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What Dr Horrible Can Teach TV About Participatory Culture
Yesterday at the Social Networks stream of the conference attached to GO3 at the Perth Convention Centre I gave a fairly rough version of a new paper called “What Dr Horrible Can Teach TV About Participatory Culture.” As readers of this blog will be well aware, one of my ongoing interests is the way that traditional media forms, especially television, engage with participatory culture and their immediate fan networks. In my past writing on the Tyranny of Digital Distance I’ve looked at the way shows like Battlestar Galactica have harnessed a global fan network only to have that network turn sour as national media distributors insist on broadcasting shows at different times (implicitly encouraging fans to participate in peer-to-peer downloading of TV). While Joss Whedon’s Dr Horrible had a few similar teething issues, it looks like a very promising model for web-based media that can actually be a fan favourite and make a decent profit in the process. My thinking on this very much in process (as, indeed, is the ongoing story of Dr Horrible’s success), but my first stab at drawing a few ideas together was in this paper. I didn’t get a chance to record my talk, but I’ve uploaded the presentation onto Slideshare if you’re interested. There’s a fair bit not on the slides, but they should give you at least an outline of the argument:
Any questions, feedback or criticism would be most welcome!
Links for August 1st 2008
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)…”
An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube
Michael Wesch, an anthropologist focused on digital culture and YouTube (famous for the the videos The Machine is Us/Ing Us and A Vision of Students Today) has released (on YouTube) an excellent presentation he gave about YouTube’s history and cultural impact called An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube:
While much of the story Wesch presents will be familiar, this 55 minute package is an excellent overview and will no doubt prove an excellent resource for getting students thinking about the place of YouTube in digital culture. Beside which, it features a whole bunch of old favourites which should make it enjoyable viewing for almost everyone. (If a 55 minute YouTube clip is a bit much, Wesch has posted a timeline for the video in his blog, so pick up the story wherever you’re most interested.)
Links for July 26th 2008
Interesting links for July 25th 2008 through July 26th 2008:
- Last Lecture Professor Randy Pausch, 47, Dies [NYTimes Blog] – The sad loss of a truly inspirational educator. If you’ve not listened to Pausch’s Last Lecture, go watch it now.
- GetUp! for what? Issues Driven Democracy in a Transforming Public Sphere By Henk Huijser & Janine Little [Transformations, 16, 2008] – Article exploring the impact of Getup! on Australian politics and democracy, concluding that GetUp! is an exemplar of ‘issues-based’ democracy, where political action is organised on around issues, not via a stable political group.
- The Guts Of Dr Horrible [Warren Ellis] – Warren Ellis sings songs or praise for Joss Whedon’s business model with Dr Horrible. Also: “And if you can get an evil horse in there, that’d be good, too.”
Links for July 23rd 2008
Interesting links for July 23rd 2008:
- WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars [Wired Magazine 16.08] – To celebrate it’s twenty-fifth anniversary, Wired has a good overview of the place of WarGames in videogame and geek history.
- What’s In It For Doogie Howser? [Jeffrey McManus] – McManus takes an educated stab at the economics of Joss Whedon’s Dr Horrible web experiment. (Joss himself notes that these figures aren’t that far off.)
- Xbox 360 users to build and sell own games [The Age] – It’ll be interesting to see how well the coming “Xbox Live Community Games” take off and, most importantly, what terms and conditions Microsoft force game creators to accept in order to sell their work to other Xboxers.
Jib Jab Do Obama/McCain!
I find it amazing that it’s been four years since the first Jib Jab effort! This one’s a little less pointed, but just as much fun as the original but as it’s a little more participatory as you can stick your own face on one of the little characters!
I find it amazing that it’s been four years since the 
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