PUBLICS AND PUBLISHING IN TRANSITION

Essay -in-lieu of examination

Sat, 09 Jun 2012 07:31:27 -0400

ARTS2090

Publics and Publishing in Transition

Assessment Task 3

Question 4: When publishing changes, so does society. Investigate and compare the impact of two publication technologies, one pre-1900 and one post-2000, on a specific aspect of society (e.g. education, politics, creative industries, science, entertainment, social relationships).

Publishing is the process of making produced literature, graphics and information public. Throughout history, the evolution of the publishing industry has been a primary catalyst for enabling societies to flourish and ultimately develop into the modern world we live in today. It is true that when publishing changes, so too does society. This statement can be made explicit by investigating and contrasting the impact that both the printing press and the Internet have had on various aspects of business.

The advent of the printing press was the pinnacle for what the publishing industry is today. It changed the way information and knowledge itself was thought of, structured and disseminated, while indeed having a profound impact on many aspects of business. “So much that we think of as characteristic of the modern world economic, social, religious, political is built on the foundation provided by print as a medium of communication”. (Finnegan, 1978) Invented by businessman Johannes Gutenberg in 1436 in Southern Germany, the printing press in its most simple form was based on existing screw presses and used replaceable wooden or metal letters to transmit texts, the earliest being mostly bibles and other religious texts. The printing press has been hailed “one of the most revolutionary inventions in human history”. (Dittmar, 2011)

Prior to Guternberg’s printing press, the practice of book making relied on a person hand copying the words and images for every copy, and books were made out of cleaned, smoothed animal skin called parchment. With this manual labour being very expensive, books were nothing other than a luxury for the rich. Gutenberg’s invention was a much faster method, meaning less labour costs and ultimately changing the possibilities for information and ideas to be distributed. With books being more readily available throughout Europe and at a much lower cost, the demand for more books drastically increased and the publishing tool proceeded to spread rapidly around the globe. “Eisenstein refers to a “knowledge explosion”, accompanying the ‘Northern Renaissance’ of the fifteenth century, with the literature of the period, involving writers from Marlowe to Rabelais speaking of the ‘intoxication’ of the availability of written knowledge”. (Bawden, 2000)

One of the ways that the printing press impacted on business was in the way that this new publishing tool greatly reduced the cost of the book. Dittmar says “The printing press was one of the most important access cost-reducing inventions in history”. (2011) With this mass cost reduction in an entire industry as it was, a large sector of the population were now able to afford to purchase books, meaning people wanted to be educated so they could read them. “Printing encouraged literacy in the population and eventually brought about a deep and lasting impact on many people’s lives”. (Dittmar, 2011) Being educated with text books meant people were well equipped for working in businesses when they left school. This broad increase in the education of the populace of Europe and the greater world meant business practices could broaden. “Historical research suggests that print media transformed the ways ideas were disseminated, promoted the accumulation of human capital, and played a key role in the evolution of business practices”. (Dittmar, 2011) The expanding book publishing trade and a better educated population meant more job opportunities as well as increased incentive to start new businesses, boosting the economic climate at the time.

The printing press played a pivotal role in the teaching and implementation of literary and other skills that were useful to business merchants. Such skills included being able to do mathematical equations to calculate prices of goods, interest rates, profit rates and exchange rates (Dittmar, 2011). It is clear that the printing press revolutionised the world and impacted in many ways on the business sector of the 15th Century in Europe, emphasising the extent to which society is changed when publishing changes.

Similarly, social media is a post-2000 publishing tool that has extensively impacted on the publishing industry and continues to change the practice of business as an important aspect of society. By first understanding what the term social media manifests of, one can better understand how it has impacted on business as an aspect of society. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein defined social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content”. Social media can be distinguished from other forms of media in that it is heavily dependent on user-generated content. The value of social media as a hugely successful publishing platform is both dependent on the technology of social media and the constant information uploading and sharing of users.

Popular social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, as well as blogs, have impacted on and virtually transformed many aspects of society, and one of those aspects that it has been particularly useful for is business. Small businesses as well as large, multi-national companies can benefit from implementing social media into their business marketing and advertising plan. When businesses use social media, the customer/company relationship is strengthened by creating a platform for increased dialogue between the company and the customer, where customers are not only fed information but can actually comment back. In a recent study conducted by Wildfire, where over 700 marketers from all around the world were surveyed, it found that the top three reasons for why a ‘fan’ on Facebook has value are: new customer recruitment, higher conversion rates and more frequent purchases. It found that 85% of worldwide marketing managers believed engaging in dialogue was the largest benefit of using social media in their marketing plan. (Heaton, 2012)

It has been suggested that the frequency that businesses actively use their social media accounts, such as updating their Facebook status, and posting on Twitter, is directly related to increased sales. This is most likely because of the way social media more directly reaches the customer, as well as the advent of online shopping meaning social media is a way of linking to the sales page of the business. It is now all very practical, easy and direct marketing to sell a product to the customer at home behind the computer screen. Oglivy ChatThreads Social Media Sales Impact Study 2011 investigated “Does investing in social media create business value?”, and found that “Social media exposure is directly linked with increase in sales. Integrated social media (social content and one or more other channels) exposure is linked with significant increases in spend and consumption - for example, social media - PR exposure was associated with a 17% spend increase compared to the prior week without these”. (Kamal; Carl, 2011)

Businesses that use social media also have the benefit of timeliness. This means being able to post important advertising messages to all of the company’s customers within a matter of seconds. Timeliness is important for publicists who are trying to promote a product, person or idea through creating and implementing a media strategy, and the industry is very dependent on timing. The Huffington Post recently published an article that emphasised social medias role of timing in publishing practices, saying how advertising should now be done slowly over time rather than attacking the customers all at once. “Social media has also changed the timing of marketing campaigns. Instead of creating a blitz campaign of shock and awe (advertising driven), today we need a sustained campaign of community building and long-term exposure” (Burke, 2011). It is evident through investigating social media as a post-2000 technology that it has beyond any doubt been a major influencing technology on the publishing industry, and the business sector of society.

If we compare these two publishing technologies’ impact on business as a significant aspect of society, it is apparent that there are many similarities but some differences in the way they impacted on business. Despite being invented in two very contrasting contexts, both the printing press and social media have reduced costs for businesses. The invention of the printing press meant it was much cheaper for society to both produce written works and purchase them. This allowed business, society and the economy to flourish as pamphlets and other advertising was more accessible, and as more people were educated business and technology could prosper and more businesses be opened. Likewise, social media reduces costs for businesses today in the way that it allows for free, instantaneous advertising rather than having to spend money on advertising in the mass media which is very expensive. Both the printing press and social media have impacted on businesses by increasing revenue, however in very different ways. Unlike social media, the printing press was a new publishing tool that allowed for people to learn the skills necessary to work in a business or be a business owner, such as calculating interest rates, profits and other basic costs. Social media is a publishing tool that also enhances revenue for businesses, but this is done by social media providing more exposure for the business when used properly and then enabling a platform to provide direct links to online stores.

By investigating these two publishing technologies, the printing press and social media, it is overtly apparent that they have both had a remarkable and long lasting impact on the publishing industry, being a vital aspect of the evolution into all that publishing is today. Both technologies have reshaped society as it was prior to their invention, and created new publics with the possibilities that they have enabled. It is also clear that the printing press and social media, while being technologies invented in entirely different contexts, have and continue to have a particularly phenomenal impact on the business sector of society, and after all business is a fundamental component of the foundations of a functioning society. Therefore, by investigating both of these publishing technologies, one can see that both the printing press and social media have both utterly changed society, proving that it is certainly true that when publishing changes, so too does society.

List of references

Bawden, D., Robinson, L., 2000, “A distant mirror? The Internet and the printing press”, Aslib Proceedings Vol 52, No. 2, ProQuest Central, pp.51-57

Dittmar, Jeremiah E., 2011, “Information Technology and Economic Change: The impact of the Printing Press”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol.126(3), pp.1133-1167

Finnegan, R., 1978, “Communication and Technology” in Open University Course D101, Making Sense of Society, Unit 8, Block 3, Communication pp.96

Fauzia, B., 2010, “Publicity and Social Media: A Match Made in Heaven”, posted online at huffingtonpost.com, accessed 9 June 2012

Heaton, Gavin., 2012, “Business Impact of Social Media” Wildfire posted online at socialmediatoday.com, accessed 9 June 2012

Kamal, I; Carl, W; Ogilvy & Mather; ChatThreads., 2011, “Does investing in social media create business value?” posted online at ogilvyoneworldwide.com, accessed 9 June 2012

Kaplan, Andreas M.; Michael Haenlein., 2012, Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media” Business Horizons 53 (1): pp.59-68

Publics and publishing - A final reflection

Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 -0400

As there are no required readings for this final week 13, I have decided to do a brief reflection to summarise the course thus far.

As the jumpers and scarves come out and the excitement of the winter holidays are in arms reach, the Publics and Publishing in Transition course for 2012 is drawing to a close… What have I discovered, uncovered, learned?

Click on the link below to view my favourite visualisation. I think the enthralling video on how a baby is made encapsulates the notion of making something invisible visible, and by publishing a visualisation, allows the publics involved to have a far better understanding of what actually happens in the making of a baby inside a woman’s tummy, allowing the viewer to make sense of a difficult concept. Check it out…

http://youtu.be/_2MFFzldkYQ

Looking back on what we have covered in the course, I would divide it into four sections.

-Aggregation

-Modes of publishing

-Archiving

-Distribution

These are four standard and vital components of publishing in any sense of the word. Information needs to be aggregated or gathered, a mode of publishing needs to be selected and used, information is recorded and archived via publishing something, and of course distribution is how the work is physically, well, distributed or made public.

However in learning about these aspects of publishing, they have been set in the context of how publishing as a whole has changed with the advent of the 21st century.

This will be further examined and summarised in the final assignment. Watch this space…

Aggregation

Sat, 19 May 2012 21:44:04 -0400

This week we have been asked to think about our favourite example of publishing for “show and tell” in our Week 12 Tutorial. There are just so many different examples of publishing at our fingertips, constantly interweaving and scrambling to stand out, that it does make it hard to choose just one. As a media AND journalism student I was a little thrown as to what to choose. The journalistic side of my brain chose classic novels like To Kill A Mockingbird or Pride and Prejudice, (I think they will always sit precariously collecting dust in the back of my mind as two of my favourite novels) Alas, the media side of my brain was quick to throw one of my more contemporary, current favourites to the forefront of my mind. And won. Call me ahead of my years but Mia Freedman’s blog Mama Mia (click on the link below) which is all about relationships, parenting, careers, current affairs and more, is often my go to place for entertainment, news updates with a twist, and a spoonful of hilarious social commentary. The blog is hugely successful and is a fresh, contemporary example of publishing.

http://www.mamamia.com.au/

Paul N. Edwards’ book A Vast Machine basically discusses - in light of the issue of global warming - how data is collected, used or misused. He summarises the book as a tracing of the history of efforts to gather weather and climate records for the planet, and he calls this making global data. He then goes on to say that the efforts involved in making global data can be referred to as data friction. I think essentially we can relate this paper to publishing in the way that all publishing involves the aggregating of data and the concept of data friction exists constantly when data is being collected and used.

The example of publishing that I have chosen is only one spoke in the rainbow wheel of publishing that I personally take from and contribute to in my life. Aggregation refers to a conglomeration or coming together to form a group of many distinct and varied things. I am very much an aggregator of published media, more than a distributor, in the way that I view, use and reassemble media published by others on a regular basis more than I create media. For example I take from television programs, websites, music, photos, books, blogs and more. I hope to become more of a distributor by publishing more of my own work in the months and years to come!

Distribution, Aggregation and the Social

Sun, 13 May 2012 07:39:00 -0400

Are you a giver? Or a taker? Or somewhere in between? This week’s readings opened up the idea of living in a world of constant give and take, and the importance of not being mere consumers, but actively striving to create to give to the functioning of society.

David Gauntlett’s video was a fabulous summary of his book Making is Creating, which explores the way modern society flourishes only when people continue to be creative and active participants in society, inserting their own creativity into society to shape the environment around them. He introduces three reasons for why people want to create:

People create to feel pleasure and reflect
People want to be active and contribute to a community
People want to be recognised in a community of interesting people

He believes it is crucial to publish creativity so as to contribute to the public sphere. From this, he asserts that socially relationships are formed by people making, creating and sharing things, particularly with reference to social media but also with the physical. Essentially creativity sustains a healthy, functioning society.

Similarly, in the article What Is Implied By Living In A World of Flow? by Hubert Guillaud, sociologist Danah Boyd’s talk about her metaphor of ‘the world of flow’ pertaining to the way life is a constant flow of creating, consuming and redirecting information.

“Those who are most enamored with services like Twitter talk passionately about feeling as though they are living and breathing with the world around them, peripherally aware and in tune, adding content to the stream and grabbing from it when it is appropriate”. Danah Boyd

I personally liked this metaphor, because I think it perfectly encapsulates the way social media functions interlinked with society, and I can relate in the way that I am likewise constantly adding to, dismissing, reassembling and taking from publications in the media and social media. For example writing this blog post is adding to the ‘flow’, re-posting a video is reassembling the ‘flow’, and reading a news article online is taking from the ‘flow’.

However Boyd also highlighted the limitations to the flow of social media, in the way that sometimes the flow that she talks about is interupted by physical and technical barriers.

“Of course, this state is delicate, plagued by information overload and weighed down by frustrating tools”.

As citizens of a modern, technology fueled society, we must remember to continue to maintain this flow by creating, publishing, and redirecting media, not just consuming it.

Visualisation

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 08:53:39 -0400

Visualisation is a powerful and effective way to create understanding of an invisible concept. People are better able to make sense of, interpret and understand concepts when looked at visually rather than descriptively through language and words. Here is a video I found that is a visualisation of childbirth. Click on the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xath6kOf0NE

This week’s first article titled Climate Change Deniers VS The Consensustackles the ever complex issue of climate change by outlining various arguments from the ‘deniers’ and ‘believers’ of climate change, and is an example of using visualisation in scientific research and reporting to emphasise an argument. It enables one to process sometimes complex concepts and a visual image assists understanding. It presents a lot of scientific data in the form of graphs, which can be overwhelming for the viewer. I think a visualisation is more effective on its own, addressing a singular concept.

The second article for this week was ‘Struggling polar bears put on endangered list’ from Metro.com.uk in 2008. It showed an image of a polar bear clinging on top of a small block of ice in the Antarctic. Obviously this isn’t the case all over Antarctica, but the author of the article has found an image that is an accurate visualisation of the story.

What we can learn from both articles, but the second more so, is that in publishing visualisation is a crucial and very effective way of conveying concepts and stories clearly by providing a supporting image for the viewer to gain a deeper understanding from.

Have you caught the archive fever?

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 01:58:00 -0400

On recently returning from a whirlwind 4 month stint in Europe, I found myself on the plane home thinking of how best to go about getting my thousands of photos in some kind of album. Should I scrapbook, upload them onto Facebook, Tumblr or kick it old school with a photo album? Somewhere high above the Indian Ocean I decided on the traditional photo album. I figured someday I want to be able to sit down with my children and show them a hard copy of my travels as a 20 year old. This particular moment came to mind after reading about Jaques Derrida’s concept of Archive Fever (Archive Fever, 1997, Chicago: University of Chicago Press). I couldn’t help but wonder, why are we so desperate to constantly record every single moment of our lives?

There are many forms of archiving, from libraries to photo albums to iTunes, and Derrida effectively explains how each different form of archive creates social and individual sense of self for the creator. It is a way of organizing likes, dislikes, opinions and memories, and systematically categorizing ones life.

“The technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure of the archivable content…archivization produces as much as it records the event.”
Archive Fever, A love Letter To The Post Real-Time Web, 2010)

With advanced technologies and subsequently new modes of publishing available to the everyday citizen, we are not only all becoming publishers, but we are also, as Mathew Ogle says becoming ‘accidental archivists’ (Archive Fever, A love Letter To The Post Real-Time Web, 2010). Ogle explains how we are in such a hurry to post everything online, due to the implosion of mediums available to do so - and without even realising we are creating a virtual timeline of our own history, in other words becoming our own archivists. An example of this is Facebook. Say I posted a photo and accompanying caption every day of last year. In the present moment of posting each of those photos, I would have assumed it was for immediate viewing and instant gratification. In fact I would have just created a virtual archive of my life for that year, including the dates, times and locations of where I posted each photo from.

With the advent of the Internet Age, every man and his dog has caught the archive fever. Symptoms include an overwhelming desire to store everything in virtual memory banks, whether it be on our phones, iPods or computers. More than ever, we want to make our opinions and experiences public and systematically organised, and we have the power to archive our own publications with thanks to new modes of publishing.

Assemblage

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 06:29:00 -0400

Assemblage has been defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary as a ‘collection or gathering of things or people’. An assemblage in publishing refers to the materials and semiotics (things and concepts), that interrelate to make up a publication. The concept of the Actor Network Theory (ANT), developed as an approach to social theory by Michel Callon, John Law and Bruno Latour, attempts to explain and evaluate the relationship between these materials (things) and semiotics (concepts) to ultimately make up a network.

The ANT reading for this week focused on explaining the transient, repetitive nature of the material-semiotic network by using the example of a school. There are materials that are the ‘things’, such as pencils, computers and chairs, and there are the semiotics or ‘concepts’ such as the teachers, children, parents and their ideas that perpetually interact to form a network. When we relate the ANT to publishing in a simple way, we could consider a material as the physical book product and the semiotics as the reader’s response to the book, with this interrelation constantly reciprocating to form a single network that is publishing.

The ANT reading describes how within a network there are human and non-human properties that make up the network, as discussed above, however the idea of generalized symmetry suggests that all of these elements that make up a network are equally as important as the other. The second reading for the week A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity shows how De Landa somewhat challenges this facet of the ANT by suggesting each component of an assemblage’s importance should be analysed singularly. This can be understood further by using an example of publishing, whereby De Landa’s theory would suppose that in the whole process of publishing a book, or creating and sustaining a ‘network’, there are elements of the process that are more important, such a writer coming up with an idea and actually writing a book, which is perhaps more important than the editing of the manuscript.

I found this video useful in helping me grasp the complex concept of the Actor Network Theory. Click on the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2YYxS6D-mI

Modes of Publishing

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:49:00 -0400

Confession #1 of an aspiring journalist: I am finding it hard to keep up. Not with the latest fashion trends, or assignments, or with the Kardashions. I am finding it hard to keep up with the media and the multitude of various websites that the Internet allows and encourages us to sign up to and upload our lives onto. Think Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogspot and the list goes on. Am I the only one who is exhausted by even thinking about all of these? Not to mention having to remember a quickly expanding list of passwords.

Intertwined with the advent of new technologies such as the Internet, the laptop, the smartphone, including Apple’s iPhone and now the iPad, it seems we are living in a culture of wanting to make our lives virtual. Upload everything, share everything, and essentially follow other peoples lives, some that we may not even know or particularly care about - “Sally Jones is having a sandwich. Yum!” Sound familiar anyone?

The technological advances of the Internet and such an enormous number of publishing platforms being made available to us at the click of a button means that every man and his dog is essentially now an author, an editor, and a publisher. It forces me to consider the questions, what does this mean for society and what are the implications for professional publishers?

For society, their are of course pros and cons. Unfortunately we are facing an online culture of mush. The line between quality journalism and shallow, incorrect information is being blurred. As consumers of online information, we are challenged by the benefits of portable, accessible, current news versus journalism that is perhaps of lesser quality, with outdated statistics and reused information.

Paradoxically, with so many modes of publishing available we are provided with the possibilities to have our voice heard in a democratic virtual world, making it easier for up and coming media and journalism students such as myself to break in to the competitive field and gain some experience. We also have the added pleasure as media consumers of having more news and entertainment available to us to read and view.

It is evident that for established professional publishers, the traditional role of publishing is irreversibly evolving with the scope of publishing modes available to the everyday citizen. The reality is people no longer need to go via a publishing company to have their story heard, they can very easily attract an audience of potentially millions, by writing a public blog for free. Professional publishers are also faced with the pitfalls of copyright infringements, and of course they are now up against an unprecedented competitor: their readers. There is also a question of whether people will rely on professional modes of publishing anymore when free, more easily accessible modes are available to the everyday citizen who has something to say.

In our fast paced, constantly evolving world, we have to keep up with the latest technological installments because they ultimately shape our culture and society. A particularly interesting example of how new modes of publishing are defining our culture as consumers, is being encouraged to hash tag our tweets on Twitter during a live television show. We are seeing traditional modes of publishing interlinking with new modes of publishing, largely due to we as media consumers happily shifting into media producers. Look around you, Australian culture and society as we knew it is changing before our very eyes, or madly typing fingertips, you could say…

The changing role of publishers

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 06:25:00 -0500

Publishing is the multi-part process of having produced literature moved from the hands of the author to the hands of the public. Traditionally, the process refers to the distribution of printed books and newspapers. When we examine the process of book publishing for example, it is apparent that up until recently the demand for work to be professionally published was high.

However the reality for the 21st century is, the role and importance of publishers is changing. With the advent of digital information systems, the scope of publishing as a practice is expanding. The onslaught of technologies like e-readers, particularly Apple’s iPad, as well as open publishing sites, blogs and print-on-demand options, means people are able to produce and quite literally publish their own work.

With this, obviously, comes problems. Dire problems in fact, both for the role of the publisher as well as for books in general. With the emergence of e-readers, a new technological device that is lightweight, small, and allows the reader to download and virtually read a book while storing thousands more at a time, we are seeing a consequent decline in the need for publishers. Every man and his dog is now an author, albeit a more shallow one, with less expert opinion and more grammatical errors in their work. Not only that, established professional news companies are having to completely restructure their businesses in terms of being equipped with and reevaluating costs to have people who can take their business and put it online, competing in an entirely new market.

Instead of buying a copy of The Sydney Morning Herald at the local corner store, people want there news now, they want it fast, and they want it on their iPad at the touch of a button. It’s about practicality. Did anyone else see that puff of smoke where publishers once existed?

Yes, e-readers, blogs, the Internet and print-on-demand options are certainly a threat to publishers, making their field a lot more competitive. There’s also no denying that the idea of sitting down and turning the pages of a real book, breathing in its musky smell and dog earring its pages, is potentially going to be a pastime and that’s hard to swallow for we book-lovers. However, for the time being at least, while challenges present for all involved, I do not think that the emergence of these technologies will entirely abolish the physical form of ‘the book’. For the moment I think it is more about choice for society, perhaps an addition to ones bookshelf rather than a replacement of actual books altogether.