Digital Society

Four student-produced segments attack aspects of community building in participatory media.

Flynn, Ruby, Luna, Charlotte, Annabelle and Gemma studied selfies this week, and now they're here to tell you all about it.

Students discuss challenges with internet regulation via perspectives thrown up from two major case studies.

This is the first episode in Digital Society in which the mic is fully turned over to students. They're asked to produce segments up to around five minutes in length examining internet topics from their own perspectives and ideas. This week, it’s the history of the internet, which Georgia Fisher has covered with a segment looking at Dril and his relationship with the rise, and now fall, of Twitter. Then, through interviews with internet users, Georgia Lewis-Minogue gives us a social history of the net.

This episode focuses on tips to craft effective audio storytelling via podcasts.

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Referenced material and websites:

Berry, R. (2006). Will the iPod Kill the Radio Star? Profiling Podcasting as Radio. Convergence, 12(2), 143–162. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856506066522

Euritt, A. (2022). Podcasting as an Intimate Medium. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003340980

Spotify for Podcasters. https://podcasters.spotify.com/

Riverside FM. https://riverside.fm/

Twitter thread between Travis Holland and Richard Berry https://twitter.com/travisaholland/status/1637557919406522368

Professor David Marshall convenes a discussion about the way we represent ourselves online. 

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Extra info 

Is social media really social? Is it good for society? How do we respond to the unprecedented power and influence of such global corporations? These are just some of the questions asked in this episode. Plus, a chat about cyberpunk with Dr David Cameron, and everything AI with Ph.D. candidate Jasmyn Connell.

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More to read:

Carr, M. (2022, May 4). Is TikTok A Social Media Or Entertainment Platform? ScreenRant. https://screenrant.com/tiktok-social-media-entertainment-platform-is/

Figueira, L. (2022, September 5). TikTok is not social media. In fact, it marks the end of the social era. The Drum. https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2022/09/05/tiktok-not-social-media-fact-it-marks-the-end-the-social-era

Holland, T. (2017). How Facebook and Google changed the advertising game. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/how-facebook-and-google-changed-the-advertising-game-70050

NPR (2018). The Science in Science Fiction. https://www.npr.org/2018/10/22/1067220/the-science-in-science-fiction

Featuring a look at whether the internet can and should be regulated, and three case studies of regulation from around the world: the 'Great Firewall of China', the Christchurch Call, and Australian Mandatory Data Retention. The episode also engages with JP Barlow's thirty-year-old Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. 

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Sources discussed: 

Barlow, J. P. (1996). A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. https://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html 

Barlow, J. P. (2014). A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow. https://vimeo.com/111576518 

Christchurch Call. (n.d.). Retrieved 23 January 2023, from https://www.christchurchcall.com/assets/Documents/Christchurch-Call-full-text-English.pdf

Galperin, E. (2015, April 7). Data Retention Law Passes in Australia, but the Fight Isn’t Over. Electronic Frontier Foundation. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/data-retention-law-passes-australia-fight-isnt-over

Greenberg, A. (2016, February 8). It’s been 20 years since John Perry Barlow declared cyberspace independence. Wired. https://www.wired.com/2016/02/its-been-20-years-since-this-man-declared-cyberspace-independence/

Morrison, A. H. (2009). An impossible future: John Perry Barlow’s ‘Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’. New Media & Society, 11(1–2), 53–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444808100161

The internet is the realisation of a centuries-old dream: instantaneous global communication. It has shaped and continues to shape global economic, political, and social structures in extraordinary ways. It is a relatively new technology and yet we can find numerous traces of the internet throughout human history.

In this episode, we will introduce some ideas about the internet and describe both its history and that of the precursor technologies and ideas which have informed and shaped not only the net itself but also how we might think about it. There's also an analysis of Bo Burnham's song, 'Welcome to the Internet'. 

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For further critique of Welcome to the Internet: