So I'm completing an MA in Creative Industries and Cultural Policy and part of that is the module Social Media as Culture. It is an odd one for me because while I use Twitter and Facebook, Posterous, Digg, Delicious, Ping and so on, I don't know if I really care about social media over and above using it. Whatever 'it' is.
I haven't got to grips with thinking about it which is obviously the point of the module, to get us thinking!
Unlike a lot of my fellow students, who will be using Social Media as part of their ongoing work, I'm not sure I'll ever really be in that position. I understand that it is a new, great, way of communicating with a disparate group of individuals but I don't think I'll ever be at a stage in my life where I construct an online persona that I think long and hard about and ensure it is 'on message' or really worry about how many people follow me as Marwick and Boyd write about in I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience.
So it was with some interest that I attended the Beyond 2010 event in Birmingham, part of a wider group of events of the Hello Digital week long event.
Billed as an event that would be dynamic, interactive and thought provoking and would provide models of practice to help the public service sector deliver enhanced and more efficient services, it was unclear whether we would see an event like this again as the oft mentioned spending review was announced during the opening keynotes. It is however, an indication of the importance placed on the perceived benefits of the digital environment.
Due to work commitments I could only stay for the first half of the first day so I feel slightly wrong critiquing the event as a whole. I did however see the first keynotes and more interestingly one of the panel workshops. My initial view was that this was going to be a fairly dry conference in terms of looking at social media as a medium. This was about savings and efficiency, working smarter and although not explicitly stated it seemed to me about how to get citizens to do a lot of your work for you.
During my time at the event I have to admit to being fairly non-commital to most of the talks and I'm not sure I could have lasted the full two days. There was a strand however that was very interesting and that was centred around Open Data and the benefits that this can bring to our communities and society at large. Kicked off by Nigel Shadbolt an academic by day and government transparency and open data advisor by night. Nigel talked about how cholera was identified as a water borne disease in the 1800's by plotting outbreaks and mapping them on, well, maps. He went on to talk about how open data can change institutional behaviour. This can be brought about by releasing the most mundane and dry data as there is always someone who will mash it up into something of interest and importance. Publish everything was his mantra.
The second talk of interest was by Will Perrin who runs, amongst other sites
http://www.kingscrossenvironment.com/ Here is the Shirky arguement writ large. An individual, seeking to make change in his local environment by tapping into his cognitive surplus. Harnessing the opportunities created by a group of individual but like minded people, accessing data and turning that to social change in a number of ways, in Wills case by ensuring his local council upholds their statutory duties. He does this by using Freedom of Information calls and then presenting the data in the most simple and readable manner. It gets things done.
But here is my problem with Open Data. If this not just a way for public service organisations to use cheap (read free) labour to do the things they should be doing anyway. Are they simply using and abusing Social Capital?
I'm a member of the Centre for Media and Cultural Research in the School of Media at Birmingham City University: 