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Mashup Patterns

July 13, 2009 by Roy Johnson

designs and examples for the modern enterprise

Mashups originated in the music industry, where a mashup was a combination of two or more songs to create a new experience. Typically, the vocal track of one song was combined with the instrumental background of another. The result was a hybrid – but something new. For most consumers, mashups are built with data from Google Maps, Flickr, YouTube, Amazon, and eBay. These companies were pro-active in offering up their data for other people’s use. In Mashup Patterns Michael Ogrinz is more concerned with ‘enterprise’ (that is, Big Business) where there may be less enthusiasm in giving access to data. But it can be ‘gathered’ nevertheless – and he offers the polite euphemism ‘harvesting’ to avoid the more nasty-sounding term ‘screen-scraping’.

Mashup PatternsHe also sees rich potential in the congruence of mashups with Software as a Service (SaaS) – firms which offer ready-made software solutions to which business users subscribe at very little cost. This saves them the heavy investment costs of developing their own. His emphasis is on showing useful solutions to problems: this is the ‘patterns’ of his title. A pattern is a solution to a problem which can be re-used elsewhere to solve a different problem. What he doesn’t do is show the technical detail of how it’s done. For that you might wish to consult the book’s companion, J. Jeffrey Hanson’s Mashups: Strategies for the Modern Enterprise.

It’s understandably assumed that data will be taken from more than one source to create a mashup – but he gives examples where only one source is used. In both cases however, scheduling of gathering the data may be crucial, especially on time-sensitive issues such as stock market prices.

The book is rich in examples. An ‘alerter’ can be used to warn businesses of new software releases or product updates, or compare price fluctuations to identify buying opportunities. Similarly, price analysis mashups allow businesses to keep an eye on competitors and offer lower prices.

Mashups he calls ‘Infinite Monkeys’ can be used to analyse huge amounts of data, which are too big for human analysis. This is done to uncover hidden trends – such as geographic hot spots where more widgets sell, more accidents occur, or where house repossessions are on the rise.

Mashups can also analyse data in blogs, wikis, and email messages to deal with what he calls ‘reputation management’ – such as most frequently cited sources. The patterns he describes are given a ‘fragility’ rating – based on how likely the data they use is going to become unavailable (because sites do go down or even disappear).

One of the most obvious uses of mashup technology is the holiday planner. Data can be drawn from multiple sources such as airline schedules, hotel booking agencies, car hire firms, and restaurants to produce a complete package.

All these applications are grouped into chapters which consider how information can be obtained from various sources, how it can be enriched, recombined, and repurposed. The term ‘enterprise’ in his subtitle is reflected in the fact that most concrete examples involve improving sales, making a business more effective, identifying new business opportunities, and in general maximising profit.

He finishes with some real life case studies in which companies successfully used mashups to solve problems – from Associated Press to the Philadelphia Stock Exchange and Reuters. This emphasis on commerce might make the book appeal to business users as well as the content creators and software developers who are most likely to be taken up with the possibilities of mashups.

© Roy Johnson 2009

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Michael Ogrinz, Mashup Patterns: Designs and Examples for the Modern Enterprise, London: Addison-Wesley, 2009, pp.400, ISBN: 032157947X


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Mediactive

December 27, 2010 by Roy Johnson

new journalism, new publishing, new media

Mediactive is the latest stage in an argument that has been developing for some time now. In 2004 Dan Gillmor launched the notion of the ‘citizen journalist’ in his polemic We the Media. He argued that news is too important to be left entirely in the hands of professional journalists, and that bloggers (who were at that time a new phenomenon) had a corrective influence that should be encouraged. Since anyone with access to a computer and the Internet can start blogging within five minutes, it was in the power of ordinary people to create an additional and maybe an alternative voice to the established press and the broadcast media. They can also do this at virtually no cost, because the open source movement makes powerful software available to us free of charge. Since that time the sales of print newspapers have been plummeting, and bloggers have risen in importance and influence, to the extent that all major newspapers now have their own staff bloggers, having once ridiculed their very existence.

Mediactive Mediactive is Gillmor’s update to these arguments, in which he urges us all to become more active, sceptical, and open consumers of information – but also active participants in its creation. And he even provides the tools to do the job. In the past you needed to own printing presses, publishing companies, and distribution networks to make even the smallest item of information available to a wider audience. But now all that has changed. Because as he argues very persuasively (referencing Clay Shirky) – the barriers to entry are virtually zero. “You don’t need anybody’s permission, and you don’t need much money either”. In other words, individual entrepreneurs now have an entirely new opportunity to make information available to the public.

His book is in three parts: first, the arguments for becoming active in the creation of media (print, blogs, video, podcasts); second, the tools for engagement and how to use them; and third, the large socio-legal issues and conflicts in online advocacy and the realms of media literacy in education.

This is an interesting book in its own right as a physical object. Mediactive exists primarily as an on-going project, a web-based set of resources, of which this printed book is only one manifestation, which might well be called Version 1.0. Other manifestations already exist as web pages, and you can download the whole thing as a PDF file free of charge at Mediactive.com. In time, as new materials, updated evidence, modifications, and corrections are made, the version number will change – just as in the case of software at the moment.

Dan Gillmor is one of those people who believe that making books available as free downloads increases the sales of a print version. It has to be said that in this form of print on demand (POD) format these books are not very attractive. They have small page margins, the first lines of paragraphs are indented, typography is crude, and perhaps worst of all, underlining is used to show where hyperlinks exist in the online version.

It has no index, footnotes, or bibliography. All of these are available in the master copy which exists on line. It’s rather like a book that has been produced by an enthusiastic amateur using a desktop publishing kit. It’s also written in bite-sized chunks for reading on screen. What works in one medium doesn’t necessarily translate well without problems for another

However this is the Brave New World of publishing and distributing ideas, and I think we might expect a few rough edges in these emerging forms, just as I’m equally confident that production standards will rise as the form matures. If you don’t believe me, have a look at any document you produced twenty years ago.

Basically he wants us all to become more vigilant and active participants in using the new media tools at our disposal. His strongest argument in support of citizen media against traditional journalism and especially broadcast media is also its smallest and simplest elements – the hyperlink and the comment. If television news reports an event, we have no way of clicking through to check the source of the information or any alternatives there might be, and we have no way of offering corrective feedback or criticism.

Having urged participation, he then goes through the best known of the new media tools – blogs, YouTube, Flickr, and even content management systems (CMS), though like me, he drew the line at Drupal as a techie step too far.

All this creates an entirely new opportunity to the individual entrepreneur in any field of interest. That’s because the barriers to entry are virtually zero. “You don’t need anybody’s permission, and you don’t need much money either.”

He poses interesting questions and raises thought-provoking questions. For instance, the apparently simple query: “What is journalism?” If somebody documents arguments over a planning application to build a new factory in their neighbourhood on a blog – is that journalism? And if not, why not? His answer would be yes – because even though you are not paid for writing the article or employed by a newspaper, the article is performing the function of journalism by making information publicly available.

He also poses an interesting notion that is reflected in the very nature of the book itself. “When is a work complete?” Why shouldn’t a digital work live on and accrue to itself all the modifications, corrections, additions, and links to further information that become available over time? There is no reason why a book should not be like a Wikipedia entry – subject to constant updating and revision.

Of course this idea leads in turn to the question “What is a book?” – to which this production is an interesting answer. Of course we are accustomed to a book being a relatively static or fixed entity, existing in maybe at the most two or three editions. But there is no reason why we should not refer in future footnotes and references to Book Title, Version 3.1.5

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© Roy Johnson 2011


Dan Gillmor, Mediactive, Lulu.com, 2010, pp.183, ISBN: 0557789427


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Filed Under: Media Tagged With: Communication, Cultural history, Journalism, Media, New media, Publishing, Technology

Metaphor

July 15, 2009 by Roy Johnson

its meaning in literature and general culture

Routledge have a series of books (New Critical Idiom) which offer monographs examining the key concepts and critical terms used in literary, cultural, and media studies. They seek to bring modern theory to bear upon traditional concepts, so as to illustrate the development of modern usages and shifts in contemporary interpretation. David Punter’s examination of metaphor starts by looking at its history. This begins with Aristotle’s observation in his Poetics (350 BC) that the genius of metaphor lies in the ability to see similarities in two different things.

Metaphor That is at the base of metaphor in all its forms – similes, metaphors, metonymy, synecdoche, symbols, and allegories – and I think he was wise in not getting hung up about the differences between them. He looks at examples in poetry and prose, showing them working at various levels of complexity – from simple similes to extended metaphors which seem to be operating at a ‘beyond the text’ level. After establishing the basics, he moves on to look at metaphor in a non-European context (specifically, Chinese poetry) then at public or political metaphors (‘Fathers4Justice’, the Crown, and Labour’s red rose symbol – cue William Blake).

In most cases his approach is to show what lies beneath the ‘intended’ meaning(s) so as to show others, that might be unintended, lurking below. To give an example that never ceases to amaze me, when local government officers speak of their ‘front line’ services, I wonder if sub-consciously they think of the public (their clients, whose interests they are supposed to be serving) as their enemy, with whom they are at war?

Then he tries something more difficult – interpreting modern texts that seem to have metaphorical meanings to which (it would seem) we do not have access – The Life of Pi being his most prominent example. This didn’t seem so convincing.

There’s also a discussion of psycho-analysis and metaphor which I thought might say something about what the two things being likened to each other might reveal about the person making the comparison – but he drifts off into a consideration of Edward Lear’s nonsense poetry. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that Lear’s famously bathetic last lines (‘That elastic old person of Pinner’) which merely echo the first, might just be an example of feeble whimsy.

At its weakest, his commentaries are not much more than chasing word associations (‘Howling at the moon’-> Howling Wolf -> Wolf -> Sheep -> Wolf -> Rome) and so on, but at their best he offers genuine insights into the limits and possibilities of his subject.

And despite any differences one might have with his interpretations, any students of literature (and in particular, poetry) will find his extended analyses of modern poets (Hardy, Hughes, W.S. Graham, Walcott) very illuminating.

© Roy Johnson 2007

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David Punter, Metaphor, London: Routledge, 2007, pp.158, ISBN: 0415281660


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MTIV: New Media Design

June 14, 2009 by Roy Johnson

new media design principles, plus tips on inspiration

Hillman Curtis is one of the new generation of multi-media designers – with a background in writing and rock music rather than art college. This is his credo on the process of professional new media design – which is centred on listening carefully to what clients want, and helping them to articulate their ideas. It’s a glamorous production, with big margins, glossy paper, and double-spread photos.

New Media Design In the first part of the book he spells out his approach to designing and managing projects. He gets his stimulus from magazines, movies, and other people’s Web sites, collecting examples of good design for inspiration. One of the main purposes of this book is to communicate this personal enthusiasm – which he does very well.

You feel as if you’re only a couple of steps away from your own award-winning designs. The down side is, he doesn’t go into any technical detail on how to do it. In the central section of the book he gives examples of the people whose work has inspired him – graphic designers Saul Bass, Kyle Cooper and Joseph Müller-Brockman, painter Mark Rothko, plus film directors David Mamet and Sydney Lumet.

I’ll visit a gallery, buy or borrow a few CDs, see a couple of movies, and study my favourite movies on DVD. I’ll read art history, film theory … and of course I immerse myself constantly in design books and magazines.

It’s interesting to note how the possibilities of motion and the Web has led to these Flash designers thinking of themselves as directors of sixty second movies which must deliver a theme, plus a coherent and complete experience.

When it comes to the technical matters discussed in part three, he hands over the baton to other writers, so what we get is a series of essays from experts. These are on colour theory, design with grids, font construction, and Web page layout. These are quite useful primers, particularly if you want a quick introduction to HTML and XML. He also includes a chapter on usability from Steve Krug’s excellent Don’t Make Me Think, and a there’s a finale encouraging would-be movie makers to try their hands at digital video.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Hillman Curtis, MTIV: Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer, Indianapolis (IN): New Riders, 2002, pp.240, ISBN: 0735711658


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Nerds 2.0.1 – A Brief History of the Internet

June 13, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Internet HistoryTV programmes of interviews with Internet personalities

Robert Cringely’s Triumph of the Nerds won legions of computer-skeptical and computer-naive viewers with its mix of minutiae and hip techniques. Going one step further into the digital maze, Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet operates as a sequel of sorts to the surprise docu-hit. Just as its precursor chronicled the rise of empires built on computer software, Nerds 2.0.1 collects interviews from key players in the development of the Internet.

Fashionably hip in its visual feel, the film begins by amassing data on the net’s crowning, collaborative irony: conceived in the Pentagon during the counterculture’s smokiest high point by members–dare it be said–of the military industrial complex, the Net developed on the axis of university research networks and Deadhead (as in the Grateful Dead) electronic bulletin boards.

Much of the rest has become history, but Internet and computer industry pundit Robert X. Cringley makes the narrative a jumping, attractive embrace of being a nerd. Interviews with Bill Gates, Mark Andreesen, and Steve Case make these three hours (three tapes slipcased in a nice box) fly by.

This video series is an excellent addition to the material available on computer history. It moves at a fast pace and provides interviews with many of the key people in the industry. It does not cover every aspect of computer history, but it does fill in some gaps that other references missed. I encourage anyone interested in computer history to add this video series to their library. Excellent footage, nicely put together.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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Robert X Cringley, Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet, VHS Video (3 tapes) ASIN: 6305128235


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New Media in Late 20th-century Art

July 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

new forms of multimedia, performance, and digital art

There’s nothing like discussing ‘contemporary’ art forms for making you realise we’re now in the twenty-first century. When you look at developments which seem quite recent (particularly related to the Internet) you suddenly realise that these were in the LAST CENTURY!! – (to sound for a moment a little like Tom Wolfe). The latter half of the nineteen hundreds saw artists breaking up the boundaries of aesthetic genres and introducing all sorts of new technology into their work – as well as mixing disparate activities into one experience. New Media in Late 20th-century Art is a survey of the new media which evolved roughly in the period 1950—2000.

New Media in Late 20th-century Art It covers the mixing of media and performance, video art, video installations, and the new forms of digital art. Starting from the notion that traditional Art has been a painting in two dimensions, Michael Rush looks at the extensions made by the twentieth century. It’s a beautifully illustrated book, with picture captions which explain the significance of each medium.

After an introductory consideration of the inclusion of Time, which is made possible by film, he passes into the early stages of media and performance. This covers the multimedia happenings which started with events organised by the painter Robert Rauschenberg, the composer John Cage, and the choreographer Merce Cunningham organised in the 1960s. These mixed together various combinations of film, acting, music, and dance, and there began the widespread use of video film around the same time.

Performances range from video films of ultra-minimalist events such as hand gestures or people asleep, to live broadcasts of people commenting whilst under local anaesthetic on their own cosmetic surgery operations. Yes, it’s true.

There’s a lot of combining performance art with video recordings of it. Artists put themselves into embarrassing and even dangerous situations and record the consequences as a work of ‘art’. The problem for a lot of the art works created between the 1960s an 1980s is that there is little easily recoverable record of them. On the plus side, there are lots and lots of artists represented here – and their work is illustrated in colour with stills from exhibitions and ‘installations’.

The general problem with the survey is that most of its emphasis is on the content of the so-called art works, rather than the art itself. There is nothing new in an artist putting her adolescent traumas of sexual identity into a work of art just because it’s in the form of a video film.

The older artist to whom most repeated reference is made in the context of cross-boundary works is Marcel Duchamp, and the contemporary names which come up most frequently are Naim June Paik and Bill Viola, both installation artists. Most of these works seem to add up to multiple projections, using TV monitors or giant split screens

Bill Viola – ‘Acceptance’ 2008

A section on digital art attempts to bring things up to date with digitally altered photography and virtual reality programs. But in fact it’s very difficult to keep up with the developments of digital multimedia. I think the publishers will do Michael Rush a favour by publishing a second edition which allows him to add material on the Flash and Shockwave movies which are now sweeping the Web.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Michael Rush, New Media in Late 20th-Century Art, London: Thames and Hudson, revised edition 2005, pp.248, ISBN: 0500203784


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New Media Language

May 21, 2009 by Roy Johnson

new forms of language, rhetoric, and communication

This is a collection of papers given at a conference on ‘Language, Media, and International Communication’ at Oxford University. The contributions are from academics and journalists, and the best thing about them is that they are interestingly varied in topic and approach. Issues discussed include the manner in which the norms of communication in the English-speaking world are affecting speakers of other languages. The example given is of an assistant in MacDonald’s in Budapest who speaks Hungarian, but uses an Anglo-American ‘discourse’.

New Media LanguageRobin Lakoff also writes on the ‘new incivility’ – how swearing and bad manners have risen to the surface of public discourse, from the television chat show to the theatres of government in the west. Sometimes the arguments seem to take a sledgehammer to crack nuts. Martin Conboy’s otherwise excellent analysis of the language of hysterical chauvinism in The Sun could have been done without evoking references to Mikhail Bakhtin.

Despite the title of the book, the emphasis is more on media than on language. John Carey looks at the problems of establishing credulity in reportage, and there’s a well-informed piece on the BBC’s anguish regarding the middlebrow nature of Radio 4.

One of the best pieces in the collection is by co-editor Diana Lewis on the changes brought about to the concept of news and the way it is broadcast as a result of now being simultaneously available in so many different forms. It comes at us in traditional manner via newspapers, radio, and television – but to these are now added instantly updated web sites, news feeds, and personal blogs – all of which can come along with a huge variety of background and contextual materials, available at the click of a hyperlink. Have a look at any page on a Wikipedia entry, and you’ll see what she means.

I also enjoyed an amusing piece from the Guardian columnist Malcolm Gluck on the difficulty of describing wines without slipping into Pseud’s Corner prose. At a more serious level, there’s an excellent piece analysing the duplicitous and rhetorical devices used in White House press briefings, where the official spokespeople try to give away as little as possible, and the press representatives try equally hard to make them admit the truth of what is going on.

There are two good chapters from professional lexicographers. John Ayto looks at the way in which newspapers create neologisms by what’s called ‘blending’ – as in motel comes from a blend of motor + hotel. John Simpson, one of the editors at the Oxford English Dictionary, considers the problem of accepting new media forms such as film, tabloids, and email as the sources for word definitions.

It certainly deals with traditional as well as new media – because there’s lots on the press, particularly the tabloids. This will be of interest to students of media, communication skills, politics, and current affairs, as well as anyone who follows trends in current language use.

© Roy Johnson 2004

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Jean Aitchison and Diana M. Lewis, New Media Language, Abingdon: Routledge, 2003, pp.209, ISBN: 0415283043


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Pause and Effect: the art of interactive narrative

July 9, 2009 by Roy Johnson

techniques of telling stories in visual media

Pause and Effect examines the intersection of storytelling, visual arts, new media, and interactivity. It’s a mixture of a little theorising with plenty of practical examples. Mark Meadows starts reasonably well with some interesting reflections on narrative and perspective, and then plunges valiantly into the realm of literary narratives. But before giving himself time to consider them seriously, he’s off into Excel spreadsheets and interactive games. It’s a very elegantly designed book. Almost every page is illustrated with diagrams, screenshots, and paintings.

Click for details at AmazonHe ventures bravely into first, second, and third person narratives, plus point of view. Famous names come thick and fast – Homer, Aristotle, Dostoyevski, Giotto, James Joyce. We get reflections on novels, TV programs, video games, and Spiderman comics. But it’s hard to find a coherent argument. Most of what he has to say is descriptive rather than analytical.

This is a shame, because theoretical reflections on new media design would be very welcome – but here there is the sense of someone struggling with issues which even literary theorists have sorted out long ago.

He does look at some interesting examples of narrative art – religious paintings and tablets. But when you think about it, the traditional narrative painting is ‘cheating’ in terms of conveying a new story. Viewers of ‘The Annunciation’ already know the sequence of events when they see the depiction of them in two dimensions.

There are some interviews with designers of multimedia and interactive events, plus case studies which feature contemporary games designers. He also covers interesting reports of experiments which seek to blend digital genres. Probably the best part of the book however is where he offers reflections on narrative and architecture, second-person point of view, and 3D virtual reality.

This is a publication which will appeal to people who want to pursue ideas about narrative theory. Web designers and new media buffs will certainly pick up some new lines of investigation to think about.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Mark Stephen Meadows, Pause and Effect: the art of interactive narrative, Indianapolis (IN): New Riders, 2003, pp.257, ISBN: 0735711712


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Plagiarism, Copyright, and New Media

July 21, 2011 by Roy Johnson

how digitization affects creative work

Plagiarism

Plagiarism Copyright New MediaStrange thought it may seem, it’s not possible to copyright the title of a creative work. There is nothing to stop you writing a novel called Where Angels Fear to Tread, making a film called Gone with the Wind, or composing a musical show called A Little Night Music. In fact all of these examples have taken their titles from works of art which preceded them. You might be criticised for lack of originality; you would certainly risk creating confusion, but nobody could stop you. Copying somebody else’s title is not the same thing as plagiarism. This isn’t particularly well known, but it’s a fact.


Ideas

It’s also not possible to copyright an idea. You can have the idea for inventing invisible steel, but you can’t copyright or patent the idea itself. Copyright and patent applications are required to be detailed descriptions for the manufacture and implementation of new ideas. That is, you can only copyright the process of actually making invisible steel.

In the creative arts, it’s not possible to copyright the idea for a new series of television programmes, the plot outline for a new opera, or the concept for a new video game or iPhone app. You only have copyable rights to such a product when the thing itself has been produced. That’s why proposals for new works such as these are kept under tight wraps by production companies. They don’t want their rivals to get in first.


Music

The issues of ownership in recorded sound are increasingly complex since the arrival of digitization. But there are two fundamental distinctions to be made which affect plagiarism and copyright:

  1. Melodies can be copyrighted
  2. Chord sequences can not be copyrighted

In 1970 the Beatles guitarist George Harrison published a song called My Sweet Lord which went on to become a big hit. The problem was that it was note-for-note identical to a song called He’s So Fine recorded by an all-girl black group called The Chiffons. Harrison claimed that it was a case of ‘subconsciously’ copying. A court case ensued in which just about everyone’s reputation was damaged and a lot of money changed hands.

Similar cases have arisen elsewhere, but now with less frequency, since it is relatively easy to prove the similarity between two melodies, even if they have different underlying harmonic sequences.

In the case of harmony and chord sequence, the case is quite different. Any number of tunes have been written based on an identical harmonic sequence. George Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm has a relatively simple chord progression which has been a great favourite of jazz musicians because it provides a comfortable sequence on which to improvise. New songs composed to fit on top of the original harmony include Ah-Leu-Cha, Allen’s Alley, Anthropology, Lemon Drop, Lester Leaps In, Red Cross, Salt Peanuts, and Squatty-Roo.


Sampling

PlagiarismSampling occurs when one part of a song or a musical performance is taken and re-used as part of a different composition or performance. This is often done using electronic equipment and software programs. The sampled portion can also be edited or played back continuously in a ‘loop’ to form the background for a new composition. This practice has been widespread in popular music for the last twenty years.

It’s currently a vexed area of copyright and plagiarism, and many successful court cases have been fought by artists claiming that their work was being used without recognition or payment. Some have been successful even though the original sample has been edited and changed almost beyond recognition.

The argument in favour of sampling invokes the concept of ‘fair use’ in copyright law. This recognises the right of one person to quote from the work of another when creating an original work. [This happens all the time in academic scholarship and research.]

Open Source supporters such as Laurence Lessig and Cory Doctorow argue that sampling and fair use should be tolerated in favour of creative expression. Detractors argue that if the newly composed work relies too heavily on the original sample for its effect (such as a recognisable guitar riff in pop music) it falls into the realm of plagiarism.


Mashups

A mashup is the fusion of two separate sources of digital information to form a new entity. The following example shows the combination of a geographic map with information on flights in and out of Schipol airport Holland to produce a real-time (and interactive) data presentation program.

In this case it’s likely that permission has been sought to use these sources of information. But thousands and thousands of mashups are created in the world of pop music where the lyrics from one song are overlaid on the instrumentals or the melody of another. These instances raise issues which the copyright laws have been unable to resolve.

Defenders of mashups claim ‘fair use’ arguments, and point to the fact that the new product is ‘original’ in that it did not exist before. Critics have pointed to unacknowledged use of material, but the court cases they have brought have rarely been successful, because the people being sued rarely have any money. Pop music mashups is a minority sub-culture in which people produce things just for the hell of it – or just because it can be done.


Film

In the realm of film, literal copying and even plagiarism are rare – for the simple reason that access to the original materials would be difficult and permission to quote expensive. Rare exceptions include Woody Allen’s Play it again, Sam which includes reconstructions and direct imitations of films featuring Humphrey Bogart and in particular Michael Curtiz’s 1942 film Casablanca.

Sometimes films include re-makes of an original story. For example, The Big Sleep was originally filmed by Howard Hawks in 1946, based on Raymond Chandler’s 1939 novel of the same name. It was re-made in 1978 by Michael Winner and the setting transferred to England. In both cases, these are ‘interpretations’; of Chandler’s original story.

In 1998 Luc Van Sant created a shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho, which was itself taken from Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel, based on a true-life Wisconsin serial killer. Although many of the camera angles and shots are very similar, the cast is different, the setting updated, and the theme music re-orchestrated. It was not particularly well-received, but nobody accused Van Sant of plagiarism: the film was seen as more of a hommage to the original.


Video

Because much video is now digitised, it is much easier to copy and ‘quote’ than a film printed on a 35mm celluloid strip. Consequently, much video footage is now used in mashups. These are often created for comic effect – with visual materials from one source counterposed with audio tracks from something entirely different.

A popular case in point is the short sequence from Joachim Fest’s 2004 film Downfall about the last days of Adolf Hitler. This has been used as the basis of any number of satirical parodies. The original video footage and the sound track of Hitler’s furious rant about the war being lost is retained – but new sub-titles are inserted with reference to anything from English football managers being sacked, Hitler’s plans to invade Ireland, his rage at having been banned from Microsoft’s arcade game Xbox. and even rants about the frequency and quality of Downfall parodies themselves. In this example (ranting about the new iPad) he finishes his rant with a request not to put the video clip onto YouTube.

What makes these clips funny is the fact that the film remains the same, but the subtitles are re-written to provide ridiculous and completely inappropriate subjects for his rantings, often focussed on trivial contemporary events. Why is this not classed as plagiarism? For two important reasons. First – the people who make these parodies don’t suggest for one minute that they have made the original Downfall footage. Second – they are not attempting to profit from their re-use of the visual material. Their object is to create fun which is freely available to anybody.

Joachim Fest has endorsed the production of these parodies on the grounds that they reinforce his original message – that people who become too powerful should be exposed by revealing their megalomania, with mockery if necessary.


Blogs

Blogging is rather like the Wild West of the Internet. Anybody can write whatever they wish and publish it to a personal blog for the rest of the world to see and read. There is virtually no control over content, no censorship, and no monitoring of who says what.

Nevertheless, bloggers are on the whole respectful and they attribute the sources of any materials quoted, with web links to the original and hat-tips acknowledging the authors. Some people break these conventions and steal other people’s news items, but they are often found out and held up to ridicule. That’s because once something is put up onto the Internet it’s easy to check its origin and the time and date it was put there. Anyone claiming an ‘exclusive’ or lifting someone else’s copy can be found out if the same material exists in an earlier published version. Even a string of words less than a sentence long can be traced via a Google search in less than a second.

It was common only a few years ago for people to deride blogging as no more than a form of vanity publishing. Now, every self-respecting business (particularly news-related publications and broadcasters) have their own in-house bloggers.


Web sites

In their earliest manifestation, web sites were specialist repositories for scientific research papers and archives of academic materials. Since the democratisation of the Internet, the Web is also now big commercial business. Some online companies exist for the sole purpose of throwing up web pages which will attract the attention of Google searches.

As a consequence of this change, an enormous amount of copyright infringement and plagiarism occurs on web sites. That’s because some people will shamelessly copy existing web pages and take already-syndicated articles to give their own sites more ‘content’. There are even programs that will automate the process. (These are called ‘page scrapers’.) Shady business companies adopt this practice to attract visitors with a minimum of effort and make money from advertising on the site.

However, they do so at their peril, because Google ranks any ‘duplicate material’ as ‘redundant pages’ and demotes them in its page and site rankings.

A similar lack of original content occurs on web sites known as ‘link farms’ or ‘portal sites’. These are sites which merely provide lists of other web sites – usually in categories with multiple sub-menu options. That is, they are empty of any original content. These too are downgraded by Google in its rankings.


Newspapers

Most established newspapers now have their own web sites, and they employ journalists to write the news items and articles that they publish both in print and on line. Copyright and plagiarism is almost never in question. Even when a newspaper uses a photograph or a short report supplied by an independent news agency such as Reuters, the fact will usually be credited and the original source named.

However, a recent case shows that there are always possible exceptions. Johann Hari was a journalist writing for The Independent. He specialised in radical issues, and in particular he wrote in-depth interviews with controversial political figures. Recently, he has been accused of breaking the journalist’s code of ethics. By comparing the text of his articles to previously published work it has been possible to show three primary instances of plagiarism.

  1. He used quotations from other people’s work – without attribution.
  2. He re-wrote other people’s articles, using the structure, sequence, and the arguments of the original.
  3. He used quotations from other people’s interviews – as if the words had been addressed to him personally.

Hari at first strenuously denied these charges of plagiarism, but then it was discovered that he had adopted a false identity (‘David Rose’) and used it to maliciously edit other people’s Wikipedia entries, besmirching their reputations and boosting his own. He was suspended from the Independent, and then eventually admitted his guilt.


Magazines

The only time copyright issues occur in magazines is when one publication decides to re-print an article from another. But this is usually acknowledged, with a footnote along the lines of ‘This article first appeared in the July 2010 issue of Harper’s Bazaar‘.

However, the recent success of The Huffington Post has raised a number of copyright issues. Arianne Huffington created her online news service in 2005-2009. It offers a combination of a frequently updated digital news service with magazine-style articles written by specialists. It has been very successful, and now has versions covering Canada, America, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

But much of the content of the HuffPo is generated by bloggers who are not paid for their articles. They’re encouraged to contribute on any subject they wish; and their work is mingled with product placement articles and other junk journalism. There have also been recent accusations that armies of HuffPo staff are being employed to re-write other people’s original work to escape any accusations of plagiarism.


Copyright cases

Wikipedia has a useful list of copyright case law in Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and the United States. This takes account of historical rulings and recent cases involving digital works, trademarks, photographs, peer-to-peer file sharing, definitions of originality, distribution, and even ‘what is not a sculpture’.

© Roy Johnson 2011


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Filed Under: Journalism, Media, Publishing Tagged With: Copyright, Journalism, Mashups, Media, Plagiarism, Publishing, Sampling

Remediation: Understanding New Media

May 26, 2009 by Roy Johnson

new media – theoretical and practical studies

Jay Bolter is the author of Writing Space, one of the most important books on hypertext of the early 1990s. Here he continues with co-author Richard Grusin his theoretical and practical consideration of digitisation into the realm of ‘new media’: that is, computer graphics, streamed video, and virtual reality. He begins by looking at the ways in which various media – from Renaissance paintings to modern 3D digital images – have tried to render convincing images of the real world.

Remediation: Understanding New MediaThe first part of the book discusses the interesting distinctions to be made between immediacy and hypermediacy. Their definition of remediation is ‘the representation of one medium in another’ and they argue that this is ‘a defining characteristic of the new digital media’.

Their premise is that all new media take over and re-use existing media. Thus the Web grabs aspects of television and printed books. A good Web homepage presents all its most important information visible ‘above the fold’, in the same way as newspapers are designed.

This doesn’t prevent some of the ‘old’ media fighting back. So, for instance, television news programs begin to show separate ‘windows’ on screen – in a clear imitation of the multitasking environment of the computer monitor to which we are now all accustomed.

There’s some heavy-duty language to get through in this section – but the tone lightens in the second part of the book. This deals with studies of a dozen contemporary forms of digital media – computer games, virtual reality, digital art and photography, television, and the Web.

This includes an extended analysis of the game Myst, which is seen in terms of a remediation and critique of film. They chase the differences between photo-realistic painting and digital art all around the houses. It also includes an interesting analysis of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, of Disney theme parks, and of web cam sites.

The analysis does include some dubious assumptions – such as the idea that the difference between film and TV is that we watch films in public and television in private. The truth is that not many people go to the cinema any more, and lots of people watch television films with friends.

The last part of the book returns to a theoretical consideration of the effect of all this on the individual. We are taken into issues such as ‘gender problems in MUDs’ and what it is like in VR experience to be a molecule or virtual gorilla.

It might be hard work to read, but it’s stimulating stuff. There may be further theoretical questions posed on many of these issues – but anybody interested in the uses of new media will not wish to miss what Bolter and Grusin have to say about them.

© Roy Johnson 2000

New Media   Buy the book at Amazon UK

New Media   Buy the book at Amazon US


Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media, Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 2000, pp.295, ISBN: 0262522799


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Filed Under: Media, Theory Tagged With: Jay Bolter, Media, New media, Remediation, Technology, Theory

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