In the presentation from the Thinking Digital conference, Matt Locke of Channel 4 discusses the blurring of public and private communication and the six kinds of social spaces online. In interviews with their target audience of 14-19 year olds, they found that while they could imagine a world with fewer media choices, they could not imagine not being able to communicate and interact through media.
The variety of new methods for self expression on the internet have led to an overlap between public and private communication and six new kinds of communication spaces have emerged. These are not along a spectrum but rather have different roles and rules governing behavior. When designing a new media service, the important thing is not which medium (TV, internet, etc) it is on. The important thing is to make the architecture of your service match the kind of social space the users expect.
Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor for Education and New Media at Channel 4 works to commission online services that deliver informal learning in innovative and exciting ways to teenage audiences.
Before Channel 4, Matt was Head of Innovation for BBC New Media & Technology. He was responsible for developing and running research programmes within the BBC and with external partners, including developing academic and industry partnerships, and developing open innovation initiatives like http://backstage.bbc.co.uk and http://open.bbc.co.uk/labs/.
Before joining the BBC, Matt worked as a curator and writer, specialising in the social adoption of technology and the cultural impact of digital technology, and still continues to write regularly about these themes for journals, websites and his own site at www.test.org.uk
Resources
This free podcast is from our Thinking Digital Conference series.
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