Category Archives: social media

Digital material archives: Web 2.0 and algorithmic memory

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As part of its Wednesday research afternoons, the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research recently hosted a talk from Katrina Sluis of London South Bank University.

Katrina Sluis is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Arts, Media and English at London South Bank University where she leads the BA (Hons) Digital Media Arts. Her scholarly interests include critical theories of photography, digital memory and contemporary fine art practice. As a visual artist, she works with photography and digital media to explore materiality, archiving and transmission in relation to the digital image.

Her paper was entitled ‘Digital Material Archives: Web 2.0 and algorithmic memory’.

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Social media & globalisation (and glocalisation)

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Tonight I delivered a brief talk at the Midland’s arts centre. Below is a transcript of my talk (minus my live rambles and tangents and including some typos – sorry). Also speaking were Jon Bounds & Pete Ashton.

Firstly an apology: as an academic I can’t take a title at face value. I find I need to hand wring and worry about the terms of a debate before I can do anything at all. And then once I have problematised the issue, I find that the title is wrong and I start using different words.

As a media and cultural studies academic who has been criticised by the Daily Mail for wasting tax payers money running courses on social media, this condition is particularly acute. I need to be seen to have thought too much about things to justify myself. So that being the case, I struggled to get into this topic and felt I had to change it. I hope you don’t all rush to get your money back, but stay with me for a moment. The new title is:

Social Media & Glocalisation

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Empowering Public Sector Workers with Social Media

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To what extent is social media a useful tool for meeting the government’s local empowerment agenda? That was the question being asked in a panel session at an event last week organised by the National Empowerment Partnership which is managed by the Community Development Foundation.

‘Local Engagement: Sharing Practical Approaches’ was aimed at local authority officers and those working in the various organisations that make up the National Empowerment Partnership. The panel I was presenting at included Hannah Peaker from the London Civic Forum (who interestingly had spent time on the Obama campaign in 2008) and Stephen Frost from izwe.com. I was there courtesy of the work the role I’ve had with Digital Birmingham over the past year.
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Ikonic Social Media

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I recently had an informal meeting with Ikon, Birmingham’s contemporary arts gallery, where we discussed how they can use social media effectively. Many galleries, museums, and other attractions have profiles in a number of social networks and Ikon is no exception. The main social media activity from Ikon is on Facebook and Twitter where they have developed a fairly active following. The Twitter account is particularly interesting when used to live blog from a series of talks. Encouraged by this initial success (which has come relatively easily), Ikon are keen to push forward and develop a more comprehensive social media strategy. I asked Ikon three key questions, and discussed a number of solutions for them. Ikon are keen for you to add more in the comments below.

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Meanwhile on the MA Social Media Blog…

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The School of Media’s new suite of MA programmes start this September. Several of the programmes have their heart in the work of Interactive Cultures or the research interests of team members. The MA Music Industry starts in September 2010, but we have had a major hand in the development of MA Social Media & MA Creative Industries and Cultural Policy.

A key feature of the learning experience on the MA Social Media is a research blog. I started this blog off with a few entries (some of which run parallel to but provide a different take on posts made to this blog) but our first intake of postgraduate students have now started contributing to the blog. The first two student contributions were made yesterday, and there will be plenty more to follow so do add the blog to your RSS reader. So, Ladies & Gentleman so say hello to Leland Strott and Jigar Patel.

Social Media at 52 degrees north

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Marlon Parker
Marlon Parker addresses the Black Country Social Media Café

Last month I spent two days in the company of South African social media academic Marlon Parker. Regular readers will remember Marlon from his guest post several months ago. The purpose of the visit was to share thoughts and ideas in the field of social media, and to discuss social media education. We were fortunate that the visit coincided with a number of social media events in Birmingham, which meant I could give Marlon a real flavour of what we do in the West Midlands and I could introduce him to as many contacts as possible in a few short days. So what does an academic and social entrepreneur from Cape Town make of the social media activity in Birmingham? And what could we learn from him? The answer is: “a lot”.
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Moseley Barcamp: The Cross

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Moseley Barcamp was held at The Cross in Moseley on Sunday the 28th of July and was a free-ranging forum for those involved in Birmingham’s social media / internet “scene”. Speakers included Pete Ashton, Nick Booth, Chris Unitt and Michael Grimes to name but a few… The room contained a fair smattering of the “Brumtwitter mafia” who debated, and I imagine “tweeted”, passionately about all things “web” in Birmingham.

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Aftershock: Musical creative process as digital narrative

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“I can’t believe how hard you work.” High praise from Nitin Sawhney, composer, multi-instrumentalist and (it turns out) heavy-duty arts and culture thinker.

Of course, work’s a relative term when you’re doing something really enjoyable and fascinating in a really amazing setting, but given that I was completely focused on (almost) nothing other than the task at hand from 8am till 2am over 5 consecutive days, perhaps he had a point.

I was in Genoa, Italy with Birmingham web developer and entrepreneur Stef Lewandowski to work on the Aftershock Project – a pan-European collaborative music event. In short, Nitin Sawhney turns up in a town, brings about a dozen musicians together, and they workshop, compose, rehearse and eventually perform about an hour’s worth of completely new music over the course of a week. Stef had been commissioned to make them a website, and he’d asked me on board for my perspective as the “online music guy”.

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My Dad’s on Twitter (#mdot)

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The finished wall... maybe

Last night I spoke at “My Dad’s on Twitter but he doesn’t know why” – part of Fazeley Digital ’09. Part lecture, part performance, the idea was to mind map some current thinking about Twitter by writing on a wall in an empty studio space. I’ve written a blog post about the process of the event on the new MA Social Media blog but wanted to also reflect on some of the content here on the IC blog.

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Twitter and the news agenda

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Today the Telegraph published an article headlined “Oldest Tweeter talks cuppas and casserole on Twitter at 104”. The article tells the story of Ivy Bean, who has taken advantage of some IT training offered to her at Hillside Manor residential home in Bradford, and has recently taken up use of the popular micro-blogging service Twitter. The story is being gently taken up by the Twitter community, who are excited about the concept of the “world’s oldest tweeter”. But in some ways this story is actually quite troubling.

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