Nancy Baym wrote:

Matthew Allen wrote:

...

I wonder if the problem is the word content itself (which has too many, contested uses).

Firstly, on a technological basis might I suggest we separate "channel media" (print, radio, TV, film, videos, nonnetworked games) vs "environmental media" (telephone, CB radio). ...

I just ran across this quote which I thought encapsulated the issue nicely:

"As Hirsch and Silverstone (1992) argue, information technology poses unique challenges because it is both a set of artifacts to be consumed as well as a medium within which social relations are conducted." (from Nafus and Tracey "Mobile Phone and Concepts of Personhood" in Katz & Aarkhus Perpetual Contact, p.208)

I think Matthew and Nancy are raising some very interesting issues about content here. I think redefining content to include both texts (of whatever form) AND social relations is crucial to an adequate understanding of the internet and its applications. I see this task as requiring an interdisciplinary approach that brings the social scientists among us into a more direct conversation with textual analysts and others focused on media content, such as legal scholars involved with issues of IP and copyright. There's a lot of great work by social scientists on networked relations and online sociability, and equally, a lot of great work on content - its form and it's production and consumption in these new networked environments. But there's a lot less work that examines and adequately theorises the relationship between content and social relations - the affective and immaterial elements of content that is also textual, creative, aesthetic (in whatever way). Thinking this stuff together, redefining what content is, will mean reorganising large institutional practices like copyright, media content regulations regimes, and so on. Establishing metrics will be even more complex than it already is. Sal Dr Sal Humphreys Post Doctoral Fellow Faculty of Creative Industries Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, Australia Mob. 0414 456 078