Renee Wong

ARTS2090 - Publics and Publishing

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Essay-in-Lieu-of-Examination

By Renee Wong z3459986 Tutorial: Wed 9am - 10:30am Tutor: Adam Hulbert Question: 2. How is the diminution of traditional, and often hierarchical, “authoritative” intermediaries changing the role of publishing in social life?

Reference: Gentzkow, Matthew (2014) ‘Trading Dollar for Dollars: The Price of Attention Online and Offline’, American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings <http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/matthew.gentzkow/research/DollarsForDollars.pdf> 

Glaser, Mark (2006) ‘Your Guide to Citizen Journalism’, MediaShift: Your Guide to the Digital Media Revolution, September 27, <http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/09/your-guide-to-citizen-journalism270/ Lewis, P & Woods, J (2012) ‘News you trust? Fourth Estate was already woobly’, ABC, June 19, <http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-19/lewiswoods/4079030> Moser, Whet (2014) ‘ Maybe the Internet Isn’t Killing Newspaper After All’, Chicago Magazine, October 1, <http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/October-2014/Maybe-the-Internet-Isnt-Killing-Newspapers-After-All/> Rainie, L & Wellman, B (2014) ‘The Internet Revolution’ in Networked: The New Social Operating System, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 61-62. Rusbridger, Alan (2010) ‘The splintering of the fourth estate’, theguardian, November 19, <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/nov/19/open-collaborative-future-journalism/print>

Stovall, James Glen (2005) ‘Journalism: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How’, <http://www.ablongman.com/stovall1e/chap04/newspaperorgchart.html> 

‘Fourth Estate’ Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate>

‘Fifth Estate’ Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Estate>

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Week 12 - Culture and Data

Paul N. Edwards (2010) in this weeks readings provides an insightful description of global knowledge infrastructures via climate change. The introduction to his book ‘A Vast Machine’ describes how all we know (about climate change) is through models and the data we collect/observe that constantly changes to make these model, he describes it as an infrastructure of interlocking technical systems with many layers and links (2010). This approach about climate change can also be used as a way to approach the internet and these new types of corporations called ‘The Stacks’ by Bruce Sterling (2014).

Edwards describes the notion of ‘infrastructure globalism’ as the building of these technical systems via gathering data to create institutions and ways of thinking on a global scale (2010). If we were to apply this to a corporation such as Google it does seem to be true. Jay Springlett (2014) explains a series of new technologies in his article about Google’s ‘nest’ that are used to passively gather data on people used to further build Google in creating ads and products that suit its customers. Also with the growth of Google we see the alteration of the way people think, if we were to ask someone 10 years ago about where a location was or how to spell a word they might say ‘look at a map’ or ‘use a dictionary’ now days its common to think and say ‘Google it’. Corporations such as Google are part of this infrastructure globalism.

Springlett (2014) also goes further to see what kind of infrastructure Google would fall under. Using a criteria of ‘simple critical infrastructure maps’ he attempts to determine if Google can be see as a ‘Nation State’ with the biggest question about whether or not Google can be classified as a territory. He suggest that the territory it posses is an informational state and I agree with this. Information can be seen as Google’s ‘territory’ (2014). Simply by examining the example from before of just ‘Google it’ we have adjusted to attaining information via search engines. Our thinking of using Google as the sole search engine is its territory, by being what we instantly think of as a channel to obtain information is how it can be classified as a ‘Nation State’ territory. Google is a growing infrastructure that seems to be blurring the boundaries of private and public creating uneasiness as exemplified by Springlett however I do believe it is a long way before items such as the ‘nest’ that passively and constantly obtain our information come into use.

  Reference:

Edwards, Paul N. (2010) ‘Introduction’ in A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: xiii-xvii

Springett, Jay (2014) ’Colonising the Clouds—Infrastructure Territory and The Geopolitics of The Stacks’, Medium.com, July 8, <https://medium.com/@thejaymo/colonising-the-clouds-4405d2d590b5>

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Week 11 - Distribution, Aggregation and the Social

There is no doubt that the internet is a platform that has altered how we make new content, knowledge,information and how we connect across the world. David Gauntlett (2009) proposes that ‘making is connecting’. By making a world of our own and by making new content its is connecting people and as Gauntlett describes as making a mark on the world, a feat which is assisted by the internet.

Herbert Guillaud (2010) discusses a presentation by danah boyd in which behind her a live twitter stream was being displayed. Similarly I have encountered situations like these at university across a series of lectures, by applying what David Gauntlett (2009) proposes to this situation we can clearly see the idea of ‘making is connecting’ occurring. Students are taking the content that appears in lectures and often commenting on it and tweeting it and hence ‘making’ or alliterating the content into what they perceive as their own opinion, just like what Gauntlett (2009) comments these students are make their own world. 

It also interesting to note that this is also an example of the “System Age” mentioned by Joe Salvo. An era of “sensing, collecting and manipulation data in near real time with little to no human supervision”, this situation is with a live tweeting stream is an exact example of this (Dodson, 2009). The effects of the “no human supervision” can also be detrimental. Guillaud (2010) notes that during boyd’s presentation the comments appearing behind her would create laughter distracting from her presentation. With the internet there are no defined customs or mediation around content.

Twitter as described by boyd (Guillaud, 2010)is the only place where she proposes people are forced tho think outside their own world through trending topics. However I disagree with this. Just like many social sites on the internet they are customisable to suit what the user wants to see, creating a ‘world’ of their own. Twitter is exactly the same, features such as trending topics are also customisable to a certain area, limiting how large this ‘world’ people create. Further hashtags and who you follow further define this world that is created. It is obvious that those live tweeting around lectures or presentations have created a world around the content they are seeing, customising it by commenting or manipulating the content. The laughter is a depiction of this world where only those who can see the tweets and the content of the presentation understand the full picture. Twitter is only a tool for people to further create this ‘world’ of theirs. Whilst people do create a ‘world’ of their own it still connects them to people that they would essentially not have been able to communicate with via the internet. So despite people creating their own niche ‘worlds’ it is still connecting.

Reference:

Dodson, Wes (2009) 'Dawn of the Systems Age’, Page 3.14 <http://scienceblogs.com/seed/2009/12/dawn_of_the_systems_age.php#more>

Gauntlett, David (2010) Making is Connecting <http://www.makingisconnecting.org/

Guillaud, Hubert (2010) (on Danah Boyd) 'What is implied by living in a world of flow?', Truthout, January 6, <http://www.truthout.org/what-implied-living-a-world-flow56203>

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Week 10 - Visualisation Presentations//Living with/as Data

There were no readings this week. Instead time was spent preparing for the visualisation presentation. Hence this blog will be about preparing for this and what was achieved during the group work. The initial idea for this visualisaiton was to present the frequency of each number during lotto drawings over a set period of time and the present which of these were the most likely to be chosen. However more discussion with the group determined that this may be too hard to visualise. The group consisted of 3 people Briella Brown, Emily Choy and myself. The topic that was eventually chosen was the kilojoule intake for certain food items and the % it was of the daily intake, the idea was to present this using circular foods which represented a pie graph. However as we began to gather the data for this many of the numbers were not spread evenly or either too clustered however we did notice that the saturated fat intakes had a more interesting and varied result hence we once again switched to this topic.

All the foods chosen had nutritional labels which had the amount of saturated fat in it in grams. This was then converted into a % using: (n/24) x 100

to create the percentage with "n" being the variable and 24 being the maximum/average intake of saturated fat an average person should consume, some nutritional information also had to be divided by serving size.

The limitations of this visualisation consisted of the fact that we could only present this information in circular foods which symbolised a pie graph, foods of different shapes could not be used. Also the group had trouble meeting up however we were able to split the work evenly meaning not everyone had to meet up to take the photographs yet still do equal work

Overall the teamwork was excellent with little trouble to gather an create the information. The visualisation require a lot of preparation and thinking before hand to determine how to clearly convey information to an audience in a unique way.

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Visualisation Project—Making Something Invisible Visible

Group: Briella Brown, Emily Choy & Renee Wong

Group Report:

We chose to visually represent the daily percentage of our recommended daily intake of saturated fat in both healthy and unhealthy foods. Our recommended average daily intake of saturated fat is 24 grams and from this we could determine the percentage of our recommended daily intake of saturated fat contained in various foods. We felt that many people are unaware when they read a food label if 9.6g of saturated fat is not much or a lot. Food labels can often be a confusing mix of numbers with percentages of daily intake or numbers representing the grams of nutrition it contains. Therefore our visual representation makes it easy to distinguish which foods contain a high amount of saturated fat in proportion to our recommended daily intake.

We made a specific decision to choose circular foods to mimic a pie graph, it is therefore easier to recognize the information when we see the pizza instead of merely a pie graph with a title explaining that the information is regarding the food ‘pizza’. We also included the numerical amount next to each picture to reinforce the exact percentage of saturated fat in proportion to our recommended average intake in each food. Next to each food is a whole 100% depiction of the food, which allows the reader to contrast between the two. Therefore we can see of our entire daily-recommended intake of saturated fat how much saturated fat that specific food contains.

We have chosen to include a comparison of foods with both a high and low content of saturated fat.

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Week 8 - Visualisation

This weeks readings provide an intricate look into what can be visualised. Initially when asked to make something invisible into a visualisation, the first conclusion I drew was a physical element such as air or oxygen and how to make that visible to all. Something that is clear yet we know is there. However the readings provide an element that I had not considered extensively.

For example Timo (2006) describes the potential of the dashed line to make things visible, that it is a multifunctional visualisation. Making the imaginary borders on a page visible, depicting hidden geometry, potential movement, direction and expectations. All things we can not see but know iare there or will happen. At first there seems to be limits to what we can make visual but this article proves the opposite. A single dashed line has the possibility the represent endless things and what makes it unusual is that when we see them we almost universal understand and accept what it means.

‘Dirty Energy Money’ and ‘Flight Patterns’ takes this element a step further by depicting networks. By using diagrams and lines it provides a visualisation of the network and connection between elements. It provides a grand idea of the whole, a network between people and places that we may here and know about but the links that connect are not visual until these diagrams are produced.

The readings act as an eye-opener to the small things in everyday life we do not notice as visualisations of seemingly invisible networks, guides and expectations. They are taking things that we already know of into visualisations, making it easier for us to all understand. The potential of this is not only useful and practical but also creative with the rise of audio visualisation works to express design and music.

Reference

Arnell, Timo (2006) 'the dashed line in use', <http://www.nearfield.org/2006/09/the-dashed-line-in-use> 

Oilchange International <http://dirtyenergymoney.com/>

Celestial Mechanics: <http://users.design.ucla.edu/~akoblin/work/faa/index.html>

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Week 5 - Archives, Authority and Memory, Cultural and Individual/Theory and Practice

With the use of the internet and modern technology there is no doubt that there is this ‘archive fever’. With access to information being so easy there are masses of archives arising from this. However the question I would like to pose (that have occurred to me whilst doing the readings) are how much of this archival information is actually useful? And also are we unconsciously catching archive fever?

First Matthew Ogle (2010) notes that real time web creates permanent records of events that we choose to share and hence creating archives of specific information. For example Twitter records all tweets and date that a user post. These are archived or stored away as data. Yet how much of this is valuable information? Do we really need to record the tweet about our morning coffee? Jacques Derrida suggest that all media construct archives yet it also destroys archives. If this is the case does our creation of ‘useless’ archives actually destroy or hinder the formation of more useful information.

Also I see this is an example of unconsciously archiving information. Rather than a hectic movement where everyone suddenly has the urge to archive information, it seems more like we are unknowingly doing it with the help of larger organisations. Companies such as Twitter, Facebook etc all create archives the moment we post something online. Many of us who use the internet are unaware of the full consequences of storing information. We use these services without the intention of creating archives. Delete doesn’t mean delete, what is on the internet has the potential to be stored forever (or at least traces of it).

Rather this archive fever in the internet is more beneficial to larger companies rather than the individual who does it unconsciously and has no use for miniscule date. Jussi Parikka (2013) notes that these free-platforms of communication are about collecting data and selling it to third party organisations. Archive fever seems more the be more and more about large organisations rather than the individual.

Reference:

Ogle, Matthew (2010) ‘Archive Fever: A love letter to the post real-time web’, mattogle.com, December 16, <http://mattogle.com/archivefever/>

Parikka, Jussi (2013) ‘Archival Media Theory: An Introduction to Wolfgang Ernst’s Media Archaeology’ in Ernst, Wolfgang Digital Memory and the Archive Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 1-22

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Week 4 -Assembling Publishing-Publics/Archive Fever

Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is a complex social theory on networks that takes into consideration both humans “actors” and non-humans “actants”. This way of looking at networks provides a detailed and complex look into relationships and how things came into being by analysing all aspects of influence even those that are non-human “actants”. However this theory has the potential to be overly complex and yet overly simplify information at the same time.

Criticism drawn from this theory notes that it does not take into account aspect such as race, class, gender (Banks 2011) hence is incapable of challenging these issues due to its simplistic analytical vocabulary(which can only describe) yet by doing so we also give the most basic network and links to understand the factors contributing to the network, producing a simplified and easy to understand network.

However at the same time by taking into account both actors and actants we are faced with the possibility of an endless network. That each factor of a network is about to branch of and create its own network of what has factored into making it possible. Here we are faced with the possibility of an over complex and endless amount of information to take into account just to analysis a social network.

Note also in David Bank (2011)’s own example of ANT on wifi to work uses both the same language to describe both actors and actants yet rather than demonstrating the equal contribution between both actors and actants in creating the network it seems to belittle the work of actors. However this maybe be a biased outlook due to the fact that personally we are used to not seeing both humans and non humans being described in the same way.

We should also not these creations of networks are created by the actors only and actants are not able to add themselves into network (Banks 2011), in this case do we as humans create some sort of bias when creating these networks using the ANT which also leaves us to question how correct the information is in using the theory.

The Actor-Network Theory seems to be one that whilst is excellent into taking account all factors (especially if we were to use it to analysis the history of printing and publishing) it seems to also have many loopholes and criticism. Whilst it benefits certain areas it also leaves much behind in taking into consideration social aspects such as race, gender, class etc.

Reference:

Banks, David (2011) ‘A Brief Summary of Actor-Network Theory’, Cyborgology, November 2, <http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/12/02/a-brief-summary-of-actor-network-theory/>

‘Actor Network Theory’, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor-network_theory>

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Week 3 - Genres, Processes, Tools and Techniques of Publishing

The newspaper industry publishing platform has shifted in the last decade from traditional print media to seeing its place in the online world. With this is also a shift in revenue with profits from traditional print media dropping (Doctor 2013). In this sense it seems logical to charge people to view their content after all it is essentially the same all that is different is the platform on which it is published. With this we see paywalls, charging people for subscriptions to view the content on their sites, this is occurring in New York Times and Sydney Morning Herald. However it is interesting to note that the average age for these subscription such as NY Times is 47 (Doctor 2013). Whilst they say its “younger” it truly is not hitting the target of the younger generations. Why? Because everyone likes free things.

We (the younger generations) have become accustomed to seeing sites like these as free. When news sites first began content was free, to us the shift to pay for content we have always seen as public is just not logical. Our unwillingness to pay is a great motivation. Whilst this might be a leap in saying the younger generation is more “technological savvy” we are able to find ways to by pass paywalls and yet still access the same content. A simple google search could easily lend us the same content from a different site or even just switching to incognito mode on a web browser bypass content that requires a subscription once you’ve filled your daily quota on articles to view (this is true of sites such as Sydney Morning Herald).

Whilst the shift from traditional print to an online medium can be hard to be accustomed and often the younger generations is perceived to be able to so more quickly. It seems that middle age (lower middle age) seem more quick to accept paywalls and pay for their content and this change in journalism. Now the younger generation is the one that has begun to lag behind in taking up subscriptions. However is this intentional?

Reference:

Doctor, Ken (2013)  ‘The newsonomics of The New York Times’ Paywalls 2.0’,Nieman Journalism Lab, November 21, <http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/11/the-newsonomics-of-the-new-york-times-paywalls-2-0/>

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Week 2 - History, Present and Future of Publics and Publishing

The general concept of printing is so heavily connected with the idea of publishing that we often forget that the two whilst are linked are clearly not the same thing. Self (2014) , McCormick (2013) and Shatzkin (2012) all seem to suggest some sort of diminishing value towards printing that was once held (printing, in a literary sense). Rather I believe this value has been shifted and shared across the mass of published works on the Internet, with having such a large amount of data the value of these works actually seem to diminish. With printed material becoming less common I actually believe that their values rise (in a sense that something rare equals value). Printing seems to have an attribute that makes it more official and holds a ‘trustworthy’ character than something published online.

The problem with publishing online these days is that anyone can do it, even this simple blog post could is publishing! Who officiates what I right? Who make sure that everything is right? These questions create a wary attitude towards online publishing. The world of the internet has changed the way we view publishing and also changed out behaviours. Lehrer (2010) discusses the future of reading and how reading on technology such as a computer screen or table affects our concentration and the way we process information which I believe to be true. If we look at the first printing revolution Eisenstein (1979) suggest that this shift changed the way we processed information and in fact contributed to intellectual and societal changed. If online publishing is to have such an effect we are in for a huge change! Already when we read articles on news site or blogs we are constantly bombarded with ads and links to other sites that distract our concentration away from the article.

This shift in the way we value printed material and published material online is an interesting viewpoint as even when reading articles online provided by the course we can experience firsthand these shifts in our concentration (personally I was distracted countless times by useless ads next to the articles) and understand why online reading may create a pivotal shift in our society and behaviours.

Reference

Eisenstein, Elizabeth (1979) ‘Defining the initial shift: some features of print culture’ in The Printing Press as an Agent of Change Vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 43-163

Lehrer, Jonah (2010) ‘The Future of Reading’, Wired, September 8, <http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/the-future-of-reading-2>

McCormick, T. (2013) “From Monograph to Multigraph: the Distributed Book”, LSE Impact of Social Sciences weblog post, 17 January, <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/01/17/from-monograph-to-multigraph-the-distributed-book/>

Self, Will (2014) ‘The novel is dead (this time it's for real)’, The Guardian, May 2, <http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/02/will-self-novel-dead-literary-fiction>

Shatzkin, Mike (2012) 'Some things that were true about publishing for decades aren’t true anymore', The Idea Logical Company, January 12, <http://www.idealog.com/blog/some-things-that-were-trueaboutpublishing-for-decades-arent-true-anymore>