research
I have a number of research projects in various stages:
Technology, social change & global affairs
Our team at the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy is working with the US Department of State, technology firms, and NGOs to develop technologies to combat international Trafficking in Persons and modern day slavery. In August, 2010, I led a team to Thailand and Cambodia to research how mobile and internet-based technologies can better connect organizations, communities, and individuals combating human trafficking.
Social media in emergency & disaster
I am the Principle Investigator with Irina Shklovski (IT University Copenhagen) on a grant from the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation for social science research on the Los Angeles Fire Department’s use of Twitter in times of emergency, wildfire, and disaster. Our article, on Emergency Management and Social Media Evangelism, was published in the Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management in Seattle, 2010.
In November, 2010, I traveled to Haiti with a research team of emergency management and architecture specialists from New York. We conducted research on technologies and innovations used in camps and shelters in Port-au-Prince.
Remix
An article published in Information, Communication & Society evaluates the ethics of cultural reappropriation and remix practices in digital networked environments. Aram Sinnreich (NYU), Marissa Gluck, and I argue that an attitudinal shift in evaluating the value of appropriated content is underway as the lines between consumer and producer continue to blur. We discussed versions of this research at Media in Transition 5 at MIT and the International Communication Association in San Francisco. In November, 2010, we launched a followup national survey to compare longitudinal data in this arena.
Performance rights on the Internet
I delivered a paper at the Association of Internet Researchers in Milwaukee, which argued that the ontology of performance and the very notion of performance rights are being redefined with the widespread usage of networked “performance technologies” like YouTube. A key case study was the accusation of copyright infringement in Stephanie Lenz’s use of Prince’s song Let’s Go Crazy for her baby’s home video. A subsequent decision in Lenz vs. Universal Music Publishing requires Fair Use considerations for user-generated content.
Network performance
Alain Renaud (Bournemouth University, UK) and I have an article under review wherein we investigate the socio-cultural dimensions of networked performance over the Internet. We interviewed a distributed ensemble of musicians playing synchronically over the Internet from disparate global locations. We presented portions of this study at the International Communication Association in Montreal, Canada, and the International Association for the Study of Popular Music in Birmingham, UK.
Creative Commons & Copyright
At the Stanhope Centre for Communication Policy Research and the LSE I wrote an article (still under review) on the use of Creative Commons licenses and CC Mixter as a reaction to traditional copyright and as a legitimizing mechanism for the global exchange of digital content. In addition, Prodromos Tsiavos (LSE) and I published an article on the UK’s review of intellectual property rights and Creative Commons in Intermedia: Journal of the International Institute of Communication. I presented this research at the International Communication Association in New York and Dresden, Germany.
Internet music downloading
As a researcher with the Norman Lear Center, an entertainment and society think tank, I published the first academic study on Internet music consumption, which found that users downloading MP3s peer to peer on Napster were still willing to pay for music. The report was covered in the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Bloomberg News, Congressional Quarterly, and the Washington Post.