plagiarism
copy, copy, copy
all rights reserved, attribution, non-commercial, no derivative works, share-alike, public domain…open…copyright…
content is dirty, noisy, messy
cheap, amateur, trash
content is remixing, cut n’ paste
content is user-generated
on the web, content is no king, it is a pawn (in virtual drag)

antisocial notworking is a repository of projects that explore the pseudo-agency of online social platforms. It takes a number of recent software projects as its inspiration to reflect upon the fashion for ‘participation’ with the arts sector and culture in general. The concern is how the Internet is increasingly charactised as a ‘platform’ (or collective machine) for ‘social’ uses, but to question what is meant by the term social in such descriptions. Although social networking platforms rely on user-generated content, what is the nature of this participation? What alternatives (or antitheses) can be identified?

extended notes and essay.

I got this link from Geert’s critique of this video, ‘Michael Wesch Takes On YouTube’ on the video vortex list and in that critique he mentioned the book reference: James Elkens, Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction.

Following is my perspective, notes and ideas that where generated by this presentation. The POOL is an R&D initiative for the ABC and is being built around a philosophy of open content and open source.

In relation to specifics I was interested in work being done around licensing and the site default setting of the most restrictive Creative Commons license. Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). It is good to see these license options including all rights reserved and public domain. Blip tv for example runs the same options and is known in the online video domain to be far more respectful of licensing than YouTube for example. Also, the ABC seem to be working hard to create an even playing field with the content providers where any rights over content on the POOL is reduced to a minimum.

The key here seems to be about respecting attribution with the POOL also looking at how they can track content right through to a remix. A process of geotagging which is starting to be reflected in the metadata that is being added to content as it is uploaded. Correcting this geotagging is a concept the POOL would like to look into down the track. The current tracking and tagging of content is included in the drupal upload form. Operating on another level below content tagging there seems to be a method of classification being used to work out what and who uploaded content in terms of the author and specifics of that content. The Drupal system provides the functionality needed to create these types of automated processes with users and very specific forms. In the content tagging on uploading content onto POOL having default categories to chose from creates a delineated type of categorisation in combination with more user-generated type approaches. Drupal signalling may also be worked in over time. A functionality that responds to individual users engagement with the site.

Jacobs pointed out that a remix, a derivative work can in the context of the POOL and further publication on other ABC platforms, be created by as little as adding fade in and outs. It is useful to acknowledge that a subtle change like this to someone’s content could constitute a remix. The POOL has used a .org domain name http://www.pool.org.au/ to reorientate this intiative into the non-proft arena and create some simpatico with open content/opens source communities.

Questioned on gatekeeping and editorial control of content added to the POOL, Jacobs explained that they are working with social media mechanisms that encourage the users to be involved in this process. Where users get to flag what they see as being problem content and at the same time comment on what they consider to be good. The idea is to work on a bottom-up approach where the good material floats forward. There are plans to add a forum, for example.

Also, an aim with the architecture is to create cross-referencing systems that let people see related content. A similar aim in the video blogging community that I have written about in the post hammering vlogs. Jacobs described how the POOL producers had contacted a couple of people who had submitted works, with suggested alterations due to sensitive issues in these pieces. A subtle form of gatekeeping compared to pulling the content off all together.

In fact what I find interesting is the relationship the POOL is setting up with ABC prosumers through specific call outs. People submitting content can get feedback on their work from experienced media producers. From a teirtary education perspective this is where the POOL offers something different, providing a link between the ABC and students/teachers engaged in media training. In the past the ABC as public broadcaster and university media departments generally operate in islolation from each other, apart from traditional work placements. Having the potential to develop dialogue between professional media producers and students around content and social media offers a more level situation for both parties to learn from each other.

The other thing I picked up on is the way the call outs are run to get the public interested in contributing content. Jacobs was reluctant to call these ‘comptetitions’ and I agree with him when you see the way this term has been used and applied by a number of social media sites to generate content and solicit traffic . I also see the competition idea relating too much with the big brother/pop idol mentality of TV where there is always a loser and a winner. I think the idea of there being a best work in a user-generated environment dissolves to a large degree, with the focus shifting to what is relevant for the user and what they are interested in specifically. This goes against the YouTube or Google search process of whatever has the most contact with users rises to the top.

Also, the project ‘call outs’ on the POOL in most cases are targeted around specific ABC programs with the idea that they may generate content for those programs. Like ‘My Street’ for example, the POOL call out and the Radio National program ‘Street Stories‘. Even though this is a radio program the POOL decided to run with all types of rich media in response to these call outs, rather than just audio in this example. I was interested to know whether a photo, writing or a video submitted to this call out was taken up for adaption in some way by the Street Stories producers, as there is the potential to uncover all sorts of stories when a program brief is opened up to the public. There is so many successful examples of user-generated content being driven around very specific constrained briefs. i.e squared circle on flickr.

Another idea is whether the content uploaded around this theme/callout could be curated into other types of public media. For example a short series of videos for ABC 2; A photo gallery of images that shifts to the Street Stories website making a direct connection between the POOL and the Radio National program. In an online environment there are many ways to look at what might constitute public broadcasting and direct publishing. Finally, what might eventuate is scenarios where the public come up with program ideas in reverse. Like what has been happening on open source radio.

Also, he debunked the idea that websites like Facebook and MySpace actually provide young people with a free space to engage with peers without an authoritative figure in the background. Instead these spaces become places that he described as being governed by “corporate surveillance”, where a key economic objective is the monitoring of users personal information and purchasing habits for marketing purposes. This is the selling and distribution of this information to third party operatives. Facebook Beacon is an example that uses specific documentation in UGC content as a means to promote ‘Behavioural Forward Advertising’- Behavioural targeting (wikipedia). A confronting interview by 60 minutes with the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on this development. The distribution of private content in this context to friends networks is used for economic gain.

He also touched on the historical development of Social Network Sites based on the article danah boyd and Nicole Ellison, ‘Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship’.

Aesthetics in terms of design where also covered with the ironic note of PCWorld voting MySpace as the worst design on the Internet in 2006. MySpace in comparison to the early Friendster website opened up the HTML and CSS for users to customise which caused a proliferation of competing and fashionable design responses amongst users. A notion he demonstrated in the MySpace celebrity examples above.

A current key figure in terms of research on the social networking field is Danah Boyd who is in the process of completing her PhD at Berkeley. Note, Boyd also acts as a commercial consultant to Yahoo.

Fred Scharman a MA post-graduate produced a critique on Boyd’s perspective in the essay, You Must be Logged in to Do That!: MySpace and Control. I could not help noting that key figures researching and providing valid critique on social networking are post-graduate students.

Dieter finished the presentation with a reference to the Greg Elmer book Profiling Machines: Mapping the Personal Information Economy which critically examines for example, the mythical notion that contributing UCG is a voluntary process that is not constantly being monitored.

A Comedy Central video (February 15, 2006) ‘Trendspotting, Social networking sites are loaded with sexual predators; more importantly they’re loaded with sexual prey’, by Demetri Martin provides an amusing perspective.