[iDC] looking for social media scholars ...

Thu Oct 11 00:16:55 UTC 2007

Hi Jeff, Stephen, Paul and others,

My recently completed phd looks at just this topic - the capacity for
increased cultural production/participation via new media/technologies -
though from a slightly different perspective than the
socio/cultural/political. By drawing upon the framework of stigmergy - agent
interactions with their environment stimulate further interactions which may
result in emergent patterns - i map out a framework for understanding
collective creative activity online (and off). If you are interested you can
find a link to the abstract here: http://mark-elliott.net/view/Dissertation

The crux is that encodable networked media provide for the coordination of
distributed, individualised contributions which may aggregate into emergent,
system level behaviour such as collaborative filtering (Digg, Reddit),
content creation (Second Life, YouTube) knowledge aggregation/generation
(wikis, Wikipedia) etc. An important distinction to be made here, touched on
in the previous posts, is that while this phenomenon achieves
democratic-like outcomes, it is qualitatively different from 'democracy', in
that its participants needn't be associated with or form constituent groups
to advocate for or with. Instead, they act solely as individuals, with those
individualistic actions contributing to emergent outcomes which provide
'use-value' for the participants and others.

So for me it is stigmergy in combination with media and its
digital/networked evolutions which is enabling the Internet, crowdsourcing,
mass collaboration and user-gen content in general. And, in my opinion, this
is mob rule (but one which is simultaneously individualistic and
participatory), and it *is* the dawn of an empowered consumerate, but, it is
probably heavily hyped too ;-).

Jeff, you might be interested in an analysis of a number of web 2.0 type
sites including Digg that I did here (scroll down a bit to see the table):

http://mark-elliott.net/view/Dissertation/StigmergyDissertation#3_10_Digital_Stigmergic_Coordina

but it might need a bit of background that can probably be got here:

http://mark-elliott.net/view/Dissertation/CollaborationDissertation#2_5_Coordination_Cooperation_Col

hope this is of use,
cheers,
mark

On 10/5/07, Paul B. Hartzog <paulbhartzog at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Jeff,
> Nice to see you here.
>
> You may be interested in a piece I did for Many-to-Many called
> "Culture Jams, Culture Preserves."
>
>
> http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/07/27/culture_jams_culture_preserves.php
>
> The gist of it is:
> "Using existing mass media images to twist, mock, refute, subvert, or
> as wikipedia more politely says "produce negative commentary about
> itself" is called "culture jamming."  Umberto Eco calls this
> "semiological guerrilla warfare" and supports "action which would urge
> the audience to control the message and its multiple possibilities of
> interpretation." (from Travels in Hyperreality). But what happens when
> the culture jammers actually want to continue and extend the media in
> question?"
>
> hope it helps :-)
> -Paul
>
> On 10/3/07, Howe, Jeff <Jeff_Howe at wired.com> wrote:
> > iDCers,
> >
> > I've greatly enjoyed lurking on this list for the last several months,
> but
> > now I'm hoping you fine folk might help me identify anyone engaged in
> the
> > study of social media sites, aka Digg/Reddit etc. for a book I'm writing
> > about crowdsourcing. The chapter in question is a bit broader than
> social
> > media, per se, and is tentatively titled, The Crowd Votes. I'm
> interested in
> > the ways in which user feedback is influencing cultural production, as
> well
> > as the capacity to be hacked. Is this mob rule or the dawn of an
> empowered
> > consumerate or just a load of hype?
> >
> > Very grateful for any responses, online or off.
> >
> > Jeff Howe
> >
> > ---------------------------
> > Jeff Howe
> > Contributing Editor, Wired Magazine
> > 4 Times Square, 19th Floor
> > New York, NY 10036
> > www.crowdsourcing.com
> > W: 212 286 5275
> > M: 917 992 6531
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (
> distributedcreativity.org)
> > iDC at mailman.thing.net
> > https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
> >
> > List Archive:
> > http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
> >
> > iDC Photo Stream:
> > http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
> >
> > RSS feed:
> > http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
> >
> > iDC Chat on Facebook:
> > http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
> >
> > Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref
> >
>
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------------
> http://www.PaulBHartzog.org
> http://www.panarchy.com
> PaulBHartzog at PaulBHartzog.org
> PaulBHartzog at panarchy.com
> PHartzog at umich.edu
> --------------------------------------------------------
> The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
>                  --Muriel Rukeyser
>
> See differently, then you will act differently.
>                  --Paul B. Hartzog
> --------------------------------------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (
> distributedcreativity.org)
> iDC at mailman.thing.net
> https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
>
> List Archive:
> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>
> iDC Photo Stream:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
>
> RSS feed:
> http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
>
> iDC Chat on Facebook:
> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
>
> Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref
>

-- 
-----
Mark Elliott
PhD Candidate

The Centre for Ideas
Victorian College of the Arts
The University of Melbourne
234 St Kilda Rd
SOUTHBANK 3006
Victoria, Australia

Mob: 0421 978 501
http://mark-elliott.net/, http://metacollab.net/
me at mark-elliott.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/attachments/20071011/10ef36ef/attachment.htm 