Category: Uncategorized

Spreadable Media – stickiness vs spreadability

Stickiness seeks to:

attract and hold the attention of site visitors

concentrate the attention of all interested parties on a specific site or through a specific channel

unify consumer experience as consumers enter into branded spaces (collecting them into fewer locations)

prestructure interactivity to shape visitor experiences (radically limit the number of ways that participants can react)

typically tracks the migrations of individual consumers within a site

sales force markets to consumers

logical outgrowth of the shift from broadcasting’s push model to the web’s pull model

producers, marketers, and consumers are separate and distinct roles

depends on a finite number of channels for communicating with consumers

Spreadability seeks to:

facilitate the efforts of fans and enthusiasts to “spread” the word

expand consumer awareness by dispersing the content across many potential points of contact

create a diversified experience as brands enter into the spaces where people already live and interact

open-ended participation as diversely motivated but deeply engaged consumers retrofit content to different niche communities

maps the flow of ideas through social networks

grassroots intermediaries become advocates for brands

restores some aspects of the push model through relying on consumers to circulate the content within their own communities

depends on increased collaboration across and even a blurring of the distinction between these roles

takes for granted an almost infinite number of often localized and many times temporary networks through which media content circulates

New book by Larry Grossberg available Free

Hi. So I got word that this new book by Larry Grossberg -“We All Want To Change The World”- is available free.

http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/ebooks/we_all_want_to_change_the_world.html

It is a polemic to talk about the shape of “the left” between its “pessimistic intellect” and “optimistic will”:
“There is no litmus test, no inclusionary or exclusionary principles that constitute the left for all times in all places. For the moment, it is enough to say that I mean by “the left” all those (theories, groups, opinions, actions) which fundamentally oppose, at the very least, the obscene growth (if not the very fact) of profound inequalities in the distributions of the resources (wealth, power, knowledge, meanings, emotions, bodies, time, etc.) necessary to live a reasonably secure and dignified life, which oppose the absence of justice and freedom (and these too are productive terms), manifested in different ways, in different populations and places, which stand against the full range of technologies of othering, including subordination, subjugation, exploitation and violence, by which society transforms differences into relations of domination, etc. That means people who, whether in general or in specific issues—and in spite of whatever specific disagreements they may have—are opposed to the trajectories and directions of historical change over the past fifty years (although for many, the time frame can be longer). The left names a collective project to articulate and perform opposition, resistance, discomfort or whatever, with the dominant vectors of contemporary social change. It names a collective desire for better ways of living otherwise.” (p. 21)

On Wednesday, 17 June 2015, 16:19, “Grossberg, Lawrence” wrote:

“I am sending this email because I have decided to make my new book available for free online, and I do not know how else to get the news out but through the internet. I hope you will download and read the book, but I would also ask for your help to spread the word to everyone. The book is available in both pdf and epub format at the Lawrence and Wishart website (and while you are there, you should browse some of their other really interesting books). Here is the url:
http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/ebooks/we_all_want_to_change_the_world.html
“And here is a description:
“In We all want to change the world, Lawrence Grossberg continues his analysis of the changing popular and political cultures and the increasingly conservative and intensely capitalist vectors of change the United States during the last fifty years.This time, however, he turns his attention from the forces that seem to be defining the success of those vectors to the counterforces of dissatisfaction, resistance, opposition and creative alternatives, as a vital part of understanding what is going on. He poses the paradox of the left:despite the many people involved in the great variety of such counterforces, the left seems unable to create a broad, visible and effective movement for change.Rather than attempting to assign blame, Grossberg considers the state of the left as both a product and expression of the very context it struggles against. That context, he suggests,is significantly shaped by a set of crises of knowledge and critique on the one hand, and a specific affective organization of pessimism on the other. The result has been an increasing assertion of both absolute certainty an new universalisms in both intellectual and political judgments. Somewhere between a popular polemic and an academic critique, Grossberg argues for more humble and convivial forms of unities in difference, whether as intellectual conversations or political movements.
Thanks, and I apologize for filling your inbox.” – Larry Grossberg

Thanks, Larry!

Rethink Time and Space…(repeat)

For as long as I’ve been teaching media, I’ve come to a greater understanding of the necessity of understanding space and time. There are many many ways of approaching an understanding of both of these dimensions. And I don’t mean to reassert something that’s (only) a simple dualism. But coming to some understanding of how space and time work together in your thinking about media is essential.

Every incidence of an experience with media has what Harold Innis would have called a time biased dimension and a space biased dimension. Put simply, The time bias allows a particular idea to continue through time unchanged. The space bias, on the other hand, allows an idea to extend over space. Think carving in stone versus notes on paper.

The way Innis ((1951) The Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press) understood it, The more emphasis you put out a message lasting through time, the harder it is to extend it over space. Correspondingly, The more emphasis you put on extending a message over space subjects it to more potential change.

The digital environment makes this messy, of course. More on that later. But, any chance that we have to consider and discuss how we come to understand the relationship between time and space becomes valuable to the way we experience all media.

Time and space. Permanence and change. Ritual and transmission. Oral and literate.

Notes on Lessig’s “RW Revisited” chapter, on Writing

2/19/15 – Digital and Transmedia Theories
Ralph Beliveau

Guide to Larry Lessig (2008), Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. Penguin Press.

What does he mean by hybrid?*

Lessig – ch. 4 part 1 – RW, Revived (on writing)

Three layers:
1st. Writing itself
critical invention 1- of the writable web – blogging
critical invention 2 – ability of readers(audience) to write (talk) back

how to find and order things?

2nd layer:
The folksonomy (vs. taxonomy) of tags and rankings (Reddit, Digg, del.icio.us)

Tagging – makes it locatable; and enable collaboration

3rd layer:
– measures the significance of the communication by counting links

so…
content
content about content
influence measurement

Quality?
– if you take the average – be skeptical
– but measurements and quality assessments work to secure quality and truth

So…blogging without filters
– what about trolls?
– Posner’s practice: never allow or encourage sycophants; reward the critics

To write in the medium of RW is to know that anything one writes is open to debate

(note about the importance of anonymity)

*Social production that features a mix of commercial and sharing economies.

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