This week I have been trying to watch they way in which youths use their mobile phone, but whilst doing this I realised that there isn't that much difference between some of todays  youths and some of todays adults. Whilst I was at work this week there were about three adults that I had to serve whilst they were having a seperate conversation on their mobile. There was also a woman I noticed that had Beyonce as her ring tone which is something I associated with the young people and thought it was something you grew out of!   However there are some things which only youths do such as play their music so EVERYONE can hear it at the back of the bus for example, where it annoys you even more because you can't get away from it. They also seem to have it out at all times and then look at the screen every ten seconds waiting for that all important text. When they do recieve a text they also have to tell everyone so they seem loved.   There are some traits that I recognise from when I was young but I do feel that I have grown out of them now, such as texting someone in the same room as you or changing the covers on your phone, I do feel that is because of the quality of phones that we have now as well.

Things I noticed whilst observing youngsters using their mobiles….

They play music from their phone on the bus, walking the street or with friends as a sort of background music.

Sometimes, though not so often these days, youths where there phone round their neck

To play games whilst waiting for public transport

To Blue-tooth music from one device to another

To text. I noticed one kid texting whilst riding his bike

Youths always text whilst walking completely oblivious to whats going on ahead of them

As cameras

As video recorders

This is all I noticed.

 

Chris

Stage 1 - The teenager

YEEERRRRR BLUDZ I IZ GOT MAD SKILLZ ON TEH WEBZ N SHIZ. CHEK OWT MA FONE! HAZ GOT SUM MAD SPKRZZZ! BOOM BOOM BOOM LISTN TO DEM BEATZZZ!!!

Stage 2 - The adult

Oh, hello, I use my phone primarily for communication, perhaps the odd game here and there, maybe a bit of web browsing. It is not, however a ghettoblaster or an extension of my penis.

Stage 3 - Blackberry/iPhone owners

Hey! HEY! Have you seen my Blackberry/iPhone? You must have. You MUST have. I've had it out for the last 2 hours. Look at it. Look at my Blackberry/iPhone. F*CKING LOOK AT MY F*CKING BLACKBERRY/IPHONE. You want one don't you? DON'T YOU? YOU LOSER WITH YOUR LOSER NOKIA. THERE'S NO "APP FOR THAT" IS THERE!?!? MUAHAHAHAHAHA!! Touch me.

And there ends today's lecture.

I havn't had much time to observe how the youth of today use their mobile phones. I've been running between Kenrick library, lectures and the calm of my room...you know how it is. So instead I have taken a slightly different approach to this week's directed study. I have chosen to do an auto-ethnography.   At 20, I may not be classed as a youth, but I'm pretty sure I still carry some traits that those younger than me would possess. For example, I like to use my favourite song as my ringtone. Granted, mine has been the same for about a year, mainly due to laziness, but the case still stands. I havn't done this personally, but a few weeks ago a very talkative girl sat on the bus in front of me had attached some form of 'bling' to the bottom of her phone. I've seen this with miniature tubes of lipgloss and models of cartoon characters, pretty stars, hearts and the like. I suppose personalisation is the key. Looking at my phone with it's original cover and casing, the only thing that makes this phone distinctly mine is the row of 3 stickers on the back.   My phone is also my diary, I use it to write birthdays, notes and also use the alarm as a reminder function. Normally to remind me to wake up for a lecture. My phone is my camera, and my videocamera for when I dont happen to have my digital camera on me.This is normally at gigs...or just to capture that snap of my friend's birthmark on his knee that I happened to have doodled an amusing face on.   Much like Chris last week, if I lost my phone I wouldnt feel quite right. I feel that I fit quite a few of the 5 sections from the reading.   Using a mobile phone as a fashion accessory is not so much my style. Using phones in public is fine. Whilst on the bus, with nothing else to do, I do feel the need to text people to see if they'd like to have a conversation. But for some reason bothering the people around me by having a chat feels rude to me, unless it is necessary. I use my mobile phone for safety - Absolutely! I walk around a lot, specially living so far away from university and with it getting dark so early. I text people when I get nervous, not telling them I'm nervous, just to let someone know I'm still alive.

 

Having only had a few encounters with "youths" this week I’ve not had many chances to observe, however the encounters I’ve had certainly fit modern stereotypical behaviour of 'chavs'.

Mostly the young people I observed used them as mini-ghetto blasters (one even during a film… I may have ruined the research by politely telling him to turn it off).

I do find that quite a lot of young people use their phones as a form of self-expression. They play music loudly out of their phone much in the same way that the old ghetto blasters of the 80s were used (but thankfully quieter than them).

The reading talks about the concept of 'apparatgeist' or "the spirit of the machine that influences both the designs of the technology as well as the initial and subsequent significance accorded them by users, non-users and anti-users" - Katz and Aakhus (2002). You can see how this concept of apparatgeist fits in with the use and significance that mobile phones hold in this modern era.

The mobile phone has certainly evolved since the days of my lowly Nokia 3310. Instead of just a simple communications device, through convergence we get a personal organiser, games machine, portable music player and obviously a telephone all wrapped up into one small device. The spirit of the machine has changes from a communications device to something more. This device now lets the youth of today carry around a tool that can help themselves self-express to those around them (much to my ears displeasure).

Although I never witnessed it, the uses the youth of today have for mobiles is still going to be fairly similar to the old uses. As the reading suggests, there is an international culture of phone use among teens and an almost near-universal way in which people perceive communications use in their lives.

*= No young people were harmed during this research, however one was shouted at.

 

To introduce my research question in a sentence I would say that it is researching if the social capital a person or entity has can help them to gain information from a network of people. More specifically "How does @GlastoWatch use their social capital to gain information from followers?". If @GlastoWatch's identity on twitter and it's social capital can be used to gather roumers and sources of information on who may or may not be performing at Glastonbury Festival.

 In order to start researching on this I began looking through old notes from lectures we have had on social capital. This led me to theorists talked about previously. Namely, Bordieu, Coleman, Putnam, Fukuyama, etc. With these theories as a starting point I decided to take a visit to Central Library. Having only visited once, and there not being a dedicated Media section I decided on Sociology as a starting point.

 Being quite a specific subject that I am researching, Social Capital for personal gain online, I found it quite tricky to find books that were of uswe to me. However, I found a few, more generalised, books with sections that related to my research.

 A book by Darin Barney - The Network Society (2004) had a section talking about the discourse of community. Much like this weeks reading it talks about the fact that the word community had lost it's meaning by having so many meanings. It talks about how community could relate to a place where people live, a group of people who share a common interest, or people who hang out or communicate because of a shared interest, it defines people as a community even if they just have the shared interest and dont neccessarily meet.
This adds a little complication when researching my particular area as I'm talking about social capital and how it relates to a network of people, or a community.

 Another interesting book I sourced was called "Growing up digital: the rise of the net generation"  by Don Tapscott (1998)
Despite being related to the younger audiences of chatrooms and forums, I felt some of the theories were relevant to my research.
More specifically the mention of Faucault's "Web of Power" theory. This talks about how the "incitement to discourse", or the starting of a discussion about a particular subject, leads to increased knowledge on that subject. This then leads to increased power for the individual.
Power, in this context, seems to relate directly back to Social Capital and how the starting of a discussion can help them to gain information.

 I plan to visit the Central Library some more after finding some more specific book titles and subjects that I feel will be more relevant.   

My research question is "To what extent do 'video responses' to music videos on youtube explain fan culture within popular music?". The literature I will need to use as my classic studies will cover various areas; fan culture, online communities, popular music culture, and fan activities within those areas.   The first piece of literature that I have found covers fan activities and culture within the field of Manga animation. The article also looks at how these activities relate to copyright, a side issue that has great relevance to my chosen work due to the recent copyright issues between youtube and the major label music industry.   The article focuses on an activity known as 'scanlation' "where ardent fans scan in manga titles, translate them from Japanese to another language and release the translated version free of charge via the internet". Lee argues that this activity exists for 2 reasons: Demand for Manga films in the west out weighing current supply, and also the distribution opportunities, such as P2P networking and fan site chat rooms, presented by the internet. As these practices are 'non-profit' then we can view them as cultural items rather than products with monetary value.   The tricky subject of copyright in relation to fan activities such as this is also explored. Lee explains "as a fan culture which aims to 'promote' manga in non-Japanese-speaking territories through potentially infringing copyright, scanlation seems to have an intriguing relationship with the industry". This idea of fans 'promoting' an artists work was at the heart of the recent row between youtube and the major label record industry who wanted large royalty payments for user generated content that includes music that they own the copyright to. This area therefore has significant relevance to my studies of popular music fan culture on youtube.   Lee uses interviews with scanlation website owners as well as Manga publishers for balance. This is an excellent method for this kind of work as it shows balance, however I feel for my work that youtube is a much broader community and a combination of virtual ethnography and discourse analysis will provide me with the best findings in this case.   The article is an excellent piece of work on fan culture as Lee not only looks at the product of the activities, but also explores the motives and ethics of scanlation finding that there are many "rules" laid down by the online community that 'scanlators' abide by, providing evidence that fan communities are often self-regulatory.

 

What is Yours, Ours, and Mine:
Authorial Ownership and the Creative Commons – Emily Apter

OCTOBER 126, Fall 2008, pp. 91–114. © 2008 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In this article Apter refers to ‘Creative Commons’ as

“a generic term to refer to aesthetic and intellectual property that rightfully belongs to the public sphere or should be protected as an open source outside the range of corporate copyright law”

rather than the copyright movement of the same name.

The article explores the world of copyright law, plagiarism and the freedom to use others ideas without fear of legal reprisal.

Apter begins by referring to cases where authors have taken inspiration from folk tales and others biographical accounts, then gone on to publish a work which caused them to suffer from being sued by the ‘original’ owner of such a tale.

Apter goes on to talk about the work of Jonathan Letham and the idea of ‘imperial plagiarism’ where creative workers take inspiration from primitive, third world or privileged (better) artists.

This ‘imperial plagiarism’ idea is applied to the Walt Disney company and it’s plundering of folklore for story ideas. Letham describes the irony that Disney takes others works to produce their animations, yet aggressively pursue legal action with anyone using any of their works.

Apter quotes Letham as saying “Don’t pirate my editions; do plunder my visions. The name of the game is Give All.”

She uses this to show that inspiration shouldn’t be discouraged, just the act of outright plagiarism.

The article then goes onto explore the boundaries of public/private space and where the lines blur. She references a piece of film work called ‘Stealing Beauty’ by Guy Ben-Ner, this is a short film involving people acting out real acts of living within room displays in Ikea stores.

Apter ends the article by referring to an interesting case involving an author called Romain Gary who after winning the Goncourt literature prize went onto publish more books under a pseudonym Emily Ajar. One of these works went onto winning another Goncourt prize (which can only be awarded once to an author).

Gary then convinced a nephew to impersonate Ajar so he could accept the prize for him. This backfired later when the nephew blackmailed Gary to continue writing for him as Ajar so he could continue to live the highlife. By doing this he had effectively taken over Gary’s copyright.

Ironically Gary’s work then went onto being accused of plagiarising Ajar’s work.

Apter concludes by bringing up several interesting ideas on ownership and creative practice.

“Is free property definable only as freedom from the legalistic strictures that privatize and corporatize signature”

“How does one deal legally with the ephemeral ownability of language and creative property?”

“What are the ethical and political consequences attendant on the border-policing of the creative commons by copyright and patent holders?”

These are several interesting questions that Apter proposes and it all fits in with my research on the creative industries.

The article was of interest to me mainly due to the links with the Creative Commons movement (the copyright alternative) and its ties with commercial creativity.

I’m investigating the way in which government policy is trying to shape our creative digital industries through policy, and Apter’s thoughts on who exactly owns creativity and if we should have works as a format of free creative common are key to the core of my research.

I plan on using this article to bolster the counter argument to strengthening copyright laws and supporting old business models, which the implication from the digital Britain report points towards. 

This week we are going to conduct some ‘informal’ ethnographic research into youth mobile phone culture.  When you are out and about on your travels over the coming week, whether it be on the bus, walking around campus, or in Birmingham City Centre, try and look how youths use their mobile phones.  Do they use them as fashion accessories?  Mini-ghetto blasters?  A camera?  Do your findings relate in any way to this week’s reading?

Please post your response by 2pm next Thursday 3 December.

This is a roughly accurate account from the start to the present of my personal experiences with the internet.

-Early 1998 First experiences of the web via expensive subscription based services (AOL) on a 32kb modem!

-Got first access to the web at home on family computer using a premium call dial up service (costly indeed). Moving on we then went onto using a new ISP called Freeserve at local rate calls using a 56kb modem!

-Was now using the web to find people of interest and chat with them via ICQ (think MSN messenger but you could look up people in a directory). This then progressed to first experiences of using persistent chat rooms via IRC (internet relay chat).

-Early 1999 meeting the same people regularly on the net encouraged me to take up blogging using a fairly new site at the time, called Livejournal.

-Was starting to use the web for direct media downloads. MP3’s to my minidisk player and low quality films were all downloaded over hours and days via the awesome might of my 56k modem. Was also using my 6th forms web connection in the day to explore music downloads.

-The family got broadband and I got my own PC. Finally the web was opened up for gaming and fast media downloads.

-Applied for a Visa credit card simply so I could engage with shopping on the web. Bought stuff I couldn’t get in this country from a German website.

- In 1999 Napster was suddenly where the free music scene was at and I jumped on the pirate bandwagon. This was to continue till the lawsuit’s brought it to its knees (around 2001) and everyone moved onto sites like the Pirate bay and Demonoid.

-Bought a flight to America to see a friend I made via the web. Got a fantastic deal through a website and saved hundreds of pounds.

-Succumbed to social networking and had a Myspace page until the Facebook revolution happened (I was a fairly early adopter). Also started using Deviantart.com to post my photography for commentary.

-Posted a comment to an article on the BBC news page about foxhunting. Got into a heated debate with friends online through Livejournal.

-In 2004 I got onto World of Warcraft (before it was cool). I then left before they started getting celebrities to say they played it.

-Started using Pandora.com around 2005 (intelligent music streaming from America). Free music and recommendations.

-2008 I got a 750gig hard drive and began to download films, music and entire TV series. Opened up my viewing habits and began to see more live music and films as a result.

-Got a Twitter account after talking to Paul Bradshaw in my interview to start at BCU.

-Got the web on my mobile. Portable web use!

-Used the net to register my new home address when I moved, change driving licence details, order pizza online and check the local traffic status.

Things I’ve not taken up?
I’ve used pretty much all the new technology available to me to enhance my lifestyle. I’ve not really taken up any service that requires paying for (possibly cause I’m poor and there’s free services available to me).

Digitally excluded?
Can’t think of any time when I’ve been left out for not using technology. I’ve embraced anything of worth to me before it could leave me behind. I grew up with the internet as it evolved on a meaningful level.

I use it as a social tool to enhance my communication, a media consumption platform and as resource of information. I could certainly get by without it, but my daily life would require changing to find new sources for resources I previously found online.

Internet & popular culture?
I often find that popular culture lags behind myself and other early adopters of services. In a self-reflective view I quite like the elitist position of knowing you caught onto something before others.

There’s a certain satisfaction/disgust when you see the mainstream media reporting on something you’ve been using for years. It’s also annoying when some second grade reporter does a factually wrong article on something you know more about.

There’s a great diagram on the web that explains elitist behaviour. The circle on the right is stuff the general public like. The one on the left is stuff I like. The overlap in the middle is stuff I no longer like.

This is mainly because when the masses start to like something they tend to pervert its original purpose, the value I derive from it is cast aside and mutated into something else by the new users.

How is this relevant to popular culture? Popular culture lags behind the net savvy and we digitally exclude people until they catch up. The only issue is when they catch up, they often pervert the way things are used e.g. Twitter is used by every man and their dog and is now plagued with spam due to it’s rise in popularity.