Posts Tagged ‘media’
UPDATE 1-Why make Kony famous? Video rubs raw Uganda scars | Reuters
This text taken from Reuters via Online Media Daily Europe
* First screening of internet sensation in northern Uganda
* Disappointment and scorn greets scratchy screening (Adds tourism officials)
By Elias Biryabarema
LIRA, Uganda, March 14 (Reuters) – Few faces evoke more hatred and fear in northern Uganda than Joseph Kony, one of Africa’s most wanted men whose army of child soldiers preyed on this town for years and whose brutal legacy has been thrust back into the spotlight by a hugely popular U.S. video.
A wave of anger and depression swept over 27-year old Isaac Omodo as he stared at fuzzy images of young boys mutilated by the rebel warlord whose drugged and vicious fighters abducted Omodo’s brother at the height of northern raids by Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in 2001.
Those grainy pictures came from the first screening in northern Uganda on Tuesday of a 30-minute YouTube video filmed by a California-based charity, whose appeal for U.S.-backed Ugandan troops to capture the LRA leader went viral on the Internet over the last week.
“When I see some of those things Kony did I get mad,” said Omodo, whose sibling is still missing.
As the sun dipped over a dusty park in Lira, Omodo was among thousands who gathered to watch the screening of the video, which has been seen by more than 77 million people. It has attracted massive support on Twitter and Facebook and endorsements from celebrities like George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey in its quest to press for Kony’s capture.
But Omodo said he felt his raw emotional scars were being reopened.
“Why are we being reminded? I feel bad. We want to just forget all about Kony and the LRA madness,” Omodo told Reuters.
Some jeered as the projection neared its end and scuffles broke out as simmering frustrations boiled over.
Notorious for his use of children as fighters and sex slaves, as well as his fighters’ fondness for hacking off limbs, Kony terrorised northern Uganda for nearly 20 years until he was chased out of the area in 2005.
via UPDATE 1-Why make Kony famous? Video rubs raw Uganda scars | Reuters.
Business social networking in China set to grow five fold by 2013
Business social networking is set to grow five fold in China with the number of users tipped to reach 100 million by 2013, according to data from Tianji.
The company, which is China’s most popular business social network, estimates that the market for social business networking in China — which currently stands at 20 million professional users — will grow to account for 60 million users next year alone.
Of that market, Tianji currently enjoys 9 million ahead of close rival Ushi while LinkedIn trails with just one million members.
LinkedIn remained tight lipped on its plans for China when contacted it about its Japanese launch, saying only that is is “looking for opportunities all over the APAC region and will continue studying various regions and markets moving forward”.
The statistics come from the infographic which also contains details of business social network users in China and projections for Tianji’s own market share.
Business social network has been slow develop in Asia where many users adopt acronyms online and social networks are used for more personal content and activities, as the infographic below highlights. As we’ve seen with the launch of LinkedIn Japan, the industry is beginning to gather momentum in Asia however.
via Business social networking in China set to grow five fold by 2013.
The social in ‘social media’
I found this article in The University of Utrecht’s New Media Studies group pages, right here and decided to share it with you.
The so-called Web 2.0 and social media are enthusiastically embraced as enabling technologies turning alienated couch potatoes into active producers of media content. But what is actually so social about ‘social media’?
A plethora of publications frames web applications such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and others as ‘social media’ to describe the dynamic interaction and massive participation of large audiences. However, ‘social’ receives here an overly positive connotation, something like ‘nice people are collaborating nicely with each other in order to create nice things.’
Three aspects are remarkable about the popular framing of ‘social media’:
a) Claiming that users belong to a community. Drawn from the notion of collective intelligence and peer-based production, the ‘social’ in ‘social media’ receives a positive connotation as a community experience. It is perceived as a social phenomenon rather than a commercial one.
b) Claiming mediated communication equals publishing. The simple use of technology that mediates communication and facilitates interaction is presented the replacement of established media production with user generated content.
c) Claiming that these practices are specific features of the Web 2.0 and distinctive from earlier media practices online.
The commentary on Web 2.0 constitutes a ‘rhetoric of community’, emphasizing aspects of togetherness, equality, collective production and democratic decision making. Turning users into media producers is only one part of the promise the ‘social web’ bears, the other is changing the world for the better through collective efforts facilitated by ‘social media’ (e.g. Leadbeater 2008, Shirky 2010). Social progress is considered as collective effort achieved by simply using advanced technologies properly.
In his programmatic text We think. The power of mass-creativity, Charles Leadbeater dreams of a way to amplify the collective intelligence of the plurality of users who then, in a joint effort, provided technology is used ‘wisely’, could “spread democracy, promote freedom, alleviate inequality and allow us to be creative together, en mass” (2008:6). Through this repetitive positive connotation of ‘social, the ‘social media’ acquired’ a public understanding that goes beyond the original denotation of social interaction and organisation. Actual events of using Web 2.0 applications, such as during the Obama Campaign in 2008 or in response to the Iran elections of 2009 constituted a strong belief in the revolutionary potential of media technology. However, this image is mostly shaped by not telling the entire story and therefore creating media myths.
Web 2.0 platforms or ‘social media’ established themselves successfully as community driven platforms committed to public weal. And while the enthusiastic promoters celebrate their potential to empower passive consumers, entrepreneurs have long realized that the ‘social media’ users are not only yet another audience for advertising, but also a crowd of helping hands in distributing the commercial messages. A plethora of marketing oriented books promises to provide strategies on how to employ social networks for commercial success and how to boost a company’s image by appearing friendlier and more committed to customers communicating through ‘social media’.
Recently some critical voices are pointing out problematic aspects about Web 2.0 platforms (e.g. Lanier 2006 and 2010; Zimmer 2008, Scholz 2008; Petersen 2008; Mueller 2009; Schaefer 2009). Critical perspectives can be divided into three accounts. The free ‘labour account’ draws from post-marxist critique of labour in media consumption (Andrejevic 2002; Terranova 2004; Virno 2004).
The critique aims at the the unacknowledged implementation of user generated content for commercial ends (e.g. Scholz 2007a, 2007b, 2008; Petersen 2008). A joint effort in revisiting participatory culture as unpaid labour for corporate companies has been initiated by Trebor Scholz on the mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity and a conference with the programmatic title ‘The Internet as Playground and Factory’ (Scholz 2009).
Another branch of critique emphasizes the violation of privacy in online services (e.g. Zimmer 2007, 2008; Fuchs 2009) and the power structures facilitating means of control and regulation (e.g. Galloway 2004; Chen 2006; Deibert et al. 2008; Zittrain 2008).
A third thread of criticism considers Web 2.0 platforms as emerging public spheres (Münker 2009; Schaefer 2010) and the new socio-political quality of user-producer relations in governing software applications and their users (Uricchio 2004; Kow and Nardi 2010). This is exceedingly important to consider since ‘social media’ platforms are indeed becoming something similar to traditional “third places” where conversations take place as much on private issues as on socio-political concerns.
In expanding the traditional private and public spaces and increasing the possibilities for socio-political organization and debate the actual social quality of online media is revealed. The function and role online platforms occupy in daily social life are still subject to negotiations between the various stakeholders ranging from common users over corporate producers and public administrations. These debates result from the technological qualities of the new media as well as from the media practices that are eventually transforming social interaction, markets and politics. Drawn from a deep-rooted idealism for participatory societies, democratic decision processes and freedom of expression expectations are formulated for potential use and regulation of the new technologies. Currently social media platforms constitute an area of conflict where platform providers and users negotiate possibilities and limits of corporate governance. While users attempt to make a difference through petitions requesting consumer rights, the platform providers seek ways of communication and negotiation in setting up policy blogs. The social in social media is recognizable in how these platforms increasingly constitute semi-public spaces and how they turn users into something similar to mini-societies while their corporate providers find themselves in the roles of governors.
Mirko Tobias Schaefer is assistant professor for new media and digital culture at Utrecht University. He is co-editor of the recently published volume Digital Material. Tracing New Media in Everyday Life (2009 Amsterdam University Press) and author of Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Industries (forthcoming at Amsterdam University Press, December 2010).
Literature
Andrejevic, Mark. 2002. The work of being watched. Interactive media and the exploitation of self-disclosure. Critical Studies in Communication, Vol. 19, No. 2:230-248.
Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. 2006. Control and freedom. Power and paranoia in the age of fiber optics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Deibert, Ronald, John Palfrey, Rafael Rohozinski and Jonathan Zittrain (eds). 2008. Access denied. The practice and policy of global Internet filtering. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
Galloway, Alex. 2004. Protocol: How control exists after decentralization. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
Kow, Yong Ming and Bonnie Nardi (eds). 2010. User creativity, governance, and the new media. First Monday, Vol. 15, No. 5.
Lanier, Jaron. 2010. You are not a gadget. Alfred A. Knopf: New York.
Leadbeater, Charles and Paul Miller. 2004. The pro-Am revolution. Demos: London.
Leadbeater, Charles. 2008. We think. Mass innovation, not mass production. Profile Books: London
Müller, Eggo. 2009. Formatted spaces of participation. In Digital material: Tracing new media in everyday life and technology, eds. Marianne van den Boomen et al., 49-64. Amsterdam University Press: Amsterdam.
Münker, Stefan. 2009. Emergenz digitaler Öffentlichkeiten. Die Sozialen Medien im Web 2.0. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt a.M.
Petersen, Søren, Mørk. 2008. Loser generated content. From participation to exploitation. In First Monday, Vol. 13, No. 3, <http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2141/1948>
Schäfer, Mirko Tobias. 2009. Participation inside? User Activities between Design and Appropriation. In Marianne van den Boomen, Sybille Lammes, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Joost Raessens, Mirko Tobias Schaefer: Digital Material. Tracing New Media in Everday Life and Technology, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009, pp. 147-158.
Scholz, Trebor. 2007a. A history of the social web. Collectivate.net, <http://www.collectivate.net/journalisms/2007/9/26/a-history-of-the-social-web.html>.
— —. 2007b. What the MySpace generation should know about working for free. Collectivate.net, <http://www.collectivate.net/journalisms/2007/4/3/what-the-myspace-generation-should-know-about-working-for-free.html>
— —. 2008. Market ideology and the myths of Web 2.0. First Monday, Vol 13. No 3 <http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2138/1945>.
Shirky, Clay. 2008. Here comes everybody. The power of organizing without organizations. Penguin Press: London, New York.
Shirky, Clay. 2010. Cognitive surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age. Penguin Press: London, New York.
Terranova, Tiziana. 2004. Network culture. Politics for the information age, Pluto Press: London, Ann Arbor.
Uricchio, William. 2004. Cultural Citizenship in the Age of P2P Networks. In European Culture and the Media, eds. Ib Bondebjerg, and Peter Golding, 139-164. Bristol. Intellect Books.
Virno, Paolo. 2004. A Grammar of the multitude. Semiotexte. Los Angeles
Zimmer, Michael. 2008. The externalities of search 2.0: The emerging privacy threats when the drive for the perfect search engine meets Web 2.0. First Monady, Vol 13, No. 3, <http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2136/1944>.
Zittrain, Jonathan. 2008. The future of the Internet, and how to stop it. Yale University Press: New Haven, London.
Media Mavens Weigh In: The Future Of News Is…
Glenn Beck, Founder & CEO of Mercury Radio Arts
Image: Fox/treehugger.com
“Everyone knows that the internet has transformed how news is both reported and consumed. This fact—that news production and distribution changes—is the new (and only) constant. Change is normal. In the future a lot more stories will be uncovered that have been ignored for too long—stories that people actually want to read about but that the media gatekeepers either finds disinteresting or is afraid to report. The power is shifting from the media to the people. Cave canem.”
Future of media: Community is your new business model — Tech News and Analysis
As media companies try desperately to solve their revenue problems by launching paywalls and subscription iPad apps, too few are looking at how connecting with their community (or communities) can help. That’s the view of Public Radio International’s vice-president of interactive, Michael Skoler, in a piece written for Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism. And I think he is right: engaging a community can be one of the most powerful tools that companies have in an era of real-time, distributed and hyper-social media.
As an example of what this kind of engagement can produce, Skoler describes the incredible response that PRI had when it took radio host Ira Glass on the road several years ago, with a live version of his popular show “This American Life.” But would anyone come to see what amounted to a radio show in person? Apparently yes — huge numbers of them.
They came in droves. More than 30,000 watched the first digital show at hundreds of theaters across the U.S. and Canada in the spring of 2008. The next year, 47,000 turned out. They came to be with other fans, experiencing something they all loved together. The success wasn’t so much the power of Ira, but the power of his community.
Skoler also offers several other non-media related examples of communities that have produced profitable businesses, including Angie’s List — which has grown from a site run by a single mom into a company with more than 1.5 million members in over 150 cities who pay annual fees that total about $50 million. Although Skoler doesn’t mention it, Craigslist is perhaps the most powerful example of this phenomenon: a site that started as Craig Newmark’s personal passion and is now one of the largest sites on the Internet, with revenues estimated in the $100-million-plus range.
via Future of media: Community is your new business model — Tech News and Analysis.
A lesson from Zappo’s: The Like button is not a social media strategy – Social Media
Since its introduction, the Like button has provided as many difficulties as it has opportunities for brands. It seems to be largely responsible for the near-meaningless race to numbers we’re now experiencing, as it places a value or an indicator of success against every piece of content it’s installed against. Whether this is your site, a blog post, a piece of clothing, a classified listing – the Like button has become dangerous for brands, as many seem to view it almost as their complete social media strategy.
We’ve seen a proliferation of Like buttons in marketing both offline and online, including the most annoying Facebook Like advert we’ve ever seen, but often the call to action is completely lost or there seems to be no strategy behind its placement. The temptation to make the Like button centre stage because of its ease of use, and the option to tick the social media box when it’s done can be dangerous for brands who risk missing out on the real potential.
via A lesson from Zappo’s: The Like button is not a social media strategy – Social Media.
The paradox in iCloud
I’ve been sort of following WWDC, You know: what the sentiment was, what the novelties were and, obviously, what Steve Jobs oracled that fine day at the West Coast. Steve Jobs was, could it be any different, the ultimate keynote speaker and his brilliant master stroke that day was: “We’re going to demote the PC and the Mac to just be a device, we’re going to move your hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud.” With this bright future claim, Jobs introduced, what Apple refers to as iCloud. And this is how it works: iCloud is integrated across Apple desktops and Apple mobile devices to ensure that all of your Apple computers can synchronize contacts, calendars, email, apps, music, photos, and more. Most likely, iCloud can be integrated not just in Apple machines but in machines that run on any given OS. So Apple is offering a fully integrated service while at the same time other companies offer parts of the service (i.e. Amazon’s latest music service, Google’s Gmail inbox, Youtube, Dropbox, Wiggio, Flickr) no one combines it all into one seamless service that also works across a set of hardware devices. And it’s free. Now, isn’t that nice?
Now the question rises whether Apple has any scruples, let alone responsibility regarding the rise and fall of companies that build their business model on just one, call it, platform. Obviously, these companies choose to depend entirely on the big ones that provide the necessary biotope to have an entire ecosystem of interdependent companies. I have often wondered about this phenomenon. Why should you bet on just one horse? On the other hand, there is a paradox in this. It is not just in digital media that there is a certain parasite behavior of -often – smaller – companies that extend the big one. We see it in industries like automotive and agriculture, to name just two. In the case of automotive, we only have to bear Chicago in mind, its deserted streets, gross poverty and bitter waste.
Thinking of interdependency (as we may call this system) in agriculture, we see fast areas of non-activity all over the world; places that used to thrive. Paradoxily, the small specialized companies that provide the big one with a one trick pony probably have no other place to go to, may not know how to do things differently or simply don’t have the power to step out of the race and find different employment.
So, now it appears that Apple is taking over all the specialties of other (small) companies that were once proud of
the technological innovation they marketed. I wonder if this has any effect on us, the simple end user, consumer, adapter. Will we obey the great leader, St. Steve? Will we adjust to his demands from his new and spectacular ivory tower (that will most likely look like an UFO (as indicated in the press?)
Who knows? But the paradox, no, question better remains: do we lead or do we follow? Apple bought more semiconductors in 2010 than any of its peers, and the spread will be even larger in 2011. Semiconductors power chips. Chips power tech. Tech powers innovation. Innovation powers tomorrow. See where we’re going here?
Google Gobbles Up PostRank in Surprise Acquisition in the Mobile Social Space | Mobile Marketing Watch
On Friday, it was confirmed that Google has acquired PostRank, which calls itself “the largest aggregator of social engagement data” in the analytics industry. In short, PostRank enables social media users to measure and monitor the reach of their content – like Facebook posts and Tweets – across the Internet.
Although terms of the deal were not disclosed, Google’s intentions are obvious. The Internet search giant is ramping up its focus on all things social. And the acquisition of PostRank could prove a vital component of the company’s burgeoning social strategy.
“We know that making sense of social engagement data is crucial for online businesses,” the PostRank team posted on their website Friday, “which is why we’ve worked hard to monitor where and when content generates meaningful interactions across the web. Indeed, conversations online are an important signal for advertisers, publishers, developers and consumers — but today’s tools only skim the surface of what we think is possible.”
“We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished,” the post concluded, “and we now look forward to working with Google’s team to build more useful tools for measuring engagement online, and we’ll be sure to share details on our progress in the coming months.”
“We’re always looking for new ways to measure and analyze data, and as social analytics become increasingly important for online businesses, we’re excited to work with the PostRank team to make this data more actionable and accountable,” a Google representative tells Tech Crunch. “They have developed an innovative approach to measuring web engagement, and we think they can help us improve our products for our users and advertisers.”
The Danger of Playing in Apple’s Walled Garden: Tech News and Analysis «
Every so often a news item comes along that reinforces the downside of building your business on someone else’s platform, and this week’s poster child is iFlowReader, an e-book app for the iPhone and iPad. The company behind the app announced Wednesday that it’s shutting its doors for good, and it puts the blame for its demise squarely on Apple and its new 30-percent levy on in-app sales. The benefits of getting into bed with Apple are obvious: access to a huge universe of motivated users and built-in payment handling. But the downsides for those who play inside Apple’s walled garden should be just as obvious — namely, you lose control over some fundamental as
pects of your business.
The bitterness that iFlowReader feels about Apple suddenly changing the rules of the app game spills out of every line in the company’s blog post, in which the company advises users that it will be “going out of business” as of May 31, and that this is a “sad day for innovation.” The post goes on to say that:
via The Danger of Playing in Apple’s Walled Garden: Tech News and Analysis «.
Kees Winkel
