exploring new media worlds krystina.benson@qut.edu.au kcb 202 week 2

Exploring New Media Worlds

Krystina.Benson@qut.edu.au

KCB 202 Week 2

Agenda

• Welcome! • Introductions• About the Course• Assessments 1&2• Discussion: The Wiki (Assignment 2)• List of possibilities (Assessment 1)• To do this week

Propaganda, Journalism and Popular Culture

About the Course: Tutorials

How our time is spent:• Attendance Sheet• 1.5 hours: Activities and Discussion• .5 hours: Individual Consultation & Questions

What is a wiki?

• Everyone, please go to: www.wikispaces.com

• Please sign up & confirm your email address

• Search Wikispaces for KCB202 (select our tutorial) and request to join

About the Course: Purpose

• to broaden and deepen your understandings of contemporary theories, thinking and debates surrounding new media technologies and practices

• experience as well as explore how new media are employed to construct, organize, convene and maintain communities

• build your capacity to analyse implications• limits of embodiment, nation-states and

their infrastructures of laws and economics

About the Course: Content

• Histories (temporalities) of new media • Geographies (spatialities) of new media• Understandings of new media collectives• Politics of/in/surrounding new media • Implications of new media on the intersecting

spheres of law, regulation, commerce and politics• New media beyond the first world

Assessment One

FORMATIVE & SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT • Assessment name: Class Wiki, Ongoing from Week 3 to 10

Description: Each tutorial group will host its own wiki with the objective to compile a shared repository of information. The overall structure, function and management of the wiki is to be regarded as a communal task, wherein you are expected to accept responsibility for adding to and developing information on the wiki on all of the unit’s topics, with a greater emphasis on the topic of their chosen case study towards the second half of semester (from week 6 onwards). You are expected to participate in the process of discussion necessary to the professional operation of the wiki and make positive contributions to its overall success as a shared resource.

• There are no weekly deadlines for wiki entries, all entries between week 3 and 10 count towards the marks for this assessment.

• Individual progress feedback in week 5 (wk starting 16 Aug) and week 8 (wk starting 6 September) and have the final grade for the wiki by week 12.

Relates to objectives: 1, 2, 3 & 4Weight: 40%Group or Individual: IndividualDue date: Week 10, Friday, 24 September, 12 midnight

Assessment Two

SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT• Assessment name: Wiki Self-Assessment

Description: Each tutorial class will be asked to assess their combined contributions to the class wiki based on a predetermined set of criteria, which amongst others will include the wiki’s overall organisation, visual appeal, usability and how well the wiki has worked as an instance of online professional collaboration.

• This assessment will be conducted in-class, so your presence in week 12’s tutorial is crucial to the process of self-assessment.

• Relates to objectives: 1, 2, 3 & 4Weight: 10%Group or Individual: GroupDue date: Week 12 (to be performed during week 12 tutorial)

Questions so far?

Brainstorming & Discussion: Assessment 2

• Lets talk about editing, discussion, history, netiquette

• What do you want and expect from each other while jointly working on wiki?

• Organisation and presentation as group work and assessment

• Your self-assessment will be part of the grade (10%)

• How will it be managed? • Design, navigation, structure, organisation,

interface Check out your wiki . . .

Brainstorming: Assessment One

• Brainstorming and thinking about your topic and area for contribution to the wiki, case study.

• Topics must be decided on by week 6 tutorial, vetted and approved by tutor. Examples of possible topics:

• Collaboration, creativity, innovation (mashups, youtube symphony)• Ethics, its formation and evolution (ISP code on content copyright)• Behavioural change, management and study• Copyright, copyleft, creative commons • Commodities and commodification • Property, patents, intellectual property• Civic participation, Digital divide, Democracy• Collectives, Hive Minds, Smart Mobs• Cloud Culture, Censorship, filtering• Crime, deviance, jurisdictionsAnother approach is to think about possible projects in light of current issues like• Australian Elections 2010 and (ab)use of new media• NBN (national broadband network) and what that means• Fiji censorship of media and how new media is being used to circumvent it

Week 2 Readings: Histories of New Media

(1) Chapter 13: The Gift Economy by John Naughton, 2000. Chapter 13: The Gift Economy from A Brief History of the Future: from Radio Days to Internet Years in a Lifetime, pp. 193-206.

• an ex-journalist, account of the origins of sme cultural values of the internet that still mark ongoing developments like open source programming, participatory media and wikipedia,

• characteristics: consultation, sharing, user-generated content and user developed application; are an intrinsic reason for the success and ubiquity of new media.

• Think about and compare the events Naughton describes to contemporary challenges currently playing out, like that between Apple and Adobe.

(2) Imagining the Internet: a History and Forecast • Pay attention to the predictions made for 2010-2014, pick on one or two and consider how far

these forecasts have come to pass in 2010, if at all. Conversely, wherever the developments predicted seem impossible or bypassed since, think about why that is so and what factors influenced the turn of events.

Excerpt

• ‘Freesoftware…is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free speech”, not “free beer” (197)

• How does history, geography, policy, understanding of media, regulation, commerce and politics affect your understanding of Stallman?

To do this week:

• Check out the Wiki, navigate around• Topic for week 6 – have a think• Week 2 Readings