Hashtags are like blue hats

If I were to study football culture by observing, exhaustively, everything done by someone in a blue hat because they were the first football fan I’d ever seen I’d miss all the things being done by the blue scarves, the blue shirts… and the red everything else. I found this on the first page of… Con

Wolverhampton is really good at television

The announcement of Wolverhampton’s Portas Pilot win does rather indicate that the scheme is shaped more by telly than by a serious attempt at regeneration. SHARE THIS: * Share * * Twitter [https://theplan.co.uk/wolverhampton-is-really-good-at-television/?share=twitter] * Email [https

westwing

Twitter fanfic as ‘Improvised Fan Simulation’

I just wanted to share a nugget from one of the articles Inger-Lise and I are producing from our research on fans who tweet as characters from The West Wing. One of the key discussions we had throughout the project was around defining the activity: is it role play? Fan fic? Something else? The term…

ROI

Oh right so *that* is what Klout is for

I’ve never really got the appeal of Klout because I’ve always tended to think it was a bit naff to go around fretting about your “stats” on social media like that was in any way meaningful. Thanks to this blog post by James Carson I can now see how it could be useful. In his post… Continue reading O

food

Bean Jar

Bean jar is a close as Guernsey comes to having a national dish. A relation of cassoulet, it’s very much a (Guernsey) French thing. This is proper folksy peasant food, so if you’re looking for some stick-to-your-ribs goodness and a thrifty recipe to make a few quid last several days it’s a real winn

cbeebies

Postman Pat and the slow death of the postal service

A quick post in response to a conversation on Twitter today: https://twitter.com/#!/discorick84/status/200854243933032448 You know, Pat has moved on a lot since I was a kid. Obviously there’s the whole thing where he is married with a kid now (not enough to stop those rumours about him and Ted), but

PhD

What is hyperlocal media for?

Part 2 of a positioning statement ahead of TAL12. Part 1 is here. There’s not yet a lot of published academic work on hyperlocal media. The work that’s out there tends to frame hyperlocal as a quest to improve civic dialogue and as a response to changes in media markets (Domingo and Heinonen 2008; D

PhD

I don’t know what hyperlocal media is, but I’ve stopped worrying about that

A note on my PhD, and an invitation to talk to me about your practice at TAL12. Part 2 is here You may or not know this but I’ve been working away for some time on PhD research into hyperlocal media in the UK. That’s harder than it sounds, not because it’s a PhD but… Continue reading I don’t know wh

food

Cooking with friends of the stars

This is the story of my dinner, powered by Friends of the Stars fried chicken seasoning. SHARE THIS: * Share * * Twitter [https://theplan.co.uk/cooking-with-friends-of-the-stars/?share=twitter] * Email [https://theplan.co.uk/cooking-with-friends-of-the-stars/?share=email] * * LinkedIn

Introducing… The Zeitgeist Card

Life moves pretty fast… One minute everyone is a Social Media Consultant, the next they’re a Hyperlocal Blogger. No sooner do you catch up then you find people are Open Data Advocates and Social Technologists. A Twitter bio can be changed quickly, but the waves of creative destruction and disruptive

Cheerio Posterous – a timely move and a how to

The announcement yesterday that Posterous has been sold to Twitter reminded me that I’ve been meaning to move my blog for sometime (apparently since last March, so my bookmarks tell me). We’ve been fans of Posterous for while at the Birmingham Centre for Media & Cultural Research. It’s been a good t

The anecdote where I have to download Doctor Who from a grey market source

There’s an Oatmeal comic doing the rounds today about how hard it can be to actually pay for media content. The basic message is that although there is a wide range of places consumers can go to pay for media content (in this case a TV programme) it can actually be really hard to pay for the… Contin

Next week’s twitter – now!

Just in case you’ve got a lot on next week, here’s the zeitgeist tape to get you up to speed on what’s coming up next on Twitter.  Warning contains spoilers A Daily Mail columnist will say something outrageous. Twitter will be cross, but will unwittingly support their journalism by amping the shit o

2011 in my Twitter bios

Web, New Media, Social Media | Lecturing, research, knowledge transfer & exchange at Birmingham City Uni | How I use Twitter: http://bit.ly/2XILW1 Hacking the planet & amping my shit while teaching bright, lovely people at BCU about Web, New Media, Social Media | How I use Twitter: http://bit.ly/2XI

learning and teaching

Sometimes leaving the room is the best way to teach

Not going to your own classroom when you have a class is wrong, right? Students kind of expect us to be there, it’s part of the deal. Our bosses probably expect us to be there too. It’s what you do when your timetable says you should.   I’m not going to my classroom today, despite… Continue reading

Getting Things Sold

I had a little chat with John Polling about switching from Things to OmniFocus. Both are apps built around the popular productivity process GTD – Getting Things Done. DO NOT FRET THIS IS NOT A POST ABOUT PRODUCTIVITY GURU MYSTICISM John had been using Things for some time, but has switched to OmniFo

food

Apple glut? Here’s something from Guernsey for you to try

Craig Hamilton was offering around some cooking apples on the Twitters recently and I said “I’ll take a tonne off you”. So he duly dropped a 25 kilo potato sack brimming with bramleys round my house. Fantastic. I’ve risen to the challenge and got busy with my apples. Mum and Dad were coming up, so…

altbeebies

Media policy explained for the under-6s

CBeebies, the BBC’s preschool channel, has now completed its switch from BBC Television Centre, London to Media City, Salford. There’s probably more interest in the moves of things such as BBC Breakfast (also to Salford) and Question Time (to Glasgow) but I think there’s something quite fascinating

popular music

The “virally launched popstar” as a PR genre piece.

Remember Sandi Thom? She was the punk rocker with flowers in her hair who virally launched with some bedroom concerts via her home broadband that seemed able to support 30,000 instantaneous connections.Well, the soft viral launch myth was back with a bang on my Guardian app this morning. SHARE THI

Re-reading Six Feet Under: red hair and red herrings

The following is a spoiler laden essay on Six Feet Under, co written with Chris Wills (and also available on his blog). If you’ve not watched the show yet, treat yourself to a box set before you read this. Six Feet Under is a simple narrative complicated by three red herrings: Nathaniel Jr. (Nate),

westwing

Previously on the West Wing (on Twitter)

This is a little catch up post about a piece of work that’s been developing over the past 12 months. Back in August 2010 I wrote a post about West Wing fan fiction on Twitter which highlighted a few points of interest, and speculated a little about what might be going on behind the scenes. I know… C

Summer Reads Review 1: I play the drums in a band called okay

A few weeks ago I asked for a £15 summer reading list for my Kindle. I’ve had my first block of summer holiday, another block to come, so here’s an update. The first book up is ‘I play the drums in a band called okay’ by Toby Litt suggested by Daz Wright. I absolutely loved… Continue reading Summer

listening

It’s a shame the police don’t want to chat about my porn problem

Remember how in 24 things would often get kick started by “chatter”? Yeah, chatter – mutterings on the Internet that something is afoot. In espionage drama (and heck, probably real life spying too) the ‘net is monitored for tidbits of this and that which might fall into a sort of a pattern that tell

Next summer’s bestsellers: phone hack novels

I’m not one for predictions but here’s a hunch: next summer your holiday reading will include a door stop sized page turner about phone hacking and tabloid journalism. Furthermore I bet that this week publishers have made as many calls to their authors floating that idea as they’ve received unsolici

Summer reads: three novels where the internet is the star

Following on from last night’s post asking for summer reading picks, here are some recommendations for you, with an internet theme. Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby  A return to music and music fandom as a central theme finds Hornby on his best form in  some time. This a rather melancholy love story, ce