Category Archives: Citizen Media

IPL discourages media sharing by fans

Posted on May 5, 2008 | Leave a comment

The normal preoccupation of New Media Mogul is media sport – in the changing relationships between the media and audiences, there seems to be plenty happening within this sphere. There’s also a lot of money tied up in the media coverage of sport, making the situation interesting as new forms of media and social media movements supplant older, more established forms of media.

New Media Mogul has already featured numerous example of this but the latest comes from cricket’s Indian Premier League, as the tournament has banned news organisations the event from supplying photos to their own websites or the websites of any other organizations. Tcovering his would appear to be because they want all traffic looking for photos of the event to come to their own website and view them, where the photos are also offered for sale. Consumers can purchase a single, extremely high resoultion photo for $199 and by the looks of it download the photo and have it printed out or whatever else they may desire.

The point about this practice is that media sharing seems to be a way to encourage fan interaction with a sport in this new media age, and so making any media surrounding the sport exclusive to one particular site on the one hand, and then so expensive to obtain on the other hand seems to have turned fans away from the IPL, at least in an online sense.

For a tournament that was so hyped and so talked about amongst cricketing fans the world over, to date the league’s ‘fan page’ on Facebook has only managed to secure 713 people and the paucity of media available on this page is telling, with only 9 fan pictures contributed. In comparison, one of the AFL’s most popular teams, the Collingwood Football Club has 3,695 fans and in addition to this 91 fan pictures have been contributed.

IPL is doing better on other social media sites with 243 results found on Flickr, although many of these seem to be team logos and screen shots, so they don’t count as genuine contributions of fan media. Likewise on YouTube there is plenty of media, but once again much has been repurposed from television and is not genuine fan contribution.

It has been reported that attendances at the matches are not what organisers of the tournament expected, with many tickets having to be given away to ensure that games have sufficient spectators. So it is unclear how large a part the decision to make all media content surrounding the tournament exclusive to the IPL’s website; thus ensuring that the enthusiasm that fan made media brings to an event is somewhat diminished; has impacted on this lack of attendance. But it is becoming increasingly clear that fan culture as displayed through social media is becoming an important element to the success of sport, and in particular media sport.

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Posted in Citizen Media, Social Networking, Sports Media

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Super-meta-cagalisticexpialadocious

Posted on April 13, 2008 | Leave a comment

Pretty much every time a new post is published on New Media Mogul it ends up aggregated or referred to on someone else’s blog. Only quite often in surprising places. Like one of my posts from last week mentioned So You Think You Can Dance as an example of how there is a voyeuristic element to media that consumers enjoy. Next thing I knew, my post had been aggregated to a blog about So You Think You Can Dance. Needless to say my post looked very out of place on the site (and now I wonder if this post will end up on the site too).

So it was good when I discovered yesterday that a journalism student, Sherri Powers had spotted my latest posting on collective intelligence and had made a contribution to the J-Talk blog, quoting me. I’m not mentioning this as a means of self promotion, but because I want to take up some of the points that Powers makes in her post.

Powers’ post came after a guest lecture from Dr Dianne Lynch, dean of the Roy Park School of Communications at Ithaca College. Lynch’s main point seems to have been that as collective intelligence enters the field of journalism, journalists are worried about the transformation that is taking place because they are supposed to be the experts on things. They are worried that they will become less credible or not needed if the public decides that they can get the same news from an average Joe on the Internet.

I think journalists will always remain the experts on things. People working as professional journalists have more than likely done an undergraduate degree in the area then spent a further year learning the ropes as a cadet at a media organization. In most cases they have skills in writing, researching and keeping up to date with issues that average Joe does not who spends two hours per week reporting on the news does.

Furthermore, unlike other industries, there are issues of trust involved with media, and particularly with news media. While we might be increasingly flippant about where we go for our news, with so many choices for content, old habits die hard and people stick to the news organizations they’ve grown to respect over time. Even if a citizen media site was to attain the sort of quality in news presentation that is expected from a professional outlet, I believe it would be a while before a substantial audience flocked to it.

This is why I think my analogy to the software industry is a good one for the media, and particularly the news media. Collective intelligence produces open source software that is extremely innovative, but this software isn’t likely to put Microsoft or Apple out of business anytime soon. Probably because the likes of Microsoft and Apple have been in the business for a long time, and consumers have come to know them as producers of quality products.

But like I said in my last post, there are some things that citizen journalists can do better than professional journalists. A famous example is the resignation of Republican Senate majority leader Trent Lott, which was brought about by the efforts of citizen journalists (To read all about it, click here). The point with the Lott story is that the politician made some racially offensive comments that weren’t ‘newsworthy’ enough for the mainstream media to carry. But then citizen journalists decided to look into the issue and found that Lott had made racist comments on numerous comments over a period of time. Their ongoing investigation of the issue caught the attention of the mainstream media and it made its way back into the big time, eventually leading to the resignation of Lott.

This was an important piece of work by citizen journalists, where they devoted their attention to an issue that the mainstream media really couldn’t justify using resources on. This is an example of how the two ‘tiers’ of the media worked together to hold a public figure accountable, and I think this is a model of how the media landscape could function. Instead of being competitors, professional journalists and citizen journalists could work together to make the news.

To return to computer software again, it’s really no different to what some major software companies are doing. For example Sun Microsystems sponsors the open source (and collective) efforts of OpenOffice.org and the innovations trialled in that program eventually make their way into the commercial Star Office. Media organizations are beginning to catch onto this idea with citizen journalism too, although mainly through submissions of photos and videos at this stage. There’s no reason why they couldn’t call for articles too, which would act as an extra source of information for the public, and an extra resource for journalists in their effort to compile the best reports.

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A defence of collective intelligence in media making

Posted on April 11, 2008 | Leave a comment

Collective intelligence is a hotly debated topic amongst those of us interested in new media. In its basic form, it is the idea that everyone has a contribution to make, and when combined those contributions can create a quality product. It is the idea that is the basis of Wikipedia, an open source encyclopedia that has been the subject of much controversy in its short lifespan. Wikipedia controversies arise when the pages of political figures are hacked to contain inaccurate and sometimes scandalous information. But its biggest controversy arose when an analysis in Nature found that Wikipedia’s scientfic articles were nearly as accurate as those in Encyclopedia Britannica.

The insult to Britannica was that their articles are usually written by the foremost experts in the field, whereas the articles in Wikipedia are written by anyone who feels that they have a contribution to make to such an article. To those who supported the idea of collective intelligence in media making, this finding supported their contention that this approach can produce quality products. There are many others who remain unconvinced.

Jaron Lanier is unimpressed by the chaotic nature of collective intelligence. He believes that consensus is never reached in making media products this way; instead the products produced are in a constant state of flux and cannot be relied upon as being 100 percent accurate. Likewise, Terry Fisher warned of the lack of stable cultural reference points that might exist in a society that openly embraced the idea of making media through collective intelligence.

To my way of thinking, these commentators miss the point on collective intelligence. Collective intelligence also exists within the production of computer software, and is known as open source. In the open source software community, developers from all around the world form teams and work cooperatively on developing software. The best example of open source software is Linux, an operating system that contains many of the same features as found in Windows and OSX, as well as some that aren’t.

This is the freedom that open source software has – nobody expects it to be perfect. So features that might be too risky for a commercial application like Windows to include can be tried out in the open source software world. Mozilla Firefox is an open source web browser, and was the first application of its kind to feature tabbed browsing. The idea of tabbed browsing caught on and now the commercial browsers, Internet Explorer and Safari feature it as well. Likewise, OpenOffice is an open source alternative to Microsoft Office and pioneered the use of an XML based file format. Now Microsoft has followed suit in the latest versions of their office suite, because OpenOffice proved that it could work well first.

The same relationship could exist between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica, or between the collective efforts of citizen media and the mainstream media. Citizen journalism has already proved that it can cover some issues more effectively than the mainstream media, mainly because of the limited time and space that the mainstream media can devote to any one issue. Likewise content can be developed in a collective and if it proves popular and workable, be developed into a stable product within the mainstream media. Consequently the mainstream media could leverage the advantage that collective media initiatives give them – a testing bed for new content and a forum for extending the coverage of issues; letting amateurs with an interest in the issue run with it.

Just as proprietary software producers like Sun and Novell encourage the efforts of hobbyist software developers to create new products that they can later refine and release commercially, mainstream media organizations could foster the efforts of citizen media makers in an effort to bring more innovation and diversity into the ‘stable’ world of the mainstream media. Jaron Lanier suggests that citizen journalists need leadership from a strong independent press, but this isn’t about the mainstream media leading citizen media makers. This is about amateurs and professionals working in a symbiotic relationship to create quality media products.

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Citizen media and the Beijing Olympics

Posted on March 11, 2008 | 1 Comment

In ‘Blogging for gold at Beijing’ I’ve previously outlined the IOC’s plan on New Media Mogul to let athletes maintain personal blogs surrounding the games, provided they don’t comment on the performances of other athletes or upload audiovisual content they have created of an Olympic event.

Speaking more generally, it would appear that the IOC considers blogging to be ‘a legitimate form of personal expression’ rather than journalism. To quote the IOC’s official statement on these blogs;

‘Therefore, the IOC does not consider that blogs by Accredited Persons, in accordance with these Guidelines, will compromise paragraph 3 of Bye-law to Rule 49 of the Olympic Charter which states that “Only those persons accredited as media may act as journalists, reporters or in any other media capacity”.

It would appear then that blogs of personal commentary surrounding the Olympics by citizen journalists are also permissible, but that posts appearing on sites such as Nowpublic and Wikinews may contravene the IOC’s bylaws. But then again, what exactly is the difference between personal expression and journalism? The IOC’s only attempt at clearing this up is to say that a blog is a type of website where entries appear in a reverse chronological order. Entries also tend to appear in reverse chronological order on the aforementioned citizen news sites.

In the same document, the IOC puts forward its policy on audivisual recordings being made at the games;

The dissemination of moving images of the Games through any media, including display on the Internet, is a part of the IOC’s intellectual property rights. No sound or moving images (including sequences of still photographs which simulate moving images) of any Olympic events, including sporting action, Opening, Closing and Medal Ceremonies or
other activities which occur within any zone which requires an Olympic identity and accreditation card (or ticket) for entry – e.g. competition and practice venues, Olympic Village, Main Press Centre – (“Accredited Zones”) may be made available, whether on a live or delayed basis, regardless of source.

This prohibition also extends to still images, which must also be taken from within accredited areas. It is unclear just how the IOC plans to police this, because with technology the way it is, 90% of people entering a stadium could be carrying a camera built into their cellular telephones. No information about entry conditions to the Olympics appears to be available on the official site at this point in time, but a cursory look at the ‘audiovisual policies’ of major Australian sporting grounds reveals they’re out of step with modern technology.

Under the Melbourne Cricket Ground’s conditions of entry audio recording equipment and video cameras are prohibited, except in cases where the parents of Auskick participants are trying to enter the ground with this equipment and in these cases it is permissible (presumably with some sort of proof that the person does have a child participating in Auskick). Telstra Dome prohibits professional cameras, audio recording equipment or video cameras. The SCG Trust, which operates the Sydney Cricket Ground and the Sydney Football Stadium, prohibits anyone to have or operate television, cinematographic or photographic equipment for commercial purposes.

Under the MCG’s conditions of entry, almost every patron should be barred from entering the ground, seeing as the majority of mobile phones are capable of recording video and audio. Under Telstra Dome’s policy it would depend what was considered professional; but the cameras found in some of the latest mobile phones are 5 megapixel, so while they may not be operated in a professional manner, they are certainly capable of capturing a decent picture. The SCG prohibits any commercial use of audiovisual equipment, but with citizen media increasingly gaining recognition, this might be a redundant distinction in a few years time.

There isn’t so much of an issue in Australia as none of the major sporting codes seem as hellbent on maintaining complete control of their intellectual property as the IOC. But certainly the Olympics will be an interesting fortnight for watchers of citizen media like New Media Mogul. Because the only way the IOC is going to maintain complete control over the content that is disseminated from the Olympics is by insisting that every patron check his or her mobile phone at the entry gates. Otherwise there will be thousands of devices capable of capturing and disseminating Olympic content outside of the accredited zones of Olympic stadiums. Television stations have this policy when you go and see a show being recorded, but while this may deprive someone of their mobile phone for a two hour period where they have to be quiet anyway, Olympic events go all day and in this age mobile phones are first and foremost vital communication devices.

So you can be sure that New Media Mogul will keep watching this issue.

To look at the full statement from the International Olympic Committee, click here.

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Democracy and citizen media

Posted on February 27, 2008 | Leave a comment

Last week on New Media Mogul I raised the issue of democracy within ‘citizen media’ by talking about the athletes’ blogs at the Beijing Olympics. While the idea of a blog is to encourage its owner to write about whatever they feel like, athletes have been warned that they cannot talk about the performances of other athletes and other such things, which kind of takes some of the democracy out of their blogging experiences at the games.

This leads me to thinking more widely about how democracy functions in different ways and on different levels within the media landscape. From a holistic point of view, the mass media is democratic to the point that while the Government regulates mass media, the mass media is free to create and distribute any content that does not contravene these regulations without interference from the Government.

On this level, user-generated content enjoys a greater level of democracy, considering that its main means of distribution is the Internet and in Australia regulation of the Internet really only extends to pornography and gambling. So provided that user-generated content does not contravene these regulations, there is also the freedom to create and distribute any content.
Individual democracy within the mass media is tightly controlled by the corporations that control the proprietary media networks. Newspapers set aside pages where a careful selection of opinions from the general public are published on a daily basis. Some television shows also encourage interactivity – whether it is SMS voting, emails, letters or in some cases talkback. Talkback radio has been put forward as a particularly democratic medium, but ultimately while considerable time might be devoted to the opinions of individuals by this medium, not all callers can get through as their opinions may be too controversial or just not interesting enough.

User-generated content and the sites devoted to its hosting encourage a much more fluidic democracy – some sites will promote a dialogue between an individual who has created a piece of work and the viewers of that work, while other sites are read/write in the sense that users can change the work of others, or build upon it. This read/write process is known as collective intelligence and is encouraged by sites like Wikipedia and movements such as creative commons with its ‘share and share alike’ philosophy.
The idea of ‘collective intelligence’ is such an interesting one to me – never before has it been so easy for individuals to collaborate on creating media and the success of this collaboration will determine the success of UGC as an alternative medium. How individuals, sporting organizations and media professionals address the potential drawbacks of collective intelligence is essential, given the influential nature of media within society, and this is an area that I will be working on in much greater depth.

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