Backchat, some thoughts
Having penned a short definition of ‘the backchannel’ for December’s Wired UK (see subsequent celebratory arm-flailing), it was with a tightening stomach that I read this blog post from web researcher danah boyd:
“… I walked off stage and immediately went to Brady and asked what on earth was happening. And he gave me a brief rundown. The Twitter stream was initially upset that I was talking too fast. My first response to this was: OMG, seriously? That was it? Cuz that’s not how I read the situation on stage. So rather than getting through to me that I should slow down, I was hearing the audience as saying that I sucked. And responding the exact opposite way the audience wanted me to. This pushed the audience to actually start critiquing me in the way that I was imagining it was …”
An interesting discussion of the way an audience can rapidly become a mob, in all it’s pitchfork-waving, windmill-burning glory – full kudos to danah for being so open and honest about the whole thing. There’s also something interesting (and faintly disturbing) about the journalistic/political side of this.
[key texts] Wired UK 12.09
Riding on the tailcoats of my January internship with the zeitgeist-riding wunderkinder of Wired UK, I’ve got two short pieces in the December issue – both as part of the feature, ‘25 Ideas for 2010+‘. It’s my first professional byline, in one of the most awesome individual magazine issues to spit on the much-touted ‘death of news’, and – naturally – I’m all kinds of adrenal.
© image credit: the conde nast publications ltd.
Now that it’s safely in print, I feel comfortable pointing you to a copy of the email interview I conducted with Swedish doctoral student Jonas Anderson. There’s some seriously interesting stuff in there, very little (unfortunately) of which made it into the final 250 words.
Oh, and with the apparent ratification of Lisbon, it’ll be interesting to see the reception Amelia Andersdotter gets from the European Parliament (and the media) when taking her seat at the start of December. Researching the Wired piece, I spent fifteen minutes transfixed by her interview with Andrew Keen for (of all things) The Daily Telegraph:
Setting aside my own nascent megalomania for a moment (if we must), the December issue also contains Mic Wright’s fantastic feature on photographic miracle the Impossible Project – mentioned briefly in my delirious (and slightly incoherent) economic analysis of Cory Doctorow’s new novel, Makers. Also: heaps of nifty infographics, airfix hacking, and Warren Ellis’ spirited defence of phonic curmudgeon Paul Morley.
Now, most of this is probably available online, but – admit it – you need the tactility of print. Underneath it all is the realisation that it’s just not practical to take your laptop to the toilet with you. Netbook, maybe, but not your laptop …
Film & Multimedia Journalism Material Digital Culture Politics & Economics
by Justin
1 comment
Why #WeLoveTheBBC – Digital Revolution
A near-perfect marriage of medium and message, the upcoming BBC documentary Digital Revolution (working title) is everything I could ask of a public broadcaster. Indeed, if I owned a television, this alone would justify my license fee for the next five three years.
They’ve given me a platform to rant and rail against Baroness Susan Greenfield; made their interview rushes available for people to download, embed, and remix; and actually seem to be listening to the comments and suggestions they’ve recieved.
This clip – in which web pioneer Tim Berners-Lee turns the camera on his interviewer, Aleks Krotoski – is one of my favorite videos of the year:
Two people sharing a passion – it’s intimate, authentic, and utterly of-the-moment. So zeitgeisty it hurts your teeth. And I love it.
(Admittedly, this video is an off-the-cuff clip from Tim, rather than an official output of the documentary, but the BBC enabled this meeting of minds – so my point on the BBC being awesome stands.)
This is my City
(Via Digital Urban)
I’d argue that this is what the internet does better than traditional broadcast media – empowers those with the skills to bypass the gatekeepers, plugging their output straight into an audience. As ever, the watchword is authenticity. Admittedly, I may be carrying a certain nostalgia for my own 6th form-era travel documentary exploits, but from the look of it, these guys deserve an audience.