wordwhacker

I thought I would have more to say about this week's reading, but I am realizing something as I go through it: I don't really participate in participatory journalism. I know that it happens. I am also sometimes directed to political blogs and mainstream news sources with copious comments by other internet users - which, I guess, is really a big part of the whole idea of participatory journalism anyway. Even though my livejournal friends page is not entirely politically-geared, they can essentially morph into political discussion spaces, drawing in mainstream and blogosphere sources at the drop of a hat and spreading them meme-style.

Which I guess is a way of expressing - maybe even expanding upon - the introduction to participatory journalism that comes up in this week's reading from The Media Center:

"Participatory journalism flourishes in social media — the interpersonal communication that takes place through email, chat, message boards, forums — and in collaborative media — hybrid forms of news, discussion and community."

What I'm suggesting, I guess, is that the boundaries of participatory journalism are really easily blurred into the space that one could more generally call "participatory culture."

I don't have a lot else to say, but I wanted to also comment specifically on the weaknesses of "discussion group" settings:

"Weaknesses: Sometimes forums are too open, easily garnering flip, reactive comments. Active, large forums can get noisy, with so many posts from so many members, it's hard to determine what information is meaningful or useful. In addition, some moderated forums require each post to be pre-approved before it appears online, slowing down and smothering the conversation."

My comment is generally an emphatic YEP! This is, in a nutshell, why I don't go out of my way to participate in political (and other forms of) discussion online. In my last blog post I talked about the difficulty of navigating in a forum populated by thousands of active participants. And re: the modding business, I have heard some interesting and frightening horror stories about having to moderate big-name forums. Though this wasn't so much about conversation-smothering as reigning-in-the-hatemongering, which is a definite up-side to forum moderation. (I should point out that this reading does also focus on the positive aspects of online discussion groups, which I generally agree with as well - for instance, the ease of participation and the lowered technical and financial resources for participation in general.)

That's it from me for now - off to class!

So when I started this blog I made a generic entry which outlines my media use throughout the day. This is kind of handy, because it means that for the most part I can focus in on particular activities and try to be reflective and relevant to my course materials. Fun fun. But now and then I catch myself using media in different ways, and by the time I'm going to write a blog entry I've forgotten some of it.

Clearly, I need to get a little notepad or something and carry it with me for a few days so I can jot things down as I go. That way I can watch for trends, as well as remember neat little things that will make for a good blog entry. I'm toying with the idea of doing this through "Twitter" - I hardly EVER send texts, and I'm sure I have a number of "free" ones included in my cell phone plan. (And I think you can update them directly on the site, too.) Since lots of people are starting to do this it could be an interesting experiment. Look for some "twitter" updates here over the next week or so, between my normal blog entries.

For a while I've been thinking about the digital media fast that Danna Walker got her students to do in "The Longest Day". It would be interesting to do this - a few times I've all but decided to go for it. There are lots of things that I could cut out for a day or two, to see how I feel. I could go for walks without my mp3 player; I could write long-hand and read textbooks (and, y'know, normal books) instead of use the computer.

( Read more... )

The other day there were THREE baseball games on - one in the afternoon, one in the early evening, and one at night. But because the NFL apparently pays Rogers more money than does the MLB, they weren't broadcasting the first two games on the basic Rogers cable that you can get around here. They were trumped by the football games. This was a royal piss-off for my dad, who LOVES baseball and was really looking forward to watching them. We're not really huge TV people - sports are the #1 reason we even HAVE cable, and are the ONLY reason why we have that one tiny "expanded" package that gives you the 52 channels or whatever.

So TBS is carrying all of the games. And we HAVE TBS. We are technically PAYING for TBS. But whatever feed we get through Rogers wasn't covering it.

This is where the whole "WE ARE THE AUDIENCE, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE" thing comes in, and I get inventive with internet... stuff.( Read more... )

Gah! I am at the mercy of technology here. It's been over a week since I did the reading that I want to talk about, and my browser died when I tried to re-open it. And one thing led to another and I found myself uninstalling and deleting old programs to make more space on my hard drive. But that's okay, because it kind of leads into what I want to talk about, and maybe while I'm rambling I'll get that reading open again.

Something that bugged me about the Jenkins reading (if I'm remembering correctly - will know soon, anyhow, browser-permitting) is that it seemed to imply that "convergence" was mostly happening in one direction - big media companies merging making technology that allows users to do more with a single piece of technology, for instance. Sure, that's definitely happening - but what MAKES it a good business move? Might it be user demand? Not that it's ALL originating with the users, but there's definitely a kind of feed-back loop happening where people are coming up with new uses for technology and companies are responding to this. Argh, the browser's not cooperating tonight. Anyway, Jenkins may have hinted at this but it seems to me that he suggested that the source of convergence was mostly ORIGINATING in the big media company mergers and then trickling down. And that bugged me.

I had a brief discussion in the comments of the last entry with my friend eternalism, and a bunch of interesting stuff came up, including a bit of thought about convergence. You can take a peek if you're in the mood.

( Further rambling ahead includes talk about swearing in internet media, and some discussion of why Rock Band is so awesome. )