Journal articles on the topic 'Smart embedded micro-Network'

Electronic technology plays a vital role in healthcare, not only for sensory equipment but also for communication and recording. As a result, the Internet of Things (IoT) is the most recent communication breakthrough in healthcare. In this work, we present a system that tracks patient health using a Blynk application, a micro-controller as a communication gateway, and sensors. When the output of the detector changes, a buzzer is embedded into the controller to alert the nursing staff. The sensor connects to a micro-controller, which is then interfaced with the liquid-crystal display (LCD) panel and wireless local area network (LAN) to provide notifications. An alert will be sent to the doctor through IoT if the system detects a change in the patient’s pulse rate or blood pressure, and the patient’s heartbeat, blood pressure, and body temperature will be displayed in real-time via Cloud. As a result, an IoT-based patient health monitoring system could save lives by efficiently monitoring patients’ health in real- time.

In this study, the synthesis of smart, polymerically embedded titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles aimed to exhibit photo-induced anticancer properties under visible light irradiation is investigated. The TiO2 nanoparticles were prepared by utilizing the sol gel method with different dopants, including nitrogen (N-doped), iron (Fe-doped), and nitrogen and iron (Fe,N-doped). The dopants were embedded in an interpenetrating (IP) network microgel synthesized by stimuli responsive poly (N-Isopropylacrylamide-co-polyacrylicacid)–pNipam-co-PAA forming composite particles. All the types of produced particles were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, micro-Raman, Fourier-transform infrared, X-ray photoelectron, ultra-violet-visible spectroscopy, Field Emission Scanning Electron, Transmission Electron microscopy, and Dynamic Light Scattering techniques. The experimental findings indicate that the doped TiO2 nanoparticles were successfully embedded in the microgel. The N-doped TiO2 nano-powders and composite particles exhibit the best photocatalytic degradation of the pollutant methylene blue under visible light irradiation. Similarly, the highly malignant MDA-MB-231 breast cancer epithelial cells were susceptible to the inhibition of cell proliferation at visible light, especially in the presence of N-doped powders and composites, compared to the non-metastatic MCF-7 cells, which were not affected.

Radar-based human activity recognition (HAR) provides a non-contact method for many scenarios, such as human–computer interaction, smart security, and advanced surveillance with privacy protection. Feeding radar-preprocessed micro-Doppler signals into a deep learning (DL) network is a promising approach for HAR. Conventional DL algorithms can achieve high performance in terms of accuracy, but the complex network structure causes difficulty for their real-time embedded application. In this study, an efficient network with an attention mechanism is proposed. This network decouples the Doppler and temporal features of radar preprocessed signals according to the feature representation of human activity in the time–frequency domain. The Doppler feature representation is obtained in sequence using the one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1D CNN) following the sliding window. Then, HAR is realized by inputting the Doppler features into the attention-mechanism-based long short-term memory (LSTM) as a time sequence. Moreover, the activity features are effectively enhanced using the averaged cancellation method, which improves the clutter suppression effect under the micro-motion conditions. Compared with the traditional moving target indicator (MTI), the recognition accuracy is improved by about 3.7%. Experiments based on two human activity datasets confirm the superiority of our method compared to traditional methods in terms of expressiveness and computational efficiency. Specifically, our method achieves an accuracy close to 96.9% on both datasets and has a more lightweight network structure compared to algorithms with similar recognition accuracy. The method proposed in this article has great potential for real-time embedded applications of HAR.

Embedded systems in Agriculture play a vital role in unifying the work involved and improve conservations. Designing a smart as well as a cost efficient and more user-friendly system will be idealistic challenge. The following system that has been proposed is designed with those ideal constraints in mind. It consists of a Raspberry pi3 as a gateway that links the sensor networks with the cloud. To improve security an MQTT protocol is used for cloud connectivity. The communication between the sensor networks is managed by NRF24L01. The Sensor network is a separate entity that can used like a plug and play device and is built by a micro controller with a LCD display and an interfaced GPS. Multicasting is also possible between sensor networks and the gateway. The processed data from the sensor networks is sent through NRF24L01 to the gateway. The gateway further processes and encapsulates the data and through MQTT the data gets stored on the cloud. This cloud data can be accessed through computer or mobile device

To set right the usage of water for crops of agriculture an automated irrigation system has been implemented. A moisture soil sensor; and a temperature measure sensor which is called as network of the distributed wireless is used at base of the plant. Along with these, we implemented a gateway unit. which gathers information and regulate it and by activating the triggers actuators, it can send and receive the transmits data to and from the web application. I proposed the algorithm which having the temperature and soil moisture threshold values that embedded in a gate way based on micro controller. It implemented panels of the photovoltaic; and having a duplex communication link; and works with the interface i.e. cellular-Internet which offers that data inspection & irrigation timing. All this can be programmed by using a web page. Implemented automated Crop water saving system tested for 136 days in sage crop field. It can be saved 90% water compared to others. The main 3 advantages of this automated system make it place successfully in any place for 18 months. As it is energy self-rule, cost less, so it can be efficiently useful in limited water geographical lands.

An investigation was conducted to develop an effective automated tool to deploy micro-fabricated stretchable networks of distributed sensors onto the surface of large structures at macroscale to create “smart” structures with embedded distributed sensor networks. Integrating a large network of distributed sensors with structures has been a major challenge in the design of so-called smart structures or devices for cyber-physical applications where a large amount of usage data from structures or devices can be generated for artificial intelligence applications. Indeed, many “island-and-serpentine”-type distributed sensor networks, while promising, remain difficult to deploy. This study aims to enable such networks to be deployed in a safe, automated, and efficient way. To this end, a scissor-hinge controlled system was proposed as the basis for a deployment mechanism for such stretchable sensor networks (SSNs). A model based on a kinematic scissor-hinge mechanism was developed to simulate and design the proposed system to automatically stretch a micro-scaled square network with uniformly distributed sensor nodes. A prototype of an automatic scissor-hinge stretchable tool was constructed during the study with an array of four scissor-hinge mechanisms, each belt-driven by a single stepper motor. Two micro-fabricated SSNs from a 100 mm wafer were fabricated at the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility for this deployment study. The networks were designed to be able to cover an area 100 times their manufacturing size (from a 100 mm diameter wafer to a 1 m2 active area) once stretched. It was demonstrated that the proposed deployment tool could place sensor nodes in prescribed locations efficiently within a drastically shorter time than in current labor-intensive manual deployment methods.

The technology for human activity recognition has diverse applications within the Internet of Things spectrum, including medical sensing, security measures, smart home systems, and more. Predominantly, human activity recognition methods have relied on contact sensors, and some research uses inertial sensors embedded in smartphones or other devices, which present several limitations. Additionally, most research has concentrated on recognizing discrete activities, even though activities in real-life scenarios tend to be continuous. In this paper, we introduce a method to classify continuous human activities, such as walking, running, squatting, standing, and jumping. Our approach hinges on the micro-Doppler (MD) features derived from continuous-wave radar signals. We first process the radar echo signals generated from human activities to produce MD spectrograms. Subsequently, a bidirectional gate recurrent unit (Bi-GRU) network is employed to train and test these extracted features. Preliminary results highlight the efficacy of our approach, with an average recognition accuracy exceeding 90%.

Tactile sensing is paramount for robots operating in human-centered environments to help in understanding interaction with objects. To enable robots to have sophisticated tactile sensing capability, researchers have developed different kinds of electronic skins for robotic hands and arms in order to realize the ‘sense of touch’. Recently, Stanford Structures and Composites Laboratory developed a robotic electronic skin based on a network of multi-modal micro-sensors. This skin was able to identify temperature profiles and detect arm strikes through embedded sensors. However, sensing for the static pressure load is yet to be investigated. In this work, an electromechanical impedance-based method is proposed to investigate the response of piezoelectric sensors under static normal pressure loads. The smart skin sample was firstly fabricated by embedding a piezoelectric sensor into the soft silicone. Then, a series of static pressure tests to the skin were conducted. Test results showed that the first peak of the real part impedance signal was sensitive to static pressure load, and by using the proposed diagnostic method, this test setup could detect a resolution of 0.5 N force. Numerical simulation methods were then performed to validate the experimental results. The results of the numerical simulation prove the validity of the experiments, as well as the robustness of the proposed method in detecting static pressure loads using the smart skin.

Light and active mobility, as well as multimodal mobility, could significantly contribute to decarbonization. Air quality is a key parameter to monitor the environment in terms of health and leisure benefits. In a possible scenario, wearables and recharge stations could supply information about a distributed monitoring system of air quality. The availability of low-power, smart, low-cost, compact embedded systems, such as Arduino Nicla Sense ME, based on BME688 by Bosch, Reutlingen, Germany, and powered by suitable software tools, can provide the hardware to be easily integrated into wearables as well as in solar-powered EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment) for scooters and e-bikes. In this way, each e-vehicle, bike, or EVSE can contribute to a distributed monitoring network providing real-time information about micro-climate and pollution. This work experimentally investigates the capability of the BME688 environmental sensor to provide useful and detailed information about air quality. Initial experimental results from measurements in non-controlled and controlled environments show that BME688 is suited to detect the human-perceived air quality. CO2 readout can also be significant for other gas (e.g., CO), while IAQ (Index for Air Quality, from 0 to 500) is heavily affected by relative humidity, and its significance below 250 is quite low for an outdoor uncontrolled environment.

— Scientific researches advancements achieving miniaturization of Micro-electromechanical Systems, has enable smarts autonomous embedded devices know as sensor nodes, that are developed on numerous platforms using the proprietary of hardware and software with capability to communicate wirelessly. Today more than ever these sensors are continuously spreading to civilian usage side of things and in many others applications , including military, security, medical, environments, and animal among others, to sense specific occurrence of desired event and may carried very important data on physical device such as the mica-mote. Hence a plethora of security protocols arises in order to mitigate the risks of malicious attacks such as eavesdrop communications, or data alteration, using cryptographic techniques such as Elliptic curve for data privacy, accuracy, integrity, efficiency, and reducing the energy consumption by mote and processors. We focus on securing data by all means. Hence the in-network processing technique is used to reduce considerably the energy consumption, considering that sensors deployments in inaccessible and resource-constrained environments. After the drawback, we investigate the secured data aggregation and give security requirements that are mandatory to a Trusted Data Aggregation with Low Energy model to satisfy. The security and energy performances are analysed comparing with others methods. Index Terms—TDALE, Aggregation, Elliptic curve, RSA, Security, Energy

The purpose of this paper is to outline the climate responsive innovation process within the agricultural innovation system of the North West Province, South Africa. The focus was on the embedded curriculum and learning activity system and its responses to social-ecological and earth system changes influenced by climate change. It outlines the barriers and processes hampering curriculum and learning innovations towards climate-smart responsiveness, and also examines the processes required to initiate micro and macro innovations. This paper focusses on how actors within the system can initiate curriculum innovation and climate responsiveness through micro innovations when supported and how this can lead to macro innovations. The system experienced various barriers during the innovation process and overcame many challenges during the journey towards climate-smart responsiveness through the identification of contradictions within the system, developing tools to assist in the transitioning process and expansion in the social-spatial dimension by establishing a learning network within the surrounding communities. The research indicated that the catalysing of the curriculum and learning system required specific tools, time and the understanding of the importance of micro-level innovation. Keywords: curriculum innovation; climate-smart agriculture; agricultural training institutes

Water management systems to be efficient is a major concern in many agricultural field. This paper deals with the control of an irrigation system by designing the variable rate irrigation with the help of a wireless sensor network, and software for real-time in-field sensing are implemented . This irrigation system is made of two various sensors and a micro-controller unit with an embedded cloud communication module. The communication among the sensors, microcontroller, and farmer is established by their respective Login ID using Internet of Things (IoT). In this paper the farmer can communicate to this irrigation system through android mobile application. The farmer can check the status of their land at any time using the app or webpage.

The exponential growth in digital technology is leading us to a future in which all things and all people are connected all the time, something we refer to as The Infinite Network (TIN), which will cause profound changes in every industry. Here, we focus on the impact it will have in healthcare. TIN will change the essence of healthcare to a data-driven continuous approach as opposed to the event-driven discrete approach used today. At a micro or individual level, smart sensing will play a key role, in the form of embedded sensors, wearable sensors, and sensing from smart medical devices. At a macro or aggregate level, healthcare will be provided by Intelligent Telehealth Networks that evolve from the telehealth networks that are available today. Traditional telemedicine has delivered remote care to patients in the area where doctors are not readily available, but has not achieved at large scale. New advanced networks will deliver care at a much larger scale. The long-term future requires intelligent hybrid networks that combine artificial intelligence with human intelligence to provide continuity of care at higher quality and lower cost than is possible today.

AbstractElectronic nose (e-nose) technology for selectively identifying a target gas through chemoresistive sensors has gained much attention for various applications, such as smart factory and personal health monitoring. To overcome the cross-reactivity problem of chemoresistive sensors to various gas species, herein, we propose a novel sensing strategy based on a single micro-LED (μLED)-embedded photoactivated (μLP) gas sensor, utilizing the time-variant illumination for identifying the species and concentrations of various target gases. A fast-changing pseudorandom voltage input is applied to the μLED to generate forced transient sensor responses. A deep neural network is employed to analyze the obtained complex transient signals for gas detection and concentration estimation. The proposed sensor system achieves high classification (~96.99%) and quantification (mean absolute percentage error ~ 31.99%) accuracies for various toxic gases (methanol, ethanol, acetone, and nitrogen dioxide) with a single gas sensor consuming 0.53 mW. The proposed method may significantly improve the efficiency of e-nose technology in terms of cost, space, and power consumption.

Recent developments in micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) point towards a wide range of applications for a new breed of integrated wireless sensors. Applications include embedded sensors in “smart” buildings, for example vibration and temperature monitoring, medical implants and remote sensing. The new devices, which will communicate by microwatt power, short range radio (picoradio), have been compared with communicating neurons. The vision is that hundreds, or even thousands of small independent, low cost devices will be built into, say, a building, producing a powerful, interlinked network of information transmission. But they require a long- term power source, which can be a significant problem. The limitations of batteries have led to interest in scavenging by conversion of another form into electrical energy. Possible energy sources are solar, body functions such as breathing, natural temperature gradients etc. This article considers energy scavenging from vibration.

This study is a review on controlling an electronic device (Arduino) apply for temperature and soil moisture process using Android based Smart phone application in order to address the issues of flexibility and functionality. Beside, this study in future will also develop a low cost and flexible for agriculture control due to not to incorporate with an expensive components such as high end personal computers. On peak of that, now anyone, from anytime and anywhere can have connectivity for anything and it is expected that these connections will extend and create an entirely advanced dynamic network of the internet of things. Thus, this study is to review several design of smart monitoring system using an embedded micro-web server, with IP connectivity for accessing. There are three principal components in this study, which are an electronic device (Arduino), software development (eclipse), and system prototype internet protocol layer. The aim is to build the web organization and ultimately to combine all three components together. The solution of this whole study is a complete review to design a complete application with an electronic device that can help landlord agriculture to start out a dependable quality product in the marketplace.

The article will explore the augmentation of cognition with the affordances of mobile micro-blogging apps, specifically the most developed of these: Twitter. It will ask whether this is enabling new kinds of on-the-fly collective cognition, and in particular what will be referred to as ‘collective volition.’ It will approach this with an address to Bernard Stiegler’s concept of grammatisation, which he defines as as, “the history of the exteriorization of memory in all its forms: nervous and cerebral memory, corporeal and muscular memory, biogenetic memory” (New Critique 33). This will be explored in particular with reference to the human relation with the time of protention, that is an orientation to the future in the lived moment. The argument is that there is a new relation to technology, as a result of the increased velocity, multiplicity and ubiquity of micro-communications. As such this essay will serve as a speculative hypothesis, laying the groundwork for further research. The Context of Social Media The proliferation of social media, and especially its rapid shift onto diverse platforms, in particular to ‘apps’—that is dedicated software platforms available through multiple devices such as tablet computers and smart phones—has meant a pervasive and intensive form of communication has developed. The fact that these media are also generally highly mobile, always connected and operate though very sophisticated interfaces designed for maximum ease of use mean that, at least for a significant number of users, social media has become a constant accompaniment to everyday life—a permanently unfolding self-narrative. It is against this background that multiple and often highly contradictory claims are being made about the effect of such media on cognition and group dynamics. We have seen claims for the birth of the smart mob (Rheingold) that opens up the realm of decisive action to multiple individuals and group dynamics, something akin to that which operates during moments of shared attention. For example, in the London riots of 2011 the use of Blackberry messenger was apportioned a major role in the way mobs moved around the city, where they gathered and who turned up. Likewise in the Arab Spring there was significant speculation about the role of Twitter as a medium for mass organisation and collective action. Why such possibilities are mooted is clear in the basic affordances of the particular social media in question, and the devices through which these software platforms operate. In the case of Twitter it is clear that simplicity of its interface as well as its brevity and speed are the most important affordances. The ease of the interface, the specificity of the action—of tweeting or scrolling though a feed—is easy. The limitation of messages at 140 characters ensures that nothing takes more than a small bite of attention and that it is possible, and routine, to process many messages and to communicate with multiple interlocutors, if not simultaneously then in far faster succession that is possible in previous applications or technologies. This produces a form of distributed attention, casting a wide zone of social awareness, in which the brains of Twitter users process, and are able to respond to, the perspectives of others almost instantly. Of course the speed of the feed that, beyond a relatively small number of followed accounts, means it becomes impossible to see anything but fragments. This fragmentary character is also intensified by the inevitable limitation of the number of accounts being followed by any one user. In fact we can add a third factor of intensification to this when we consider the migration of social media into mobile smart phone apps using simple icons and even simpler interfaces, configured for ease of use on the move. Such design produces an even greater distribution of attention and temporal fragmentation, interspersed as they are with multiple everyday activities. Mnemotechnology: Spatial and Temporal Flux Attending to a Twitter feed thus places the user into an immediate relationship to the aggregate of the just passed and the passing through, a proximate moment of shared expression, but also one that is placed in a cultural short term memory. As such Twitter is thus a mnemotechnology par-excellence, in that it augments human memory, but in a very particular way. Its short termness distributes memory across and between users as much, if not more, than it does extend memory through time. While most recent media forms also enfold their own recording and temporal extension—print media, archived in libraries; film and television in video archives; sound and music in libraries—tweeting is closer to the form of face to face speech, in that while it is to an extent grammatised into the Twitter feed its temporal extension is far more ambiguous. With Twitter, while there is some cerebral/linguistic memory extension—over say a few minutes in a particular feed, or a number of days if a tweet is given a hash tag—beyond this short-term extension any further access becomes a question of paying for access (after a few days hash tags cease to be searchable, with large archives of tweets being available only at a monetary cost). The luxury of long-term memory is available only to those that can afford it. Grammatisation in Stiegler’s account tends to the solidifying extension of expression into material forms of greater duration, forming what he calls the pharmakon, that is an external object, which is both poison and cure. Stiegler employs Donald Winnicott’s concept of the transitional object as the first of such objects in the path to adulthood, that is the thing—be it blanket, teddy or so forth—that allows the transition from total dependency on a parent to separation and autonomy. In that sense the object is what allows for the transition to adulthood, but within which lies the danger of excessive attachment, dependency and is "destructive of autonomy and trust" (Stiegler, On Pharmacology 3). Writing, or hypomnesis, that is artificial memory, is also such a pharmakon, in as much as it operates as a salve; it allows cultural memory to be extended and shared, but also according to Plato it decays autonomy of thought, but in fact—taking his lead from Derrida—Stiegler tells us that “while Plato opposes autonomy and heteronomy, they in fact constantly compose” (2). The digital pharmakon, according to Stiegler, is the extension of this logic to the entire field of the human body, including in cognitive capitalism wherein "those economic actors who are without knowledge because they are without memory" (35). This is the essence of contemporary proletarianisation, extended into the realm of consumption, in which savour vivre, knowing how to live, is forgotten. In many ways we can see Twitter as a clear example of such a proletarianisation process, as hypomnesis, with its derivation of hypnosis; an empty circulation. This echoes Jodi Dean’s description of the flow of communicative capitalism as simply drive (Dean) in which messages circulate without ever getting where they are meant to go. Yet against this perhaps there is a gain, even in Stiegler’s own thought, as to the therapeutic or individuating elements of this process and within the extension of Tweets from an immediately bounded, but extensible and arbitrary distributed network, provides a still novel form of mediation that connects brains together; but going beyond the standard hyper-dyadic spread that is characteristic of viruses or memes. This spread happens in such a way that the expressed thoughts of others can circulate and mutate—loop—around in observable forms, for example in the form of replies, designation of favourite, as RTs (retweets) and in modified forms as MTs (modified tweets), followed by further iterations, and so on. So it is that the Twitter feeds of clusters of individuals inevitably start to show regularity in who tweets, and given the tendency of accounts to focus on certain issues, and for those with an interest in those issues to likewise follow each other, then we have groups of accounts/individuals intersecting with each other, re-tweeting and commenting on each other–forming clusters of shared opinion. The issue at stake here goes beyond the question of the evolution of such clusters at that level of linguistic exchange as, what might be otherwise called movements, or counter-publics, or issue networks—but that speed produces a more elemental effect on coordination. It is the speed of Twitter that creates an imperative to respond quickly and to assimilate vast amounts of information, to sort the agreeable from the disagreeable, divide that which should be ignored from that which should be responded to, and indeed that which calls to be acted upon. Alongside Twitter’s limited memory, its pharmacological ‘beneficial’ element entails the possibility that responses go beyond a purely linguistic or discursive interlocution towards a protection of ‘brain-share’. That is, to put it bluntly, the moment of knowing what others will think before they think it, what they will say before they say it and what they will do before they do it. This opens a capacity for action underpinned by confidence in a solidarity to come. We have seen this in numerous examples, in the actions of UK Uncut and other such groups and movements around the world, most significantly as the multi-media augmented movements that clustered in Tahrir Square, Zuccotti Park and beyond. Protention, Premediation, and Augmented Volition The concept of the somatic marker plays an important role in enabling this speed up. Antonio Damasio argues that somatic markers are emotional memories that are layered into our brains as desires and preferences, in response to external stimuli they become embedded in our unconscious brain and are triggered by particular situations or events. They produce a capacity to make decisions, to act in ways that our deliberate decision making is not aware of; given the pace of response that is needed for many decisions this is a basic necessity. The example of tennis players is often used in this context, wherein the time needed to process and react consciously to a serve is in excess of the processing time the conscious brain requires; that is there is at least a 0.5 second gap between the brain receiving a stimulus and the conscious mind registering and reacting to it. What this means is that elements of the brain are acting in advance of conscious volition—we preempt our volitions with the already inscribed emotional, or affective layer, protending beyond the immanent into the virtual. However, protention is still, according to Stiegler, a fundamental element of consciousness—it pushes forward into the brain’s awareness of continuity, contributing to its affective reactions, rooted in projection and risk. This aspect of protention therefore is a contributing element of volition as it rises into consciousness. Volition is the active conscious aspect of willing, and as such requires an act of protention to underpin it. Thus the element of protention, as Stiegler describes it, is inscribed in the flow of the Twitter feed, but also and more importantly, is written into the cognitive process that proceeds and frames it. But beyond this even is the affective and emotional element. This allows us to think then of the Twitter-brain assemblage to be something more than just a mechanism, a tool or simply a medium in the linear sense of the term, but something closer to a device—or a dispositif as defined by Michel Foucault (194) and developed by Giorgio Agamben. A dispositif gathers together, orders and processes, but also augments. Maurizio Lazzarato uses the term, explaining that: The machines for crystallizing or modulating time are dispositifs capable of intervening in the event, in the cooperation between brains, through the modulation of the forces engaged therein, thereby becoming preconditions for every process of constitution of whatever subjectivity. Consequently the process comes to resemble a harmonization of waves, a polyphony. (186) This is an excellent framework to consolidate the place of Twitter as just such a dispositif. In the first instance the place of Twitter in “crystallizing or modulating” time is reflected in its grammatisation of the immediate into a circuit that reframes the present moment in a series of ripples and echoes, and which resonates in the protentions of the followers and followed. This organising of thoughts and affections in a temporal multiplicity crosscuts events, to the extent that the event is conceived as something new that enters the world. So it is that the permanent process of sharing, narrating and modulating, changes the shape of events from pinpointed moments of impact into flat plains, or membranes, that intersect with the mental events. The brain-share, or what can be called a ‘brane’ of brains, unfolds both spatially and temporally, but within the limits already defined. This ‘brane’ of brains can be understood in Lazzarato’s terms precisely as a “harmonization of waves, a polyphony.” The dispositif produces this, in the first instance, modulated consciousness—this is not to say this is an exclusive form of consciousness—part of a distributed condition that provides for a cooperation between brains, the multifarious looping mentioned above, that in its protentions forms a harmony, which is a volition. It is therefore clear that this technological change needs to be understood together with notions such as ‘noopolitics’ and ‘neuropolitics’. Maurizio Lazzarato captures very well the notion of a noopolitics when he tells us that “We could say that noopolitics commands and reorganizes the other power relations because it operates at the most deterritorialized level (the virtuality of the action between brains)” (187). However, the danger here is well-defined in the writings of Stiegler, when he explains that: When technologically exteriorized, memory can become the object of sociopolitical and biopolitical controls through the economic investments of social organizations, which thereby rearrange psychic organizations through the intermediary of mnenotechnical organs, among which must be counted machine-tools. (New Critique 33) Here again, we find a proletarianisation, in which gestures, knowledge, how to, become—in the medium and long term—separated from the bodies and brains of workers and turned into mechanisms that make them forget. There is therefore a real possibility that the short term resonance and collective volition becomes a distorted and heightened state, with a rather unpalatable after-effect, in which the memories remain only as commodified digital data. The question is whether Twitter remembers it for us, thinks it for us and as such also, in its dislocations and short termism, obliterates it? A scenario wherein general intellect is reduced to a state of always already forgetting. The proletarian, we read in Gilbert Simondon, is a disindividuated worker, a labourer whose knowledge has passed into the machine in such a way that it is no longer the worker who is individuated through bearing tools and putting them into practice. Rather, the labourer serves the machine-tool, and it is the latter that has become the technical individual. (Stiegler, New Critique 37) Again, this pharmacological character is apparent—Stiegler says ‘the Internet is a pharmakon’ blurring both ‘distributed’ and ‘deep’ attention (Crogan 166). It is a marketing tool par-excellence, and here its capacity to generate protention operates to create not only a collective ‘volition’ but a more coercive collective disposition or tendency, that is the unconscious wiling or affective reflex. This is something more akin to what Richard Grusin refers to as premediation. In premediation the future has already happened, not in the sense that it has already actually happened but such is the preclusion of paths of possibility that cannot be conceived otherwise. Proletarianisation operates in this way through the app, writing in this mode is not as thoughtful exchange between skilled interlocutors, but as habitual respondents to a standard set of pre-digested codes (in the sense of both programming and natural language) ready to hand to be slotted into place. Here the role of the somatic marker is predicated on the layering of ideology, in its full sense, into the brain’s micro-level trained reflexes. In that regard there is a proletarianisation of the prosumer, the idealised figure of the Web 2.0 discourse. However, it needs to be reiterated that this is not the final say on the matter, that where there is volition, and in particular collective volition, there is also the possibility of a reactivated general will: a longer term common consciousness in the sense of class consciousness. Therefore the general claim being made here is that by taking hold of this device consciousness, and transforming it into an active collective volition we stand the best chance of finding “a political will capable of moving away from the economico-political complex of consumption so as to enter into the complex of a new type of investment, or in other words in an investment in common desire” (Stiegler, New Critique 6). In its most simplistic form this requires a new political economy of commoning, wherein micro-blogging services contribute to a broader augmented volition that is not captured within communicative capitalism, coded to turn volition into capital, but rather towards a device consciousness as common desire. Needless to say it is only possible here to propose such an aim as a possible path, but one that is surely worthy of further investigation. References Agamben, Giorgio. What Is an Apparatus? Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009. Crogan, Patrick. “Knowledge, Care, and Transindividuation: An Interview with Bernard Stiegler.” Cultural Politics 6.2 (2010): 157-170. Damasio, Antonio. Self Comes to Mind. London: Heinemann, 2010. Dean, Jodi. Blog Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010. Foucault, Michel. “The Confession of the Flesh.” Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings. Ed. Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon. 1980. Grusin, Richard. Pre-mediation. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011. Lazzarato, Maurizio. “Life and the Living in the Societies of Control.” Deleuze and the Social. Eds. Martin Fuglsang and Meier Sorensen Bent. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006. Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Books, 2002. Stiegler, Bernard. For a New Critique of Political Economy. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010. ———. What Makes Life Worth Living: On Pharmacology. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013.

Fig. 1: “Pink Flamingo Furby” (2000), “Peachy Furby Baby” (1999), and “Owl Furby” (1999) Sunlight Up (“Dah-ay-loh oo-tye”): Introduction As playthings at the junction of human experience and imagination, toys like Furby present an interesting touch point to explore cultural imaginations, hopes, and fears about zoomorphic robots and AI toys. This year marks their 25th anniversary. Created by Dave Hampton and Caleb Chung, Furby publicly debuted at the American International Toy Fair in 1998. Originally released by Tiger Electronics, this toy was later sold to Hasbro in 2005 to 2007. Since their introduction to the market, Furbys have been occupying our shelves and basements, perceived as “annoying little owl-like dolls with embedded sound-recording chips” (Gullin) that speak their own language “furbish” (shown throughout in parenthesis). Early reportage likened Furby to all kinds of cute critters: mogwais, hamsters, and Star Trek’s tribbles. Narratively Furbys are framed as a benevolent, alien species, living in space in a cloud known as Furbyland. For motivations not revealed, Furbys, in looking down on our planet, were so struck by the beautiful view of nature and its signs of peacefulness — “no worry (boo boh-bay)” — that they jumped, plummeting to us like tiny fluffy asteroids. Little did they know that their arrival would spark an intergalactic diplomatic incident. During its introduction in 1998, the initial discourse in media reportage emphasised anxieties of the unknown. What lies beneath the surface of Furby, as a toy that might blur the line between the real and imagined for children? What technologies might it harbour? As a hybrid of technology and animal, Furby appeared as a creepy-cute cultural icon that simultaneously delighted and horrified children and adults alike. Today adult fans reimagine Furby through play and customisation as part of their reflections on their childhood experiences of this cultural moment, and as a way of exploring new futures. Furby provides an opportunity to reflect on adults’ interactions with toys, including parents, members of the public, and fans motivated by nostalgia. At the time of its release Furby presented adults with moments of “dissonance” towards new horrifying technologies that “might occur at the seams [of] … monumental cultural shifts” (Powell 4). But for adult fans today, as a childhood memory, the toy represents both strangeness and future possibilities; it has become a tool of “disrupt[ing] and challeng[ing] beliefs and connections” (Rand 9). In this article I primarily analyse the “original” Furbys of 1998 to 2002, but also mention a range of later versions. This includes: the Emoto-tronic Furbys (2006) which were designed to have more expressive faces; the Furby Boom (2003), a toy whose personality changes according to the level of care it is provided with; and the Furby Connect (2016), which has bluetooth capacity. This discussion is supported by a thematic analysis of 3800 news articles about Furby from 1998 to 2000, visual analysis of both the original and customised iterations of Furby, as well as my reflections as a member of the Furby fandom community. You Play? (U-nye-loo-lay-doo?): Furby Encounters A key part of the discourse around Furby since its introduction in 1998 was, “who would want one?” Indeed, the answer at the time appeared to be “several million of us, the toy demons hope” (Weeks). After their release in American toy stores on 2 October 1998 in limited supplies, a Furbish frenzy ensued, resulting in altercations between shoppers and staff (e.g. Munroe; Warmbir; Associated Press). Aged 10, I recall my little black and white Furby, Coco, waiting for me on the shelves of the electronics section of Big W in Australia, fortunately with no such commotion. Furby is classed by the Guinness World Records as the world’s first AI toy, but it was certainly not the first electronic toy to enter the market; at the time of Furby’s release, Tickle Me Elmo and My Interactive Pooh presented competition, and by the late 1980s there was already concern about how electronic pet toys might erode emotion and connection (Turkle, “Authenticity”; Turkle, “Nascent”). Speculation over the reason for the Furby mass hysteria ensued. Some suggested the appeal was the toy’s status symbol status (Beck), whereas others cited its broad appeal: “it's not gender specific; it doesn't appeal to a particular age group; and most important, it's affordable and doesn't require additional equipment or a computer” (Davis). Some experts offered their commentary of the cyberpet phenomena in general, suggesting that it is a way of dealing with isolation and loneliness (Yorkshire Post). Indeed, all of these features are important to note when we consider the transformation of Furby into queer icon. Central to Furby’s cultural narrative is the idea of contact, or a meeting between robot and user; through play children “teach” their new pet Earth’s new ways (Marsh, “Coded”; Marsh, “Uncanny”). And with this contact also comes a sense of the unknown: what lies beneath the creature’s surface? In their study of zoomorphic robots, Hirofumi Katsumi and Daniel White suggest that Donna Haraway’s work on animal encounters might help us understand this idea of contact. As “animal-like” creature, Furby recalls the transformative potentials of meeting with the more-than-human. Furby’s presence on toy shelves, in classrooms and in homes was one of the first times society had to consider what it meant to “enter the world of becoming with” zoomorphic robots, and to reflect on “who or what ... is precisely at stake” in this entanglement (Haraway 19). What do we learn about ourselves and the unknown through our encounters with Furby? “Monster” (Moh-moh): Technological Threat, Monstrous Other In media reportage, Furby is framed as both new and innovative, but also as a threatening fluffy anarchist. With its technology largely unknown, Furby at the time of its release presented society with a sense of “technohorror” and “imaginings of [social] collapse” (Powell 24). A common concern was that Furby might record and repeat inappropriate language in an act of rebellion. Occasionally tabloid newspapers would report claims such as, "MUM … was horrified when she sat down to play with her daughter's new Furby toy and it squeaked: "F*** me" (The Sun). Some concerns were quite serious, including that Furby could emit electromagnetic fields that would create interference for medical devices and aircraft instruments; this was later disproven by engineers (Tan and Hinberg; Basky; Computer Security). Other urban myths pointed to a more whimsical Furby, whose sensors had the capacity to launch spacecraft (Watson). One persistent concern was the surveillance potentials of Furby. In 1999 the US National Security Agency (NSA) issued a ban on Furby in their Fort Mead headquarters, with concern that they might record and repeat confidential information (Gullin; Ramalho; Borger). This was denied by Tiger Electronics, who emphatically stated “Furby is not a spy” (Computer Security). Engineers performing “autopsies” on Furbys quickly put much of this anxiety to rest (Phobe). This was met with mirthful rebuttals of how future Furbys might be transformed into cute and ubiquitous “wireless furby transmitters” to gather intelligence in warzones (Gullin). As a result, the initial anxiety about surveillance and toys dissipated. However, academics continue to remind us of the real risks of smart toys (e.g. Lupton; Milkaite and Lievens). The 2016 Furby Connect, equipped with voice recognition and Bluetooth capacities has been shown to be hackable (Williams). Further, Maria Ramalho has reported Snowden’s 2014 claims that both NSA and the UK Government Communication Headquarters have been accessing the data collected. In this context, Furby has become “Big Brother transmogrified into ambiguous, cute” unaccountable creature (Ramalho). Through this, we can see how our entanglement with Furby as an object of technohorror speaks both to our anxieties and the real possibilities of technology. In order to craft a narrative around Furby that speaks to this monstrous potential, many have drawn comparisons between Furby and the character Gizmo from the Gremlins franchise. This reference to Gizmo appears in the majority of the media articles sampled for this research. Gizmo is a “mogwai” (trans. demon) with both cute and monstrous potential; like Furby, it also has the potential to transform into a threat to “good society” (Chesher 153-4). This comparison speaks to Gremlins as an anti-technology statement (Sale). However, when we consider how media rhetoric has framed Furby as something to be tamed and controlled, it’s important we approach this comparison with caution in light of the Orientalist underpinnings of the Gremlins franchise. Wendy Allison Lee highlights how Gremlins reflects xenophobic themes of invasion and assimilation. While Gizmo is a “cute, well-behaved” character who “strives to assimilate” much like how Furby might, through play with children, it also harbours a threat to order. In this encounter are resonances of “racist love” that can sometimes underpin our affection for cuteness (Bow). Further reflection is needed on how we might unentangle ourselves from this framing and imagine more inclusive futures with toys like Furby. Fig. 2: Interactive Gizmo, a “Furby Friend” produced by Hasbro, Tiger and Warner Bros in 1999 Big Fun! (Dah doo-ay wah!): Queer Re-Imaginings of Furby Fig. 3: Party time! Adult fans around the world now gather under the “Furby” banner, participating in a colourful array of playful mischief. Reddit forum r/furby (11,200 subscribers) creates a fun space to enjoy the whimsy of Furby, transforming the figure into a sweet and kind companion. Under this umbrella, r/oddbodyfurby (997 subscribers) explore the horrifying potentials of Furby to its playful and surprising ends, which I discuss in this section. In other forums, such as Furby Collectors and Customisers (4.1k members) on Facebook, these different interests come together in a playful and creative space. There was also an active community on Tumblr, where some of the most creatively generative activities around Furby have occurred (Tiffany). In Japan, there is a lively community of fans on Twitter who dress and photograph Emoto-tronic Furbys in a range of cute and charming ways. This forms part of a broader network of creatives, such as “Circuit Benders” who tear down toys and rework them into instruments in a process known as “frankensteining”, such as Look Mum No Computer’s Furby Organ (Deahl). As fans and artists, people act as “queer accessories” to help Furby escape the world and narrative that sought to enclose it, so it might enact its revenge or transcend as a non-binary queer icon (Rand 9-11). As small, collectible and customisable friends, images of happy and creepy Furbys are part of a network of cute media that provides my generation with a source of comfort during times of precarity, occupying our spaces with their own vitality and presence as soothing companions (e.g. Stevens; Allison; Yano). Cuteness as media also lends itself to hybridisation; a mixing and matching with seemingly “opposing” aesthetics. For many fans, the charm of Furby lies in its nostalgic pull as a creature of childhood creepy-cute nightmares. Indeed, it seems that early concerns that Furby may “blur the line between the real and imagined for many children” were in fact valid (Knowlton). While we knew they weren’t “alive” in the true sense, to us they appeared “sort of alive” as our everyday environments became increasingly technological with a dazzling array of electronics (Turkle, “Authenticity”). As Allison (179) explains, we had to “adjust to a world where the border between the imaginary and the real” began to shift rapidly, leaving us open to dream, imagine, and craft narratives populated by a fear of the mechanised undead. Many Millennials were convinced as children that their Furby was waiting for them in the dark, watching, chuckling (“he he heeeee”). Patrick Lenton, diarising his adventures with a rescue Furby this year recalls his childhood toy as “a riot of noise and fury, the kind of demonic household terror”. Some adults, recalling these memories now refer to Furby as “it” or “evil” (Marsh, “Uncanny” 59). In 2020, adult Furby fans, thinking back to their childhood toys, speculated if the positioning of Furby’s eyes at the front of its head meant it was a predator (Watson). Some suggested that their short legs meant they are ambush predators, their infra-red sensor enabling them to detect prey in the dark. Other playful lore suggested that they were made of real cat and dog fur. Through this act of imaginative play, adults reach back to the playful horrors of their childhoods, combining their sense of dread with glee. This has been recently animated by films such as The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021), where Furbys equipped with “PAL” chips transmogrify into a horrific pack of menacing creatures, and exact revenge. The main contributing factor to this experience is in part the puppetry of Furby. The 1999 Furby presents an exaggerated performance that is both “alive” and “unalive”, its wild rocking, owlish blinking, and cackling creating a sense of “dread and creeping horror” (Freud 2; Marsh, “Uncanny”). Through a blend of animation and imagination, agency is diffused between toy and child to give Furby “life” (Silvio 423). Interestingly, studies of the 2016 Furby Connect and its friendly and social programming that is designed to encourage positive care and engagement has counteracted some of this experience for children (Marsh, “Uncanny” 54). Likewise, in discussing the 2013 Furby Boom Chesher (151) describes this animation as “zany”, working with Sianne Ngai’s conceptualisation of this aesthetic and its relationship to cuteness. While some might praise these later developments in the Furby franchise as having saved another generation of children from nightmares, compared to the original Furby these later editions are less popular among fans; perhaps there is less “material” to work with. Fans as adults now draw on Furby as a playful and cute text to experiment with and hybridise with a variety of horrifying and surprising potentials. This leans into Furby’s design as a chimera, as it uses a combination of cute features to create a “short-hand” for life and also evoke the “idea” or “character” of appealing animals that form part of cultures “charismatic megafauna” (Nishimura 179; Stuck and Rogers; Gn). With cat-like ears, a tuft of hair that drifts with sympathetic movement, two wide eyes, framed with coquettish false lashes, a bird’s beak, and two paws, Furby both suspends and confounds our disbelief. Following the principles of the Kindchenschema (Lorenz) to a “100% ratio” its body is reduced to a round form, its most dominant feature its large eyes (Borgi, Cogliati-Dezza, Brelsford Meints, and Cirulli). While large eyes generally are thought to have an affective pull to them (Harris 4), their fixed placement in the original Furby’s skull creates a dead-pan gaze, that morphs into a Kubrik stare as the toy tilts forward to greet the viewer. Fig. 4: Kindschenschema at work in Furby’s design Furby fans mischievously extend this hybridisation of Furby’s body further through a range of customisation practices. Through “skinning”, Furby’s faux fur surfaces are removed and replaced with a fantastic array of colours and textures. Through breaking into their mechatronic shell – a practice known as “shucking” – their parts are repaired or modified. This results in a range of delightfully queer, non-binary representations of Furby with a range of vibrant furs, piercings, and evocative twinkling and gentle eyes (“tee-wee-lah!”). These figures act as both avatars and as companions for fans. Sporting earrings and rainbow bead necklaces, they are photographed resting in grassy fields, soft crochet rainbows, and bookshelves: they are an expression of all that is joyful in the world. Some fans push the customisation further to create whimsical creatures from another dimension. Some Furbys appear with moss and lichen for fur, sprouting tiny toadstools. Furbys are also transformed into “oddbodies” of varying species. Some appear both as winged fairies, and as transcendental multi-eyed and winged “biblically accurate” angels. Others are hybridised with plush toys or are reworked into handbags. Some veer into the realm of body horror, using doll limbs and bodies to create humanoid forms. The most iconic is the “long furby”, created by Tumblr user FurbyFuzz in 2018. Elongated and insect-like, the Long Furby wriggles into homes and curls up on soft furnishings. Collectors gather “haunted photos from the dark recesses of the internet” to document their escapades (Long Furby). Sometimes, hybridised Furbys appear not through creator interventions but rather emerge from nature itself. One such mythical creature is Murby, an original Furby unearthed in 2013 on an old farm property. Once toy, now woodland spirit, Murby gazes upon and blesses fans with dreamy, clouded eyes, its body an entanglement of thick moss, rich earth and time. Furby’s queerness, strangeness, and hybridity speaks to fans in different ways. Personally, as a neurodivergent person, I experience the coding and the playful reimaginings of Furby as a reflection of my own life experience. Neurodivergent people have a high capacity for care and empathy for objects as curiosities, supports, and friends (e.g. Atherton and Cross; White and Remington; Clutterbuck, Shah and Livingston). Like Furby, I am an alien whom people want to tame. My body and movement are treated with the same infantilising bemusement and suspicion. I feel like a chimera myself; an entanglement of many parts that make a whole, each on their own charming, but together forming a chaotic attempt to connect with neurotypicals. For me, what lies beneath Furby’s surface is my own psyche; rescuing and customising Furbys is a symbolic act, a creative expression of my desire to transcend and resist ableist forces. Together my Furbys and I revel in our strangeness in solidarity, plotting our mischievous revenge (“party time!”). This micro-level resistance will not overturn ableism but brings me a sense of reprieve as I work with my allies to bring socio-cultural change. Fig. 5: The author, Furby Queen. Photo by Sherbet Birdie Photography. Through their creative work, fans explore how Furbys could be reimagined. While fannish activities may at first glance appear fringe or frivolous, they hold up a mirror to our own limitations, anxieties, and practices as a society. The future is Furby. Go to Sleep Now (U-nye-way-loh-nee-way): Conclusions As a source of technohorror and queer potential, Furby provides a vessel by which we can imagine the futures of toys. Through encounter and contact, this seemingly harmless fluffy robot brought about disruption and chaos as a threat to securities and social fabrics. Adult fans, now recalling this cultural moment, lean into this creature’s promise of new possibilities, queering its cultural narrative. Through exploring adults’ interactions with toys, we explore new potentials for change and futures that are playful and creative. Acknowledgments This article was produced with the support of a Vitalities Lab Scholarship and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. I also thank Deborah Lupton and David Eastwood for their support in the production of an arts-based project that draws on this research into cyberpet histories. References Allison, Anne. Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination. Berkeley: U of California P, 2006. Associated Press. “Two Injured in Flurry over Furby.” Charleston Daily Mail 28 Nov. 1998. Atherton, Gray, and Liam Cross. “Seeing More than Human: Autism and Anthropomorphic Theory of Mind.” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2018): 1–18. Basky, Greg. “Furby Not Guilty as ‘Charged’.” The Western Journal of Medicine 172 (2000): 59. Beck, Rachel. “‘Must-Have’ Toys Created by Intense Publicity Campaigns.” AP Business Writer 16 Oct. 1998. 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IntroductionThe popularity of social networking sites (SNSs) bears witness to thriving movement protests worldwide. The development of new hardware technologies such as mobile devices and digital cameras, in particular, has fast enhanced visual communications among users that help document and broadcast contemporary social movements. Using social media with these technologies thus presents new opportunities for grassroots social movement organisations (SMOs) and activist groups to become narrators of their activist lives, and to promote solidarity and recognition for advancing varied civic and political agendas. With the case of a student activist group that led and organised a 10-day occupation protest in Hong Kong, this article examines the idea of new media-savvy SMOs as political curators that employ SNS platforms to (co-)create digital narratives at large-scale movement protests. Invoking the concepts of curation and choreography, it highlights how these processes can work together to encourage contentious engagement and collaboration in contemporary social movements.The New Media-Savvy SMO as Political CuratorWhereas traditional social movement studies stressed the importance of pre-existing social networks and organisational structures for collective action, developments in new information and communication technologies (ICTs) challenge the common theories of how people are drawn into and participate in social movements. In recent years, a spate of research has particularly emphasised the ability of individuals and small groups to self-organise on the Internet (e.g. Rheingold). Lately, observing the use of SNSs such as Facebook and Twitter in contemporary social movements, work in this area has focused on how SNSs enable movement diffusion through personal networks and individuals’ online activities even without either the aid or the oversight of an organisation (e.g. Shirky).However, horizontal activism self-organised by atomised new media users seems insufficient as an explanation of how many recent protest movements achieved their high tides. While the flourishing literature shows writers have correctly centred their study on the changing dynamics in control over information and the growing importance of individual users’ contributions, it fails to account for the crucial role that SMOs continue to play. In fact, recent studies consistently observe the continuing importance of SMOs in mobilising and coordinating collective actions in online environments (Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl, Collective). Whereas new ICTs have provided activist groups with the instrument to deal with their contentious activities with less cueing and leadership from conventional institutionalised structures, SMOs have created their own new media resources. Nowadays, a significant percentage of protest participants have received their information from online platforms that are run by or affiliated with these organisations. The critical questions remain about the kinds of communication methods they utilise to activate and integrate independent activists’ networks and participation, especially in emerging social media environments.Unfortunately, existing research tends to overlook the discursive potentials and cultural dimensions in online activism while emphasising the cost-effectiveness and organisational function of new ICTs. In particular, social movement and new media scholars merely attended to the ways in which digital media enable widescale, relatively un-coordinated contributions to repositories of resources for networks of activists and interest groups, as SNS applications stress the importance of user participation, openness, and network effects in the processes of content production and sharing. However, the mere existence or even “surplus” (Shirky 27) of “second-order communal goods” (Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl, “Reconceptualizing” 372)—a collection of resources created collectively but without a bounded community, through video-posting, tagging, and circulation practices engaged in by individuals—does not accidentally result in critical publics that come to take part in political activism. Rather, social movements are, above all, the space for manifesting ideas, choices, and a collective will, in which people produce their own history through their cultural creations and social struggles (Touraine). As such, the alteration of meaning, the struggle to define the situation, and the discursive practices carried out within a social movement are all major aspects of social movements and change (Melucci).Indeed, SMOs and marginalised communities worldwide have increasingly learnt the ability to become narrators of their activist and community lives, and to express solidarity and recognition afforded through technology adoption. The recent proliferation of social media applications and mobile digital technologies has allowed activist groups to create and distribute their own stories regarding concrete actions, ongoing campaigns, and thematic issues of protest movements on more multimedia platforms. In order to advance political ideas and collective action frames, they may bring together a variety of online content in such a way that the collated materials offer a commentary on a subject area by articulating and negotiating new media artefacts, while also inviting responses. Therefore, not only are the new media channels for activist communication comparatively inexpensive, but they also provide for a richer array of content and the possibility of greater control by SMOs over its (re-)creation, maintenance, and distribution for potential digital narrating. To understand how digital narrating takes place in contemporary protest movements with SNSs, we now turn to two analytic concepts—curation and choreography.Social Media Content Curation and Choreography Curation, as a new media practice, involves finding, categorising, and organising relevant online content on specific issues. For instance, museums and libraries may have curators to select and feature digital items for collection and display, improving the types of information accessible to a public audience. In protest movements, SMOs and political actors may also curate peer-produced content on SNS platforms so as to filter and amplify useful information for mobilising collective action. In fact, this process by SMOs and political actors is particularly important, as it helps sort and draw timely attention to these information sources, especially at times when users are faced with a large amount of noise created by millions of producers (Bennett, Segerberg, and Walker). More importantly, not only does content curating entail the selection and preservation of online materials that may facilitate collective action, but it may also involve the (re-)presentation of selected content by telling stories not being told or by telling existing stories in a different way (Fotopoulou and Couldry). In contrast to professional collecting, it is a much more deliberate process, one which clearly articulates and puts forwards (opportunities for) new meanings or new understanding of a subject (Franks). For example, when new media content is re-posted or shared in its original form but in a new context, digital narrating occurs as it may result in a new or additional layer of meaning (Baym and Shah). Therefore, more than merely expending information resources available to activists, the power of curation can be understood primarily as discursive, as users may pick up particular versions of reality in interpreting social issues and protest movements (Bekkers, Moody, and Edwards).Moreover, nowadays, social media curating is not restricted to text but also includes image and video streaming, as the development of mobile devices and digital cameras has facilitated and enhanced instant communication and information retrieval almost regardless of location. The practice of content curating with SNSs may also involve the process of choreographing with various social media modules, such as posting a series of edited pictures under an overarching schema and organising user-generated photos into an album that suggests a particular theme. Rather than simply using a single visual item designed to tell a story, the idea of choreographing is thus concerned with how curated items are seen and experienced from the users’ perspectives as it “allows curators not just to expose elements of a story but to tell a structured tale with the traditional elements of beginning, middle and end” (Franks 288).In practice, the implementation of choreography can be envisioned to bring together the practice of content curating and that of enhancing and connecting contentious engagement at protest movements. For example, when SMOs make use of images and video to help frame an issue in a more advanced way by sharing a picture with a comment added on Facebook, they may at once, whether consciously or unconsciously, suggest possible endorsement to the selected content and/or the source—may it be that of an individual user or a formal organisation—while drawing attention to the image and circulating it beyond the original network for which it was posted (Bennett, Segerberg, and Walker). As such, by posting pictures with captions and sharing user-generated photos that do not belong to the SMO but are produced by other users, curating and choreographing with social media content can create a temporary space for practicing mutual recognition and extending the relationship between the SMO and the larger public. Combined, they may therefore “entail the creation of norms and boundaries in particular user communities and their platforms” (Bennett, Segerberg, and Walker 239).This article examines the ways in which a new media-savvy SMO employed SNS platforms to (co-)create digital narratives, with the case of the 2012 Anti-National Education Movement in Hong Kong. By highlighting how social media content curating and choreographing may work together to encourage engagement and collaboration at large-scale protests, we can better understand how emerging SNS-enabled affordances can be translated into concrete contentious activities, as well as the discursive aspects and cultural expressions of using new media platforms and digital technologies in contemporary protest movements.Digital Narrating for Grassroots Mobilisation Since 2010, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government has undertaken “national education” curriculum reform. However, the worry about mainland-Chinese style national education in schools brought people out to defend values that were held dear in Hong Kong. Scholarism, a new media-savvy SMO founded by about 20 secondary school students in May 2011, became the first pressure group formed against the “Moral and National Education” curriculum and became the leading activist group. On 30 August 2012, about 50 members and supporters of Scholarism started occupying the public area in front of the government’s headquarters, while three of its members went on a hunger strike. At the same time, Scholarism made active use of Facebook to undertake grassroots mobilisation, prompting both online activism and offline participation. On 7 September, over 120,000 people went to Occupy Headquarters. The next day, the Chief Executive, C. Y. Leung, succumbed to the pressure and declared that the curriculum would not be imposed in Hong Kong schools. In order to initiate a grassroots mobilisation, upon the beginning of Occupy Headquarters, Scholarism carried out the new media practice of telling the story of the student hunger strikers on Facebook to create a “moral shock” (Jasper 106) among the general public. On the first day of the occupation protest, 30 August, a poster on the hunger strike was released by Scholarism on its Facebook page. Instead of providing detailed information about the protest movement, this poster was characterised by the pictures of the three student hunger strikers. The headline message simply stated “We have started the hunger strike.” This poster was very popular among Facebook users; it accumulated more than 16,000 likes.By appealing to the hardships and sufferings of the three student hunger strikers, more photos were uploaded to narrate the course of the hunger strike and the occupation protest. In particular, pictures with captions added were posted on Facebook every couple of hours to report on the student hunger strikers’ latest situation. Although the mobilising power of these edited pictures did not come from their political ideology or rational argumentation, they sought to appeal to the “martyr-hood” of the student activists. Soon thereafter, as the social media updates of the student hunger strikers spread, feelings of shock and anger grew rapidly. Most of the comments that were posted under the updates and photos of the student hunger strikers on Scholarism’s Facebook page protested against the government’s brutality.In addition, as the movement grew, Scholarism extended the self-reporting activities on Facebook from members to non-members. For instance, it frequently (self-)reported on the amount of people joining the movement days and nights. This was especially so on 7 September, when Scholarism uploaded multiple photos and text messages to report on the physical movement of the 120,000 people. As a movement strategy, the display of images of protests and rallies on the Internet can help demonstrate the legitimacy, unity, numbers, and commitment of people supporting the movement goals (Carty and Onyett). Curating and choreographing with protest images on Facebook therefore facilitated the symbolic interactions and emotional exchanges among activists for maintaining movement solidarity and consolidating activist identity.To demonstrate the public support for its organisation and the movement, Scholarism extensively reported on its own, as well as other, protest activities and efforts on Facebook against the introduction of the “Moral and National Education” curriculum, creating unprecedented parallel public records of these events. In fact, throughout the entire movement protest, Scholarism took tight photo records of protest activities, systematically organised them into albums, and uploaded them onto Facebook every day between 30 August and 8 September.Content Co-Creation for Counter-Hegemonic ExpressionsFrom a (neo-)Gramscian perspective, counter-hegemony is often embedded and embodied in music, novels, drama, movies, and so on (Boggs). An example of counter-hegemony in the traditional media is a documentary that questions the government’s involvement in a war (Cohen). Therefore, popular culture in the media may help foster counter-hegemony on the terrain of civil society in preparation for political change (Pratt). For Chinese communities in East Asia, pop music, for example, had played a significant role in organising patriotic feelings in mass protest events, such as the Tiananmen demonstrations of 1989 and the many subsequent protests in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and elsewhere against the violence of the Beijing government (Chow 153). During the occupation protest, Facebook was turned into an open and flexible discursive space, in which cutting-edge counter-hegemonic narratives were produced, distributed, and expressed. Scholarism and many individual activists adopted the social media platform to (co-)create activists’ discourses and knowledge in order to challenge the dominant political and cultural codes (Melucci). An example is a poster created by Scholarism, posted on its Facebook page on 4 September. The title message of this poster is: “This is not the government headquarters. This is our CIVIC SQUARE. Come and occupy!” This message represents a discursive intervention that seeks to “illuminate the limits of normative discourses of knowledge and power” (Lane 138). It did so by replacing the original, official name and meaning of the government headquarters as well as its authority with the counter-hegemonic idea of “civic square,” a term developed and coined by Scholarism during the occupation protest to represent the public space in front of the headquarters.Moreover, the Facebook page of Scholarism was by no means the only source of content out of which counter-hegemonic knowledge and discourses were produced. Conversely, most of the new media artefacts observed on the Facebook page of Scholarism were originally created by and posted on, and therefore re-posted and shared from, the Facebook pages of other individual or group users. They are in forms of text, picture, video, and the like that sought to undermine the legitimacy of the Hong Kong government, ridicule the rationale of the “Moral and National Education” curriculum, and discredit figures in the opposition.An example is a cartoon made by an individual user and re-posted on the Facebook page of Scholarism on 2 September, the day before schools restarted in Hong Kong after the summer break. This cartoon features a schoolboy in his school uniform, who is going to school with a bunch of identical locks tied to his head. The title message is: “School begins, keep your brain safe.” This cartoon was created to ridicule the rationale of the introduction of the “Moral and National Education” by “making visible the underlying and hidden relations of power on which the smooth operation of government repression depends” (Lane 136).Another new media artefact re-posted on the Facebook page of Scholarism was originally created by a well-known Hong Kong cartoon painter of a major local newspaper. This cartoon sought to humanise the student activists and to condemn the brutality of the Hong Kong government. It paints an imagined situation in which a public conversation between the Secretary for Education, Hak-kim Eddie Ng, and the three students on the hunger strike takes place. In this cartoon, Ng is cast as the wholesaler of the “Moral and National Education” curriculum. Holding a bottle of liquid in his hand, he says to the students: “This is the tears of the chief executive from last night. Kids, should you all go home now?”Thus, counter-hegemonic expressions did not flow unidirectionally from Scholarism to the society at large. The special role of Scholarism was indeed to curate and choreograph new media artefacts by employing social media modules such as re-posting and sharing user-generated content. In so doing, it facilitated the mobilisation of the occupation protest and instant collaboration, as it connected scattered activities, turned them into a collective, and branded it with a common identity, conviction, and/or purpose.ConclusionThis article has briefly looked at the case of a new media-savvy SMO in Hong Kong as an example of how activist groups can become political curators at large-scale protest events. In particular, it highlights the concepts of curation and choreography in explaining how emerging SNS-enabled affordances can be translated into concrete contentious activities. This article argues that, rather than simply producing and disseminating content on SNS platforms, SMOs today have learnt to actively construct stories about protest movements with social media modules such as (re-)posting edited pictures and sharing user-generated photos in order to mobilise effective political interventions and sustain a vibrant participatory culture.ReferencesBaym, Geoffrey, and Chirag Shah. “Circulating Struggle: The On-Line Flow of Environmental Advocacy Clips from the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.” Information Communication & Society 14.7 (2011): 1017–38. Bekkers, Victor, Rebecca Moody, and Arthur Edwards. “Micro-Mobilization, Social Media and Coping Strategies: Some Dutch Experiences.” Policy and Internet 3.4 (2011): 1–29. Bennett, W. Lance, Alexandra Segerberg, and Shawn Walker. “Organization in the Crowd: Peer Production in Large-Scale Networked Protests.” Information, Communication & Society 17.2 (2014): 232–60. Bimber, Bruce, Andrew J. Flanagin, and Cynthia Stohl. “Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment.” Communication Theory 15.4 (2005): 365–88. ———. Collective Action in Organizations. New York: Cambridge UP, 2012.Boggs, Carl. The Two Revolutions: Antonio Gramsci and the Dilemmas of Western Marxism. Boston, MA: South End P, 1984. Carty, Victoria, and Jake Onyett. “Protest, Cyberactivism and New Social Movements: The Reemergence of the Peace Movement Post 9/11.” Social Movement Studies 5.3 (2006): 229–49. Chow, Ray. “Between Colonizers: Hong Kong’s Postcolonial Self-Writing in the 1990s.” Diaspora 2.2 (1992): 151–70. Cohen, Theodore. Global Political Economy. New York: Longman, 2003. Fotopoulou, Aristea, and Nick Couldry. “Telling the Story of the Stories: Online Content Curation and Digital Engagement.” Information, Communication & Society 18.2 (2015): 235–49. Franks, Rachel. “Establishing an Emotional Connection: The Librarian as (Digital) Storyteller.” The Australian Library Journal 62.4 (2013): 285–94. Jasper, James M. The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movement. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997. Lane, Jill. “Digital Zapatistas.” The Drama Review 47.2 (2003): 129–44. Melucci, Alberto. Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.Pratt, Nicola. “Bringing Politics Back in: Examining the Link between Globalization and Democratization.” Review of International Political Economy 11.2 (2004): 311–36. Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2003. Shirky, Clay. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. London: Allen Lane, 2010. Touraine, Alain. Return of the Actor: Social Theory in Postindustrial Society. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1988.

IntroductionThis paper is concerned with recent attempts to develop the creative economy in rural Scotland. Research shows that the creative economy is far from self-organising, and that an appropriate institutional landscape is important to its development (Andersson and Henrekson). In Scotland, there is a proliferation of support mechanisms – from those designed to help creative entrepreneurs improve their business, management, or technical expertise, to infrastructure projects, to collective capacity-building. In rural Scotland, this support landscape is particularly cluttered. This article tackles the question: How do rural creative entrepreneurs negotiate this complex funding and support landscape, and how do they aid the development of the rural creative economy ‘from below’? From Creative Industries to the Creative EconomyThe creative industries have been central to the UK’s economic growth strategy since the 1990s. According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research the creative industries contributed £5.9bn to the economy in 2013 (CEBR 17). In the last five years there have been significant improvements in ICTs, leading to growth in digital creative production, distribution, and consumption. The established creative industries, along with the nascent ‘digital industries’ are often grouped together as a separate economic sector – the ‘creative economy’ (Nesta A Manifesto for the Creative Economy).Given its close association with creative city discourses (see Florida 2002), research on the creative economy remains overwhelmingly urban-focused. As a result of this urban bias, the rural creative economy is under-researched. Bell and Jayne (209) note that in the last decade a small body of academic work on the rural creative economy has emerged (Harvey et al.; White). In particular, the Australian context has generated a wealth of discussion as regards national and regional attempts to develop the rural creative economy, the contribution of ‘creativity’ to rural economic and social development, sustainability and resilience, and the role that individual creative practitioners play in developing the rural creative economy (see Argent et al.; Gibson, Gibson and Connell; Waitt and Gibson).In the absence of suitable infrastructure, such as: adequate transport infrastructure, broadband and mobile phone connectivity, workspaces and business support, it often falls to rural creative practitioners themselves to ‘patch the gaps’ in the institutional infrastructure. This paper is concerned with the ways in which rural creative practitioners attempt to contribute to the development of the creative economy ‘from below’. ICTs have great potential to benefit rural areas in this respect, by “connecting people and places, businesses and services” (Townsend et al. Enhanced Broadband Access 581).The Scottish InfrastructureSince 1998, cultural policy has been devolved to Scotland, and has fallen under the control of the Scottish Government and Parliament. In an earlier examination of a Scottish creative business support agency, I noted that the Scottish Government has adopted a creative industries development strategy broadly in line with that coming out of Westminster, and subsequently taken up worldwide, and that the Scottish institutional infrastructure is extremely complex (Schlesinger et al.). Crucially, the idea of ‘intervention’, or, the availability of a draw-down programme of funding and support that will help creative practitioners develop a business from their talent, is key (Schlesinger).The main funder for Scottish artists and creative practitioners is Creative Scotland, who distribute money from the Scottish Government and the National Lottery. Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) also offer funding and support for creative practitioners working in the Highlands and Islands region. Further general business support may be drawn down from Business Gateway (who work Scotland-wide but are not creative-industries specific), or Scottish Enterprise (who work Scotland-wide, are not creative-industries specific, and are concerned with businesses turning over more than £250,000 p.a.). Additionally, creative-sector specific advice and support may be sought from Cultural Enterprise Office (based in Glasgow and primarily serving the Central Belt), Creative Edinburgh, Dundee or Stirling (creative networks that serve their respective cities), the Creative Arts and Business Network (based in Dumfries, serving the Borders), and Emergents (based in Inverness, dealing with rural craftspeople and authors).MethodologyThe article draws on material gathered as part of three research projects, all concerned with the current support landscape for creative practitioners in Scotland. The first, ‘Supporting Creative Business’ was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the second, ‘Towards a model of support for the rural creative industries’ was funded by the University of Glasgow and the third, ‘The effects of improved communications technology of rural creative entrepreneurs’ funded by CREATe, the Research Council's UK Centre for the Study of Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy.In all three cases, the research was theoretically and practically informed by the multi-sited ethnographies of cultural, creative and media work conducted by Moeran (Ethnography at Work, The Business of Ethnography) and Mould et al. Whilst the methodology for all three of my projects was ethnography, the methods utilised included interviews (n=23) – with interviewees drawn from across rural Scotland – participant and non-participant observation, and media and document analysis. Interviewees and study sites were accessed via snowball sampling, which was enabled by the measure of continuity between the three projects. This paper draws primarily on interview material and ethnographic ‘vignettes’. All individuals cited in the paper are anonymised in line with the University of Glasgow’s ethics guidelines.Cities, Creativity, and ‘Buzz’As noted earlier, cities are seen as the driving force behind the creative industries; and accordingly, much of the institutional infrastructure that supports the rural creative industries is modelled on urban systems of intervention. Cities are seen as breeding grounds for creativity by virtue of what Storper and Venables call their ‘buzz’ – consider, for example, the sheer numbers of creative practitioners that congregate in cities, the presence of art schools, work spaces and so on. Several of the creative practitioners I spoke to identified the lack of ‘buzz’ as one key difference between working in cities and working from rural places:It can be isolating out here. There are days when I miss art school, and my peers. I really valued their support and just the general chit chat and news. […] And having everything on your doorstep. (Visual artist, Argyll)Of course, rural creatives didn’t equate the ‘buzz’ of activity in cities with personal or professional creative success. Rather, they felt that developing a creative business was made easier by the fact that most funders and support agencies were based in Scotland’s Central Belt. The creatives resident there were able to take advantage of that proximity and the relationships that it enabled them to build, but also, the institutional landscape was supplemented by the creative ‘buzz’, which was difficult to quantify and impossible to replicate in rural areas.Negotiating the Funding and Support LandscapeI spoke to rural creative practitioners about whether the institutional infrastructure – in this case, relevant policy at national and UK level, funding and support agencies, membership bodies etcetera – was adequate. A common perspective was that the institutional infrastructure was extremely complex, which acted as a barrier for creatives seeking funding and support:Everything works ok, the problem is that there’s so many different places to go to for advice, and so many different criteria that you have to meet if you wanted funding, and what’s your first port of call, and it’s just too complicated. I feel that as a rural artist I fall between the cracks […] am I a creative business, a rural creative business, or just a rural business? (Craftsperson, Shetland) Interviewees suggested that there were ‘gaps’ in the institutional infrastructure, caused not by the lack of appropriate policy, funders, or support agencies but rather by their proliferation and a sense of confusion about who to approach. Furthermore, funding agencies such as Creative Scotland have, in recent years, come under fire for the complexity of their funding and support systems:They have simplified their application process, but I just can’t be bothered trying to get anything out of Creative Scotland at the moment. I don’t find their support that useful and they directed me to Cultural Enterprise Office when I asked for advice on filling in the form and tailoring the application, and CEO were just so pushed for time, I couldn’t get a Skype with them. The issue with getting funding from anywhere is the teeny tiny likelihood of getting money, coupled with how time-consuming the application process is. So for now, I’m just trying to be self-sufficient without asking for any development funds. But I am not sure how sustainable that is. (Craftsperson, Skye, interview) There was a sense that ‘what works’ to enable urban creative practitioners to develop their practice is not necessarily sufficient to help rural creatives. Because most policymakers, funders and support bodies are based in the Central Belt, rural creatives feel that the challenges they face are poorly understood. One arts administrator summed up why, statingthe problem is that people in the Central Belt don’t get what we’re dealing with up here, unless they’ve actually lived here. The remoteness, poor transport links, internet and mobile access […] it impacts on your ability to develop your business. If I want to attend a course, some organisations will pay travel and accommodation. But they don’t account for the fact that if I travel from Eigg, I’ll need to work around the ferry times, which might mean two extra nights’ accommodation plus the cost of travel … we’re excluded from opportunities because of our location. (Arts administrator, the Small Isles) A further issue identified by several participants in this research is that funding and support agencies Scotland-wide tend to work to standardised definitions of the creative industries that privilege high-growth sectors (see Luckman). This led to many heritage and craft businesses feeling excluded. One local authority stakeholder told me,exactly what the creative industries are, well that might be obvious on paper but real life is a bit more complicated. Where do we put a craftsperson whose craft work is done in her spare time but pays just enough to stop her needing a second job? How do we tell people like this, who say they are in the creative industries, that they aren’t actually according to this criteria or that criteria? (Local authority stakeholder, Shetland, interview)Creating Virtual ‘Buzz’? The Potential of ICTsAccording to 2015 OFCOM figures (10-12), in rural Scotland 85.9% of households can receive broadband, and 6.3% can receive superfast. The Scottish Government’s ambition is to deliver superfast broadband to up to 90 per cent of premises in Scotland by March 2016, and to extend this to 95 per cent by 2017. Whilst the current landscape as regards broadband provision is far from ideal, there are signs that improved provision is profoundly affecting the way that rural creatives develop their practice, and the way they engage with the institutional infrastructure set up to support them.At an industry event run by HIE in July 2015, a diverse panel of rural creatives spoke of how they exploited the possibilities associated with improved ICTs in order to offset some of the aforementioned problems of working from rural and remote areas. As the event was conducted under Chatham House rules, the following is adapted from field notes,It was clear from the panel and the Q&A that followed that improved ICTs meant that creatives could access training and support in new ways–online courses and training materials, webinars, and one-on-one Skype coaching, training and mentoring. Whilst of course most people would prefer face-to-face contact in this respect, the willingness of training providers to offer online solutions was appreciated, and most of the creatives on the panel (and many in the audience) had taken advantage of these partial solutions. The rural creatives on the panel also detailed the tactics that they used in order to ‘patch the gaps’ in the institutional infrastructure:There were four things that emerged from the panel discussion, Q&A and subsequent conversations I had on how technology benefited rural creatives: peer support, proximity to decision-makers, marketing and sales, and heritage and provenance.In terms of peer support, the panel felt that improved connectivity allowed them to access ‘virtual’ peer support through the internet. This was particularly important in terms of seeking advice regarding funding, business support and training, generating new creative ideas, and seeking emotional support from others who were familiar with the strains of running a creative business.Rural creatives found that social media (in particular) meant that they had a closer relationship with ‘distant’ decision-makers. They felt able to join events via livestreaming, and took advantage of hash tagging to take part in events, ‘policy hacks’ and consultations. Attendees I spoke to also mentioned that prominent Government ministers and other decision-makers had a strong Twitter presence and made it clear that they were at times ‘open’ to direct communication. In this way, rural creatives felt that they could ‘make their voices heard’ in new ways.In terms of marketing and sales, panel members found social media invaluable in terms of building online ‘presence’. All of the panel members sold services and products through dedicated websites (and noted that improved broadband speeds and 3G meant that these websites were increasingly sophisticated, allowing them to upload photographs and video clips, or act as client ‘portals’), however they also sought out other local creatives, or creatives working in the same sector in order to build visible networks on social media such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. This echoes an interview I conducted with a designer from Orkney, who suggested that these online networks allowed designers to build a rapport with customers, but also to showcase their products and build virtual ‘buzz’ around their work (and the work of others) in the hope their designs would be picked up by bloggers, the fashion press and stylists.The designer on the panel also noted that social media allowed her to showcase the provenance of her products. As she spoke I checked her Twitter and Instagram feeds, as well as the feeds of other designers she was linked to; a large part of their ‘advertising’ through these channels entailed giving followers an insight into life on the islands. The visual nature of these media also allowed them to document how local histories of making had influenced their practice, and how their rural location had influenced their work. It struck me that this was a really effective way to capture consumers’ imaginations. As we can see, improved ICTs had a substantial impact on rural creatives’ practice. Not only did several of the panel members suggest that improved ICTs changed the nature of the products that they could produce (by enabling them to buy in different materials and tools, and cultivate longer and more complex supply chains), they also noted that improved ICTs enabled them to cultivate new markets, to build stronger networks and to participate more fully in discussions with ‘distant’ policymakers and decision makers. Furthermore, ICTs were seen as acting as a proxy for ‘buzz’ for rural creatives, that is, face-to-face communication was still preferred, but savvy use of ICTs went some way to mitigating the problems of a rural location. This extends Storper and Venables’s conceptualisation of the idea, which understands ‘buzz’ as the often-intangible benefits of face-to-face contact.Problematically however, as Townsend et al. state, “rural isolation is amplified by the technological landscape, with rural communities facing problems both in terms of broadband access technologies and willingness or ability of residents to adopt these” (Enhanced Broadband Access 5). As such, the development activities of rural creatives are hampered by poor provision and a slow ‘roll out’ of broadband and mobile coverage. ConclusionsThis paper is concerned with recent attempts to develop the rural creative economy in Scotland. The paper can be read in relation to a small but expanding body of work that seeks to understand the distinctive formation of the rural creative industries across Europe and elsewhere (Bell and Jayne), and how these can best be developed and supported (White). Recent, targeted intervention in the rural creative industries speaks to concerns about the emergence of a ‘two tier’ Europe, with remote and sparsely-populated rural regions with narrow economic bases falling behind more resilient cities and city-regions (Markusen and Gadwa; Wiggering et al.), yet exactly how the rural creative industries function and can be further developed is an underdeveloped research area.In order to contribute to this body of work, this paper has sketched out some of the problems associated with recent attempts to develop the creative economy in rural Scotland. On a Scotland-wide scale, there is a proliferation of policies, funding bodies, and support agencies designed to organise and regulate the creative economy. In rural areas, there is also an ‘overlap’ between Scotland-wide bodies and rural-specific bodies, meaning that many rural creatives feel as if they ‘fall through the cracks’ in terms of funding and support. Additionally, rural creatives noted that Central Belt-based funders and support agencies struggled to fully understand the difficulties associated with making a living from a rural location.The sense of being distant from decision makers and isolated in terms of practice meant that many rural creatives took it upon themselves to develop the creative economy ‘from below’. The creatives that I spoke to had an array of ‘tactics’ that they used, some of which I have detailed here. In this short paper I have focused on one issue articulated within interviews – the idea of exploiting ICTs in order to build stronger networks between creatives and between creatives and decision makers within funding bodies and support agencies. Problematically, however, it was recognised that these creative-led initiatives could only do so much to mitigate the effects of a cluttered, piecemeal funding and support landscape.My research suggests that as it stands, ‘importing’ models from urban contexts is alienating and frustrating for rural creatives and targeted, rural-specific intervention is required. Research demonstrates that creative practitioners often seek to bring about social and cultural impact through their work, rather than engaging in creative activities merely for economic gain (McRobbie Be Creative, Rethinking Creative Economies; Waitt and Gibson). Whilst this is true of creatives in both urban and rural areas, my research suggests that this is particularly important to rural creatives, who see themselves as contributing economically, social and culturally to the development of the communities within which they are embedded (see Duxbury and Campbell; Harvey et al.). ‘Joined up’ support for this broad-based set of aims would greatly benefit rural creatives and maximise the potential of the rural creative industries.ReferencesAndersson, Martin, and Magnus Henrekson. "Local Competiveness Fostered through Local Institutions for Entrepreneurship." Research Institute on Industrial Economics Work Paper Series (2014), 0-57. Argent, Neil, Matthew Tonts, Roy Jones and John Holmes. “A Creativity-Led Rural Renaissance? Amenity-Led Migration, the Creative Turn and the Uneven Development of Rural Australia.” Applied Geography 44 (2013): 88-98.Bell, David, and Mark Jayne. 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