Digital Works Podcast
Talking about all the different things that 'digital' means in the arts, culture and heritage sectors. Tales of success and failure, interrogating the shiny new things and looking at what works (or not) and why, Interviews with digital folks working across the sector and beyond, in-house, consultants, funders, and more.
Join us at the first Digital Works Conference in Leeds, UK on the 24th-25th April 2024.
Digital Works Podcast
Episode 049 - Ash & Katie, Bytes #9 - a conversation about digital media trends in 2024, museums joining the fediverse, attention metrics at the New York Times, and a creative use of AI
The nineth in our new series, Bytes, where Ash and Katie discuss 3 (or 4) things from the latest Digital Works Newsletter.
In this episode we'll be discussing some of the links in the newsletter that went out on April 15th.
We talk about:
- Deloitte's 2024 Digital Media report
- Aaron Cope's blog post on how the SFO Museum is navigating the Fediverse
- We look at the news that The New York Times are measuring user attention and engagement metrics in new ways
- And last but not least we look at AI meets social history with 'Synthetic Memories', a project aiming to fill the visual void in underrepresented communities' pasts.
You can sign up for the newsletter at thedigital.works.
Hello and welcome to the Digital Works podcast, the podcast about digital stuff in the cultural sector. My name's Ash and today's episode is episode nine of Bytes. Bytes is our regular short-form series where we look at three or four interesting things from the most recent edition of our Digital Works newsletter and you can sign up for the newsletter on our website, which you can find at thedigitalworks. Joining me today and for all episodes in this series is the person who puts the newsletter together, colleague Katie, and today we'll be discussing things from the newsletter which went out on Monday, the 15th of April, and I'll put a link to that in the show notes for this episode. So, katie, the three or four actually, things we're going to look at today are a new report from deloitte looking at 2024 digital media trends, a blog from aaron cope at the sfo museum about their experience joining the Fediverse, an article in Marketing Brew about the New York Times developing new metrics to measure attention. And I also want to hear your take on the AI project that you linked to synthetic memories. I don't have a take on it because I can't get it to load on my computer. Maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere. Load on my computer. Maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the first thing is this report, set of reports from Deloitte Insights looking at 2024 digital media trends, and you pulled one stat out in the newsletter, which is that 60% of Gen Zers prefer user-generated content over streaming services. But there's a whole load of other interesting observations from what I can see. There's things about the type of content that audiences more generally prefer. There's an interesting article looking at, as they term it, the untapped potential of fandom. There are questions about the business models that underpin streaming video services. There's a focus on women, video game players and maybe whether the video game industry is leaving half the population underserved. But you know, you've you've looked at this report. What are your takeaways from it? Which bits do you think are perhaps most interesting to the folks listening to this?
Speaker 2:So I think there's a couple of things and you've touched on them there. The first thing about 60% of Gen Z preferring user-generated content is interesting more because they qualified that by the addition of the fact that it's because they don't have to spend time searching for what to watch, so the content is being delivered to them algorithmically on TikTok or whatever, which is to me quite shocking. There's a lot in that, isn't there? The fact that you would rather have somebody, not somebody. You'd rather have a platform, learn what you like and then deliver you stuff, rather than, oh gosh, having to actually make the effort to search for things. It probably speaks to how good in adverted commas these algorithms are getting at assessing what kind of content people like, especially things like TikTok, which obviously that's what it's known for. It also, though, from a content creator perspective, in terms of organizations and so on, is a sort of bit of a warning sign as well, isn't it A reminder that you know, now more than ever, you can't rely on people looking for your stuff. It's got to be good enough and it's got to be targeted enough at a clear enough audience that it will find them. So that was one thing, and then the other thing is. Again, that you mentioned is the fans.
Speaker 2:So the report picks up on the fact that, for many people, being a fan is core to their identity. That's something, of course, that Kevin Kelly wrote about in his very seminal, famous essay, a Thousand True Fans, which was originally written in 2008. And he did subsequently update it. So, for those people who haven't read it, it's an article that talks about how you don't need to try and get the biggest audience possible. You really need to try and get just a thousand people who are true fans of what you do. The figure a thousand isn't a set in stone figure. It's more the sort of concept, and I was thinking about that when this report came out and they highlighted this kind of fandom increasing sort of trend for people being very passionate about certain things, and that made me think of organizations like the Tank Museum, who've managed to build a huge fan following on lots of platforms, but not least platforms like Patreon, where they're making something like £200,000 a year just from giving fans exclusive type content. So, yeah, I think there's some kind of good connections there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think the thing that came out when I looked through is that and this is something we've talked about before, but it does feel like we are in this moment of change and sort of the way that the internet on the whole has sort of worked, existed for the last, let's say, five to 10 years, is undergoing a shift and that is driven, as you say, by generational differences in how people are sort of finding and engaging with content, but also the it feels like there are medium and long-term strategic implications for how and where cultural organizations are going to be focusing time and investment in finding, building and serving online audiences. Yes, for sure. Our next thing is a blog post from Aaron Cope at the SFO Museum titled Holding Hands with the Fediverse Activity Pub at SFO Museum. It's talking about the experiment experience that Aaron and colleagues at SFO Museum have had in joining the Fediverse. It's quite a long read.
Speaker 1:I think it's useful in that it explains what the Fediverse is, how it works, why SFO Museum were carrying out this experiment, a bit of historical context and their experience existing on the platform. And the Fediverse is not a new idea, but it certainly has come to greater prominence with the how should we describe them? Changes that Twitter in particular has undergone over the last couple of years, and there was a bit of an exodus is that the right word? Growth in a platform called Mastodon, and Mastodon exists in this sort of Fediverse, decentralized model.
Speaker 2:So, katie, so, katie, maybe first for folks who are new to this idea, what is?
Speaker 1:the Fediverse? You can answer that Okay. And why is it perhaps interesting for cultural organisations to be thinking about looking at considering this model of existing online and this model of social media platforms?
Speaker 2:model of existing online and this model of social media platforms. Okay, so better minds than mine have explained the Fediverse In the article that we're talking about. He links to another article which the Verge did, which is called the Fediverse Explained. Highly recommend reading that.
Speaker 2:In short, the Fediverse is a term that just refers to a set of decentralized services. What does that mean? And the example often given to describe decentralized services compared to centralized services is like something like email I might use Gmail, you might use Outlook, but I can send you a message, you can send me one With something like Facebook or Twitter. They're considered to be centralized because we have to both be on them to exchange messages. So the idea with the decentralized services and Fediverse it's not plural, the Fediverse is that you are not tied to a sort of one place and obviously, from a tech platforms perspective and questions around the kind of you know all the stuff around the sort of ethics and the so on of these big tech platforms, the sort of promise in inverted commas, of the Fediverse longer term is that we, so individuals and organizations, won't necessarily have to be tied to platforms. Instead, we'll be able to sort of share our content, our interactions. It will be more in our control.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's sort of a maybe not a brilliant explanation, but an explanation of what the Fediverse is and the article. This isn't a criticism, it's an observation, but it has that sort of vibe that sometimes museum type articles like this have, which is, it's quite information dense and it's quite, you know, unashamedly and quite rightly sort of geeky and techie about what they're trying to do. The reason I think it's interesting is because they are, as you said in that intro, they are exploring what this might mean. They're not saying this is going to be the answer to everything. This is going to change everything.
Speaker 2:It is an experiment. They reference an article that we have linked to before in Digital Works, which is about the BBC talking about doing this as well, and so really it's an experiment for them to see. I mean they phrase it as could this help us broaden our audiences, reach new audiences, and they also I think the phrase he says is this a way that we can share content with a diverse audience without having to enter into one or more Faustian bargains that the large centralized social media platforms increasingly demand. So it's kind of interesting in and of itself, I think, for that in terms of trying to move away from they describe it this kind of faustian pact that we all have with these big platforms yeah, and I think from an institutional perspective, it's useful to keep up with these types of conversations and to be aware of which organizations are maybe dipping their toe and to see how that experience goes.
Speaker 1:I think you're right. It is a, or maybe requires a more sort of technically literate approach than many of the the sort of more in inverted commas mainstream social media platforms. You know, there's lots of descriptions of specific code that's been written and specific servers that have been set up and links to to github repositories and things like that, which may put some organizations off at this stage, but I would encourage people to keep tabs on the conversation because it does feel. You know, we just said that we're in this sort of moment of tectonic plate shifting a little bit, and there could be a world in which, in three to five years time, things are more decentralized and more fragmented, and so therefore, therefore, understanding how these ecosystems work is a useful thing for people to be aware of for sure, because, um, just just one final point on it is say, is that some people may have heard that threads which is owned by meta, which own everything basically facebook, whatsapp, instagram, you know, are decentralizing, are going into the Fed first.
Speaker 1:I don't even know what the correct terminology is, and so if an organization of that size is considering these sorts of things, it is definitely something that is just worth keeping an eye on, for sure, absolutely our third thing is an article in marketing brew titled for the new york times, attention metrics find new applications, and it's talking ostensibly about a new partnership that the new york times has entered into with adelaide, which are a company that use signals like eye tracking data to gauge whether readers are paying attention to ads, which in and of itself is maybe not the most interesting thing to look at, but I do think it touches on a wider shift. We're perhaps seeing earlier this year wider shift we're perhaps seeing Earlier this year. The Guardian launched a new feature on their site where they rank articles by the most deeply read, which is very different from most viewed, and that's looking at engagement in a different way.
Speaker 1:Conversation I had on the podcast last year with George Montague from FT Strategies. We talked in that conversation about the new metrics that the Financial Times have developed to understand how online readers are engaging with different formats and different types of journalism, and it does feel like this conversation is a useful one for cultural organisations to remain engaged with because increasingly cultural websites, cultural digital experiences, are focused on engagement and there is, it seems, a maturing of the conversation around how engagement is sort of understood. But I mean, I think we've talked about this previously. You know so much technical evolution and innovation comes out of war, porn and advertising exactly, and maybe this is an example of that yeah, I mean, I, I'd agree with everything you're saying.
Speaker 2:That in and of itself it's slightly sort of so what? Because the idea that you know a website that we're looking at is going to track where our eyes are looking in order to serve as ads is, yeah, it's slightly depressing, dystopian, however you want to put it. But there is, as you're saying, a wider point here about how we measure engagement online. The Guardian example is a really good one and obviously, from a cultural organization perspective, they are typically organizations that are producing lots of content for all sorts of reasons, and it's always been quite tricky to measure the impact, especially of kind of text-based content. So these sorts of things are worth being aware of, I think. And, yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 1:We'll see what happens now the last thing, the fourth thing we're going to look at. I've not actually managed to make work on my machine, but it's a project called synthetic memories, which is using ai to create images and video, as you've said, to reconstruct the memories of communities whose stories have historically been overlooked, and this feels interesting and potentially important and very applicable, obviously, in a museum context. But what is synthetic memories? Is it good, is it interesting? If so, why?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's a shame you couldn't get it to load. Yeah, so the reason for including this and why I think it's noteworthy, is it has actually has a couple of different strands, so it's sort of partially a research project. So it's basically a group of kind of researchers, data analysts, creative technologists who are using AI with different communities around the world to build visual reconstructions, so photographs, videos of the past. You know we've talked before, and all over the place at the moment is the idea of using AI to create video. This is the same thing, but it's talking about producing, you know, stuff that looks old.
Speaker 2:Basically, why would you want to do that? Well, specifically, they are working with communities whose stories have historically been overlooked, under represented communities, and you know it may be that those communities didn't have, you know, lots of photos of them taken and all that kind of stuff. So it's an they're saying it's an opportunity to visualize realities that have never been captured on camera, and I think we hear a lot, read, a lot talk, a lot about the negative side of AI, but this sort of thing is really interesting. The other strand of this research project is looking at how this kind of technology could be useful with early stage Alzheimer's patients. So thinking about how you could, you can use AI to help people with their memories, to help capture their memories, you know, in the unfortunate circumstances where those memories are fading. So it's really just that sort of counterpoint to the narrative of AI is universally evil, I think.
Speaker 1:Well, a good note to end on thanks for listening to this episode of bytes. You can find all episodes of the podcast on our website at the digital dot works, where you can also find more information about our events and sign up to the newsletter. Our theme tune is vienna, beat by blue dot sessions. And, last but not least, thanks to mark cotton for his editing support on this episode. See you again soon.
