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Green Tags and Hash: We Must Like Them Sam I Am #Tagging

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How much thought do you put into the tags you assign to your posts?

If you’re like me, the answer is probably not much. I reach the end of the post and then come up with four or five keywords which relate to my post and add a couple of WordPress category tags and that’s about it. Occasionally I might add a trending keyword or two to try to tap into popular culture, but search engine optimisation or SEO comes very much a distant second to my creative process.

That said, I do however find the whole world of SEO and tagging quite fascinating. There is a rhythm to it, once you take the time to observe the patterns and get your head into the technology (which I don’t claim to have done, but I do read a fair bit about the theory). In the rich world of the continually woven Web tapestry, the tie that binds our individual creativity is metadata. Metadata is essentially the tool that gives us information about information or knowledge about knowledge and its principal forms for the Web are tags and links. These are the signposts that lead others to our work, our entry to the Web directory.

One thing I never considered until now is that by tagging and linking we all shape the look and feel of the Web directory. This ability is like a wonderful gift. At school you probably learned about several formal classification systems, such as the Dewey Decimal System for books or the animal taxonomy system in biology. Remember how you had to learn the rules, imposed by others in these formal systems and sometimes the results lead you down a path you thought illogical? Ordered but rigid and reflecting the value systems and judgements of others.

Contrast this to the system operating for the Web, a system so vast and rapidly changing that the human and financial resources required to maintain a formal classification system for its content would be greater than a small nation. Instead we have an informal, ever changing and continually evolving non hierarchical classification system composed of links and tags to which we all contribute. This is known as a folksonomy. Unlike a taxonomy it functions on few formal rules, is produced out of self-interest, is valuable because of its aggregation and continues to function even when data is incomplete. Sounds like a recipe for chaos, right? But it works.

Everything ok quoteWhich takes me back to when I first started using the Web. I remember logging onto a page and thinking how do I know I have started at the very beginning (which according to the Sound of Music is a very good place to start) and not missed something. It felt very foreign and quite ad hoc and not very systematic or logical. Up until that point my sole point of reference for finding information was the library, this was a whole new world. Now it has become second nature to just start somewhere on the Web and see where it leads. Rather than knowing its the end because you have reached the last classification point, it’s now the end when it feels like the end.

The other interesting thing about tagging is that it can give you instant feedback in relation to your work. Most posts start out by the producers allocating their own tags. However as the work is disseminated, others may tag the same work differently, bringing their own perspectives to it. Have you ever tagged something as “humour” only to find that it is tagged as something quite  serious by your readers? Tagging also creates its own language and social norms throughout the communities that use them. “Freshly Pressed” is an example of this in the WordPress community. What to some might connote a laundry service, to this community it means the best of the best, posts judged as quality by WordPress and worthy of promotion and a prize to be achieved. And we contribute to this evolution, every one of us by the tags we create and by the value we assign to tags created by others.

Tagging should therefore be a considered and deliberate choice for creators. It is the modern day equivalent to the shingle and deserves to be more than just an afterthought. We are judged by the metadata we send out and we should create it with as much zeal as we do the main body of our content.

The final word about tagging must go to Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon. So you think the use of hash tags on Twitter, Instagram and now Facebook is pervasive? You’re not alone as this fun YouTube clip shows:

We could all take a leaf out of Jimmy Fallon’s book about the power of tagging. He shows us nightly how to harness the comedic creativity of his audience through the use of hash tags.

Do you put much thought into your tags? Do you use hash tags in your social media? Do you find them annoying?

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Do No Harm: Revisiting Intellectual Property Rights In The Digital World

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The system of intellectual property has developed into a huge machine, largely out of control, and ever more aggressive as it fails to stop the floodwater of information from breaking through the barriers it tries to erect

Aigrain, P 2005 “Positive Intellectual Rights and Information Exchanges” in R A Ghosh (ed), CODE: collaborative ownership and the digital economy, pp 287-315. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press at page 289.

For many who create, these are fighting words.

Undoubtedly, by empowering the user to create the new digital environment has placed the subject of the ambit of copyright protection squarely in the spotlight. Governments around the globe are grappling with finding the right balance between copyright protection and encouraging innovation that builds on previous works. In this country, the Australian Reform Law Commission is currently finalising its review, entitled Copyright and the Digital Economy, into the effectiveness and reform of Australia’s copyright laws in the Internet age. The ALRC released its discussion paper in June 2013 after receiving more than 300 submissions, including from Google and eBay to its issues paper and the same number of submissions again to its discussion paper.

The Australian review follows on the heels of similar reviews held in the United Kingdom, with the main findings summarised in the Hargreaves Report released in 2011, Ireland in 2012 and Canada. In April 2013, the US Government announced it was also reviewing US copyright laws in this press release.

The importance of this inquiry is highlighted by the following statement from Professor Lawrence Lessig, in his article In Defense of Piracy:

The return of the “remix culture” could drive extraordinary economic growth, if encouraged and properly balanced. It could return our culture to a practice that has marked every culture in human history—save a few in the developed world for much of the 20th century – where many create as well as consume.

Or if you prefer the visual, you can see Professor Lessig’s TED talk on this topic here.

At the time of writing this post, Canada leads the way in innovating its approach to copyright laws particularly in the context of user-generated content (UGC). After conducting a review into copyright law in that country, Canada enacted the Copyright Modernization Act which came into force in November 2012. It inserted, what is now widely known as the ‘YouTube clause”, permitting the creation and publication of mashup videos and other UGC without infringing copyright in the works used. The clause, number 29-21, provides that it is not an infringement of copyright for an individual to use an existing work which has been published or made available to the public in the creation of a new work or to disseminate it if:

  • the use is done solely for non-commercial purposes
  • the source of the original is mentioned in the new work if reasonable in the circumstances
  • the individual has reason to believe that the existing work is not infringing copyright
  • the use does not a have a substantial adverse effect, financial or otherwise on the actual or potential exploitation of the existing work or on an existing or potential market for it, including that the new work is not a substitute for the existing one.

At this stage, the ALRC is not recommending that Australia follow the Canadian example believing that determining the issue of whether a work is created solely for non-commercial purposes is problematic. That issue, the ALRC argues is made more difficult by the interaction of UGC and social media platforms where the creator of the UGC may not use the work for commercial purposes, but the platform operator may.

The way forward must balance the needs of new creators with the old and should focus on the concept of harm to the original copyright holder.

It is said that copyright as a form of property was implemented to ensure that original creators could maximise the return for their creations thereby encouraging innovation. However, In practice, creativity never occurs in isolation and works generally borrow from
what has come earlier. Transformative works make a beneficial contribution to modern culture and should be permitted particularly when they cause no harm to the incentives to creation for the original copyright holder.

220px-Barack_Obama_Hope_posterWhilst no direct empirical study exists on the economic consequences of transformative works on the rights of the original, some indicative principles can be drawn from a recent study undertaken in the context of the proposed introduction of a parody fair dealing exemption in the United Kingdom. The study reviewed a sample of more than eight thousand YouTube musical videos which were stated to be parody and viewer behaviour in response to those videos. The study found that the activities of the parody creators had little or no direct impact on the audiences of the original creators and if any impact was observed it was positive in that it appeared to be more advantageous for a commercial video to be parodied than not parodied at all. The addition of creative labour to the original made the work potentially transformative and diminished the possibility of confusion in the minds of viewers between the parody and the original. The study went further to note that even if the parody is produced for commercial purposes, it may well increase demand for the original or be sold in a different market. Contrary to popular belief, there is not necessarily any direct relationship between profitability to the copyright owner and the matter of exploitation by others.

We are at a point in history where we have an opportunity to recalibrate our thinking on copyright. Permitting the use of copyright material where no harm is caused to the original copyright holder strikes the right balance between the present and the future and avoids our children being unnecessarily labelled as copyright criminals.

And keeps things like the Hope poster coming.

Digital Culture: It is All About YOU!

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We hear the term “digital culture” everyday. Usually it is used with a negative connotation, describing a counter-revolution to traditional media delivery and consumption and the death of reading and writing as we know it. But what does the expression really mean and what is our place in this so-called “culture”?

Digital CultureLet me start by outlining what it is not. Digital culture is not the same as being digitally cultured. There is no doubt, our children are growing up more exposed to digital devices than ever before and at an ever earlier age. My children were born before the smartphone/tablet revolution, so it always intrigues me when I see toddlers out with their parents at restaurants with smartphone or tablet in hand. They have replaced books and plastic keys as the distraction devices of the new millennium. And from what I have observed, the practice is almost universal. In fact, just yesterday at the supermarket, a four year old was being pushed around in a trolley playing on his tablet allowing his mother the time to shop. I pass no judgement on this practice other than to use it as an example of children becoming more and more familiar with the use of digital devices, in other words becoming digitally cultured. You can read more about the possible impacts in this UK Telegraph article .

The concept of digitally cultured therefore connotes an ever increasing computerization and digitizatilation of society. It is as a result, that digital culture emerges. In his article, Participation, Remediation, Bricolage: Considering Principal Components of Digital Culture, Mark Deuze notes the main components of a digital culture as:

    • Participation – we have all become active agents in the content creation process
    • Remediation – we build on, modify, amplify and recreate what has come before
    • Bricolage – we assemble and disseminate our version of reality

Whilst to Deuze, this may not be quite so radical as it sounds, to some of us it is a huge change in the way we relate to and engage with news and information. We may never have written a letter to a newspaper editor, done a stint on community radio or complained to the Publications and Media Ombudsmen in the past, but we are now blogging, tweeting and linking. Web 2.0 has brought us an easy and low cost way to do it all. And this not only impacts journalism and the way we consume news, but also impacts on product development, marketing, public relations, corporate communication and many other sectors of the economy.

Let’s have a closer look at blogging and see how that fits in with Deuze’s three components.

Examples of news and political blogs abound in the Australian context. In late 2011, Greg Jericho, the author of the Rise of the Fifth Estate and pro blogger at Grog’s Gamut, compiled this list of Australian political blogs. The 2013 winner of the Best Australian Blogs competition in the commentary section was AusVotes 2013, a compilation blog. Clearly, Australians who are not journalists are participating in political commentary by running and contributing to blogs. However, far from replacing traditional media sources, they act as a supplement to it. Would these bloggers or blogs have survived this long if traditional media sources were giving the public all they want in news delivery? They lend another voice to the debate, sometimes that voice is objective, sometimes not, sometimes that voice is in pursuit of a personal agenda, sometimes not. An Internet connection, a point of view and some very basic technical skill is all that participation requires.

According to Deuze, remediation:

does not necessarily mean different from or in radical opposition to, the mainstream or dominant ways of doing things, but rather an expression of a distinctly private enactment of human agency in the omnipresent computer-mediated reality.

What this means is that blogs sit alongside traditional media where public journalism is still practiced in corporate news groups. Blogs however rely more on Netiquette or a loose consesual way of reader and producer interaction whilst still building on notions of quality journalistic practice, such as credibility and legitimacy. They often address the experiences of people in a more meaningful way, taking the news story and targeting its relevance towards readers rather than to a demographic.

And finally, bricolage. This refers to the act of creating something new out of what is existing. Think remix, think tweaking and reassembly. Because of Netiquette, bloggers understand the interconnectivity of the world in which they operate. Linking to mainstream media stories, other blogs and refashioning blog posts to apply across different sites and platforms so as to reach different audiences are all part of the blogger’s tool box. Bloggers of value always however add their own opinions and analysis and as such appear to be talking to us.

Created through Tagxedo

Created through Tagxedo

Every time we post a blog, pass a comment on a new item, take a story and post a link to it whilst adding our own viewpoints we are engaging in digital culture. Every time we follow a Titter news feed, retweet, video an event and upload a YouTube video or add to a Wiki we shape digital culture. It is all about YOU and it is all about ME.

Digital culture gives us the freedom to create and publish, but requires us to live up to the responsibility of being discerning and ethical readers. It is indeed a brave, new world.

In what ways do you participate in digital culture? Are you a blogger? Do you prefer other ways of participation, such as microblogging on Twitter or news dissemination on Facebook?