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. Phone: +61 7 3138 5548
We - the users turned creators and distributors of content - are TIME's Person of the Year 2... more We - the users turned creators and distributors of content - are TIME's Person of the Year 2006, and AdAge's Advertising Agency of the Year 2007. We form a new Generation C. We have MySpace, YouTube, and OurMedia; we run social software, and drive the development of ...
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Uses of blogs / edited by Axel Bruns, Joanne J... more Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Uses of blogs / edited by Axel Bruns, Joanne Jacobs, p. cm. (Digital formations; v. 38) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Weblogs Social aspects. 2. WeblogsPolitical aspects. 3. Weblogs Economic aspects. I. ...
Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production is the first comprehensive study of the latest... more Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production is the first comprehensive study of the latest wave of online news publications. The book investigates the collaborative publishing models of key news Websites, ranging from the worldwide Indymedia network to the massively successful technology news site Slashdot, and further to the multitude of Weblogs that have emerged in recent years. Building on collaborative approaches borrowed from the open source software development community, this book illustrates how gatewatching ...
Blogs and other online platforms for personal writing such as LiveJournal have been of interest t... more Blogs and other online platforms for personal writing such as LiveJournal have been of interest to researchers across the social sciences and humanities for a decade now. Although growth in the uptake of blogging has stalled somewhat since the heyday of blogs in the early 2000s, blogging continues to be a major genre of Internet-based communication. Indeed, at the same time that mass participation has moved on to Facebook, Twitter and other more recent communication phenomena, what has been left behind by the wave of ...
... However, when important news breaks and spreads across the Twittersphere, shifts in tone and ... more ... However, when important news breaks and spreads across the Twittersphere, shifts in tone and topical focus of incoming tweets may cause that user ... This graph points to the importance of television, with significant increases in volume at 7:00 and 8:15 GMT, as major networks ...
Collaborative user-led content creation by online communities, or produsage (Bruns 2008), has gen... more Collaborative user-led content creation by online communities, or produsage (Bruns 2008), has generated a variety of useful and important resources and other valuable outcomes, from open source software through the Wikipedia to a variety of smaller-scale, specialist projects. These are often seen as standing in an inherent opposition to commercial interests, and attempts to develop collaborations between community content creators and commercial partners have had mixed success rates to date. However, such tension ...
We - the users turned creators and distributors of content - are TIME's Person of the Year 2... more We - the users turned creators and distributors of content - are TIME's Person of the Year 2006, and AdAge's Advertising Agency of the Year 2007. We form a new Generation C. We have MySpace, YouTube, and OurMedia; we run social software, and drive the development of ...
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Uses of blogs / edited by Axel Bruns, Joanne J... more Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Uses of blogs / edited by Axel Bruns, Joanne Jacobs, p. cm. (Digital formations; v. 38) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Weblogs Social aspects. 2. WeblogsPolitical aspects. 3. Weblogs Economic aspects. I. ...
Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production is the first comprehensive study of the latest... more Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production is the first comprehensive study of the latest wave of online news publications. The book investigates the collaborative publishing models of key news Websites, ranging from the worldwide Indymedia network to the massively successful technology news site Slashdot, and further to the multitude of Weblogs that have emerged in recent years. Building on collaborative approaches borrowed from the open source software development community, this book illustrates how gatewatching ...
Blogs and other online platforms for personal writing such as LiveJournal have been of interest t... more Blogs and other online platforms for personal writing such as LiveJournal have been of interest to researchers across the social sciences and humanities for a decade now. Although growth in the uptake of blogging has stalled somewhat since the heyday of blogs in the early 2000s, blogging continues to be a major genre of Internet-based communication. Indeed, at the same time that mass participation has moved on to Facebook, Twitter and other more recent communication phenomena, what has been left behind by the wave of ...
... However, when important news breaks and spreads across the Twittersphere, shifts in tone and ... more ... However, when important news breaks and spreads across the Twittersphere, shifts in tone and topical focus of incoming tweets may cause that user ... This graph points to the importance of television, with significant increases in volume at 7:00 and 8:15 GMT, as major networks ...
Collaborative user-led content creation by online communities, or produsage (Bruns 2008), has gen... more Collaborative user-led content creation by online communities, or produsage (Bruns 2008), has generated a variety of useful and important resources and other valuable outcomes, from open source software through the Wikipedia to a variety of smaller-scale, specialist projects. These are often seen as standing in an inherent opposition to commercial interests, and attempts to develop collaborations between community content creators and commercial partners have had mixed success rates to date. However, such tension ...
Some ten and a half years ago, David Marshall—then lecturing in the English Department at the Uni... more Some ten and a half years ago, David Marshall—then lecturing in the English Department at the University of Queensland—had an idea.
In recent years, various observers have pointed to the shifting paradigms of cultural and societa... more In recent years, various observers have pointed to the shifting paradigms of cultural and societal participation and economic production in developed nations. These changes are facilitated (although, importantly, not solely driven) by the emergence of new, participatory technologies of information access, knowledge exchange, and content production, many of whom are associated with Internet and new media technologies. In an online context, such technologies are now frequently described as social software or Web2.
Collectively, the writers here at Club Bloggery have been watching the Australian political blogo... more Collectively, the writers here at Club Bloggery have been watching the Australian political blogosphere for years. We know that the bloggers who have perhaps been most important and prominent down under are psephologists–specialist electoral statisticians who try to understand and analyse polls, and consider the interlocking numbers games of electoral politics.
Lists have long been an ordering mechanism for computer-mediated social interaction. While far fr... more Lists 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.
Consideration of the creative industries as a cohesive sector is a relatively recent and contenti... more Consideration of the creative industries as a cohesive sector is a relatively recent and contentious construct. The newly coined label" Generation C" is used as a lens to frame relevant literature that describes knowledge workers who use information and communication technologies (ICT) to create and share content.
The uses of Twitter for sharing information and reactions to acute events, including crises and e... more The uses of Twitter for sharing information and reactions to acute events, including crises and emergencies (Bruns, Burgess, Crawford, & Shaw, 2011) and breaking news (Bruns, 2011) are becoming increasingly well-documented. In this paper, however, we focus on Twitter's adoption as a space for long-term political discussions.
Such models remain somewhat limited still, however, in their maintenance of a traditional industr... more Such models remain somewhat limited still, however, in their maintenance of a traditional industrial value production chain: they retain a producer-> distributor-> consumer dichotomy. Especially where what is produced is of an intangible, informational nature, a further shift away from such industrial, and towards post-industrial or informational economic models can be observed.
Diese Aufgabenteilung ermöglichte es den einzelnen Stationen der Wertschöpfungskette, sich besond... more Diese Aufgabenteilung ermöglichte es den einzelnen Stationen der Wertschöpfungskette, sich besonders auf die Entwicklung ihrer eigenen Kompetenzen zu konzentrieren. Für den Endpunkt der Kette, die Verbraucher, hatte dies zunächst kaum konkrete Auswirkungen, da sie weitgehend von der Arbeit der Produzenten und Distributoren abhängig waren, und die Konsumtion–zumindest bei begrenzter Produktvielfalt–blieb eher eine Frage der Notwendigkeit als der Produktwahl.
The uses of Twitter for sharing information and reactions to acute events, including crises and e... more The uses of Twitter for sharing information and reactions to acute events, including crises and emergencies (Bruns, Burgess, Crawford, & Shaw, 2011) and breaking news (Bruns, 2011) are becoming increasingly well-documented. In this paper, however, we focus on Twitter's adoption as a space for long-term political discussions.
This paper explores methodologies for using the IssueCrawler research tool to map the interconnec... more This paper explores methodologies for using the IssueCrawler research tool to map the interconnections of individual blogs in sections of the blogosphere. It uses the case of Australian-born Guantanamo detainee David Hicks as a case study, mapping the distributed discussions of this case in that part of the Australian blogosphere which is concerned with debating news and politics.
I suppose I can write about this now. Enough time has passed, and the places I will write about h... more I suppose I can write about this now. Enough time has passed, and the places I will write about have long since receded from the frontline and faded back into obscurity. Back then, it was different–we were, if not exactly shrouded in secrecy, then at least loosely draped in it. We were Eloka, electronic warfare, the first line of defence if the cold war were ever to heat up. Or so they told us.
If there still remained doubts about the continuing importance of and interest in news in what ha... more If there still remained doubts about the continuing importance of and interest in news in what have been said to be increasingly apathetic and entertainment-driven Western societies, they can be seen to have been dispelled to some extent by the rise of alternative online news in dedicated news Websites from Indymedia to Slashdot, and the frequent discussions of newsworthy local, national, and global events in the wider blogosphere.
Many of the dust-ups so far between bloggers and the mainstream media (MSM) in Australia have con... more Many of the dust-ups so far between bloggers and the mainstream media (MSM) in Australia have concerned comment, not news. The kinds of spats we've written about previously have been over who exactly has the mortgage on punditry about established stories, social issues, opinion polls and the like.
Climate change dominated a couple of days of Federal Election campaigning earlier this week, with... more Climate change dominated a couple of days of Federal Election campaigning earlier this week, with the major parties both fumbling in laying out their responses. Peter Garrett and Malcolm Turnbull were punished by the mainstream media for, respectively, revealing something approximating a real opinion about how climate change agreements should work, and for being involved in a debate about Government policy before it's implemented.
The 2007 Australian federal election campaign will be remembered for a number of reasons. It was ... more The 2007 Australian federal election campaign will be remembered for a number of reasons. It was only the second time that a sitting prime minister lost his seat. It was the first time those voters born after 1988 had experienced a change in government, after the Howard Government had been in charge since 1996. It also brought about the Australian Labor Party's domination of all territory, state, and federal parliaments.
This thesis introduces and analyses the emerging Website genre of Resource Centre Sites. RCSs are... more This thesis introduces and analyses the emerging Website genre of Resource Centre Sites. RCSs are sites which combine news, rumours and background information as well as community discussion and commentary on their chosen topic, and frequently serve as a first point of entry for readers interested in learning more about the field.
Twitter is an important and influential social media platform, but much research into its uses re... more Twitter is an important and influential social media platform, but much research into its uses remains centred around isolated cases–eg of events in political communication, crisis communication, or popular culture, often coordinated by shared hashtags (brief keywords, prefixed with the symbol '#').
Understanding the ways people contribute to and use the Internet for a wide range of purposes is ... more Understanding the ways people contribute to and use the Internet for a wide range of purposes is important to Australia's future from both a social and an economic perspective. Effective, evidence-based policy depends on developing a vastly improved understanding of the current level of Australians' online activities and interests.
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