On Friday evening I attended and spoke at the ‘Future of Journalism’, an event organised by the Media Alliance & Walkley Foundation which was styled as a “Blueprint for progress”, featuring healthy discussion and debate about the future of paid journalism and, amongst other topical issues, whether news consumers would actually start paying for content they’ve already been enjoying for free.

I was part of the final panel for the night, joining Ralph Nicholson (formerly with Reuters, now the publisher and editor of The Beach Times, a free newspaper in Costa Rica), Jo McManus (who has 30 years experience as a journalist and now lectures the next generation at ECU/WAAPA), and Australian political blogger William Bowe (the Poll Bludger) for a very spirited conversation chaired by Jonathan Este, the Media Alliance’s director of communication.  We were briefed that the discussion would be pretty informal, which held true, but it was very wide-ranging, discussing everything from possible business models for online news through to the role of social media and blogging both by, and in opposition to, traditional journalists.

From the outset, I should by saying I have no idea what the best business model for journalism is in the online age, but I am quite certain it is not putting all content back behind a paywall.  That way, I’d suggest, lies disaster, one the reasons for which I outline a little below. 

There isn’t time to touch on everything that was discussed, but I wanted to re-visit three points that were raised during our panel (or earlier, and to which our panel then responded):

[1] The relationship between bloggers and paid journalists.  For whatever reason, the ‘bloggers’ (or ‘amateur bloggers’ now, since so many journos write blogs) still attract the ire of professional journalists because the bloggers are seen as a vast, untrained, amateur army of low-quality content creators who aren’t bound by a code of ethics but do get read by people who should be reading proper journalism.  To be fair, many of the people who spoke didn’t share this view, but at least a few did, and there were plenty of barbed asides to be heard.  Let me reiterate what I said on the night: there are certainly some bloggers who write as well as journalists, are just as ethically-driven as good journalists and who can research and investigate as well as paid and trained journalists. However, the vast majority of bloggers do not consider themselves journalists, do not seek to compete with journalists and still value (and enjoy) quality journalism done by paid professionals.  Despite what Rupert Murdoch might now believe, bloggers are not the enemy and those who do engage in debate with, or commentary on, professional journalism are usually amongst the strongest supporters of good journalism as a profession.  Indeed, a  blog post written by blogger and journalist Steven Johnson back in 2006 called ‘Five Things All Sane People Agree On About Blogs And Mainstream Journalism (So Can We Stop Talking About Them Now?)’ did a far more elegant job of making this point. Perhaps a few more people should read it.

[2] Digital media tools are not names to be feared, but rather processes than can be readily understood.  There were a lot of comments from old hands in the industry about the difficulty keeping up with the latest new technology – the main mentions were MySpace to Facebook, and now to Twitter.  MySpace, Facebook and Twitter all share many commonalities: they’re all about making sharing ideas, conversations, links and media (broadly defined).  Rather than asking how Facebook is different from MySpace, or Twitter different from the first two, what might be more fruitful is to ask what the latest technology does that’s similar to something you are familiar with.  Rather than treating Twitter as something new, and thus something alien, if it’s examined as primarily replicating the conversational style of Facebook, but without anything else from that platform (including those annoying applications) then you start to come to terms with what it is.  Sure, it takes a little while to become familiar with a new tool, but starting to use these tools, rather than spending copious time fearing them and lamenting all these new-fangled technologies, is surely a better use of peoples’ time. Many journalists have embraced Twitter, for example, and it’s paying real dividends.  It is, of course, important to verify any ‘facts’ gathered via Twitter, but that’s true of each and every source. During our panel I suggested that people interested in journalism can become part of the media conversation long before they become active professionals or even before any formal training using social media tools – tomorrow’s journalists can sharpen the skills they’ll need via Facebook, Twitter or whatever comes next, and that should, in my opinion, be seen as an asset.

[3] The relationship between social media and news. Many more entrenched journalists seem to think that social media tools, like blogging or Twitter, might be valuable since they let journalists talk to their audience, but they still seem to see the gap between themselves and the audience as a chasm; their audience, by contrast, is increasingly thinking of themselves as participating in a conversation, and often a conversation amongst equals.  That doesn’t mean everyone thinks they’re a journalist, but the era when journalists were set apart by their training and ethics has by and large ended thanks to a lot of very bad journalism in the world and a lot of very smart people in that audience. Indeed, the word audience might just need to be rethought altogether. As Dan Gillmor, amongst others, have eloquently described the change: “Journalism is evolving from a lecture to a conversation, and the first rule of good conversation is to listen.” This, incidentally, is the main reason I think putting news behind a paywall will fail: stopping people from participating in the conversation about the news you report or create will reduce the impact and spread of that news.

A different way of thinking about this is that many people engage with news not by visiting a newspaper’s website, but by coming across a link via Google or, increasingly, a link that a friend or contact has posted using a social media tool.  These are conversational contexts, and any media links posted in these contexts are seen as things to be discussed. In the coming months, this will be even more pronounced thanks to Google’s newest invention, Google Wave.  As I understand it, Google Wave is about taking all of the disparate bits of conversation that can happen using online communication tools and making it possible to retain and continue the conversations, regardless of where it starts (be that email, a blog, or wherever else).  Thus, for Google Wave, conversation is content.  While we’ll need to see how Google Wave works once it’s officially launched, we know today that newspapers are already put in a lot of effort into trying to gain solid Google rankings. In the coming months, that may very well involve being more conscious of news as a conversation rather than a lecture.  I can understand how that might sound daunting to journalists and the industry, but figuring out how to be part of more conversations may very well be part of successful business models for the quality journalists of tomorrow.

Those points aside, I must admit I enjoyed that Future of Journalism event; the very fact that the night was organised shows that news journalists in Australia are trying to figure out new, sustainable ways of plying their trade in the digital age.  Moreover, while there were definitely a few dinosaurs in the room, some of the newer faces of journalism, including Tim Burrowes from mUmBrella (his response to the event here), and Stephen Brook from the Guardian, showed that many journalists are definitely already in tune with the tides of the digital world in which they operate.

[Photo: ‘Dead sea newspaper’; CC BY SA]

Local citizen journalism evangelist, Bronwen Clune, often describes the news media corporations and mechanisms as ‘control media’.  While this is certainly a striking expression, and no doubt fair when thinking about the likes of Rupert Murdoch, I’ve wondered if it’s at times a bit of a harsh brush with which to paint the news media in general .  However, the Associated Press (AP) seems to be doing out its way to take the idea of control media literally, which has not been embraced by the interwebs at large; AP recently described a system of Digital Rights Management (DRM) to police the uses of its news content online.  Their explanatory graphic and been, how shall we say, reinterpreted by the public they’re expecting to pay for AP’s services:

[Source for the top half of the image: AP’s Press Release “Associated Press to build news registry to protect content”; source for the full image: “What the AP really meant to convey”. Via Boing Boing]

At the same time, Chris Anderson on the promotion trail for his new book Free, has been enjoying himself by being as provocative as possible in interviews (conducted, oddly enough, by journalists).  For example:

In the past, the media was a full-time job. But maybe the media is going to be a part-time job. Maybe media won’t be a job at all, but will instead be a hobby. There is no law that says that industries have to remain at any given size. Once there were blacksmiths and there were steelworkers, but things change. The question is not should journalists have jobs. The question is can people get the information they want, the way they want it? The marketplace will sort this out. If we continue to add value to the Internet we’ll find a way to make money. But not everything we do has to make money.

While change is definitely in the air, suggesting that journalism is a redundant profession is going too far.  We need good journalism; we need people who are willing to take risks and invest huge amounts of time into investigative reporting; and they need to be paid.  I’m not suggesting the status quo even means anything any more, and the last few years have definitely forced the news industry to decide whether it’s just an entertainment business or something more, but amongst all of that I think we need to try and figure out sustainable models that support journalism (but not sensationalism).  I think unpaid citizen journalism and random acts of journalism by netizens will definitely play a significant role in the news media landscape that’s developing, but I don’t every think the culmination of citizen journalism will ever be enough by itself.  I can’t live without the ABC or SBS, and I’m delighted they’re mainly government funded, but I know that’s not the only answer.  And I also realise that answers aren’t readily available yet.  We should, however, be looking for them.  While the news industry is definitely having a rough time, and the future is uncertain, I also don’t think AP’s approach hard core ‘lock it all up’ approach, or Anderson’s dismissive suggestion the all journalists need to get real jobs and write news as a hobby, are really helping the debate.  Not one little bit.

Clay Shirky’s ‘Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable’ has been getting a fair amount of attention in the past few days and his central point is ringing true for most people: the traditional revenue model of the newspaper is so dead that it might just be time to admit that in many cases news will need to find (a) new platform(s) of choice.  It is worth noting, though, that Shirky is not downplaying the important role journalists have to play in our society; what he has resoundingly challenged is whether collecting their daily output on printed paper has much of a future.  Indeed, Shirky’s conclusion is worth noting:

Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.

When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.

I concur; the world at large needs good journalism, but many good journalists will need to find a new home and it’s likely a new medium, too.  On March 12, the New York Times posted this visualisation:

You’ll have to click and see the enlarged version to read the text, but the brown and beige circles show declining circulation numbers for US newspapers; blue circles show increases (there are very few blue dots).  The US is a country of brown and beige dots.  The fact that neither Shirky nor anyone else knows what should come next is an important tension.  For those currently making a living working for newspapers who are laying off staff, this is a really immediate tension and, to be honest, I’m glad I’m not in those shoes.  For society more broadly, the question of where we get our news, and whether we’re willing to pay anything for it – either personally or through an organisation we support, or even through government funding – is something we do need to consider. I have to say, I’m feeling more protective than ever of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and SBS and have no qualms whatsoever about some fraction of my taxes supporting both.  And sitting at a point of convergence of the best traditional journalism and web 2.0 platforms have to offer, I’m glad that people like Margaret Simons are finding new ways to keep the fourth estate alive and well.  (And to be fair, there is still a lot of quality journalism out there … it just too often gets buried behind the bleeding leads.) 

For Perth folks, the paucity of our current choice in newspapers has been obvious for a long time; we only have one and it has spent almost all credibility it ever had.  A new editor is on board now, but it’ll take a lot before The West holds any serious sway or has most people read it for anything other than the TV Guide and Saturday classifieds.  In a well timed move, Perth’s citizen journalism advocate, Brownen Clune, has just relaunched her own web presence, hitting the ground running a provocative post entitled ‘The Emperor’s New Media’ which argues that many journalists lack credibility, and the profession overall is in disrepute, leaving little wonder why so many folks don’t want to pay to read it anymore:

Can we be so quick to blame the business models of newspapers (selling advertisements) when people won’t miss the service (news) they are providing? For years journalists have been regarded alongside used-car salesmen as the least trustworthy profession and every journalist has certainly experienced the polite disdain from strangers when you tell them what you do.

There is something very wrong with the media and the quality of journalism has a lot to do with it. “News” has become so devalued that people are not willing to pay for it.

Bronwen’s post has attracted some spirited comments from Fairfax journo Nick Miller (continuing an older debate, really) who does remind us that Perth certainly hasn’t really developed much of an alternative model as yet (and Bronwen’s PerthNorg, which is valuable, relies a great deal on filtered content created by the mainstream newspapers).  But to return to Shirky’s point, we need more experiments, like PerthNorg, which are willing to try and find new ways to connect journalists of various types with audiences. 

In terms of the quality of journalism out there, there’s definitely appetite for more transparent reporting and for reporting that returns more clearly to the notion of the fourth estate; keeping the average citizen informed is, after all, the aim.  If nothing else, the fact that Jon Stewart and The Daily Show (a comedy show!) managed to get so many tongues wagging in the US recently when they went after CNBC’s ethics, and then Jim Cramer in particular when he took issue with Stewart’s criticism, shows that there is real desire for a more robust sense of the fourth estate (even if many people don’t recognise the term any more).  As The Washington Post put it:

Jon Stewart has amassed a passionate following over the years as a sharp-edged satirist, the man who punctures the balloons of the powerful with a caustic candor that reporters cannot muster. As public furor over the economic meltdown rises, the Comedy Central star has turned not just his humor but also his full-throated outrage against financial journalists who he says aided and abetted the likes of Bear Stearns, AIG and Citigroup — especially those who work for the nation’s top business news channel.  Stewart morphed into a populist avenging angel this week, demanding to know why CNBC and its most manic personality, Jim Cramer, failed to warn the public about the risky Wall Street conduct that triggered the financial crisis.

Okay, ‘avenging angel’ might be a bit over-the-top, but Stewart has, in my opinion, re-energised the question of journalistic ethics and, if nothing else, we can see responses like Fix CNBC http://fixcnbc.com/; while the sentiment is noble, perhaps, like, Fix the Newspapers, we need to hope for more?

Links for January 16th 2009 through January 18th 2009:

• At First, Funny Videos. Now, a Reference Tool [NYTimes.com] – YouTube as #2 search engine? Googlopoly clearly progressing according to plan: “The explosion of all types of video content on YouTube and other sites is quickly transforming online video from a medium strictly for entertainment and news into one that is also a reference tool. As a result, video search, on YouTube and across other sites, is rapidly morphing into a new entry point into the Web, one that could rival mainstream search for many types of queries. … And now YouTube, conceived as a video hosting and sharing site, has become a bona fide search tool. Searches on it in the United States recently edged out those on Yahoo, which had long been the No. 2 search engine, behind Google. (Google, incidentally, owns YouTube.) In November, Americans conducted nearly 2.8 billion searches on YouTube, about 200 million more than on Yahoo, according to comScore.”
• Hudson River plane crash [Kottke] – Detailed wrapu-up of the citizen journalist (and some mainstream media) responses to teh Hudson River plan crash. Twitter and Flickr excel. [Via BBoing]
• U.S. Airways Crash Rescue Picture: Citizen Journalism, Twitter At Work [Slicon Valley Insider] – Twitter as a citizen journalism platform: “Janis Krums from Sarasota, Florida posts the first photo of U.S. Airways flight 1549 on Twitter from his iPhone. Thirty-four minutes after Janis posted his photo, MSNBC interviewed him live on TV as a witness …”

Links for January 14th 2009 through January 15th 2009:

• Gurunomics – Crowdsourcing the “Social Media Revolution” Revolution – Gurunomics – the social media revolution (satire) you had to have. I think.
• Turning Down Uploads at Google Video [Official Google Video Blog] – Google finally gets around to the slow, painful, drawn out murder of Google Video (why it’s still active today I have no idea): “In a few months, we will discontinue support for uploads to Google Video. Don’t worry, we’re not removing any content hosted on Google Video — this just means you will no longer be able to upload new content to the service. We’ve always maintained that Google Video’s strength is in the search technology that makes it possible for people to search videos from across the web, regardless of where they may be hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide.” (They’re also killing Jaiku, apparently.)
• Doctor Who Opening Credits, Firefly Style [YouTube] – When fandoms collide, creativity can result!
• Weak Password Brings ‘Happiness’ to Twitter Hacker [Threat Level from Wired.com] – “An 18-year-old hacker with a history of celebrity pranks has admitted to Monday’s hijacking of multiple high-profile Twitter accounts, including President-Elect Barack Obama’s, and the official feed for Fox News. The hacker, who goes by the handle GMZ, told Threat Level on Tuesday he gained entry to Twitter’s administrative control panel by pointing an automated password-guesser at a popular user’s account. The user turned out to be a member of Twitter’s support staff, who’d chosen the weak password “happiness.” Cracking the site was easy, because Twitter allowed an unlimited number of rapid-fire log-in attempts. “I feel it’s another case of administrators not putting forth effort toward one of the most obvious and overused security flaws,” he wrote in an IM interview. “I’m sure they find it difficult to admit it.”"
• Ten things every journalist should know in 2009 [Journalism.co.uk - Editors' Blog] – “1. How to use Twitter to build communities, cover your beat, instigate and engage in conversations.
  2. How to use RSS feeds to gather news …
  3. That there is a difference between link journalism and ‘cut and paste’ journalism (aka plagiarism). …
  4. That your readers are smarter than you think. …
  5. That churnalism is much easier to spot online. …
  6. Google is your friend. But if you are not using advanced search techniques, you really have no idea what it is capable of.
  7. You do not have to own, or even host, the technology to innovate in journalism and engage your readers. …
  8. Multimedia for multimedia’s sake rarely works, and is often embarrassing. If you are going to do it, either do it well enough so it works as a standalone item or do …
  9. How to write search engine friendly journalism. …
  10. Learn more about privacy.”
• Report Finds Online Threats to Children Overblown [NYTimes.com] – “The Internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all. A high-profile task force created by 49 state attorneys general to find a solution to the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem, despite years of parental anxieties and media hype. The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was charged with examining the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that older adults were using these popular sites to deceive and prey on children. But the report compared such fears to a “moral panic” and concluded that the problem of child-on-child bullying, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults. “

Links for December 30th 2008 through January 1st 2009:

• Principles for a New Media Literacy by Dan Gillmor, 27 December 2008 [Center for Citizen Media] – “Principles of Media Creation: 1. Do your homework, and then do some more. … 2. Get it right, every time. … 3. Be fair to everyone. … 4. Think independently, especially of your own biases. … 5. Practice and demand transparency.”"We are doing a poor job of ensuring that consumers and producers of media in a digital age are equipped for these tasks. This is a job for parents and schools. (Of course, a teacher who teaches critical thinking in much of the United States risks being attacked as a dangerous radical.) Do they have the resources — including time — that they need? But this much is clear: If we really believe that democracy requires an educated populace, we’re starting from a deficit. Are we ready to take the risk of being activist media users, for the right reasons? A lot rides on the answer.”
• Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies by Howard Rheingold [Freesouls, ed. Joi Ito] – “Literacy−access to the codes and communities of vernacular video, microblogging, social bookmarking, wiki collaboration−is what is required to use that infrastructure to create a participatory culture. A population with broadband infrastructure and ubiquitous computing could be a captive audience for a cultural monopoly, given enough bad laws and judicial rulings. A population that knows what to do with the tools at hand stands a better chance of resisting enclosure. The more people who know how to use participatory media to learn, inform, persuade, investigate, reveal, advocate and organize, the more likely the future infosphere will allow, enable and encourage liberty and participation. Such literacy can only make action possible, however−it is not in the technology, or even in the knowledge of how to use it, but in the ways people use knowledge and technology to create wealth, secure freedom, resist tyranny.
• How to Do Everything with PDF Files [Adobe PDF Guide] – Pretty much anything you can imagine needing to do with PDF files, without needing to buy Acrobat!
• The 100 Most Popular Photoshop Tutorials 2008 [Photoshop Lady] – Many useful photoshop tutorials from fancy fonts to montages and entirely new creations!
• Israel posts video of Gaza air strikes on YouTube [Australian IT] – THE Israeli military has launched its own channel on video-sharing website YouTube, posting footage of air strikes and other attacks on Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. The spokesman’s office of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it created the channel — youtube.com/user/idfnadesk — on Monday to “help us bring our message to the world.” The channel currently has more than 2,000 subscribers and hosts 10 videos, some of which have been viewed more than 20,000 times. The black-and-white videos include aerial footage of Israeli Air Force attacks on what are described as rocket launching sites, weapons storage facilities, a Hamas government complex and smuggling tunnels. One video shows what is described as a Hamas patrol boat being destroyed by a rocket fired from an Israeli naval vessel.”
• No terminating the Terminator … ever [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “Time will not be allowed to terminate The Terminator, the US Library of Congress said overnight. The low-budget 1984 action film, which spawned the popular catchphrase “I’ll be back”, was one of 25 movies listed for preservation by the library for their cultural, historic or aesthetic significance. Other titles included The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Deliverance (1972), A Face in the Crowd (1957), In Cold Blood (1967) and The Invisible Man (1933). The library said it selected The Terminator for preservation because of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s star-making performance as a cyborg assassin, and because the film stands out in the science fiction genre. “It’s withstood the test of time, like King Kong in a way, a film that endures because it’s so good,” Patrick Loughney, who runs the Library of Congress film vault, said.”
• Webisodes Bridge Gaps in NBC Series [NYTimes.com] – Takes a look at the late 2008/early 2009 webisodes from NBC (particularly for Heroes and Battlestar Galactica) and the way these online stories are used to keep fans engaged with television series (or, really, television-spawned franchises) during breaks.
• Nintendo to offer videos on Wii [WA Today] – “Nintendo will start offering videos through its blockbuster Wii game console, the latest new feature for the Japanese entertainment giant. Nintendo said it would develop original programming which Wii users could access via the internet and watch on their television. It is considering videos for both free and fees. The game giant teamed up with Japan’s leading advertising firm Dentsu to develop the service, which will begin in Japan next year, with an eye on future expansion into foreign markets.”

Links for December 16th 2008:

• The writer’s guide to making a digital living [Australia Council for the Arts] – “The writer’s guide was developed through the Australia Council’s Story of the Future project to explore the craft and business of writing in the digital era. It includes case studies from Australia’s rising generation of poets, novelists, screenwriters, games writers and producers who are embracing new media and contains audio and video content from seminars and workshops, as well as extensive references to resouces in Australia and beyond.” (The online presentation is great, but you can also download the full guide as a PDF and watch the hilarious introductory video.)
• YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money [NYTimes.com] – Making videos for YouTube — for three years a pastime for millions of Web surfers — is now a way to make a living. Michael Buckley quit his day job in September. He says his online show is “silly,” but it helped pay off credit-card debt. One year after YouTube, the online video powerhouse, invited members to become “partners” and added advertising to their videos, the most successful users are earning six-figure incomes from the Web site. For some, like Michael Buckley, the self-taught host of a celebrity chatter show, filming funny videos is now a full-time job.”
• A “Run” of William Gibson’s “Agrippa” Poem from a Copy of Original 1992 Agrippa Diskette [The Agrippa Files] – A video capture of William Gibson’s infamous self-destroying poem Agrippa – to read it, you had to erase it! Amazing stuff.
• Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of 2008 [TorrentFreak] – Surprising no one, The Dark Knight is the most pirated movie of 2008, but how did The Bank Job end up at #3 given it took less than $US 65 million at the box office? The match between downloads and box office figures seems vague, at best!
• News About the News Business, in 140 Characters [NYTimes.com] – “With staff changes and reductions across the media industry, even a blog post can be too time-consuming a way to announce who is in and out of a job. That is why a public relations employee turned to the instant-blogging platform Twitter to create The Media Is Dying, a Twitter feed that documents media hirings and firings in one-sentence bursts of text. “These sorts of layoffs are unheard-of,” said the stream’s founder, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve his sources in the industry. “It’s gotten insane to keep up with who was moving around and changing beats.” Initially, The Media Is Dying was accessible only to select Twitter members, as the feed was intended to help those in the P.R. industry stay on top of the revolving entries in their address books. But requests to be included flooded the founder, who decided to go public three weeks ago.”
• Iran’s bloggers thrive despite blocks [BBC NEWS | World | Middle East] – “With much of the official media controlled by the government or hardline conservatives, the internet has become the favoured way of communicating for Iran’s well-educated and inquisitive younger generation. Go online in Iran and you will find blogs or websites covering every topic under the sun. Politics, of course, but also the arts, Hollywood cinema, women’s issues, women’s sport, pop music. Whisper it quietly, there is even an online dating scene in the Islamic Republic. Day-by-day there is an intriguing cyber-war, as the government wrestles for control of the internet, and Iran’s bloggers wrestle it back. Iran hosts around 65,000 bloggers, and has around 22 million internet users. Not bad for a country in which some remote areas do not yet have mains electricity.”

Links of interest for October 13th 2008:

• Video games and music | Playing along [The Economist] – “As the music industry searches for a new model in the age of digital distribution and internet piracy, it is getting a helping hand from an unexpected quarter: video games such as “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band”, which let people play along to songs on simplified imitation instruments. “These games are revitalising the industry,” says Aram Sinnreich, an industry expert at New York University. “They’re helping as both a revenue and an advertising platform. … Established artists are also using the games to promote their music. Bobby Kotick, Activision’s boss, says Aerosmith have made more money from “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith”, a version of the video-game that features the band, than from any of their albums.” [Via Terry Flew]
• Mainstream News Outlets Start Linking to Other Sites [NYTimes.com] – ” “Thou shalt not link to outside sites” — a long-held commandment of many newsrooms — is eroding. Embracing the hyperlink ethos of the Web to a degree not seen before, news organizations are becoming more comfortable linking to competitors — acting in effect like aggregators.”
• AC/DC Electrify BitTorrent Album Downloads [TorrentFreak] – “AC/DC will release its new album ‘Black Ice’ worldwide on October 20th, in physical format only since the band doesn’t sell its music online. However, the upcoming album has already been digitized by pirates, as it leaked to BitTorrent five days ago. In that time it has taken the trackers by storm, racking up a staggering 400,000 downloads.”

As Axel and Mark have noted, Brisbane will get its turn to debate the The Future of Journalism this Saturday at a one-day symposium bringing journos, media makers, academics, students and more together to debate the issues. If only it wasn’t 3,500kms away … I’d love to be there, and I doubt the Future of Journalism roadshow will be stopping in Perth any time soon. That said, I’m delighted that Perth citizen journalist and citizen media advocate Bronwen Clune will be presenting on Saturday, bring a little perspective from the West coast. In anticipation of that even, I thought it worth pointing out that earlier this month, in the wake of the news Fairfax was axing more than 500 of their staff, Bronwen (who is the creator of PerthNorg) wrote a provocative post entitled ‘A Letter to Love-Stricken Fairfax Journalists’ which asked whether Fairfax was actually the best place for committed journalists today:

If you are one of the journalists standing in a picket line outside The Age and SMH, I have to ask – do you realise how pathetic you look? … David Kirk has made you an offer and is calling for volunteers before compulsory redundancies. Your relationship is clearly strained and here he is giving you a dignified out and you choose to beg him to take you back? Where is your backbone, your fire, your passion for news? Has Fairfax got you so wrapped around its finger that you think the only way you can be a good journalist is to stay with it? Guess what – people produce good news outside of news corporations everyday. And you can too. Take the divorce settlement and learn to stand on your own feet again. You are better off investing in a relationship with your audience – you’ll find it infinitely more rewarding.

Clearly Bronwen wasn’t pulling her punches, and in the heated discussion which ensued the full spectrum of opinions were heard, from those in total agreement to those who completely disagree (with the oft-heard but fair question: where is the business model for citizen journalism?). However, for my money, the most interesting thread was when Fairfax journalist Nick Miller joined in. Miller, also originally from Perth, didn’t bring a knee-jerk reaction, but instead pointed out that journalists are well aware of what’s happening in the industry, but they still need jobs! An excerpt from Nick’s argument:

I get it. You’re on the forefront of digital journalism. You reckon everyone else should be here. Um… they’re not. Yet. And we’re yet to see any proof that this medium can financially support the extent of investigative journalism that mainstream media currently supports. … I challenge you to go through Perthnorg and remove every link to, and every reference to, a story that originated or was sourced in a Fairfax or WAN or News Ltd report (or wire story, which are paid for by mainstream media). Then see what you’ve got left. A lot of gossip, sure. And gossip is often the start of a news story. But it’s not news.

And:

I am passionate for news. And at Fairfax I have found an organisation that backs my quest for good investigative journalism with all the resources that that requires. Time, money, opportunity, logistical support, etc. The luxury of being able to say ”I didn’t file a thing today, but you should see what I’m working on”. I don’t see any online organisation in Australia that will support that kind of journalism – beyond simply giving it a place to be published. Therefore, I think it is the right thing to fight Fairfax in its attempt to reduce that support. I suggest the Norg concept is just as likely to be an online evolutionary dead end as Fairfax’s. We file for The Age online, too, after all. … The medium isn’t the issue. It’s the search for commercial support for the often highly uncommercial occupation of journalism.

While I agree that a lot of what appears on PerthNorg is more like a Digg-style take on other news sources, there is some original content in there (probably around the 10-15% mark, I’d estimate) but Nick does beg the big question of how any citizen journalism portal can support journalists financially (sure, there’s embedded advertising, but that’s more likely to pay the hosting bills and give a modest income to the site’s creator rather than anyone else creating content). Also noteworthy was the point made by another commentator that people employed by Fairfax Digital are not subject to the rights and conditions afforded even normal Fairfax Journalists, suggesting that even the digital portals for big media companies are becoming the cyber-sweatshops of the twenty-first century. There are, of course, a lot more issues at hand so I’m looking forward to hearing reports from the The Future of Journalism in Brisbane … I hope there are some optimistic answers about citizen journalism and mainstream media working together … and at least some people getting paid!

After getting off to a decent start with my blogging about student creativity this year, I seem to have fallen a little behind.  I’ve had this post in draft form for ages, waiting for some insightful commentary to spring forth from my uncooperative brain, but alas, none has emerged so I thought I’d just showcase a few outstanding examples from my Digital Media (Comm2203) unit last semester and let them speak for themselves! While the first Student News assignment in this unit asked students to make a relatively traditional television news-style story (the best of which were screened on local tv), the final project was rather different as it was designed to provoke some hard thinking about digital media more broadly both in form and content.  The outline for the final projects stated:

The Digital Media Project is designed to explore the affordances of digital video and media in an online context. Working in teams (the same as your Student News Project team), students will produce a 3-minute short digital video piece which critically explores an idea, concept or area which was discussed in or, or directly provoked by, the ‘Convergence & Transmedia Storytelling’ or ‘Citizen Journalism and Participatory Culture’ lectures, readings and seminars.

This project emphasizes (a) research in the area of digital media, (b) clarity in communicating and sharing a research-informed perspective or argument about part of the digital media landscape; (c) taking an innovative approach to creating digital media; and (d) technical proficiency in creating digital media.

Given that the first half of the unit was largely practical – many were first-time users of digital video cameras, sound equipment and non-linear editing software – I wondered if introducing conceptual material from the likes of Henry Jenkins and Axel Bruns might overwhelm students; on the contrary, I found almost everyone excelled at combining their newfound practical skills with wider issues and concepts.  All 28 projects submitted were of a high quality, and everyone who took this unit should be proud of their work, but a few really did stand out amongst the rest and are well worth highlighting here.

The first project I want to mention is ‘Citizen Journ vs Traditional Journ‘ which mimics the style of the Mac Vs PC advertisements, with a stop-motion twist, to explore the changing relationship between traditional journalists and citizen journalists:

In a similar vein but using a really different technique, ‘Something Old, Something New‘ mixes excerpts from a 1940s documentary on being a journalist with contemporary footage to examine exactly how far journalism has changed in the face of participatory culture:

Looking at web 2.0 culture more broadly, ‘A Blog’s Life’ is a comical look at the evolution of blogging, in the style of a nature documentary:

And in a slightly more academic tone, ‘Transmedia Storytelling and Convergence’ gives a pretty good rundown of some core features of Henry Jenkins’ arguments about transmedia in the digital media landscape:

Finally, ‘Joe Bloggs Presents Web 2.0’ is a laugh out loud satire looking at the average blogger (A LANGUAGE WARNING, though: Joe Bloggs swears like an angry trooper!):

And, yes, I did have what can best be described as an awkward cameo appearance in that the adventures of Web 2.0 there – but it was worth if, if nothing else, for that outstanding end credits song! If you’re inspired to see more, 27 of the digital media projects can be found here.  Also, it’s worth mentioning that the majority of students chose to post their work under a Creative Commons license (not all, I should add, but I’m pleased enough that by the end of the course everyone knew enough to make an informed choice one way or another).

Oh and quick shout out: my partner in crime in teaching Digital Media was Christina Chau who was an excellent tutor and whose own thoughts on the unit can be read here!

Interesting links for August 23rd 2008 through August 25th 2008:

• Drilling Down – Preferring the Web Over Watching TV [ NYTimes.com] – “For children ages 10 to 14 who use the Internet, the computer is a bigger draw than the TV set, according to a study recently released by DoubleClick Performics, a search marketing company. The study found that 83 percent of Internet users in that age bracket spent an hour or more online a day, but only 68 percent devoted that much time to television. The study found that the children often did research online before making a purchase (or bugging their parents to make one). The big exception to this rule was apparel: like many grown-ups, the children said they preferred to choose their clothes at a store.”
• Film Studies For Free [Catherine Grant on Blogger] – “Film Studies For Free actively espouses the ethos of Open Access to digital scholarly material. It aims to promote good quality, online, film and moving-image studies resources by commenting on them, and by linking to them. These resources will include published scholarship or research in various forms: from film and media weblogs, through online peer-reviewed journals, to other forms of web-based scholarly writing, as well as online works of film/moving-image research by practice. Film Studies For Free readers are invited to bring relevant items to the blog’s attention; please use the comments option or this email link to do so.”
• “A Few Lives Left” for Poor Research into Virtual Worlds [PERSONALIZE MEDIA] – A substantial, well-research and convincing rebuttal of this article from the SMH on Second Life and Virtual Worlds. This rebuttal contains many stats and figures which cast Asher Moses’ piece in a pretty poor light.
• Hollywood losing its grip on television content [Darknet] – JD Lasica interviews Eric B Kim (an Intel VP and general manager of its Digital Home Group) and Patrick Barry (VP of TV for Yahoo) about the coming trend of getting TV properly on the net: “Kim’s quote that most stuck out for me was this: “We’re bringing television to the internet.” Notice what Kim didn’t say: We’re bringing the Internet to television, which has been the approach of the big movie studios until now. (Or, until recently, We’re preventing the Internet from coming to TV.) I don’t know whether Kim’s turn of phrase was intentional or not — I suspect so — but the difference is a significant one. “
• Video: Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games [Times Online] – “Extraordinarily lifelike characters are to begin appearing in films and computer games thanks to a new type of animation technology. Emily – the woman in the above animation – was produced using a new modelling technology that enables the most minute details of a facial expression to be captured and recreated. She is considered to be one of the first animations to have overleapt a long-standing barrier known as ‘uncanny valley’ – which refers to the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness. Researchers at a Californian company (Image Metrics) which makes computer-generated imagery for Hollywood films started with a video of an employee talking. They then broke down down the facial movements down into dozens of smaller movements, each of which was given a ‘control system’.” [Via io9]
• The dawn of intelligent machines [BBC NEWS | Technology] – “The idea may scare some, but Intel predicts that by 2050 machines could surpass the peak of human intelligence. So predicted Justin Rattner, chief technology officer at the chip maker, in a presentation at the Intel Developer Forum which examined how technology is expected to bridge the gap between man and machine. The vision included sensitive robots and shape-shifting materials. “There is no question that one of the most likely things that will happen in the next 40 years is that machine and human intelligence will come much closer together,” Mr Rattner told the BBC. “The ability of humans to communicate with machines and for machines to communicate with humans will get so much better.”"

Hello to anyone visiting from the Self.Net: Identity in the Digital Age course. The slides from my guest lecture are embedded here:

If you click the link and follow back to Slideshare, you’re welcome to download the slides for your own uses if that would be helpful.

Some of the links discussed today that you might want to explore:
* Rebecca’s Pocket (Rebecca Blood)
* Dear Raed (Salam Pax)
* http://jilltxt.net/ (Jill Walker Rettberg)
* Larvartus Prodeo (Mark Bahnisch et al)
* The Daily Kos

Comments or questions are welcome!

Interesting links for August 1st 2008:

• Malwebolence – The World of Web Trolling [NYTimes.com] – A really fascinating article from Mattathias Schwartz trying to take a serious look at the more extreme edge of trolling culture, searching for meaning behind what at first glance are random acts of online cruelty. Schwartz paints the biggest trolls as quite complicated people, who have their own rationale for what they do, albeit often quite a hard to comprehend one. [Via Christy Dena]
• Rebooting America (Book) [Personal Democracy Forum] – The blurb: “The Personal Democracy Forum presents an anthology of forty-four essays brimming with the hopes of reenergizing, reorganizing, and reorienting our government for the Internet Age. How would completely reorganizing our system of representation work? Is it possible to redesign our government with open doors and see-through walls? How can we leverage the exponential power of many-to-many deliberation for the common good?” The entire collection is available online, for free, as pdfs and features lots of people you know, or should know, like Yochai Benkler, danah boyd, Howard Rheingold and Clay Shirky. The whole thing is released under a Creative Commons license, too! [Via danah]
• Beijing lifts some internet restrictions: IOC [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Chinese organisers have agreed to lift all internet restrictions for the Beijing Games, IOC vice-president Gunilla Lindberg says. “The issue has been solved,” Ms Lindberg said. “The IOC Coordination Commission and the Beijing Olympics Organising Committee (BOCOG) met last night and agreed. “Internet use will be just like in any Olympics.” ABC journalists in Beijing said they could access internet content about Tiananmen Square and other previously banned websites. But it was not immediately clear if the restrictions had been lifted outside hubs for foreign media.”
• Oh happy day — the new Delicious is here [delicious blog] – No longer del.icio,us, Delicious had an overhaul, a facelift, and now resides at delicious.com. To see what’s different, check out the video or read What’s New.For readers of this blog, the biggest difference will be that I can now use 1000 characters in teh notes section, so my annotated links posts will often have considerably more annotation!
• Scrabulous Returns As Wordscraper [All Facebook] – “One of the big news stories this morning is that the Argarwalla brothers who founded Scrabulous have launched a similar application called “Wordscraper”. The application, which is similar in style to Scrabulous, has attracted over 8,000 people so far. It also appears that the brother no longer have an announcement message on Scrabulous and have instead completely pulled down the application.” (That said, using Facebook in Australia I still have perfect access to Scrabulous today!)
• Blocked websites ‘not Olympics related’ [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “Internet censorship in China is now being allowed during the Olympic period on the basis that the blocked websites are not related to the Games. The stance is a backdown on earlier promises made by the International Olympic Committee (IOC)…”

I’m delighted to see that Jill Walker Rettberg’s book Blogging has just been released. I had the pleasure of reading much of this book in draft form last year while Jill was a guest researcher here in Communication Studies here at UWA, and on the basis of what I read I’m confident this book will be extremely well received. Jill’s work is neither a simple how-to guide (of which there are many), nor is it a book on blogging which presumes readers are already blogosphere aficionados. Rather, Jill has managed to write an engaging and critical book which situates blogging within broader histories – such as the role of blogging in terms of literacy, the evolution of citizen journalism, blogs and/as social networks, and even ethical frameworks which examine advertising and authenticity in blogs. More to the point, for someone new to blogs as an idea, or in practice, Blogging offers a world of insight and experience distilled into a readable and engaging form.

The table of contents and the (extremely positive) early reviews of Blogging are available on Polity’s website, and it can be ordered now from Amazon UK or will be available from Amazon US in about two months.

I strongly recommend you read Blogging for yourself!

Interesting links for June 12th 2008 through June 17th 2008:

• Blogger arrests hit record high [BBC NEWS | Technology] – “Since 2003, 64 people have been arrested for publishing their views on a blog, says the University of Washington annual report. In 2007 three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues than in 2006, it revealed.”
• Facebook No Longer The Second Largest Social Network [Tech Crunch] – “April 2008 was the milestone: Facebook officially caught up to MySpace in terms of unique monthly worldwide visitors, according to data released by Comscore … Both services are attracting around 115 million people to their respective sites each month.”
• Save Jericho Again: TV Campaign Info – The fan fight to save the now twice-cancelled US TV series Jericho continues, with dedicated Jericho nuts this time raising funds for a series of tv advertisements and billboard trying to save the show and get a new network to pick up the series.
• Sexually Frustrated Superheroes: Superheroes Who Can’t Have Sex [io9] – Which comic-book superheroes can’t have sex? Any why? (And I can’t believe there is an alternative future Spider-Man comic in which Mary-Jane dies after sharing too many bodily fluids with Marvel’s favourite hero!!).

Interesting links for May 21st 2008:

• The Long Tail Wags the Dog [Technorati Weblog] – “Nowhere have we seen a bigger impact of blogging and social media on the American political landscape than on the 2008 presidential election. Candidate appearances formerly confined to a small town are uploaded to YouTube and seen by millions.”
• Big Brother’s vault for all net use, calls and emails [The Age] – “A digital vault containing information about every email, internet visit and phone call made in Britain is to be created in a European bid to battle terrorism. The plan, …has alarmed civil libertarians who are already anxious about a proposed ID card”
• Teenage burglar snapped on cameraphone [PerthNow] – “A teenage boy is facing burglary charges after being photographed on a mobile telephone after allegedly breaking into a Thornlie house. A woman took a snap of the 17-year-old as he rode away on a BMX bike …”
• Net starts to overtake TV [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “A new survey of internet consumer trends has revealed that people with broadband connections spend more time on the net than watching television. … Australians with broadband spend an average of 22 hours per week on the web. “

Interesting links for May 12th 2008 through May 14th 2008:

• Twitters scoops media in reporting China quake [The Age] – "The world had real-time news about China's massive earthquake as victims dashed out "twitter" text messages while it took place, in what is being touted as micro-blogging outshining mainstream news."
• Sightseeing in Liberty City [Flickr] – A fantastic set of shots by Matthew Johnston which compare GTA IV's Liberty City with New York City (on which it was based). The level of detail in the GTA modelling is just amazing!
• From Production to Produsage: Interview with Axel Bruns (Part One) [Henry Jenkins - Confessions of an Aca/Fan] – Very useful two-part interview in which Axel Bruns gives an overview of 'produsage' and the project behind his new book. (Part 2)

Interesting links for May 9th 2008 through May 12th 2008:

• TimeTube – “Creates a timeline for any YouTube keyword search–very handy for visualising the activity around particular topics–and iterations/transformations of particular videos–over time.” (Via Jean)
• Victorian Liberal staffers sacked for blogging [gatewatching] – Two staffers in the Victorian Liberal Party were fired after they were outed as the writers of a blog highly critical of the party’s leader. Jason Wilson: “blogs revealed once more as a politically disruptive technology”. (More from the ABC)
• Storm Troopin’ – a set on Flickr – An absolutely wonderful set which tells the convoluted tale of Star Wars StormTrooper (toy) TK-704 and his many adventures in our world, from his quest for love, the arrival of other Troppers, and their shared love of doughnuts!
• Grand Theft Auto IV smashes sales record [theage.com.au] – “Grand Theft Auto IV blew away video game and Hollywood records as its creators reported that it raked in an unprecedented $US500 million in its opening week.”

No Australian can have missed the news that we’ll be voting in a Federal Election on November 24. The advertising onslaught has begun and, unlike past campaigns, this one’s taking online campaigning seriously, with the current Liberal government apparently spending upward of $5 million on their web-based advertising. In the lead up to the official election campaign we’ve seen Labor make considerable inroads with both MySpace and Facebook. Indeed, Team Rudd have been so clever with Facebook that Kevin not only has his maximum-allowed 5000 friends, but there is also an “I want to be Kevin Rudd’s Facebook Friend, Too!” Facebook group which has over 10,000 members and uses Facebook’s structural limitation as a popularity mechanism! Given their knowledge of web campaigning, it’s hardly a surprise that the Kevin07 web campaign is so clearly modeled on the high-profile runners for the 2008 US elections.

Things have really kicked into overdrive for both main political parties – and the others – with Google’s 2007 Australian Federal Election page which has lots of usefully aggregated material as well as a dedicated YouTube channel for each of the political parties. While the potential social affordances of these tools aren’t necessarily being explored that well by the major parties, at least the web is being taken seriously as a battleground for the minds and hearts of the Australian public. In that direction, it’s great to see Australia’s national broadcaster – the ABC – getting in on the act with their Poll Vault, which collates reporting from their various sources.

Also important for this election – and really, this is the first Australian election in which it’s been a major player – is the influx of citizen journalism and participatory cultural portals centred on the election. For example the ambitious YouDecide07 attempts to bring citizen journalists across the country together tightly focusing on the election seat-by-seat. This project is run through QUT‘s Centre for Creative Industries and Innovation with Jason Wilson doing a lot of the hard yards in running the website itself, with the help of media-savvy folk like Barry Saunders. Also of note is the Election 07 Norg from the people who bring you PerthNorg. This user-voted website with at least partially user-generated content (and mainstream media reports ranked via a Digg-style voting system) is just getting started but looks quite promising. It’ll probably retain a WA flavour given it’s run here, but there’s nothing stopping sharing between this Norg and the many other mainstream and user-generated election 07 sources. Similarly the team at New Matilda have launched a focused groupblog called Polliegraph while the always political Lavartus Prodeo have kicked into election overdrive.

Of course, there are still many individual bloggers offering insightful – or sometimes just vicious – commentary but you’ve probably got your own favourites so I shan’t run through the major individual bloggers. I will, however, end by mention two newer folks well worth reading: Peter Black from Law at QUT is blogging at his dedicated sub-site Australian Politics 2.0 while Elliott Bledsoe from Creative Commons Australia and Vibewire (who have their own youth-orientated political bloggers) , among other things, has upped his what it feels like for a boi into full election mode. And if you’re already over the campaign promises and just want the election-related comedy clips, Elliot’s also focused on building an Election on YouTube stream. In that spirit, as elections always bring out the most amusing video clips, I’ll finish with a satire from the self-anointed Axis of Awesome, called their Rudd Vs Howard rap…

[Photo by Marxpix]

Like the Asian Tsunami (December 29, 2004),the The London Bombings (July 2005) and Hurricane Katrina’s Aftermath (September 2005), information about the current demonstrations and atrocities happening in Burma are flowing through user-generated channels as much (indeed, often more so than) through the traditional mainstream media. There is a great deal of activity both in blogs and throughout the broader sphere of citizen media, but some noteworthy places to look are:-

[X] The 2007 Burmese anti-government protests Wikipedia entry – Wikipedia is at its most useful during moments of crisis which have many sets of eyes watching. The collective intelligence of Wikipedia contributors continues to develop one of the best resources on the Burma protests.

[X] YouTube has a number of clips like this one which simply show the enormous scope of the protests [Via]. A very good source is the videostream from news6776 which collates a great deal of footage (both mainstream media-produced and from citizen journalists)

[X] The Support the Monks’ protest in Burma Facebook Group – To be honest, I’ve never really thought Facebook would provide a terribly useful platform for political activism as the ‘groups’ often seem a peripheral part of Facebook’s design. However, I happily stand corrected as the exponential growth of the Support the Monks’ protest in Burma Facebook Group has been amazing – over 170,000 members when I checked this morning – and the links, advice and descriptions of how members can actively support the Burmese demonstrations in that group seems quite robust to me, not just a tokenistic gesture. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say this Facebook group has probably done more to promote the ‘ Day of International Action for a Free Burma – Free Aung San Suu Kyi & Support the Monks in Burma’ on October 6th than any other single outlet online or offline.

[X] The SmartMobs blog notes that cameraphones and other mobile devices are one of the main tools allowing information and media to get out of Burma, but the government has moved from shutting down Internet Cafes to blocking the entire internet in order to try and stop knowledge about the situation in Burma being available internationally. Taking the massive step of blocking the entire internet speaks volumes to how widely the impact of citizen reportage is from inside Burma is disseminating to international viewers and readers.

[X] For a traditional media rundown of the impact of citizen media, see ‘Bloggers in Burma keep world informed during military crackdown’ in the San Francisco Chronicle and Dan Gillmor’s response at the Centre for Citizen Media where he points out, quite rightly, that there’s a lot more than just blogging going on!

[X] Finally, you should visit Free Burma (dot Org) which is a portal for international information on how to support the protestors and get involved in their struggle.

[Photo by Hugo*'s from protestors supporting the Burmese democratic protests, in front of the Myanmar embassy in Paris, with a portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi.]

The big news of the day is that The Australian Blogging Conference, a fabulous-looking free one-day event exploring everything about blogging in Australia (including education and Creative Commons!) now has a date: Friday, 28 September 2007 in sunny Brisbane! All of the details are here. I’d write more, but I’m now running around to see if I can get myself from Perth to Brisbane for the day of the conference!

 Update: I’ve successfully organised flights and my benevolent university has agreed to part with me for the day (yes, the day, so I’ll be on red-eye flight at midnight Thursday flight!) so Aussie BloggerCon here I come!

Australia’s QUT has been in the grip of a very public controversy recently which dovetails between issues of freedom of speech, academic ethics and the transparency of university processes.  The controversy came to light and media attention on 11 April this year when two QUT academics, John Hookham and Gary MacLennan, published an article in The Australian entitled ‘Philistines of relativism at the gates’.  In it, Hookham and MacLennan very publicly took issue with the ethics of work being done by PhD candidate, Michael Noonan:

A time comes when you have to say: “Enough!”, when you can no longer put up with the misanthropic and amoral trash produced under the rubric of postmodernist, post-structuralist thought. The last straw, the defining moment, came for us when we attended a recent PhD confirmation at the Queensland University of Technology, where we teach. Candidate Michael Noonan’s thesis title was Laughing at the Disabled: Creating comedy that Confronts, Offends and Entertains. The thesis abstract explained that “Laughing at the Disabled is an exploration of authorship and exploitation in disability comedy, the culmination of which will be the creation and production (for sale) of a six-part comedy series featuring two intellectually disabled personalities. “The show, entitled (Craig and William): Downunder Mystery Tour, will be aimed squarely at the mainstream masses; its aim to confront, offend and entertain.” (Editor’s note: the subjects’ names have been changed to protect their privacy.) Noonan went on to affirm that his thesis was guided by post-structuralist theory, which in our view entails moral relativism. He then showed video clips in which he had set up scenarios placing the intellectually disabled subjects in situations they did not devise and in which they could appear only as inept. Thus, the disabled Craig and William were sent to a pub out west to ask the locals about the mystery of the min-min lights. [...]

At the seminar we were told there was a thin line between laughing at and laughing with. There is no such thin line. There is an absolute difference that anyone who has been laughed at knows. We must admit with great reluctance that at the seminar we were alone in our criticism of the project. For us, it was a moment of great shame and a burning testimony to the power of post-structuralist thought to corrupt. It is not our intention here to demolish the work of Noonan, an aspiring young academic and filmmaker. After all, ultimate responsibility for this research rests with the candidate’s supervisory team, which included associate professor Alan McKee, the faculty ethics committee, which apparently gave his project total approval, and the expert panel, which confirmed his candidacy. [...]

What we have instead is the reality that cultural studies is in the grip of a powerful movement that we call the radical philistine push. It is this same movement that has seen the collapse of English studies and the consequent production of graduates who have only the scantiest acquaintance with our literary heritage. It is also undermining the moral fabric of the university.

So, what starts with ethical questions about a particular thesis, quickly becomes a much more generic complaint about the corruption of education by poststructuralist and postmodern theory and approaches.  I know nothing of the people writing or mentioned in this article, but have to say after reading the piece I wasn’t swayed; my sympathies were more with Michael Noonan than anyone else, because as a PhD candidate I know I would have been almost destroyed by such public denouncing of my work.  This, I should add, is not a comment on the quality on the work being or proposed – I know nothing beyond the article above and the surrounding debate, and haven’t seen any of the footage mentioned – but rather a comment on the process and the reasonable expectation that any criticism of a candidate’s work be handled within the university as long as possible.  I’m not saying there is never a case for ‘going public’ with dismay about certain research, but from what I’ve read I believe Hookham and MacLennan took that step far too early.  More to the point, combining criticism of a specific project with a very generic attack on a particular body of theory and its influence on teaching seems a less than generous way of dealing with the work of a PhD candidate.

The issues raised here also beg serious questions about transparency and universities.  There is a lot of talk about the need to transparency of research outcomes since (most) Australian universities are at least partially publicly-funded.  I quite agree with that notion.  However, I think the idea of the processes of a university being taken public under the rubric of transparency tend to skew what makes it into the public arena.  Selectively releasing aspects of a process (such as an ethics review process and confirmation of candidature) around research which clearly relies on careful contextualisation is bound to produce a one-sided picture.  Tellingly, when Hookham and MacLennan’s article was republished in Online Opinion, the were comments from a student – using the handle WWSBD – who’d had Noonan (the candidate) as a lecturer, praising his efforts to educate student about people with disability.  Moreover, this is the only place I’ve seen Noonan himself comment publicly:

I am at the student at the centre of Hookham and MacLennan’s attacks.
I thank WWSBD for understanding and appreciating my work in its context. I appreciate the words of Anecdote, who understands that a work must be seen and placed in context before it should be attacked. And I am disappointed for bedwin, who has lost all respect for me on the basis of an uninformed and incorrect article.
Much has been assumed about my project, my integrity and my intentions. Very little of it is based on truth. The simple facts are these: the excerpts I showed at my PhD confirmation seminar were presented in the context of exploring and discussing issues of authorship and representation in disability. My project seeks to empower the disabled, to give them a voice through comedy. Each clip was prefaced with my own thoughts about whether or not this had been achieved.
As a sessional staff member at QUT, I can think of nothing more deplorable than attacking a student’s incomplete research in a public forum. Hookham and MacLennan have made no effort to read my PhD confirmation document (it was offered) and they rejected my attempts to meet and discuss their concerns.
To date I have not sought to respond to their attacks in print. But I refuse to be further bullied and vilified before the public, my peers and my students.

However, the story doesn’t end there.  Earlier this month The Australian report that Hookham and MacLennan are now facing a disciplinary hearing at QUT for their public comments, with the university arguing that the two unfairly attacked the candidate and his supervisory team.  Now, whatever their views, Hookham and MacLennan seem to have a reputation as inspirational teachers themselves, and the news of their censure galvanized some of the QUT student body to defend their actions on the basis of free speech.  The student campaign is visible through it’s “Save Our Lecturers” MySpace page.  Moreover, over at Martin Hirst’s blog, he has posted ‘Freedom of Speech disabled at QUT’ which points to this documentary which is now available at YouTube:

(Hirst is a friend of Hookham and MacLennan’s, and his post also contains the full text from Hookham and MacLennan’s original article in The Australian, as well as some additional commentary from The Australian and subsequent letters to editor.)

The YouTube documentary clip, by QUT student Adrian Strong, is very compelling; Hookham and MacLennan both come across as intelligent, compassionate teachers and academics who have good cause for concern.  My point here is not to judge the debate being documented in this clip – although I imagine it would be extremely compelling for many people.  Rather, in the era of participatory culture and digital media, this clip is indicative of a very profound change which can see debates and arguments that once would have remained closed suddenly being open to public viewing and public debate.  In such an era, digital literacy is extremely important – the ability to create, edit and share such a clip is a key part of the ability to make a case in the public eye.  It’s no surprise that QUT, which has Australia’s most renowned Creative Industries faculty, should be the source of the first such debate in Australia (to my knowledge, at least).

Illustrating my point, I just noticed another posted by the same YouTube user who posted the clip above (and thus, I presume, also be Adrian Strong) which talks in even stronger terms about a perceived campaign of censorship at QUT:

(Again, let me reinforce, I don’t know enough about the other things going on to really judge this debate, but I do know that the perception of censorship certainly doesn’t add to the reputation of any university.  However, like the first clip, without any further rebuttal, this clip is likely to be very persuasive to viewers.)

Update: In ‘Dissenting dons out in the cold’, Andrew Fraser reports in The Australian that the saga ended with Hookham and MacLennan both being suspended without pay for 6 months from QUT.

I woke this morning to the news that 33 people were dead at Virginia Tech university in the US due to a gunman’s “shooting rampage” . Apart from the tragedy itself one line which struck me as odd in initial report I was reading from the BBC (and I struck, literally, hundreds more when I started working through the posts in the eight hours since I last looked at the aggregated news in Google Reader) was this:

Eyewitnesses said some students jumped from classroom windows to escape the gunfire, which triggered panic on campus.

Some of those locked down inside the university buildings were using the internet to try to glean information about what was happening and many e-mailed the BBC News website. [Emphasis added.]

Why would Virginia Tech students turn to the BBC for information on a real-time event happening around them in the United States? While the BBC was certainly a focal point in the aftermath of the 2005 London Bombings, this line struck me as just odd (and uncharacteristically self-important for the usually quite staid BBC). Looking a little further around the BBC website, I found this story from Virginia Tech student Nikolas Macko which describes the experience of staying inside one of the classrooms while gunshots could be heard nearby. The BBC was certainly quick off the mark with this story, so I guess if students didn’t find anything on the BBC, perhaps they sent their stories in by email or the other means the BBC has set up to highlight reports from everyday folk.

Reading further, Dan Gillmor of Citizen Media points out that most of the news stories on US television feature a cameraphone video taken by a VT student in which gunshots can be clearly heard, but not seen (the video is, of course, now available on YouTube, found via NewTeeVee).

A number of mainstream media outlets have also turned to blogs to find eyewitness and VT student testimonials. One blogger, ntcoolfool aka Bryce Carter, had mainstream media producers requesting help finding cameraphone videos after he posted a videoclip of police cars heading to the scene of the massacre. There was also a request from someone at the Boston Herald for Carter’s thoughts on social software, given that the paper was “wondering if online communication is the best way to stay in touch during a crisis“.

One of the things that stood out to me when reading some of the blog posts from Virginia Tech students, including Carter’s, was how people reacted when their blogged personal thoughts suddenly became mainstream media soundbites. For example, Carter later posted this:

As this blog has received international attention, I find myself wondering what the world has come to. The media watch dogs, no offense, have jumped on this story and on me for, as one anonymous user said, ‘exploit my emotions’. At this time I do not believe this is so, because to put it simply: I’m willing to share my experience. This is nothing special. I don’t deserve any credit. I went to class as any other student would. I just happened to be on the other side of campus when the shots were fired later in the day. But isn’t that just it? What is remarkable about this story is that this is the story of an average student at this great school. Stories of horror, bloodshed, and death are soon to come from the victims of this horrible catastrophe and the limelight will shine onwards, for that is what the public thirsts for.

For those that are interested, I will write a more complete narrative of my experiences of today later, once the media frenzy has died down and I have a minute to better reflect. As of the time I am writing this I have done a radio interview with BBC and talked with a reporter from the LA Times. CBC Newsworld, the Boston Herald, Current TV, and MTV have asked for interviews and further information. As I said I intend to share my experiences with everyone, but I want to reinstate that I am just an average student and I don’t want to be made into something I am not.

Furthermore, upon looking at a few of the posts made on this blog, I want to declare that I am OFFENDED that people are allowing this to become a political debate. People are dead. My friends could be dead. Forget bickering about trivia. Now is not the time or the place. It is the media’s job to report to the public these stories. Take it as you wish. I’m not the media. I’m just me.

A few minutes ago I walked in the hallway of the dorm frustrated with the constant contacts of media coming in every minute. In my arrogance and limited perspective I walked into a friends room while in discussion and yelled out “I hate livejournal!”, which, concerning the current emotions of campus, was not the best thing to do. Understandably, they kicked me out. [Link Via Washington Post Blog Roundup]

Carter, I have to say, seems to be handling his edge of the media spotlight rather well. His comments really emphasise that despite the ideals of citizen journalism, many forms of social software tend to allow ordinary folks to become more like eyewitnesses who are harassed into sharing their perspectives with the mainstream press, far more so than being intentional ‘reporters’ in their own right. That said, Carter’s commentary on the process itself will, I guess, have much more prominence in the aftermath of these tragic shootings. I suspect I might end up talking about Carter’s livejournal experience in a lecture in the near future, when trying to get students to ponder the difference between the initial and intended use of social software and online presence, versus what these textual (another other) online artifacts might, at some point, be used for.

Xeni Jardin’s post about the shootings at Boing Boing has lots of relevant links to citizen-produced commentary (much intentionally so), links and blogs and is a solid starting point if you’re looking to see how reportage about the VT Shootings — both mainstream and otherwise — has grown across the world wide web.

Finally, though, I wanted to share a screenshot posted to the Flickr Virginia Tech Shooting pool. This image is far from graphic, but really hit home because it’s the sort of notice which looks so banal, but says so much. The screenshot is from the Virginia Tech website and reads “Campus Advisory: Gunman on Campus; Classes Canceled“:

This left me wondering, if such a tragic event happened at my university, how would we react? I guess, at some level, that’s the thought that runs through most people’s minds and what makes these shootings feel so visceral to so many people – sympathy, of course, but empathy, too.

As everyone from the New York Times onward has noted, in the wake of the threats against Kathy Sierra Tim O’Reilly proposed a Blogging Code of Conduct and has now written the first (draft) version of this code. While I’m heartened that so much well-intentioned conversation has surged through the blogosphere, I fear that a trying to write rules of all blogs and bloggers is a fairly silly and self-defeating thing to do. One of the models being mentioned all over the place is the BlogHer Community Guidelines; I think that these are great guidelines for a particular online community and suggest that, really, it’s not just the model but the width of applicability that matters; communities should always be able to assert their own guidelines, but the blogosphere, despite the collective noun, is at best an awful lot of communities and individuals, often with vastly different aims and intentions.

In educational contexts, for example, the process of discussing guidelines in classes from K-12 through to university is a useful one both for the issues raised, and the shared guidelines which emerge. Similarly, most communities or vague collectives have rules of some sort, but these rules differ. Some bloggers have a notice about conduct on their blog (by commenters); I think this level of transparency is great. (It’s also something I’ve always meant to do for this blog, but I fear I might not get around to until I actually have to deal with deleting someone’s comments and I’ve not had to do that to anyone other than Mr Spam as yet.)

I think Jeff Jarvis sums up a lot of the angst I’m feeling at reading about O’Reilly’s Code:

So O’Reilly only set us up to be called nasty, unmannered, and thus uncivilized hooligans. Except for Tim, of course. He’s the nice one. Me, I feel like the goth kid with premature tattoos skulking down the hall.

But the problems are far more fundamental and dangerous than that. And just gratingly twinkie, too.

This effort misses the point of the internet, blogs, and even of civilized behavior. They treat the blogosphere as if it were a school library where someone — they’ll do us the favor — can maintain order and control. They treat it as a medium for media. But as Doc Searls has taught me, it’s not. It’s a place. And when I moved into the place that is my town, I didn’t put up a badge on my fence saying that I’d be a good neighbor (and thus anyone without that badge is, de facto, a bad neighbor). I didn’t have to pledge to act civilized. I just do. And if I don’t, you can judge me accordingly. Are there rules and laws? Yes, the same ones that exist in worlds physical or virtual: If I libel or defame you on the streetcorner or in a paper or on a screen, the recourse is the same. But I don’t put up another badge on my fence saying I won’t libel you. I just don’t. That’s how the world works. Why should this new world work any differently? Why should it operate with more controls and more controllers?

Also, Tristan Louis has a thoughtful “Blogger’s Code of Conduct: a Dissection” which makes a very strong case against O’Reilly’s Code, pointing out many of the semantic, interpretive and legal difficulties such a code throws up for bloggers (and commenters) everywhere (Via SmartMobs).

It’s no shock that Dave Winer has blasted O’Reilly’s Code, but it is telling to have Robert Scoble stating he wouldn’t be able to follow the proposed Code despite the fact that his wife was also one of the people targeted by the same pillocks who threatened Sierra.

I’m all for thinking about how communities work (online and, indeed, offline) and for individuals and individual communities to be able to – within reason – set rules for their own digital turf. I just think the turf of the blogosphere en masse is so different and so wide that no single set of rules will let the grass grow properly or productively everywhere.

The races for party nomination and the Presidential election in the US always tend to bring out the most creative political media and mashups. The first great political video of the 2008 race is definitely Hillary 1984, which mashes up one of Apple’s most famous advertisements from 1984, using the imagery of 1984, with Hillary Clinton’s campaign launch speach. (Actually, the Apple ad used is the updated version released in 2004, with the sledgehammer-weilding Anya Major given an iPod to wear as she attacks the projections of an Orwellian big brother.)

An article called ‘Political video smackdown’ in San Francisco Chronicle has these sparse details:

It may be the most stunning and creative attack ad yet for a 2008 presidential candidate — one experts say could represent a watershed moment in 21st century media and political advertising. Yet the groundbreaking 74-second pitch for Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, which remixes the classic “1984″ ad that introduced Apple computers to the world, is not on cable or network TV, but on the Internet. [...]

The compelling “Hillary 1984″ video recently introduced on YouTube represents “a new era, a new wave of politics … because it’s not about Obama,” said Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank on politics and new media. “It’s about the end of the broadcast era.” [...]

That theme — reflecting a generational change in the relationship between media, politics, candidates and voters — suggests that “Hillary 1984″ could have the iconic power with the 21st century political generation that another classic political ad called “Daisy” represented to Baby Boomers, says Leyden. That 1964 spot for President Lyndon Johnson — featuring images of a child plucking a daisy, which morphed ominously into a nuclear mushroom cloud — battered GOP presidential candidate Sen. Barry Goldwater because it, too, portrayed “a shattering of the whole world” in both political leadership, and media.

Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama, said he is aware of the “Hillary 1984″ video and has gotten calls from reporters on it — but he insisted that the campaign is not connected to it. “It’s somebody else’s creation,” he said, declining to comment on the ad’s biting content. [...]

The ad is proof that “anybody can do powerful emotional ads … and the campaigns are no longer in control,” Rosenberg said. “It will no longer be a top-down candidate message; that’s a 20th century broadcast model.”

Citizen media and participatory culture, indeed! And the video itself:

[Via Rebecca Blood]

Update: For more on the politics on this mashup, see Chuck Tryon’s column ““Why 2008 Won’t Be Like 1984:” Viral Videos and Presidential Politics” in Flow. Also of interest is a statement in the Huffington Post by the video’s creator Phil de Vellis: I Made the “Vote Different” Ad.

If you’re interested in Net Neutrality, then check out this evocative mini-documentary on why regulating the internet in the ways being debate in the US are a bad idea of democracy, a bad idea for the US, and a really bad idea for the rest of us!

Save the Internet | Rock the Vote

If you’re not interested in Net Neutrality, perhaps after watching this you should be!

[Via Lawrence Lessig]