Author Archives: Adam Fish
Nicholas Negroponte famously insisted that the dotcom boomers, “Move bits, not atoms.” Ignorant of the atom heavy human bodies, neuron dense brains, and physical hardware needed to make and move those little bits, Negroponte’s ideal did become true in industrial sectors dependent upon communication and economic transaction. In the communication sector, atomic newspapers have been [...]
Every case we investigate has them. Either FSE-housed and salaried individuals doing the work the algorithm can’t–humanly cultivating, curating, and cheerleading participation–or the OP netizen doing it for free, fun, or the Lulzzz–online community managers. Alex Leavitt recently asked the AIR-L list about research on this necessary yet precarious species of knowledge. These were the returns: The [...]
I keep returning to the public sphere as Habermas originally described it as I think about progressive political movements of today: Occupy Wall Street and its global dimensions, Anonymous and its more theatrical and political wing LulzSec, and progressive and independent cable television news network Current. Internet activism, television news punditry, and street-based social movement [...]
We have been dealing with cultural totalities—a single FSEs here and its single OPs there. Perhaps at an earlier point such holism and universalism was plausible. Closer examinations of each entity under the same banner provides evidence that each FSE and OP is likely an accumulation of numerous micro-communities. If we are going to explore [...]
The social dynamics and genesis of inter-networked activist cultures are little understood and the focus of some of our research at UCLA’s Part.Lab and a bunch of new business, activism, and pop theory books. Beyond the Echo Chamber: Reshaping Politics through Networked Progressive Media (New Press 2010) by Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke is [...]
Sivek, S. C. (2010). Social media under social control: Regulating social media and the future of socialization. Electronic News, 4(3), 146-164. Susan Currie Sivek has written an article that bears attention for Part.Lab’s focus on internet-enabled participation, and in particular its use in political television. A new generation of young new media journalists are being socialized in the [...]
Pilfering the good ideas of my Part.Lab colleagues, I intend to get into the question of multiple resources, perspectivalism, and partnerships through an analysis of two species of participatory video: citizen journalism and entertainment talent networks. For those not in the Lab, FSEs, or formal social enterprises, are the video firms and OPs, or organized [...]
Kperogi, Farooq A. 2011. Cooperation with the corporation? CNN and the hegemonic cooptation of citizen journalism through iReport.com, New Media & Society, 13: 314-329 http://nms.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/2/314 (Accessed April 3, 2011). Can user-generated content, promoted and contained by a corporation, constitute an alternative or resistance to mainstream media? This is Kperogi’s timely question. Its asking portends a new [...]
I work here at UCLA’s Part.Public.Part.Lab where we investigate new modes of co-production and participation facilitated by networked technologies. Internet-enabled citizen journalism such as Current TV, public science like PatientsLikeMe, and free and open software development like Wikipedia are key foci. In the lab I investigate the vitality or closure of a moment of freedom [...]
Entrenched hierarchy within open communities
Partisans