Thanks anonymous Jean, my sister in law in NJ for once again providing grist for the mill. And once again you have raised an essential question which by all accounts is a time of great change in the media. Your question is will new media result in honest change in Washington where it is ‘We the People’ who use new media to orient Washington and make government more transparent and accessible to us all – or - will it be used to misinform and control information and reinforce the stronghold of elite interests have on our Government? In the latter scenario media will continue to be a messaging strategy, albeit delivered through ‘hipper’ and more interactive strategies.
We all know reality is rarely an either or situation so both these media outcomes may exist at the same time in the same place. The real question is, which one will dominate?
Jenkins observes at least two major contradictory trends at play in our media environ today. The first trend is the large number of consolidation and mergers across the news, cultural, and communications industries. The mainstream press is caught in the cross fire as they are now tightly controlled by narrow private ‘corporate’ interests. Imagine, Disney doing the news? Newspapers are dropping like flies. The Pew Center on Excellence in Journalism released a report a few weeks ago noting alarming trend in the DC Press Corps. The number of reporters affiliated with the mainstream news outlets in DC has declined steadily since the 1980s. Mainstream journalists with credentials to cover Congress has decline by a third, while those registered with other agencies are down by more than half. In the last quarter of 2008 alone, five newspapers closed their DC bureaus while six others cut staff positions.
At the same time, the number of writers, editors, and reporters working for newsletters, magazines, and specialty news papers, and broadcast media outlets considered to part of the ‘niche media’ has risen by half – with a third of that growth in newsletters alone. This sector offers specialized and a more detailed analysis directed at smaller, often elite audiences or audiences concerned with a particular political interest or cause. In addition, the representatives of the foreign news outlets have grown nearly tenfold since 1968 when it had 160 members.
As you can imagine, these trends have an enormous effect on what journalists can report. Journalists in mainstream outlets are crunched for time and under fire to be more entertaining – they no longer ask the hard questions. Rising to fill the reporting gap are outlets with a mission – they keep plenty of news flowing out of DC, but it is new news – news with a spin and an agenda that goes way beyond keeping us all informed.
The second, contradictory trend is that at the same time new media technologies and practices have lowered production and distribution costs, expanded the range of delivery channels and empower consumers to engage in the media to include the creation of their own media. So new media advocates say these trends give ‘we the people’ the power to storm the new gates to the news.
Gillmore talks about ‘we the media’. Individuals like you and me who care about our government take up new tools and use them to mine information, link it with other information sources, and join with others to discuss, compare and contrast our sources to become more aware of what is going on in our world. Once passive consumers of mainstream news have the power to be transformed into an active and vital part of the larger media environ. People now have to toots to make their own news and this can potentially tip the scales in our relationship with our government. We can use these tools to join with others in making government more transparent and accountable to us all.
So who will orient the orientors of new media in D.C., will it be ‘We the People’ or same old crowd? Although time may tell the answer to this question – the forces that will tip the scale in one or other of these directions are in play in the media landscape in DC today. So you see Anonymous Jean it is not about Washington at all really. It is about how people like you and me assemble with others through the use of these new tools to hold government more accountable. It is about using the new media tools force the orientors of new media in DC to shape a new media infrastructure in the halls of government that supports “We the Media”.
Any thoughts on how we do this?
Monday, March 23, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Can boring be good for business?
Pratt suggests new media is best understood as a situated industry and practice characterized by the networks of firms and skills that converge in particular locations, in particular ways, for particular purposes. The products, material dimensions, and dynamics of a new media economic center and its workforce are thus largely constituted by the local economy where institutions and firms apply new media to enhance internal operations and external relationships.
In this light any analysis of a new media cluster by definition must be contextualized in a regional economy and it must include a discussion on how a new media industry emerges from within a broader network of industries and skills. Indeed over the last decade there have been at least three attempts to explore the emergence of a new media cluster in the Greater Washington Region. Although each study explored convergence among different combination of the technology, communications, information, media, entertainment, arts, and cultural industries residing in the region, each articulated the new media cluster differently.
For example, in 1998, the Potomac Knowledgeway in an analysis on the InfoComm Industry in D.C. region explored the convergence of ‘heritage’ – the established communications, information content (including nonprofits, publishing, and the press), and computing and systems integration industries in the region; with ‘vision’ provided by a new class of entrepreneurial visionaries who understood the Internet and digital products and services.
In the second study produced by the Greater Washington Initiative (GWI) in 2005, new media was presented more narrowly. The report explored the convergence of the significant cluster of film, video, and niche entertainment production and distribution with the growing number internet service providers in the region and predicted it would result in a new digital platform for the delivery of existing media products as well as new digital products and services. In this light, this study made the argument that D.C. was poised create a new media cluster to compete with New York City.
The third study also conducted by the GWI in 2007 of knowledge workforce in Greater Washington, extended this argument and stated that DC had emerged as another Silicon Alley and was now fully prepared to compete with NYC. This study configured the industry differently than the 2005 study. The new media cluster in this study included the serious film and niche entertainment production, the news media, the media produced by the large non-profit sector in the region, as well as other creative industries like the commercial arts, museums, and all kinds of design work. Because the study positioned new media in the broader context of the creative industry, its close affiliation with the IT sector seemed to fade into the background.
These three studies, each defining the new media cluster and activities in Greater Washington differently over the last decade illustrate that new media in the Greater Washington Region continues to be an emergent, inherently unstable, and contested social object. This series of studies also show that new media is not all that new in the Region. Indeed it seems those involved in thinking about and observing new media in the Greater Washington Region have either focused on the relationship between the communications, technology, and information content sectors, which includes the mainstream news and the policy and advocacy information and analysis produced in the region - or the relationships between the news and entertainment content sectors and the internet. Except for the military, the role of government in new media convergence in the region receives little to no attention in these studies. Even less attention is paid to the whether and how convergence may or may not be occurring across all these sectors, or more importantly how this convergence is linked to or embedded in the broader political economy of the region.
Perhaps one of the barriers to a broader and deeper analysis of the new media cluster in DC is the stated and intended purpose of each of these studies, which is to present DC as more than a company town. Each of these studies goes to great lengths to emphasize the vital commercial sector in the region while downplaying the important role of government as a regional catalyst and orientor of innovation and growth in each of the economic sectors that are linked to the new media economy. I argue for an alternative approach. Rather than comparing the region to New York, San Francisco or other ‘cool’ centers of new media or the creative economy, economic development resources would be better spent fostering a new media economy that extends rather than departs from the historic relationship between the federal government and the commercial sector in the region. I argue that more study is needed to explore how government continues to orient the concentration and organization the commercial resources across the ICT, media, and artistic sectors in the Region.
What do you think DC?
In this light any analysis of a new media cluster by definition must be contextualized in a regional economy and it must include a discussion on how a new media industry emerges from within a broader network of industries and skills. Indeed over the last decade there have been at least three attempts to explore the emergence of a new media cluster in the Greater Washington Region. Although each study explored convergence among different combination of the technology, communications, information, media, entertainment, arts, and cultural industries residing in the region, each articulated the new media cluster differently.
For example, in 1998, the Potomac Knowledgeway in an analysis on the InfoComm Industry in D.C. region explored the convergence of ‘heritage’ – the established communications, information content (including nonprofits, publishing, and the press), and computing and systems integration industries in the region; with ‘vision’ provided by a new class of entrepreneurial visionaries who understood the Internet and digital products and services.
In the second study produced by the Greater Washington Initiative (GWI) in 2005, new media was presented more narrowly. The report explored the convergence of the significant cluster of film, video, and niche entertainment production and distribution with the growing number internet service providers in the region and predicted it would result in a new digital platform for the delivery of existing media products as well as new digital products and services. In this light, this study made the argument that D.C. was poised create a new media cluster to compete with New York City.
The third study also conducted by the GWI in 2007 of knowledge workforce in Greater Washington, extended this argument and stated that DC had emerged as another Silicon Alley and was now fully prepared to compete with NYC. This study configured the industry differently than the 2005 study. The new media cluster in this study included the serious film and niche entertainment production, the news media, the media produced by the large non-profit sector in the region, as well as other creative industries like the commercial arts, museums, and all kinds of design work. Because the study positioned new media in the broader context of the creative industry, its close affiliation with the IT sector seemed to fade into the background.
These three studies, each defining the new media cluster and activities in Greater Washington differently over the last decade illustrate that new media in the Greater Washington Region continues to be an emergent, inherently unstable, and contested social object. This series of studies also show that new media is not all that new in the Region. Indeed it seems those involved in thinking about and observing new media in the Greater Washington Region have either focused on the relationship between the communications, technology, and information content sectors, which includes the mainstream news and the policy and advocacy information and analysis produced in the region - or the relationships between the news and entertainment content sectors and the internet. Except for the military, the role of government in new media convergence in the region receives little to no attention in these studies. Even less attention is paid to the whether and how convergence may or may not be occurring across all these sectors, or more importantly how this convergence is linked to or embedded in the broader political economy of the region.
Perhaps one of the barriers to a broader and deeper analysis of the new media cluster in DC is the stated and intended purpose of each of these studies, which is to present DC as more than a company town. Each of these studies goes to great lengths to emphasize the vital commercial sector in the region while downplaying the important role of government as a regional catalyst and orientor of innovation and growth in each of the economic sectors that are linked to the new media economy. I argue for an alternative approach. Rather than comparing the region to New York, San Francisco or other ‘cool’ centers of new media or the creative economy, economic development resources would be better spent fostering a new media economy that extends rather than departs from the historic relationship between the federal government and the commercial sector in the region. I argue that more study is needed to explore how government continues to orient the concentration and organization the commercial resources across the ICT, media, and artistic sectors in the Region.
What do you think DC?
Monday, March 9, 2009
What is New Media?
Since launching this blog several people have asked me to explain what I mean by new media. Even many of you who 'do' new media, have inquired about my views. Sooo....
New media is a broad term used to describe a series of technological, political, and cultural shifts that together are changing the structure of the media and entertainment industries. More importantly, these shifts are also changing the historic relationship between the media producers and consumers.
Deregulation, technology innovation, and new capital investments have significantly altered the way media and entertainment products are developed and distributed. Large corporate conglomerates have emerged to exploit capacity from across once different sectors of the economy. Intellectual property and media content developed in one part of the corporation can be repackaged, resold, and distributed many times over several mediums, and across domestic and international markets. New products and services and new business models have emerged that threaten many industry players who have not figured out how to adopt them, like newspapers.
These same technologies gives consumers much more control over not only what they will watch, read and listen to, but also over how media products are developed and can be used. The new internet based peer-to-peer networks, collaborative tools, social software coupled with new and cheap computer software and recording equipment, coupled with a myriad of new communication devises empower consumers to become producers and distributors of their own media and entertainment. Interactive forms of entertainment and civic engagement like internet based social networks are cutting into the overall percentage of personal time and resources people invest in traditional media products and services. The media and the entertainment art form are changing from a one-way, mass viewing experience - to an interactive, personalized experience. Many people are demanding a new level of engagement in the media and cultural that constitute their world.
Yet there is still no consensus on a definition of the media industry today – old or new. Analysts use different frameworks to identify the sectors that make up the industry. Attempts to study the industry are further complicated by the large number of mergers and acquisitions that have occurred since the 1990s and continue today. Data on specific companies is constantly changing. Also, given that much of the work within the industry is project based and contingent, data on the number of people who actually earn a living by working within the industry, their wage levels, skill sets, credentials, etc. are also hard to obtain.
It seems to me Jenkins got it right when describing new media as a process - a convergence process through which a new or an alternative media environment will emerge. He believes the new media environment is being shaped by these two seemingly contradictory trends - trends in traditional media that have a given rise to very small number of privately held gatekeepers who now have unprecedented control over the media and popular culture - and - trends that are transforming the audience into active producers and consumers of the news and popular culture. As we sit in the midst of this process he claims it is very hard to predict the media landscape that will emerge on the other end.
Next week, I will share some of what I have learned about the potential implications of these trends for the media landscape in Greater Washington DC.
Meanwhile, what do you think? Does Jenkins capture the inherent contradiction which he believes may characterize 'the media' today? What are your thoughts about how these contradictions are playing out in Greater Washington, DC?
New media is a broad term used to describe a series of technological, political, and cultural shifts that together are changing the structure of the media and entertainment industries. More importantly, these shifts are also changing the historic relationship between the media producers and consumers.
Deregulation, technology innovation, and new capital investments have significantly altered the way media and entertainment products are developed and distributed. Large corporate conglomerates have emerged to exploit capacity from across once different sectors of the economy. Intellectual property and media content developed in one part of the corporation can be repackaged, resold, and distributed many times over several mediums, and across domestic and international markets. New products and services and new business models have emerged that threaten many industry players who have not figured out how to adopt them, like newspapers.
These same technologies gives consumers much more control over not only what they will watch, read and listen to, but also over how media products are developed and can be used. The new internet based peer-to-peer networks, collaborative tools, social software coupled with new and cheap computer software and recording equipment, coupled with a myriad of new communication devises empower consumers to become producers and distributors of their own media and entertainment. Interactive forms of entertainment and civic engagement like internet based social networks are cutting into the overall percentage of personal time and resources people invest in traditional media products and services. The media and the entertainment art form are changing from a one-way, mass viewing experience - to an interactive, personalized experience. Many people are demanding a new level of engagement in the media and cultural that constitute their world.
Yet there is still no consensus on a definition of the media industry today – old or new. Analysts use different frameworks to identify the sectors that make up the industry. Attempts to study the industry are further complicated by the large number of mergers and acquisitions that have occurred since the 1990s and continue today. Data on specific companies is constantly changing. Also, given that much of the work within the industry is project based and contingent, data on the number of people who actually earn a living by working within the industry, their wage levels, skill sets, credentials, etc. are also hard to obtain.
It seems to me Jenkins got it right when describing new media as a process - a convergence process through which a new or an alternative media environment will emerge. He believes the new media environment is being shaped by these two seemingly contradictory trends - trends in traditional media that have a given rise to very small number of privately held gatekeepers who now have unprecedented control over the media and popular culture - and - trends that are transforming the audience into active producers and consumers of the news and popular culture. As we sit in the midst of this process he claims it is very hard to predict the media landscape that will emerge on the other end.
Next week, I will share some of what I have learned about the potential implications of these trends for the media landscape in Greater Washington DC.
Meanwhile, what do you think? Does Jenkins capture the inherent contradiction which he believes may characterize 'the media' today? What are your thoughts about how these contradictions are playing out in Greater Washington, DC?
Monday, March 2, 2009
Liminal Tribe
If I had any doubt before this weekend, my experience at Transparency Camp 09 confirmed for me that D.C. is a place of great opportunity for tech savvy professionals from across the media, information and communication technology, creative, non-profit, and public administrative sectors. Represented at this weekend’s un-conference was the current generation of the class of professionals who have historically clustered in D.C. This class is described on the Camp’s website as a... ‘trans-partisan tribe...from all walks – government representatives, developers, NGOs, wonks, and activists” and I’d add to this list members of The Press.
This weekend made clear to me the professional opportunities that exist in the DC area for individual members of this tribe. But perhaps more importantly this tribe may represent an opportunity for us all to learn how to distribute the powerful potential of social media tools and practices beyond the industrial sectors that invented them and the generation who grew up with them. If this tribe succeeds, they may very well provide a bridge to help move social media and its benefits into broader areas of community, civic, and economic life.
Ironically DC is not recognized as a significant cluster of the social media economy. It is way overshadowed by areas like Silicon Valley, or New York City. It may be said the social media ‘tribe’ in DC are like a liminal people residing at the bounds between the originators and a broader adoption of social media technologies and practices throughout the civic life and the economy. And they share a common problem with other liminal people - they are ambiguous and unremarkable and seen as possessing no particular status, power, or role in the overall social structure. Liminal tribes, like the DC social media professionals are hard to see and define for their condition often defies classification by conventional means.
This experience of being ‘unremarkable’ on the broader economic map of social media was expressed by many of the individuals and groups I met throughout my research in social media in DC. Almost every individual I met who is involved in convening groups of social media advocates, every professional association executive, every individual who hires or in some way supports social media professionals in D.C. expressed frustration by the lack of recognition DC receives for the wide ranging social media work performed in the region. Individual professionals themselves also acknowledge their lack of broader recognition and indeed, this insight seems in part to drive them to work and learn and engage others in their social media endeavors. Much of the networking people do in social media in DC seems to me, to be partly motivated by a personal and collective desire to matter in the broader world of social media.
If my analysis is correct and the D.C. social media tribe represent a liminal stage between the powerful political, economic, social, and technological forces that gave rise to social media and its broader adaption and integration in civic and economic life, then it D.C must be seen as a site of great potential, learning, and personal risk. Liminal stages require greats acts of personal and group agency for it involves pushing past established boundaries and great collective effort that is often punctuated by significant meaning. Liminal worlds are naturally sites of individual learning and cultural development – people and their culture emerge from liminal states transformed in some way. What liminal people learn and how they learn it may be of value to all others who will inevitably follow them to the other side of their developmental cycle.
If the members of the tribe who came together this weekend achieve their aims they will not only succeed in making government more ‘transparent’ they will also be poised to help figure out what seems to be a fundamental question in the world of social media today. I argue that their efforts may help distribute and begin to normalize social media tools, practices and the collaborative culture it fosters inside of the hierarchical institutions that comprise and uphold our society and economy. The skills this tribe develops and uses and the way they organize to work and learn may have implications beyond their current aims – it may be a harbinger of things to come for us all who live and work within the bounds of the institutions that comprise modern life.
This weekend made clear to me the professional opportunities that exist in the DC area for individual members of this tribe. But perhaps more importantly this tribe may represent an opportunity for us all to learn how to distribute the powerful potential of social media tools and practices beyond the industrial sectors that invented them and the generation who grew up with them. If this tribe succeeds, they may very well provide a bridge to help move social media and its benefits into broader areas of community, civic, and economic life.
Ironically DC is not recognized as a significant cluster of the social media economy. It is way overshadowed by areas like Silicon Valley, or New York City. It may be said the social media ‘tribe’ in DC are like a liminal people residing at the bounds between the originators and a broader adoption of social media technologies and practices throughout the civic life and the economy. And they share a common problem with other liminal people - they are ambiguous and unremarkable and seen as possessing no particular status, power, or role in the overall social structure. Liminal tribes, like the DC social media professionals are hard to see and define for their condition often defies classification by conventional means.
This experience of being ‘unremarkable’ on the broader economic map of social media was expressed by many of the individuals and groups I met throughout my research in social media in DC. Almost every individual I met who is involved in convening groups of social media advocates, every professional association executive, every individual who hires or in some way supports social media professionals in D.C. expressed frustration by the lack of recognition DC receives for the wide ranging social media work performed in the region. Individual professionals themselves also acknowledge their lack of broader recognition and indeed, this insight seems in part to drive them to work and learn and engage others in their social media endeavors. Much of the networking people do in social media in DC seems to me, to be partly motivated by a personal and collective desire to matter in the broader world of social media.
If my analysis is correct and the D.C. social media tribe represent a liminal stage between the powerful political, economic, social, and technological forces that gave rise to social media and its broader adaption and integration in civic and economic life, then it D.C must be seen as a site of great potential, learning, and personal risk. Liminal stages require greats acts of personal and group agency for it involves pushing past established boundaries and great collective effort that is often punctuated by significant meaning. Liminal worlds are naturally sites of individual learning and cultural development – people and their culture emerge from liminal states transformed in some way. What liminal people learn and how they learn it may be of value to all others who will inevitably follow them to the other side of their developmental cycle.
If the members of the tribe who came together this weekend achieve their aims they will not only succeed in making government more ‘transparent’ they will also be poised to help figure out what seems to be a fundamental question in the world of social media today. I argue that their efforts may help distribute and begin to normalize social media tools, practices and the collaborative culture it fosters inside of the hierarchical institutions that comprise and uphold our society and economy. The skills this tribe develops and uses and the way they organize to work and learn may have implications beyond their current aims – it may be a harbinger of things to come for us all who live and work within the bounds of the institutions that comprise modern life.
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