G325 media 2.0 & democracy

Media 2.0

Lots of DIFFERENT IDEAS on this. Very much a CONTESTED view.

Convergence

• “We’re really talking about a converged interactive media industry. There’s an increasing interplay between gaming, online, TV and films – it’s all coming together.”

Jon Kingsbury, NESTA, 2010

Transmedia

• Doctor Who has encompassed television, radio, cinema, literature and videogames, across 50 years.

• All adds up to a rich metatext, with multiple access points – although television is clearly the dominant medium.

Meanings

• Now live in an age of trans-mediality– Migration of content across media forms– Sense of fragmentation

• New forms– Computer games, simulations, SX cinema

• New representations– Virtual worlds, interactive multimedia

• New relationships between producers, users and technology

• New patterns of organisation and production

• Is New Media transforming culture?• Rise of interaction and networking• Production = less centralised and more

fluid• Shift from production to produsage, or

consumer to prosumer• Audience shift from passive to active• Interactive or also more DEMOCRATIC?

• Generation Y, Digital Immigrants, Google Generation, Screenagers…

• Rise of Generation C (Bruns)– Content, Control, Creativity, Celebrity

• Intercreativity (Time Berners-Lee)• Pro-ams

– Amateurs working to professional standards

• End of the artefact?• End of the artefact as a finished construct?

– Mash-ups, etc

• “The print media company and the TV network are hierarchical organisations that reflect the values of their owners. New media, on the other hand, give control to all users. The distinction between bottom-up and top-down organisational structure is at the heart of the new generation. For the first time ever, young people have taken control of critical elements of a communications revolution.” (p21)

David GauntlettMedia 1.0

• Celebrates key texts produced by media moguls and celebrated by well-known critics

• Vague recognition of internet and new digital media, as an 'add on' to the traditional media

• A preference for conventional ideas where most people are treated as non-expert audience 'receivers', or, if they are part of the formal media industries, as expert 'producers'.

David GauntlettMedia 2.0

• Interest in the massive 'long tail' of independent media projects such as those found on YouTube and many other websites, mobile devices, and other forms of DIY media

• Recognition that internet and digital media have fundamentally changed the ways in which we engage with all media

• Media now more democratic through people making and connecting

Shannon and Weaver, 1949Gauntlett, 2011

Audiences are the distributors

Participation Culture

New Fan Behaviours?

Fan 2.0 Categories (Fraser)

Acting OutExtended StorytellingMachinimaPasticheLego http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IybHfbQWrJo

RemixFan Art

But …

• Many scholars very much against the media 2.0 hypothesis

• Celebrates the “power of active users” , ignoring the commercial structures that help to shape those powers

• Ignores real material and cultural constraints?– Gender inequality?– Poverty?– Who’s online?