European public sphere online

My seminar paper presentation:

European public sphere online

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2020: A new, fully digitalized Europe?

May 19^th 2010 the European Commission released a new strategy titled Digital Agenda for Europe 2010-2020. they described it as:

the Digital Agenda is Europe's strategy for a flourishing digital economy by 2020. It outlines policies and actions to maximise the benefit of the Digital Revolution for all. To achieve these goals, the Commission will work closely with national governments, concerned organisations and companies. An annual Digital Assembly will bring stakeholders together to assess progress and emerging challenges.

The new agenda outlines 7 priority areas:

1. A new Single Market to deliver the benefits of the digital era: The Commission intends to open up access to legal online content by simplifying copyright clearance, management and crossborder licensing. Other actions include making electronic payments and invoicing easier and simplifying online dispute resolution.

2. Improve ICT standard-setting and interoperability: Enabling ICT products and services to be open and interoperable.

3. Enhance trust and security: Since a lot of people have trust and safety issues regarding online shopping and the like, the EU tries to overcome this barrier by actions that could also potentially oblige website operators to inform their users about security breaches affecting their personal data.

4. Increase Europeans' access to fast and ultra fast Internet: The 2020 target is internet speeds of 30 Mbps or above for all European citizens, with half European households subscribing to connections of 100Mbps or higher.

5. Boost cutting-edge research and innovation in ICT: Europe must invest more in R&D and ensure our best ideas reach the market. EU investment in ICT research is less than half US levels (€37 billion compared to €88 billion in 2007).

6. Empower all Europeans with digital skills and accessible online services: Over half of Europeans (250 million) use the Internet every day, but another 30% have never used it. Everyone is entitled to the knowledge and skills they need to be part of the digital era since commerce, public, social and health services, etc. is increasingly moving online.

7. Unleash the potential of ICT to benefit society: We need to invest in smart use of technology and the exploitation of information to seek solutions to reduce energy consumption, support aging citizens, empower patients and improve online access for people with disabilities. One aim would be that by 2015 patients could have access to their online medical records wherever they were in the EU.

Delivering the Digital Strategy for Europe: Ensuring rapid adoption and implementation of the measures necessary to meet the above objectives is the main goal.

All this sound good, but firstly, I think that ten-year period will not suffice. Adoption of digital technologies takes time and despite notable progress in the recent years, I do not think this goal will be achieved.

Secondly, they are dealing with several different areas at a time instead of ensuring high speed Internet connections first and then moving on to R&D, ICTs, etc. I cannot imagine how the use of ICTs can be optimized or progress made in R&D if the technological aspects are not properly addressed. So primarily they should ensure high speed Internet connection for everyone and secondarily deal with tools adoption.

Thirdly, I am very suspicious of the online market part. A lot of people do not trust shopping or providing (personal) data online and their attitudes cannot be changed over night. So I am really curious how they are planning to overcome this issue, Bessel I am not sure crossborder licensing will be enough.

Howard Rheingold on media literacy

The other day I was browsing through my Google Reader and found a link that brought me to this site. JD Lasica published a short (6 minutes) interview with Howard Rheingold at King’s College at Cambridge University.

21st century media literacies from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

In this short interview on the importance of media literacy in the current day and age, he makes many interesting points.
At the beginning Rheingold states:

“Increasingly I think the digital divide is less about access to technology and more about the difference between those who know how and those who don’t know how.”

He emphasized the role of knowledge and information and knowing what to do with information, as opposed to access to technologies, which means very little, if a person does not know what to do with the content (s)he accessed.

On the Internet there are billions of different sites providing all sorts of content with varying degrees of credibility since a lot of content is user generated . That causes a problem because readers must be media literate, critical readers to be able to place the information they gained inside the context. A lot of people believe what they read and problems arise when these people are expected to make informed decisions like voting, participating in referendums, etc. He also mentions key terms, related to media literacy: Attention, Participation, Collaboration and Critical consumption part of the latter being “crap detection,” as he called it. Additionally he also emphasizes the role of multitasking - since we do live in so called information society, and Castells network society, we are saturated with information and contacts of all kind and a person must be have the skills to sift the useful information from the rest.

“The ability to know has suddenly become the ability to search and the ability to sift and discern."

Perhaps he sounds a bit radical, but he has a point. While many believe that they (as individuals) are powerless and that the media are all-powerful, trending towards media literacy and taking the matter into one's own hands could result in a significant change in the society.

FB chat with a MEP?

ICTs (information and communication technologies) and their ascribed revolutionary potential could/should by now make a notable change in the formal political arena. Many expected that they will bring politicians closer to their voters by enabling direct dialogue with political leaders. Yet, this is not the case. As noted by many researchers ITCs did not make a revolution in this view, instead they provided a new space for the polititians to be present but mostly do nothing. Of course, they use Twitter, Facebook etc. to update their followers on the latest happening, but they do not provide much of an environment, where a political discussion could take place. So instead of relevant political dialogue with the citizens, a lot of them share more or less personal thoughts, that have little or nothing to do with their political persona. (Holtz-Bacha 2004, Karvonen 2007, Sampedro & Pérez 2008) Personalization of politics is not a new phenomenon, yet the web and especially the ITCs provide a great environment. So as Bentivegna (2006, 337) adequately notes:

If one takes the formal political arena as a reference point for defining the role played by ICTs, the result is inevitably disappointing. In this context, in fact, ICTs can only take on a marginal role, in support of a pre-existing organizational and communicative apparatus. In the case of exceptional events such as electoral campaigns, ICTs assume a prominent role but without ever modifying the fundamental nature of the relationship between political actors and citizens.

As much as I agree with Bentivegna, there are exceptions. An interesting thing happened about a month ago. I was browsing through my news feed on Facebook an saw, that European parliament made an event called: Journalism, New Media & Public European Space - Chat with MEP Løkkegaard. I found out about this event only two hours before it was supposed to take place, so I decided to participate. This chat was created in order to get some feedback on a report “On journalism and new media – creating a public sphere in Europe”, a draft of which was presented by Danish liberal MEP Morten Løkkegaard to the Culture committee in April and which will be voted in beginning of June.

The chat took place here, under Mr. Lokkegaard's portait. Participants asked questions and MEP answered. Facebook users would surely agree, that trying to make a proper discussion by posting questions and answers as comments under a photo is nearly impossible: participants were trying to address complex problems and notions, such as the existence of the European public sphere, online deliberation etc., which require more space available for the text itself and even more importantly, more time to make a proper answer by the MEP. The event only lasted an hour and a half, and in this time I believe all of us got our answers: - they were short, sometimes superficial, but everyone got one.

Skeptics would argue, that this kind of events are only part of a show to humor the public, and make them think that politicians really do care and want be closer with citizens, but in my opinion, this kind of events are definitely a step forward from just being present in social networking sites and other ITCs. The MEP actually took the time and provided answers for everyone who had a question. Some questions were completely irrelevant and some people came only to promote their civic initiative groups and the like, but all things considered, such events could be seen as a sign of progress, because by creating potential spaces for online discussions, governmental institutions and polititians are (slowly) bridging the gap between political leaders and their citizens.

Examined literature:

Bentivegna, S. 2006. Rethinking Politics in the World of ICTs. European Journal of Communication, 21 (3): 331 – 343.

Holtz-Bacha, Christina. 2004. Germany: How the private life of politicians got into the media. Parliamentary Affairs 57 (1): 41-52.

Karvonen, Lauri. 2007. The Personalization of politics. What does research tell us so far, and what further research is in order? http://www.ecprnet.eu/ecpr/ecpr/paper_info.asp?paperNumber=PP226

Sampedro, Víctor in Francisco Seoane Pérez. 2008. The 2008 Spanish General Elections: "Antagonistic Bipolarization" Geared by Presidential Debates, Partisanship, and Media Interests. The International Journal of Press/Politics 13 (3): 336-344.

Tool experience: Google Buzz

About a month ago I, too, got curious about Google Buzz, and decided to click through the invitation on my Gmail to see what this new tool is all about.

Google Buzz is a social networking tool from Google, designed to be integrated into Gmail. Users can share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments organized in "conversations" and visible in the user's inbox. Buzz enables users to choose the content they want to share publicly with the world or privately with a group of friends for each post. Some tools like Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, YouTube, Blogger and Twitter are already integrated.

Basically what I used it for, was mostly keeping track of my friends (Google suggested people I may want to follow and I clicked on the ones I wanted to be in coontact with) and I tried a bit of updating my 'followers'.

Turns out, it left me disappointed. I expected much more of it, perhaps because I am a Facebook and a Twitter user, and therefore I may have had high expectations. Regardless, the experience was somehow dissatisfying: my and my friends 'updates mostly had no comments, so potential for any kind of discussion is really low, thing people share are usually also published elsewhere (like Twitter – which is compatible with Buzz, Facebook, etc.) but the difference between other social networking sites and Google Buzz is in the context: Facebook, etc. have more stimulating environments – it's somehow logical that users “like” and comment each other's posts, but with Buzz it is just not that easy. I could hardly get anything more that a “like” from anyone.

Plus I have been using Google Reader for more than 2 year now and I am perfectly satisfied with what and how it enables content to be accessed. And now Buzz allows integration of these Reader posts, but it is just like having another Google Reader with more options in an unstimulating environment.

As you can see, I am not exactly 'thrilled' about Google Buzz, not to mention all the indignation Google Buzz caused with it's (more or less default) privacy settings, aptly addressed by Danah Boyd in her SXSW speech and some other newspaper reports like the Guardian, the Inquirer, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc.

Perhaps I am biased, but since I can't make any good use of Buzz, and due to my preference to using Gmail, Reader, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter separately and not in an nonfunctional conglomerate of all this functions, I will turn Google Buzz off.

iPad. vs. publishing, pt. 4

Apple developers were obviously aware that in order for their new product (iPad) to be widely used, it must have to potential to be incorporated in it's user's everyday life, therefore it must be simplistic, user-friendly, not too big but at the same time but large enough to really appreciate the touch-screen and display resolution. So iPad enables users to carry everything with them in a small portable device: pictures, music, the Internet, personal information manager, interactive maps, books and magazines, movies etc. And to make sure to attract the masses, they made an alluring minimalistic design.

By creating a means of daily media consumption (iPad), Apple developers also affected the already changing publishing industry: now kindle has a rival, Amazon is threatened by iBookstore and the meaning and of a book is (becoming) revolutionized, first by e-books and now by e-books enriched with various audiovisuals. So If publishers want to assure their future, then their offer of e-books must exceed plain text and provide a dynamic reading experience. But as Nathan Jurgenson noted, the iPad favors passive consumers and not active prosumers.

During the last couple of weeks while I was browsing through various articles and blog posts on iPads I noticed something: the New York Times was constantly praising iPad in its articles and also when speaking of the new, revolutionized ways of reading newspapers, there was always a picture of iPad with the NYT on the screen (all the early posts on the subject had the same visual material, because pictures of iPad were available only on apple.com). In his recent article Francis Reynolds posted:

Dan Gillmor recently commented on the relationship between Apple and the New York Times, noting that Times new media executive Martin Nisenholtz was on stage for the iPad's unveiling ceremony in January, praising the device, and that the Times frequently appeared on the screen of iPads in advertisements for the device. "By appearing on stage at the Apple event and by launching an iPad app that the Times wants to monetize in every possible way—an app from which Apple will likely make money as well—the Times is becoming more of a business partner with a company it covers incessantly."

So while everybody is speaking of newspapers and publishing revolution in general, the NTY is getting a lot of publicity by being present at iPad-related events, in the visual materials and almost always being an example of this 'revolution'.

Reynolds makes another good point:

[iPad's] not just a better computer, it's a different way of providing content. It doesn't make it easier to surf over to nytimes.com, rather, the big draw of the iPad is that you don't go to nytimes.com, you get the content of nytimes.com in a visually-appealing and user-friendly app. All of which puts a lot of importance on the app as a content-providing medium.

While publishers are focusing on getting a lot of money from subscriptions, Apple will soon most likely be in the power to manage the content that these publishers will provide. So publishers are obviously not (entirely) aware of all the power they are giving up, and Apple is being smart enough to take advantage of the situation.

In my opinion, when all this buzz around the iPad subsides, it will be just like with all the other Apple products: there are die-hard fans and the “indifferent others”, as aptly presented in this comic.

What do you think?

Tool experience: SlideShare

When thinking about the forthcoming group presentation at the seminar, I became curious about the presentation programs and decided to take a closer look at SlideShare.

SlideShare is a slide hosting service: it allow users to upload, view, comment, and share slideshows created with presentation programs.

When visiting the site you are welcomed with a short description of SlideShare's abilities: 'Upload and share your PowerPoint & Keynote presentations, Word &PDF documents on SlideShare. Add audio to make a webinar. Capture leads with your presentations.' So SlideShare does not simply enable users to upload slides, it supports also other formats (including OpenOffice - a great advantage in my view). Additionally, users can add audio to their presentations, embed YouTube Videos inside presentations and make use of event functionality to send conference invites, etc.

SlideShare enables 100 MB per presentation, and this is useful when making an extensive presentation with many pictures. Documents can be made public, remain private or can be accessible only to those, who the author identifies as friends : when registration is completed, user is asked if he would like to import friends from existing email addresses, so SlideShare is obviously intended to works also as a social networking site.

After uploading a presentation to this slide hosting service, I had to to wait a while in order for the presentation to load completely. Then I could take a look at my presentation and the first thing I noticed was, that the site looks a lot like YouTube: the presentation on the left and on the right user information and presentation description. Beneath, thiere is a 'related presentations' section and under the presentation part are links to different social networking sites, blog platforms, etc. and a 'comment' section. I like the fact that a HTML code, which allows embedding it to a web site or blog, is available and situated in a visible spot.

Presentations are easy to manage and the site itself is easy to use. SlideShare users can also join groups by interests and debate about any subject they are interested in.

I like this tool, because it is user-friendly and really easy to use, there is no need for tutorials on the basic operations, but I intend to look deeper into its functions. Unfortunately, I can't make any comparisons yet, since this is the only slide hosting service I ever tried.

Well, here is the the result of my 'curiosity': (please note that this presentation of collaborative project is still in progress so this is a working version of my part only)

Collaborative Project - my part of presentation

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iPad. vs. publishing, pt. 3

Just a short update this week: iPad's revolution of publishing newspapers is just around the corner! The New York Times will begin publishing daily on the iPad, offering readers around the world immediate access to most of the daily newspaper’s contents.

Techcrunch reports:

The New York Times on the iPad, as the electronic publication is known, contains most of the news and feature articles from the current day’s printed newspaper, classified advertising, reporting that does not appear in the newspaper, and interactive features including the newspaper’s crossword puzzle.

The iPad App is part of a strategy to extend the readership of The Times and to create opportunities for the company in the electronic media industry, said Martin Nisenholtz, president of The New York Times Electronic Media Company.

And how much does reading the Times on iPad cost?

Mr. Nisenholtz, publisher of The Times, said that initially, at least, no subscription or access fee would be charged for readers in the United States and that the iPad App would generate revenue from advertising. Readers who connect to the iPad App from outside the country will be offered a 30-day trial without charge, but will eventually face a subscription fee.

So reading newspapers using iPads could make the benefit mutual: newspapers get readership and readers get to read newspapers on iPads whenever and wherever they want to.

iPad. vs. publishing, pt. 2

Since iPad was just released, I decided to stick to this theme. Many (more or less) professionals are still wondering and trying to foresee iPad's impact on media production and consumption, but for now, we can only observe and discuss comments, published by early adopters. Ipad obviously has the potential to notably affect publishing industry, therefore, this week I will focus on potential changes iPad is about to bring to self-publishers and bloggers.

In his post, Paul Weinstein states:

that DigitalBeat Smashwords, a site that enables authors to publish their own eBooks, recently notified its authors via email that it has signed a distribution deal with Apple which allows writers to offer their works for sale to iPad owners. Smashwords already publishes eBooks for independent authors in nine formats and can distribute to a number of sites including Barnes & Noble and Kobo. So inking a publishing deal with Apple certainly makes sense and no doubt signals the beginning of numerous other independent and self-publishing services targeting the iPad's iBookstore.

Meanwhile, for bloggers and readers of various news feeds, Glasshouse Apps has developed what the Next Web called a “Gorgeous iPad RSS Reader.” The application, called The Early Edition, arranges stories on the screen just like newspaper, but allows the user to customize which news sources to pull from and where to place individual stories.

So Apple will take care of blog-loving customers, as well as those, who like to read books by independent authors. Since iBookstore enables users to buy books, but not for less than 10$, the price will surely affect the amount of books people will buy and especially affect the self-publishers, since iPad owners will be in position to decide what is worth publishing and how much it's worth. On the other hand, cosumers/ iPad owners will be able to store and access all their favorite books and other forms of media content in a small, user-friendly portable device.

Could this evolutions of publishing industry in turn affect the content of the medium? Could this mean that McLuhan was right, saying that “the medium is the message”?

In my opinion, iPad will affect the production and consumption processes, but I doubt that it could considerably affect the content, because the content of the message is in large part dependent on consumers' themselves, their interpretations, social contexts etc.

What do you think?

photo: www.apple.com

iPad vs. publishing

In the last couple of moths iPad seems to be the center of gadget universe. While waiting for the release scheduled for April 3, 2010 (Wi-Fi model) or better late April 2010 (Wi-Fi + 3G model), many speculations regarding the use and implications of this tablet computer arose. Although it seems that critics are not nearly unified, iPad could (or better should) in turn affect existing publishing practices, especially in the sphere of newspapers, as Joe Zeff suggests in his post.

When released, the iPad will include the iBooks application, which displays books and other ePub-format content downloaded from the iBookstore. Five of the US’ six largest publishers (Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Penguin) have already reached deals with Apple to sell their books through iBookstore, reported the New York Times. In an interview Condé Nast Publications representative said they will have available iPad subscriptions for its GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired, The New Yorker and Glamour magazines by June.

What about newspapers? For now it seems that newspapers will be read as (free) on-line versions (using Safari) But will this suffice? Not necessarily, because this could mean that newspapers are not competitive enough to follow current trends. As Joe Zeff wrote:

"Newspapers are challenged to deliver a product that surpasses their print, mobile and online editions. Otherwise, what’s the point of reading an iPad edition, let alone paying for one? It needs to offer something not found in the traditional version already in your briefcase and the up-to-the-second version already in your pocket."

He also poses some interesting suggestions such as content with less time-sensitivity and greater multimedia potential could shift into apps, and on the other hand »news you can use«: Like a newspaper, the iPad becomes a tool, which helps a user find a new house by showing him property values, school information etc.

Perhaps newspapers should consider adapting to new circumstances in the media landscape, because outlook of the near future suggests that iPad could become a widely used appliance and not just a gadget for the technophiles and Apple fans. Newspapers could see iPads as a niche and present themselves in new, even more interactive form, attracting the expectedly large population of users-to-be.

photo: www.apple.com

Twitter users not so social after all?

Many articles can be found on social networks, especially Facebook and Twitter. Steve Thornton provides a great description and systematic comparison of both of their pros and cons. Last week Jernej wrote an interesting post on this topic, where he argued that Twitter and Facebook differ significantly considering their target audiences. He states that:

"Facebook is more about connecting with friends you know, Twitter is connecting with people you might want to know - exchanging information."

While (in my opinion) most of (us) Twitter and Facebook users agree with this assessments, especially Twitter being about knowledge, an interesting article on Twitter confirms this providing statistical data. As Paul Judge, author of the report, put it:

"As of December 2009, only 21% of Twitter account holders were defined as "true users," meaning someone who has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people and has tweeted at least 10 times. /.../ [This means that most Twitter users] came online to follow their favorite celebrities, not to interact with their buddies the way they would on Facebook or MySpace."

I can agree on that, but I think that these statistics need some further explanations. What I observed, is that a lot of technophils mostly prefer Twitter to Facebook and probably represent a large segment of those 21% of “true users”, although they are not using it primarily to follow their favorite celebrities. They usually emphasize abilities such as rapid responsiveness, interactivity, extensible messaging platforms and less “cluster” made by applications and the like. So they could count as social users.

And another observation: A lot of people sign up for Twitter, because they heard a lot about it from their friends or read about it, find it to confusing, don't want to deal with figuring out how it works and never come back again. Their first post is most likely to sound something like: "This thing is so confusing" or "I can't figure this thing out, how does it work?" etc. So I am not surprised, that nearly 80% of Twitter accounts don't count as true/really active users, because they are not really users.

What do you think?

Global collaboratory?

There are different definitions but collaboratory could simply be described as a (virtual) environment where participants make use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to access shared instruments and data. In the article From Shared Databases to Communities of Practice: A Taxonomy of Collaboratories Bos, Zimmermann, Olson et al. propose a typology of collaboratories, focusing on their strengths and weaknesses and the purpose of collaboration - is it established just for aggregation (enabling accessibility, but at the expense of synchronous communication) or is it intended to facilitate co-creating (communication among participants is tighter). Of course, any kind of collaboration is dependent on the participants and on-line communication is no exception. An extensive research regarding what motivates and sustains adoption, what prevents individual scholars or groups of scholars to adopt e-Research tools is provided by Ralph Schroeder and Dimitrina Spencer (2009).

Prima facie collaboratories are used as a means of collaborations inside the academic field. Scholars engage in such collaborations in order to facilitate working on a common project. But accessibility of new technologies (to those on the right side of the “digital divide”) enables also less formal, and more provisional collaboratories outside the academic filed.

I saw a video the other day about the impact of the Internet age on dance evolution and it occurred to me, that what Jon Chus, the LXD representative is talking about is actually an informal global collaboratory.

In his short introductory speech, Jon Chus states:

"Dancers never had a better friend than technology. [Using] on-line videos and social networking [sites] dancers have created a whole global laboratory on-line for dance work. Kids in Japan are taking moves from YouTube videos created in Detroit, building on it within days and releasing a new video, while teenagers in California are taking the Japanese video and remixing it to create a whole new dance style in itself."

Of course this form of collaboratory lacks organization and using Schroeder's and Spencer's term “politics”. It is hard to categorize it, since there is no definite goal they are trying to achieve. It could be categorized as co-creating collaboratory but in my opinion, it is more of an aggregation type: "participants" are scattered all over the globe, their coupling is loose and the nature of communication is asynchronous. Nevertheless they are effective, because all “participans” are (more or less voluntarily) working toward a common goal (in this case getting new ideas for choreographies) using accessible ICT's. It would be interesting to analyze such informal collaborations and mutatis mutandis compare the resaults with existing research in academic collaboratories. I would expect atleast inertia and recalcitrance to turn out as less significant factors than in the Schroeder and Spencer (2009) case.

Welcome!

I created this (academic) blog with a (noble) intention of sharing my thoughts, critique and other contributions related to the field of new media. My posts will be part of the New Media & Society course held at our faculty.

Last year I graduated in Media and Communication studies at Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana. My thesis was on personalization of politics in Slovenian on-line space, where I examined the degree of personalized presentations of Slovenian politicians that joined social network sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

In this seminar I would like to expand my knowledge of new media and get a more systematic overview of the field. I hope to find this course of my benefit to the masters degree research (where I am focusing on the infrastructure of communication in European public sphere) by getting new ideas and perspectives.

Since new media have the potential to establish and facilitate new forms of publics and public spheres that efficiently transgress the boundaries of space and time, I am also interested in the democratic and rebellious potential that seems inherent to the new media, a great example being the Moldova's Twitter Revolution in 2009.