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constructions

Friday, September 30, 2005

personal media with twist

A couple of weeks ago JD Lasica interviewed BBC technology reporter Jo Twist about the use of personal media within a mass media insitution such as BBC: "we've always been interested in a two-way conversation with our readers, and giving people a voice".

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Conversation analysis

Therese's post about communicative affordances and context made me curious about Hutchby's framework of studying computer-mediated conversations. To my surprise I found Hutchby's book among my library-books. I have a tendency of borrowing books at the library and then forgetting about them. Well, thanks to Therese I might actually read this one. Ian Hutchby uses conversation analysis to study technologically mediated communication. Which basically implies a methodological approach of recording naturally occurring interactions using audio and video equipment and then transcribing and analysing these conversations.The fortunate thing when studying computer-mediated communication is of course that you don't have to do any transcribing. In the actual analysis trying to interpret the meaning or motivation behind the utterances is not really considered to be a good thing, and I believe the researcher is supposed to be rather detached from the empirical material. I don't think I'm going to use conversational analysis in my possible analyses of IRC/IM-conversations or blog-posts (with comments), but Hutchby raises a few interesting and very relevant questions, as he discusses relations between "technologies of communication" and the nature of communication.

Btw1: Loughborough University's Conversation Analysis tutorial. Btw2: the ICCA06: International Conference on Conversation Analysis takes place in Helsinki, may 10-14 2006.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

mass media arenas for interpersonal interactions

I have been confused for some time. The source of my confusion stems from the increasing interpersonal interactions that are taking place among a participating audience in mass media settings. Niklas Luhmann claims that with mass media no interaction can take place between senders and receivers: "Interaction is ruled out by the interposition of technology" ( The Reality of the Mass Media: 2). Similarly John Thompson asserts that because of the asymmetric relations and the lacking degree of reciprocity between producers of mass media content and the unknown audience, the form of interaction initiated by mass media has a quasi character.

Radio- and TV phone-ins and letters to editors in newspapers have a long history, and they have all been important to demonstrate a wish to include the people's voice. However, these feedback channels have hardly been significant enough to challenge the asymmetric relations between mass media institutions and their audiences.

But what happens when mass media increasingly take advantage of the possibilities of digital media? Take the chat-TV formats, of which there are a few on Norwegian TV-channels (the screen-shot to the left is borrowed from Beyer, Enli, Maasø and Ytreberg's article "Small talk makes a big difference", which will be published in Television and New Media in 2006 - remember that). Other examples are the discussions that take place in the blogs of Norwegian tabloids VG and Dagbladet. So far 508 people have commented on the Norwegian parliamentary elections on Dagbladet. These are examples of mass mediated social discussion arenas, which are not really different from regular web-boads and chats. But do they change the fundamentally asymmetric relations between mass media institutions and the audience. Hardly? The institutional setting and the mere scope of the mass media audience restrict symmetrical interaction on a large scale. Mass mediated chats are not really feedback-channels, are they?

And yes, I never seem to finish the paper where I try to deal with these issues. I never thought I could actually spend more than a year on one article. Of course I work on a few other papers as well, but it's so difficult to reach the point where I actually feel I'm done with it.

Monday, September 12, 2005

parliamentary elections

Today is parliamentary elections day in Norway. I sincerely hope that the red-green alliance (the Labour Party, the Socialist Left and the Centre Party) eventually will win and get the chance to form our next government. I voted, as always, the Socialist Left Party. Environmental politics and solidarity (nationally and globally) are of course pivotal for my choice. The Norwegian electorate seems divided down the middle: one poll indicating that the centre-right government will continue (The Conservative Party, The Liberal Party and The Christian Democratic Party), and the next promising a red-green change.

Hm, the election-day poll has just been released: the red-green alternative are in the lead. But it's such a close tie that no one knows until the votes have actually been counted. Unfortunately there seems to be no doubt that the populist right wing Progress Party has more support than ever with 20% of the votes.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

flickr-networks and hubs

No doubt: I enjoy the explore-feature on flickr. Lots of great photos I might not have found otherwise. I like flickr-princess Rebekka's photos of Iceland, herself, and her macro-shots of water. Rebekka is one of those relatively few people who dominate the interesting-list every day. The nature of networks in online worlds partly explains why a few users among so many can be rather dominating. The interesting list is a result of "lots of things that make a photo 'interesting' (or not) in the Flickr. Where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing." Generally the featured photos are of great quality. However, they are often posted by the hubs of flickr. "Hubs are special. They dominate the structure of all networks in which they are present, making them look like small worlds" (Barabasi: Linked: 64). Want to be a star on Flickr? Good photos are required. But not always enough. You need to do some serious networking as well. Oh, and remember, you can come a long way with loads of photos of your self, cats, portraits of adorable children, sun-sets and of course, macros. They are definitely cliche-genres on flickr. Then again, I rather like cliches.

Self-portraits are interesting though. I like to take self-portraits. Apparently a lot of other people do as well.