Though we exist in a time of great media upheaval, where the Internet has made available so much story for so little effort, millions are still drawn to long-form traditional narratives. We still go to the cinema, the bookstore, the concert, the play, the big game, the event. Though so much power can be packed into a media snack – a tweet, a blog post, a text message, a sentence, a word, or even an acronym (LMAO anyone?) – we still sit down for super-sized media meals. Something must be inspiring us to pull up that chair and sup from the old media table. Inspiration seems to be the answer. What is the importance of inspiration to storytelling? In our digital world – full of bombardment from massive narrative abstraction and fragmentation, where so much story content is being communicated in so many bits and bytes and packets like bullets from a fiber-optic Gatling gun – we still find time to stick the old media morphine drip in. This happens when we do something so archaic as watch an hour-long drama on network television, spend nine innings at the baseball stadium, or, gasp, read an entire Harry Potter book cover-to-cover. Read more…

Facebook. Twitter. Mybarackobama.com. Text messaging. The president-elect used all of these digital tools to devastating effect in the 2008 election. How did he do it? What strategic lessons can we learn from Barack Obama’s high-tech campaign? How might he deploy this online army of millions to govern? And does President Obama’s historic rise to the White House also propel social networking into the mainstream?

The answers to these important questions have a profound impact on the very near future of our democracy, as well as how we organize, communicate and even do business in the digital age. On the eve of the Obama inauguration, the University of Washington’s Master of Communication in Digital Media program held a dynamic, engaging “UW Insight” conversation that sought to put this digital revolution in perspective.

Part 1 includes the Introduction to this event and a presentation by Prof. Lance Bennett, UW Political Science and Communication, on the digital tools employed during the election.

Parts 2 & 3 after the jump…

Read more…

Is New Media contributing to the economic recession in America?  Is it even a factor, and if so, how?  I was reading Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily earlier, and she posted an entry on yet another PR firm moving to embrace emerging platforms to stay afloat in the social media era.  People are losing their jobs to unintended crowdsourcing, in this case, due to the web’s impact on word-of-mouth and brand/persona marketing.  Agencies have to compete with an entirely new beast.  For example, would Tom Cruise’s image be as tarnished by his relationship with Scientology if it wasn’t for the chatter on Digg, the Wikileaks, and the activities of the Anonymous movement?

Anyway, all of this got me thinking about New Media’s economic impact.  Piracy, net neutrality, e-commerce, web leaks, etc.; do these and other elements of the age in which we live completely subvert traditional avenues of cash flow?  I gather the consensus is somewhere close to a “yes”.  So, if the idea is social media is going to do your work for you because you can no longer control messages, that agencies, studios and other media entities require less overhead and fewer employees, technology is streamlining manufacturing and production methods, customer support is outsourced overseas or provided by the community at-large, and while everyone is willing to pay for delivery platforms they incipiently expect free content (oh, and who the heck really looks at advertising? I mean, really?) then I guess that means no one is spending money and no one is making money.  What do you think?

The economy and social media is no where near my area of study or expertise, so I’m just putting my thoughts out there.  Tell me what you think I should know.  Or, tell me I’m clueless.  I can handle it either way.