Bruns, Axel
Dr Axel Bruns is an Associate Professor in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (http://cci.edu.au/). He is the author of Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage (2008) and Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production (2005), and a co-editor of A Companion to New Media Dynamics (2012, with John Hartley and Jean Burgess) and Uses of Blogs (2006, with Joanne Jacobs). Bruns is an expert on the impact of user-led content creation, or produsage, and his current work focusses on the study of user participation in social media spaces such as Twitter, especially in the context of acute events. His research blog is at http://snurb.info/, and he tweets at @snurb_dot_info. See http://mappingonlinepublics.net/ for more details on his current social media research.
Contributions
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ArticlesAs the Next Big Thing in consumer electronics is introduced, Australia is once again feeling the tyranny of distance from the world's major markets DVD (Digital Video Disc, recently rechristened 'Digital Versatile Disc') has long been hyped as the next step in the digital revolution of home entertainment. A...Read more
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EditorialMemory is everywhere. We remember, more often than not, who and what we are, recognise friends and acquaintances, remember (hopefully) birthdays and anniversaries, and don't forget, as much as we'd sometimes like to, our everyday tasks and duties. But that's just the tip of the iceberg: we also speak of computer memory (usually in the context of needing more...Read more
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ArticlesThey may have been obscured by the popular media's fascination with the World Wide Web, but for many Net users, Usenet newsgroups still constitute an equally important interactive tool. While Web pages present relatively static information that can be structured through...Read more
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Articles"'Cogito ergo sum' is an insufficient measure of existence within Usenet. ... Without some sort of response beyond interior cogitation there is nothing to be perceived by other Usenet users." (MacKinnon 119) Much early research...Read more
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ArticlesThese days, when we speak of the Internet, electronic networks, or computer-mediated communication (CMC) in general, the term 'cyberspace' all too readily presents itself as a blanket description of these communications systems. Without question it's an attractive and powerful metaphor -- and that "the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day...Read more
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ArticlesIf you have a look at the concert schedules around Australia (and elsewhere in the Western world) these days, you could be forgiven for thinking that you've suddenly been transported back in time: there is a procession of old players, playing (mainly) old songs. The Rolling Stones came through a while ago, as...Read more
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ArticlesIt is the same spectacle all over the Western world: whenever delegates gather to discuss the development and consequences of new media technologies, a handful of people among them will stand out from the crowd, and somehow seem not quite to fit in with the remaining assortment of techno-evangelists, Internet ethnographers, multimedia project leaders, and...Read more
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FeatureOne of the most frequent comments about Internet-based media, particularly about newsgroups and the Web, is that they provide a forum for everyone, no matter how obscure or specific their interest -- you'll find dedicated fora for every field, from high-energy physics to learning Klingon, from...Read more
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ArticlesIt's not only recently that computer technology and electronic networking have been surrounded with a vast amount of hyperbole -- sweeping statements of glorious futures awaiting us if we continue on the present course of technological development, with predictions from the 'paperless office' to the vision of permanently uploading one's consciousness to the...Read more
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ArticlesHave you noticed the proliferation of access statistics icons on your favourite bands' Websites? How do you feel about being told you're visitor number 10870 to the Star Wars hate page? Have you wondered why you don't gain weight from all theRead more
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ArticlesPractically any good story follows certain narrative conventions in order to hold its readers' attention and leave them with a feeling of satisfaction -- this goes for fictional tales as well as for many news reports (we do tend to call them 'news stories', after all), for idle gossip as well as for academic papers. In the Western tradition of storytelling,...Read more
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ArticlesIt used to be so simple. If you turn on your TV or radio, your choices are limited: in Australia, there is a maximum of five or six free-to-air TV channels, depending on where you're located, and with a few minor exceptions, the programming is relatively uniform; you know what to expect, and when to expect it. To a...Read more
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ArticlesIn his recent re-evaluation of McLuhanite theories for the information age, Digital McLuhan, Paul Levinson makes what at first glance appears to be a curious statement: he says that on the Web "the common denominator ... is the written word, as it is and has been with all things having to do with computers -- and will likely continue to be until such time, if...Read more
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Articles"On a list concerned with 'media-culture' one would expect the discussion to focus around the way 'media' function" -- Trevor Batten, in a posting to M/C's Media-Culture mailing-list (9 Sep. 2000) If I may begin by speaking personally for a moment: this is...Read more
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EditorialInvested capital demands growth. Growth is possible through the expansion of markets or through finding new products to sell, that is, by creating new markets. Thus, we have seen, over the last one hundred years, the commodification of more and more aspects of human life. However, what superficially...Read more
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ArticlesAll we hear is radio gaga, radio googoo, radio blahblah Radio, what’s new? Radio, someone still loves you Queen, “Radio Gaga” Someone still loves radio—and more people are beginning to...Read more
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EditorialSome ten and a half years ago, David Marshall—then lecturing in the English Department at the University of Queensland—had an idea. Academics around Australia, and around the world, were still coming to terms with this new-fangled thing, the Web, but publishing academic work was more often than not still linked to the slow processes of print...Read more
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EditorialWelcome to the world of pop. Even to announce this issue in such a way seems like a quaint anachronism, a mild nostalgia; the expression echoes the voices of countless TV presenters on Top of the Pops, Beat Club, Countdown, or whatever your local variety was. This association demonstrates that pop has been historically located in the arts and in popular...Read more
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EditorialDoes the arrival of the network society mean we are now a culture of collectors, a society of sharers? We mused about these questions while assembling this M/C Journal issue, which has its genesis in a past event of ‘shared’ confusion. Alex Burns booked into Axel Bruns’s hotel room at the 1998 National Young Writer’s...Read more
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EditorialGlobalisation is often identified as the pre-eminent push towards a global social order. Some see globalisation as an all encompassing and inevitable process towards an emerging “hyperglobal” world order (Held et al.); an “inexorable integration of markets, nation states and technologies to a degree never witnessed before” (Friedman); a world...Read more
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EditorialCollaboration is a highly desirable and, increasingly, often a mandated element in many modes of research, creative and business practice—and a factor on which successful and innovative outcomes, as well as funding, often depend. While there is a growing literature on collaboration (and especially teamwork) in business settings, there is little material...Read more
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ArticlesLists and Social MediaLists have long been an ordering mechanism for computer-mediated social interaction. While far from being the first such mechanism, blogrolls offered an opportunity for bloggers to provide a list of their peers; the present generation of social media environments similarly provide lists of friends and followers. Where blogrolls and other...Read more
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EditorialMining is an industry that likes to maintain a certain element of distance from the rest of the world. The practice of mining for minerals rarely takes place close to homes. If it weren’t for the sea of high-vis clothing that we now see pouring through many city airports in resource-rich countries such as Australia and Canada, and for the...Read more
