Never Gonna Give You Up: Creating a Musical Experience in a Digital Age

September 11, 2017November 28, 2017 Jaigrisbenjamin, Digital Disruption, music, sharing economy, social media, spotify, Strategy, YouTube2 Comments

The music industry has been feeling the curse of digital communication technologies as a result of music streaming services such as Spotify (or even YouTube, which is a popular way of accessing music, with or without video). Streaming services pay very little – fractions of pennies, in fact, back to the musician when songs are played. And this year, the closure of HMV has shown us that there is no longer a market for physical recorded music. In fact, even the purchase of individual songs on iTunes has become less relevant as a result of streaming. In my private sector consulting work, I often coach independent musicians about how they might survive, and even thrive in a world where they cannot make money from their original product, and I think we can draw inspiration from this in the most unlikely of places: Tough Mudder – a fitness brand that is optimized for the digital age.

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All hail our (kind of annoying) robot neighbours and their human overlords

August 30, 2017November 28, 2017 JaigrisLeave a comment

Robots have been all over my various news feeds of late. Here are just a few examples:

From Slate: Russian bots posing as regular people are trying to sow discord on Twitter after Charlottesville
From the Guardian: The future of funerals? Robot priest launched to undercut human-led rites
From Business Insider: Robots are starting to enter pre-K and kindergarten alongside kids
And finally, from Engaget: Drones will watch Australian beaches for Sharks with AI help

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Digital Literacy: What Do We Really Need?

August 25, 2017November 28, 2017 Jaigrisinterdisciplinary, sharing economy, Social Media and Society, student advice, surveillance, technology critique, transdisciplinary2 Comments

A picture of a google search box for digital literacy — Digital Literacy by AJC1. Available on Flickr: https://flic.kr/p/dwkZMM

Last week I mentioned that I would write a post discussing the gaps I see in current descriptions of digital literacy, particularly as it’s described in the popular press, and why a more holistic or even interdisciplinary understanding of digital literacy is needed. Well I’m back this week to continue that discussion. We must move beyond the idea that digital literacy is about teaching people how to create a website or learn to code. We need to recognize that a skills based approach to digital literacy will only serve to exacerbate certain social and democratic challenges inherent in digital communication, and we must instead consider digital literacy as something that stretches far beyond equipping students for jobs that may or may not exist in the ever-fickle digital economy. The best example, I think ,of why this is the case is the current problem of “fake news”.

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Yellow is the New Black

August 14, 2017November 28, 2017 Jaigrisinformation flows, public sphere, social media, Social Media and Society, technology critiqueLeave a comment

I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about social media as a source of news, and how we are currently experiencing parallels with yellow journalism. I think that if we can identify similarities with our current media environment, and the rise and management of yellow journalism during the Hearst/Pulitzer years, we may be in a better position to brainstorm meaningful solutions to the fake news challenges that we are seeing today. And there are indeed many parallels to be drawn, so I’ll begin with a few important ones, as I see them:

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From Print to Digital – Information Overload and Folk Wisdom

August 2, 2017November 28, 2017 JaigrisEisenstein, Filter Failure, public sphere, Rainie, Shirky, social media, Social Media and Society, technology critiqueLeave a comment

Lee Rainie’s Keynote in Image Form from #SMSociety 2017

Last week, I had the great pleasure of presenting my work at the International Conference on Social Media and Society (#SMSociety2017), hosted by the esteemed team at the Social Media Lab at Ryerson University. While in attendance, I listened to a fantastic keynote by Lee Rainie, the director of Internet and Policy Research at the Pew Research Center. His keynote, titled “The Reckoning for Social Media” focused on the research work conducted by the Pew Internet and Technology research center, about how social media have changed the relationship of people to each other and to public institutions. Some of his findings were disheartening such as, for example, recent research that shows that people polled in the US are experiencing declining trust in academic institutions, or that people are becoming more polarized in their political views. Other findings were more hopeful, such as the fact that there is substantial reciprocity across social media platforms.

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Back to the Future? History in oral, literate and digital forms

July 18, 2017November 28, 2017 JaigrisLeave a comment

Cave paintings, Magura Caves by MarleBrlzrd on Flikr: farm3.static.flickr.com/2789/4387489763_6fbbd42824_o.jpg

Fake News on The Rise

According to the Daily Mail, a recent study out of Oxford University has reported that fake news is on the rise around the world. The study found that automated bots play an outsized role in spreading fake news, and are often employed as a form of astroturfing or to deliberately spread propaganda. Reflecting on this phenomenon, and also the ways that online propaganda played a role in the most recent US election, I can’t help but draw upon Walter Ong’s foundational work, Orality and Literacy: Technologizing the Word. Though the text was written prior to the development of Facebook and Twitter, re-reading this book in light of recent events has lent some weight for me on ideas of orality, literacy, and the new world of electronic secondary orality, particularly as these cultures relate to how people make sense of history, and how we determine the nature of truth. At the same time, I also think that recent events challenge Ong’s original ideas about what secondary orality looks like, and thus I’d like to propose a slightly new definition in light of new digital trends and the worrying disruption of the archive. I’ll begin to discuss these ideas here, and may also return to them later, as these topics are big ones.

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Hello World: On Writing and Scholarship in Public

July 14, 2017November 28, 2017 Jaigrisacademics, public scholarship, student advice, writingLeave a comment

“Writing Longhand” by R. Crap Mariner on Flikr

As with any new WordPress blog, the first post you see when you load it up for the first time is the ubiquitous “Hello World” post. I’m thinking of leaving that post on my blog as I write this. Not to indicate a lack of familiarity with how to edit a blog, or to demonstrate a lack of professionalism, or a sort of ambivalence to blogging, but rather, because that phrase sums up an insecurity that I think we all have regarding public writing and public scholarship in particular.

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Jaigris Hodson, PhD.

Critical thoughts about digital communication technologies and how they impact our lives, by Jaigris Hodson, PhD.

All hail our (kind of annoying) robot neighbours and their human overlords

Back to the Future? History in oral, literate and digital forms

Fake News on The Rise

Hello World: On Writing and Scholarship in Public