From cultural convergence to analysis paralysis and beyond arts

“The Poachers and the Stormtroopers: Cultural Convergence in the Digital Age” is a fascinating study of the intersection of media and culture in the area of fandom and paves the way for Henry Jenkins’ eloquent book published in 2006 Convergence Culture: where old and new media collide. In an era when 'convergence culture' has spread across all forms of media and entertainment (fandom is no longer an underground activity) and media is in transition it is difficult to assess how creators can be financially rewarded for their creations, the notion of intellectual property and copyright are ‘punitive models’ that are inadequate to deal with the contemporary media environment. Corporates e.g. Star Wars/ LucasArts have had to negotiate a balance with fandom enthusiasm and investment in production and protecting intellectual property.

Jenkins’ paradigm for understanding media change spans franchises (corporates top-down) and grassroots level (bottom-up) as media producers as well as consumers. “This book is about the relationship between three contexts – media convergence, participatory culture and collective intelligence,” he writes. He discusses the migratory experience of audiences who will go ‘almost anywhere’ to find the entertainment experience they desire – and the unpredictability of the appropriation of cultural images and their circulation – in a complex media environment which depends on active participation “by a new set of rules nobody really fully understands”. Convergence is not simply a technological term. Jenkins covers the notion of divergence as part of the same phenomenon, and while his focus is on popular culture, he understands that the lines between this and politics have already blurred (Obama’s election campaign is a prime example).

As Pool predicted before Jenkins, convergence does not imply stability, rather as media cultures compete and diversify, it is predicated on tension with change. Jenkins’ aim is to understand some of the ways in which convergence is impacting on popular culture in America, “in particular the ways in which it is impacting on the relationship between media audiences, producers and content.” He describes us as living within a ‘convergence culture’ which will lie somewhere between the world ‘without gatekeepers’ and the world with ‘too tightly controlled gatekeepers’. A world where audiences empowered with new technologies are part of the landscape and producers will be rewarded for embracing participatory culture.

I found Douglas Bowman’s ‘abrupt exit’ (The Sunday Age, Business syndicated from the New York Times) from Google very well-handled by the designer who explained on his blog that when user data wholly dictates the engineering of a site, it leaves little room for designer innovation (is this an example of ‘analysis paralysis’?). The question is how textured the feedback is and whether reactive data when taken to an extreme, is the most useful in building web design. Certainly, Bowman is not suggesting that designers should ignore user feedback which he states informs valuable insights.

The website I’ve been following Arts Hub has become slightly more streamlined but has not improved aesthetically. News is divided into latest reviews, views and profiles with the first and last being free content. It still carries advertisements including the easy stray click to Deakin University on the right hand side. It is a straightforward click on reviews to ‘free content’, but ‘premium content’ – e.g. latest Australian news takes the user to the beginning of the article with only one line displayed before it asks you to sign in or join now. I guess it’s the balancing act of piquing interest as discussed last week. Partial feed is not saleable, however, just look at the presentation of Crikey's new aggregated content.

Arts Hub has a flash through of top stories that seems to be regularly updated but features many media releases. It is optimising business opportunities and resolving copyright issues (although Fairfax has attempted to claim copyright over headlines and bylines) by making the user click through directly to other publications to see full stories from national or international publications (the view remains clunky and aesthetically unappealing with the summary, link and comment box). It features an arts directory with many entries ‘that have not yet provided a profile’. CEO Lisa Watts was announced in early April. Under events, classifieds and arts directory users are invited to browse or lodge an advertisement. It is offering a free 60 day trial for companies. It is encouraging members to keep in touch with Facebook page (for latest giveaways) or Twitter in its e-bulletin. Central to driving its subscriptions are employment and volunteering opportunities, residencies and auditions etc. However, it does not sort employment opportunities from voluntary and other opportunities for members except to offer a volunteer search for the user actively seeking voluntary positions or a breakdown of industry sectors. It offers a browse job function without specific organisational details to all users. Arts Hub charges for job and volunteer listings.

Having looked at mediabistro.com, although overwhelmed, I find the content much more tantalising and it’s skew more creative than Arts Hub, while it targets a broader, more textured demographic and showcases more interesting offers.

Adventures in Cyberspace

I have only recently analysed my disenchantment with the Arts Hub site, which Gemma discussed in our first class website briefing. I have never really taken to the facelift which was voted most popular in a design contest, particularly for a vehicle purporting to represent the ‘creative career community’. But it is the design and navigation of the site that I find cumbersome. From the home page it requires two clicks to reach a story which we may or may not be really interested in after the abbreviated introduction.

A large advertisement on the front page for a degree in arts and entertainment management takes you off-site to Deakin University’s site. This is a distraction.

When you enter ‘latest news’ there is a useful function ‘browse by sector’ which allows you target the kind of news you’re looking for but still you have to enter two clicks to reach the news, and consider an in-your-face comment function before actually reading the article.

And something which is inexcusable online is having outdated copy under ‘latest news’ and ‘profiles’.

News is a mixture of RSS feeds from different national and international newspapers, press releases and arts hub articles. It is impossible to decipher the source on first viewing the link, which might be sourced as e.g.(Australia). Members are emailed a weekly e-bulletin “The Front Page” which is much simpler to navigate, once you’ve scrolled through the ticket giveaways, you can click directly through to articles of your choice. Reviews of mixed quality precede latest headlines.

The drop down menus are an irritating feature though, here they are not cluttered, relatively clean and clear and not too difficult to navigate.

Events are classified by sector without much art in presentation and do not indicate the paucity of content available, mainly only advertised events seem to get listed.

At least the advertising is generally well connected to the intent of the site, although printing deals on the home page represent a more tenuous connection.

Profiles are a good way of recognising some of the performers who are doing good work but are scarcely visible in mainstream media. Again the selection and quality of these profiles varies and they are left online after their currency e.g. a forthcoming season has ended.

Of course, for the subscriber the jobs listings are an important feature, but while you can browse by category and location there seems to be no distinction in job coding between opportunities, volunteering and paid jobs.

When this service was conceived by David Eedle and Fiona Boyd nine years ago it was a break through in communication for the arts and creative services community. Although its content, particularly free content, and collaborative opportunities have grown and developed and its services have increased in reach, the accessibility of valuable information for arts workers seems devalued by a sprawling focus.

This leads me to a question: why is Arts Hub currently targeting lapsed subscribers with special deals?

Another website I’ve been looking at is www.cvent.com/. With the proliferation of event management companies in Australia, it takes a focussed approach to cut through the clutter.

This US based company emailed me a lunch invitation to a demonstration of Cvent event management prowess and a colleague a meeting request to a webinar to discuss web survey best practice. The slick website (which unfortunately does include some drop down menus, but uses a variety of techniques to sort and semi-customise information) relates to a suite of integrated web products from a ten year old company, including event management software and supplier network, as well as web survey software and strategic meetings management and email marketing.

Their recently launched freely available database of US and more locally based meeting suppliers is surprisingly impressive. I wonder what the cost is to the ‘supplier’ They also make good use of YouTube and have made some provision for collaborative content inviting comments in response to self-promotional blogs and a Twitter following. They claim to have helped diverse customers manage over 150,000+ marketing campaigns, events and web surveys. Of course, this statistic glosses over the nature of the ‘help’. Perhaps they should be the subject of a web survey.

It is interesting that both these websites have evolved over a similar timeframe (one fundamentally product based and the other services based) originating in different countries. Both have expanded on a global scale – Arts Hub has expanded into the US and the UK and Cvent is now multinational in its reach. They have utilised different approaches to expanding technology towards the creation of free content and a dynamic user interface.