Carpenter’s research defines online citizen journalist as an individual who intends to publish information online meant to benefit a community.

Carpenter has a positive view about diversity and about citizen journalism-diversity of information by citizen journalists helps in “making decisions for the betterment of the community or life” and it “promotes a greater awareness of self”.

In the article she compares the citizen journalists with traditional ones and the difference is that traditional ones tend to tailor their coverage in the support of the status quo, but citizen journalists since they are smaller it tends to be dissimilar newspaper journalists and more diverse. Citizen journalism focuses on athletic, human interest, and social events.

Carpenter explains that hyperlinks in citizen journalism is a useful learning tool, for example bloggers acknowledge the credibility of outside sources and have a connection with outside sources. She also finds that big online newspapers rarely or never linkout but they try to keep the viewer within the site.

Multimedia is also a useful tool since users are able to absorb information faster and learn more in different ways.

In conclusion she believes that content diversity is important and that more people around the world should have access to them. One unfortunate aspect of the study she says is that it only focuses on the US.

Reflection time: Well the article was interesting and it made me look back on week five workshop. Me and Gazaleh looked at the big news sites for news and at that time citizen social media wasn’t really helping. So I felt that big news sites were more reliable and informative, but now after reading this article I can see the importance of citizen media can have on an individual.

Today’s class: oh man, it was stressful… for me at least, but I survived with some ideas about my research essay and digital project. For my research I plan to look at citizen journalism (inspired by this weeks article) and its role in developing countries (Inspired by past readings and others). For my digital project i want to do this online collage thing where you can access different images and videos, audio by scrolling or clicking…. but like Luke said i need to figure out what the purpose of the project would be… anyway, I will try to figure it out now and hand it in by the end of the day (11:59 pm)

-Peace

Week four we did the filming of our readings and got to use final cut pro which was awesome. I haven’t used one in ages and I forgot everything… but anyway, I thought it was helpful since it made me and my group to figure how our articles could fit in with each others and it was interesting how we were going to visualize on the camera.

Week five was another useful and thoughtful workshop: the usability, quality, and use value of social media sources like, digg, twitter, youtube, wikipedia. Me and Gazaleh picked a current news topic, the Moscow subway bombing, what we found was that these social media sources weren’t very good except for wikipedia which had all the basic information with external links to major news networks.

In the news sites there were differences in the popularity of the story which we thought was interesting. Fox has very American and did not have the story as “hot” news only sites that considered the story news worthy was the European news media like BBC, Herald.co.uk, etc.

So the conclusion was that public media is for entertainment and if you want news go to the news network.

Well for week 5 presentation I talked about Africa on Youtube article by by Melissa Wall. I didn’t have much to talk about except about African stereotypes constructed by Westerners  and the content of the Youtube clips.

So the main focus of the article is how citizen media might influence international communication flows by enabling new ways of representing Africa. In the literature review section of the article she discuses the two sides of Youtube.

The negative side argues that Youtube’s representation of Africa  is controlled by a Western gaze. Images on Youtube consistently portrays Africa backward and violent, and extreme poverty. The positive side is that new communication technologies in Africa can enable African to construct their own identities and be connected to the world better.

She uses content analysis for her research of Youtube clips specifically on Ghana and Kenya and asks 4 questions:

1. how long is the video?
2. How many times has it been viewed
3. what country does the person posting the video claim to be from?
4. What is the focus (the main activity or theme) of the video?

Wall mention that the person who is posting the video is people with internet access, and because Africans have lower internet access the one who are posting the videos would be dominated by Westerners of African diaspora. In Ghana only 3%of the population have internet access and only 6% of Kenya’s population have internet access.

The content for Kenya and Ghana’s videos were entertainment focused and it clashes with the optimistic view that Youtube content will educate or inform viewers as has been claimed.

The second and third most popular content was tourist and aid work videos.

Conclusion of the article is that “Youtube enables the average Westerner in particular to become a chronicler of other peoples in faraway lands just as travelers and missionaries ‘discovered’ Africa in previous centuries.”(Hall 405)

In my opinion Youtube is strictly for entertainment and should never be the only or even a source of information. Is that too critical? But I still enjoy its content

I wa trying to find a picture of the Sada Mp3 player but no luck. But I did manage to find an article that was relevant to the journal about the Sada project. Its about the harsh realities radio stations in Afghanistan and being a Afghanistani female radio journalist. Its quite sad that the turmoil that is going on in Afghanistan is affecting ICT developments that can help the country develop itself.

Here is the link if you want to read it in detail

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1017227/Good-morning-Afghanistan-The-dangers-war-torn-broadcasting.html

Anyway I was really interested in the discussion about information communication technologies in developing countries last week and so for week 4′s reading I chose to read  The Sada Says `We Women Have Our Rights’: A Gender Analysis of an ICT Initiative in Afghanistan. The journal  is about the use of information communication technology, the Sada device, and gender empowerment in Afghanistan. The research and its result is very positive. Sada is like an Mp3 player and on it had 15hrs of content consisting of “civic education material and promoted peace, national unity, democracy, civic engagement in the parlimentary election, human and women’s rights and related rural development and health issues.”(Sengupta, 338) To us an Mp3 player is a common device that plays music or other audio file and may seem to have little or no real significance in our lives, but to these women in Afghanistan this technology, that we sometimes take granted for,  means something much more important and life changing.   

Like my previous post I’m really interested in ICT and its relevancy to developing countries and I think it will be a pretty awesome research topic. RAD!

Tune in next week for “Africa on Youtube”   

Anyway…

My Melissa Gregg’s article notes and my thoughts:

Banal Bohemia: Blogging from the Ivory Tower Hot-Desk

In short summary Gregg reveals to the reader of the academic blogger subculture and the various functions/reason for blogging, recurring themes on these types of blogs, and also the risks of new generation scholars of being disconnected from effective labor politics. When I was reading this I couldn’t decide if she was mocking these academic blogs or if she thought they were brilliant… so I guess she’s neutral.

Gregg’s view on on academic blogs is they “display a number of features of creative labor. But perhaps more importantly, they gauge the anxieties of a new generation of would-be academics who can be excused for wondering of the career they thought they were training for has somehow slipped from reach.”(471)

Gregg cites Jill Walker’s description of three types of academic blogging, which are:

1. Public intellectuals- blogs are a defining feature of their reputation
2. Research log- online notebook (what we are doing in 712)
3. Pseudonymous blogs about academic life- not to be taken seriously

The role of blog communities for academics is to sustain motivation through their career paths and ease loneliness.

In the article there is an emphasis on subcultural theory and Gregg mentions the Birmingham school in relation to the theory.

“The early theorization of subculture Group solidarity, formed through shared disaffection.” (476)

“Scholarly blogging can be understood as a subculture for the highly educated: ‘lifestyle’ has been replaced with ‘workstyle.’”(476)

Gregg also mentions blogs to boost career prospects, ‘careerist blogging’, and as in discussion, Luke mentions also the problems that academics face about plagiarism if they do post their work on a blog.

In summary Gregg introduces one on the many blogging subcultures that are online. Like most blogging subcultures academic subculture functions to blow off steam, relieve stress, find solace, and to motivate, and also to slack off

Here are some example of academic blogs (or something close) I found on WordPress… They are absolutely the stuff Gregg was talking about… some of them are quite funny, since I’m not a PhD student…yet?

possibly “junior faculty blogger” (not quite PhD)-http://rideyourpony.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/phd/

http://carlos9900.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/how-not-to-get-a-phd/

I have to thank carlos9900 (above) for hooking me up with this one- http://malenel.wordpress.com/

http://theflowingmind.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/phd-student-the-real-definition/

This on was mentioned in the article and is on blogger, just have a look around in the old archives- http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/

www.adfreeblog.org

It spreads awareness to bloggers and it flows with Fuchs idea of free platforms and their users being “victims” to corporate advertising. Would you advocate this ad-free blog campaign?

Note: I was reading and typing at the same time  so most of the info is straight from the source.

Information and Communication Technologies and Society by Christian Fuchs

Thesis/Topic of the journal: Web 2.0 signifies the increasing importance of the internet gift commodity strategy- commodifying the user who produce content and communicates online on free access platforms so that advertising rates go up- “prosumer” (producer-consumer/ productive-consumer?) also with commodification (demand), individualization becomes more important. Developing Critical Internet Theory on the basis of the Marxist critique, Fuchs questions informational capitalism of information as gift and commodity and believes that without applying this theory users of the advertisement-based free platform will make advertising prices higher and thus making bigger profits for big internet corporations.

Outline of journal (form/approach is Marxian critique research method)

*Analysis of Critical Theory through Marxian Critique:

1. ontology (nature of existence)- critical theory is materialistic, seeing the negativity and contradictions of society and research should be constructed in totality, in a macro (large) scale

2. epistemology (origin, nature, method)- critical theory is not linear but it is open, dynamic, and contradictory. It is a dialectic analysis meaning investigating the truth of opinions. It is realistic in that it shows pessimism and optimism.

3. axiology (values, ethics, aesthetics)- critical theory does not accept existing social structures, not interested in society but what society could be or could become.

Critical Internet Theory

Since Fuchs looks at a Marxian view the article explains the relationship between economic, social, and the internet/Web 2.0.

The internet is viewed as capitalist, how people produce, reproduce, consume or transform media and culture.

1. Capitalism is seen to be repressive- there are approaches to the Internet that stress on the repressive aspects of media and culture.

2. Internet is seen to be like society itself, since it deals with capitalism, which is a big part of society.

3. Internet has different interconnected roles in capitalism

i. media products as capital accumulation

ii. media a means of advertising and circulating products

iii. media as and ideology of economic and political theory and policy

iv. media as systems that reproduce human labour power, productions, products, reflects class struggles

v. alternative media

Definition of Critical internet theory to Fuchs is: “identifying and analyzing antagonisms in the relationship of Internet and society, and how the internet shaped and shapes the colliding forces of competition and cooperation, class struggle and formation, domination and exploitation, over all questioning the potential for cooperation, self determination, participation, happiness, and self management.”

Informational capitalism vs. Contemporary capitalism (production): contradicts each other because contemporary capitalism is where the country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit but with informational capitalism individuals produce and trade information but the networks profit.

1. hard to control because it is globally produced and diffused by networks

2.information is intangible, can be copied indefinitely

3. negates ownership which is a theoretical approach to traditional capitalism

Information is not a public good that is freely available to all anymore it has become a commodity. The gift form is subsumed under the commodity form.

commodification of human creativity and audience participation-PROSUMER pg. 82

So because of this advertising becomes more personalized and individualized

In web 2.0 social relationships are commodified

Democracy??? Only if democracy is understood as the production of information by all that has no significant political effects and leaves dominant power structures untouched. But doesn’t work that easily, since all the big decisions are still taken up by elite groups, there is a flood of data but no significant political voices.

Question:

Is it possible by applying the critical Internet theory that the Internet can become a cooperative society, as in community based (not so much individualized), and information free to all? Or is it too ideal, difficult, or too late.

Thats all for now… will talk about it more in class.

This is my first time doing this kind of thing, usually I’m the anonymous/ghost reader but I guess I have to experience blogging before I can say or understand the importance? or benefits? or whatever it is that makes blogging such a world wide thing. I just can’t believe people who have managed to maintain their blog or several other blogs, its so tedious and time consuming… -_-;;. Anyways about the flicker photo sharing, I’m planning to signup because it seems to me not so much of a narcissistic community site like facebook, myspace, etc. I especially like and find it interesting the ‘geotag’ link. With this feature I was able to and admire the world around me by just sitting in front of my mac. Photography as a medium through which we access it through another digital medium…. am I making sense??? Anyways please leave comments … if you want. see you guys next week!