Chapter 8: Networked Creators

Here is the lazy student's guide to Networked: The New Social Operating System by Lee Rainie Chapter 8: Networked Creators. Below I have summarized each section of the chapter followed by the main points pulled directly from the text.

Networked Creators

This section introduces the power of networked individuals on social media and other connected sites. As an example of this, we are introduced to blogger Peter Maranci who creates a blog dedicated to his four hours of commuting on a northeastern railway. He eventually started to see updates to the things he complained about online. He eventually fizzled out online as he switched to WFH and no longer had relevant content to contribute to his commuter blog. Content creators online usually span multiple platforms to connect to others.

• In the age of the Triple Revolution, anyone with an internet connection and a bit of digital literacy can create online content that has the potential to reach a wide audience.
• While Maranci is not a celebrity or politician, he is able to act in the same environments they do and have influence on the issues that matter most to him. He would likely not have been very visible were it not for the affordances of ICTs.
• He said he had less to post, and his withdrawal shows that when unpaid networked creators lose interest or opportunity, they become less involved.
• Networked individuals often do not confine themselves to one type of content creation activity, but are involved in multiple types.

 

Creating in the Age of the Triple Revolution

• Nevertheless, ICTs had opened up the possibility for greater dialogue, especially with a public figure who is nearly impossible for an ordinary person to reach.
• “Sites such as YouTube, eBay, Facebook, Flickr, Craigslist and Wikipedia only exist and have value because people use and contribute to them, and they are clearly better the more people are using and contributing to them.”

 

Collaborative Content Creation on Wikipedia

In this section, the process of how content is created and edited collaboratively on Wikipedia through examples of  the 2008 election.

• Many of the traditional processes of creating reliable information are abandoned in favor of a procedure based on interpersonal exchanges among networked individuals during their leisure time.
• Professional elite producers no longer hold a monopoly on content creation and dissemination. Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia mostly edited by amateurs, is a primary example of how knowledge is crowdsourced

 

Tag, You’re It!

Here there is a detailed account of how the Library of Congress had digital volunteers upload and tag thousands of photos on the platform Flickr. They then allowed these photos to be usable by the internet at large. While their were concerns of internet trolls, this fear was not realized.

• A small team of the library’s staff managed by Michelle Springer was in the process of placing approximately three thousand historic photographs on the popular photo-sharing website Flickr. They needed people who were members of Flickr to help provide more information about the photos by commenting and adding labels, also known as “tags"
• The Library of Congress team noted that the response from Flickr members and observers was “overwhelmingly positive and beneficial”
• Moreover, the Library of Congress team decided to enable Flickr’s “blog this” functionality, which allowed the photos to be incorporated into the personal blogs and websites of networked individuals.
• Thus, in releasing the historic photos, the Library of Congress opened the doors for people to integrate the past with the present through their own creations and with their own interpretations.
• The library’s material had been enriched, expanded, and made more accurate and accessible by its invitation to people to contribute their own insights and engage in their own conversations about the photos.
• By December 2011, fifty-six additional museums, libraries, and archives were participating in the Flickr Commons initiative, a project compiling artifacts from the past and crowdsourcing them for modern interpretation.

 

The Egyptian Revolt, On and Offline

The Arab Spring. If you are unfamiliar with this uprising, I highly recommend you read this section in its entirety. It outlines how social media platforms like Facebook really are responsible for connecting the younger population of Egypt to organize in anti-government rebellions. Without social media and the ability to remain connected on the move though cell phones, the likelihood of this event happening would be diminished. When the authorities closed their largest news network, Al Jazeera, the only way the world was able to see what was happening were through social media reports and videos from local's phones.

• How online content creation and community building, in tandem with offline gatherings and backstage maneuvering, can aid mass mobilizations 
• In 2008, Ahmed Mahar and his friends had created the “April 6 Youth Movement” as a Facebook group to promote and coordinate a nationwide general labor strike.
• The Tunisian uprising had special resonance in Egypt because it was prompted by incidents of police corruption and viral social media condemnation of them.
• provided practical advice, such as sniffing lemons, onions, and vinegar for relief from tear gas...
• As Egyptian blogger Mahmoud Salem said, the internet created a “parallel Egypt” through which networked individuals could communicate.
• Egyptian authorities closed down Al Jazeera’s office in Cairo, the pan-Arab broadcasting network called on people to send blog posts and videos of what was happening on the ground to expand coverage of the protests. Mobile phones were so essential

 

How All This User-Generated Content Is Changing the Media Landscape

 This section outlines the differences of content in blogs, Twitter, and YouTube versus mainstream media outlets.

• Bloggers gravitated toward stories that elicited emotion, concerned individual or group rights, or triggered ideological passion.
• Blogs have highly partisan language
• Twitter, by contrast, technology itself is a major topic of posts—with a heavy focus on Twitter itself—while politics often plays a much smaller role.
• YouTube - the most watched videos have a strong sense of serendipity.
• blogs shared the same lead story with traditional media in just thirteen of the forty-nine weeks studied.
• Twitter shared the same lead story with traditional media in just four weeks of the twenty-nine weeks studied.
• YouTube, the top stories overlapped with traditional media eight out of forty-nine

 

The Week of March 30 to April 5

To further drive home the previous section, this section focuses on the differences in news stories in a single week. In this week, they detail a summit in Europe and all of the economic uncertainties and protests that were occurring in early 2009 covered by the mainstream media. On Twitter, the biggest story was an April Fool's Joke.

• Bloggers and other social media creators are not “on scene” and obliged to cover topics.  
• The most discussed and linked-to story of this same week on the New Media Index was not even a real story—or an American story. As an April Fool’s prank, the Guardian, a British newspaper, said it would end its print edition and use the popular online communications site Twitter to draw attention to its stories.  
• Common traits of stories that take off among social media creators. They are passed around a lot and gain velocity after a critical mass of internet users finds them funny or otherwise valuable.  
• In sum, the stories in social media often differ from stories in traditional media because they frequently cover different subjects, have a different narrative sensibility, and have different pathways to capture the attention of their audience.

 

Networked Stars are Found and Mashed-up

This section outlines how creators on YouTube such as Justin Beiber have been plucked out of obscurity and into real celebrity. It also goes into detail about how creators collaborate to create mash-up songs and remixes.

 

Identity Creation and Reputation Management

This section touches on how people choose to brand themselves online and how it can lead to "real" success or fame. Note, this talks about leveraging their way out of being an online "star" and into success in the real world.

• There are people who use the internet and smartphones to advertise themselves and build networks that reach out to strangers. They can brand themselves, using ICTs to become celebrities of a kind.
• With ICTs acting as doors that could lead to relative fame and increased social standing, some networked individuals are becoming more deliberate in building their reputations online.

Why Become A Networked Creator?

• A form of self-expression
• An opportunity to learn
• A space for collaboration
• A place to connect with community
• A sense of empowerment
• The prelude to greater glory

Everybody Wants to Get Into the Act

• A major impact of this democratization of media participation is that it enables a new breed of media creators to step onto the cultural stage.
• This reshuffles the relationship between experts and amateurs and reconfigures the ways that people can exert influence in the world.
• the 15th-century invention of the printing press gave new life to charlatans, quacks, alchemists, disseminators of ridiculous folk “wisdom,” propagandists, and other assorted evildoers. Digital technology has been roundly challenged for having the same impact.
• Just as not every violinist makes it to Carnegie Hall, not every networked creator becomes a star—or is even heard by more than their friends and relatives.

Networked: The New Social Operating System by Lee Rainie can be found here.