Participating in the Always-On Lifestyle

300 Pages·2016·4.21 MB·English

by  Danah Boyd

The Social Media Reader
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The Social Media Reader
Edited by
Michael Mandiberg
a
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2012 by New York University
All rights reserved
Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) license
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York
University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The social media reader / edited by Michael Mandiberg.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–8147–6405–3 (cl : alk. paper)
ISBN 978–0–8147–6406–0 (pb : alk. paper)
ISBN 978–0–8147–6407–7 (ebook)
ISBN 978–0–8147–6302–5 (ebook)
1. Social media. 2. Technological innovations—Social aspects.
I. Mandiberg, Michael.
HM742.S6284 2012
302.23'1—dc23 2011038308
The following work bears Create Commons Attribution (CC BY) license:
“Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing
as a Modality of Economic Production” by Yochai Benkler
The following works bear Create Commons Attribution ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license:
“The People Formerly Known as the Audience” by Jay “REMIX: How Creativity Is Being Strangled by the Law”
Rosen by Lawrence Lessig
“Open Source as Culture/Culture as Open Source” by “Your Intermediary Is Your Destiny” by Fred Von Lohmann
Siva Vaidhyanathan “On the Fungibility and Necessity of Cultural Freedom”
“What Is Web 2.0?” by Tim O’Reilly by Fred Benenson
“What Is Collaboration Anyway?” by Adam Hyde, “Giving Things Away Is Hard Work: Three Creative
Mike Linksvayer, kanarinka, Michael Mandiberg, Marta Commons Case Studies on DIY” by Michael Mandiberg
Peirano, Sissu Tarka, Astra Taylor, Alan Toner, and “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus” by Clay Shirky
Mushon Zer-Aviv “Between Democracy and Spectacle: The Front-End and
“Participating in the Always-On Lifestyle” by danah boyd Back-End of the Social Web” by Felix Stalder
“From Indymedia to Demand Media: Journalism’s “DIY Academy? Cognitive Capitalism, Humanist
Visions of Its Audience and the Horizons of Democ- Scholarship, and the Digital Transformation” by Ashley
racy” by C. W. Anderson Dawson
“Phreaks, Hackers, and Trolls and the Politics of Trans- The following work bears Creative Commons Attribu-
gression and Spectacle” by E. Gabriella Coleman tion NonCommercial ShareAlike
“The Language of Internet Memes” by Patrick Davison (CC BY-NC-SA) license:
“The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson “Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars?” by Henry Jenkins
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen
for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the
greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Michael Mandiberg
Part I: Mechanisms
1 The People Formerly Known as the Audience 13
Jay Rosen
2 Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence 17
of Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production
Yochai Benkler
3 Open Source as Culture/Culture as Open Source 24
Siva Vaidhyanathan
4 What Is Web 2.0? Design Patterns and Business Models 32
for the Next Generation of Software
Tim O’Reilly
5 What Is Collaboration Anyway? 53
Adam Hyde, Mike Linksvayer, kanarinka,
Michael Mandiberg, Marta Peirano, Sissu Tarka,
Astra Taylor, Alan Toner, Mushon Zer-Aviv
Part II: Sociality
6 Participating in the Always-On Lifestyle 71
danah boyd
| v
7 From Indymedia to Demand Media: Journalism’s Visions 77
of Its Audience and the Horizons of Democracy
C. W. Anderson
Part III: Humor
8 Phreaks, Hackers, and Trolls: The Politics of 99
Transgression and Spectacle
E. Gabriella Coleman
9 The Language of Internet Memes 120
Patrick Davison
Part IV: Money
10 The Long Tail 137
Chris Anderson
Part V: Law
11 REMIX: How Creativity Is Being Strangled by the Law 155
Lawrence Lessig
12 Your Intermediary Is Your Destiny 170
Fred von Lohmann
13 On the Fungibility and Necessity of Cultural Freedom 178
Fred Benenson
14 Giving Things Away Is Hard Work: Three Creative 187
Commons Case Studies
Michael Mandiberg
Part VI: Labor
15 Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars? Grassroots Creativity 203
Meets the Media Industry
Henry Jenkins
vi | Contents
16 Gin, Television, and Social Surplus 236
Clay Shirky
17 Between Democracy and Spectacle: The Front-End and 242
Back-End of the Social Web
Felix Stalder
18 DIY Academy? Cognitive Capitalism, Humanist Scholarship, 257
and the Digital Transformation
Ashley Dawson
About the Contributors 275
Index 279
Contents | vii
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Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I thank the many authors who contributed to this
volume. I thank both those who created new essays and those who gave their
works a Creative Commons license that permitted me to use them here. If it
were not for the freedom offered by these freely licensed texts, I would never
have had the ability or inspiration to take on this project. Thank you for sharing.
I conceived of this anthology while preparing a seminar on social media.
The absence of any critical anthology prompted me to collect the writings
that I thought were most important. The realization that many of these were
Creative Commons licensed inspired me to transform this reading list into a
table of contents for this book. I wish to thank the Department of Media Cul-
ture at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, for its sup-
port of this project: C. W. Anderson, Cynthia Chris, Jeanine Corbet, David
Gerstner, Janet Manfredonia, Tara Mateik, Edward D. Miller, Sherry Millner,
Jason Simon, Matthew Solomon, Valerie Tevere, Cindy Wong, Bilge Yesil, and
Ying Zhu. I am indebted to my colleagues at the CUNY Graduate Center:
Steve Brier, Ashley Dawson, and Matthew Gold. I am grateful to the provost,
William J. Fritz, for the support of the Provost’s Research Grant and to Dean
Christine Flynn Saulnier and former dean Francisco Soto for their support of
my research leaves and for the Dean’s Summer Research Assistantship.
I edited this anthology during a leave as a senior fellow at Eyebeam Cen-
ter for Art and Technology, and I am deeply indebted to Eyebeam for the
material support for this period of research and for the context from which
to produce such a collection. Amanda McDonald Crowley offered me such
a generous period of serious creative research, and Steve Lambert constantly
pushed me to live, act, and create in line with my beliefs. I want to thank
everyone at Eyebeam, including Ayah Bdeir, Jacob Ciocci, Jon Cohrs, Sarah
Cook, Jeff Crouse, Patrick Davison, Jennifer Dopazo, Stephen Duncombe,
Clara Jo, John Johnson, Simon Jolly, Emma Lloyd, Qimei Luo, Marisa Olson,
Stephanie Pereira, Marc Schiller, Roddy Schrock, Brooke Singer, Marko
Tandefelt, and Addie Wagenknecht.
| ix