Distribution and Aggregation

In Danah Boyd's talk, she mentioned that we live inside streams of content and information - adding to it, consuming it, and redirecting it.

I started to consider how I am doing that. How distributed or aggregated am I when it comes to content and information? I suppose I use Twitter to gain access to news - whether it be sports, or news in general and I guess I am aggregating different sources into one news feed. I actually think its a lot easier to get news from Twitter because it's actually the stuff I want to read.

Danah Boyd mentioned that people "who are most enamored with services like Twitter talk passionately about feeling as though they are living and breathing with the world around them, peripherally aware and in-tune, adding content to the stream and grabbing it when appropriate", in this case I suppose I only 'grab' and not add to it as I don't 'distribute' much content on Twitter, perhaps I retweet something interesting once in awhile but that's pretty much it.

Going back to the lecture, I found it interesting how new forms of publishing allow us to transform other forms of distribution. An example given was Facebook, emotions, feelings and thoughts can be distributed through this tool. I suppose this is quite true, not just posting text on your news feed, but links, pictures, videos... I guess it could be considered 'distributing' emotions, feelings and thoughts in the form of different types of publishing, even commenting on your friends' posts and what they've 'distributed' can distribute your thoughts, feelings and emotions.

Moving back to Danah Boyd's talk, another thing I found interesting was how she mentioned that the barriers to distribution are collapsing and that what matters is not the act of distribution, but the act of consumption. In a networked structure, anyone can get content to another person. According to her, "the power is no longer in the hands of those who control the channels of distribution, but those who control the limited resource of attention" and "it's no longer about push; it's about pull". I agree with this to a certain extent, the fact that I use Twitter to aggregate the news that I want to read proves her point that the power is in my hands. However, there is also the issue of credibility. I feel that traditional news broadcasters still have the power, not in terms of channels of distribution, but the content itself, for example I would not believe news from a shoddy website. Then again, that also proves that I still have the absolute power to choose what content to access...


REFERENCES
http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/87704:what-is-implied-by-living-in-a-world-of-flow
http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/Web2Expo.html