Community Media 2.0: A Report from the ‘Co-Creative Communities’ Forum

Participatory digital culture presents major challenges to all traditional media outlets, but it presents very direct challenges to the community broadcast sector, which was established from the outset as local, community-driven and participatory. These and other issues were the focus of a recent forum at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne (Co- Creative Communities, 8–9 November 2012). The forum was part of a national research project, which has been exploring how Australian community arts and media organisations are responding to participatory digital culture, social media and user-led innovation. Focusing on the organisations that presented at the symposium, the paper examines how community interest media is making the most of new and social media platforms. It considers examples of participatory digital media that have emerged from the community broadcast sector, but it also considers local, collaborative, community-interest media projects developed by public broadcasters and organisations involved in arts, social justice and development. Drawing on forum transcripts and follow-up research the essay describes some of the key trends shaping how community-interest media organisations and independent producers are working with participatory digital culture, and with what success

Introduction

This issue of Cultural Science emerges largely from research undertaken through the Australian Research Council Linkage project, Community Uses of Co-Creative Media. The project has sought to better understand how community arts and media networks – incorporating cultural development, heritage, arts, activist, broadcasting and Indigenous media sectors – can increase the capacity of communities to engage in participatory media culture

Correlation between mass and volume of collected blood with positivity of blood cultures

Background The collection of blood cultures is an extremely important method in the management of patients with suspected infection. Microbiology laboratories should monitor blood culture collection. Methods Over an 8-month period we developed a prospective, observational study in an adult Intensive Care Unit (ICU). We correlated the mass contained in the blood vials with blood culture positivity and we also verified the relationship between the mass of blood and blood volume collected for the diagnosis of bloodstream infection (BSI), as well as we explored factors predicting positive blood cultures. Results We evaluated 345 patients with sepsis, severe sepsis or septic shock for whom blood culture bottles were collected for the diagnosis of BSI. Of the 55 patients with BSI, 40.0 % had peripheral blood culture collection only. BSIs were classified as nosocomial in 34.5 %. In the multivariate model, the blood culture mass (in grams) remained a significant predictor of positivity, with an odds ratio 1.01 (i.e., for each additional 1 mL of blood collected there was a 1 % increase in positivity; 95 % CI 1.01–1.02, p = 0.001; Nagelkerke R Square [R2] = 0.192). For blood volume collected, the adjusted odds ratio was estimated at 1.02 (95 % CI: 1.01–1.03, p \u3c 0.001; R2 = 0.199). For each set of collected blood cultures beyond one set, the adjusted odds ratio was estimated to be 1.27 (95 % CI: 1.14–1.41, p \u3c 0.001; R2 = 0.221). Conclusions Our study was a quality improvement project that showed that microbiology laboratories can use the weight of blood culture bottles to determine if appropriate volume has been collected to improve the diagnosis of BSI

Postmodern attractions: music videos 2000-2010

© 2012 Dr. Maura EdmondPostmodern Attractions: Music Videos 2000 – 2010 revisits music videos nearly twenty years after the majority of scholarly material was first written about them, and shortly after YouTube and other internet video aggregates have wrought massive changes on their production, exhibition and reception. The thesis both identifies and tries to explain the prevalence and persistence of certain formal traits in contemporary music videos. These traits include a preoccupation with visual hyperbole, exhibitionism and showmanship; catchy, shocking or clever concepts; and a rapid-fire alternation of diverse spectacles, novelties and intertextual references. Whereas other writers tend to interpret these as ‘postmodern’ traits, indicative of the cultural contexts in which music videos first emerged, Postmodern Attractions argues that these traits are better understood as belonging to much longer and broader traditions of popular entertainment and attractions. The thesis draws comparisons between music video aesthetic ‘norms’ and the aesthetic principles that underpin popular music, vaudeville and variety theatre, the ‘cinema of attractions’, fashion parades, television, Hollywood comedies, musicals, special effects blockbusters, ‘high concept’ cinema, and a range of other entertainments. The first chapter begins by examining the similarities commonly attributed to these different formats and attempts to define a broad ‘aesthetic logic of entertainment’. The subsequent chapters examine in detail one particular element of music videos and their adherence to, diversion from and remediation of this entertainment logic. Chapter two focuses on the relationship between music and vision, chapter three on performance and self-conscious tropes of performance; chapter four on fashion and sartorial style; and chapter five on industry and audiences in an online era. In doing so, Postmodern Attractions offers a new and very different interpretation of music videos aesthetics. In particular it provides a comprehensive explanation for why titillation, nonsense and novelties, outlandish special effects, confrontational shocks, and razzle-dazzle glamour are predictable features of even the most prosaic music video, and why these qualities will continue to shape music videos in an online era

All platforms considered: Contemporary radio and transmedia engagement

Over the last 10 years, radio listeners have increasingly begun to tune in online – via podcasts, radio-on-demand and other digital distribution platforms. In the last couple of years, they have begun to interact with radio in theatres, cinemas and assorted make-shift gig venues, via mobile apps and social media platforms, and in the form of live performances, online videos, maps, tweets, blogs, forums, essays, photographs and interactive websites. Radio, like every other medium, is experimenting with ever more complex cross-media practices. These kinds of activities have been analysed at length with regard to commercial film, television and gaming, but much less is understood about radio-born approaches to transmedia content. This article considers how existing transmedia theories can contribute to our understanding of these new radio practices and also how radio-originated cross-media productions might challenge some of the ingrained assumptions we have about transmedia engagement. </jats:p

Making media participatory [Editorial]

In 2002, Media International Australia published a special issue on Citizens' Media (no. 103). It profiled new academic work that was reinvigorating research into alternative and community-interest media. Contributions to that issue explored new possibilities for community media policy and argued that critical participatory media provided a crucial link between media studies and broader agendas in political theory and democratic debate. In this issue, we refresh this debate with a collection of articles from new and established researchers that consider the use of critical perspectives in participatory digital culture, which has flourished with the growth of consumer markets for digital media technologies

Community uses of co-creative media. Digital storytelling and co-creative media : The role of community arts and media in propagating and coordinating population-wide creative practice

This report describes a dynamic ‘Co-creative Media System’ that is emerging in the social space bounded by the following institutional pillars: • major cultural institutions (including screen culture agencies, libraries, museums, galleries and public service broadcasters) • the Community Arts and Cultural Development sector (historically supported through various programs of the Australia Council for the Arts) • the community broadcasting sector • the Indigenous media sector, and • the higher education sector. It illustrates how this system activates the immense creative potential of the Australian population through the ongoing development and application of participatory storytelling methods and media

Community uses of co-creative media - digital storytelling and co-creative media: The role of community arts and media in propagating and coordinating population-wide creative practice

How is creative expression and communication extended among whole populations? What is the social and cultural value of this activity? What roles do formal agencies, community-based organisations and content producer networks play? Specifically, how do participatory media and arts projects and networks contribute to building this capacity in the contemporary communications environment? The latest issue of CSJ article in a special issue on “Broadening Digital Storytelling Horizons” edited by Burcu Simsek

ILC Reference Design Report Volume 1 - Executive Summary

The International Linear Collider (ILC) is a 200-500 GeV center-of-mass high-luminosity linear electron-positron collider, based on 1.3 GHz superconducting radio-frequency (SCRF) accelerating cavities. The ILC has a total footprint of about 31 km and is designed for a peak luminosity of 2x10^34 cm^-2s^-1. This report is the Executive Summary (Volume I) of the four volume Reference Design Report. It gives an overview of the physics at the ILC, the accelerator design and value estimate, the detector concepts, and the next steps towards project realization.The International Linear Collider (ILC) is a 200-500 GeV center-of-mass high-luminosity linear electron-positron collider, based on 1.3 GHz superconducting radio-frequency (SCRF) accelerating cavities. The ILC has a total footprint of about 31 km and is designed for a peak luminosity of 2x10^34 cm^-2s^-1. This report is the Executive Summary (Volume I) of the four volume Reference Design Report. It gives an overview of the physics at the ILC, the accelerator design and value estimate, the detector concepts, and the next steps towards project realization