Gauntlett or Silver? Who is more right? Who can tell the truth and nothing but the truth?
The difference of approaching the filed of web studies of two authors is significant. We can say this firmly if we compare only the introduction of both books (Gauntlett’s Web.Studies 2nd ed. and Silver’s Critical Cyberculture Studies). Different approach and different focus gives the different result. And how the approach, focus and result differes? We can say that the main difference is the following:
For Silver we can say that he is more theory-oriented, and for Gauntlett that he is more practice-oriented. If Looking through the glass of Williams‘s dichotomy high culture / popular culture, we can state that Silver represents high (web)culture and for Gauntlett that he represents the popular (web) culture. Before making the analysis we can finally stress that Silver offers more bird’s-eye view theory and Gauntlett more forg’s-eye view theory.
Silver is more interested in how internet studies are developing as an academic filed (showing the development with the help of Beaubine’s, Hogan’s and George’s four stage model). He is making the up-to-date overview of authours, literature, journals and academic centers. After elaborating the „academic“ perspecitive of the filed he highlights three cruical elmenets of the filed (historical contexts, social contexts and cultural difference). As Silver‘s focus are web studies as the the new discipline he structures his book into four sections: I) Fielding the filed, II) Critical approaches and methods, III) Cultural difference in/and cyberculture and IV) Critical histories of the recent pasts. Main effort of his book is making the overview of the field, making the basis on which others who come behind him can build and re-build.
On the other side Gauntlett shows himself as more practice-oriented scholar. As the one who analyses the popular forms of cyber culture. All his findings, of course, have the relation to the theoretical background, but because his focus is practical, he makes his intruduction to the filed differently. He drives us through different phenomena of cyberculture: internet, www, HTML, ASP, Flash, Google, Amazon, blogs, Wired…As he builds his book on the basis of practical happening in cyberculture, he structures his book very differently as Silver: I) Introduction, II) Web life, identities, arts and Culture, III) Web business, economics and capitalism and IV) Global web communities, politics and protest. In realtion to this structure he finds the following issues important: expression, communities, anonymity, identity, web-business and influence of web on politics and international relations.
If we answer the question from the title: Gauntlett or Silver? Pracatice or Theory? Both, because this is the only way to paint the truth and find out the true eseence of different aspects of modern networked society. Both because, they are the just the different side of the same coin.
References
• Silver, D. 2006. Critical Cyberculture Studies, Chapter: Introduction-Where is Internet Studies?, 1-14, New York: New York University Press. Available at: http://www.nyupress.org/webchapters/0814740235intro.pdf
• Gauntlett, D. 2004. Web.Studies, 2nd ed., Chapter: Introduction. Available at: http://www.newmediastudies.com/intro2004p.htm
sobota, 8. december 2007
Gauntlett or Silver?
Interactive or not interactive this is now the question?
Starting with famous Shakespear’s question from Hamlet, transformed into paraphrase, is indeed the right starting point. Are the new media interactive? Do they bring revolutionary tool to the contemporary society? Is interactivity just a myth or reality?
Interactivity as word, should be clearly defined otherwise we can stand on the stage where this word can mean just another cliché. Analysis of interactivity must be contextualized, otherwise the concept can become, as Manovich (2001:70) said, „too broad to be trully useful“.
The concept of interactivity is definitelly not a concept, which would come into play with new media. It is a concept which exists in our world from the ancient times (imagine Greek amphiteatre) and gets replicated in every new medium. And „new media“, which are based on the computer technology, are of course no exception. They are interactive per se. As Manovich (2001: 71) put it, is on this level „the concept of interactivity a tautology. Modern human-computer interface (HCI) is by its very definition interactive“.
Replications of interactivity are driven by specific reasons: avant-garde teatre as a way to break with traditional teatre forms (artistic reasons of the artist); interactivity in TV show Big brother as a way to attract the audience (economic reasons of the TV station).
In every medium is interactivity changing the relationship between the author, text and audience. For instance: without voting component is Big brother, just another show. The TV station would have no reason to call it „interactive TV show“. Author of the text is still the TV station, but with voting feature is audience becoming co-author (as they can influence text dynamics).
Change of relationship can be traced also in the case of indymedia.com (independent internet media): audience is becoming the author. With this kind of changes are traditional media loosing the position of being the only legitimate author. In this manner, we can see that bloggers, which was an audience before (and still is), are becoming authors. And not just any authors, but are becoming so important that they receive the press-acreditations, they receive the press-release materials and get quoted by traditional media.
Let us conclude with another example of how modern technologies are changing the relation between author, text and audience: mobile technologies don’t just serve it’s primary function – giving the ability to talk. Mobile phone users can become movie producers (competing with tradicional production studios). In some cases they can become the ultimate source of photo/video material for traditional media (as BBC used photos and video material when reporting about terrorist attacks on London underground). Audiences in traditional sense are becoming authors as understood in traditional way.
References
• Cover, R. 2006. Audience inter/active: Interactive media, narrative control and reconceiving audience history. New Media Society. Vol8(1): 139-158.
• Manovich, L. 2001. The Language of New Media. MIT Press.
