As we know, there’s a general trend towards the democratization of the media; public archives such as
Wikipedia,
the BBC’s World War 2 Archives, citizen journalism or
‘We Media’ (the optimistic view) and
The Cult of the Amateur (the pessimistic view). The boundaries between professional content and amateur content are also blurring with publicly generated content sitting next to articles or video made by journalists and producers. The audience are getting in on the act, as it were.
Maybe this blurring started with the first painting which didn’t feature God at the top, a serpent at the bottom; man in the middle beginning to question the given order. Maybe it was the invention of the printing press which enabled ‘the common man’ to begin to read and write as much as anybody else.
Citizen media got a good push when
The Well launched in March 1985. It’s one of the oldest online communities. For me, online communities are inhabited places where user-generated content or citizen media is produced to sustain a culture which develops in the shared space over time. The members come together to do something and there is a sense of shared purpose and evolving permanence about the ecosystem that exists there. They fail if there is no purpose, nothing to keep people interested. The existence of a shared and living culture is one of the litmus tests for a healthy society.
The Unofficial Tourists Guide to Second Life lists plenty of culture: Bruno Echegaray’s immersive sphere’s exhibition, of which Paul Carr and Graham Pond enthuse “Every so often something in Second Life makes you stop and think ‘wow’ as you realise you are witnessing something that couldn’t be accomplished in the real world”. Giant floating spheres contain 360 degree artwork you can view by hopping inside. Meteroa is 'America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration', a museum which features a pseudo-Tsunami and hurricane. For festivals you could take a look at Burning Life which echoes the real life festival Burning Man taking place for one week only, ending on America’s Labour Day. There are acres of Second Life which are barren, where avatars drift aimlessly around doing not much, but there is growing evidence of living cultures developing; social structures, businesses and so on.
Broadcasters and publishers are also beginning to learn how to run shared space environments. Canny organisations will have been steadily building up knowledge and staff able to run these kinds of new participatory environments. The old ‘episodic’ relationship broadcast media used to have with a mass audience is breaking down, but re-forming in a different way. The way children engage with media is worth looking at. They are great media snackers, munching on Instant Messaging, TV, gaming and texting on mobile phones in a flocking pattern, following recommendations from friends.
The broadcast era may be defined in hindsight as the time when the audience were one side of the camera lens or microphone and the producers were at the other. The age of the newspaper may be defined as the time when the Editor set the agenda (or the advertisers). Media organisations now play host, facilitating shared spaces within which the public play, consume, compose, upload, download, solve, create, participate and co-create media.
The moment of broadcast or act of reading a newspaper will continue, of course, but that content will be consumed in different ways at different times. Broadcast time (
Paddy Scannell) is now supplemented by ‘on demand time’ (downloads,
The BBC’s iPlayer), and also beginning to be augmented by ‘inhabited time’ (virtual worlds).
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