Interactive Newsprint: The Future of Newspapers? Printed electronics meets hyperlocal and community co-design

The news industry is currently in a well-documented state of flux, with publishers from across the developed world examining new business models, reinterpreting existing relationships between their income streams and readers, while maintaining their ability to generate editorial output that is relevant and interesting to the communities they cover. Interactive Newsprint seeks to add a new and revolutionary dimension to this media evolution by asking: can printed electronics and internet-enabled paper (technologies that utilise standard paper and printing processes and through conductive ink and battery power offer capacitive touch interactions similar to smartphones and tablets) create a new way of transmitting community-based news and information? Utilising co-design techniques and practices, the project seeks to produce community- relevant hyperlocal text and audio content and place it on a centuries-old platform: the newspaper. As a result of the paper's internet connectivity, the project is also examining potential benefits of transplanting some online features such as analytic data on user interactions. Led by the School of Journalism, Media and Communication (JoMeC) at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), the 18-month, EPRSC-funded project is therefore examining the potential for community co-design and printed electronics to transform paper- based news and information for the 21st Century, along with revenue and data generation that is unique to digital formats such as websites, social networks, smartphones and tablets. Building on work carried out on the EPSRC-funded Bespoke project, researchers from UCLan, University of Dundee, University of Surrey and commercial printed electronics firm Novalia are prototyping a series of paper-based community news platforms that are populated by content produced by community reporters and generated through an iterative co-design process. This paper will outline the methodology, technological potential of interactive newsprint and how the project is looking to embed analytic data into traditional printed-paper formats. It will also focus on how members of the Preston community are shaping both the news and platform over the 18-month process. As the project is mid-way through, the paper will present an overview of the project to date, outline the design methodology and describe and demonstrate the early-stage prototypes. The paper will also hint at new editorial construction practices as community and professional reporters all contribute to the hyperlocally-themed editorial output. The authors will present a discussion of the theoretical framework that underpins the project as a whole. In addition to the practical illustrations, the paper will outline the authors' initial thoughts on how interactive newsprint – through its internet connectivity and potential for data transfer – could revolutionise editorial and advertorial relationships

City Magazine Editors and the Evolving Urban Information Environment

The urban information environment in which city magazines operate is changing dramatically, with the decline of local newspapers and the growth of user-generated local content. City magazine editors are re-envisioning their purpose as local information providers. This study provides a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with senior editors at 15 award-winning city magazines. The editors’ responses speak to the changing role of their publications today; the function of new technologies in informing local communities; and the public service that local journalism organizations offer in a constrained economic situation

Metadata enrichment for digital heritage: users as co-creators

This paper espouses the concept of metadata enrichment through an expert and user-focused approach to metadata creation and management. To this end, it is argued the Web 2.0 paradigm enables users to be proactive metadata creators. As Shirky (2008, p.47) argues Web 2.0’s social tools enable “action by loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and outside the profit motive”. Lagoze (2010, p. 37) advises, “the participatory nature of Web 2.0 should not be dismissed as just a popular phenomenon [or fad]”. Carletti (2016) proposes a participatory digital cultural heritage approach where Web 2.0 approaches such as crowdsourcing can be sued to enrich digital cultural objects. It is argued that “heritage crowdsourcing, community-centred projects or other forms of public participation”. On the other hand, the new collaborative approaches of Web 2.0 neither negate nor replace contemporary standards-based metadata approaches. Hence, this paper proposes a mixed metadata approach where user created metadata augments expert-created metadata and vice versa. The metadata creation process no longer remains to be the sole prerogative of the metadata expert. The Web 2.0 collaborative environment would now allow users to participate in both adding and re-using metadata. The case of expert-created (standards-based, top-down) and user-generated metadata (socially-constructed, bottom-up) approach to metadata are complementary rather than mutually-exclusive. The two approaches are often mistakenly considered as dichotomies, albeit incorrectly (Gruber, 2007; Wright, 2007) . This paper espouses the importance of enriching digital information objects with descriptions pertaining the about-ness of information objects. Such richness and diversity of description, it is argued, could chiefly be achieved by involving users in the metadata creation process. This paper presents the importance of the paradigm of metadata enriching and metadata filtering for the cultural heritage domain. Metadata enriching states that a priori metadata that is instantiated and granularly structured by metadata experts is continually enriched through socially-constructed (post-hoc) metadata, whereby users are pro-actively engaged in co-creating metadata. The principle also states that metadata that is enriched is also contextually and semantically linked and openly accessible. In addition, metadata filtering states that metadata resulting from implementing the principle of enriching should be displayed for users in line with their needs and convenience. In both enriching and filtering, users should be considered as prosumers, resulting in what is called collective metadata intelligence

The Effects of the Quantification of Faculty Productivity: Perspectives from the Design Science Research Community

In recent years, efforts to assess faculty research productivity have focused more on the measurable quantification of academic outcomes. For benchmarking academic performance, researchers have developed different ranking and rating lists that define so-called high-quality research. While many scholars in IS consider lists such as the Senior Scholar’s basket (SSB) to provide good guidance, others who belong to less-mainstream groups in the IS discipline could perceive these lists as constraining. Thus, we analyzed the perceived impact of the SSB on information systems (IS) academics working in design science research (DSR) and, in particular, how it has affected their research behavior. We found the DSR community felt a strong normative influence from the SSB. We conducted a content analysis of the SSB and found evidence that some of its journals have come to accept DSR more. We note the emergence of papers in the SSB that outline the role of theory in DSR and describe DSR methodologies, which indicates that the DSR community has rallied to describe what to expect from a DSR manuscript to the broader IS community and to guide the DSR community on how to organize papers for publication in the SSB

The book an adaptation from the film: technology, narrative, business & how the book industry might adapt the film

This paper proposes that the book, both its form and the book publishing industry that support it can make reference to how the film industry have reacted to technological change since the 1980 's. This can be done in such a way to transform how a book is marketed, published and perhaps read. Epstein (2010) describes how the film industry profited despites its best efforts, from technological advances. The book industry has an opportunity to learn both from the film and record industries using both industries as case studies to support the book's transition to a supporting digital format. There is an opportunity to make the debate not about Kindle versus Ipad, open-source ePub format versus locked down Kindle but about how to use non-linearity, choice vs control, structure and storytelling in a creative fashion. What is the book? It is more than its physical form. It is an experience. Current industry marketing practices, for instance the book review, the audio book, speaking tours all lend themselves to a multimedia approach that can reinforce the position of the book and the reading of the book in today's creative cultural environment

Multi-platform media: how newspapers are adapting to the digital era

No abstract available

Tackling Ageing Continence through Theory, Tools & Technology

Originally presented at ‘Aging and Society: An Interdisciplinary Conference’, University of California, Berkeley (2011), this article was double-blind peer reviewed, receiving scores of 96% and 73%. It outlines the interdisciplinary research of the cross-Research-Council-funded New Dynamics of Ageing Tackling Ageing Continence through Theory Tools & Technology (TACT3) project (2008–12), which brought together designers, social scientists, bio-engineers, chemists and care-management services to understand the challenges faced by an ageing population in the management of continence. Bichard’s Work Package, ‘Challenging Environmental Barriers to Continence’, explored the need for public toilet provision as essential for quality of life, health and well-being. It developed a life-course methodology that considered ageing from birth through to advanced age (0–101 years), and involved inclusive design research with members of the public and providers of facilities to assess public expectations and provider limitations in service provision. As co-investigator on TACT3, this research built on Bichard’s previous work for the VivaCity2020 consortium (Bichard REF Output 2). Whereas the VivaCity2020 work focused on architectural barriers in toilet provision, the TACT3 project examined the problem in service provision, and how, through inclusive design research, service-design solutions might be explored and implemented. Bichard’s contribution to the TACT3 project produced The Great British Public Toilet Map (http://greatbritishpublictoiletmap.rca.ac.uk/), a public participation website that provides information and locations of public toilets, encouraging members of the public to contact relevant local authorities that have not released information in the format of Open Data. Secondary analysis of TACT3 data for references to issues of personal safety and community initiative in toilet provision was used for the ESRC-funded Robust Accessible Toilets (RATs) project (2011) and produced Publicly Accessible Toilets: An Inclusive Design Guide (2011). Related published conference papers include those in ‘Cumulus 2010’ (China) and ‘Include 2011’ (UK)