Must Read #2

Kozinets, R (2010): Netnography. Doing Ethnographic Research Online

The importance of this book is, IMHO, comparable to the must read #1 by Hindman (2009): Perhaps not incredibly innovative but filling in a crucial gap regarding online research.

Kozinets seems to be the pioneer in discussing ethnography done online, and his brand new book is a clear, simple, step-by-step manual that systematises the core characteristics and particularities of researching internet use/consumer behaviour (K comes from marketing research). Thank you!

In one way, the book is a basic, general manual for empirical research:

What is ethnography -- a strand of anthropology, mix of methodologies to understand a culture or a social setting?

How to choose your method online -- whether a survey, journal, interview, social network analysis?

What are the steps of an netnography project -- Definitions of questions and social setting/topic to be researched; Community identification and selection; Community participant-observation, gathering of data; Analysis & interpretation; Writing up results, theoretical and/or policy implications?

What are the particularities of netnography vis-a-vis ethnography -- alteration of communication by the particular media used; anonymity; access & participatory ethos of online communities; 'autmatic' archiving of communication?

What are the ethical considerations and procedures -- are online communities public or private spaces; how to get consent for research (inform about the reseach, ; how to avoid harm for participants and how to portray data (degrees of concealment)?

What are the quality parameters of netnography -- degrees of coherence, rigour, literacy, groundedness, innovation, resonance, verisimilitude, reflexivity, praxis, intermix?

By being so basic, systematic and practical, the book demystifies online ethnography. Its wonderful core message is, really, that a lot of social science/ethnography data is mediated. Thus, online is just one -- albeit a very important, if not currently the most important -- domain, among others, with its particularities. But those special characteristics can and should be researched in a manner similar to any ethnographic project -- with ethical, reflective and contextual considerations.

Must Read #1

Matthew Hindman: The Myth of Digital Democracy (2009, Princeton University Press).

Finally something like this. A political scientist takes a serious and systematic quantitative look on the question of the Internet and political participation.

His motivation: "Popular enthusiasm for technology has made sober appraisal of the Internet's complicated political effects more difficult." 

Couldn't agree with him more.  Ingrid Erickson & I recently mapped the close history of the concept "public sphere" within socsci and STS; see the blog entry and our working paper online @the Fordham University McGannon Center series. The optimistic undertone can be found in most articles discussing the Internet and its political potential. Still, the lack of empirical analyses is evident, especially of those looking beyond networked social movements as 'counter public spheres'.

Hindman quite rightly points out an important distinction about democratization (as a characteristics / potential of the Internet) as either normative or descriptive. It's incredible how often the normativeness lurks into research, without the researcher / author explicitly acknowledging it (having read through quite a few abstracts of related  recent research, I know now it's not only me committing this sin of opaqueness. I bet the Habermasian allure of normative ideas and ideals gives many of us a sense of purpose). But ideals can only be applied when we observe, describe and understand what's going on right now; what our starting point in the process towards that desired state of affairs is.

Hindman also notes several factors that should, at the outset, make any big thinkers of Internet utopias a little wary.  The digital divide is an undeniable fact, still.  Direct (political or any other) speech in the internet doesn't mean that the speaker is being heard (by peers, political elites). Gatekeepers of information -- that were thought to hinder plurality of voices heard via old media -- exist in online communication as well.

Hindman presents several cases through which he aims to gather understanding of the potential of Internet-based democratization, in descriptive terms. His operationalisation of the issue includes analyses of 'site visibility', search engines, online concentration, and the characteristics of political blogs.  

I can't claim I understand all methodological solutions (especially the metrix for link structures are beyond my current capabilities) but the takeaways are clear. An interesting and far reaching theory developed by Hindman & collaborators is 'Googlearchy', or, 'the rule of the  most heavily linked'. This means that the more links to a site, the more easy to find and thus visible the site; that there is a 'niche dominance' so that a small portion of sites of any online community dominate; and that this niche dominance is self-perpetuating (more links attract more links...) As for online concentration, Hindman observes that the main top 10 news sources are even more concentrated online than in traditional media (and, at the same time, certain tiny online outlets receive proportionally substantial attention) -- but the middle-class outlets have experienced decline. And those political bloggers? It seems that the 'ordinary citizen' as political blogger with a substantive following is an oxymoron. The scene seems to be somewhat dominated by those well-educated and established middle-class white males (have I heard this one before?)

Conclusion: Hindman parallels participation in politics to participation in e-commerce. The infrastructure of participation may alter the patterns of who's participating and how. Surely the fantastic examples of  political activities via online and mobile media are also clear. And Hindman is quick to note that the Internet has many positive applications and implications to us ordinary citizens, including fundraising and easy mobilising. At the same time, he clearly shows that many of the (academic) normative debates have gone too far ahead of empirical evidence.

Salute to Hindman. There is nothing wrong with normativeness and optimism, but it's a fixation of mine to resist the 'evident' discourses and slogans.  The next steps following Hiondman's intervention should include more analyses, and more qualitative studies, on people's experiences of the realities and expectations of political participation in today's multimedia environment. Politics, democratisation -- or participation, as I argue in this McGannon Center working paper -- can take many different forms.

TVless Life

Television used to be my life.

I decided that was what I wanted to research when I saw my first Oprah Winrey Show in Chicago in 1992. Those were the days of mothers who dated their daughters' transvestite boyfriends. That kind of anarchy on TV, the most official and powerful of all media! Afterwards, as if to balance this out, I got to calculate content diversity indices for annual studies of the Ministry of Communications of Finland. I realised that television systems and programming strategies could also 'create audiences' and be real sites of (media policy) power struggles. I spent some 10 years researching the small screen.

TV Disappears

But since January 2008 when I moved to New York I haven't had a TV. People talked about 30 Rock and enthused about the last episode of Battlestar Galactica. I had no clue.

I noticed that I didn't desire any of it. I read online from the New York Times that my favourite show ever, ER was about to have its season and series finale (what is it about all these grand finales in 2009?) and would log on to Hulu, to see it after the 'real time' broadcast.  I would also check some excerpts of old Finnish sitcoms, on YouTube, that someone would share in their Facebook profile. I read a lot at night.

TV = Less Life

Now, having spent 6 weeks in Finland this summer I realise that more TV equals less life. I was back being hooked.

Housesitting a friend's place with a nice HD wide screen TV, I started the mornings with the public service moning show.  Serious discussions about the necessity of biking helmets. Afterwards, I felt bored (but in a good way),  engaged (in a distanced way); in other words, ready to start my day as a citizen.

Then I stayed tuned in the PSB channel TV1 for the Canadian soap, set on the 19th century Nova Scotia. Road to Avonlea (remember, anyone?) .  My taste degraded as the day grew old: The enlightened Oprah and the spin-off favourite, Dr. Phil; followed by reruns of fashion-related reality shows (Australian Top Model) and B class romantic comedy series (the Ex List) in commercial channels.

TV is National and Nostalgic...

This experience has taught me two things: how old habits such as media practices stick with us, and how broadcast TV is still very much a national construct. Although I don't miss American television, I feel attached and drawn to the kind of programming, on Finnish television, that resembles television culture that I grew up with (I'm 41).

But I also found out, as I bet many expats and fans of foreign TV shows before me, that no matter of all the webstreams and digi-TV-ready computers, the present copyright regime keeps the (free or low-cost) flow of television programming within national borders.

The Case of TV-Kaista

Professor Hannu Nieminen of the University of Helsinki has recently written a unique case study on a Finnish attempt to bypass national borders in television webstreaming (in print: Jostein Gripsrud and Hallvard Moe, eds.: The Digital Public Sphere: Challenges for Media Policy, Nordicom).

He tells a fascinating story: 

From summer 2006 TVkaista has offered a global service which allows anybody from anywhere in the world to have access to all Finnish free-to-air television broadcasts for a small fee. Only difference to watching live television is the time that it takes to record the programme before having access to the copy.  In autumn 2006 major Finnish television companies challenged TVkaista for breaching their copyright. The argument was that in effect, TVkaista was nothing but commercially motivated re-transmission of the TV-companies’ copyright-protected programmes, and as such it was plainly illegal. TVkaista, in turn, claims it only offers recording service, not the programming.

Nieminen concludes:

• TVkaista as a service-format is an exciting example of the hardships that today’s global copyright governance faces. There is an urgent need to study similar experimentations and their reception in other countries. Does the prevailing copyright regime offer any real solution to TVkaista’s challenge? 

• The case of TVkaista brings out interesting topics concerning cultural democracy in the digital era, especially regarding both the creation of comprehensive and publicly accessible national audiovisual archives, and the competencies of the ex-patriots to actively participate in the social and cultural life of their home countries. However, is this participatory potential is real or is it just wishful thinking? If it is real, what more is needed in order to make it stronger?

• From the viewpoint of the European public sphere, the case of TVkaista includes promising prospects: these kinds of services can be seen both to represent and to promote a new kind of European cosmopolitanism. Again, the problem is if this cosmopolitan promise is just our optimistic projection or do we have some concrete evidence of the democratising effects of such services?

Nieminen's article depicts a case par excellence of how TV could matter, precisely because it's national but its distribution is potentially global. At the same time, the discussion on the role and funding of Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) continues, e.g., online in yesterday's (8/19) biggest Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat. The core idea simplified: although people might not watch TV they are likely to follow content though some distribution channel. Consequently,  every household should pay a 'media fee' and that would be used to fund public service media. 

As noted in my last post, commercial media houses are in a mission to challenge YLE's existence in all possible ways. Not surprisingly, a new poll (commissioned, unsurprisingly, by the Finnish Association of Newspapers,  a major opponent of PSM) showing people's major discontent to the idea most comments to the news item seem to call for a narrowed mission for PSB, and budget-based funding. 

Long Live TV!

Television is no longer only the apparatus in the living room. Public service is no longer only broadcasting. And mainstream audiences are indeed getting more and more comfortable in watching content on their laptops,  as the New York Times recently reported:

By some estimates, one in four Internet customers now uses Hulu, an online home for NBC and Fox shows, every month. “Dancing With the Stars,” the popular ABC reality show, draws almost two million viewers on ABC.com, according to Nielsen. (...) While online video is not going to replace television anytime soon, it is now decidedly mainstream. About 150 million Internet users in the United States watch about 14.5 billion videos a month, according to the measurement firm comScore, or an average of 97 videos per viewer.

At the same time, TV still gathers biggest audiences, most ad money, and even changes the aesthetics and duration of the online video. From the aforementioned NYT article:

Production companies are now creating 10- and 20-minute shows for the Internet and writing story arcs for their characters — essentially acting more like television producers, while operating far outside the boundaries of a network schedule. (...)

Yet TV networks get much of the credit for the longer-length viewing behavior. In the past two TV seasons, nearly every broadcast show has been streamed free on the Internet, making users accustomed to watching TV online for 20-plus minutes at a time. 

To echo the scholar/media practitioner John Ellis, who set to write his book Seeing Things about the death of television, but had to change his mind: Television is not dead. Television did not kill cinema. Net/mobile video content will not kill television. There will be interaction, and mingling and mixing, and convergence. 

As the case of my old habits and TVkaista show, the conventional, 'old-fashioned' characteristics and qualities of television (national-bound aspects, public service traditions,  'liveness' and simultaneous consumption) could be used to its advantage. In the times of Ipods, vinyl records became popular again. Rephrasing Ellis: the lone net surfer may increasingly begin to yearn the sense of common witnessing.