Статті в журналах з теми "Complex Networks, Network Reconstruction, Sustainable Development Goals"

Policymaking requires an in-depth understanding of the cause-and-effect relationships between the sustainable development goals. However, due to the complex nature of socio-economic and environmental systems, this is still a challenging task. In the present article, the interconnectedness of the United Nations (UN) sustainability goals is measured using the Granger causality analysis of their indicators. The applicability of the causality analysis is validated through the predictions of the World3 model. The causal relationships are represented as a network of sustainability indicators providing the opportunity for the application of network analysis techniques. Based on the analysis of 801 UN indicator types in 283 geographical regions, approximately 4000 causal relationships were identified and the most important global connections were represented in a causal loop network. The results highlight the drastic deficiency of the analysed datasets, the strong interconnectedness of the sustainability targets and the applicability of the extracted causal loop network. The analysis of the causal loop networks emphasised the problems of poverty, proper sanitation and economic support in sustainable development.

Background: Achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is beyond the capacity of any single organisation. The principles of engaging stakeholders suggest that an engaged, multi-sectoral approach, such as described in models of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), hold promise to mobilise humanity to solve complex and urgent global issues. Methods: This scoping review explores the characteristics of effective and sustainable inter-organisational networks for fostering RRI in service of the SDGs. The review focuses on strategies to initiate and maintain international communities of practice relevant to the implementation of RRI and/or SDGs. The search began with themes derived from prior network theory, focusing on: (a) the type and function of networks; (b) the aims and vision; and (c) the relationships between networks and network members. In total, 55 articles on inter-organisational network theory were included for the final analysis. Results: Results are reported under themes of: (1) Effectiveness, Sustainability, and Success; (2) Governance and Management; and (3) Network Relationship. Network structures, forms of management and funding are linked to sustainable networks. Potential threats include power imbalances within networks, and internal and external factors that may affect relationships at network and community levels. Few studies examine diversity or cultural viewpoints. Studies highlight the benefits of networks such as enhancing knowledge sharing among researchers, practitioners, and other stakeholders. Conclusions: The effectiveness of the managerial structure may be observed as outputs of the intention and values of an inter-organisational network. Our review demonstrates that a global inter-organisational network approach is achievable. Such a network would have many benefits, including allowing organisations to be responsive and flexible towards change and innovation.

Background: Achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is beyond the capacity of any single organisation. The model for Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) includes principles of engaging stakeholders and suggests that an engaged, multi-sectoral approach hold promise to mobilise humanity to solve complex and urgent global issues. Methods: This scoping review explores the characteristics of effective and sustainable inter-organisational networks for fostering RRI in service of the SDGs. An inductive-deductive search of prior studies (1990-2020), with the exception of Benson’s (1975) seminal work was conducted, which focused on strategies to initiate and maintain inter-organisational networks relevant to the implementation of RRI and/or SDGs. The search began with themes derived from prior network theory, focusing on: (a) the type and function of networks; (b) the aims and vision; and (c) the relationships between networks and network members. In total, 55 articles on inter-organisational network theory were included for the final analysis. Results: Results are reported under themes of: (1) Effectiveness, Sustainability, and Success; (2) Governance and Management; and (3) Network Relationship. Network structures, forms of management and funding are linked to sustainable networks. Potential threats include power imbalances within networks, and internal and external factors that may affect relationships at network and community levels. Few studies examine diversity or cultural viewpoints. Studies highlight the benefits of networks such as enhancing knowledge sharing among researchers, practitioners, and other stakeholders. Conclusions: The effectiveness of the managerial structure may be observed as outputs of the intention and values of an inter-organisational network. Our review demonstrates that a global inter-organisational network approach is achievable. Such a network would have many benefits, including allowing organisations to be responsive and flexible towards change and innovation. Keywords RRI, SDGs, network theory, inter-organisational networks, governance, trust

In the last years, international programs in diverse sectors and national frameworks have been driven by the need of a sustainable growth, in a green economy perspective. In order to reduce the energy losses/dissipations, as well as the fossil fuels employment and related pollutant emissions, indeed, the spread of combined heat and power units and/or renewable sources generators is promoted into both the electrical grids and the thermal networks but are often in conflict with the economic aspects. In this context, the optimal management of complex energy networks – including, in particular, smart district heating – may lead to the achievement of important goals from the environmental and sustainability viewpoints. The aim of this paper is to develop a preliminary methodology for the complete evaluation of complex energy networks, considering energy, economic and environmental aspects. With this purpose, a case study consisting in a network for the fulfillment of electrical and thermal needs of the connected users will be analyzed, considering different scenarios in terms of energy generation mix and operation and applying different optimization software. In addition, the carried out evaluations will allow to set the basis for the discussion about the future of energy policies and possible incentives towards the sustainable development of the energy sector.

The complex and globally influential mosaic of institutional frameworks, organizations, events, declarations, professional societies, organizations, and networks that focus on water-resources governance collectively known as “global water initiatives” (GWIs) remains starkly understudied. We address this knowledge gap by means of a robust examination of key actors and institutions involved in global water governance and thereby affirm the dynamic and organic nature of the GWI landscape. Our investigation of the changing landscape of GWIs taps historical and current data and employs both text analysis and bibliometric review. We find that: (1) GWIs have diversified, expanded their constituencies, and gradually extended their influence over how water is perceived, governed, and managed; (2) the institutional landscape within which GWIs exist and operate is continuously shifting to accommodate and lubricate the spread of new ideas, ways of thinking, and available science and tools; (3) networks, megaconferences and their declarations, and water-themed journals likely will continue to be at the leading edge of global water governance and policy; and (4) the advent of the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals has enhanced the relevance of UN-Water, the network of water-related United Nations (UN) agencies. Our findings indicate that as the number of GWIs grows, such proliferation has not necessarily led to duplication, but more likely to diversity and interconnectedness. On balance, GWI activity tends to increase awareness-raising, information-sharing, network-building, agenda-setting, and on-the-ground action. GWI behavior both mirrors and influences prevailing worldviews on water governance and management and taken together, GWI efforts continue to shape international water discourse.

The implementation of railway infrastructure construction projects including sustainable development goals is a complex process characterized by a significant extension of individual investment stages. The need for additional works has a big impact on construction railway projects, representing a risk which is the result of many different factors. During the execution of works, both the design assumptions and the conditions of the project’s implementation can be changed. An attempt to eliminate potential risks is a key element of construction projects. The article proposes a proprietary management method for the risk of additional works in railway projects. A methodology for creating risk management strategies using a standard algorithm that includes risk identification, risk analysis, and risk assessment is presented. The original elements of the work include risk identification followed by analysis using Bayesian networks. Using the example of a scenario of events, it is shown that a well-programmed network can be used to implement risk mitigation methods. Using the network, it is possible to compare different ways to reduce risk, check the effect of reducing the risk factors, and determine a satisfactory level of effects, e.g., increased financial resources as a result of additional works.

The current debate aims to reconceptualize the changing role and missions of the university in today’s knowledge economy and investigate how universities’ knowledge resources can benefit urban development and inform the direction of changes in universities. However, there is a lack of empirical studies exploring how governance networks and the institutional conditions of universities in specific contexts can support, limit and/or incentivize the integration of academic activities into societal development. There is a discussion of the various and paradoxical components of university transformation (institutional and physical), affecting their societal contribution, which conceptualizes a holistic and integrated approach towards governance that previously has not been fully investigated. This paper will examine the co-location case of university campuses in Trondheim to explore the implications of a multilevel governance network for achieving the goals of sustainable and knowledge-based urban development. This paper suggests that engineering effective governance is challenging and that factors related to the culture of the institution and their connecting strategies, government priorities, and temporal factors have a great influence on universities’ contribution to their societies. While investigating governance in this topic requires political, cultural, and periodic review, focusing on the interactions of governance multi-layers, this paper concludes that governments’ control functions or some moderate hierarchical coordination is necessary to avoid the failure of university governance and unbalanced societal contributions.

Transport networks play a critical role for living communities, as they facilitate the exchange of people and goods and foster economic growth. Improving their resilience against seismic hazards, among which liquefaction is by far one of the most significant and complex, is consistent with most of the Sustainable Development Goals pinpointed by the United Nations’ Agenda. In this paper, an original methodological framework, combining innovative Geo-statistical approaches to analyze soil properties, prediction models for soil liquefaction, and calibrated transport demand models providing the social and economic cost associated with seismic-induced road damages and closures within a renewed Geographical Information Systems (GIS) workspace, is proposed. In particular, based on traditional risk assessment evaluation, an innovative approach to evaluate the exposure in terms of economic loss due to lack of accessibility is presented. The methodology is applied to a district area in northern Italy that underwent a recent seismic event that caused several soil liquefaction phenomena. Results provided by a sensitivity analysis on a stochastic (return period) basis are derived: as the seismic intensity increases, the total social costs increase, but the trend of the rates due to traffic delays and the loss of accessibility are irregular. Although further simulation scenarios need to be undertaken, the proposed methodology seems to provide an effective planning tool to evaluate preventive strategies aimed at improving the resilience of transport networks against liquefaction risk.

Aim. The ratification of the Paris Agreement by Ukraine envisages an increase in the ability to adapt to the negative effects of climate change, as well as promoting low carbon development so as not to endanger food production. At the same time, water resources, on the one hand, are one of the most vulnerable to climate change components of the environment from the state of which the food security of the country depends directly, and on the other hand, the activity of the water management complex causes the emergence of both direct and indirect carbon footprint. Therefore, an indispensable prerequisite for sustainable low carbon development is the assessment of the carbon footprint of the main sectors of Ukraine's water management complex and the identification of priority measures for their decarbonisation and adaptation to expected climate change. Methods. The methodological basis for the assessment of the carbon footprint of the main sectors of the water management complex was the life cycle method (LCA), by which, based on the open data of the National Inventory of Anthropogenic Emissions from Sources and Absorption by Greenhouse Gas Absorbers in Ukraine and the statistical analysis of the results of previous studies. By means of systematic analysis of the main factors of greenhouse gas emission in the water management complex of Ukraine, the priority directions of its decarbonisation and adaptation to climate change were determined. Results. The estimated carbon footprint of Ukraine's water complex in 2017 was estimated to be 5.15 million tons of CO2-equiv, which was 1.6% of the total greenhouse gas emissions in Ukraine in 2017, and taking into account the potential carbon footprint enduse processes can be increased by up to 3%. Due to the deterioration of the water supply networks, an average of 35% of the supplied water is lost in Ukraine. Reducing network leakage by at least 10% will reduce carbon footprint by 30,000 tons of CO2-equiv annually. The priority areas for decarbonisation of the water management complex should be modernization of water supply and water treatment infrastructure, improvement of energy efficiency of pumping equipment and introduction of drip irrigation, and its adaptation to climate change – development of the network of green infrastructure. Conclusions. The low-carbon development of the water management system should include the introduction and coordination of such measures, which, on the one hand, minimize the adverse effects of climate change on water resources and contribute to reducing the carbon footprint of water management activities, and on the other hand, guarantee the achievement of sustainable development goals, in particular for ensuring water and society proper sanitary conditions.

PurposeThe study aims to demonstrate that farmers' markets can represent a model of environmental, social and governance reference for modern agri-food systems facing the challenge of post COVID-19 pandemic reconstruction, responding to consumer expectations in terms of health, safety and wholesomeness of agri-food products.Design/methodology/approachA sample of consumers was surveyed in farmers' markets and social network analysis (SNA) was adopted as a methodological approach to reconstruct the links between the worlds of production and consumption and to derive the relative importance attributed to various factors that promote relational structures.FindingsThe work demonstrates the importance of sustainability – as a productive and behavioural model of firms – for the construction of efficient and durable relationship systems in two farmer markets in Sicily. In particular, four fundamental components emerge in the construction of networks represented by consumer sensitivity to sustainability processes, the individual behavioural model of purchasing and consumption, the expectation of political direction and the level and factors of knowledge of the firm. The clustering elements of the relationships were found to be the territory and local products, the environmentalist attitude and the protection of resources, as well as the adoption of a rational waste disposal policy, the fight against food waste, the encouragement of healthier and more sustainable consumption styles, clear and transparent communication and the activation of sustainable supply chain processes in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).Originality/valueThe paper aims to demonstrate how alternative food systems can become a useful model for large enterprises, which are committed to rebuilding their business strategy to overcome the current crisis.

In 2016, the Dutch government, in pursuit of the UN’s sustainable development goals, set a target that all its diesel transit bus networks should be fully electrified between 2025 and 2030. A research team from Rotterdam School of Management has since worked in close collaboration with Rotterdamse Elektrische Tram, the public transport operator in the city of Rotterdam, to accomplish this complex transition. This paper presents essential lessons learned and key practical implications derived from the project. As part of the transition process, we developed a discrete-event simulation model that can simulate the network using different settings and under uncertainty. We also formulated a mixed-integer linear programming problem to optimize the charging schedule. To mitigate the critical impact of uncertainty regarding traffic delays and energy consumption on the electrified transit bus network operation, we developed a real-time decision support system that adjusts and reoptimizes the charging schedule during the day according to the realizations of this uncertainty. We use this system to achieve better coordination between the charging schedule of the electric buses and electricity generation from renewable energy sources with the latter involving high levels of uncertainty. Our study shows the benefits of real-time optimization compared with off-line planning and other greedy strategies. We also show that even highly conservative off-line planning might not be sufficient to maintain reliability levels under extreme operational uncertainty conditions. Additionally, our results and insights have substantially contributed to the success of the first phase of the project, which involved electrifying seven essential bus lines in the city, in realizing a robust and reliable operational plan. Finally, our study shows the potential substantial positive impact of installing renewable energy generators and coordinating the electric buses’ charging schedule with their output power profile. Based on our recommendations, RET developed a real-time monitoring system and is working on incorporating our charging schedule optimizer into its planning process.

Health reform has been a constant feature of most health systems for a number of decades and has often focused on structural change. The lexicon of health reform and health management has also become intertwined with managers reporting that reform has become a constant and that rather than influencing that change they are in fact influenced by it and by its impact on their role, professional development and career. There is a challenge for health service managers to return to a leadership role in enabling health reform. In doing so will this challenge us to think differently about management? This article addresses the significant body of research into health reform and health management through the lens of language used in reporting the context and the significant impact that it has had on the management role. It describes what directions that role might take, the qualities required in selecting capable managers and questions the current status quo in the education, training and development of this significant sector of the health system workforce. It concludes by proposing a way forward that acknowledges that contemporary health reform is shifting the paradigm of healthcare delivery in a way that requires the dominant view of health management to be challenged. This might be achieved by the use of a critical lens on the language of management, a focus on a grounded approach about what managers need to do and an acceptance of variability in that role in adaptive complex contexts. Abbreviations: DNOP – Distributed Networks of Practice; MDG – Millennium Development Goals; PHC – Primary Healthcare; PHN – Primary Health Network; SDG – Sustainable Development Goals; SEDOH – Social Economic Determinants of Health; SHAPE – Society for Health Administration Programs in Education.

The road network is one of the most important branches of the economy, which performs the function of a kind of circulatory system in the complex organism of the country. It not only helps to meet the needs of the economy and the population in transportation, but together with the cities forms a "framework" of the territory, has a significant impact on the dynamism and efficiency of socio-economic development of individual regions and the country as a whole. World experience shows that without a developed transport, automotive network can not create an efficient market economy. Ensuring the development of the road network and improvement their transport and operational condition is a necessary condition for further socio-economic development of the state and society. Unsatisfactory condition of the road network has a negative impact on the social and economic situation of the country, international image and key indicators such as gross domestic product, development of productive forces, state budget revenues, employment, performance of road and other modes of transport and more. The level of financing the road networks for the last 10 years makes 14-34 percent of the minimum necessary need for repair and maintenance of a network of highways defined by scientists. Due to insufficient funding, the pace of implementation of new technologies, machines, mechanisms, modern materials and structures is slow and does not meet current needs. The process of business investment in the road industry in Ukraine in modern conditions is risky due to imperfect legislation, low development of technology, which can be eliminated through the introduction of concession approaches in the development of the industry. The impact of public-private partnership on social risks is considered and ways to minimize them are suggested. Solving the problems of financial support for the repair, reconstruction and maintenance of roads requires the integration of State efforts, regional and local authorities, research and practice of their application, legal framework, as well as financial and material resources in international and Euroregional cooperation . It should be noted that the most problematic in terms of effective provision of transportation by state roads are sections of roads on international transport corridors. On the one hand, the financial and economic capabilities of the state and the region are still insufficient for their reconstruction, and on the other - the postponement of these problems has a negative impact on the national economy and contradicts international trends, prospects for the transport network. The object of the article is the process of applying the concession to improve the financing of costs for repair, reconstruction and maintenance of roads in terms of social risks. The subject of the article is the socio-economic relations between the subjects of the concession and the public. The main purpose of the article is to substantiate the need for the introduction of a road concession, taking into account developed recommendations for social risk management. In accordance with the purpose of the article, the authors set the following goals: - definition and analysis of the conditions of public-private partnership in Ukraine; - identification of the causes and consequences of the development of social risks in terms of road concessions based on the analysis of international experience in the application of tolls on highways; - substantiation of the main directions of social risk management in the conditions of the road concession and formation of the corresponding conclusions. The result of research is the authors' proposed ways to minimize social risks in terms of road concessions.

Important initiatives, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) Aichi targets, the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (and its Sustainable Development Goals) highlight the urgent need to stop the continuous and increasing loss of biodiversity. That requires an increase in the knowledge that will allow for sustainable use of natural resources. To accomplish that, detailed studies are needed to evaluate multiple species and regions. These studies demand great effort from professionals, searching for species and/or observing their behavior. In this case, the use of new monitoring devices could be beneficial in data collection and identification, optimizing the specialist effort to detect and observe species in-situ. With the advance of technology platforms for developing connected devices and sensors, associated with the evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) concepts, and the advances of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and Wireless sensor networks (WSN), new scenarios in biodiversity studies are possible. The technology available now could allow studies applying relatively cheaper sensors with long-range (approx. 15 km), low power, low bit rate communication and up to 10-year battery life, using a Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) and with capacity to run bio-acoustic or image processing detection. Platforms like Raspberry Pi or any other with signal processing capabilities can be applied (Hodgkinson and Young 2016). Sensor technologies protocols applied in IoT networks are usually simple and flexible. Common semantics and metadata definitions are necessary to extract information and representations to construct complex networks. Some of these metadata definitions can be adopted from the current Darwin Core schema. However, Darwin Core evolved based on enterprise technologies (i.e. XML) and relational database definitions, that usually need machines with significant bandwidth to transmit data. Today the technology scenario is taking another route, going from centralized to distributed architectures, occasionally applying non-relational and distributed databases, ready to deal with synchronization and eventual consistency problems. These distributed databases are usually employed to construct complex networks, where relation restrictions are not mandatory or, sometimes, even desired (Baggio et al. 2016). With these new techniques becoming a reality in biodiversity conservation studies, new metadata definitions are necessary. Those new metadata need to standardize and create a shared vocabulary that includes requirements for devices information exchange, data analytics, and model generation. Also, these new definitions could aggregate the Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) concepts, that aim to identify the minimum of variables that can be used to inform scientists, managers and decision makers (Haase et al. 2018). For this reason, we propose the insertion of EBV definitions in the construction of sensor integration metadata and models characterization inside the Darwin Core metadata definitions (Fig. 1).

The article analyzes the features of the modern stage of the development of smart cities in the world and in Ukraine, and highlights the key prerequisites. It has been established that the formation of smart cities takes place in the conditions of global intellectualization, which is reflected in the key indexes and ratings of smart city evaluation in the world. It was determined that the weight of intellectualization factors in individual indices can reach 40% in the overall assessment. In general, within the framework of the study, the Ukrainian case of the formation of smart cities was characterized and the key forms of implementation of the smartization process of city management were analyzed. The key features of the formation of a smart management system in the cities of Kyiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Odesa, Lviv, and Dnipro have been determined. It has been determined that at the initial stage, capital investment in the development of smart cities is key to the formation of an integrated system of smart management, which combines the need to create prerequisites for high-quality well-being, increase the competitiveness of cities and ensure sustainability. In general, the key goal of the development of smart cities involves optimizing the function of megacities, increasing the level of comfort for living in all constituent elements, including government, society, economy, ecology, lifestyle and mobility opportunities. Today’s urban environment is filled with advanced multimodal transportation systems, self-sustaining and self-managing energy networks, comprehensive services, amenities, and access to services. However, complex problems complicate the implementation of the concept of smart cities, which includes infrastructure support, the growth of the urban population and the need to implement the global goals of sustainable development. The construction of a smart city system is possible only under the condition of unification and joint work of authorities, businesses and public organizations, which is caused by the need to combine all management systems into a single network.

With air quality being one target in the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations, accurate monitoring also of indoor air quality is more important than ever. Chemiresistive gas sensors are an inexpensive and promising solution for the monitoring of volatile organic compounds, which are of high concern indoors. To fully exploit the potential of these sensors, advanced operating modes, calibration, and data evaluation methods are required. This contribution outlines a systematic approach based on dynamic operation (temperature-cycled operation), randomized calibration (Latin hypercube sampling), and the use of advances in deep neural networks originally developed for natural language processing and computer vision, applying this approach to volatile organic compound measurements for indoor air quality monitoring. This paper discusses the pros and cons of deep neural networks for volatile organic compound monitoring in a laboratory environment by comparing the quantification accuracy of state-of-the-art data evaluation methods with a 10-layer deep convolutional neural network (TCOCNN). The overall performance of both methods was compared for complex gas mixtures with several volatile organic compounds, as well as interfering gases and changing ambient humidity in a comprehensive lab evaluation. Furthermore, both were tested under realistic conditions in the field with additional release tests of volatile organic compounds. The results obtained during field testing were compared with analytical measurements, namely the gold standard gas chromatography mass spectrometry analysis based on Tenax sampling, as well as two mobile systems, a gas chromatograph with photo-ionization detection for volatile organic compound monitoring and a gas chromatograph with a reducing compound photometer for the monitoring of hydrogen. The results showed that the TCOCNN outperforms state-of-the-art data evaluation methods, for example for critical pollutants such as formaldehyde, achieving an uncertainty of around 11 ppb even in complex mixtures, and offers a more robust volatile organic compound quantification in a laboratory environment, as well as in real ambient air for most targets.

Sustainable production besides economic, energetic, and environmental aspects should consider social and cultural features of the territory in which it relies. This occurs above all for agriculture that is intrinsically related to the territory. Today, the territory as a landscape represents a complex eco-system (subjects, communities, traditions, cultures, and specific agricultural systems) and a valuable vehicle for art and history and it is also a strategic asset to defend and promote with environmental policies. The topic of urban preservation and regeneration has been increasing by opening up to other factors such as the engagement of local communities and the contribution they can give toward the development of the identity and the symbolic universe of every community especially for historic territories. The main research question of this study is: Can historic territories be described as the landscape of a complex eco-system able to support a new cultural policy? In addition, which type of connections between physical resources and the virtual-cultural ones of that landscape are strategic assets for promoting historic territories? This theoretical manuscript is oriented toward improving territorial policies. In more details, it tries to develop a new model to reach a “global community of creativity” as a bridge between the networks of historic territories, which is meant as roots of variety to transfer to future generations, and between local and global quality in an emergent landscape. In order to reach this new model, the local community and ecosystem capabilities require a multi-level connection among both art, science, and culture as well as nature, technology, and civic capability. The result is that the new model is able to share common goods, which are both internal and external. Following this path, it is urgent to develop policies in an emergent perspective that are able to combine artistic, ecological, environmental, and cultural assets. In particular, the goals are to: (i) explore the complex value of territorial contexts that develop/evolve from both a medium-term and long-term point of view that is not described by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) standard indicators, (ii) reach the suggestion of a continuous re-articulation of sectors of knowledge proposed by cultural resources, and (iii) highlight that cultural marketing is involved in the interpretation and transmission within a large network of participants, users, institutions, markets, virtual, and territorial places. The starting point is identified as the landscape of historic territory, but an important achievement will be to transfer the main results to other territories by studying specific case histories of urban and non-urban landscapes.

The penetration of ICT in the management and study of material culture and the emergence of digital cultural repositories and linked cultural data in particular are expected to enable new paths in humanities research and new approaches to cultural heritage. Success is contingent upon securing information trustworthiness, long-term preservation, and the ability to re-use, re-combine and re-interpret digital content. In this perspective, we review the use in the cultural heritage domain of digital curation and curation-aware repository systems; achieving semantic interoperability through ontologies; explicitly addressing contextual issues of cultural heritage and humanities information; and the services of digital research infrastructures. The last two decades have witnessed an increasing penetration of ICT in the management and study of material culture, as well as in the Humanities at large. From collections management, to object documentation and domain modelling, to supporting the creative synthesis and re-interpretation of data, significant progress has been achieved in the development of relevant knowledge structures and software tools. As a consequence of this progress, digital repositories are being created that aim at serving as digital cultural memories, while a process of convergence among the different kinds of memory institutions, i.e., museums, archives, and libraries, in what concerns their information functions is already evolving. Yet the advantages offered by information management technology, mass storage, copying, and the ease of searching and quantitative analysis, are not enough to ensure the usefulness of those digital cultural memories unless information trustworthiness, long-term preservation, and the ability to re-use, re-combine and re-interpret digital content are ensured. Furthermore, the widely encountered need for integrating heterogeneous information becomes all the more pressing in the case of cultural heritage due to the specific traits of information in this domain. In view of the above fundamental requirements, in this presentation we briefly review the leveraging power of certain practices and approaches in realizing the potential of digital cultural memories. In particular, we review the use of digital curation and curation-aware repository systems; achieving semantic interoperability through ontologies; explicitly addressing contextual issues of cultural heritage and humanities information; and the services of digital research infrastructures. Digital curation is an interdisciplinary field of enquiry and practice, which brings together disciplinary traditions and practices from computer science, information science, and disciplines practicing collections-based or data-intensive research, such as history of art, archaeology, biology, space and earth sciences, and application areas 38 such as e-science repositories, organizational records management, and memory institutions (Constantopoulos and Dallas 2008). Digital curation aims at ensuring adequate representation of and long-term access to digital information as its context of use changes, and at mitigating the risk of repositories becoming “data mortuaries”. To this end a lifecycle approach to the representation of curated information objects is adopted; event-centric representations are used to capture information “life events”; the class of agents involved is extended to include knowledge producers and communicators in addition to information custodians; and context-specificity is explicitly addressed. Cultural heritage information comprises representations of actual cultural objects (texts, artefacts, historical records, etc.), their histories, agents (persons and organizations) operating on such objects, and their relationships. It also includes interpretations of and opinions about such objects. The recording of this knowledge is characterized by disciplinary diversity, representational complexity and heterogeneity, historical orientation, and textual bias. These characteristics of information are in line with the character of humanities research: hermeneutic and intertextual, rather than experimental; narrative, rather than formal; idiographic rather than nomothetic; and, conformant to a realist rather than positivist account of episteme (Dallas 1999). The primary use of this information has been to support knowledge-based access, while now it is gradually also being targeted at various synthetic and creative uses. A rich semantic structure, including subsumption, meronymic, temporal, spatial, and various other semantic relations, is inherent to cultural information. Complexity is compounded by terminological inconsistency, subjectivity, multiplicity of interpretation and missing information. From an information lifecycle perspective, digital curation involves a number of distinct processes: appraisal; ingesting; classification, indexing and cataloguing; knowledge enhancement; presentation, publication and dissemination; user experience; repository management; and preservation. These processes rely on three supporting processes, namely, goal and usage modelling, domain modelling and authority management. These processes effectively capture the context of digital curation and produce valuable resources which can themselves be seen as curated digital assets (Constantopoulos and Dallas 2008; Constantopoulos et al. 2009). The field of cultural information presents itself as a privileged domain for digital curation. There is a relatively long history of developing library systems and museum systems, along with recent intense activity on interoperable, semantically rich cultural information systems, boosted by two important developments: the emergence of the CIDOC CRM (ISO 21127) 1 standard ontology for cultural documentation; and the movement for convergence of museum, library and archive systems, one manifestation of which is the CIDOC CRM compatible FRBR-oo model 2 . Advances such as those outlined above allow addressing old research questions in new ways, as well as putting new questions that were very hard or impossible to tackle without the means of digital technologies. Significant enablers towards this direc- 1 http://www.cidoc-crm.org/ 2 http://www.cidoc-crm.org/frbr_inro.html 39 tion are the so-called digital research infrastructures, which bear the promise of facilitating research through sharing tools and data. Several trends can be identified in the development of research infrastructures, which follow two main approaches: a) The normative approach, whereby normalized collections of data and tools are developed as common resources and managed centrally by the infrastructure. b) The regulative approach, whereby resources reside with individual organizations willing to contribute them, under specific terms, to the community. A set of interoperability conditions and mechanisms provide a regulatory function that lies at the heart of the infrastructure. Both approaches are being pursued in all disciplines, but the mix differs: in hard sciences building common normalized infrastructures appears to be a necessity, with a complementary, yet significant role to be played by a network of interoperable, disparate sources. In the humanities, on the other hand, long scholarly traditions have produced a formidable variety of information collections and formats, mostly offering interpreted, rather than raw material for publication and sharing. These conditions favour the development of regulated networks of interoperable sources, with centralized, normative infrastructures in a complementary capacity. By way of example, a recent such infrastructure is DARIAH- GR / ΔΥΑΣ 3 , one of the national constituents of DARIAH-EU 4 , the Europe-wide digital infrastructure in the arts and humanities. DARIAH- GR / ΔΥΑΣ is a hybrid -virtual distributed infrastructure, bringing together the strengths and capacities of leading research, academic, and collection custodian institutions through a carefully defined, lightweight layer of services, tools and activities complementing, rather than attempting to replicate, prior investments and capabilities. Arts and humanities data and content resources are as a rule thematically organized, widely distributed, under the custodianship and curation of diverse institutions, including government agencies and departments, public and private museums, archives and special libraries, as well as academic and research units, associations, research projects, and other actors, and displaying a diverse degree of digitization. The mission of the infrastructure is then to provide the research communities with effective, comprehensive and sustainable capability to discover, access, integrate, analyze, process, curate and disseminate arts and humanities data and information resources, through a concerted plan of virtual services and tools, and hybrid (combined virtual and physical) activities, integrating and running on top of existing primary information systems and leveraging integration and synergies with DARIAH- EU and other related infrastructures and aggregators (e.g. ARIADNE 5 , CARARE 6 , LoCloud 7 ). In its first stage of development, the DARIAH- GR / ΔΥΑΣ Research Infrastructure has offered the following groups of services: 3 http://www.dyas-net.gr/ 4 http://www.dariah.eu/ 5 http://www.ariadne-infrastructure.eu/ 6 http://www.carare.eu/ 7 http://www.locloud.eu/ 40 • Data sharing : comprehensive registries of digital resources; • Supporting the development of digital resources : tools and best practice guidelines for the development of digital resources; • Capacity building: workshops and training activities; and • Digital Humanities Observatory : evidence-based research on digital humanities, monitoring, outreach and dissemination activities. Key factor in the development of DARIAH- GR / ΔΥΑΣ, ARIADNE, CARARE and LoCloud resources alike has been a curation-oriented aggregator, the Metadata and Object Repository - MORe 8 (Gavrilis, Angelis & Dallas 2013; Gavrilis et al. 2013). This system supports the aggregation of metadata from multiple sources (OAI-PMH, Archive, SIP, Omeka, MINT) and heterogeneous systems in a single repository, the creation of unified indexes of normalized and enriched metadata, the creation of RDF databases, and the publication of aggregated records to multiple recipients (OAI- PMH, Archive, Elastic Search, RDF Stores). It enables the dynamic definition of validation and enrichment plans, supported by a number of micro-services, as well as the measurement of metadata quality. MORe can incorporate any XML/RDF metadata schema and can support several intermediate schemas in parallel. Its architecture is based on micro-services, a software development model according to which a complex application is composed of small, independent services communicating via a language-agnostic API, thus being highly reusable. MORe currently maintains access to 30 SKOS-encoded thesauri, totaling several hundred thousands of terms, as well as to copies of the Geo-names and Perio.do services, thus offering information enrichment on the basis of a wide array of sources. Metadata enrichment is a process of automatic generation of metadata through the linking of metadata elements with data sources and/or vocabularies. The enrichment process increases the volume of metadata, but it also considerably enhances their precision, therefore their quality. Performing metadata aggregation and enrichment carries several benefits: increase of repository / site traffic, better retrieval precision, concentration of indexes in one system, better performance of user services. To date MORe is used by 110 content provider institutions, and accommodates 23 different metadata schemas and about 20,800,000 records. The advent of digital infrastructures for arts and humanities research calls for a deeper understanding of how humanists work with digital resources, tools and services as they engage with different aspects of research activity: from capturing, encoding, and publishing scholarly data to analyzing, visualizing, interpreting and communicating data and research argumentation to co-workers and readers. Digitally enabled scholarly work and the integration of digital content, tools and methods present not only commonalities but also differences across disciplines, methodological traditions, and communities of researchers. A significant challenge in providing integrated access to disparate digital humanities resources and, more broadly, in supporting digitally-enabled humanities research, lies in empirically capturing the context of use of digital content, methods and tools. 8 http://more.dcu.gr/ 41 Several attempts have been made to develop a conceptual framework for DH in practice. In 2008, the AHRC ICT Methods Network 9 developed a taxonomy of digital methods in the arts and humanities. This was the basis for the classification of over 200 digital humanities projects funded by the U.K. Arts and Humanities Research Council in the online resource arts-humanities.net, as well as for the subsequent Digital Humanities at Oxford 10 taxonomy. Other initiatives to build a taxonomy of Digital Humanities include TADIRAH 11 and DH Commons 12 . From 2011 to 2015 the Network for Digital Methods in the Arts and Humanities 13 (NeDiMAH) ran over 40 activities structured around key methodological areas in the humanities (digital representations of space and time; visualisation; linked data; creating and using large scale corpora; and creating editions). Through these activities, NeDiMAH gathered a snapshot of the practice of digital humanities in Europe, and the impact of digital methods on research. A key output of NeDiMAH is NeMO 14 : the NeDiMAH Ontology of Digital Methods in the Arts and Humanities . This ontology of digital methods in the humanities has been built as a framework for understanding not just the use of digital methods, but also their relationship to digital content and tools. The development of an ontology, rather than a taxonomy, stands in recognition of the complexity of the digital humanities landscape, the interdisciplinarity of the field, and the dependencies that impact the use of digital methods in research. NeMO provides a conceptual framework capable of representing scholarly work in the humanities, addressing aspects of intentionality and capturing the diverse associations between research actors and their goals, activities undertaken, methods employed, resources and tools used, and outputs produced, with the aim of obtaining semantically rich structured representations of scholarly work (Angelis et al 2015; Hughes, Constantopoulos & Dallas 2016). It is grounded on earlier empirical research through semi-structured interviews with scholars from across Europe, which focused on analysing their research practices and capturing the resulting information requirements for research infrastructures (Benardou, Constantopoulos & Dallas 2013). The relevance of NeMO to the DH community was validated in a series of workshops through use cases contributed by researchers. A variety of complex associative queries articulated by researchers and encoded in SPARQL, demonstrated the potential of NeMO as an effective mechanism for information extraction and reasoning with regard to the use of digital resources in scholarly work and as a knowledge base schema for documenting scholarly practices. In a recent workshop in DH2016, researchers created their own NeMO-based descriptions of projects with an easy to use tool (Constantopoulos et al 2016). 9 http://www.methodsnetwork.ac.uk/index.html 10 https://digital.humanities.ox.ac.uk/people-projects 11 http://tadirah.dariah.eu/vocab/index.php 12 http://dhcommons.org/ 13 http://nedimah.eu/ 14 http://nemo.dcu.gr/ 42 Knowledge bases documenting scholarly practice through NeMO can be useful to researchers by (a) helping them find information on earlier work relevant for their own research; (b) supporting goal-oriented organization of research work; (c) facilitating the discovery of new paths with regard to resources, tools and methods; and, (d) promoting networking among researchers with common interests. In addition research groups can get support for better project planning by explicitly exposing links between goals, actors, activities, methods, resources and tools, as well as assistance for discovering methodological trends, future directions and promising research ideas. Funding agencies, on the other hand, could benefit from the kind of systematic documentation and comparative overview of project work enabled by the ontology.

AbstractIn this work we use a network-based approach to investigate the complex system of interactions among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), that constitute the structure of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for a sustainable future. We construct a three-layer multiplex, in which SDGs represent nodes, and their connections in each layer are determined by similarity definitions based on conceptualization, communication, and achievement, respectively. In each layer of the multiplex, we investigate the presence of nodes with high centrality, corresponding to strategic SDGs. We then compare the networks to establish whether and to which extent similar patterns emerge. Interestingly, we observe a significant relation between the SDG similarity patterns determined by their achievement and their communication and perception, revealed by social network data. The proposed framework represents an instrument to unveil new and nontrivial aspects of sustainability, laying the foundation of a decision support system to define and implement SDG achievement strategies.

AbstractAgriculture is under pressure to achieve sustainable development goals for biodiversity and ecosystem services. Services in agro-ecosystems are typically driven by key species, and changes in the community composition and species abundance can have multifaceted effects. Assessment of individual services overlooks co-variance between different, but related, services coupled by a common group of species. This partial view ignores how effects propagate through an ecosystem. We conduct an analysis of 374 agricultural multilayer networks of two related services of weed seed regulation and gastropod mollusc predation delivered by carabid beetles. We found that weed seed regulation increased with the herbivore predation interaction frequency, computed from the network of trophic links between carabids and weed seeds in the herbivore layer. Weed seed regulation and herbivore interaction frequencies declined as the interaction frequencies between carabids and molluscs in the carnivore layer increased. This suggests that carabids can switch to gastropod predation with community change, and that link turnover rewires the herbivore and carnivore network layers affecting seed regulation. Our study reveals that ecosystem services are governed by ecological plasticity in structurally complex, multi-layer networks. Sustainable management therefore needs to go beyond the autecological approaches to ecosystem services that predominate, particularly in agriculture.

A characteristic feature of the modern market is its transformation from the market of the producer to the market of the consumer who by means of modern information technologies gets an opportunity to choose a way of satisfaction of the inquiries, choosing various kinds of production, technologies, brands. The main mesoeconomic chain of such an economy today is a network that is recognized worldwide as an effective means of forming national competitive advantages, increasing production efficiency through vertical and horizontal integration of individual industries and enterprises. Network structures are best known for the concept of economic relations based on institutional and territorial combination. There is now an urgent need for a more accurate conceptualization of what networks are and the phenomena associated with them, which will allow for relevant research on network systems, particularly in trade. Financial resources are a system-forming factor in the functioning and development of the enterprise, form its resource and economic potential, ensure the continuity of production and sales, is a source of funding for socio-economic development and growth of market value of the enterprise. Macroeconomic stability and economic growth in the country on the basis of expanded reproduction, satisfaction of social and other needs of society depend on their effective and rational formation and use at the micro level. Management of financial resources in retail chains is a complex system that synthesizes the processes of making and implementing management decisions aimed at optimal formation, rational placement, efficient use, expanded reproduction and increase of financial potential of the enterprise to achieve its strategic, tactical and operational goals. Its sustainable operation and further development taking into account the influence of changing environmental factors.

AbstractThe Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) present a complex system of 17 goals and 169 individual targets whose interactions can be described in terms of co-benefits and trade-offs between policy actions. We analyse in detail target-by-target interlinkage networks established by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) SDG Interlinkages Tool. We discuss two quantitative measures of network structure; the leading eigenvector of the interlinkage networks (‘eigencentrality’) and a notion of hierarchy within the network motivated by the concept of trophic levels for species in food webs. We use three interlinkage matrices generated by IGES: the framework matrix which provides a generic network model of the interlinkages at the target level, and two country-specific matrices for Bangladesh and Indonesia that combine SDG indicator data with the generic framework matrix. Our results echo, and are confirmed by, similar work at the level of whole SDGs that has shown that SDGs 1–3 (ending poverty, and providing food security and healthcare) are much more likely to be achieved than the environmentally- related SDGs 13–15 concerned with climate action, life on land and life below water. Our results here provide a refinement in terms of specific targets within each of these SDGs. We find that not all targets within SDGs 1–3 are equally well-supported, and not all targets within SDGs 13–15 are equally at risk of not being achieved. Finally, we point to the recurring issue of data gaps that hinders our quantitative analysis, in particular for SDGs 5 (gender equality) and 13 (climate action) where the huge gaps in indicator data that mean the true nature of the interlinkages and importance of these two SDGs are not fully recognised.

Air pollution, climate change, and chemical exposure constitute the world's most significant environmental health concern, resulting in the early deaths of 6. 5 million people annually. Reducing child mortality from preventable causes, primarily pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses, would have contributed to the united nation's sustainable development goals (SDG). Some significant goals are sustainable cities, industry innovation, green and resilient infrastructure, good health, and well-being. Non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia (NV-HAP) is a severe but preventable cause of morbidity and mortality in hospitalized patients. Despite being the most frequent and fatal hospital-acquired infection (HAI), NV-HAP is not tracked, documented, or avoided in most hospitals. The success of NV-HAP prevention and monitoring initiatives relies on reliable, up-to-date surveillance data. Surveillance offers the information needed to target, analyze, and quantify the efficacy of preventative activities by identifying patients at the highest risk for NV-HAP. However, pneumonia monitoring is complex due to the clinical criteria's subjective, imprecise, inconsistently recorded, and labor-intensive nature. Non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia must be monitored and standardized, which demands cutting-edge technologies and the deployment of advanced sensors. In the framework of this research, initially, a wireless body area networks (WBANs) architecture has built by making use of wearable biosensors, and then real-time sensor data were uploaded to a cloud platform. Researchers have devised a wireless sensor network (WSN) to track volatile organic compounds (VOC) and other atmospheric characteristics in real time to curb the spread of NV-HAP. The ESP32 Internet of Things (IoT) and Raspberry Pi 4B graphical processing unit platforms host the finalized WBAN and WSN network. To reduce the mortality rate of NV-HAP, this research aims to investigate clinics' and hospitals' indoor and outdoor air quality. The developed biosensor-assisted IoT enabled framework is used in hospitals to keep tabs on the conditions of individual patient rooms, treatment areas, and critical care units in real time. The research found the suggested technique achieves better results than existing state-of-the-art methods regarding computing cost, communication overhead, storage cost, and energy utilization.

Abstract Data driven analysis is proven to create a competitive advantage to business. Governments and nonprofit organizations also turn to Big Data to harness its benefits and use it for social good. Among different types of data sources, location data collected from mobile networks is especially valuable for its representativeness, real-time observation, and versatility. There is a distinction between mobile positioning data (MPD) generated by the exchanges between mobile devices and the core network; versus over-the-top or system-level location data collecting individual GPS location. MPD is composed of all mobile network events regardless of the mobile phone brand, operating system, app usage, frequency bands or mobile generation; it is uniform and ubiquitous. Getting the best out of MPD relies on the knowledge of how to create an advanced algorithm for homogeneously processing this massive, complex data into insightful indicators. Anonymized and aggregated MPD enables the testing of multiple combinations with other data sources, fully abiding by GDPR, to arrive at innovative solutions. These unique insights can help tackle societal challenges (the state of mobile data for social good June 2017 GSMA, UN Global pulse). It can help to establish accurate statistics about population movements, density, location, social patterns, finances, and ambient environmental conditions. This article demonstrates how MPD has been used to help combat Covid-19 in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Furthermore, depending on the future direction, MPD and data analysis can serve powering economic development as well as working toward the Sustainable Development Goals, whilst respecting data privacy.

Introduction This article explores the phenomenon of the Creative City in the context of Aberdeen, Scotland’s third-largest city. The common perception of Aberdeen is likely to revolve around its status, for the last 50 years, as Europe’s Oil & Gas Capital. However, for more than a decade Aberdeen’s city planners have sought to incorporate creativity and culture in their placemaking. The most visible expression of this was the unsuccessful 2013 bid to become the UK City of Culture 2017 (CoC), which was referred to as a “reality check” by Marie Boulton (BBC), the councillor charged with the culture portfolio. This article reviews and appraises subsequent policies and actions. It looks at Aberdeen’s history and its current Cultural Strategy and how events have supported or inhibited the reimagining of Aberdeen as a Creative and Cultural City. Landry’s “Lineages of the Creative City” tracks the rise in interest around culture and creative sectors and highlights that there is more to the creative city than economic growth, positing that a creative city is a holistic environment in which “ordinary people can make the extra-ordinary happen” (2). Comunian develops Landry’s concept of hard (infrastructural) assets and soft (people and activity) assets by introducing Complexity Theory to examine the interactions between the two. Comunian argues that a city should be understood as a complex adaptive system (CAS) and that the interconnectivity of consumption and production, micro and macro, and networks of actors must be incorporated into policy thinking. Creating physical assets without regard to what happens in and around them does not build a creative city. Aberdeen: Context and History Important when considering Aberdeen is its remoteness: 66 miles north of its closest city neighbour Dundee, 90 miles north of Edinburgh and 125 miles north-east of Glasgow. For Aberdonians travel is a necessity to connect with other cultural centres whether in Scotland, the UK, Europe, or further afield, making Aberdeen’s nearly 900-year-old port a key asset. Sitting at the mouth of the River Dee, which marks Aberdeen’s southern boundary, this key transport hub has long been central to Aberdeen’s culture giving rise to two of the oldest established businesses in the UK: the Port of Aberdeen (1136) and the Shore Porter’s Society (1498). Fishing and trade with Europe thrived and connections with the continent led to the establishment of Aberdeen’s first university: King’s College (Scotland’s third and the UK’s fifth) in 1495. A second, Marischal College, was established in 1593, joining forces with King’s in 1860 to become the University of Aberdeen. The building created in 1837 to house Marischal College is the second-largest granite building in the world (VisitAberdeenshire, Marischal) and now home to Aberdeen City Council (ACC). Robert Gordon University (RGU), awarded university status in 1992, grew out of an institution established in 1729 (RGU, Our History); this period marked the dawning of the Scottish Enlightenment when Aberdeen’s Wise Club were key to an intellectual discourse that changed western thinking (RSA). Gray’s School of Art, now part of RGU, was established in 1885, at the same time as Aberdeen Art Gallery which holds a collection of national significance (ACC, Art Gallery). Aberdeen’s northern boundary is marked by its second river, the River Don, which has also contributed to the city’s history, economics, and culture. For centuries, paper and woollen mills, including the world-famous Crombie, thrived on its banks and textile production was the city’s largest employer, with one mill employing 3,000 staff (P&J, Broadford). While the city and surrounds have been home to notable creatives, including writers Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Lord Byron; musicians Annie Lennox, Dame Evelyn Glennie, and Emeli Sandé; fashion designer Bill Gibb and dancer Michael Clark, it has struggled to attract and retain creative talent, and there is a familiar exodus of art school graduates to the larger and more accepted creative cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London. In 2013, at the time of the CoC bid, ACC recognised that creative industries graduates leaving the city was “a serious issue” (ACC, Cultural Mapping 1). The City of Culture Bid This recognition came at a time when ACC acknowledged that Aberdeen, with already low unemployment, required an influx of workforce. An ACC document (Cultural Mapping) cites Richard Florida’s proposal that a strong cultural offer attracts skilled workers to a city, adding that they “look for a lively cultural life in their choice of location” (7) and quoting an oil executive: “our poor city centre is often cited as a major obstacle in attracting people” (7). Changing the image of the city to attract new residents appears to have been a key motivation for the CoC bid. The CoC assessor noted this in their review of the bid, citing a report that 120,000 recruits were required in the city and agreeing that Aberdeen needed to “change perceptions of the city to retain and attract talent” (Regeneris 1). Aberdeen’s CoC bid was rejected at the first shortlisting stage, with feedback that the artistic vision “lacked depth” and “that cultural activity in the city was weaker than in several other bidding areas” (Regeneris 3). In an exploration of the bidding process, McGillivray and Turner highlight two factors which link to other concerns and feedback about the bid. Firstly, they compare Aberdeen’s choice of a Bid Manager from the business community with Paisley’s choice of one from their local arts sector in their bid for CoC 2021, which was successful in being shortlisted, highlighting different motivators behind the bids. Secondly, Aberdeen secured a bid team member from “Pafos’s bid to be 2017 European Capital of Culture (ECC), who subsequently played an important role” for Kalamata’s 2021 ECC bid (41), showing Aberdeen’s reluctance to develop local talent. A Decade of Investment ACC responded to the “reality check” with a series of investments in the hard assets of the city. Major refurbishment of two key buildings, the Music Hall and the Art Gallery, caused them both to be closed for several years, significantly diminishing the cultural offer in the city. The Music Hall re-opened in 2018 (Creative Scotland) and the Art Gallery in 2019 (McLean). In 2021, the extended and updated Art Gallery was named “Scotland’s building of the year” by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS) (Museums Association). Concurrent with this was the development of “Europe’s largest new events complex, TECA [now P&J live] part financed through a £370 million stock market bond issue” (InvestAberdeen). Another cultural asset of the city which has been undergoing a facelift since 2019 is Union Terrace Gardens (UTG), the green heart of the city centre, gifted to the public in 1877. The development of this asset has had a chequered history. In 2008 it had been awarded “funding from Aberdeen Council (£3 million), the Scottish Arts Council (£4.3M) and Scottish Enterprise (£2 million)” (Aberdeenvoice) to realise a new multi-disciplinary contemporary art centre to be called ‘Northern Light’ and housed in a purpose-designed building (Brizac Gonzalez). The project, led by Peacock Visual arts, a printmaking centre of excellence and gallery founded in 1974, had secured planning permission. It would host Peacock Visual Arts, City Moves dance company, and the ACC arts development team. It echoed similar cultural partnership approaches, such as Dundee Contemporary Arts, although notably without involvement from the universities. Three months later, a counterbid to radically re-think UTG as a vast new city square was proposed by oil tycoon Sir Ian Wood, who backed the proposal with £50 million of his own funds, requiring matching finance by the city and ownership of the Gardens passing to private hands. Resistance to these plans came from ‘Friends of UTG’, and a public consultation was held. ACC voted to adopt Wood’s plans and drop those of Peacock, but a change of administration in the local authority overturned Wood’s plans in August 2012. A significant portion of the funding granted to the Northern Lights project was consumed in the heated public debate and the remainder was lost to the city, as was the Wood money, providing a highly charged backdrop to the CoC bid and an unfortunate divide created between the business and culture sectors that is arguably still discernible in the city today. According to the Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce (AGCC) 2022 Investment Tracker, the nearly complete UTG transformation has cost £28.3m. The AGCC trackers since 2016 provide a useful reference for a wider view of investment in the region over this period. During this period, ACC commissioned two festivals: Spectra (ACC, Culture Programme 5), a festival of light curated by a Manchester-based organisation, and NuArt (VisitAberdeenshire, Nuart), a street-art festival curated by a Stavanger-based team. Both festivals deliver large-scale public spectacles but have little impact on the development of the cultural sector in the city. The drivers of footfall, income generation, and tourism are key motivators for these festivals, supporting a prevailing narrative of cultural consumption over cultural production in the city, despite Regeneris’s concerns about “importing of cultural activity, which might not leave behind a cultural sector” (1) and ACC’s own published concerns (ACC, Cultural Mapping). It is important to note that in 2014 the oil and gas industry that brought prosperity to Aberdeen was severely impacted upon by a drop in price and revenue. Many jobs were lost, people left the city, and housing prices, previously inflated, fell dramatically. The attention of the authorities turned to economic regeneration of the city and in 2015, the Aberdeen City Region Deal (UK Gov), bringing £250m to the region, (REF) was signed between the UK Government, Scottish Government, ACC, Aberdeenshire Council, and Opportunity North East (ONE). ONE “is the private sector leader and catalyst for economic diversification in northeast Scotland” with board members from industry, enterprise, AGCC, the councils, the universities, the harbour, and NHS. ONE focuses on five ‘pillars’: Digital Technology, Energy, Life Sciences, Tourism and Food, and Drink & Agriculture. A Decade of Creativity and Cultural Development Aberdeen’s ambitious cultural capital infrastructure spending of the last decade has seen the creation or refurbishment of significant hard assets in the city. The development of people (Cohendet et al.), the soft assets that Landry and Comunian agree are essential to the complex system that is a Creative City, has also seen development over this time. In 2014, RGU commissioned a review of Creative Industries in the North East of Scotland. The report notes that: the cultural sector in the region is strong at the grass roots end, but less so the higher up the scale it goes. There is no producing theatre, and no signature events or assets, although the revitalised art gallery might provide an opportunity to address this. (Ekos 2) This was followed by an international conference at which other energy cities (Calgary, Houston, Perth, and Oslo) presented their culture strategies, providing useful comparators for Aberdeen and a second RGU report (RGU, Regenerating). A third report, (RGU, New North), set out a vision for the region’s cultural future. The reports recommend strategy, leadership, and vision in the development of the cultural and creative soft assets of the region and the need to create conditions for graduate and practitioner retention. Also in 2014, RGU initiated the Look Again Festival of Art and Design, an annual festival to address a gap in the city festival roster and meet a need arising from the closure of both Art Gallery and Music Hall for refurbishment. The first festival took place in 2015 with a weekend-long public event showcasing a series of thought-provoking installations and events which demonstrated a clear appetite amongst the public and partner organisations for more activity of this type. Between 2015 and 2019, the festivals grew from strength to strength and increased in size and ambition, “carving out a new creative community in Aberdeen” (Williams). The 2019 festival involved 119 creatives, the majority from the region, and created 62 paid opportunities. Look Again expanded and became a constant presence and vehicle for sectoral and skills development, supporting students, graduates, volunteers, and new collectives, focussing on social capital and the intangible creative community assets in the city. Creative practitioners were supported with a series of programmes such as ‘Cultivate’ (2018), funded by Creative Scotland, that provided mentoring to strengthen business sustainability and networking events to improve connectivity in the sector. Cultivate also provided an opportunity to undertake further research, and a survey of over 100 small and micro creative businesses presented a view of a tenacious sector, committed to staying in the region but lacking structured and tailored support. The project report noted consistent messages about the need for “a louder voice for the sector” and concluded that further work was needed to better profile, support, and connect the sector (Cultivate 15). Comunian’s work supports this call to give greater consideration to the interplay of the agents in the creation of a strong creative city. In 2019, Look Again’s evolving role in creative sector skills development was recognised when they became part of Gray’s School of Art. A partnership quickly formed with the newly created Entrepreneurship & Innovation Group (EIG), a team formed within RGU to drive entrepreneurial thinking across all schools of the university. Together, Look Again and EIG ran a Creative Accelerator which became a prototype for a validated Creative Entrepreneurship post-graduate short-course that has supported around 120 creative graduates and practitioners with tailored business skills, contextual thinking, and extended peer networks. Meanwhile, another Look Again collaboration with the newly re-opened Art Gallery provided pop-up design events that many of these small businesses took part in, connecting them with public-facing retail opportunities and, for some, acquisitions for the Gallery’s collection. Culture Aberdeen During this time and after a period of public consultation, a new collaborative group, ‘Culture Aberdeen’, emerged. Membership of the group includes many regional cultural and arts organisations including ACC, both universities, and Aberdeen Civic Forum, which seeks “to bring the voice and views of all communities to every possible level of decision making”. The group subsequently published Culture Aberdeen: A Culture Strategy for the City of Aberdeen 2018-2028, which was endorsed by ACC in their first Cultural Investment Impact Report. The strategy sets out a series of cultural ambitions including a bid to become a UNESCO Creative City, establishing an Aberdeen Biennale, and becoming a national centre of excellence for an (unspecified) artform. This collaboration brings a uniting vision to Aberdeen’s creative activity and places of culture and presents a more compelling identity as a creative city. It also begins to map to Comunian’s concept of CAS and establish a framework for realising the potential of hard assets by strategically envisioning and leading the agents, activities, and development of the city’s creative sector. Challenges for Delivery of the Strategy In delivering a strategy based on collaborative efforts, it is essential to have shared goals and strong governance “based on characteristics such as trust, shared values, implicit standards, collaboration, and consultation” (Butcher et al. 77). Situations like Aberdeen’s tentative bid for UNESO Creative City status, which began in late 2018 but was halted in early 2019, suggest that shared goals and clear governance may not be in place. Wishing to join other UNESCO cities across Scotland – Edinburgh (Literature), Glasgow (Music), and Dundee (Design) –, Aberdeen had set its sights on ‘City of Craft and Folk Art’; that title subsequently went to the city of Perth in 2022, limiting Aberdeen’s future hopes of securing UNESCO Creative City status. In 2022, Aberdeen is nearly halfway through its strategy timeline; to achieve its vision by 2028, the leadership recommended in 2014 needs to be established and given proper authority and backing. Covid-19 has been particularly disruptive for the strategy, arriving early in its implementation and lasting for two years during which collaborators have, understandably, had to attend to core business and crisis management. Picking up the threads of collaborative activity at the same time as ‘returning to normal’ will be challenging. The financial impacts of Covid-19 have also hit arts organisations and local councils particularly hard, creating survival challenges that displace future investment plans. The devastation caused to city centres across the UK as shops close and retail moves online is keenly felt in Aberdeen. Yet the pandemic has also seen the growth of pockets of new activity. With falling demand for business space resulting in more ‘meanwhile spaces’ and lower rents, practitioners have been able to access or secure spaces that were previously prohibitive. Deemouth Artists’ Studios, an artist-run initiative, has provided a vital locus of support and connectivity for creatives in the city, doubling in size over the past two years. ‘We Are Here Scotland’ arrived in response to the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, as a Community Interest Company initiated in Aberdeen to support black creatives and creatives of colour across Scotland. Initiatives such as EP Spaces that re-purpose empty offices as studios have created a resource, albeit precarious, for scores of recent creative graduates, supporting an emerging creative community. The consequences of the pandemic for the decade of cultural investment and creative development are yet to be understood, but disrupted strategies are hard to rekindle. Culture Aberdeen’s ability to resolve or influence these factors is unclear. As a voluntary network without a cohesive role or formal status in the provision of culture in the city, and little funding and few staff to advocate on its behalf, it probably lacks the strength of leadership required. Nevertheless, work is underway to refresh the strategy in response to the post-pandemic needs of the city and culture, and the Creative Industries more broadly, are, once again, beginning to be seen as part of the solution to recovery as new narratives emerge. There is a strong desire in the city’s and region’s creative communities to nurture, realise, and retain emerging talent to authentically enrich the city’s culture. Since the 2013 failed CoC bid, much has been done to rekindle confidence and shine a light on the rich creative culture that exists in Aberdeen, and creative communities are gaining a new voice for their work. Considerable investment has been made in hard cultural assets; however, continued investment in and commitment to the region’s soft assets is needed. This is the only way to ensure the sustainable local network of activity and practice that can provide the vibrant creative city atmosphere for which Aberdeen has the potential. References Aberdeen Civic Forum. 4 June 2022 <https://civicforumaberdeen.com/about/>. Aberdeen City Region Deal. 5 June 2022 <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/city-deal-aberdeen-city-region>. Aberdeen Timelines. 24 Feb. 2022 <https://localhistories.org/a-timeline-of-aberdeen/> and <http://www.visitoruk.com/Aberdeen/13th-century-T339.html>. ACC. "Aberdeen Art Gallery." 19 Mar. 2022 <https://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/AAGM/plan-your-visit/aberdeen-art-gallery>. ———. “Aberdeen City Council Investment in Culture; 2018/19 Impacts.” 19 Mar. 2022 <https://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2019-12/Aberdeen%20City%20Culture%20Report%202019%20.pdf>. ———. “Aberdeen City Council Cultural Mapping of Aberdeen; Final Report, July 2013.” 3 June 2022 <https://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2020-10/FOI-19-1479%20-%20Cultural%20Strategy.pdf>. ———. “Culture Programme 2014 – 2019.” 2014. 6 June 2022 <ABERDEEN CITY COUNCIL>. 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In recent years ecological thinking has been applied to a range of social, cultural, and aesthetic systems, including performing arts as a living system of policy makers, producers, organisations, artists, and audiences. Ecological thinking is systems-based thinking which allows us to see the performing arts as a complex and protean ecosystem; to explain how elements in this system act and interact; and to evaluate its effects on Australia’s social fabric over time. According to Gallasch, ecological thinking is “what we desperately need for the arts.” It enables us to “defeat the fragmentary and utilitarian view of the arts that dominates, to make connections, to establish overviews of the arts that can be shared and debated” (Gallasch NP). The ecological metaphor has featured in debates about the performing arts in Brisbane, Australia, in the last two or three years. A growing state capital on Australia’s eastern seaboard, Brisbane is proud of its performing arts culture. Its main theatre organisations include the state flagship Queensland Theatre Company; the second major presenter of adapted and new text-based performances La Boite Theatre Company; venues which support local and touring performances such as the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Arts and the Brisbane Powerhouse; emerging talent incubator Metro Arts; indigenous companies like Kooemba Jdarra; independent physical theatre and circus companies such as Zen Zen Zo and Circa; and contemporary play-producing company 23rd Productions (cf. Baylis 3). Brisbane aspires to be a cultural capital in Australia, Australasia, and the Asia Pacific (Gill). Compared to Australia’s southern capitals Sydney and Melbourne, however, Brisbane does have a relatively low level of performing arts activity across traditional and contemporary theatre, contemporary performance, musicals, circus, and other genres of performance. It has at times been cast as a piecemeal, potentially unsustainable arts centre prone to losing talent to other states. In 2009, John Baylis took up these issues in Mapping Queensland Theatre, an Arts Queensland-funded survey designed to map practices in Brisbane and in Queensland more broadly, and to provide a platform to support future policy-making. This report excited debate amongst artists who, whilst accepting the tenor of Baylis’s criticisms, also lamented the lack of nuanced detail and contextualised relationships its map of Queensland theatre provided. In this paper we propose a new approach to mapping Brisbane’s and Queensland’s theatre that extends Baylis’s “value chain” into a “value ecology” that provides a more textured picture of players, patterns, relationships, and activity levels. A “value chain” approach emphasises linear relationships and gaps between production, distribution, and consumption in a specific sector of the economy. A “value ecology” approach goes further by examining a complex range of rhizomatic relationships between production, distribution, and consumption infrastructure and how they influence each other within a sector of the economy such as the performing arts. Our approach uses a “value ecology” model adapted from Hearn et al. and Cherbo et al. to map and interpret information from the AusStage performing arts database, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and other sources such as previews, reviews, and an ongoing local blogosphere debate. Building upon Baylis’s work, our approach produces literal and conceptual maps of Queensland’s performing arts as they change over time, with analysis of support, infrastructure, and relationships amongst government, arts organisations, artists, and audiences. As debate on Mapping Queensland Theatre gives way to more considered reflection, and as Baylis develops a follow-up report, our approach captures snapshots of Queensland’s performing arts before, during, and after such policy interventions. It supports debate about how Queensland artists might manage their own sustainability, their own ability to balance artistic, cultural, and economic factors that influence their work in a way that allows them to survive long term, and allows policy makers, producers, and other players to better understand, articulate, assess, and address criticisms. The Ecological Metaphor In recent years a number of commentators have understood the performing arts as an “ecology,” a system characterised by interacting elements, engagements, flows, blockages, breaks, and breakthroughs whose “health” (synonymous in this context with sustainability) depends on relationships between players within and without the system. Traditionally, performing arts policies in Australia have concentrated on singular elements in a system. They have, as Hunt and Shaw argue, “concentrate[d] on individual companies or an individual artist’s practice rather than the sector as a whole” (5, cf. 43). The focus has been on how to structure, support, and measure the success—the aesthetic and social benefits—of individual training institutions, artists, administrators, and arts organisations. The “health” of singular elements has been taken as a sign of the “health” of the system. An ecologies approach, by contrast, concentrates on engagements, energies, and flows as signs of health, and thus sustainability, in a system. Ecological thinking enables policy makers, practitioners, and scholars to go beyond debate about the presence of activity, the volume of activity, and the fate of individual agents as signs of the health or non-health of a system. In an ecologies context, level of activity is not the only indicator of health, and low activity does not necessarily equate with instability or unsustainability. An ecological approach is critical in Brisbane, and in Queensland more broadly, where attempts to replicate the nature or level of activity in southern capitals are not necessarily the best way to shore up the “health” of our performing arts system in our own unique environment. As the locus of our study Queensland is unique. While Queensland has 20% of Australia’s population (OESR; ABS ‘ Population Projections’), and is regularly recognised as a rapidly growing “lifestyle superstate” which values innovation, creativity, and cultural infrastructure (Cunningham), it is still home to significantly less than 20% of Australia’s performing arts producers, and many talented people continue to migrate to the south to pursue career opportunities (Baylis 4, 28). An ecologies approach can break into oft-cited anxieties about artist, activity, and audience levels in Brisbane, and in Queensland, and create new ideas about what a “healthy” local performing arts sector might look like. This might start to infuse some of the social media commentary that currently tends to emphasise the gaps in the sector. Ecologies are complex systems. So, as Costanza says, when we consider ecosystem health, we must consider the overall performance of the system, including its ability to deal with “external stress” (240) from macro-level political, legal, social, cultural, economic, or technological currents that change the broader society this particular sector or ecosystem sits within. In Brisbane, there is a growing population and a desire to pursue a cultural capital tag, but the distinctive geographic, demographic, and behavioural characteristics of Brisbane’s population—and the associated ‘stresses’, conditions, or constraints—mean that striving to replicate patterns of activity seen in Sydney or Melbourne may not be the straightest path to a “healthy” or “sustainable” sector here. The attitudes of the players and the pressures influencing the system are different, so this may be like comparing rainforests with deserts (Costanza), and forgetting that different elements and engagements are in fact “healthy” in different ecosystems. From an ecologies point of view, policy makers and practitioners in Brisbane and in Queensland more broadly might be well advised to stop trying to match Sydney or Melbourne, and to instead acknowledge that a “healthy” ecosystem here may look different, and so generate policy, subsidy, and production systems to support this. An ecological approach can help determine how much activity is in fact necessary to ensure a healthy and sustainable local performing arts sector. It can, in other words, provide a fresh approach that inspires new ideas and strategies for sector sustainability. Brisbane, Baylis and the Blogosphere Debate The ecological metaphor has clearly captured the interest of policy makers as they consider how to make Queensland’s performing arts more sustainable and successful. For Arts Queensland: The view of the sector as a complex and interdependent ‘ecosystem’ is forging new thinking, new practices and new business models. Individual practitioners and organisations are rethinking where they sit within the broader ecology, and what they contribute to the health and vitality of the sector, and how they might address the gaps in services and skills (12). This view informed the commissioning of Mapping Queensland Theatre, an assessment of Queensland’s theatre sector which offers a framework for allocation of resources under the Queensland Arts & Cultural Sector Plan 2010-2013. It also offers a framework for negotiation with funded organisations to ensure “their activities and focus support a harmonious ecology” (Baylis 3) in which all types and levels of practice (emerging, established, touring, and so on) are functioning well and are well represented within the overall mix of activities. Utilising primary and secondary survey sources, Mapping Queensland Theatre seeks: to map individuals, institutions, and organisations who have a stake in developing Queensland’s professional theatre sector; and to apply a “value chain” model of production from supply (training, creation, presentation, and distribution) to demand (audiences) to identify problems and gaps in Queensland’s professional theatre sector and recommend actions to address them. The report is critical of the sector. Baylis argues that “the context for great theatre is not yet in place in Queensland … therefore works of outstandingly high quality will be rare” (28).Whilst acknowledging a lack of ready answers about how much activity is required in a vibrant theatre culture, Baylis argues that “comparisons are possible” (27) and he uses various data sets to compare numbers of new Australian productions in different states. He finds that “despite having 20% of the Australian population, [Queensland] generates a dramatically lower amount of theatre activity” (4, cf. 28). The reason, according to Baylis (20, 23, 25, 29, 32, 40-41, 44), is that there are gaps in the “value chain” of Queensland theatre, specifically in: Support for the current wave of emerging and independent artistsSpace for experimentation Connections between artists, companies, venues and festivals, between and within regional centres, and between Queensland companies and their (inter)national peers Professional development for producers to address the issue of market distributionAudience development “Queensland lacks a critical mass of theatre activity to develop a sustainable theatre culture” (48), and the main gap is in pathways for independent artists. Quality new work does not emerge, energy dissipates, and artists move on. The solution, for Baylis, is to increase support for independent companies (especially via co-productions with mainstage companies), to improve (inter)national touring, and to encourage investment in audience development. Naturally, Queensland’s theatre makers responded to this report. Responses were given, for example, in inaugural speeches by new Queensland Theatre Company director Wesley Enoch and new La Boite Theatre Company director David Berthold, in the media, and in blogosphere commentary on a range of articles on Brisbane performing arts in 2010. The blogosphere debate in particular raged for months and warrants more detailed analysis elsewhere. For the purposes of this paper, though, it is sufficient to note that blogosphere debate about the health of Queensland theatre culture acknowledged many of the deficits Baylis identified and called for: More leadershipMore government supportMore venuesMore diversityMore audience, especially for risky work, and better audience engagementMore jobs and retention of artists Whilst these responses endorse Baylis’s findings and companies have since conceived programs that address Baylis’s criticisms (QTC’s introduction of a Studio Season and La Boite’s introduction of an Indie program in 2010 for example) a sense of frustration also emerged. Some, like former QTC Chair Kate Foy, felt that “what’s really needed in the theatre is a discussion that breaks out from the old themes and encourages fresh ideas—approaches to solving whatever problems are perceived to exist in ‘the system’.” For commentators like Foy the blogosphere debate enacted a kind of ritual rehearsal of an all-too-familiar set of concerns: inadequate and ill-deployed funding, insufficient venues, talent drain, and an impoverished local culture of theatre going. “Value Chains” versus “Value Ecologies” Why did responses to this report demand more artists, more arts organisations, more venues, and more activities? Why did they repeat demands for more government-subsidised venues, platforms, and support rather than drive toward new seed- or non- subsidised initiatives? At one level, this is to do with the report’s claims: it is natural for artists who have been told quality work is “rare” amongst them to point to lack of support to achieve success. At another level, though, this is because—as useful as it has been for local theatre makers—Baylis’s map is premised on a linear chain from training, to first productions, to further developed productions (involving established writers, directors, designers and performers), to opportunities to tour (inter)nationally, etc. It provides a linear image of a local performing arts sector in which there are individuals and institutions with potential, but specific gaps in the production-distribution-consumption chain that make it difficult to deliver work to target markets. It emphasises gaps in the linear pathway towards “stability” of financial, venue, and audience support and thus “sustainability” over a whole career for independent artists and the audiences they attract. Accordingly, asking government to plug the gaps through elements added to the system (venues, co-production platforms, producer hubs, subsidy, and entrepreneurial endeavours) seems like a logical solution. Whilst this is true, it does not tell the whole story. To generate a wider story, we need to consider: What the expected elements in a “healthy” ecosystem would be (e.g. more versus alternative activity);What other aesthetic, cultural, or economic pressures affect the “health” of an ecosystem;Why practices might need to cycle, ebb, and flow over time in a “healthy” ecosystem. A look at the way La Boite works before, during, and after Baylis’s analysis of Brisbane theatre illustrates why attention to these elements is necessary. A long-running company which has made the transition from amateur to professional to being a primary developer of new Australian work in its distinctive in-the-round space, La Boite has recently shifted its strategic position. A focus on text-based Australian plays has given way to adapted, contemporary, and new work in a range of genres; regular co-productions with companies in Brisbane and beyond; and an “Indie” program that offers other companies a venue. This could be read as a response to Baylis’s recommendation: the production-distribution-consumption chain gap for Brisbane’s independents is plugged, the problem is solved, the recommendation has led to the desired result. Such a reading might, though, overlook the range of pressures beyond Brisbane, beyond Queensland, and beyond the Baylis report that drive—and thus help, hinder, or otherwise effect—the shift in La Boite’s program strategies. The fact that La Boite recently lost its Australia Council funding, or that La Boite like all theatre companies needs co-productions to keep its venue running as costs increase, or that La Boite has rebranded to appeal to younger audiences interested in postdramatic, do-it-your-self or junkyard style aesthetics. These factors all influence what La Boite might do to sustain itself, and more importantly, what its long-term impact on Brisbane’s theatre ecology will be. To grasp what is happening here, and get beyond repetitive responses to anxieties about Brisbane’s theatre ecology, detail is required not simply on whether programs like La Boite’s “plugged the gap” for independent artists, but on how they had both predicted and unpredicted effects, and how other factors influenced the effects. What is needed is to extend mapping from a “value chain” to a full ”value ecology”? This is something Hearn et al. have called for. A value chain suggests a “single linear process with one stage leading to the next” (5). It ignores the environment and other external enablers and disregards a product’s relationship to other systems or products. In response they prefer a “value creating ecology” in which the “constellation of firms are [sic] dynamic and value flow is multi-directional and works through clusters of networks” (6). Whilst Hearn et al. emphasise “firms” or companies in their value creating ecology, a range of elements—government, arts organisations, artists, audiences, and the media as well as the aesthetic, social, and economic forces that influence them—needs to be mapped in the value creating ecology of the performing arts. Cherbo et al. provide a system of elements or components which, adapted for a local context like Brisbane or Queensland, can better form the basis of a value ecology approach to the way a specific performing arts community works, adapts, changes, breaks down, or breaks through over time. Figure 1 – Performing Arts Sector Map (adapted from Cherbo et. al. 14) Here, the performing arts sector is understood in terms of core artistic workers, companies, a constellation of generic and sector specific support systems, and wider social contexts (Cherbo et al. 15). Together, the shift from “value chain” to “value ecology” that Hearn et al. advocate, and the constellation of ecology elements that Cherbo et al. emphasise, bring a more detailed, dynamic range of relations into play. These include “upstream” production infrastructure (education, suppliers, sponsors), “downstream” distribution infrastructure (venues, outlets, agents), and overall public infrastructure. As a framework for mapping “value ecology” this model offers a more nuanced perspective on production, distribution, and consumption elements in an ecology. It allows for analysis of impact of interventions in dozens of different areas, from dozens of perspectives, and thus provides a more detailed picture of players, relationships, and results to support both practice and policy making around practice. An Aus-e-Stage Value Ecology To provide the more detailed, dynamic image of local theatre culture that a value ecology approach demands—to show players, relations between players, and context in all their complexity—we use the Aus-e-Stage Mapping Service, an online application that maps data about artists, arts organisations, and audiences across cityscapes/landscapes. We use Aus-e-Stage with data drawn from three sources: the AusStage database of over 50,000 entries on Australian performing arts venues, productions, artists, and reviews; the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data on population; and the Local Government Area (LGA) maps the ABS uses to cluster populations. Figure 2 – Using AusStage Interface Figure 3 – AusStage data on theatre venues laid over ABS Local Government Area Map Figure 4 – Using Aus-e-Stage / AusStage to zoom in on Australia, Queensland, Brisbane and La Boite Theatre Company, and generate a list of productions, dates and details Aus-e-Stage produces not just single maps, but a sequential series of snapshots of production ecologies, which visually track who does what when, where, with whom, and for whom. Its sequences can show: The way artists, companies, venues, and audiences relate to each other;The way artists’ relationship to companies, venues, and audiences changes over time;The way “external stressors” changes such as policy, industrial, or population changes affect the elements, roles, and relationships in the ecology from that point forward. Though it can be used in combination with other data sources such as interviews, the advantage of AusStage data is that maps of moving ecologies of practice are based not on descriptions coloured by memory but clear, accurate program, preview, and review data. This allows it to show how factors in the environment—population, policy, infrastructure, or program shifts—effect the ecology, effect players in the ecology, and prompt players to adapt their type, level, or intensity of practice. It extends Baylis’s value chain into a full value ecology that shows the detail on how an ecology works, going beyond demands that government plug perceived gaps and moving towards data- and history- based decisions, ideas and innovation based on what works in Brisbane’s performing arts ecology. Our Aus-e-Stage mapping shows this approach can do a number of useful things. It can create sequences showing breaks, blockages, and absences in an individual or company’s effort to move from emerging to established (e.g. in a sudden burst of activity followed by nothing). It can create sequences showing an individual or company’s moves to other parts of Australia (e.g. to tour or to pursue more permanent work). It can show surprising spaces, relations, and sources of support artists use to further their career (e.g. use of an amateur theatre outside the city such as Brisbane Arts Theatre). It can capture data about venues, programs, or co-production networks that are more or less effective in opening up new opportunities for artists (e.g. moving small-scale experiments in Metro Arts’ “Independents” program to full scale independent productions in La Boite’s “Indie” program, its mainstage program, other mainstage programs, and beyond). It can link to program information, documentation, or commentary to compare anticipated and actual effects. It can lay the map dates and movements across significant policy, infrastructure, or production climate shifts. In the example below, for instance, Aus-e-Stage represents the tour of La Boite’s popular production of a new Australian work Zig Zag Street, based on the Brisbane-focused novel by Nick Earls about a single, twentysomething man’s struggles with life, love, and work. Figure 5 – Zig Zag Street Tour Map In the example below, Aus-e-Stage represents the movements not of a play but of a performer—in this case Christopher Sommers—who has been able to balance employment with new work incubator Metro Arts, mainstage and indie producer La Boite, and stage theatre company QTC with his role with independent theatre company 23rd Productions to create something more protean, more portfolio-based or boundary-less than a traditional linear career trajectory. Figure 6 – Christopher Sommers Network Map and Travel Map This value of this approach, and this technology, is clear. Which independents participate in La Boite Indie (or QTC’s “Studio” or “Greenroom” new work programs, or Metro’s emerging work programs, or others)? What benefits does it bring for artists, for independent companies, or for mainstage companies like La Boite? Is this a launching pad leading to ongoing, sustainable production practices? What do artists, audiences or others say about these launching pads in previews, programs, or reviews? Using Aus-e-Stage as part of a value ecology approach answers these questions. It provides a more detailed picture of what happens, what effect it has on local theatre ecology, and exactly which influences enabled this effect: precisely the data needed to generate informed debate, ideas, and decision making. Conclusion Our ecological approach provides images of a local performing arts ecology in action, drawing out filtered data on different players, relationships, and influencing factors, and thus extending examination of Brisbane’s and Queensland’s performing arts sector into useful new areas. It offers three main advances—first, it adopts a value ecology approach (Hearn et al.), second, it adapts this value ecology approach to include not just companies by all up- and down- stream players, supporters and infrastructure (Cherbo et. al.), and, thirdly, it uses the wealth of data available via Aus-e-Stage maps to fill out and filter images of local theatre ecology. It allows us to develop detailed, meaningful data to support discussion, debate, and development of ideas that is less likely to get bogged down in old, outdated, or inaccurate assumptions about how the sector works. Indeed, our data lends itself to additional analysis in a number of ways, from economic analysis of how shifts in policy influence productivity to sociological analysis of the way practitioners or practices acquire status and cultural capital (Bourdieu) in the field. Whilst descriptions offered here demonstrate the potential of this approach, this is by no means a finished exercise. Indeed, because this approach is about analysing how elements, roles, and relationships in an ecology shift over time, it is an ever-unfinished exercise. As Fortin and Dale argue, ecological studies of this sort are necessarily iterative, with each iteration providing new insights and raising further questions into processes and patterns (3). Given the number of local performing arts producers who have changed their practices significantly since Baylis’s Mapping Queensland Theatre report, and the fact that Baylis is producing a follow-up report, the next step will be to use this approach and the Aus-e-Stage technology that supports it to trace how ongoing shifts impact on Brisbane’s ambitions to become a cultural capital. This process is underway, and promises to open still more new perspectives by understanding anxieties about local theatre culture in terms of ecologies and exploring them cartographically. References Arts Queensland. Queensland Arts & Cultural Sector Plan 2010-2013. Brisbane: Arts Queensland, 2010. Australian Bureau of Statistics. “Population Projections, Australia, 2006 to 2101.” Canberra: ABS (2008). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/3222.0Main+Features12006%20to%202101?OpenDocument›. ——-. “Regional Population Growth, Australia, 2008-2009: Queensland.” Canberra: ABS (2010). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3218.0Main%20Features62008-09?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3218.0&issue=2008-09&num=&view=›. Baylis, John. Mapping Queensland Theatre. Brisbane: Arts Queensland, 2009. Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Forms of Capital.” Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Ed. John G. Richardson. New York: Greenwood, 1986.241-58. Cherbo, Joni M., Harold Vogel, and Margaret Jane Wyszomirski. “Towards an Arts and Creative Sector.” Understanding the Arts and Creative Sector in the United States. Ed. Joni M. Cherbo, Ruth A. Stewart and Margaret J. Wyszomirski. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008. 32-60. Costanza, Robert. “Toward an Operational Definition of Ecosystem Health”. Ecosystem Health: New Goals for Environmental Management. Eds. Robert Costanza, Bryan G. Norton and Benjamin D. Haskell. Washington: Island Press, 1992. 239-56. Cunningham, Stuart. “Keeping Artistic Tempers Balanced.” The Courier Mail, 4 August (2010). 20 June 2012 ‹http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/keeping-artistic-tempers-balanced/story-e6frerc6-1225901295328›. Gallasch, Keith. “The ABC and the Arts: The Arts Ecologically.” RealTime 61 (2004). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.realtimearts.net/article/61/7436›. Gill, Raymond. “Is Brisbane Australia’s New Cultural Capital?” Sydney Morning Herald, 16 October (2010). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/is-brisbane-australias-new-cultural-capital-20101015-16np5.html›. Fortin, Marie-Josée and Dale, Mark R.T. Spatial Analysis: A Guide for Ecologists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Foy, Kate. “Is There Anything Right with the Theatre?” Groundling. 10 January (2010). 20 June 2011 ‹http://katefoy.com/2010/01/is-there-anything-right-with-the-theatre/›. Hearn, Gregory N., Simon C. Roodhouse, and Julie M. Blakey. ‘From Value Chain to Value Creating Ecology: Implications for Creative Industries Development Policy.’ International Journal of Cultural Policy 13 (2007). 20 June 2011 ‹http://eprints.qut.edu.au/15026/›. Hunt, Cathy and Phyllida Shaw. A Sustainable Arts Sector: What Will It Take? Strawberry Hills: Currency House, 2007. Knell, John. Theatre’s New Rules of Evolution. Available from Intelligence Agency, 2008. Office of Economic and Statistical Research. “Information Brief: Australian Demographic Statistics June Quarter 2009.” Canberra: OESR (2010). 20 June 2012 ‹http://www.oesr.qld.gov.au/queensland-by-theme/demography/briefs/aust-demographic-stats/aust-demographic-stats-200906.pdf›.

“Journalists have to begin a new type of journalism, sometimes being the guide on the side of the civic conversation as well as the filter and gatekeeper.” (Kolodzy 218) “In many respects, citizen journalism is simply public journalism removed from the journalism profession.” (Barlow 181) 1. Citizen Journalism — The Latest Innovation? New Media theorists such as Dan Gillmor, Henry Jenkins, Jay Rosen and Jeff Howe have recently touted Citizen Journalism (CJ) as the latest innovation in 21st century journalism. “Participatory journalism” and “user-driven journalism” are other terms to describe CJ, which its proponents argue is a disruptive innovation (Christensen) to the agenda-setting media institutions, news values and “objective” reportage. In this essay I offer a “contrarian” view, informed by two perspectives: (1) a three-stage model of theory-building (Carlile & Christensen) to evaluate the claims made about CJ; and (2) self-reflexive research insights (Etherington) from editing the US-based news site Disinformation between November 1999 and February 2008. New media theories can potentially create “cognitive dissonance” (Festinger) when their explanations of CJ practices are compared with what actually happens (Feyerabend). First I summarise Carlile & Christensen’s model and the dangers of “bad theory” (Ghoshal). Next I consider several problems in new media theories about CJ: the notion of ‘citizen’, new media populism, parallels in event-driven and civic journalism, and mergers and acquisitions. Two ‘self-reflexive’ issues are considered: ‘pro-ams’ or ‘professional amateurs’ as a challenge to professional journalists, and CJ’s deployment in new media operations and production environments. Finally, some exploratory questions are offered for future researchers. 2. An Evaluative Framework for New Media Theories on Citizen Journalism Paul Carlile and Clayton M. Christensen’s model offers one framework with which to evaluate new media theories on CJ. This framework is used below to highlight select issues and gaps in CJ’s current frameworks and theories. Carlile & Christensen suggest that robust theory-building emerges via three stages: Descriptive, Categorisation and Normative (Carlile & Christensen). There are three sub-stages in Descriptive theory-building; namely, the observation of phenomena, inductive classification into schemas and taxonomies, and correlative relationships to develop models (Carlile & Christensen 2-5). Once causation is established, Normative theory evolves through deductive logic which is subject to Kuhnian paradigm shifts and Popperian falsifiability (Carlile & Christensen 6). Its proponents situate CJ as a Categorisation or new journalism agenda that poses a Normative challenged and Kuhnian paradigm shift to traditional journalism. Existing CJ theories jump from the Descriptive phase of observations like “smart mobs” in Japanese youth subcultures (Rheingold) to make broad claims for Categorisation such as that IndyMedia, blogs and wiki publishing systems as new media alternatives to traditional media. CJ theories then underpin normative beliefs, values and worldviews. Correlative relationships are also used to differentiate CJ from the demand side of microeconomic analysis, from the top-down editorial models of traditional media outlets, and to adopt a vanguard stance. To support this, CJ proponents cite research on emergent collective behaviour such as the “wisdom of crowds” hypothesis (Surowiecki) or peer-to-peer network “swarms” (Pesce) to provide scientific justification for their Normative theories. However, further evaluative research is needed for three reasons: the emergent collective behaviour hypothesis may not actually inform CJ practices, existing theories may have “correlation not cause” errors, and the link may be due to citation network effects between CJ theorists. Collectively, this research base also frames CJ as an “ought to” Categorisation and then proceeds to Normative theory-building (Carlile & Christensen 7). However, I argue below that this Categorisation may be premature: its observations and correlative relationships might reinforce a ‘weak’ Normative theory with limited generalisation. CJ proponents seem to imply that it can be applied anywhere and under any condition—a “statement of causality” that almost makes it a fad (Carlile & Christensen 8). CJ that relies on Classification and Normative claims will be problematic without a strong grounding in Descriptive observation. To understand what’s potentially at stake for CJ’s future consider the consider the parallel debate about curricula renewal for the Masters of Business Administration in the wake of high-profile corporate collapses such as Enron, Worldcom, HIH and OneTel. The MBA evolved as a sociological and institutional construct to justify management as a profession that is codified, differentiated and has entry barriers (Khurana). This process might partly explain the pushback that some media professionals have to CJ as one alternative. MBA programs faced criticism if they had student cohorts with little business know-how or experiential learning (Mintzberg). Enron’s collapse illustrated the ethical dilemmas and unintended consequences that occurred when “bad theories” were implemented (Ghoshal). Professional journalists are aware of this: MBA-educated managers challenged the “craft” tradition in the early 1980s (Underwood). This meant that journalism’s ‘self-image’ (Morgan; Smith) is intertwined with managerial anxieties about media conglomerates in highly competitive markets. Ironically, as noted below, Citizen Journalists who adopt a vanguard position vis-a-vis media professionals step into a more complex game with other players. However, current theories have a naïve idealism about CJ’s promise of normative social change in the face of Machiavellian agency in business, the media and politics. 3. Citizen Who? Who is the “citizen” in CJ? What is their self-awareness as a political agent? CJ proponents who use the ‘self-image’ of ‘citizen’ draw on observations from the participatory vision of open source software, peer-to-peer networks, and case studies such as Howard Dean’s 2004 bid for the Democrat Party nominee in the US Presidential election campaign (Trippi). Recent theorists note Alexander Hamilton’s tradition of civic activism (Barlow 178) which links contemporary bloggers with the Federalist Papers and early newspaper pamphlets. One unsurfaced assumption in these observations and correlations is that most bloggers will adopt a coherent political philosophy as informed citizens: a variation on Lockean utilitarianism, Rawlsian liberalism or Nader consumer activism. To date there is little discussion about how political philosophy could deepen CJ’s ‘self-image’: how to critically evaluate sources, audit and investigation processes, or strategies to deal with elites, deterrence and power. For example, although bloggers kept Valerie Plame’s ‘outing’ as a covert intelligence operative highly visible in the issues-attention cycle, it was agenda-setting media like The New York Times who the Bush Administration targeted to silence (Pearlstine). To be viable, CJ needs to evolve beyond a new media populism, perhaps into a constructivist model of agency, norms and social change (Finnemore). 4. Citizen Journalism as New Media Populism Several “precursor trends” foreshadowed CJ notably the mid-1990s interest in “cool-hunting” by new media analysts and subculture marketeers (Gibson; Gladwell). Whilst this audience focus waned with the 1995-2000 dotcom bubble it resurfaced in CJ and publisher Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 vision. Thus, CJ might be viewed as new media populism that has flourished with the Web 2.0 boom. Yet if the boom becomes a macroeconomic bubble (Gross; Spar) then CJ could be written off as a “silver bullet” that ultimately failed to deliver on its promises (Brooks, Jr.). The reputations of uncritical proponents who adopted a “true believer” stance would also be damaged (Hoffer). This risk is evident if CJ is compared with a parallel trend that shares its audience focus and populist view: day traders and technical analysts who speculate on financial markets. This parallel trend provides an alternative discipline in which the populism surfaced in an earlier form (Carlile & Christensen 12). Fidelity’s Peter Lynch argues that stock pickers can use their Main Street knowledge to beat Wall Street by exploiting information asymmetries (Lynch & Rothchild). Yet Lynch’s examples came from the mid-1970s to early 1980s when indexed mutual fund strategies worked, before deregulation and macroeconomic volatility. A change in the Web 2.0 boom might similarly trigger a reconsideration of Citizen Journalism. Hedge fund maven Victor Niederhoffer contends that investors who rely on technical analysis are practicing a Comtean religion (Niederhoffer & Kenner 72-74) instead of Efficient Market Hypothesis traders who use statistical arbitrage to deal with ‘random walks’ or Behavioural Finance experts who build on Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky). Niederhoffer’s deeper point is that technical analysts’ belief that the “trend is your friend” is no match for the other schools, despite a mini-publishing industry and computer trading systems. There are also ontological and epistemological differences between the schools. Similarly, CJ proponents who adopt a ‘Professional Amateur’ or ‘Pro-Am’ stance (Leadbeater & Miller) may face a similar gulf when making comparisons with professional journalists and the production environments in media organisations. CJ also thrives as new media populism because of institutional vested interests. When media conglomerates cut back on cadetships and internships CJ might fill the market demand as one alternative. New media programs at New York University and others can use CJ to differentiate themselves from “hyperlocal” competitors (Christensen; Slywotzky; Christensen, Curtis & Horn). This transforms CJ from new media populism to new media institution. 5. Parallels: Event-driven & Civic Journalism For new media programs, CJ builds on two earlier traditions: the Event-driven journalism of crises like the 1991 Gulf War (Wark) and the Civic Journalism school that emerged in the 1960s social upheavals. Civic Journalism’s awareness of minorities and social issues provides the character ethic and political philosophy for many Citizen Journalists. Jay Rosen and others suggest that CJ is the next-generation heir to Civic Journalism, tracing a thread from the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention to IndyMedia’s coverage of the 1999 “Battle in Seattle” (Rosen). Rosen’s observation could yield an interesting historiography or genealogy. Events such as the Southeast Asian tsunami on 26 December 2004 or Al Qaeda’s London bombings on 7 July 2005 are cited as examples of CJ as event-driven journalism and “pro-am collaboration” (Kolodzy 229-230). Having covered these events and Al Qaeda’s attacks on 11th September 2001, I have a slightly different view: this was more a variation on “first responder” status and handicam video footage that journalists have sourced for the past three decades when covering major disasters. This different view means that the “salience of categories” used to justify CJ and “pro-am collaboration” these events does not completely hold. Furthermore, when Citizen Journalism proponents tout Flickr and Wikipedia as models of real-time media they are building on a broader phenomenon that includes CNN’s Gulf War coverage and Bloomberg’s dominance of financial news (Loomis). 6. The Mergers & Acquisitions Scenario CJ proponents often express anxieties about the resilience of their outlets in the face of predatory venture capital firms who initiate Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) activities. Ironically, these venture capital firms have core competencies and expertise in the event-driven infrastructure and real-time media that CJ aspires to. Sequoia Capital and other venture capital firms have evaluative frameworks that likely surpass Carlile & Christensen in sophistication, and they exploit parallels, information asymmetries and market populism. Furthermore, although venture capital firms such as Union Street Ventures have funded Web 2.0 firms, they are absent from the explanations of some theorists, whose examples of Citizen Journalism and Web 2.0 success may be the result of survivorship bias. Thus, the venture capital market remains an untapped data source for researchers who want to evaluate the impact of CJ outlets and institutions. The M&A scenario further problematises CJ in several ways. First, CJ is framed as “oppositional” to traditional media, yet this may be used as a stratagem in a game theory framework with multiple stakeholders. Drexel Burnham Lambert’s financier Michael Milken used market populism to sell ‘high-yield’ or ‘junk’ bonds to investors whilst disrupting the Wall Street establishment in the late 1980s (Curtis) and CJ could fulfil a similar tactical purpose. Second, the M&A goal of some Web 2.0 firms could undermine the participatory goals of a site’s community if post-merger integration fails. Jason Calacanis’s sale of Weblogs, Inc to America Online in 2005 and MSNBC’s acquisition of Newsvine on 5 October 2007 (Newsvine) might be success stories. However, this raises issues of digital “property rights” if you contribute to a community that is then sold in an M&A transaction—an outcome closer to business process outsourcing. Third, media “buzz” can create an unrealistic vision when a CJ site fails to grow beyond its start-up phase. Backfence.com’s demise as a “hyperlocal” initiative (Caverly) is one cautionary event that recalls the 2000 dotcom crash. The M&A scenarios outlined above are market dystopias for CJ purists. The major lesson for CJ proponents is to include other market players in hypotheses about causation and correlation factors. 7. ‘Pro-Ams’ & Professional Journalism’s Crisis CJ emerged during a period when Professional Journalism faced a major crisis of ‘self-image’. The Demos report The Pro-Am Revolution (Leadbeater & Miller) popularised the notion of ‘professional amateurs’ which some CJ theorists adopt to strengthen their categorisation. In turn, this triggers a response from cultural theorists who fear bloggers are new media’s barbarians (Keen). I concede Leadbeater and Miller have identified an important category. However, how some CJ theorists then generalise from ‘Pro-Ams’ illustrates the danger of ‘weak’ theory referred to above. Leadbeater and Miller’s categorisation does not really include a counter-view on the strengths of professionals, as illustrated in humanistic consulting (Block), professional service firms (Maister; Maister, Green & Galford), and software development (McConnell). The signs of professionalism these authors mention include a commitment to learning and communal verification, mastery of a discipline and domain application, awareness of methodology creation, participation in mentoring, and cultivation of ethical awareness. Two key differences are discernment and quality of attention, as illustrated in how the legendary Hollywood film editor Walter Murch used Apple’s Final Cut Pro software to edit the 2003 film Cold Mountain (Koppelman). ‘Pro-Ams’ might not aspire to these criteria but Citizen Journalists shouldn’t throw out these standards, either. Doing so would be making the same mistake of overconfidence that technical analysts make against statistical arbitrageurs. Key processes—fact-checking, sub-editing and editorial decision-making—are invisible to the end-user, even if traceable in a blog or wiki publishing system, because of the judgments involved. One post-mortem insight from Assignment Zero was that these processes were vital to create the climate of authenticity and trust to sustain a Citizen Journalist community (Howe). CJ’s trouble with “objectivity” might also overlook some complexities, including the similarity of many bloggers to “noise traders” in financial markets and to op-ed columnists. Methodologies and reportage practices have evolved to deal with the objections that CJ proponents raise, from New Journalism’s radical subjectivity and creative non-fiction techniques (Wolfe & Johnson) to Precision Journalism that used descriptive statistics (Meyer). Finally, journalism frameworks could be updated with current research on how phenomenological awareness shapes our judgments and perceptions (Thompson). 8. Strategic Execution For me, one of CJ’s major weaknesses as a new media theory is its lack of “rich description” (Geertz) about the strategic execution of projects. As Disinfo.com site editor I encountered situations ranging from ‘denial of service’ attacks and spam to site migration, publishing systems that go offline, and ensuring an editorial consistency. Yet the messiness of these processes is missing from CJ theories and accounts. Theories that included this detail as “second-order interactions” (Carlile & Christensen 13) would offer a richer view of CJ. Many CJ and Web 2.0 projects fall into the categories of mini-projects, demonstration prototypes and start-ups, even when using a programming language such as Ajax or Ruby on Rails. Whilst the “bootstrap” process is a benefit, more longitudinal analysis and testing needs to occur, to ensure these projects are scalable and sustainable. For example, South Korea’s OhmyNews is cited as an exemplar that started with “727 citizen reporters and 4 editors” and now has “38,000 citizen reporters” and “a dozen editors” (Kolodzy 231). How does OhmyNews’s mix of hard and soft news change over time? Or, how does OhmyNews deal with a complex issue that might require major resources, such as security negotiations between North and South Korea? Such examples could do with further research. We need to go beyond “the vision thing” and look at the messiness of execution for deeper observations and counterintuitive correlations, to build new descriptive theories. 9. Future Research This essay argues that CJ needs re-evaluation. Its immediate legacy might be to splinter ‘journalism’ into micro-trends: Washington University’s Steve Boriss proclaims “citizen journalism is dead. Expert journalism is the future.” (Boriss; Mensching). The half-lives of such micro-trends demand new categorisations, which in turn prematurely feeds the theory-building cycle. Instead, future researchers could reinvigorate 21st century journalism if they ask deeper questions and return to the observation stage of building descriptive theories. In closing, below are some possible questions that future researchers might explore: Where are the “rich descriptions” of journalistic experience—“citizen”, “convergent”, “digital”, “Pro-Am” or otherwise in new media? How could practice-based approaches inform this research instead of relying on espoused theories-in-use? What new methodologies could be developed for CJ implementation? What role can the “heroic” individual reporter or editor have in “the swarm”? Do the claims about OhmyNews and other sites stand up to longitudinal observation? Are the theories used to justify Citizen Journalism’s normative stance (Rheingold; Surowiecki; Pesce) truly robust generalisations for strategic execution or do they reflect the biases of their creators? How could developers tap the conceptual dimensions of information technology innovation (Shasha) to create the next Facebook, MySpace or Wikipedia? References Argyris, Chris, and Donald Schon. Theory in Practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1976. Barlow, Aaron. The Rise of the Blogosphere. Westport, CN: Praeger Publishers, 2007. Block, Peter. Flawless Consulting. 2nd ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2000. Boriss, Steve. “Citizen Journalism Is Dead. Expert Journalism Is the Future.” The Future of News. 28 Nov. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://thefutureofnews.com/2007/11/28/citizen-journalism-is-dead- expert-journalism-is-the-future/>. Brooks, Jr., Frederick P. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. Rev. ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995. Campbell, Vincent. Information Age Journalism: Journalism in an International Context. New York: Arnold, 2004. Carlile, Paul R., and Clayton M. Christensen. “The Cycles of Building Theory in Management Research.” Innosight working paper draft 6. 6 Jan. 2005. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.innosight.com/documents/Theory%20Building.pdf>. Caverly, Doug. “Hyperlocal News Site Takes A Hit.” WebProNews.com 6 July 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/07/06/hyperlocal-news- sites-take-a-hit>. Chenoweth, Neil. Virtual Murdoch: Reality Wars on the Information Superhighway. Sydney: Random House Australia, 2001. Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997. Christensen, Clayton M., Curtis Johnson, and Michael Horn. Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Curtis, Adam. The Mayfair Set. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1999. Etherington, Kim. Becoming a Reflexive Researcher: Using Ourselves in Research. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2004. Festinger, Leon. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962. Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method. 3rd ed. London: Verso, 1993. Finnemore, Martha. National Interests in International Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Ghoshal, Sumantra. “Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices.” Academy of Management Learning & Education 4.1 (2005): 75-91. Gibson, William. Pattern Recognition. London: Viking, 2003. Gladwell, Malcolm. “The Cool-Hunt.” The New Yorker Magazine 17 March 1997. 20 Feb. 2008 http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_03_17_a_cool.htm>. Gross, Daniel. Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy. New York: Collins, 2007. Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer. New York: Harper, 1951. Howe, Jeff. “Did Assignment Zero Fail? A Look Back, and Lessons Learned.” Wired News 16 July 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/assignment_ zero_final?currentPage=all>. Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky. Choices, Values and Frames. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur. New York: Doubleday Currency, 2007. Khurana, Rakesh. From Higher Aims to Hired Hands. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007. Kolodzy, Janet. Convergence Journalism: Writing and Reporting across the News Media. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. Koppelman, Charles. Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple’s Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema. Upper Saddle River, NJ: New Rider, 2004. Leadbeater, Charles, and Paul Miller. “The Pro-Am Revolution”. London: Demos, 24 Nov. 2004. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/proameconomy>. Loomis, Carol J. “Bloomberg’s Money Machine.” Fortune 5 April 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/04/16/ 8404302/index.htm>. Lynch, Peter, and John Rothchild. Beating the Street. Rev. ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Maister, David. True Professionalism. New York: The Free Press, 1997. Maister, David, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford. The Trusted Advisor. New York: The Free Press, 2004. Mensching, Leah McBride. “Citizen Journalism on Its Way Out?” SFN Blog, 30 Nov. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://www.sfnblog.com/index.php/2007/11/30/940-citizen-journalism- on-its-way-out>. Meyer, Philip. Precision Journalism. 4th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. McConnell, Steve. Professional Software Development. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2004. Mintzberg, Henry. Managers Not MBAs. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2004. Morgan, Gareth. Images of Organisation. Rev. ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006. Newsvine. “Msnbc.com Acquires Newsvine.” 7 Oct. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://blog.newsvine.com/_news/2007/10/07/1008889-msnbccom- acquires-newsvine>. Niederhoffer, Victor, and Laurel Kenner. Practical Speculation. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. Pearlstine, Norman. Off the Record: The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007. Pesce, Mark D. “Mob Rules (The Law of Fives).” The Human Network 28 Sep. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=39>. Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge MA: Basic Books, 2002. Rosen, Jay. What Are Journalists For? Princeton NJ: Yale UP, 2001. Shasha, Dennis Elliott. Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists. New York: Copernicus, 1995. Slywotzky, Adrian. Value Migration: How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1996. Smith, Steve. “The Self-Image of a Discipline: The Genealogy of International Relations Theory.” Eds. Steve Smith and Ken Booth. International Relations Theory Today. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1995. 1-37. Spar, Debora L. Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet. New York: Harcourt, 2001. Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Thompson, Evan. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007. Trippi, Joe. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. New York: ReganBooks, 2004. Underwood, Doug. When MBA’s Rule the Newsroom. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Wark, McKenzie. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 1994. Wolfe, Tom, and E.W. Johnson. The New Journalism. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Burns, Alex. "Select Issues with New Media Theories of Citizen Journalism." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/10-burns.php>. APA Style Burns, A. (Apr. 2008) "Select Issues with New Media Theories of Citizen Journalism," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/10-burns.php>.

“Journalists have to begin a new type of journalism, sometimes being the guide on the side of the civic conversation as well as the filter and gatekeeper.” (Kolodzy 218) “In many respects, citizen journalism is simply public journalism removed from the journalism profession.” (Barlow 181) 1. Citizen Journalism — The Latest Innovation? New Media theorists such as Dan Gillmor, Henry Jenkins, Jay Rosen and Jeff Howe have recently touted Citizen Journalism (CJ) as the latest innovation in 21st century journalism. “Participatory journalism” and “user-driven journalism” are other terms to describe CJ, which its proponents argue is a disruptive innovation (Christensen) to the agenda-setting media institutions, news values and “objective” reportage. In this essay I offer a “contrarian” view, informed by two perspectives: (1) a three-stage model of theory-building (Carlile & Christensen) to evaluate the claims made about CJ; and (2) self-reflexive research insights (Etherington) from editing the US-based news site Disinformation between November 1999 and February 2008. New media theories can potentially create “cognitive dissonance” (Festinger) when their explanations of CJ practices are compared with what actually happens (Feyerabend). First I summarise Carlile & Christensen’s model and the dangers of “bad theory” (Ghoshal). Next I consider several problems in new media theories about CJ: the notion of ‘citizen’, new media populism, parallels in event-driven and civic journalism, and mergers and acquisitions. Two ‘self-reflexive’ issues are considered: ‘pro-ams’ or ‘professional amateurs’ as a challenge to professional journalists, and CJ’s deployment in new media operations and production environments. Finally, some exploratory questions are offered for future researchers. 2. An Evaluative Framework for New Media Theories on Citizen Journalism Paul Carlile and Clayton M. Christensen’s model offers one framework with which to evaluate new media theories on CJ. This framework is used below to highlight select issues and gaps in CJ’s current frameworks and theories. Carlile & Christensen suggest that robust theory-building emerges via three stages: Descriptive, Categorisation and Normative (Carlile & Christensen). There are three sub-stages in Descriptive theory-building; namely, the observation of phenomena, inductive classification into schemas and taxonomies, and correlative relationships to develop models (Carlile & Christensen 2-5). Once causation is established, Normative theory evolves through deductive logic which is subject to Kuhnian paradigm shifts and Popperian falsifiability (Carlile & Christensen 6). Its proponents situate CJ as a Categorisation or new journalism agenda that poses a Normative challenged and Kuhnian paradigm shift to traditional journalism. Existing CJ theories jump from the Descriptive phase of observations like “smart mobs” in Japanese youth subcultures (Rheingold) to make broad claims for Categorisation such as that IndyMedia, blogs and wiki publishing systems as new media alternatives to traditional media. CJ theories then underpin normative beliefs, values and worldviews. Correlative relationships are also used to differentiate CJ from the demand side of microeconomic analysis, from the top-down editorial models of traditional media outlets, and to adopt a vanguard stance. To support this, CJ proponents cite research on emergent collective behaviour such as the “wisdom of crowds” hypothesis (Surowiecki) or peer-to-peer network “swarms” (Pesce) to provide scientific justification for their Normative theories. However, further evaluative research is needed for three reasons: the emergent collective behaviour hypothesis may not actually inform CJ practices, existing theories may have “correlation not cause” errors, and the link may be due to citation network effects between CJ theorists. Collectively, this research base also frames CJ as an “ought to” Categorisation and then proceeds to Normative theory-building (Carlile & Christensen 7). However, I argue below that this Categorisation may be premature: its observations and correlative relationships might reinforce a ‘weak’ Normative theory with limited generalisation. CJ proponents seem to imply that it can be applied anywhere and under any condition—a “statement of causality” that almost makes it a fad (Carlile & Christensen 8). CJ that relies on Classification and Normative claims will be problematic without a strong grounding in Descriptive observation. To understand what’s potentially at stake for CJ’s future consider the consider the parallel debate about curricula renewal for the Masters of Business Administration in the wake of high-profile corporate collapses such as Enron, Worldcom, HIH and OneTel. The MBA evolved as a sociological and institutional construct to justify management as a profession that is codified, differentiated and has entry barriers (Khurana). This process might partly explain the pushback that some media professionals have to CJ as one alternative. MBA programs faced criticism if they had student cohorts with little business know-how or experiential learning (Mintzberg). Enron’s collapse illustrated the ethical dilemmas and unintended consequences that occurred when “bad theories” were implemented (Ghoshal). Professional journalists are aware of this: MBA-educated managers challenged the “craft” tradition in the early 1980s (Underwood). This meant that journalism’s ‘self-image’ (Morgan; Smith) is intertwined with managerial anxieties about media conglomerates in highly competitive markets. Ironically, as noted below, Citizen Journalists who adopt a vanguard position vis-a-vis media professionals step into a more complex game with other players. However, current theories have a naïve idealism about CJ’s promise of normative social change in the face of Machiavellian agency in business, the media and politics. 3. Citizen Who? Who is the “citizen” in CJ? What is their self-awareness as a political agent? CJ proponents who use the ‘self-image’ of ‘citizen’ draw on observations from the participatory vision of open source software, peer-to-peer networks, and case studies such as Howard Dean’s 2004 bid for the Democrat Party nominee in the US Presidential election campaign (Trippi). Recent theorists note Alexander Hamilton’s tradition of civic activism (Barlow 178) which links contemporary bloggers with the Federalist Papers and early newspaper pamphlets. One unsurfaced assumption in these observations and correlations is that most bloggers will adopt a coherent political philosophy as informed citizens: a variation on Lockean utilitarianism, Rawlsian liberalism or Nader consumer activism. To date there is little discussion about how political philosophy could deepen CJ’s ‘self-image’: how to critically evaluate sources, audit and investigation processes, or strategies to deal with elites, deterrence and power. For example, although bloggers kept Valerie Plame’s ‘outing’ as a covert intelligence operative highly visible in the issues-attention cycle, it was agenda-setting media like The New York Times who the Bush Administration targeted to silence (Pearlstine). To be viable, CJ needs to evolve beyond a new media populism, perhaps into a constructivist model of agency, norms and social change (Finnemore). 4. Citizen Journalism as New Media Populism Several “precursor trends” foreshadowed CJ notably the mid-1990s interest in “cool-hunting” by new media analysts and subculture marketeers (Gibson; Gladwell). Whilst this audience focus waned with the 1995-2000 dotcom bubble it resurfaced in CJ and publisher Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 vision. Thus, CJ might be viewed as new media populism that has flourished with the Web 2.0 boom. Yet if the boom becomes a macroeconomic bubble (Gross; Spar) then CJ could be written off as a “silver bullet” that ultimately failed to deliver on its promises (Brooks, Jr.). The reputations of uncritical proponents who adopted a “true believer” stance would also be damaged (Hoffer). This risk is evident if CJ is compared with a parallel trend that shares its audience focus and populist view: day traders and technical analysts who speculate on financial markets. This parallel trend provides an alternative discipline in which the populism surfaced in an earlier form (Carlile & Christensen 12). Fidelity’s Peter Lynch argues that stock pickers can use their Main Street knowledge to beat Wall Street by exploiting information asymmetries (Lynch & Rothchild). Yet Lynch’s examples came from the mid-1970s to early 1980s when indexed mutual fund strategies worked, before deregulation and macroeconomic volatility. A change in the Web 2.0 boom might similarly trigger a reconsideration of Citizen Journalism. Hedge fund maven Victor Niederhoffer contends that investors who rely on technical analysis are practicing a Comtean religion (Niederhoffer & Kenner 72-74) instead of Efficient Market Hypothesis traders who use statistical arbitrage to deal with ‘random walks’ or Behavioural Finance experts who build on Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky). Niederhoffer’s deeper point is that technical analysts’ belief that the “trend is your friend” is no match for the other schools, despite a mini-publishing industry and computer trading systems. There are also ontological and epistemological differences between the schools. Similarly, CJ proponents who adopt a ‘Professional Amateur’ or ‘Pro-Am’ stance (Leadbeater & Miller) may face a similar gulf when making comparisons with professional journalists and the production environments in media organisations. CJ also thrives as new media populism because of institutional vested interests. When media conglomerates cut back on cadetships and internships CJ might fill the market demand as one alternative. New media programs at New York University and others can use CJ to differentiate themselves from “hyperlocal” competitors (Christensen; Slywotzky; Christensen, Curtis & Horn). This transforms CJ from new media populism to new media institution. 5. Parallels: Event-driven & Civic Journalism For new media programs, CJ builds on two earlier traditions: the Event-driven journalism of crises like the 1991 Gulf War (Wark) and the Civic Journalism school that emerged in the 1960s social upheavals. Civic Journalism’s awareness of minorities and social issues provides the character ethic and political philosophy for many Citizen Journalists. Jay Rosen and others suggest that CJ is the next-generation heir to Civic Journalism, tracing a thread from the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention to IndyMedia’s coverage of the 1999 “Battle in Seattle” (Rosen). Rosen’s observation could yield an interesting historiography or genealogy. Events such as the Southeast Asian tsunami on 26 December 2004 or Al Qaeda’s London bombings on 7 July 2005 are cited as examples of CJ as event-driven journalism and “pro-am collaboration” (Kolodzy 229-230). Having covered these events and Al Qaeda’s attacks on 11th September 2001, I have a slightly different view: this was more a variation on “first responder” status and handicam video footage that journalists have sourced for the past three decades when covering major disasters. This different view means that the “salience of categories” used to justify CJ and “pro-am collaboration” these events does not completely hold. Furthermore, when Citizen Journalism proponents tout Flickr and Wikipedia as models of real-time media they are building on a broader phenomenon that includes CNN’s Gulf War coverage and Bloomberg’s dominance of financial news (Loomis). 6. The Mergers & Acquisitions Scenario CJ proponents often express anxieties about the resilience of their outlets in the face of predatory venture capital firms who initiate Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) activities. Ironically, these venture capital firms have core competencies and expertise in the event-driven infrastructure and real-time media that CJ aspires to. Sequoia Capital and other venture capital firms have evaluative frameworks that likely surpass Carlile & Christensen in sophistication, and they exploit parallels, information asymmetries and market populism. Furthermore, although venture capital firms such as Union Street Ventures have funded Web 2.0 firms, they are absent from the explanations of some theorists, whose examples of Citizen Journalism and Web 2.0 success may be the result of survivorship bias. Thus, the venture capital market remains an untapped data source for researchers who want to evaluate the impact of CJ outlets and institutions. The M&A scenario further problematises CJ in several ways. First, CJ is framed as “oppositional” to traditional media, yet this may be used as a stratagem in a game theory framework with multiple stakeholders. Drexel Burnham Lambert’s financier Michael Milken used market populism to sell ‘high-yield’ or ‘junk’ bonds to investors whilst disrupting the Wall Street establishment in the late 1980s (Curtis) and CJ could fulfil a similar tactical purpose. Second, the M&A goal of some Web 2.0 firms could undermine the participatory goals of a site’s community if post-merger integration fails. Jason Calacanis’s sale of Weblogs, Inc to America Online in 2005 and MSNBC’s acquisition of Newsvine on 5 October 2007 (Newsvine) might be success stories. However, this raises issues of digital “property rights” if you contribute to a community that is then sold in an M&A transaction—an outcome closer to business process outsourcing. Third, media “buzz” can create an unrealistic vision when a CJ site fails to grow beyond its start-up phase. Backfence.com’s demise as a “hyperlocal” initiative (Caverly) is one cautionary event that recalls the 2000 dotcom crash. The M&A scenarios outlined above are market dystopias for CJ purists. The major lesson for CJ proponents is to include other market players in hypotheses about causation and correlation factors. 7. ‘Pro-Ams’ & Professional Journalism’s Crisis CJ emerged during a period when Professional Journalism faced a major crisis of ‘self-image’. The Demos report The Pro-Am Revolution (Leadbeater & Miller) popularised the notion of ‘professional amateurs’ which some CJ theorists adopt to strengthen their categorisation. In turn, this triggers a response from cultural theorists who fear bloggers are new media’s barbarians (Keen). I concede Leadbeater and Miller have identified an important category. However, how some CJ theorists then generalise from ‘Pro-Ams’ illustrates the danger of ‘weak’ theory referred to above. Leadbeater and Miller’s categorisation does not really include a counter-view on the strengths of professionals, as illustrated in humanistic consulting (Block), professional service firms (Maister; Maister, Green & Galford), and software development (McConnell). The signs of professionalism these authors mention include a commitment to learning and communal verification, mastery of a discipline and domain application, awareness of methodology creation, participation in mentoring, and cultivation of ethical awareness. Two key differences are discernment and quality of attention, as illustrated in how the legendary Hollywood film editor Walter Murch used Apple’s Final Cut Pro software to edit the 2003 film Cold Mountain (Koppelman). ‘Pro-Ams’ might not aspire to these criteria but Citizen Journalists shouldn’t throw out these standards, either. Doing so would be making the same mistake of overconfidence that technical analysts make against statistical arbitrageurs. Key processes—fact-checking, sub-editing and editorial decision-making—are invisible to the end-user, even if traceable in a blog or wiki publishing system, because of the judgments involved. One post-mortem insight from Assignment Zero was that these processes were vital to create the climate of authenticity and trust to sustain a Citizen Journalist community (Howe). CJ’s trouble with “objectivity” might also overlook some complexities, including the similarity of many bloggers to “noise traders” in financial markets and to op-ed columnists. Methodologies and reportage practices have evolved to deal with the objections that CJ proponents raise, from New Journalism’s radical subjectivity and creative non-fiction techniques (Wolfe & Johnson) to Precision Journalism that used descriptive statistics (Meyer). Finally, journalism frameworks could be updated with current research on how phenomenological awareness shapes our judgments and perceptions (Thompson). 8. Strategic Execution For me, one of CJ’s major weaknesses as a new media theory is its lack of “rich description” (Geertz) about the strategic execution of projects. As Disinfo.com site editor I encountered situations ranging from ‘denial of service’ attacks and spam to site migration, publishing systems that go offline, and ensuring an editorial consistency. Yet the messiness of these processes is missing from CJ theories and accounts. Theories that included this detail as “second-order interactions” (Carlile & Christensen 13) would offer a richer view of CJ. Many CJ and Web 2.0 projects fall into the categories of mini-projects, demonstration prototypes and start-ups, even when using a programming language such as Ajax or Ruby on Rails. Whilst the “bootstrap” process is a benefit, more longitudinal analysis and testing needs to occur, to ensure these projects are scalable and sustainable. For example, South Korea’s OhmyNews is cited as an exemplar that started with “727 citizen reporters and 4 editors” and now has “38,000 citizen reporters” and “a dozen editors” (Kolodzy 231). How does OhmyNews’s mix of hard and soft news change over time? Or, how does OhmyNews deal with a complex issue that might require major resources, such as security negotiations between North and South Korea? Such examples could do with further research. We need to go beyond “the vision thing” and look at the messiness of execution for deeper observations and counterintuitive correlations, to build new descriptive theories. 9. Future Research This essay argues that CJ needs re-evaluation. Its immediate legacy might be to splinter ‘journalism’ into micro-trends: Washington University’s Steve Boriss proclaims “citizen journalism is dead. Expert journalism is the future.” (Boriss; Mensching). The half-lives of such micro-trends demand new categorisations, which in turn prematurely feeds the theory-building cycle. Instead, future researchers could reinvigorate 21st century journalism if they ask deeper questions and return to the observation stage of building descriptive theories. In closing, below are some possible questions that future researchers might explore: Where are the “rich descriptions” of journalistic experience—“citizen”, “convergent”, “digital”, “Pro-Am” or otherwise in new media?How could practice-based approaches inform this research instead of relying on espoused theories-in-use?What new methodologies could be developed for CJ implementation?What role can the “heroic” individual reporter or editor have in “the swarm”?Do the claims about OhmyNews and other sites stand up to longitudinal observation?Are the theories used to justify Citizen Journalism’s normative stance (Rheingold; Surowiecki; Pesce) truly robust generalisations for strategic execution or do they reflect the biases of their creators?How could developers tap the conceptual dimensions of information technology innovation (Shasha) to create the next Facebook, MySpace or Wikipedia? References Argyris, Chris, and Donald Schon. Theory in Practice. 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