Collaborative Media: Production, Consumption, and Design Interventions - Hardcover

Jonas Löwgren; Bo Reimer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262019760 ISBN 13: 9780262019767

Publisher: MIT Press, 2013

Synopsis

With many new forms of digital media--including such popular social media as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr -- the people formerly known as the audience no longer only consume but also produce and even design media. Jonas Lowgren and Bo Reimer term this phenomenon collaborative media, and in this book they investigate the qualities and characteristics of these forms of media in terms of what they enable people to do. They do so through an interdisciplinary research approach that combines the social sciences and humanities traditions of empirical and theoretical work with practice-based, design-oriented interventions. Lowgren and Reimer offer analysis and a series of illuminating case studies -- examples of projects in collaborative media that range from small multidisciplinary research experiments to commercial projects used by millions of people. Lowgren and Reimer discuss the case studies at three levels of analysis: society and the role of collaborative media in societal change; institutions and the relationship of collaborative media with established media structures; and tribes, the nurturing of small communities within a large technical infrastructure. They conclude by advocating an interventionist turn within social analysis and media design.
REVIEW

Jonas Löwgren and Bo Reimer provide a fresh perspective on the changing patterns of infrastructure, design, production and consumption of new media ... Löwgren and Reimer thoroughly analyse a complex set of issues related to this cultural shift, enriching the existing academic and public debates with new evidence from original case studies and a detailed theoretical discussion of what constitutes collaborative media in the 21st century. I salute the authors for this achievement and highly recommend reading this book.

Vyacheslav W. Polonski, LSE Review of Books

Collaborative Media is fundamentally a book about how we design, satirize, reappropriate and invent over again. It demonstrates why we should not focus so much on the user in the singular, but in the plural. The book is necessary and warmly recommended scholarly intervention if you want to understand design and collaborative media -- but also collaborative media research.

Jussi Parikka, Winchester School of Art; author of What is Media Archaeology?

About this title

Review:

Löwgren and Reimer thoroughly analyse a complex set of issues related to this cultural shift, enriching the existing academic and public debates with new evidence from original case studies and a detailed theoretical discussion of what constitutes collaborative media in the 21st century. I salute the authors for this achievement and highly recommend reading this --LSE Review of Books

The call for an interventionist turn captures the zeitgeist in social sciences exploring collaboration across different disciplines in the light of media innovation. While this call is in the first place directed to fellow researchers and designers, the book is likely to appeal to a broader audience. The thoroughly elaborated case studies will offer professional designers, business developers, public administrators and policymakers inspiration and insights for implementing innovative and transformative processes in and through media.
Ike Picone, European Journal of Communication

This book comes at a perfect time for faculty members bridging the gap between their academic practice of media studies and the interest of the students to get out and produce -- to no longer be passive viewers subjected to a silver bullet media.
Kate S. Kurtin, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

In focusing on building a case for considering 'collaborative media' as a new cultural form and advocating design-oriented interventionist approaches, Collaborative Media results in a resource most relevant for scholars interested in these particular areas. The book, however, does also entice those studying media across (other) disciplines (including this cross-disciplinary reviewer from sociology) to further consider media's collaborative qualities and the possibilities of interventionist approaches.
Ana-Maria Herman, Media, Culture & Society

The book offers a useful, yet controversial, approach to conceptualizing collaborative media through a model that connects the three moments of design, production, and consumption.
Mohamed El Marzouki, New Media & Society

My final conclusion is that this is, overall, a very wonderful book and a must read. There is a lot of wisdom in 150 pages.
Alladi Venkatesh, Consumption Markets & Culture

In conclusion, this book is an important contribution to the field, illustrated by a diverse set of case studies that bridge traditional disciplinary boundaries between design research, human–computer interaction, and media studies in ways that prioritize the doing of design... Collaborative Media will prove to be useful to researchers, and practitioners in any of the areas described, particularly the ones motivated by the deployment of design research in real-world contexts.
John Fass, Design Issues

Endorsements

Collaborative Media is fundamentally a book about how we design, satirize, reappropriate and invent over again. It demonstrates why we should not focus so much on the user in the singular, but in the plural. The book is necessary and warmly recommended scholarly intervention if you want to understand design and collaborative media but also collaborative media research. --Jussi Parikka, Winchester School of Art; author of What is Media Archaeology?

About the Author:

Jonas Loewgren is Professor of Interaction Design at Malmoe University. He is the coauthor of Thoughtful Interaction Design: A Design Perspective on Information Technology (MIT Press). Bo Reimer is a Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Malmoe University. He is the coauthor of The Politics of Postmodernity.

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0262019760
• ISBN 13: 9780262019767
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248