It happens that one thing I wrote in my first paper for this course was that our reading for that assignment ignored the two-directional nature of networked communications. It’s interesting (and gratifying), then, to read Chapter 2 of Networked Publics, “Culture, Media Convergence, and Networked Participation” (Russell et al. 2008). The authors show a prescient insight (they were writing just as YouTube was being born) into how the main use of the Internet is for many people conversations, where the main purpose of radio was mere listening and TV mere watching.
I’m going to be personal again: I’m old enough that I was online before the Internet was available for private (non-academic, non-governmental) use. I learned on and from the “online services” like CompuServe and Prodigy and GEnie. I actually worked for GEnie as a sysop (system operator) for years. All the commercial services tried to be something, whether it was a shopping mall, a virtual space you could “walk around in” like Prodigy’s original design, a set of entertainment services … what all of them turned into were communications media. There was a real hunger to talk to other people online (which I for one certainly felt).
It’s still there. It’s still critical. And in our own field, it’s still something that educators haven’t properly learned to harness.
In current educational practice, there are what I’d all haphazard attempts to use lots of online communication methods in education. In our last readings we heard about blogs (and of course I’m writing a blog as part of Denise Grandits’ attempt to teach me right now!). Classrooms have incorporated wikis, online collaboration tools like Google Docs, virtual worlds like Second Life, and probably every kind of technology that is used anywhere. In my day job I have both created and attended “webinars” (one-to-many training sessions conducted using either video, screen-sharing, or plain voice). Currently very trendy are MOOCs–Massively Open Online Courses.
What doesn’t exist is a standard of practice. There is some research into what works but it is scattered and mostly not very rigorous. We have to select our tools and our techniques based on intuition.
The authors discuss four specific cases to illuminate the issues related to a more networked world. In their discussion of Amateur Music and Remix, issues include lowered barriers to entry (which threaten established businesses) and the problem of file sharing (what the music industry calls “stealing our intellectual property”).
We might analogize to the Khan Academy, an outsider coming from nowhere to educate children despite having no formal background or education. Interestingly, I haven’t seen any hostility to Khan comparable to what the music business expresses to those suddenly competing with it.
In the second case study, the authors discuss anime fandom. (Full disclosure: I am the chair of LI-CON, a multimedia fan convention that will be held here on Long Island in August. A huge proportion of our attendees are anime fans. I am not unbiased here, although not a big anime fan myself.) They begin by talking about similarities to the music-sharing community (amateur-created and amateur-modified works in both, for instance). However, they assert that the creators of anime are more willing to see their own efforts as collaborative with their putative audience, and thus more likely to encourage rather than litigate against remixes and the equivalent.
Viral marketing, the third case, again allows the authors to talk about the increased power of the small group or individual vs. the large entity. In this case, they present the traditional powers (in this case, marketers) as immediately seeing the value of the new techniques and emulating them, in a direct reversal of the way the music business reacted to disruption.
In the fourth case study, we read about online news. Everyone is familiar with the rapid decline of traditional print media (including this former magazine writer). As before, the authors assert that those traditional outlets which integrate new technologies and especially new attitudes toward their readers will succeed, with older ones falling by the wayside.
Overall, this is one of the better readings I’ve been assigned. Reading it seven or eight years after publication it can’t help but feel a bit dated, but if you keep its publication date in mind it’s actually surprising how well the authors anticipated what would happen. I’m very impressed (and I’d like to read more of their works, perhaps more recent ones).
As I wrote above, what isn’t clear to me (at least this early in the class!) is how to directly apply any of it to education.
Rich, Adrienne; Ito, Mizuko; Richmond, Todd; and Tuters, Mark (2008). “Culture, Media Convergence, and Networked Participation.” in Varnelis, Kazys (Ed.) Networked Publics. (pp 43-76) Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
You make some great points Carl. I was somewhat confused by the section in Networked Publics regarding the collaborative nature of anime. I admit that I know next to nothing about anime, but why would those who produce the artwork not be vigilant about stopping piracy, P2P sharing, and fansubbing? Everybody seems to take a hard line stance against the bloated corpse that is the music industry (and I agree the industry failed to change with the times), but the real issue in my opinion should be that those who create are fairly compensated. Those who file share or use P2P services that violate copyrights are doing a disservice to the creators. If this continues (whether it be anime, music or video) those who create will not have the financial security to continue with their artistic pursuits. We will see the death of art and culture. I am staunchly against the proliferation of “remix culture” in which an original creation is modified, seemingly without regard for the original creative thought process. This, in my opinion is the major downside of technology.
In my blog I wrote about how business and the retail environment has been transformed by the “long tail” in which niche markets have greater market relevance than ever before. This is a great sign, and online sites can now carry products to a niche market, that otherwise would be confined to the limited space of a retail store. This easy availability for niche items can continue to exist only with adequate compensation for the artist’s creation.
Joe, Anime doesn’t originate in the West. As mentioned in the reading, manga (Japanese comics) has from the beginning had a tradition of doujinshi–fan created works using characters and situations invented by the original creators. Mangaka (manga creators) traditionally didn’t oppose doujinshi. In fact, they were and are flattered that their creations were compelling enough to inspire it. This has carried over to anime, the “child” medium.
Anime creators don’t feel that, say, a fan sub or anime music video harms them in any way. In fact, they believe that encouraging fans to help create a community around their work is more likely to increase sales than hurt them.
Anime companies in general do try to suppress file-sharing of their works, but not creation of derivative works as long as those derivatives don’t cost or earn (much) money.
Compare this to the tremendous current popularity of fanfiction. Many creators and publishers of text fiction encourage fanficcers, as long as they don’t charge for their work or claim ownership of the characters or other copyrighted components of the story that inspires them. Do you think that this very open policy has hurt, say, JK Rowling? Or Lucasfilm? Both officially permit fanfic, which is essentially textual doujinshi. Neither allows unauthorized copying.