Media Arts & Sciences Speaker Series

Speakers: Mark Bell, Asta Zelenkauskaite

Friday, February 24
12:30-1:45pm
room RTV 180
Spring 2012

Full Schedule: http://www.indiana.edu/~telecom/news/t600.shtml

Everyone is invited to this Friday's session in the Media Arts & Sciences Speaker Series, featuring Mark Bell and Asta Zelenkauskaite from the Department of Telecommunications - details below. Topics of this week's session include virtual worlds and Italian television.

Coffee, tea, and cookies will be served... please forward this to colleagues and students who may be interested!

Mark Bell
Title: We are all kinda here: Collaborating in Virtual and Analog Environments

Abstract
Over the past few months, I have been assisting Dr. Anne Massey (Dean's Research Professor & Professor of Information Systems) and a team of researchers with a National Science Foundation Grant. This grant studies collaborative virtual presence (CVP) in collaborative virtual environments (CVE), such as Second Life. Using a range of measurements (SL activity, eye tracking and physiological) and researchers from a number of areas (Telecommunications, Information Systems, HPER) this project is, in itself, a collaborative effort that synchronously captures three streams of data. I will give an overview of the project, its goals and the part I am playing.

Bio:
Mark Bell is a PhD candidate at Indiana University in the Department of Telecommunications. His past research has focused on virtual words but more recent work focuses on deception in computer mediated environments. He is interested in digital deception detection, group information verification, digital image and video manipulation and online identity manipulation.

Asta Zelenkauskaite

Title: RECONCEPTUALIZING GATEKEEPING IN MULTIMODAL CONTEXTS: THE CASE
OF ITALIAN RADIOVISION RTL 102.5

Abstract:
A change is occurring in media production and consumption in mass media contexts that affects the gatekeeping process of content selection: User-generated content (UGC) is increasingly being incorporated into programming. This research asks: What are the differences between attitudes and practices with regards to UGC integration in mass media programming, and what are the actual audience participation patterns?

To address these questions, gatekeeping theory is applied to a case study of an interactive multimedia setting -- a leading Italian radio-television-web station,
station RTL 102.5. Through interviews with media producers and content analysis, this study analyzed two types of UGC: SMS messages (mobile texting) (N=308,339) and Facebook messages (N=62,152).

As regards gatekeepers’ attitudes, the interviews with RTL 102.5 gatekeepers identified a number of editorial content-based criteria for selection of UGC; however, editorial guidelines mostly referred to restrictions and not to preferences, and interaction-based criteria were not explicitly mentioned. In contrast, actual editorial practice revealed not only restrictions on which UG messages were selected for broadcast, such as an avoidance of requests, political content, and nonsequiturs, but also preferences, e.g., for positive program-related content and sports content, and there were differences in preferences for SMS and FB messages.

With regard to user participation, there were many more SMS messages sent to the station overall than Facebook messages. However, proportionately more Facebook messages were selected for broadcasting, and user participation varied throughout the day. Moreover, users sent messages for various purposes, including one-to-one conversations with other audience members discussing private matters; romantic affairs; communication with the program hosts, responding to program prompts/
questions; and expressing their positive attitudes towards the program.

The results of this study point to a need to reconceptualize gatekeeping in interactive mass media settings. While in classical gatekeeping the focal issue is the content, in interactive contexts gatekeeping is more complex. Facebook and SMS messages differ in structure and content, requiring selection criteria tailored to
different UGC genres. Moreover, in interactive programming, messages have to be selected in real time. Finally, given that participation often takes the form of sequential dyadic conversation, to be comprehensible, all parts of a conversation should be selected. In these and other respects, traditional gatekeeping practices are challenged in programming that integrates UGC.

Bio:
Asta Zelenkauskaite is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Telecommunications, Indiana University. Her research interests include Computer-Mediated Communication, and Social Media. She researched user-generated content mediated by TV such as Facebook messages and mobile texting; user participation pattertns in online environment - online Internet Relay Chat; collaboratevely analyzed knowledge depositories such as Wikipedia and user interaction patterns in an online massively multiplayer game BZFlag.

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Concluding Note: if you are interested in presenting work (in progress) in this speaker series in Fall 2012 - regardless in which department you are located - please do not hesitate to contact me: mdeuze@indiana.edu (and forward this message to who may be interested).


Media Arts & Sciences Speaker Series
Every Friday
12:30-1:45pm
room RTV 180
info & schedule: http://www.indiana.edu/~telecom/news/t600.shtml