 CCT 300: Critical Analysis of Media Class 9: New Media and Content Creation

Administration  Comic creation marking underway  Get feedback? If not, unlock your wiki!  Feedback cycle should be done by next week, so do the above ASAP.

Manovich’s LNM  Language of New Media - distilling the core essence of new media into eight propositions  More of a media form/genre definition  N.B. “New Media” is not a chronological term (although contemporary media are more likely to be “new”)

New Media vs. Cyberculture  Proposes a distinction - new media studies forms and codes vs. social effect (e.g., media use studies, cultural studies…)  Acknowledges cyberculture as interesting but a different field entirely

New Media as Distribution  Looks at new media explicitly as channel - digital transmission, in whatever form  Representation in digital form is increasingly common - examples?  Limitations of this approach?

New Media as Software Controlled  Use of data structures, modularity, automation to create the cultural form  Digital photography/video as example; due to common technical standards for coding and manipulation, media objects can be shared and manipulated (sometimes automatically) with ease  Other examples - e.g., dynamic web pages, Google AdSense

Cultural conventions  Uneven development - just because you can represent and manipulate something in digital form doesn’t mean it will work will in practice (e.g., digital actors?)  “morph” or “composite” - earlier conceptual models survive transition to new media and impact its form (e.g., desktop metaphor vs. alternatives)

Aesthetics of New Media  New media technologies create their own established aesthetics  Example: DV movies and cheaper amateur production (e.g., YouTube, vblogging, etc.

New Media as Efficient  Computing technology executes various tasks considerably faster - e.g., 3D animation, composite photography  Efficiency opens up new possibilities that were not present before

New Media as Metamedia  New media repurposes old media, combines existing media sources (e.g., photo montage, mashups, music sampling)  Not a new phenomenon, (e.g., collage, 1920s avant-garde film) but much easier done with digital objects

New Media as Nexus of Art and Computing  Computing becomes a more right-brain, creative process - a tool to represent and create new realities vs. simply crunch numbers (although there’s lots of that still required…)

Internet as New Media  Certainly efficient metamedia  Also envelops previous forms of content/conventions  Increasingly software controlled (e.g., static vs. dynamic pages)  Webcomics show nexus of art/computing and value of digital production/distribution

Web 1.0  Web pages as simple publication - “brochureware”  Static content, little to no community participation or input

1.0 -> 2.0  Introduction of community and data management systems  Leveraging power of social networks  Data-driven content - dynamic page creation  Data manipulation and creation by users  Democratic, open-source generally  “social” web (and version 3.0 = semantic web)

SLATES (McAfee)  Search  Linking  Authorship  Tagging  Extensions  Signals McAfee, A.P (2006). Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration. Sloan Management Review, 47(3),

Another take (Carr) Carr, A. (2007). Designing for Sustainable Conversations. InteractionCamp

Driving traffic through social media  How do you leverage social media to popularize content?  *not* just technology – build it, they won’t come. Why?  The role of content aggregators (e.g., 4chan, digg, reddit, KYM, Buzzfeed, StumbleUpon etc.) – reintermediation in content/audience dynamic

Web analytics basics  Data-driven web = data footprints everywhere  Data passed on by every web call: IP address, platform, browser, referral page  Allows for custom content (e.g., vague geolocation data, customization for plattorm (esp. mobile), content specific to source (e.g., welcoming visitors from particular sources)

Server/client interactions  HTTP as stateless (implications?)  Cookies – information passed on in web calls for session/continued use  Detailed information can be embedded to support future interaction  Implications of this?

Integration of subscriber data  Registration for social media services – what information is sometimes requested?  Profile -> action link interesting and valuable  Facebook as advertising platform -> why would subscriber data be especially valuable in FB?  Youtube analytics – age info likely from profile

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)  How do you get to Page 1 of Google?  Can (and should) happen naturally, but underhanded/unethical techniques common (examples?)  A better technique: create good content  million-people-read-your-website-ep-69

Online advertising  Advertising = not really viral  Google Adwords = targeted to keyword searches, location  Facebook ads = potentially targeted to a range of other interests  More on all this? Take CCT356.

Weekly assignment   What information could you learn about viewers of your meme using such a tool?  How could this information be valuable in refining meme and its propagation?