LitFuse

Mike Seyfang blog’s his excitement that an original video made available under Creative Commons was picked up by Adelaide Now. His post made me think about our view of information and communication. In the age of newspapers, television and radio, information was consumable and disposable and communication was about writing. New media in particular changes our relationship with information – it is now something that stays around, being re-viewed, re-mixed and re-interpreted – it talks back to us. My experience in putting information online as video, audio and text, is that the reader base builds over time, as does the conversation. This means that information I put up a year ago, can bring me new connections and opportunities a year later – as Mike has found.

This makes me think more carefully about the purpose of putting information online. What is “news” and what is “content”. In fact, if I make information available in the way Mike is suggesting, “news” is “content”, so must be carefully constructed so that it makes sense as consumable news and as long term content that has value years from now.

Barry Brook’s blog “Brave New Climate” is a case in point. It is a mix of news and content, but the news remains of interest in the context of the rest of the blog-posts. Over time, he has build up a valuable library of content, and his army of readers and commenters grows at an ever increasing rate.

It also reminds me that communication is about listening as well as talking/writing. By seeing Adelaide Now re-interpret Mike’s original videos, he gets to listen to how others perceive his original content. Too often organisations lock their material down making it difficult for others to re-interpret. Does this mean they are not interested in listening?

Written by Paul Dalby on 17 September 2009