10. Surveillance - Big Brother is Watching You

10.    

Surveillance – Big Brother is Watching You

                                   

According to Tsaliki, new media has the potential to be a public sphere, a digital democracy and a new global social space that is anti-authoritarian; allows the circulation of information; and provides for full citizen participation and inclusion in communication. It is a place like the coffee saloons in the 19^th century that was classed as a public sphere. In this modern public sphere information can be circulated, healthy public debates can be partaken and everyone is heard. Unlike the coffee saloons, however, the electronic democracy is seen to have the potential to include subordinate publics which were not included in the 19^th century discussion, along with women. Back then it was merely white aristocratic males who were allowed to be involved. New media is viewed as holding the potential to be more than just a capitalist marketplace but a place where a sense of community flourishes and expression, emotions and meanings are welcome and are as bona fide as the person sitting behind that computer screen (yeah, I mean you) connected onto the network. Democratic activities can potentially be extended beyond a mere exchange of universal information to become a civic networking movement of active and political citizens.            

            In comparison, David Lyon argues that everyday surveillance in the information societies we live in refers to the daily analysis and focused attention of our personal information. Lyon argues that this systematic and customary surveillance and invisible information infrastructure is caused by “the disappearing body” which modern technology has contributed to. He believes surveillance serves to create patterns and categories of social ordering where we all fall into a classification whether it is risk or opportunity. He believes it is this classifying structure that should undertake an ethical scrutiny. The data collected on us by the mediated world we inhabit is not just used for security but also for commercialistic purposes. Lyon argues that it is not so much privacy issues that we should be concerned about, but we should focus more on technological development, information policy, regulation, resistance, citizenship and power.    

These two arguments both focus on our modern society and the use of technology however that is where Tsaliki and Lyon’s arguments vastly differ. Tsaliki is focused more on the good that can come from new media whilst Lyon reveals the underside, we are aware of on some level but do not know enough and cannot do much about. With Tsaliki’s case, it is up to each individual to play an active role and contribute to the creation of the electronic public sphere; however, the technology that is used for everyday surveillance on us is out of our hands and even though it is about us, we have no idea what this trail of self-made data says about us, what it is used for (surveillance or commercialism), what category we have been placed in or even if the benefits of our activities outweigh the negatives of the data collection. For Tsaliki’s 'public sphere', modern technology has enabled us to actively make a difference in our political world; for Lyon’s 'everyday surveillance;, we are shown that surveillance goes hand in hand with the technology that is as invisible as our bodies have become when we enter this mediated world online.  

References

Lyon, D. (2002). Everyday Society: Personal Data and Social Classifications. Information, communication, society 5(2): 242 – 257.

Tsaliki, L. (2000). The Internet as Public Sphere. Formations A 21^st Century Media Studies Textbook. (Don Fleming. Ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

9. Digital Objects, Copyright, Intellectual Property

9.    

Digital Objects, Copyright, Intellectual Property

Copyright is a complex issue when it comes to digital technology. Traditionally, copyright laws has been based on works in their physical form whilst on the internet information flows without a physical body. Copyright grants exclusive rights to the creator of a work such as the right to authorise the duplication and the dissemination of a work to the public. Dobie (2000) quoted the U.S supreme court in defining copyright “It [copyright law] is the means by which copyright advances the progress of Science and Art.” (p. 210). An exception to the copyright law that exist both on and offline is the free use doctrine which allows works to be used for the purposes of education, news reporting and reviewing without the need of gaining permission from the owner.

Many challenges can be found in developing a system of copyright protection online. The first challenge lies in the fact of there being no physical form to online works and artists relied on this to control any unlawful copying of their works. Enforcement of copyright is another challenge as internet pirates are virtually impossible to find and the internet gives the opportunity for words to be illegally copied and distributed. Olsen (2000) affirms “This [Copyright piracy] is the digital dilemma according to the US based National Research Council (2000) because the internet is at once one of the world’s largest libraries and surely the world’s largest copying machine.” (p. 197). Decryption software programs present another challenge as this allows pirates to get around the code and make multiple high quality copies they can then distribute in cyberspace. Other challenges and cases lies in hyperlinking, deep linking and framing. Hyperlinking is the bridge on the internet that links a user from one site to another without needing permission whilst deep linking does the same thing yet skips into an inside page of the website rather than taking a user to the homepage where one see the authors name etc. Framing reveals a independent scrollable window to a separate webpage where content can be imported from one website to another. This proves a challenge to the copyright as it messes with distribution privileges and derivative works that can be passed off as a person’s own work.    

Legislation that currently exists in New Zealand in relation to digital media copyright is the Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Bill 2008. Prior to this bill was the Digital Technology and the Copyright act 1994. The act renews and refines copyright and new technologies and provides a guide and balance between protection of the owner and user, as was already established in the 1994 act. Some of the key provisions of the bill defined by Tizard (2008), the associate commerce minister, are:  “Two key conditions to the format shifting exception is that the original purchaser must not make more than one copy for use on each device owned and the purchaser must retain both the original version of the sound recording purchased and the copy made. This provision does not legitimize copying of CDs for friends or online file-sharing, both these actions remain an infringement of copyright.”

References

Dobie, I. (2000). The Music Industry Versus the Internet: MP3 and Other Cyber Music Wars. Web Studies. (2^nd ed.). (Gauntlett, D., & Horsley, R. Ed.). New York: Oxford Univeristy Press.

Olson, K. K. (2000). Copyright in Cyberspace: Protecting Intellectual Property Online. Web Studies. (2^nd ed.). (Gauntlett, D., & Horsley, R. Ed.). New York: Oxford Univeristy Press.

Tizard, J. H. (2008). Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Bill Passes 3^rd Reading – Media Statement. Ministry of Economic Development. Retrieved November 2, 2009, from http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/MultipageDocumentTOC____35264.aspx

8. Blogs and Changing News Industries

8.    

Blogs and Changing News Industries.

Blogs originated in 1997 by a website known as weblog. On 17^th December 1997 the term was coined by a blog, short for weblog, and coined by John Barger to describe the website that logged his computer travels through hyperlinks. A weblog is now known as a website that is used for regular commentary. Blogs have become a cultural phenomenon on the internet. Blogging can be done for social interaction and comes in the form of a personal diary or a collaborative space.  It is a place where a variety of opinions, ideas, knowledge, and creativity can be found and consumed online. Blogging can be perceived as social event even if a blog has few readers (like this one will), just because it is submitted before the public expressing the individual and thus, blogs help produce identity.

The way a blog looks or is read depends on what it is used for.  There are different types such as news blogs, corporate blogs, research blogs and most commonly blogs are used for personal use such as blogs on specific topic (known as genre) such as books, by device such as a mobile phone, by media type such as photoblog, vlog (video), podcasting (audio). Blogs allow publishing in a way that was once reserved strictly to the media and even that of News blogs differ from that of news due to the nature of blogs where the use of emotions is encouraged  whilst a usual news story would not be able to exhibit due to needing to appear impartial and objective. Blogs often offer behind the scenes reports and a number of perspectives the media are unable to, or wish not to convey.   

Common narrative and visual features of blogs are writing in first person, combining text, images and links/hypertext to other blogs, webpages, and other media related to a particular entry/topic. The interactive ability of feedback and reader comments is considered an important part of blogging. Blog features also include date and author listings, email links, and advertisements. Many blogs maintain anonymity and most blogs are relatively simple structured pages. Blogs typically use templates for the HTML and CSS for styling, so that changing the appearance of the pages is a simple matter of changing the style sheet. For this reason blogging software and systems are now being used for many web publishing applications, not just blogs in the traditional sense. The striking thing about blogging systems is how easy the blogs are to update, removing most or all of the pain of writing HTML pages.

Whether one is blogging for private or corporate use, there is a large number of blogs available where some are open source, some are commercial and others are free for certain classes of users.

7. Surf it - The Internet

7.    

Surf it – The Internet

The claim made by Marshall (2004) that the internet has blurred the boundary between public and private is evidently true. Online a person has complete control over what information they divulge to the public and because a user has anonymity it is easier to reveal the private details of one’s life to strangers and the public. Intimate details, secrets, confessions are freely conveyed in interactions that one would never divulge in a face to face conversation. Handing out these intimate details is often seen as being liberating – much like doing something naughty and getting away with it. It is exactly like this because we are taught etiquette from an early age and thus, divulging private information feels like one is being daring and breaking the rules.  The computer screen is a mask worn and each user enters into the cyberworld and has the choice about how much of one’s true self is revealed and how much of the person behind the mask is seen.

The internet is a subjective place and the domestic setting of home is a key place where people log on. In 2006 there were over 100 000 websites and instant message programs like ICQ and MSN is a popular tool of the internet. Like any other media form, advertising and commercialism runs the internet and often advertisements are targeted and customised specifically to each internet user by the use of cookies; this furthers the feeling of personal. It is then of no surprise that the public sphere of the internet, that is filled with strangers partaking in public discourse, is blurred with the private sphere of the individual in which the individuals thoughts, feelings, tastes, beliefs, ideologies and identity is on display for the world. Uncensored, free speech and open dialogue is encouraged, just as it was in the 19^th century salons and coffee houses however public sphere back then was largely based around politics. Like the salons and coffee houses, the internet is a free environment which non-obtrusive and uninhibited where people can discuss issues and receive public opinion away from authority. Whilst this does happen on the internet, it is not and I doubt it ever will be the main focus of the internet.

The internet makes it easy for someone to become popular and famous in their own right, as David mentioned in his lecture on internet celebrities. The internet had become the form of documentary where anyone can post anything such as youtube Unlike television and films someone can become a star overnight and because the internet is accessed by such a vast amount of people it does not take long before links are fwd onto friends and family and the website hits become large. Like movie stars who are paid with large amounts of money according to their status, the currency of popularity on the internet is website hits.

Marshall (2004) sums it up best with the words “Via the internet, the everydayness of personal and intimate images that are perpetually accessible has transformed the cultural discourse of what is public and what is private, who is the performer and who is the audience.” (P. 55).

6. Visual Culture and New Media Technologies

6.    

Visual Culture and New Media Technologies

We learn to see images long before we learn to talk or read. Images have always been around and played a crucial part in human life. Due to the popularity of the internet, the rise of cyberculture, and digital software and technology such as editing programmes, cameras, webcams and camera phones visual culture, which was once left in the realm of the professionals, can now be easily and efficiently produced by the average person and shown to the world with a simple upload. In a very effective way new media technologies have transformed us from a culture that not only sees, but also visualises and creates. The greatest transformation new media has brought visual culture is in the way we see and look at the world through representational images of it. The nature of an image or a visual representation can be said to constitute a viewer or spectator, largely by the way they give us a position and an identity from which to view the world and from which to express our own worlds and identities.

Lister, Dovey, et al (2009) affirm “Changes in the ways of visually representing the world and the relationship of the resulting images to historically changing ‘ways of seeing’ are also central to the study of visual culture.” (p. 127). New media technologies has greatly influenced and transformed the visual representation of the world in the very way our consumption of images has increased. Images now come from all parts of the world and all walks of life which can affirm or challenge the way we see the world. New media tools can manipulate and with precision and subtlety, create reality or unreality. Visual culture is not only more available and consumable but it has become a full out assault on our senses. Another transformation of visual culture can be seen in virtual reality – the use of fonts and typing through to three-dimensional presence and animation, often found in games, but also in computer graphics and the manipulation of text and pictorial space.  

New media, such as digital imaging through to cinema, is usually based around the realism and the realistic image. This concept is known as verisimilitude. Verisimilitude is a type of representation that claims to capture the visual appearance of people, objects, and thus, the world as it appears to the human eye. Verisimilitude in an aspect of cinematography that has become conventional and taken for granted but it has become of interest to both producers and consumers in computer imagery and thus, one can say that computer imagery has transformed the aesthetic of visual culture in the way it has brought Verisimilitude back into fashion. A myriad of internet sites such as Photobucket reveals the verisimilitude and the visual representation of life.     

New media has transformed visual culture in significant and  ways from styles and popular arts through to the way we use images to represent our own realities to the world – through record keeping and documenting such as online photo albums, profiles, and videos, through to interacting with virtual reality, being stimulated by and interacting with alternative realities based on properties and rules. Most of all, visual culture has been transformed by our knowledge, our use of images and the types of art now consumed and produced that visually represent the world, and reveal a way of seeing the world. All this would not have been possible without new media technologies.  

References

Lister, M., Dovey, J., Giddings, S., Grant, I., & Kelly, K.  (2009) New Media A Critical Introduction (2^nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

5. Gaming and Game Culture

5.     Gaming and Game Cultures

With traditional media, such as broadcast and print, the consumer gets little choice or control over what is offered to them and thus, audience were considered to be passive consumers of media texts; However with new media, interactivity in a key concept because it enables a high degree of choice by the user. Players become not just the consumer of the media text, but the creator of their own media as well. New media texts make possible a highly customised and personalised experience.   

In games the player takes control of the playing conditions, some games can customise and personalise the playing character with choice of appearance, down to gender, ethnicity, and the attire they want their character to wear. In combat games, one is given the choice of weaponry, through to affiliations and locations to hang out in. Some games give complete creator control to the player where they have to build everything from the ground up (as done on sim games).  The character/avatar in the game becomes more than just a character, it embodies the players tastes, interests, personality and preferences, it can also satisfy curiosities or give players the chance to interact with and explore things (such as changing gender) with their characters/avatars that one could not easily do in real life. The choice is placed in the players hands from crucial decisions through to the trivial. Flew (2005) contends “Because of the goal-driven nature of games, the emotional engagement with the text comes, not from the engagement with characters and events, such as occurs in conventional narratives, but because the player is the performer, and the game evaluates the performance and adapts to it.” (P. 112). 

 Another form of interactivity is the actual communication that takes place and that is due to the game. Player-to-player communication is seen as a key variable in multidimensional models of video game enjoyment. Receiving information from other players helps complete quests/tasks in the game and increases one’s success. Players may also regard the messages they produce as part of their influence on the game world which also renders this type of player-to-player interaction as a facilitator of experience. Communication with other players or their avatars may also serve to identify with one’s own role or character in the game and giving encouragement and support helps esteem. Another type of communication that can take place is dialogue between the game industry and players where the player enters into ongoing interactive dialogue about the nature of the game and the player can become what is known as a 4^th party developer of the game’s content, design, and engineering.

 Interactivity can also go one step further where players create communities around their game activities such as what one sees in sports and clubs. New media games have become very interactive and social to the point where teams are formed and play against other teams across local area networks, homes, or in public places often reported by the media. An example of interactive games I have personally played are the one’s found on facebook such as Mafia Wars and Vampire wars where a big part of the experience is playing with other friends (named your mafia family, or vampire clan) you can work with these members to improve your skill and status and fight battles with other players.

 

As you have seen the concept of interactivity is significant in the analysis of new media texts because it helps define the new qualities of new media technology. Interactivity greatly contributes to not only a game’s success and popularity but in its very creation of and the relationship between player and the game.  

References

Flew, T., & Humphreys, S. (2005). Games: Technology, Industry, Culture. New Media. (Flew, T. Ed.). Australia: Oxford University Press.