#digital authorship

[orlando-j-alvarez]

Two Bodies of Work, One Independent Calling

Two Bodies of Work, One Independent Calling

[theresilientphilosopher]

Two Bodies of Work, One Independent Calling

Two Bodies of Work, One Independent Calling

[coldsoupy]

High School Never Ends: Manifesto (Strategies, Goals & Process)

My goal in writing my essay was to fully thrust myself down a rabbit hole of thought. Emboldened with more questions into human nature than anything else, I found myself preoccupied with just what makes us hit that post button. What is the real significance of all this digital “sharing?”  

Social media, blogs and other other free and available media outlets have created a universal platform for all people who choose to engage online. Sharing recipes on a Facebook wall, writing a personal blog, recording videos or podcasts or developing a form of activism all are inevitably tied to a certain level of popularity or active seeking of popularity. While the sentiments of people wanting to be noticed or have their work noticed in some way may have always existed, the free and open internet as it exists today has really elevated these sentiments to much higher levels.

Everything is hyper-paced and universally available around the clock. One cannot escape the pull of social media and it has become a parallel dimension to our three dimensional world. My goals in this essay and social experiment project were to seek out and provide empirical evidence that digital authorship is nothing more than a deeply rooted desire to belong. It is a call to anyone who will listen that we are here to create and those creations need validation.

This essay was designed dig deeper into the nature of social media and digital authorship. With so many free creative outlets and platforms for “sharing,” I believe people have an inflated stake in these platforms to contribute and actively monitor just how important their post (in a broad sense) are. The opportunity here is explore what does creatively engaging on the internet (for any multitude of purposes) bring to us intrinsically by broadcasting so much extrinsically? If people are moved to share for the sake of monitoring who is seeing or supporting or opposing what they do, what will the new nature of authorship be? What are the varying degrees of authorship from one “like” to millions of followers? Are we actively community building by sharing? What does the ability to show support or rallying around a cause really say?

My essay seeks to connect research of scholarly work to a more personal take on what content (created, remixed or re-shared) generates the most feedback and what psychological effects are produced by sharing and subscribing to different kinds of content in a public display. Is the online-self nothing more than a fashion statement? Or is it something real?

The work process for this paper was devoted to searching for sources and constructing a social experiment to implement as a creative component to a this kind of meta-authorship. As I explored popularity as the root of all digital authorship, I myself had to embark on numerous elements of digital authorship that, in themselves, explored the very validation I wanted to nail down as the end-point of any public decision to post online.

From the selfie to the scholarly article, we are on desperate, far-reaching searches for connection, community and validation that what we create is worth the time of others and that what we do with our time is worthwhile. This validation is now instantaneously at our fingertips and as a result we have become followers of the very things we create.

The essay is for educators who foster authorship and for people who actively engage online in any capacity and to any end. The goal of the research and essay is to explore the nature of authorship in the context of popularity and self-branding. When we have students put work onto a blog or create a podcast there is the unspoken (or perhaps spoken) notion that people will hear this, it’s out there. 

By being “out there” with our work are we just preparing our students to seek approval or recognition? Does sharing something point to a need for acceptance or validation? Does creating or liking a "activist" page show an intrinsic desire for social change or is it an extrinsic symbol? Nothing more than an advertisement of one's identity?

In an unexpected turn of events, I found myself exiting the rabbit hole in an unexpected space of wondering where the nature of authorship will go next. I have spent so much time thinking of where authorship stands today as a destination, that it only dawned on me in conclusion that our posts are threads in the very fabric of the young Internet itself. Each element we “share” is another stitch into something larger and as yet unrealized.

[coldsoupy]

LEAP 3: Digital Story Open Reflection

This is my reflection on my Digital Story. Feel free to leave a comment yourself and contribute to the reflective process.

Feel free to enter the Padlet, listen to my reflection and contribute to the conversation yourself. I would love to here your thoughts in any medium (Padlet permitting) you choose.

What do places mean to you?

What’s a shared story? 

How can memories be crowd-sourced?

[coldsoupy]

Relax, This is Only a Remix

Somewhere in the ether an idea is born.

From some deep (or not so deep place) a creative impulse jets it’s way to the surface. Perhaps it’s a lesson plan idea or a line of a song or a manifesto waiting to be pounded out on the keyboard. Wherever that idea came from, it’s yours. It’s yours to create, yours to nourish, yours to contribute.

At its core, this is how I have come to interpret “fair use.” From somewhere an idea came, but, regardless of where it was born from, the genetic make-up of that idea is an imprint that is the sum of countless parts that are surely the copyrighted material of someone else’s bright idea.

So it goes.

While the idea of giving money and due credit to artists or creators or innovators and the protection of their intellectual property is a fundamental right, it is unrealistic to consider that every single utterance of said work must result in an infringement on the said property. The Media Education Lab (2008) defines fair use as “the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances—especially when the cultural or social benefits of the use are predominant. It is a general right that applies even in situations where the law provides no specific authorization for the use in question—as it does for certain narrowly defined classroom activities” (Media Education Lab 2008, p. 1).

In essence, ideas must be allowed to take shape unhindered by restriction as they will almost inevitably be built upon the material of other ideas. Aufderheide (2012) points to “the prizing of transformativeness (repurposing, not just re-use) as key to deciding fair use” (Aufderheide 2012, p. 6) and the confidence fair use can afford creators to pursue their ideas wherever they may lead and to whatever end is in sight.

Aufderheide (2012) goes on to explain that “Fair use applies to all of a copyright owner’s monopoly rights, including the owner’s right to control adaptation, distribution and performance. It applies across media (for example, music, video, print), and across platforms (analog, digital). Part of U.S. law for more than 150 years, and especially in recent decades, fair use has become a crucially important part of copyright policy. It is a core right; it is part of the basic package of freedom-of-speech rights available under the Constitution” (Aufderheide 2012, p. 7). To this end, fair use is an enabler of progress and process to create.

One might argue that no idea is truly original. 

Indeed what someone like Joseph Campbell or Kirby Ferguson (2015) brings to light is the idea that archetypes and “remixes” of existing media begets new media or ideas advanced in a new direction. 

Nods in film or music to familiar styles or even specific moments awakens something in the viewer or listener that can help them to see the point trying to be made. Ferguson (2015) titles his series on Vimeo “Everything is a Remix” and in the process of breaking down what makes something a remix must essentially remix and re-represent existing media to make his point. Does this make what he does infringement or unoriginal? Of course not. Ferguson (2015) using clips from J.J. Abrams to illustrate how J.J. Abrams is essentially a “remix” artist involved hours of sorting through and remixing J.J. Abram’s own “remixed” work in order to show how its a remix, juxtaposed with the remix of the “original” work Abram’s work is said to “remix” in the first place.

In order to point out that “everything is a remix,” Ferguson (2015) himself must rely on remixing himself to make his point thus proving his point through the act itself. Think Don DeLillo’s “most photographed barn in America” from White Noise. Everything is a picture of a picture that is already in our minds from somewhere.

The Media Education Lab (2008) notes that “copyright law does not exactly specify how to apply fair use, and that gives the fair use doctrine a flexibility that works to the advantage of users” (Media Education Lab 2008, p. 6). For someone like Ferguson (2015) or Abrams or Kanye West or any Youtuber to do what they do, this flexibility and murkiness of what exactly “fair use” specifically means lands the favor on the side of the creator and lays to rest what Aufderheide refers to as the “romantic notion of authorship.” That is, that the creator is the sole creator and sole-owner of their content. 

So hands off!

Aufderheide writes, “filmmakers interviewed here also balanced the ‘Romantic ideal of the author’ with the realization that, at least for documentary filmmakers, new work that uses existing work is also creative and should be valued. The realization that the law did not merely permit but encourage the re-use of copyrighted work for the creation of new work, while a new idea for many, was an exciting one that challenged their surface assumptions about authorship” (Aufderheide 2012, p. 11). Thus, authorship is a give-and-take collaboration and with each new, almost certainly free contribution to the world wide web, that give-and-take collaboration and ability to chunk and rehash other people’s work for new hopefully ingenuitive purposes grows exponentially.

As long as the end is something altogether transformed, the ability to utilize the copyrighted work of others is free and fair game. The Media Education Lab (2008) points out that “despite longstanding myths, there are no cut-and-dried rules (such as 10 percent of the work being quoted, or 400 words of text, or two bars of music, or 10 seconds of video). Fair use is situational, and context is critical” (Media Education Lab 2008, p. 15). Thus, the idea that comes from the ether can be allowed to exist freely. 

Just be ready to defend it.

Resources

Aufderheide, P. (2012). Creativity_Copyright_and_Authorship. In D. Gerstner & C. Chirs (Eds). Media authorship. New York: Routledge.

Ferguson, K. (2015). Everything is a Remix: The Force Awakens. YouTube.

Media Education Lab (2008). Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education.

[coldsoupy]

A roomful of family, a photo and a composed story about a place. 

[coldsoupy]

Letting Go...

[coldsoupy]

Facilitative Instruction

A central idea to the readings this week is that media literacy can no longer be relegated as an extra-curricular subject or a talking point, rather, it must be built into the everyday lesson. Generally, students must be able to navigate digital media, manipulate digital media and use digital media for the explicit purpose of civic engagement that supplants the still-prevalent model of teacher-centric, teacher approved information being given and then tested upon. 

This general model of education is bumping up against a digital world that grew exponentially in a relatively short period of time. Close to 20 years of (relatively) high-speed internet has created a parallel existence of accessible knowledge that current generations have grown up with and are able to use. Hobbs (2016) points to a need to empower to young voices through progressive, civic education that seeks to actively employ free, accessible knowledge for the sake of youth driven creation. Hobbs (2016) writes, "when young people discover a sense of agency from participating in a meaningful form of public communication, where their voices are part of a strategy to create social change, the impact can be transformative" (Hobbs 2016, p. 364). In Hobbs' view, digital media education and the ability to facilitate, aid and guide student-chosen, student centered pursuits is where the transformation in education lies.

  Mihailidis and Gerodimos (2016) echo the sentiments of Hobbs in pursuit of the core dilemma this approach to digital media education presents when they write, "formal education has long struggled with how to build effective approaches to teaching about citizenship while being wary of the complex political, social, and cultural constraints that are embedded in pedagogical design and approval. Civic action that is seen as overtly political in some way is harder to justify as a learning outcome. As a result, the work of the literacies can be agnostic toward social justice, inequality, underserved populations or communities, and the role of civic voice as a change agent" (Mihailidis, P. & Gerodimos, R. 2016, p. 377). Along with pushing students into a space of active, real-world civic engagement comes a loss of ability to assess them in the formal, classic sense. To facilitate is seen as a release of power and authority that, to many educators, feels like a blow to self-esteem.

Thus, a component to transform practice in education rests in the ability to embrace civic engagement in digital culture from both youth and educator perspective with the same intent.  Engagment in this digital culture "depends on the extent to which citizens learn to use media to step out of their routines and comfort zones, experiment, fail, innovate, interact, argue, and learn" (Mihailidis & Gerodimos 2016, p. 382). This applies first to educators in the classroom and then unto students. A teacher who is willing to step outside their comfort zone will find themselves working with students to create something new.  

Resources:

Hobbs, R. (2016).Capitalists, consumers and communicators: How schools approach civic education. Mihailidis, P. & Gerodimos, R. (2016). Connecting pedagogies of civic media: The literacies, connected civics and engagement in daily life.