Media City Research Articles

SYSTEM DESIGN OF INTERACTIVE PRODUCTS IN URBANISM

The article analyses the issue of a systematic approach to the design of digital products that form a modern urban space, forming a “media city”. It is shown that in modern cities digital space plays a key role in the development of the concept of “smart cities”, and digital technologies are increasingly used to solve urban problems and improve the quality of life of citizens. The characteristic features of user interfaces, such as cross-platform and ecosystem, are highlighted and described, as well as the topic of cultural, aesthetic and semantic aspects of design is touched upon. The practical experience of educational design in the field of interactive solutions for the urban environment at the Department of Environmental Design of Stroganov Russian State University of Design and Applied Arts is summarised. Instructional design experiences have been shown to add an experimental approach to systemic problem solving.

:Paris and the Parasite: Noise, Health, and Politics in the Media City

:<i>Paris and the Parasite: Noise, Health, and Politics in the Media City</i>

Media-Tech Companies as Agents of Innovation: From Radical to Incremental Innovation in a Cluster

During recent decades new players, forms, and practices have been entering the journalism field, prompting a re-examination of journalism’s professional and organizational boundaries. Many scholars argue for expanding the scope of journalism studies beyond the newsrooms to encompass actors labelled as strangers, peripheral players, or interlopers. Those actors do not belong to traditional journalism but are becoming involved in the production of news, challenging journalism borders from the inside and out. Their influence has been growing and scholarship is increasingly mapping out these strangers and assessing their role in journalism innovation. In this article, we examine the role of one type of implicit interloper in journalism innovation: media-tech companies. We consider companies that provide video management and virtual reality services as implicit interlopers, due to their connection to journalism through the boundary object of news production and lack of claim over journalistic authority. We argue that media-tech companies have been under-researched based on a review of literature on innovation according to Holton and Belair-Gagnon’s (2018) typology of interlopers. Therefore, we examine what kind of innovation comes from the periphery of journalism, and the prerequisites for and the role of those innovations in the context of a specific cluster. We conducted a case study of Media City Bergen based on a thematic analysis of semi-structured elite interviews with executives of media-tech companies. Our findings show how media-tech companies bring innovation to production and distribution, content, and content consumption. Furthermore, they show how disruptiveness and the degree of innovations change with the maturation of the cluster.

The Informal Call: &lt;em&gt;Telemonederos&lt;/em&gt; and Media Transitions in 1990s Bogot&amp;aacute;

This article re-examines the historiography of telephony in Bogotá, Colombia, focusing on the semi-public phones known as telemonederos. It challenges the conventional mono-medial and mono-usage narratives of telephony by highlighting the diverse and multifaceted use of phones in the context of urban informality. The research explores how telemonederos emerged as a creative response to Bogotá’s socio-economic and technological dynamics, embodying accessible technology and entrepreneurial spirit. These devices, evolving within electronic bazaars and informal economies, became integral to the city’s communication landscape, influencing the delivery of mobile services. The study also draws parallels between the development of telemonederos and auto-construction practices in urban environments, underscoring the role of community-driven initiatives in the modernisation of Bogotá. This approach offers a nuanced view of Bogotá as a media city, where informal networks and innovations significantly shape its technological and social evolution.

#Detroit Music City: Analyzing Detroit’s Musical Urban Imaginary Through a Cultural Justice Lens

In this article, the ways murals can become symbols of both heritage and divisive gentrification processes are analyzed in the context of the contemporary media city. Taking the case of Detroit, USA, how is the urban imaginary of the “music city” mediated through street art, and its meaning reconstituted and reframed in the contemporary networked mediasphere? Applying a cultural justice perspective, a selection of Detroit music murals, their Instagram lives, and the public debates surrounding three specific street art projects are analyzed along (1) the symbologies of place the murals represent, (2) the historiographies of space attached to the murals, (3) the social ties and community networks that keep the murals in place or protest their presence. This study shows that the proposed cultural justice framework offers an opportunity to more fully understand how cultural materialities such as murals shape mediated public space in areas of gentrification.

‘It was Bauhaus without realising we were Bauhaus:’ BBC women and Youth and Entertainment programming in the North

This working paper focuses on women in leadership roles in the Entertainment Department of BBC North, based at New Broadcasting House on Oxford Road, Manchester and subsequently at Media City UK. In so doing, it considers the role of the department’s founder, Janet Street-Porter, and her leadership of the then Youth Programmes department in the late 80s/early 90s. Drawing on interviews with six women professionals who worked either during or just after Street-Porter’s leadership and scholarship on women in the UK media industry, this paper considers some of the reasons why this environment proved so fertile for our interviewees. We also reflect on some of the key issues the interviews provoked: the issue of balancing motherhood with a career in the UK television industry, the importance of women’s networks, and the impact of class in terms of working in the BBC. In this sense, the BBC was formative for our interviewees, particularly through the leadership of an ‘outsider’ like Street-Porter despite structural issues of exclusion that remained present in the organisation.

Paris and the Parasite: Noise, Health, and Politics in the Media City by Macs Smith

Reviewed by: Paris and the Parasite: Noise, Health, and Politics in the Media City by Macs Smith Keith Moser Smith, Macs. Paris and the Parasite: Noise, Health, and Politics in the Media City. MIT, 2021. ISBN 978-0262045544. Pp. 296. In this insightful exploration of Paris as a mediatic space in which information incessantly flows in all directions through a plethora of divergent vectors, Smith exposes the ugly underbelly of the hegemonic forces undergirding the dominant social order in the city of lights. Building upon Serres's multifaceted theory of the parasite, Smith reveals how even the architectural structure of Paris evolved to expel unwanted biological, mediatic, and social parasites. Smith effortlessly weaves transdisciplinary connections between literature, philosophy, film, critical theory, media studies, architecture, cultural studies, environmental ethics, and popular culture to decry how those who have been labeled parasites by the integrated political and social elite have been effectively banished from the center of Paris and relegated to the impoverished banlieues where their undesirable noise cannot be heard. In addition to probing the efficacy and paradoxes of counterhegemonic strategies that disenfranchised and marginalized Parisians have conceived, including street art and the extreme sport of parkour, in an effort to resist oppression, Smith turns to Derrida's theories of hospitality in order to invite the reader to imagine how Paris and other postmodern metropolises could become more welcoming spaces in the future. Although Smith's interdisciplinary approach is compelling throughout the book, the passages in which he underscores the role of architecture and urban planning in the creation of a stifling anti-parasitic glass ceiling are especially thought-provoking. From a historical perspective, Smith pinpoints the "aftermath of the cholera epidemic" in the middle of the nineteenth century as the beginning of the concerted efforts of public officials working in tandem with architects to expel "invasive non-human pathogens" from the streets of Paris (28). Architects like Le Corbusier were soon called upon to deal with another kind of perceived menace: the social parasite. Smith explains how Le Corbusier was instrumental in the conception of a private space "where one can be sealed off from the parasites of the city" (36). Architecture became a hegemonic tool for shielding affluent Parisians from the parasitic noise emitted by those at the bottom of the social ladder. However, this approach to urban planning, intentionally designed to ensure that people had very little contact with each other, created isolation chambers "where anonymity reigns" (48). Delving into the theories of Guy Debord, Smith demonstrates how these attempts to eliminate the parasite atomized Parisian society. Nonetheless, Smith finds a glimmer of hope in Serres's hypothesis that the parasite can never be removed from the informational channels entirely. Specifically, Smith outlines how street artists like Blek le rat and Invader have (re-)appropriated the very walls or borders that were conceived to exclude them. Even if street art has now been commercialized to a certain extent, the counter-hegemonic discourse and culture jamming of social parasites cannot be [End Page 234] eradicated altogether. Without painting too rosy a picture of counter-hegemonic liberation techniques, Smith reveals that social parasites will continue to find ways to have their voices heard in Paris and all around the world. [End Page 235] Keith Moser Mississippi State University Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French

Paris and the Parasite: Noise, Health, and Politics in the Media City. By Macs Smith

<i>Paris and the Parasite: Noise, Health, and Politics in the Media City</i>. By Macs Smith

Cultural Models of Media City

Introduction. The paper presents a cultural analysis of the main models of media city: technological, economic and socio-cultural, revealing its function as a stable socio-cultural system and focused on the aspects of the dominant culture. Particular attention is paid to the sociocultural model of a media city, which is most important for constructing a cultural theory of a media city.Methodology and sources. Methodologically, the work is based on a culturalphilosophical analysis of the projects of futurologists, forecasters, designers, set out in cultural texts (articles, architectural projects, urban plans, etc.), cases of introducing media technologies into the urban environment and research literature.Results and discussion. The model of “media city” at the present stage is actively used by developers, governments, corporations in various variations and is fixed in the mass consciousness as a cultural form that associates development, success and prosperity with the use of media technologies in everyday urban life. All projects of a media city contain, to one degree or another, a description of its three main models – technological (based on the belief that media technologies can solve the most complex problems of the urban environment), economic (offering new economic models and solutions based on the analysis of the most diverse, as a rule, big data) and sociocultural (considering media technology as a key factor in improving the quality of life). Thus, the result of the study is the cultural-philosophical specificity of each of the models of the media city.Conclusion. The sociocultural model of a media city forms a new cultural and anthropological basis for a new urban culture – a culture based on the use of network media devices in everyday practices that affect almost every aspect of the life of a city dweller, and, first of all, his cultural communications and transactions, which comprise the cultural experience of an individual or what we call culture.

The mutual shaping of geomedia and gentrification: The case of alternative tourism apps

While the ‘media city’ has gained academic attention for over a decade, the role of the media in urban gentrification processes has been an overlooked issue. Due to the rapid expansion of geomedia technologies, for example, app-based social media and location-based services on mobile platforms, there is a growing need to address this area from a critical perspective. The article develops and tries out an analytical framework for studying the mutual shaping of geomedia technologies and gentrification processes, using alternative tourism apps as its illustration. The middle-class biased appearance of such mobile apps is hypothesized as an articulation of a broader trend, through which geomedia recognizes and gains affordances that fit the ambitions of certain social groups and their spatial norms, preferences and practices. The framework comprises two steps: (1) a media-technological unpacking exercise inspired by affordance theory and (2) a critical consideration of how geomedia play into the distribution of spatial capital in the city. The first step outlines how representational, logistical and communicational affordances of alternative tourism apps represent the broader shift from mass media to geomedia. The second step discusses the social logics whereby alternative tourism apps are adapted to middle-class spatial interests, and thus to gentrification, and how geomedia technologies in general affect the ability of different groups to access, appropriate and define different places and neighbourhoods in the city.

Intergenerational encounters on the metro: Young people's perspectives on social control in the media city

• Metro is a unique public space in which social order is negotiated with strangers. • Youth experience sexual harassment, labelling and racism by adults on the metro. • The norm of silence makes them vulnerable when dealing with these experiences. • The meanings of these experiences can be analyzed as a form of symbolic violence. • Symbolic violence restricts young people's engagements in the public sphere.

미디어 도시 공간과 인간 지각의 문제: (뉴)미디어 아트와 스트리트 아트를 중심으로

미디어 도시 공간과 인간 지각의 문제: (뉴)미디어 아트와 스트리트 아트를 중심으로

The Generals in Their Labyrinth

The Generals in Their Labyrinth

FCJ-219 The Sensed Smog: Smart Ubiquitous Cities and the Sensorial Body

The article analyses the idea of the media city both from the perspective of sensors and monitoring of air pollution and as a more conceptual thread that relates to air pollution itself. Smart cities are layered urban arrangements that have carried forward their earlier technological legacy in terms of infrastructure and often also in terms of the residual air pollution, like photochemical smog. This sort of an understanding feeds an alternative way of understanding technological cities. The issue of the sensorial becomes a central focus of the article ranging from the experienced air pollution to its tracking and monitoring in remote sensing solutions. These two threads, sensors and the sensed city, lead to a conceptual argument that suggests to look at the technologies of smart city as an entanglement of the materiality of the pollution as the data that keeps also the media ecologies of big data circulating. Besides issues of political economy and governance, it also points to questions where is political citizenship located.

Concept of world cities: human-geographical approach

Formulation of the problem. The phenomenon of world (global) cities is of considerable interest and is the subject of research of specialists from different spheres. The study of world cities at the present stage of the society’s development is complicated by a number of aspects, including complex and dynamic development of the geopolitical and geoeconomic world space, which explains rapid transformation of cities; the complexity of a statistical base formation for the study of world cities, expressed in a large amount of diverse information and limited access to it; lack of a holistic and unique methodology for studying world cities. The purpose of the article. The article studies the human-geographical approach to the formation and development of the concept of world (global) cities in the XX‒XXI centuries. Results. In modern scientific literature there are a number of terms describing the phenomenon of world cities, in particular, including «global city», «world center», «world financial center», «сosmopolis», «information city», «media city», «metropolis», «ecumenopolis», «global city region», «сapitals of capital», «international city», «globalizing city» «megacity», «interactive city», etc. The variety of terms is an indicator that reflects the ambiguity and complexity of this phenomenon in modern science, as well as the diversity of approaches to its study. Definition of «world cities» concept is based on such aspects as economic development, political influence, social significance. Formation of the world cities concept has a fairly long history. A significant contribution to its formation and development was made by P. Geddes, P. Hall, C. Doxiadis, F. Braudel, H. Reed, J. Friedmann, G. Wolff, N. Thrift, S. Sassen, M. Castells, C. Abbott, Y. Jao, A. E. Tschoegl, Y. Cassis, P. Taylor, A. Scott, P. Marcuse, R. Van Kempen, E. Isin, D. Clark, N. A. Slucka, S. McQuayer and others. In their research, the world city is, firstly, as a phenomenon unique and singular; secondly, the scope of its influence clearly has a planetary or, ultimately, macro-regional coverage; thirdly, the world city represents a special force concentrator, whether in the field of ideology, religion, military force, innovation economy, etc.; fourthly, it acts as a hegemon, functions as a governing and controlling element within the framework of another, «subordinate» territorial-social system; fifthly, the spatial organization of such a system has a clearly pronounced center-peripheral character; sixthly, the presence of the dominant one-, two-way links that support the system. Several approaches to identifying the phenomenon of a world city based on different principles can be singled out: geoeconomic, geopolitical, socio-cultural, historical-geographic, geodemographic, information and communication, service, innovation. Human-geographical approach is important as it combines all of the above-mentioned and provides the most comprehensive study of the phenomenon of world cities.

Where Is Portland Made? The Complex Relationship between Social Media and Place in the Artisan Economy of Portland, Oregon (USA)

Where Is Portland Made? The Complex Relationship between Social Media and Place in the Artisan Economy of Portland, Oregon (USA)

Arts and Cultural/Creative Activities as Creative Placemaking strategy in a newly built urban district: The Case of Seoul Digital Media City (DMC)

Arts and Cultural/Creative Activities as Creative Placemaking strategy in a newly built urban district: The Case of Seoul Digital Media City (DMC)

Studying youth in the streets of the media city – Field notes on a relational perspective

How to study the youth in the media city, where the physical and the digital lives of young people often intertwine and overlap? What kinds of spatial entitlements and forms of control young people experience in a media city? How to grasp those issues in fieldwork, in a condition in which, ‘the street’, is constructed as a conceptual and empirical locus for ethnographic research. This article attempts to reflect upon these questions by providing some theoretical and empirical reflections based on media and street ethnographic fieldwork among youth in two contemporary media cities of Helsinki and London. The article draws its inspiration from the scholarly crossroads of sociology, youth studies, urban studies and media studies, and applies the concept of relationality to that framework. We examine aspects of relationality (among and between people, spaces and the media), which researchers confront when studying young people’s lives in the media city ethnographically. In order to understand the complex meanings that the street acquires when approached from the perspective of the youth in the media city, the issues related to the boundaries, (in)visibility and control connected with the idea of relationality are discussed in more detail. Our reflections are based on the project titled Youth Street Politics in the Media Age

The politics and praxis of media-city research: a duo interview with Myria Georgiou and Scott McQuire

This epilogue draws the various themes, issues and questions addressed in this OBS* special issue together. For this purpose, a duo-interview was conducted with Myria Georgiou and Scott McQuire. Georgiou and McQuire are unquestionable pioneers in the terrain of media city research. McQuire’s The media city. Media, architecture and urban space (Sage, 2008) and Georgiou’s Media and the city. Cosmopolitanism and difference (Polity, 2013) are essential textbooks that have achieved a wide readership across various fields including media and communication studies, architecture, cultural geography, sociology, design and urban studies. McQuire approaches contemporary digital media cities from a historically contextualizing angle, while Georgiou considers the contradictory and mediated challenges of living with cultural difference in the city. They are both working on timely and topical book-projects: McQuire’s next book is titled Geomedia: Networked cities and the future of public space (Polity, 2016), while Georgiou’s next monograph is titled Urban popular cultures (Polity, 2017). The way in which the exchange took place between the end of October and early November 2015 is illustrative for the politics and praxis of media-city research: at the time both scholars were battling jet-lags, travelling and working in a continent other than where there home institutions are based. Myria Georgiou was immersed in fieldwork on communicative infrastructures in a local Los Angeles community. She sent her responses from “a hotel with annoyingly unreliable internet connection which constantly gets cut off”. Scott gathered his thoughts during his flight from Melbourne to Belgium. He sent his responses while adjusting to a different time-zone in “gloomy” Antwerp that contrasted heavily with summery Melbourne. He was there to give a lecture on Digital media cities and the future of public space at the University of Antwerp.

Digital urbanisms: Exploring the spectacular, ordinary and contested facets of the media city

This introductory review article develops an analytic-conceptual distinction between spectacular, ordinary and contested facets of the present-day digitized urban condition. We reject a scholarly techno-optimism versus techno-pessimism dichotomy and argue that this triadic conceptualization can pave the way for a better understanding of the multiple, often contradictory and unpredictable implications of the fast-proceeding digitalization on cities and people who inhabit them. First, we discuss the intensified spectacularization from the perspective of labeling of cities as technologically advanced “smart” spaces and endeavors to enhance the attractiveness and ICT-glamour of urban public spaces. Next, we highlight two acute “ordinary sides” of living in digitally-mediated cities: the contributions of code-based software and digital media infrastructures to the routinized practices of urban life, and the escalation of the perceived standards of what constitutes “the ordinary” in the face of rapid technological change. Thirdly, we shed light on attempts at re-igniting street-level political agency, and the creation of outside-the-mainstream public spheres, via the aid of digital technology. In the end of the article, we consider how variable spectacular, ordinary and contested facets of the media city are co-present in the following articles of this Special Issue.