This document provides an overview of the TECH2002 Studies in Digital Technology course. The course will cover topics such as digital technology, new media, social media, participatory culture, and online video. Assessments will include individual and group presentations, research papers, and a YouTube video. Key concepts that will be examined include Web 2.0, participatory culture, social media, blogs, and how technology is integrated into everyday life. Students will complete weekly tasks to gain participation points, including creating audio mixes, playlists, research citations, and using social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube.

1. TECH2002 Studies in Digital Technology
Lecture Week 1
Introductions 1
Andrew Clay

2. Studies in Digital Technology?
• Media
technology in a
social and
technical
context
• Emphasis on
digital
technology and
culture

3. CD Mixtape
task

4. Celestial jukeboxcelestial jukebox

5. Personalised Online Radio
(POR)

6. ‘Music Like Water’ (Kusek and Leonhard,
2005)
• ‘Music fans are
completely awash with
music, and digital music
has become the new
radio for the Internet
generation. Digital
technologies have been
totally and unobtrusively
integrated into the
lifestyle of new
generations of teens and
young adults’ (p.6)

7. Audiocassette
• Developed in the
mid-1960s
• Leading format in
1980s
• Copy, share, playlist,
compile
• cassette culture of
production
• Mobility – cassette
‘Walkman’

8. Culture of
Production

9. Teaching and Learning
Programme
• Subject area
– digital technology
– new media, social media, Web 2.0,
participation culture, and online video
such as YouTube.
• Academic writing
– Reading, research, writing, presentation
• Media communication and literacy
– Individual and collaborative media tools

10. Subject
of Study
Online media, social media,
Web 2.0
Participatory media
culture
Online
video
technology
Digital Technology

11. Academic Study
Darley, A. (2000) Visual Digital Culture, London,
Routledge.
Flew, T. (2008) New Media: An Introduction (3rd
Edition), South Melbourne, Oxford University
Press.
Mayfield, A. (2007) What is social media? [WWW].
Available from:
http://www.icrossing.co.uk/fileadmin/uploads/eBooks/
(Accessed 24/09/08).

12. Module Learning Environment

13. Assessment
• Coursework [50%] – YouTube
Research Project
– Component 1 (10%) Presentation
– Component 2 (15%) Research Paper
– Component 3 (25%) YouTube Video
• Component 4 Exam [50%] – 2 hour
unseen exam

15. Participatory Culture
• ‘Participatory culture is a term that is
often used to talk about the apparent
link between more accessible digital
technologies, user-created content,
and some kind of shift in the power
relations between media industries and
their consumers’ (Burgess and Green
2009, p.10)

16. New media = digital media?
• ‘New media can also be thought of as
digital media. Digital media are forms of
media content that combine and integrate
data, text, sound, and images of all kinds;
are stored in digital formats; and are
increasingly distributed through networks
such as those based on broadband fibre-
optic cables, satellites, and microwave
transmission systems’ (Flew 2008, pp.2-3)

17. New media (Flew 2008)
• Convergence of
computing,
communications
and content
(media)
[‘three Cs’]

18. What is new for society about new
media?
• New social practices?
– Artefacts and devices that allow
communication
– Communication activities and practices
– Social arrangements and organisations
formed around devices and practices

19. Audiences, texts, industries
productionrepresentationconsumption model
audience
text industry
a model more suitable for thinking about ‘mass
communications’ (cinema, radio, television, and so on)

20. The Internet and WWW as
New Media
• ‘The concept of new media is
integrally bound up with the history of
the Internet and the World Wide Web’
(Flew 2008, p.4)

21. Web 2.0
• ‘The concept of Web 2.0 is centrally
important to understanding new media
in the 21st
century’ (Flew 2008, p.16)
Web 2.0 video for a viral advert
competion by Leo Bridle and Leo
Powell
http://www.leobridlefilms.co.uk
/Pop-ups/firstpost-flash2.html

22. Web 2.0
• an idea about a second generation of web services
and tools that emerged around 2004

23. Web 2.0
• Participation
• Interactivity
• Collaborative
learning
• Social
networking
• Collective
intelligence

24. Electronically mediated communication
(telephones, mobile phones, the internet)
• don’t study media in isolation, but
study the social and cultural context of
which the media is a part (Moores,
2005)
• time-space relations, interactions and
sociabilities, meanings, and
experiences

25. Text messaging
• teenagers and text messaging
• ‘...text messaging influences how
teenagers feel about
themselves...often mediating
intimate relations and becoming a
repository for precious memories and
gifts’
(McCarthy and Wright, 2004, p.108)

26. Technology as experience
• ‘We don’t just use
technology; we live with it.
Much more deeply than ever
before, we are aware that
interacting with technology
involves us emotionally,
intellectually and sensually’
(McCarthy and Wright, 2004,
p.ix)

27. • Our technoid lives
• The attempt to understand and evaluate how
we use technology as part of our mundane
and extraordinary everyday lives is one of
the most important ways that we become
good technologists
• As critical technical practitioners we should
think about and investigate the social
significance of new technologies and explore
and evaluate them by using them to make
things – ‘learning by doing’ with the insight
of theory and critical reflection

28. Blogs are social media
• Blog software and tools are social media
• They allow people to mediate their lives and
share this media with other people
• People are connected through reading and
writing, watching and listening
• Bloggers integrate convergent media into
their everyday lives and turn their everyday
life into media
• Blogging is both technological experience of
everyday life and media representation of
our everyday lives

29. Social Media
• ‘What's changed is that where once tools for media
creation and publishing were controlled by an elite,
digital technology is increasingly putting them into
our hands. We can consume, interact with, create
and share media more freely than ever - and this
changes the power relationship between us and the
mainstream media. We are entering the age of
social media’.
Anthony Lilley
The Royal Television Society Huw Wheldon Memorial
Lecture 2007

30. (Mayfield, 2007, p.5)

33. Arseblog
• ‘Arseblog does not just provide a daily outlet for its
author’s obsession. His daily posts provoke lively
discussion often attracting hundreds of contributions
and supply a round up of the news in the online and
offline editions of all the British newspapers, as well
as from France and Spain where many Arsenal
players come from. The site links to and often
quotes from the other fifteen decent blogs about
Arsenal, as well as dipping into blogs run by fans of
other clubs’ (Leadbeater 2008)

34. Arseblog and Web 2.0
• ‘Arseblog is a perfect example of how Web 2.0 is
changing how people relate to information and
media. The web provides many more niches for
people to start a conversation on something about
which they feel passionately. The old, industrial
media, newspapers and television, do not have
enough room to cater for all the minority interests
of their readers and listeners’ (Leadbeater, 2008)

35. tagging
• a tag is a keyword assigned to a piece
of information
• metadata – data about data
• sorting, aggregating, identifying,
describing with personal markers

36. folksonomy (Thomas Van Der Wal)
• folks (people) + taxonomy (classification)
• personal tagging in a social environment
• tag venues (websites) allow users to
connect by providing hooks, vocabulary
(tags)

37. Studentship: module
participation
• Take control of your learning
• Taking part through attendance and
the fulfillment of various tasks,
individual and collaborative, that
while not formally contributing to
overall assessment will allow you to
gauge your progress and allow me to
provide feedback
• ‘Participation points’

38. Week 1 Tasks
• Research Task [3 annotated citations in a Word doc]
(50)
• One minute YouTube video documentary about
audiocassettes and/or mixtapes (50)
• Creating a research study blog on Wordpress.com (50)
• Creating a CD mixtape lasting 60 minutes with art work
and tracklist (50)
• Joining Spotify (50)
• Producing a Spotify playlist posted on
Sharemyplaylists.com (50)
•
• Current Participation Points Total (300)

40. Micro-blogging: Twitter
#tech2002
(50)

41. Bibliography
Burgess, J. and Green, J. (2009) YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture, Cambridge,
Polity.
Flew, T. (2008) New Media: An Introduction (3rd
Edition), South Melbourne, Oxford University
Press.
Kusek, D. and Leonhard, G. (2005) The Future of Music, Boston, Berklee Press.
Leadbeater, C. (2008) We Think [WWW] Available at
http://www.charlesleadbeater.net/cms/xstandard/Rev%20Ch%20Two.pdf
(Accessed 3/10/08)
Lilley, A. (2007) ‘The Me in Media: Participation, Interactivity and the Rise of the People
formerly known as the audience’, The Royal Television Society Huw Wheldon Memorial
Lecture 2007.
Mayfield, A. (2007) What is social media? [WWW] Available at
http://www.icrossing.co.uk/fileadmin/uploads/eBooks/
What_is_social_media_Nov_2007.pdf (Accessed 24/09/08).
Moores, S. (2005) Media/Theory: Thinking About Media and Communications, London and New
York, Routledge.