WARNING

This material has been reproduced and

communicated to you by or on behalf of
RMIT University in accordance with
section 113P of the Copyright Act
1968 (Act).

The material in this communication may

be subject to copyright under the Act.

Any further reproduction or

communication of this material by you
may be the subject of copyright protection
under the Act.

Do not remove this notice

 ’fl
HNTRODUCHON

Media studies used to be more straightforward.

But not as interesting
For a couple of decades, fromthe 19805, media studies had settled
into a
reasonably stable cluster
of subject
areas, suchas ‘institutions’, ‘production’,
‘audiences’ and ‘texts’. ‘Institutions’
looked at the broadcastmg and publish—
ing industries as businesses and organisations Withpolitical and economic
concerns; ‘production’ was abouthow the professionals working for those
companies made the stuff; ‘audiences’ was about Whatpeople did withthe
stuff;
and ‘texts’ was just
aboutthe stuff
itself.
‘Institutions’ is stillan incredibly relevant area of study, but the compa—
niesare all different.Many of them didn’t exist 20 years ago, and in traditional
terms aren’t even ‘media’ companies at all, but are ‘teclmology’ develoPers,
Whichmeans that thesgrprimarily engineer software platforms to gather data
about people and showadverts to them, whilstacting like they are primarily
about something else. Then there are the historically
well’established insti»
tutions too, Suchas the BBC and Disney, but theyare havmg to do lots of
different
filings ndW—typicall'y'
WithIzax'e.ry‘t)ochlr
doing someof everything and
trying to unify it somehow.
2 MAKING MEDIA STUDIES

‘Production’, ‘audiences’ and ‘texts’, have all fallen

meanwhile, apart.
For some kinds of mediam—Cinema,television, online broadcasting or narrOWv
castmg, publications—these are still reasonably adequate terms, but there’s
not much very new or interesting to be saidmor, to put it another way, the
interesting things can be said by scholars of economics, business or sociology,
leaving media studies somewhat adrift.
Thankfully there are lotsof new things happening, but you wouldn’t look
at themin that way anymore- People still make Stuff, and people stilllook
at stuff, but often they are the same people doing both, (Youwill notethat
I’ve skipped overthe study of individual ‘texts’ altogether, because—as Iwfll
explain briefly in chapter 3—«-Idon’t think you get to understand the role of
millions of thmgsin society merely by analysing one 01:two of the things).
For me, media smdies today comists of a dimmished blob of the 01d
themes, but With two new peaks of exciting and Vital activity on either side.
One is basically inSpir'mg and optimistic, and is about people being empovw
cred through everyday making and creativity. The other is basicallytroublin
and pessimistic, and is abOutdataexploitation, surveillance and extreme new
forms of computerised capitalism
Thisbook is almost all aboutthe firstone and not really about the second
one. But bofil are important. The second one tends to get mare attention,
and some peeple argue as though the two peaks are in competition Witheach
other—as if highlighting the importance of one set of negative COncems would
showthat an interest in_the other set ofpositive possibilities was mistaken. But
filey 316;justseparate points, Operating on different levels. To try an analogy“
Withthe necessary skills, you can make some effective weapons out' of wood,
and maybe you even live in a society Where the use of wooden weapons is
enjoying a resurgence, and somepeeple have been seriouslyinjured; but these
observations could not be used to prove that
trees
are abad thing.

Unpackfilflg ”Making Med'fia Studfieg”

Thisbook is called
‘Malcing MediaStudies:The creativity
turn in media and
communications studies’. The first
bit, ‘Making Media Studies’, obviousl
points which I don’t reall
to the making dimension of media studies—m—by
mean the old focuson traditional
media productiontechniques—how news—
roomsor television studios
are orgarflsed, 01:whatever——but
on the more DIY,
handcrafted meaning thatwe associate withmakers and maker culturetoday
And we are mterested in the relationship
of those
makmg processes
withthe
 INTRODUCTION 3

kind of online digital media thatenables everyday peeple to create and share
material, and to be inspired by that
made by others.
It’sa kind of media studies whichhas making at its front and centre. It’s
aboutbeing able to do things Withmediau—not just taflcaboutwhatother
pele do Withthem, or What they do to us. It’s aboutbeing handsom, which
means it’s still
abOutideas
and critical
engagement, but expressed thIough
making things rather thanjust writing arguments. (We can still write
too, of
course, but the writing might be more powerful When informed by the expert
ences of making and exchanging). To borrow thIee key distinctions fromthe
anthropologist Tim Ingold (2013: 3):

*9it’s about learning with media, ratherthanleanling about media;

° this is because Wé intend to move forward tb'mugh building meanings
and understandings, rather thanlooking back overaccounts of how
things are;
a and this is because our aimsare primarily transfonnational, ratherthan
being essentially docmne111x115;.l

Here, the shift

proposed for media studies
mirrors the development of re-
search in the field of design, Where a practice
blown as ‘research thIough
design’ has emerged. As suggested originally by Frayli—ng (1993), thisis dis’
tinct from‘research for design’w-the kind of research thatis done to infom
design activities—and ‘research into design’, Whichis whatIngold wouldcall
‘documentary’ work, being about design and designers. ‘Research through der
Sign’ is the more interesting
one, being a process of exploring ideas through
design practices—Iethinking design by turning the innovative and reflective
aspects of design backupon the practice itself, and creating new knowledge
(Frankel £1 Racine, 2010; Sevaldson, 2010).
More simply, it’s a matter
of do—
ing design in order to generate new ideas and to examine Whatdesign means.
we need to make things With media in order to think more thor—
3111111511137,1
oughly about the opportunities and risks associated with different materials,
tools
and services, bdthwithin
themselves, and When out in the world‘

1 Whatl have borrowed fromIngold are the distinctions

between learning ‘With’ or ‘from’
versus
learning ‘abOut’; moving forward
versus
lobking back; and a ‘transformational’
ver»
sus ‘documentary’ mode of exploration.
Perhaps, to be clear, I should notethatIngold is
writmg generally, about learning frommaking and doing—his comme‘nts
are not directly,
or only, aboutmedia, and are certainly not a commentary
on, or prescription for, media
studies
in particular.
 LTAALL'LLL‘I u uLuJJLL’L D J. U ULBO

Then. our subtitle, ‘The creativity tum in media and communications

studies’, refers to the same kinds
of things, highlightmg in particular the act of
creating media and communications, rather
than, say, receiving news, informm
tion, or entertainment. It does engage with pmliticalj economic, teckmologi—
cal and business systems, in terms of how theysupport or suppress everyday
creativity, Whichmeans it has a relationship With the other ‘pealc’ described
above—the serious concerns about surveillance and exploitation.
As creativity fundamentally signalsa positive mtent, to make a difference
in the worId—even if we disagree WithWhat others are trying to achieve with
their creative efforts, theyare stillcreativeeffortsfithe creativity tum in media
and communications studies is alsoabout trying to find a useful role, and val’
uable applications, for media and cornmumgations
studies
itself. This includes,
among other things, thinking about how today’s technologies can be used to
support and exchange creative practices Withoutnegative consequences—in
otherwords, thinking more positively about solutions to the kinds of problems
which obsess those scholars on the other peak mentioned above. We prefer
mking to describing—so this approach involves not just describing problems,
but making solutions; or, for things that are not easily changed, at least makixg
creative and provocative interventions which have; an impact on people and
fosterthe necessary motivation for change.
The creativity turn in media and communications studies involves think—
ing aboutcreativity, and creative
uses of media and corrlmuxficatiom, but also
thinking creatively about the subject. What are the new ways of domg media
and communications studies? How has the subject changed so it is not always
going over the same old issues? What approaches and methods can help media
and communications studies to be innovative and usefill in spheres beyond
itself."
These are absolutely crucial questions, not leastof all because media and
commications studies has done sufficiently well Within universities that
discussion of its moreconcrete concerns has been adopted by departments of
sociology, politics, psychology, business, economics, even geography. Media
and communications studies needs to keep ahead to avoid becoming reduna
dant, 80 questions
of innovation
and valueare important, excitinguand
unavoidable.
‘Maldng media studies” is thereforeabout making media as botha subject,
and a method; and is about renewmg What‘media studies’ means- It is about
an approach which emphasises the knowledge of makers—the recogniti on
that you develop criticalinsightsinto things by participating
and creating in
 lNTRODUCTION 5

those areas yourselfwand the responsibility thatwe haveto do something,

and to do somethmg useful.

An aspirafimmal medlfia s‘iudfias

MY work has always tended to be ratheraspirational~oftenconcerned With

how things could be rather than how things are; in particular
since the first
edition
of Web Studies (2000), a book prepared in the late19905, When we
suddenly
startedto see the blossoming of everyday creative
media activity
that
people could quite easily make and share witheach other, rather thangener-
ally only being able to consume the work of media professionals. (Of course,
peeple have always been able to make things, but getting themseen by people
outside of your locality was previously a big problem)-
Unsurprisinglv, I like the aspirational approach, Whichdoesn’t assume
that we are all doomed, and has some faith in humansto make their own [308'
itive futures. But being ‘aspirational’ can also be apoint of criticism—that the
researcher is unrealistic and has failed to grasp the grim realitiesof the present
situation. Ifeel, though, filatbeing consn'uctive and optimistic is a pragmatic
choice, being preferable to despairing pessimism, Whichdoesn’t actually get
you anywhere.
Readers Who were hoping that a bookabout ‘The creativityturnin me-
éia and communications studies’ mightoffer a textbook’like account of this
historical tumingrpoint, withdescriptions of its many practitioners, may be
disappointed, because to be honest
this
too is aspirational:
the ‘creativity tum’
is something we can see several seeds of, and whichIam Willing into existence
by making it the subtitle of a book. But it hasn’tnecessaxily happened yet. If
it’s going to happen, we’re going to have to do it together.

O‘n ithfis
@‘E‘ bmk
This volumewas originally going to be rather differentto the book you are
reading now. In 2011 Ihad published a short Kindle book, Media Studies 2.0,
and Other Battles Around the Future of Media Research, Whichchew together
[someof my previous articles
(and a smalh'sh amountofnew stuff) Whichhadn’t
previously been in a book.A significant part of the motivation for doing that
was because I simply wanted the experience of making and distributing—via
the Kindle platform—my own electronic book.
u .LV‘LAALL‘JKJ LVLEUIJ‘L fii UUUlb'

The economics Were mterestjng—wbecause Amazon pays the author

70percent oftheprice paid bythecustomer, whereas conventional publishers
tend topayaromd 7.5percent ofthesumreceived bythepublisher (Which
itselfmay be aslowashalf thecover price), this
means thata selfrpublished
Kindle book priced ’atjust £2.0015-
h'kely tobring theauthor more money per
book thana £20-00 book froma conventional publisher.
The book didOK, butI think I discovered that theworldisa bitsuspi»
ciousof£2.00 academic Kindle books~maybe itseemed oddly cheap; and]
01'
perhaps themarketing power ofconventional
publishers actually
does add
somet'kfing; ormaybe theworld wasn’t that
excited about
a David Gauntlet:
book called
Media Studies 2.0, andOther Battles Amund theFutwre ofMedia
Research
after
all.
Or somecombmation
ofthese
andperhaps other
factors.
Then MarySavigar atPeter Lang publishing said
she’d be interested
in
publishmg
a revised andexpanded Version
ofmy Kindle book, andsothat’s
Whatthis
book wasgoing tobe-
ButthenasIworked on itover 2013—14, I chucked outoldthings
and
replaced themWiTh new things. And ittookonnew shape around theidea
ofMaking Media Studies- ButI still thought ofitasthis remixofmy Kindle
book- And when people expressed interest inmy ‘new book’ I felt a little
embarrassed that itwasnottruly a new book even though I waswriting and
adding lots ofnewbits. Itwasaslate asJuly 2014-, twomonths before thebook
deadline, that
I realised—wwhilst
waiting for a train, I canstill
picture it—Hfllat
actually theonlything thatthisbook andtheKindle book now have incomr
mom isthe‘Media Studies 2.0”article—just 3 ,000 words. 80 itis
a preper book
after am ‘Well,youcanbethejudge ofthat. Inmusicterms, it’s notquite a
whole new studioalbum, butit’s nota mere cashdn remixalbumeither.Itis,
atleast, a quite
generous mini—album, (Youstill have miniaalbums,
don’t you?
At least
I didn’t call
itan‘EP’).
Now. MY sonFirm isseven years old, buthasbeen mak'mg stuff
foryears.
(His sister Edie also
loves tobuild, and sheisthree).
Someone observed re-
cently,
about WhatFinn plays With, ‘He’s just much happier withthings you
canmake someflfing outof” . And I thought, ahyes,andthat applies tome too.
And that’s theexplanation forWhy,inthis book about‘media’, youwill find
thingsabout theonline world, andeven about LEGO, butvery little about
the
traditional
‘media’ things
like television andnewspapers. The: reason isthat
we’re just
muchhappier with things
youcanmake something outof.
SotobeCl'ear—Pm notclaiming thattelevision, say,
isnota creativeme«
dium. Butthewaythat television
worksisthat 99.999 percent ofus aremeant
 INTRODUCTION 7

to be merely televisionrwatchmg people, adufiring the creative work of the

0.001 per cent, the television'making people, so that factalone means»~—for
our purposes here, at least—that it’s not really Worthtalking abOut.You see:
We’rejus; muchhappier Withthings you can make: something out of.

Media 515firfigg‘ms “ffm‘expea‘fiemes

and makmg thfingg happen
If we are taking an alternative approach to whatmedia studies
means, psrhaps
it would help to have a different way of thinking about media. So here’s a
thought. Let’s put it in a box, just
for emphasis.

We should look at media not as charmels for communicatmg messages, and

not as things. We should lookat mediaas triggers for experiences and for
making things happen They can be places of conversation, exchange, and
transfonnation. Media in the world means a fantastically messy set of net:
works filled withmillions of sparks—some igniting new meanmgs, ideas,
and passions, and some just fading away.

The simple
word ‘media’, of course, encompasses a vastrange of interesting
tlfings—different technologies, publications, games, and tools, numerous
types of content and conversation, and morestufi produced
by humans than
we couldever list
or comprehend, It would, therefore, seem reckless
to try to
pick out one reason for being interested in all of themNevertheless, Ihope
that the assertion in the box perhaps offers
a starting point for thinking about
media 111a different way
Like mostideas, this
is not really
new. Indeed the first
bit is only a minor
adaptation of two related things saidby Brian Eno, the musician and artist:
lStop thinking about art worksas objects, and starttlfinlchug aboutthemas
triggers for experiences’ (Em)= 1996: 368), and ‘... the other
way of thinking
about art, is not that it’s a channel for-commmlicating something but that it’s
.aetrigger; it’s a way of making something happen’ (E110,2013: 23 ) . I’ve shifted
the subject from‘art’ to ‘media’, but the provocative point is the same. Eno
Himself immediately attributes the ‘triggers for experiences” idea to his former
art tutor, Roy Ascott, and of course this is really justa neatway of encapr
sulating a point about art which has been around for literally thousandsof
years. Aristotle,
for instance, some 2,350 years ago, suggested thatworks
of art
5 LILAKING MEDIA STUDIES

should offer somefiling that wouldgive rise to ideas and sensations, withthe
example of music in particular being upheld as something which, by its nav
ture, cannot offerdepictions of things, or even of emotions, per se, but Which
can stir or trigger feelings in the listener (Aristotle, 335 BC; Eldridge, 2003:
29). Clearly, it is not new to seq7that art prompts something to happen in the
person experiencing it, rather thanbeing an inherent quality of the art object
itself‘ But Ascott’s and Ends way of expressing itm—art as a ‘trigger’ and ‘a way
of making something happen’wis a little more emphatic and active: a sort of
‘push’ model of making, Where you intend that the thing you havemade will
make a difference in the world, although
YOUdon’t aspire to predict whatthat
difference will be.
So let‘sgo back to my opening paragraph and take it sentence by sentence.
We should look at media not as channels for communicating messages, and
not as things.~—It is common, and understandable, that mediawouldoften be
thought of as setsof objects, produced by institutions, for particular
purposes,
including the transmission of ideological messages- Thisapproach was more
adequate in the past thanit is today (as discussed in the two following chap
11ers), but has always
been somewhatlimited. In mediastudies, the idea that
you can learn much about media in society through ‘content analysis'—-i.e.
counting or recording the: appeaxances of things in a media product—was al»
ways bothdreary and wrong. You can’t learn about the role of a medium in the
World merely by staring at that medium. And more generally, thinking about
media as just ‘content’, made by others, was always the least exciting way to
consider these phenomena. So let’s press on to the more positive points-
We should look at media as niggers for experiences and fOT making things
happen.——~This
view assumes an assertive
and interventionist
orientation
to
media: we make md share things because we wantto do something, we want
to bring about a change in the world- Thisdoesn’t need to be a big tlfingmit
wouldoften be on a tiny scale; the intended change might just
be, for example,
to make one friend smile for a moment Conceiving of media as things that
we do stujj‘ with offers a powerhl sit—forward alternative to the chilling pas—
sive approach within media studies whichis centred aromdideas of victims,
exploitation and delusion. (As I’ve indicated already, I think we really should
be concerned about issues of surveillance, and the corporate world hijacking
whatshould be a free and Open internet, but part of the solution to those grim
scenarios is to build and use alternatives. The abuse Of our data is not an inherl
ent 0r mevitable part of internet technologies; we haveto try to make our own
futures, and compel govgrmnents and businesses to behave more ethically) .
 INTRODUCTION 9

Media] can be places of conversation, exchange, and transformtion.—As a

resultof the big obvious change that happened over the past20 yearsmwhich
for mostpeople was within the lastlO—mediahaveChanged frombeing pri—
marily abgut watching, listening, and reading, to being mostsignificantly—or
at leastmostmterestmglymabout creathg, and discussing, and so bringing
about change in people, ideas, and culture, and how these
things are valued
and developed. The former
watctg/readmg mode still
exists
alongside that,
of course, and is fine, but if we wantto attend
to the significant things
that
are going onwand which have the mostpotential
value
for the filture of our
societies
and cultures—then
we are bound to wantto lookat conversanion7
exchange, and transformatiOn.
To talce anodler seed fromthe art world, I have long admired Martin
Creed’s frank, thoughtful approach to why he creates artworkaHe s_eems to
find this questiondifficult, but says it’s about
emotion, self—expression, and.’
‘Wanting to communicate and wantmg to say hello’ (Creed interviewed in II—
lmninations, 2002: 101). This everyday drive—‘wanting to say hello’—is per—
hapskey to a lot of today’s valuable
comrmlmlcation, because We wantto make
a comection, but need to do so in a useful way, via doing something else.
Studies(summarised in Gauntlettet 31., 2012) have shown thatbusylearn!
ing communities online-m—from
the N ew York fimes commentdiscussions to
thriving DIY sites suchas' Insfiuctables, Craftster, and Raveh'y—are successful
because people activelywant to help each other, to share and gain inspiration,
to feel more involved in the world, and to develop their own understanding
through supporting others.So: conversation (of any kind), exchange (of ideas
and impiration), transformation
and (of se]f and ultimately society) are vital,
and We should
be thinking abouthow media systems can be designed to em
Courage these
qualities.
Media, in the‘world means afantastically messy set ofnetworks filed with millions
of sparks—usome igniting new meanings, ideas, and passiom, and somejust fading
away. The proliferation of socialmedia and online platforms means that there
ls a really incredible amount going on. The sea of traditional media content
2973.3
really vast, of course, but it seemed at least potefitially quantifiable—a set
of countable objects
being output
in one direction
(more or less). Now, there
are millionsof these sparks, these
potential triggers for experiencés, every
day.
They are not all going to have a very noticeable impact, and we wouldnot
expect them to. We have moved away fromthe era of big things whicharia-
meantto havebig impacts. When you’ve spent 18 months producing awhole
documentary, say, or a whole exhibition, you need it to havebig results. But
.‘LU NLAALDJU LVLELJLA b J. UULbb'

in a world of networked DIY media, Withconvivial sparks leaping in all direca

tions, the expectation upon each of the: bits is lighter, but positive comections
and inspirations can happen very frequently.

What fth'égmeans in Emactfiw

There are various implications which flow fromthiskind of approach.

Implication #1: It means thatour mainquestion is not ‘what do the media
rather
do to 1153’,but ‘what can we do withm§dia?‘- If our primary interest is in
what‘the media’ do to us, we assume fromthe start a kind of victim mindset.
It’s not necessarily a wholly
passive stance, because we might
be trying
to look
at Whatsome of these media do to us so thatwe can make complaints
01' pro«
testabout it. Howevgar, it’s still
a position
of being on the back foot.
But if our primary approach is to ask ‘what can we do withmedia?’, We
are on the front foot, seeking to engage, looking for ways to make society
better—«Jr at leastlooking fer ways in whichtecl—mologies, or the things you
can do Withteclmologies, can be used to support people to shape cultureand
society
in a positive
way.
Implication #2: Thisapproach therefore means that We wouldexpect to
find the mostrelevant ideas and knowledge in different places. Scholarsin
‘media studies’ 01‘‘conununication smdies’mwifll a background in psycholoa
gy, say, or literature~do not necessarily become redundant, but may be only
partiafly useful. Thisfrontafoot approach means that we would havedesigners
working with sociologists and anthropologists—was well as artists,architects
and anyone else that wouldlike to j oin in——t0make .tools that wouldenable
people to create, exchange, converse andrcollaborate, in ways that felt
natuxal
to them. This doesn’t mean that technologists OI teclmology companies would
be in the driving seat, because we don’t actually live in a binary systemwith
critique on one side and capitalism on the other. Instead we’re talkingabout
collabOIations
where people Withdifferent
kinds of insights abOut
media, and
whatpeople do withmedia, could develop constructive innovations‘
Implication #3: The emphasis on ‘experiences’ remmds us to think of mcdia
in amultirmodal way—Win other words, that we shouldn’t justassume that me-
dia use involves looking at screens or paper, but can be a range of differentways
of engaging with ideas, through doing things withdifferent kinds of material
or materials and psing sight, sound and touch (and possibly, though lesscom—
monly, taste or smell).1t’s partlyto undeflme the significance of diffemnt kinds
of media that this book includes achapter about LEGO. If you can’t tolerate
 INTRODUCTION II

theidea ofhaving a chapterabout LEGO ina media studies bookthenfine,

don’t read it,butthefact
thatifsthere might hopefully
remind usthat
media,
theplural word for
medium, canrefer toanyr ofthethingsthathumansuseto
express and1 share ideas, and(ideally) todevelop themtogether.
Implication #4:Ifmedia are places ofconversationandexchange, thenwe
neeatohave open andshareablemedia content_which mostly
we do,on the
side ofhomemade media, andtypicallywe don’t when thirdparties
andcom—
panies (and even universities)
axeinvolved. Thisdoesn’t mean thatthefruits
ofcreative
labourhave tobe made available
With no reward fortheGreater,
butrather
thatwe need todevelop systems whichcould, Where wanted, direct
some oftheeconomic surplus back tothepeople'who
have made themusic
or
ideas orsoftware
fromWhichwe aresubsequently
benefiting.
Implication #5: This approach would encourage ustobuild adifferent kind
ofeducation system, with a corresponding sitrforward, hzmdswnapproach to
building andcritiquing bowledge. We wouldhave togetridofthetesting
ofmemorised facts, andadopt amuch more tinkering, experimental andcon—
versational approach toseeing how theworld works andWhatwe think about
it,Where students woulddevelop hypotheses together andtry them out, and
communicate them, through making anddoing, (Thatcould absolutely be
done, although it’s quitea change fromWhatisdone inmosteducation SVSr
terns right now.And just tomake itseem slightly more difficult, we;notethat
forthis playful andcreative approach toeducation toreally work, itwould
probably have tobematched bya corresponding similar shift inhow adults
work too, witha greater emphasis onplayful experimentation, andappreciar
nonofprovocative challenges andthepossibility- oflearning through failure).
Implication #6:A filrther consequence ofthis approach could be a more
artlstic and experimental approach tomedia’making, on bothprofessional
andnonvprofessiofial sides. IfWe turn again toBrian Eno, hehasoften spoken
about leaving space for theyiewer 0rlistener tohave toengage andthink; for
aworktobeprovocative butnottooffer t00»easyanswers. ‘Triggers for eXpe»
nences’ wouldn’t work bytelling youWhattothink, butrather bygiving you
something toengage with.

The mostimportant thing ina piece ofmusic [013we couldadd, anyother creative
form] istoseduce people tothepoint where theystaft
searching. Ifthemusicdoesn’t
do that, itdoesn’t do anything. Ifitjust presents
itself
andjusr sitsthere, ifiteither
declares itself
tooclearly oristooobscure toevenappear tobe saving anyflxing, then
itseems tome tohave failed. SoIthink
that
sitting
onthat
line
isvery
interesting.
(13110,
1981)
.u..4 MAALJN Li NLEULA :5'L'LJ ULES

And if the network is to be filled withthe sparks of Creative conversations,

these of course are more likely to flow fromfihoughtptovokjng conversar
tionrstarters.So then it follows thatmedia—malcershavea Ie5ponsibility to
think about different and cuxious ways of doing things, to chaflenge others,
not simply to be, ‘distinctive’ but rather because of a responsibilityto cultivate
innovation, questioning, and surprise-
Those are just six of the implicafionswhichthe approach gives rise to.
Others appear every day as people make use of the myriad potentials
of meta
worked media, of course. Leftto their
own devices, peoPIe continually
try out
new things and new ways to share ideas 51ndhave an impact on each other,
and that’sthe beauty of it.

[...]