Seth Keen

Michael Dieter gave a guest lecture in Networked Media this week on Social Networking. These are my notes and perspective. He was quick to point out how the concept of “networked individualism …hyper-individualism” seems to become the precedent – a centric, narcissitic approach that contradicts the community potential of social software. His image of a friends wheel off Facebook was a good visual example of this concept. The MySpace celebrity sites Tila Tequila and Jeremy Jackson also provided prime examples. It was intriguing to hear that MySpace paid Tila to come across from Friendster and bring here 40,000 odd network. Overall, a concept that filtered through from Manuel Castells trilogy of books on ‘Network Societies’.

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.

• Automatic image annotation – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  A wikipedia reference for thinkng about the process of anotating video clips.
  (tags: videodefunct tagging annotation taxonomy)
• Participatory Media Literacy / Participatory Media Literacy
  This wiki-based curriculum combines texts that address the social, political, economic, cultural aspects of participatory media with practical instructions in the use of each medium.
  (tags: postindustrialmedia, networkliteracies, medialiteracies, pim, participatorymedia)

An extensive Snurblog post that examines social networking aspects of Ning and Facebook.

So in essence, Facebook’s enforced flattening of the complexities of social relationships into a binary yes/no choice dilutes the salience of its social network to the point of uselessness…And indeed, I guess, ultimately that’s what it is: a vortex, a maelstrom, a sinkhole – an insidious system for luring as many users as possible into taking up Facebook membership, for ensnaring their data trails, and for monetising their online activities.

Additional resource: Axel Bruns – Who controls the means of produsage?

We the pimmers (post-industrial media) meet to do some wiki garderning on the pim wiki. We discussed seeing a wiki as a non-architecture entity that is link driven. Adrian suggested that we needed to think of a “promicious linking” where as you write you think about what could be written into that writing as way to be constantly cross-referencing. Following this process it is OK to have “redundancy and a bit of repetition” occurring. The pim wiki has been skinned and rearranged after our first retreat in Daylesford. There is a ‘all pages in the wiki‘ page which is great for seeing all the content in the wiki. We also re-worked the PIMcategory page which can be accessed via ‘all pages in the wiki.’ These categories can be seen as tags and we aimed to set up a tagging process as we write.

Resources:
http://media.rmit.edu.au/projects/pim/index.php/PIMWikiPattern
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/Wikipatterns
wiki formatting

Technorati Tags: digtial media, teaching

I have got most of the clips into the ‘Glasshouse Birdman’ prototype and are now starting to look at how the categories and tags work in terms of how I would like the user to engage with the themes that have emerged in the content. I realised that clips could be kept in separate categories by controlling cross-overs with tag names, but sometimes a clip has something to offer in other categories. For example, giving a clip a tag name that features strongly in another category brings all those clips from that category across with it into the original category that has been selected. Often from my perspective this makes the theme to random if this is not the desired effect. One way around this within this interface design is to post the same clip twice with the same title but in a different category and with a different tag name.

category = birdman; tag = animal lover; clip title = big brown snake

category = feeding; tag = aviary; clip title = big brown snake

This means clips can be repeated to appear elsewhere while still having some control over themes. In a hidden kind of way clips that seemed more important that others could be repeated to appear in a number of places. Repetition becomes a feature of the narrative structure.

Chris let me know recently about a online documentary that he made titled ‘Thumb Candy’ on SMS text culture in the Philipphines that he put together within a blog. He gives Videodefunct a plug on the More about the project page as being an influence on using tagging and a blog to classify the video content.

The SIAB people have released a number of wordpress blog themes customised for publishing video:

The Video Producer theme series will feature WordPress themes that are designed from the ground up to break the “blog diary” format and allow video creators to display their work differently from what is usually seen on most blogs, while retaining the flexibility and functionality that the WordPress core already provides.

After some recent writing on videodefunct about what it is, I recognised even more the work VD is doing as part of a growing movement towards customised video themes for blogs. I see in the distant future a plethora of choices as this development becomes more and more accessible.

http://www.blogherald.com/2008/04/09/flickr-gets-video-but-just-for-90-seconds/

Flickr has launched its long awaited video feature, and it’s an interesting addition. First of all, all videos are limited to 90 seconds, and secondly, only pro users can upload videos (everyone can view and embed them though). Why is that?

wikipedia participatory video definition:

Participatory Video (PV) is a set of techniques to involve a group or community in shaping and creating their own film. The idea behind this is that making a video is easy and accessible, and is a great way of bringing people together to explore issues, voice concerns or simply to be creative and tell stories. It is therefore primarily about process, though high quality and accessible films (products) can be created using these methods if that is a desired outcome. This process can be very empowering, enabling a group or community to take their own action to solve their own problems, and also to communicate their needs and ideas to decision-makers and/or other groups and communities. As such, PV can be a highly effective tool to engage and mobilise marginalised people, and to help them to implement their own forms of sustainable development based on local needs.

Lisa Gye posted this open book example ‘The Googlization of Everything’ by Siva Vaidhyanathanto to the fc list. The author Siva Vaidhyanathan uses the open book process (Institute for the Future of the Book) to critique Google. The book is a “book blog” and Vaidhyanathanto lays out some major research questions in the summary:

This blog, the result of a collaboration between myself and the Institute for the Future of the Book, is dedicated to exploring the process of writing a critical interpretation of the actions and intentions behind the cultural behemoth that is Google, Inc. The book will answer three key questions: What does the world look like through the lens of Google?; How is Google’s ubiquity affecting the production and dissemination of knowledge?; and how has the corporation altered the rules and practices that govern other companies, institutions, and states?

Vaidhyanathanto’s other books – Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity (New York University Press, 2001) and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (Basic Books, 2004). The about on the Institute for the Future of the Book:

We’re a small think-and-do tank investigating the evolution of intellectual discourse as it shifts from printed pages to networked screens.