Posts Tagged ‘interaction’

[Session Proposal] Social Media for the Attention Age: The Peace Media Clearinghouse

Friday, December 4th, 2009

If the media production barriers of the one-to-many model of traditional media are disintegrating with the availability of the cheap, convenient, and dispersed many-to-many network of social media, then these technologies also provide new challenges to us as individuals and organizations.

  1. As media producers we are now empowered to produce social media capable of worldwide distribution, how do we broadcast a coherent message through the background noise and engage the appropriate audience in dialogue.
  2. But since we are also consumers of social media, and consumption possibilities remain stubbornly fixed (there are only so many hours in a day), how do we prevent this information abundance from becoming an information overload?  How do we access the information that is relevant, accurate, and timely to what we are trying to achieve?

One possible solution could be to provide a centralized hub for information recommended by our peers (and thus most likely to be personalized and relevant), moderated by authorities in the field for accuracy, and updated continually by a network of facilitators.

The Center of Innovation for Media, Conflict, and Peacebuilding at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) is attempting to do just that with the Peace Media Clearinghouse.  This online resource provides a central site where educators, students, organizations, and the community of practitioners working in the conflict management field can access multimedia materials that support conflict analysis and prevention, conflict resolution, and post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation.

Following a brief demonstration of this online resource, we’ll open up the discussion to explore how other individuals and organizations have addressed these same challenges.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Proposals | No Comments »

Jumping Through the Looking Glass [session proposal]

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

I would like to propose a session, much like Kel’s and Ned’s that interrogates the process of creating discursive social worlds through social media (as well as the possibility of transforming old media into social media. What qualifies as social media by the way?). I’m interested in, both practically and theoretically, interrogating the ways social media can be used in cultural institutions in such a way that transforms the computer from a looking glass into a window; the ways it can facilitate the creation of a discursive space between privileged communities and those who are under-represented/underserved, as well as communities that are separated geographically.

In my own recent anthropological research, I’ve been investigating media ecologies and the way media shapes the way we experience our world. I’m particularly interested in the intersection of sounds and screens, and so what I intend to put on the table are interesting ways in which sounds and screens can be integrated into exhibits to foster communication and interaction, as opposed to allowing technology to re-enforce the “cult of the individual” (to steal a term from Durkheim). I am intrigued by PodCast tours, the new iPod tour applications, and twittr.

Like I said, I would really like this session to interrogate technology, not just glorify it, through both theoretical and practical lenses.

See you all soon!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Proposals | 8 Comments »

[Session Proposal] Interaction as a Two-Way Street

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

My name is Ned Prutzer and I am an intern for the Museum who is majoring in English and American Studies at the University of Maryland – College Park.  I have worked with social media in prior internships, and I anticipate a productive discussion regarding the manner in which the Museum can extend its current use of social media while maintaining the professional nature of its mission.

What I would like to pose as a topic for discussion is how the Museum can implement its use of social networking into the visitor’s experience of its exhibits – that is, how it can provide a more interactive experience on each end of the spectrum, to those who are coming to the Museum and those who are active on our pages.  How can we use varying mediums of social media to replicate the experience of visiting the Museum as best as possible?  How could we go about making an exclusively on-line experience of the Museum for those who are unable to come to DC and visit interactive without making it seem inauthentic?

It is clear that other prominent institutions are facing similar questions as they enter the realm of social networking. The Brooklyn Museum of Art, for instance, has digitized some of its collections through ArtShare, consolidated its web pages through the SimplyRSS application on Facebook, and utilized Electronic Comment Kiosks in their exhibits, for which they gather user-generated comments and post them on the walls of the exhibits.

Likewise, over the summer, the Museum hosted an innovative tour focused its architecture that encouraged participants to Twitter on their thoughts and post pictures as the tour was going on.  There’s an interesting blog on the event by Robert Michael Murray of boxednoise that I think is very pertinent to the issues being raised in the un-conference.  Could we extend such an initiative into Twitter-based tours where groups can ask questions for guides to respond to and leave comments for each other to see?  This is a great example of the issues that arise from the questions I proposed earlier, and though the issues I am raising may not be enough to sustain an entire session, I think that these are questions we should keep in mind and address during the un-conference.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Proposals | 1 Comment »