Week 2- Blogging and Authorship

This week's readings deal with a number of interconnected issues in relation to the practice of blogging. These issues range from technological determinism, affordance, social individualization, phatic culture, and online ethics- all concepts deeply interwoven into the developing practice of blogging.

To date my primary experience with blogging has had to do with posting my weekly radio show (with which I would include play list, a short summary and highlights of the show, and sometimes background a given topic/special/feature for that week) as well as informing visitors of musical projects I was involved with, upcoming gigs, musical or cultural points of interest, etc. Due to time limitations I have scaled back these activities (now using a new site to simply host/podcast the radio show), but the overall goal here was to develop an audience and promote my musical output and viewpoints to a wider audience. Twitter, Soundcloud and Facebook have also been used to the same end.

So with this background I found this week's articles particularly interesting. I realized my own blogging experiences to be, while at the root of it a personalized experience, somewhat limited, specialized, and goal-oriented in scope. In contrast to this, purely personal blogs are one instance of what Vincent Miller refers to in his article as phenomena embodying traits of "phatic communication"- in essence using communication as a means of sharing feelings and establishing social ties instead of to convey ideas or information (Miller, 387-388). This type of communication is clearly endemic to digital culture, one rife with user's status updates and tweets sharing fairly banal moments in their lives. This phenomenon is a product of the increasingly individualization of society, where "communities are less bound by history, place and tradition," (388). In such a community, individuals seek social intimacy via different means (in this case by way of various social media) and are highly dependent on the "trust and security" garnered through these social connections.

While I myself have been known to transmit the occasional personalized tweet or updates (functioning in this "phatic" mode), I feel this type of communication can be a liability for reaching new audiences. If, as a musician, my goal is to expand my fan base and market, then any engagement I have with social media should be topical, interesting, funny, entertaining, artistic, and/or pertinent to who I am as an artist. I would argue that minimizing this type of communication is essential, especially in the early stages of acruing followers, "friends", etc. This is especially true when attempting to reach people who do not know you personally (their need to know what you just ate isn't necessarily pertinent to why they are following you- one would presume to find out more about your artistic output and opinion). Having said that, established artists/celebrities/cultural icons can and do use social media in this "phatic" mode in order to create imagined social intimacy with fans/followers. In some sense this runs counter to the conventional thinking that public figures value privacy, but in this way social media is an indispensable tool for promoting, marketing, and growing one's fan base.

Works Cited

Mark Cenite et al (2009). Doing the right thing online: a survey of bloggers' ethical beliefs and practices. New Media and Society. Vol. 11(4), pp575-97.

Lucas Graves (2007). The affordances of blogging: a case study in culture and technological effects. Journal of Communication Inquiry. Vol. 31(4), pp331-46.

Vincent Miller (2008). New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture. Convergence. Vol. 14(4), pp387-400.

Week 1- Web 2.0 Empowerment

Welcome to Attache, a collection of humble rumblings related to the themes covered in FTVMS712 Digital Media.

For week one the readings I focussed on primarily dealt with the broad implications of Web  2.0 and how its clearly transformative effect on society deserves more scrutiny. Much Web 2.0 rhetoric relies on a marriage of countercultural and capitalist overtones, bearing many similarities to the language of political manifestos. For instance, Web 2.0 manifestos, like their political counterparts, employ tactics such as addressing their audience as "we" (reinforcing the collectivist "prosumer" aesthetic of these new platforms) as well as referencing the present day as the "beginning a new era" in which users are equally consumers and producers of information (Djiek, Nieborg, 857-858). Contrary to this characterization, recent studies show that only 13 percent of people online are actual content creators, begging the question of how much old business models of has really changed (861). That said, It would be worth exploring how this has changed since these studies were conducted (2007-2008) and how "content creator" is defined- surely with the recent popularization of Facebook more users contribute and share (albeit often banal) content on a daily basis.

David Beer's article, "Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconcious" questions just how empowered the individual has become under Web 2.0. As a frequent and regular user of Facebook, Twitter, and Soundcloud I, and I would guess most users, work under the assumption that the design and functionality of Web 2.0 is a positive development. As web users, we are no longer restricted to singular roles but now can operate and interact on a multitude of levels. Due to the size and compexity of the task, David Beer doesn't have definitive answers at hand but by laying out a set of considered and critical questioning has challenged people to seek these answers for themselves.

These lines of critique are an important cautionary counterbalance to our collective impulse to dive head first into the new age of Web 2.0. They ask serious questions about issues of privacy, how and to what end our personal information and habits are being collated, who will use this information and why. Also, how these platforms and algorithms both empower our ability to interact and acquire/share information but how they might also be shaping our tastes, habits and opinions in ways not fully considered.

I would like to continue exploring these issues and use the fairly manic changes in music industry of the last fifteen years as a working case study. How has the digital age and Web 2.0 spefically affected this industry? Has it benefited/hurt the consumer? The artist? How? Is the rhetoric behind new music streaming sites like Spotify legitimizing the further decline of music sales?

Works Cited

David Beer (2009). Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious. New Media & Society, Vol. 11(6), pp985-1002. 

José van Dijck and David Nieborg (2009). Wikinomics and its discontents: a critical analysis of Web 2.0 business manifestos. New Media and Society. Vol. 11(5), pp855-74.

Trebor Scholz (2008). Market Ideology and the Myths of Web 2.0. First Monday. Vol. 13(3): http://firstmonday.org