Social Media Murdoch

Ten things about social media
Professor Terry Flew
Queensland University of Technology
Presentation to Global Media Industries and
New Media Technologies
Murdoch University, Perth, WA
1 September, 2009

Social Media is a development within Internet culture, rather than something radically new
“Websites which build upon Web 2.0 technologies to provide space for in-depth social interaction, community formation and the tacking of collaborative projects”
Features:
Low participation thresholds
Highly granular participation tasks
Assumption that users have equal potential to contribute (not that they are equal contributors)
Shared content ownership

There is a time-lag between new technologies and their socio-economic impact
Kondratiev long waves
Levels of technological impact (Lievrouw & Livingstone, 2005)
Development of new devices/artifacts
New activities and practices associated with their use
Social and institutional arrangements arising from their development
Techno-economic paradigms:
Manuel Castells
Carlota Perez

The Internet was the radical innovation, not social media
Source: Carlota Perez, Technological Revolutions, Paradigm Shifts
and Socio-Institutional Change (2004)

Social media is related to, but not the same as, Web 2.0?

We may be coming to the end of the Web 2.0/social media hype cycle
Entries to Wikipedia now growing at a slower rate
Pressures to better manage editing of Wikipedia
Rupert Murdoch lost more money on MySpace than newspapers
Is Facebook fatigue happening?
Hype cycle (Gartner Group)

Social Media: Creativity or Chaos?
“a period of unparalleled social creativity when we sought to devise new ways of working together to be more democratic, creative and innovative … creating a collective intelligence on a scale never before possible”
Charles Leadbeater, We-Think: Mass innovation, not mass production, 2008.
‘we are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations’
Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, 2008.
‘Democratization, despite its lofty idealisation, is undermining truth, souring civic discourse, and belittling expertise, experience and talent … the free, user-generated content extolled by the Web 2.0 revolution is decimating the ranks of our cultural gatekeepers, as professional critics, journalists, editors, musicians, moviemakers, and other purveyors of expert information are being replaced … by amateurs … the real consequence of the Web 2.0 revolution is less culture, less reliable news, and a chaos of useless information’
Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur, 2007.

Social Production
Rise of social production (YochaiBenkler, The Wealth of Networks (2006))
Rise of knowledge-intensive service industries
Co-ordinate effects of individual activities in networked information environments
Rise of peer production and sharing of information, knowledge and culture
Altruists versus signalers (Media International Australia, No. 128 – Digital Literacy
John Quiggan: social media participation as non-market production
Jason Potts: social media participation as proto-market production or “market signaling”

From mass communications media to social media: the crisis of news
9

Social Media and Politics
Barack Obama’s 2008 US Presidential campaign “reverse-engineered” campaign fundraising
Difficult to carry campaigning into government (health care reform opposition
Government 2.0 Task Force in Australia
May be less “Left versus Right” than insurgents versus incumbents
Sarah Palin’s 800,000 Facebook friends

Social Media and Global Politics: plus ca change?
Iran: Social media influence on 2009 election results
China: Internet influence on politics contained

http://terryflew.blogspot.com	164
http://terryflew.blogspot.ca	6
http://terryflew.blogspot.com.au	6
http://www.slideshare.net	3
http://terryflew.blogspot.co.uk	2
http://terryflew.blogspot.in	2
http://terryflew.blogspot.jp	1
http://terryflew.blogspot.nl	1
http://terryflew.blogspot.de	1

Social Media Murdoch

by Terry Flew on Sep 07, 2009

Accessibility

Upload Details

Usage Rights

9 Embeds 186

Statistics

Social Media Murdoch Presentation Transcript