Framework for the implementation of urban big screens in the public space

In the last decade, big urban screens have appeared in town squares and on building facades across the UK. The use of these screens brings new potentials and challenges for city regulators, artists, architects, urban designers, producers, broadcasters and advertisers. Dynamic moving images form new architectural material, affecting our perception and the experience of the space around us. A new form of urban space is emerging that is fundamentally different from what we have known, and it seems that we are ill-equipped to deal with and analyse it. We are just beginning to understand the opportunities for public information, art and community engagement. Most of screens at present serve mainly commercial purposes, they do not broadcast information aimed at sharing community content nor do they support public social interactions. We need to see more negotiation between commercial, public and cultural interests. The SCREAM project addresses these new challenges by looking at the physical urban spaces and the potential spaces created by the new technologies

Media Communication, Consumption and Use: The Changing Role of the Designer

Consumers are changing the way in which they create, experience and consume media. User Generated Content (UGC) marks a shift in the way in which ordinary people are now able to contribute to the creation of media. They have become active citizens in what is now a two way conversation. The advent of UGC has created new challenges for communication designers who now need to take on the role of a facilitator in this process. The challenge for communication design is not only to identify appropriate methods for communication, but to understand how best to facilitate connections between users such that they create structures that they can inhabit. This paper explores the changing role of design in UGC rich media communication and presents a Decision Making Framework (DMF) that engages designers in the consideration of the user in the development process. In-depth interviews with leading industry proponents ensure currency of the insights gained. Keywords: Design Process, User Generated Content, Communication Design, Fraimwork</p

Communication as a Complement in Development

This article is a revised version of a paper produced as part of a review of Agency for International Development policy in communication undertaken by Stanford University\u27s Institute for Communication Research for which Edwin Parker and the author were co-principal investigators. Others contributed heavily to earlier drafts of this paper and the background papers on which it was based (see 7, 8, 13, 14, 18). They include (in alphabetical order) Ronny Adhikarya, Eduardo Contreras-Budge, Dennis Foote, Douglas Goldschmidt, John Mayo, Emile McAnany, Jeanne Moulton, Jeremiah O\u27Sullivan, Edwin Parker, Everett Rogers, and Douglas Solomon. The we used in the text is neither royal nor editorial, but refers to some subset of the author and this list of contributors. The work was performed under contract ta-C-1472 with the Development Support Bureau (Office of Education and Human Resources) of USAID, and benefited from advice from Clifford Block, Anthony Meyer, and David Sprague of that office

Broadcasting services amendment (Media Ownership) Bill 2006 and related bills

To help better explore the potential implications associated with the proposed legislation, we conducted a survey of 919 WA television viewers drawing from our TV Panel of 3000 viewers. Our panel has been recruited from a variety of sources including through lists acquired through marketing research firms, as well as direct mail and newspaper advertising recruitment drives. In many ways, our panel is better informed regarding future possibilities because they participate in regular studies where such scenarios are tested. In this way, the panel is better positioned to understand potential futures

Converged digital TV services: the role of middleware and future directions of interactive television

The subject of the future of the interactive Television medium has become a topic of great interest to the academic and industrial communities particularly since in the recent years there has been a dramatic increase in the pace of innovation of convergence of digital TV systems and services. The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview of what we know as digital TV converged services, to present and categorise the digital Television middleware technologies that contributed to it, and to present possible future trends and directions. A new Television era of converged wireless and mobile content delivery, user-authored content, multimodal interaction, intelligent personalisation, smart space awareness, and 3D content sensations is foreseen, creating ambient and immersive experiences

Public Media and Political Independence: Lessons for the Future of Journalism From Around the World

Profiles how fourteen nations fund and protect the autonomy of public media via multiyear funding, public-linked funding structures, charters, laws, and agencies or boards designed to limit political influence and ensure spending in the public interest

Inviting the Audience – Interactive, Participatory, and Social Television in Finland

The television and the ways it has invited the audience to take part have been changing during the last decade. Today’s interaction, or rather participation, comes from multiplatform formats, such as TV spectacles that combine TV and web platforms in order to create a wider TV experience. Multiplatform phenomena have spread television consumption and traditional coffee table discussions to several different devices and environments. Television has become a part of the bigger puzzle of interconnected devices that operates on several platforms instead of just one. This thesis examines the Finnish television (2004–2014) through the notion of audience participation and introduces the technical, thematic, and social linkages as three different phases, interactive, participatory, social, and their most characteristic features in terms of audience participation. The aim of the study is also to focus on the idea of a possible change by addressing the possible and subtler variations that have taken place through the concept of digital television. Firstly, Finnish television history has gone through numerous trials, exploring the interactive potential of television formats. Finnish SMS-based iTV had its golden era around 2005, when nearly 50% of the television formats were to some extent interactive. Nowadays, interactive television formats have vanished due to their negative reputation and this important part of recent history is mainly been neglected in the academic scope. The dissertation focuses also on the present situation and the ways television content invites the audience to take part. “TV meets the Internet” is a global expression that characterises digital TV, and the use of the Web combined with television content is also examined. Also the linkages between television and social media are identified. Since television can nowadays be described multifaceted, the research approaches are also versatile. The research is based on qualitative content analysis, media observation, and Internet inquiry. The research material also varies. It consists of primary data: taped iTV formats, website material, and social media traces both from Twitter and Facebook and secondary data: discussion forums, observations from the media and Internet inquiry data. To sum up the results, the iTV phase represented, through its content, a new possibility for audiences to take part in a TV show (through gameful and textual features) in real-time. In participatory phase, the most characteristic features from TV-related content view, is the fact that online platform(s) were used to immerse the audience with additional material and, due to this, to extend the TV watching enjoyment beyond the actual broadcast. During the Social (media) phase, both of these features, real-timeness, and extended enjoyment through additional material, are combined and Facebook & Twitter, for example, are used to immerse people in live events (in real-time) via broadcast-related tweets and extra-material offered on a Facebook page. This thesis fills in the gap in Finnish television research by examining the rapid changes taken place on the field within the last ten years. The main results is that the development of Finnish digital television has been much more diverse and subtle than has been anticipated by following only the news, media, and contemporary discourses on the subject of television. The results will benefit both practitioners and academics by identifying the recent history of Finnish television.Yleisö mukaan – interaktiivinen, osallistava ja sosiaalinen televisio Suomessa 2004–2014 Television sanotaan läpikäyneen useita muutoksia 2000-luvulle tultaessa, erityisesti digitaalisuuden näkökulmasta.Tutkimus esittelee, miten televisio on aktivoinut ja kutsunut ihmisiä ottamaan osaa TV-tarjontaan – niin teknologian, temaattisen sisällön kuin sosiaalisuudenkin kautta. Suomalaisen TV:n lähihistoriaan kuuluu olennaisena osana interaktiivisen TV-viihteen aikakausi. iTV-viihteellä oli kulta-aikansa v. 2005, jolloin peruskanavien tarjonnasta lähes 50% oli jollakin tasolla interaktiivista. Se piti sisällään SMS-pohjaiset TV-chatit, TV-mobiilipelit sekä interaktiiviset soittovisat. Nykyään lähes kaikki ITV-viihteen muodot ovat hävinneet ruudusta. Kattavaa akateemista tutkimusta ei TV:n viimeisten 10 vuoden ajalta kuitenkaan ole - väitöstyö vastaa tähän tarpeeseen. Tutkimus keskittyy kuitenkin myös TV:n nykytilaan. Nykypäivän interaktio/vuorovaikutus tai pikemminkin osallistuminen näyttäytyy erilaisten multiplatform-formaattien (elävät eri alustoilla samanaikaisesti) myötä. TV-spektaakkelit kutsuvat yleisön ottamaan osaa TV-sisältöön, esim. äänestämällä Idolsissa ja Euroviisuissa tai osallistumalla sisältöihin Internetissä/sosiaalisessa mediassa maksutta. Tutkimusaineisto on monipuolista ja se koostuu muun muassa iTV-formaattien nauhoituksista, Internetsivumateriaalista sekä sosiaalisen median, Facebook ja Twitter, taltioinneista. Lisämateriaalina käytetään keskustelupalstamateriaalia, Internetkysely-dataa ja mediassa esillä olleita artikkeleita. Tutkimusote on laadullinen ja työssä on pääosin toteutettu sisällön analyysia sekä havainnoivaa tutkimusta. Työn päätuloksena esitetään, että suomalaisen digitaalisen television aikakausi on huomattavasti monisyisempi ja monipuolisempi kun on aiemmin ajateltu. Tutkimuksessa käsitelty 10 vuoden ajanjakso voidaan jakaa kolmeen: 1) interaktiivisuuden, 2) osallistavuuden ja 3) sosiaalisen median vaiheisiin. On selvää, että aikakaudet limittyvät keskenään, mutta kukin vaihe pitää kuitenkin sisällään piirteitä, jotka ovat erityisiä juuri sille aikakaudelle. Interaktiivisuuden aikakautta määrittävät tekstiviestipohjainen iTV-viihde eli chatit, mobiilipeleineen ja hyperventiloivine juontajineen. Osallistavuuden aikakaudella Internet alkoi toimia yhä enemmän TV-lähetysten vastinparina tarjoamalla extra-materiaalia ja lisäinformaatiota. Sosiaalisen median myötä mm. Internetin ohjelmakohtaisten keskustelupalstojen luoma sosiaalisuus on siirtynyt live-lähetysten ympärille Twitter-tweettien myötä. Ajankohtaisen materiaalin jako taas on siirtynyt Facebookin piiriin jättäen ohjelmakohtaiset nettisivut lähinnä online-arkistoiksi. Väitöskirja suhtautuu kuitenkin televisioon projisoituihin diskursseihin sekä muutoksen käsitteeseen kriittisesti. Nykypäivän television on usein katsottu, osittain utopistisestikin, kehittyvän yhä vuorovaikutteisempaan ja sosiaalistavampaan suuntaan. Interaktiivisen TV:n kokeiluja on kuitenkin nähty jo television alkuajoista asti ja sosiaalisen median mukaan tulo ei automaattisesti tee TV:n kuluttamisesta sosiaalisempaa. Suomalaisen TV:n lähihistoria ja digitaalisen television aikakausi sisältää huomattavasti monisyisempiä kehitysvaiheita, mitä diskurssien pohjalta esittäytyy. Tämä väitöstyö tarjoaa tärkeän, aiemmin puuttuneen, palasen suomalaisen TV-tutkimuksen nykykentälle ja saatuja tuloksia voidaan hyödyntää niin akateemisessa kuin käytännön konteksteissakin.Siirretty Doriast

The New Hampshire, Vol. 87, No. 39 (Mar. 14, 1997)

The student publication of the University of New Hampshire