Sue Thomas

Vacancy: Impact Research Fellow, De Montfort University

Impact Research Fellow, De Montfort University
Part time 0.5 FTE, Fixed term for 6 months

This post is a unique opportunity to analyse the impact of a group of key social media projects in relation to business innovation and the growing field of transliteracy research. It is ideally suited to a scholar wishing to examine the importance of impact in relation to a substantial example of social media practice. The material to be researched includes archives of the NLab business and social network, including CreativeCoffee Club, and of Amplified Leicester, a city-wide experiment in social media. The Transliteracy Research Group originated in the Institute of Creative Technologies at DMU and is led by Professor Sue Thomas and Kate Pullinger. The post is managed by Professor Thomas and situated within the Faculty of Humanities. You will also work closely with the Institute of Creative Technologies.

You should already hold a PhD in a related topic and have previous experience of working on research projects including gathering data via interviews and surveys. You should be able to communicate complex information, orally, in writing and electronically, and be able to communicate material of a specialist or highly technical nature. It is essential that you are a regular and experienced user of social media and have practical skills in social media applications in either business or academic contexts

Closing date 11 October 2010. The post begins on 10 January 2011. More Information

Amplified Leicester: Impact on social capital and cohesion (NESTA report)

NESTA have published a report by Thilo Boeck and myself on the impact of Amplified Leicester on social capital and cohesion. Amplified_Leicester.pdf

In the report we concluded that whilst social media is an important tool, it is the process of amplification which will really contribute to social cohesion. As such, amplification is not about making a noise about the city but enhancing the capabilities of individuals and groups to cope with the complexities of modern life. (p6)

Part of the purpose of the project was to develop a transferable model. The idea we developed (see p7) is as follows:

Stage 1: Cocoon – The Consciously Amplified Group
Create a trusted collaborative space where deep diversity flourishes, ideas flow, and social media connects.
Features of the Cocoon stage include a closed group covering a highly diverse range of education, IT skills, employment, culture, and ethnicity; a commitment to working within a shared space for an agreed period of time; fearless openness to encounters with big ideas; a focus on social media tools and concepts; personalised tech support where necessary; and a conscious awareness of transliteracy and amplification.

Stage 2: Emergence – From the Amplified Group to the Amplified City
Provide a PUBLIC trusted collaborative space where deep diversity flourishes, ideas flow, and social media connect.

Our experience has indicated that there is a case for the appointment of trained ‘social media community organisers’ who are skilled in transliteracy and amplification techniques. Ideally, these workers will have been drawn from participants who have been through the Cocoon stage and can use online and offline platforms to establish areas of common ground across and between existing diverse networks.

We'd be grateful for feedback and discussion of the report at the new public Amplified Leicester community.

Xi'an posterous

I'm planning to record my visit to Xi'an, China via Posterous which will then, I hope, share it across all my social media accounts. I won't feed it into this blog though, but will post a link to the best bits after the trip.

Untethered togetherness

In the pre-mobile 90s we were used to our bodies being isolated from each other and tethered to individual desktop machines whilst our minds met together in cyberspace. Today the situation is reversed, and our bodies often share the same physical space whilst our minds are online and elsewhere. Interesting reversal of digital togetherness.

Transliteracy 多媒体读写能力 at DAW Symposium, Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts

Transliteracy           多媒体读写能力           Duo Mei Ti Du Xie Neng Li

At the end of June I'll be visiting China for the first time. I'll be speaking at the DAW Symposium: Visions and Trends in Transdisciplinary Art and Science at the Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts (XAFA). It promises to be a huge and very impressive event. I'm just one of many speakers from several countries and I'm really looking forward to meeting them as well as our Chinese colleagues. I've been learning a little Mandarin this year but not much went in, I have to admit, so I have a lot of revision to do before I leave.

I'd like to thank my colleague in the IOCT, Professor Hongji Yang, for very kindly working out a translation of the word 'transliteracy' for me in both characters and pinyin. I'll be very interested to hear the view of other Mandarin speakers as to what this means to them.

I'm also keen to research metaphors of computing and the internet in China and very much hope I'll be able to harvest a few for my growing collection.

Of course, various social media apps are blocked in China so I don't know which I'll use to journal my trip, but, time permitting, I will try to post some reports and pictures while I'm there.

Image from Wikipedia

 

Amplified Leicester Showcase, 15 April 2010, Leicester

I'm really looking forward to our Amplified Leicester Showcase event on 15th April 2010 at Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre, Leicester.

In 2009/10 Amplified Leicester offered a small group of participants from across the city the chance to:
•    Benefit from Leicester's huge diversity of people and cultures
•    Generate new ideas quickly
•    Think like a futurist and see the bigger picture
•    Organise and collaborate better
•    Be persuasive in different social situations
•    Share and develop creative ideas
•    Manage the stream of information which bombards us every day
•    Choose the best people to collaborate with
•    Make the most of different kinds of resources – social, economic, creative

Every fortnight participants attended inspiring lectures and workshops and in between meetings worked together via Twitter, Facebook and other social media applications. They filmed interviews in their communities and shared the videos online.

On Thursday 15 April 2010 we will showcase their work and expand the conversation to include the city and beyond. This one day event at the new Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre will include practical workshops run by the participants themselves, presentations of their experimental projects, and talks by the project team. Keynote speaker, Andrea Saveri, an independent foresight and strategy consultant based in Berkeley, California, will locate the Amplified Leicester experience within a global context. Find out more at www.amplifiedleicester.com

Admission is free of charge. Register early to avoid disappointment.

Journalists who tweet: How the news is changing

I've been invited to give the Annual Leicester Mercury Media Lecture at the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society on Monday 8th February at 7.30pm. It will be an honour to speak at this learned society which was founded in 1835.

My title is Journalists who tweet: How the news is changing First blogs, now Twitter. Today it’s not enough just to write your copy - many journalists also have to blog and tweet it too. How are those changes affecting the profession and its audiences? This talk discusses the impact of social media upon news reporting and the ways in which contemporary readers expect to interact with the media.

Transliteracy Conference, 9 February 2010

Very excited about the first ever Transliteracy Conference at Phoenix Square on 9th February 2010. The speakers' abstracts cover a fascinatingly broad range of topics including ethnography, reading practices, fiction, convergence, digital art, geography, music, comics, interactive graphics, remote audiences, film adaptations, the networked book, critical theory and interactive fiction.  Browse through them here.

At the time of writing there are just 8 tickets left. Register here. Hope to see you on the day!

You can also follow the general discussion about transliteracy on Twitter.