Creative Cuppa 4th Coffee Meetup

Dear everyone,

Thanks for your coming today; and we want to express our special gratitude to Professor Barrie Gunter for his coming and participation. Hopefully we will release the newsletter on next Monday. Next time we will be focusing on the topic of "virtual community/online community". Thanks again for all your contributions to the wonderful collaborative work today.

Best wishes,

Jin Shang
25/02/2009

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Event: Creative Cuppa 4th Coffee Meetup
(completed & newsletter coming out soon ... )

Theme: Digital Identity/Network Identity
Time: 12:00am-13:00pm, 25th February, 2009
Venue: Kathleen Smith Group Study Room 2.2, David Wilson Library
Coordinator: Tony O'Tierney
Speaker: Jennifer M Jones
Description: by Jennifer M Jones

Some may think that we are transgressing, moving into separate virtual spaces – a land to remix and reinvent ourselves as the person we wish we could be. Others see it as an extension to what we already have, a tool that allows us to connect, share and participate with those we know and those who we would like to know. And some think that this is just another wave, another fad and part of a bigger picture in relation towards what it means to be a human being. What is important is the Internet can be everything and nothing, anything for anybody, it can provide the tools for positive change, or facilitate destruction.

This month's "creative cuppa" is dedicated to the world of online, networked world of identity and to what you think is important in relation to the discussion, the definition and the organisation of identity in the digital age. What does the term "Networked Identity" mean to you? How do you consider your own identity online? What are the relationships between our activities online and off? Is “social networking” such a new thing? Or have we been doing something along that line for years…

Come along; share your thoughts with others. This is purely informal and interdisciplinary event where opinions are valued and where you can speak to others who are interested in topics such as the Internet, the digital economy and new media.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=54045632745
http://creativecuppa.blogspot.com

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Creative Cuppa
22/02/2009

Newsletter for 3rd Creative Cuppa Meet-up

On the 28th Jan, Creative Cuppa successfully held its 3rd meet-up in Group Study Room 2.2 of the David Wilson Library. Many thanks to Walid, Jennifer, Tony, Taslim, Patama, Danaya, and Ivy for their enthusiastic participation and supportive feedback. This time our discussion was focused on the topic of online journalism and citizen journalism. After a 10-minutes video show, the discussion started with a debate on “copyright issues”. Critically, it is good news to see an increasing trend of ordinary people becoming interested in posting news stories and other information online, though this causes increasing concerns about copyright violation. For example, as Walid pointed out, some people might “steal” others’ ideas and got them published on their own blogs; and this could be suspected as violating copyrights. However, as Jenifer argued, because there was no economic payback for doing so, this shouldn’t be considered as a big problem. Tony partly agreed with Jennifer, and he thought that online journalism allowed people to express different opinions on social events and receive diversified information from alternative channels other than mainstream media; and he thought this was more important than anything else. However, he also stressed that, people should indeed consider the reliability of the information they had received from these channels, because some news stories might be nothing but fictitious.

Apart from the “copyright issues”, there was another important point brought into discussion, which was whether citizen journalism was facing legal problems when it dealt with certain sensitive information, because laws vary from country to country, but the Internet was tended to be “boundless”. Therefore, on the one hand, citizen journalists should be allowed to say anything of their interests; but on the other hand, they should be highly responsible for everything they say, and make sure that their words don’t break the local laws. Thus most participants agreed that it was necessary to develop the national laws to monitor online journalistic information, in order to make sure that the process of online journalism would become increasingly legalized. Walid also added that, although it might be useful to improve international laws to regulate online information, there were supposed to be huge challenges due to the clear existence of diversified national situations, both culturally and politically. Finally, most participants agreed that, even though the web providers should not take responsibility for illegal activities of online journalists, they may still need "self-regulation" on the information posted on their websites.

Video link: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=58iZpMRclwI (Citizen Journalism - What Is It?)

Next time, we will be focusing on the theme of "Network Identity". Thanks for all your contributions. Looking foward to seeing you all next time!

Best wishes,

Jin Shang
2/2/2009

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Creative Cuppa:
http://creativecuppa.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60675201456