Dr Daniel Meadows - Digital Storytelling for the Masses
Not an outside guest speaker this week, but Dr Daniel Meadows. Dr Meadows teaches New Media and Photography here in the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University.
Obstensibly a talk on the relationship between those infront of the camera and those behind it, it was primarily concerned with "Capture Wales". Capture Wales is a project where the people of Wales are given the opportunity to commit their stories to film.
The talk itself I found to be interesting and raised a number of issues with regard to the new phenomenon of "User Generated Content".
The problem I had was with the way it was delivered. Dr Meadows certainly knows what he is talking about and has obviously written an extremely informed and learned thesis on it, but do I want to sit in a lecture theatre for an hour and a half and have it read to me word-for-word? well, quite frankly, no.
I found it particulaly ironic that the talk was supposed to be about "interactivity" between the journalist and the audience, and yet, for the most part, Dr Meadows delivered his lecture with his face planted in his notes.
To be fair, I did find that the video clips he played added a great deal to the talk and were highly amusing. I especially liked the clip of the workers in a First World War munitions factory who, rather innocently, had no idea how to act infront of a camera.
Philip K Dick once said in order to find the treasure you must first trawl through the trash (or words to that effect), and the same is true with UGC. The sidelines have become the mainstream, and I was very heartened to hear that Wales is in the vanguard of citizen journalism. Often regarded by the great and the good (well, those in London anyway) as being something of an irrelevance, Wales is leading the way in its use of UGC.
As to why "citizen stories" have not caught-on in England, well it's because, as is so often the case, "England just doesn't get Wales."
Obstensibly a talk on the relationship between those infront of the camera and those behind it, it was primarily concerned with "Capture Wales". Capture Wales is a project where the people of Wales are given the opportunity to commit their stories to film.
The talk itself I found to be interesting and raised a number of issues with regard to the new phenomenon of "User Generated Content".
The problem I had was with the way it was delivered. Dr Meadows certainly knows what he is talking about and has obviously written an extremely informed and learned thesis on it, but do I want to sit in a lecture theatre for an hour and a half and have it read to me word-for-word? well, quite frankly, no.
I found it particulaly ironic that the talk was supposed to be about "interactivity" between the journalist and the audience, and yet, for the most part, Dr Meadows delivered his lecture with his face planted in his notes.
To be fair, I did find that the video clips he played added a great deal to the talk and were highly amusing. I especially liked the clip of the workers in a First World War munitions factory who, rather innocently, had no idea how to act infront of a camera.
Philip K Dick once said in order to find the treasure you must first trawl through the trash (or words to that effect), and the same is true with UGC. The sidelines have become the mainstream, and I was very heartened to hear that Wales is in the vanguard of citizen journalism. Often regarded by the great and the good (well, those in London anyway) as being something of an irrelevance, Wales is leading the way in its use of UGC.
As to why "citizen stories" have not caught-on in England, well it's because, as is so often the case, "England just doesn't get Wales."
posted by Gareth Jennings @ 5:20 AM
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