Disrupt me, bro

Statutory Notices for the 21st Century

When, in the opening pages of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the people of Earth protest about the planned demolition of their planet, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz replies: There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your loca

these are my words

But what are you sorry for?

My anxieties about the #FoxNewsFacts meme spilled over when Pete Ashton provided a really crucial critique of Emerson’s apology for the lies he pedalled on Fox News: Worth remembering, in these complex times, that a heartfelt apology and charitable donation does not cure one of alarmist racist bigot

being a bit meta

This is not for you

By you I mean the readers, if they have such things, of The Brummie. The Brummie is a blog whose content is simply scraped from across the web: automated theft of words, pictures and attention. It turns out that my website is one that they pull from, grabbing at content from my RSS feed. I’d never r

acts of daily journalism

Unbacked: to the future

I’ve done quite a few bits now on Contributoria (an experimental sort-of-crowd-funded journalism experiment from The Guardian). It’s an interesting place, a pretty eclectic collection of writing that people are getting paid for. The deal is if you get enough people to back you with the fake money of

what I have been listening to

A week in domain names

If a week is a long time in politics then it’s a fucking age on the Internet, and it’s an epoch for the online commentariat. So it seems like an aeon has passed since Tuesday when everybody lost their collective minds and forgot how domain name registration actually works when UKIP’s domain name app

being a bit meta

Don’t call it a resolution

I’ve got a plan. I’ve had it for a while. It’s a master plan of what my (for want of a less awful phrase) web presence should be. And it’s been a barrier to getting anything done, anything written or shared. I still have that plan, but I’m going to stop letting it be a barrier.… Continue reading Don

Learning & Teaching

Harvard referencing a tweet (a guide for students)

💡This post was first written in 2014. I edited it on 2024-12-13 to correct some broken links, but otherwise it is as written originally. Originally about Twitter, and tweets, these guidelines can be applied to posts on any social network, so apply it to Mastodon or Bluesky posts, or any

kit

I heart Triage: Email First Aid

I’ve just got back to work after paternity leave and I blasted my inbox to zero this morning thanks partly to a nifty app for iPhone called Triage. The idea behind this app is that you can snack at your emails and nibble them down a bit between proper email sessions; GTD purists will hate what Triag

idea

#altnational – a thank you

Last week I floated an idea about making charitable donations instead of Grand National bets, and then I set up a thing to do just that. I was hoping to raise £50, and I ended up raising the limit throughout the day. We ended up with just short of £230 plus Gift Aid donations of… Continue reading #a

idea

update: #altnational

Earlier I put a blog post up with an idea to do something positive and useful with my general and growing dislike of the Grand National. A number of people gave me some nice feedback on Twitter along the lines of “that’s a good idea” and “yeah I was thinking about that”. Simon Gray signed… Continue

how to

ifttt and twitter – rumours of death exaggerated

My friend’s Dad once, apparently, said: You can’t fit six people in that car, even with your stripy trousers on I doubt it ever really happened but it stuck and it became a catchphrase amongst us, a hyperlocal meme for the kids of the Prins Estate. He was right, of course, you couldn’t get six… Cont

idea

Tote Amazeballs – a half baked idea for tomorrow

Ok, so I have a half-baked idea and you might be able to help before I actually throw it together. When I was a lad we always used to have a flutter on Grand National Day. I’ve not done that for a long time now. I’ve become increasingly uneasy with the idea of the Grand… Continue reading Tote Amazeb

PhD

How big is a hyperlocal patch? My final word on the size of a hyperlocale

Over the summer I wrote some pieces regarding the scale at which hyperlocal media production might operate. It involved talking about postcodes, more postcodes and US cable TV and its broadcast footprints. Beyond that, I’ve been reading articles that claim all manner of sizes and shapes for hyperloc

Learning & Teaching

Unfamiliar Tools

So, last week I presented my 2nd year new media class with unfamiliar tools in the hope that they would think more deeply about their practice. We aimed to produce a publication that fills the gap left by the lack of an SU campus magazine. Here’s some quick notes about what they (and I) made… Contin

Learning & Teaching

MED5008: a manifesto.

For five weeks my second year students are banned from using the Internet in their new media class. Above is our production manifesto for the first half of the term. What follows is an explanation. Histories of alternative media* often link the arrival of new technologies with surges of alternative

ref

Twitter / Profile / REF / Engagement

I’m filling out a form that is being used to capture some information for our REF narrative. Part of that is about my online profile, and part of that asks me to describe how I use Twitter. So this has all led me to distil a few things that I’ve always said about Twitter as follows: I am… Continue r

writing

“These are my words” – some recent (non-academic) writing projects

By my low standards I’ve been pretty prolific the past few weeks working on non-work related writing projects. I always loved doing this sort of thing but for various reasons I haven’t done anything like it for a very long time. First up, 280 Stops. Absolutely loved working

PhD

Hyperlocal discourse: the new media & technology repertoire

After last week’s seminar presentation, I’ve been asked to clarify the repertoires that I think inform hyperlocal discourse. Those three repertoires again: New media / technology Community & alternative media Professional / commercial media I’m going to begin by unpicking the new media / technology

PhD

From the Interactive Cultures Blog – Hyperlocal media: discourses and repertoires

I posted a brief report on the IC blog about my talk today to the Birmingham Centre for Media & Cultural Research. This was a dry run based on the first draft of a paper I’m giving to the MeCCSA conference in January – all of it drawing on my PhD work. See the full… Continue reading From the Interac

learning and teaching

Cameras are obvious, the web is still scary

It’s Freshers’ Week again. Today we had to ‘pitch’ our first year production modules to the new intake so they can make an informed choice about what they are studying this year. This afternoon I’ve been meeting students in a drop-in session at my office to answer queries about the classes I run. I’

PhD

The ever present problem of hyperlocale and scale

I’m trying to close of a section of my literature review today, which led to me chasing up an old lead that purports to be the origin of the term ‘hyperlocal’ (or hyper-local as was). The reference leads to a business article in the Washington Post from 1991, which outlines a new cable TV news… Cont

Hyperlocal: is just being there enough?

Location is a key component of what makes a hyperlocal blog a hyperlocal blog – the clue is in the term hyperlocal. The scale of what a hyperlocale is shifts around a lot as you read different academic and practitioner accounts, but that sense of place is very important. Other factors seem to matter

PhD

Hyperlocal: community media / commercial media / other

Hyperlocal is a tricky thing to study because there are so many different types of media work and media texts coalesced into the term. It’s almost easier to chart the differences between different projects than it is to pinpoint what they have in common. To illustrate this, let’s look at two differe

PhD

More postcodes: hyperlocales, postcodes, and regional variations

I must be sounding slightly obsessed with postcodes at the moment… UK postcodes are expressed as follows: B42 2SU. The postcode district in this example is ‘B42’. Frequently postcode districts are used as part of the identity of a hyperlocal website (e.g. expressed through logos and URLs) as a short

PhD

Hyperlocal and ‘postcode areas’

‘Postcode areas’ are often used to define the space – the hyperlocale as I’ve taken to calling it – which hyperlocal blogs serve, for example Sutton Coldfield Local used to be the B72 Blog and that sense of space is still fairly implicit in its coverage despite the name change (see also B31 Voices a