Learning & Teaching MED5008: a manifesto. For five weeks my second year students are banned from using the Internet in their new media class. Above is our production manifesto for the first half of the term. What follows is an explanation. Histories of alternative media* often link the arrival of new technologies with surges of alternative
ref Twitter / Profile / REF / Engagement I’m filling out a form that is being used to capture some information for our REF narrative. Part of that is about my online profile, and part of that asks me to describe how I use Twitter. So this has all led me to distil a few things that I’ve always said about Twitter as follows: I am… Continue r
writing “These are my words” – some recent (non-academic) writing projects By my low standards I’ve been pretty prolific the past few weeks working on non-work related writing projects. I always loved doing this sort of thing but for various reasons I haven’t done anything like it for a very long time. First up, 280 Stops. Absolutely loved working
PhD Hyperlocal discourse: the new media & technology repertoire After last week’s seminar presentation, I’ve been asked to clarify the repertoires that I think inform hyperlocal discourse. Those three repertoires again: New media / technology Community & alternative media Professional / commercial media I’m going to begin by unpicking the new media / technology
PhD From the Interactive Cultures Blog – Hyperlocal media: discourses and repertoires I posted a brief report on the IC blog about my talk today to the Birmingham Centre for Media & Cultural Research. This was a dry run based on the first draft of a paper I’m giving to the MeCCSA conference in January – all of it drawing on my PhD work. See the full… Continue reading From the Interac
learning and teaching Cameras are obvious, the web is still scary It’s Freshers’ Week again. Today we had to ‘pitch’ our first year production modules to the new intake so they can make an informed choice about what they are studying this year. This afternoon I’ve been meeting students in a drop-in session at my office to answer queries about the classes I run. I’
PhD The ever present problem of hyperlocale and scale I’m trying to close of a section of my literature review today, which led to me chasing up an old lead that purports to be the origin of the term ‘hyperlocal’ (or hyper-local as was). The reference leads to a business article in the Washington Post from 1991, which outlines a new cable TV news… Cont
Hyperlocal: is just being there enough? Location is a key component of what makes a hyperlocal blog a hyperlocal blog – the clue is in the term hyperlocal. The scale of what a hyperlocale is shifts around a lot as you read different academic and practitioner accounts, but that sense of place is very important. Other factors seem to matter
PhD Hyperlocal: community media / commercial media / other Hyperlocal is a tricky thing to study because there are so many different types of media work and media texts coalesced into the term. It’s almost easier to chart the differences between different projects than it is to pinpoint what they have in common. To illustrate this, let’s look at two differe
PhD More postcodes: hyperlocales, postcodes, and regional variations I must be sounding slightly obsessed with postcodes at the moment… UK postcodes are expressed as follows: B42 2SU. The postcode district in this example is ‘B42’. Frequently postcode districts are used as part of the identity of a hyperlocal website (e.g. expressed through logos and URLs) as a short
PhD Hyperlocal and ‘postcode areas’ ‘Postcode areas’ are often used to define the space – the hyperlocale as I’ve taken to calling it – which hyperlocal blogs serve, for example Sutton Coldfield Local used to be the B72 Blog and that sense of space is still fairly implicit in its coverage despite the name change (see also B31 Voices a
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
