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  • 2020-2024  (8)
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  • 1
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Queensland University of Technology ; 2021
    In:  M/C Journal Vol. 24, No. 2 ( 2021-04-27)
    In: M/C Journal, Queensland University of Technology, Vol. 24, No. 2 ( 2021-04-27)
    Abstract: Introduction This article explores the changing relational quality of “the shadow of hierarchy”, in the context of the merging of platforms with infrastructure as the source of the shadow of hierarchy. In governance and regulatory studies, the shadow of hierarchy (or variations thereof), describes the space of influence that hierarchal organisations and infrastructures have (Héritier and Lehmkuhl; Lance et al.). A shift in who/what casts the shadow of hierarchy will necessarily result in changes to the attendant relational values, logics, and (techno)socialities that constitute the shadow, and a new arrangement of shadow that presents new challenges and opportunities. This article reflects on relevant literature to consider two different ways the shadow of hierarchy has qualitatively changed as platforms, rather than infrastructures, come to cast the shadow of hierarchy – an increase in scalability; and new socio-technical arrangements of (non)participation – and the opportunities and challenges therein. The article concludes that more concerted efforts are needed to design the shadow, given a seemingly directionless desire to enact data-driven solutions. The Shadow of Hierarchy, Infrastructures, and Platforms The shadow of hierarchy refers to how institutional, infrastructural, and organisational hierarchies create a relational zone of influence over a particular space. This commonly refers to executive decisions and legislation created by nation states, which are cast over private and non-governmental actors (Héritier and Lehmkuhl, 2). Lance et al. (252–53) argue that the shadow of hierarchy is a productive and desirable thing. Exploring the shadow of hierarchy in the context of how geospatial data agencies govern their data, Lance et al. find that the shadow of hierarchy enables the networked governance approaches that agencies adopt. This is because operating in the shadow of institutions provides authority, confers bureaucratic legitimacy and top-down power, and offers financial support. The darkness of the shadow is thus less a moral or ethicopolitical statement (such as that suggested by Fisher and Bolter, who use the idea of darkness to unpack the morality of tourism involving death and human suffering), and instead a relationality; an expression of differing values, logics, and (techno)socialities internal and external to those infrastructures and institutions that cast it (Gehl and McKelvey). The shadow of hierarchy might therefore be thought of as a field of relational influences and power that a social body casts over society, by virtue of a privileged position vis-a-vis society. It modulates society’s “light”; the resources (Bourdieu) and power relationships (Foucault) that run through social life, as parsed through a certain institutional and infrastructural worldview (the thing that blocks the light to create the shadow). In this way the shadow of hierarchy is not a field of absolute blackness that obscures, but instead a gradient of light and dark that creates certain effects. The shadow of hierarchy is now, however, also being cast by decentralised, privately held, and non-hierarchal platforms that are replacing or merging with public infrastructure, creating new social effects. Platforms are digital, socio-technical systems that create relationships between different entities. They are most commonly built around a relatively fixed core function (such as a social media service like Facebook), that then interacts with a peripheral set of complementors (advertising companies and app developers in the case of social media; Baldwin and Woodard), to create new relationships, forms of value, and other interactions (van Dijck, The Culture of Connectivity). In creating these relationships, platforms become inherently political (Gillespie), shaping relationships and content on the platform (Suzor) and in embodied life (Ajunwa; Eubanks). While platforms are often associated with optional consumer platforms (such as streaming services like Spotify), they have increasingly come to occupy the place of public infrastructure, and act as a powerful enabler to different socio-technical, economic, and political relationships (van Dijck, Governing Digital Societies). For instance, Plantin et al. argue that platforms have merged with infrastructures, and that once publicly held and funded institutions and essential services now share many characteristics with for-profit, privately held platforms. For example, Australia has had a long history of outsourcing employment services (Webster and Harding), and nearly privatised its entire visa processing data infrastructure (Jenkins). Platforms therefore have a greater role in casting the shadow of hierarchy than before. In doing so, they cast a shadow that is qualitatively different, modulated through a different set of relational values and (techno)socialities. Scalability A key difference and selling point of platforms is their scalability; since they can rapidly and easily up- and down-scale their functionalities in a way that traditional infrastructure cannot (Plantin et al.). The ability to respond “on-demand” to infrastructural requirements has made platforms the go-to service delivery option in the neo-liberalised public infrastructure environment (van Dijck, Governing Digital Societies). For instance, services providers like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure provide on demand computing capacity for many nations’ most valuable services, including their intelligence and security capabilities (Amoore, Cloud Ethics; Konkel). The value of such platforms to government lies in the reduced cost and risk that comes with using rented capabilities, and the enhanced flexibility to increase or decrease their usage as required, without any of the economic sunk costs attached to owning the infrastructure. Scalability is, however, not just about on-demand technical capability, but about how platforms can change the scale of socio-technical relationships and services that are mediated through the platform. This changes the relational quality of the shadow of hierarchy, as activities and services occurring within the shadow are now connected into a larger and rapidly modulating scale. Scalability allows the shadow of hierarchy to extend from those in proximity to institutions to the broader population in general. For example, individual citizens can more easily “reach up” into governmental services and agencies as a part of completing their everyday business through platform such as MyGov in Australia (Services Australia). Using a smartphone application, citizens are afforded a more personalised and adaptive experience of the welfare state, as engaging with welfare services is no-longer tied to specific “brick-and-mortar” locations, but constantly available through a smartphone app and web portal. Multiple government services including healthcare and taxation are also connected to this platform, allowing users to reach across multiple government service domains to complete their personal business, seeking information and services that would have once required separate communications with different branches of government. The individual’s capacities to engage with the state have therefore upscaled with this change in the shadow, retaining a productivity and capacity enhancing quality that is reminiscent of older infrastructures and institutions, as the individual and their lived context is brought closer to the institutions themselves. Scale, however, comes with complications. The fundamental driver for scalability and its adaptive qualities is datafication. This means individuals and organisations are inflecting their operational and relational logics with the logic of datafication: a need to capture all data, at all times (van Dijck, Datafication; Fourcade and Healy).  Platforms, especially privately held platforms, benefit significantly from this, as they rely on data to drive and refine their algorithmic tools, and ultimately create actionable intelligence that benefits their operations. Thus, scalability allows platforms to better “reach down” into individual lives and different social domains to fuel their operations. For example, as public transport services become increasingly datafied into mobility-as-a-service (MAAS) systems, ride sharing and on-demand transportation platforms like Uber and Lyft become incorporated into the public transport ecosystem (Lyons et al.). These platforms capture geospatial, behavioural, and reputational data from users and drivers during their interactions with the platform (Rosenblat and Stark; Attoh et al.). This generates additional value, and profits, for the platform itself with limited value returned to the user or the broader public it supports, outside of the transport service. It also places the platform in a position to gain wider access to the population and their data, by virtue of operating as a part of a public service. In this way the shadow of hierarchy may exacerbate inequity. The (dis)benefits of the shadow of hierarchy become unevenly spread amongst actors within its field, a function of an increased scalability that connects individuals into much broader assemblages of datafication. For Eubank, this can entrench existing economic and social inequalities by forcing those in need to engage with digitally mediated welfare systems that rely on distant and opaque computational judgements. Local services are subject to increased digital surveillance, a removal of agency from frontline advocates, and algorithmic judgement at scale. More fortunate citizens are also still at risk, with Nardi and Ekbia arguing that many digitally scaled relationships are examples of “heteromation”, whereby platforms convince actors in the platform to labour for free, such as through providing ratings which establish a platform’s reputational economy. Such labour fuels the operation of the platform through exploiting users, who become both a product/resource (as a source of data for third party advertisers) and a performer of unrewarded digital labour, such as through providing user reviews that help guide a platform’s algorithm(s). Both these examples represent a particularly disconcerting outcome for the shadow of hierarchy, which has its roots in public sector institutions who operate for a common good through shared and publicly held infrastructure. In shifting towards platforms, especially privately held platforms, value is transmitted to private corporations and not the public or the commons, as was the case with traditional infrastructure. The public also comes to own the risks attached to platforms if they become tied to public services, placing a further burden on the public if the platform fails, while reaping none of the profit and value generated through datafication. This is a poor bargain at best. (Non)Participation Scalability forms the basis for a further predicament: a changing socio-technical dynamic of (non)participation between individuals and services. According to Star (118), infrastructures are defined through their relationships to a given context. These relationships, which often exist as boundary objects between different communities, are “loosely structured in common use, and become tightly bound in particular locations” (Star, 118). While platforms are certainly boundary objects and relationally defined, the affordances of cloud computing have enabled a decoupling from physical location, and the operation of platforms across time and space through distributed digital nodes (smartphones, computers, and other localised hardware) and powerful algorithms that sort and process requests for service. This does not mean location is not important for the cloud (see Amoore, Cloud Geographies), but platforms are less likely to have a physically co-located presence in the same way traditional infrastructures had. Without the same institutional and infrastructural footprint, the modality for participating in and with the shadow of hierarchy that platforms cast becomes qualitatively different and predicated on digital intermediaries. Replacing a physical and human footprint with algorithmically supported and decentralised computing power allows scalability and some efficiency improvements, but it also removes taken-for-granted touchpoints for contestation and recourse. For example, ride-sharing platform Uber operates globally, and has expressed interest in operating in complement to (and perhaps in competition with) public transport services in some cities (Hall et al.; Conger). Given that Uber would come to operate as a part of the shadow of hierarchy that transport authorities cast over said cities, it would not be unreasonable to expect Uber to be subject to comparable advocacy, adjudication, transparency, and complaint-handling requirements. Unfortunately, it is unclear if this would be the case, with examples suggesting that Uber would use the scalability of its platform to avoid these mechanisms. This is revealed by ongoing legal action launched by concerned Uber drivers in the United Kingdom, who have sought access to the profiling data that Uber uses to manage and monitor its drivers (Sawers). The challenge has relied on transnational law (the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation), with UK-based drivers lodging claims in Amsterdam to initiate the challenge. Such costly and complex actions are beyond the means of many, but demonstrate how reasonable participation in socio-technical and governance relationships (like contestations) might become limited, depending on how the shadow of hierarchy changes with the incorporation of platforms.  Even if legal challenges for transparency are successful, they may not produce meaningful change. For instance, O’Neil links algorithmic bias to mathematical shortcomings in the variables used to measure the world; in the creation of irritational feedback loops based on incorrect data; and in the use of unsound data analysis techniques. These three factors contribute to inequitable digital metrics like predictive policing algorithms that disproportionately target racial minorities. Large amounts of selective data on minorities create myopic algorithms that direct police to target minorities, creating more selective data that reinforces the spurious model. These biases, however, are persistently inaccessible, and even when visible are often unintelligible to experts (Ananny and Crawford). The visibility of the technical “installed base” that support institutions and public services is therefore not a panacea, especially when the installed base (un)intentionally obfuscates participation in meaningful engagement like complaints handling.  A negative outcome is, however, also not an inevitable thing. It is entirely possible to design platforms to allow individual users to scale up and have opportunities for enhanced participation. For instance, eGovernance and mobile governance literature have explored how citizens engage with state services at scale (Thomas and Streib; Foth et al.), and the open government movement has demonstrated the effectiveness of open data in understanding government operations (Barns; Janssen et al.), although these both have their challenges (Chadwick; Dawes). It is not a fantasy to imagine alternative configurations of the shadow of hierarchy that allow more participatory relationships. Open data could facilitate the governance of platforms at scale (Box et al.), where users are enfranchised into a platform by some form of membership right and given access to financial and governance records, in the same way that corporate shareholders are enfranchised, facilitated by the same app that provides a service. This could also be extended to decision making through voting and polling functions. Such a governance form would require radically different legal, business, and institutional structures to create and enforce this arrangement. Delacoix and Lawrence, for instance, suggest that data trusts, where a trustee is assigned legal and fiduciary responsibility to achieve maximum benefit for a specific group’s data, can be used to negotiate legal and governance relationships that meaningfully benefit the users of the trust. Trustees can be instructed to only share data to services whose algorithms are regularly audited for bias and provide datasets that are accurate representations of their users, for instance, avoiding erroneous proxies that disrupt algorithmic models. While these developments are in their infancy, it is not unreasonable to reflect on such endeavours now, as the technologies to achieve these are already in use. Conclusions There is a persistent myth that data will yield better, faster, more complete results in whatever field it is applied (Lee and Cook; Fourcade and Healy; Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier; Kitchin). This myth has led to data-driven assemblages, including artificial intelligence, platforms, surveillance, and other data-technologies, being deployed throughout social life. The public sector is no exception to this, but the deployment of any technological solution within the traditional institutions of the shadow of hierarchy is fraught with challenges, and often results in failure or unintended consequences (Henman). The complexity of these systems combined with time, budgetary, and political pressures can create a contested environment. It is this environment that moulds societies' light and resources to cast the shadow of hierarchy. Relationality within a shadow of hierarchy that reflects the complicated and competing interests of platforms is likely to present a range of unintended social consequences that are inherently emergent because they are entering into a complex system – society – that is extremely hard to model. The relational qualities of the shadow of hierarchy are therefore now more multidimensional and emergent, and experiences relating to socio-technical features like scale, and as a follow-on (non)participation, are evidence of this. Yet by being emergent, they are also directionless, a product of complex systems rather than designed and strategic intent. This is not an inherently bad thing, but given the potential for data-system and platforms to have negative or unintended consequences, it is worth considering whether remaining directionless is the best outcome. There are many examples of data-driven systems in healthcare (Obermeyer et al.), welfare (Eubanks; Henman and Marston), and economics (MacKenzie), having unintended and negative social consequences. Appropriately guiding the design and deployment of theses system also represents a growing body of knowledge and practical endeavour (Jirotka et al.; Stilgoe et al.). Armed with the knowledge of these social implications, constructing an appropriate social architecture (Box and Lemon; Box et al.) around the platforms and data systems that form the shadow of hierarchy should be encouraged. This social architecture should account for the affordances and emergent potentials of a complex social, institutional, economic, political, and technical environment, and should assist in guiding the shadow of hierarchy away from egregious challenges and towards meaningful opportunities.  To be directionless is an opportunity to take a new direction. The intersection of platforms with public institutions and infrastructures has moulded society’s light into an evolving and emergent shadow of hierarchy over many domains. With the scale of the shadow changing, and shaping participation, who benefits and who loses out in the shadow of hierarchy is also changing. Equipped with insights into this change, we should not hesitate to shape this change, creating or preserving relationalities that offer the best outcomes. Defining, understanding, and practically implementing what the “best” outcome(s) are would be a valuable next step in this endeavour, and should prompt considerable discussion. If we wish the shadow of hierarchy to continue to be productive, then finding a social architecture to shape the emergence and directionlessness of socio-technical systems like platforms is an important step in the continued evolution of the shadow of hierarchy. References Ajunwa, Ifeoma. “Age Discrimination by Platforms.” Berkeley J. Emp. & Lab. L. 40 (2019): 1-30. Amoore, Louise. Cloud Ethics: Algorithms and the Attributes of Ourselves and Others. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020. ———. “Cloud Geographies: Computing, Data, Sovereignty.” Progress in Human Geography 42.1 (2018): 4-24. Ananny, Mike, and Kate Crawford. “Seeing without Knowing: Limitations of the Transparency Ideal and Its Application to Algorithmic Accountability.” New Media & Society 20.3 (2018): 973–89. Attoh, Kafui, et al. “‘We’re Building Their Data’: Labor, Alienation, and Idiocy in the Smart City.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 37.6 (2019): 1007-24. Baldwin, Carliss Y., and C. Jason Woodard. “The Architecture of Platforms: A Unified View.” Platforms, Markets and Innovation. Ed. Annabelle Gawer. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2009. 19–44. Barns, Sarah. “Mine Your Data: Open Data, Digital Strategies and Entrepreneurial Governance by Code.” Urban Geography 37.4 (2016): 554–71. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. Box, Paul, et al. Data Platforms for Smart Cities – A Landscape Scan and Recommendations for Smart City Practice. Canberra: CSIRO, 2020. Box, Paul, and David Lemon. The Role of Social Architecture in Information Infrastructure: A Report for the National Environmental Information Infrastructure (NEII). Canberra: CSIRO, 2015. Chadwick, Andrew. “Explaining the Failure of an Online Citizen Engagement Initiative: The Role of Internal Institutional Variables.” Journal of Information Technology & Politics 8.1 (2011): 21–40. Conger, Kate. “Uber Wants to Sell You Train Tickets. And Be Your Bus Service, Too.” The New York Times, 7 Aug. 2019. 19 Jan. 2021.  〈 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/technology/uber-train-bus-public-transit.html 〉 .  Dawes, Sharon S. “The Evolution and Continuing Challenges of E‐Governance.” Public Administration Review 68 (2008): 86–102. Delacroix, Sylvie, and Neil D. Lawrence. “Bottom-Up Data Trusts: Disturbing the ‘One Size Fits All’ Approach to Data Governance.” International Data Privacy Law 9.4 (2019): 236-252. Eubanks, Virginia. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2018. Fisher, Joshua A., and Jay David Bolter. “Ethical Considerations for AR Experiences at Dark Tourism Sites”. IEEE Explore 29 April. 2019. 13 Apr. 2021 〈 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8699186 〉 . Foth, Marcus, et al. From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen: Urban Informatics, Social Media, Ubiquitous Computing, and Mobile Technology to Support Citizen Engagement. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2011. Fourcade, Marion, and Kieran Healy. “Seeing like a Market.” Socio-Economic Review, 15.1 (2017): 9–29. Gehl, Robert, and Fenwick McKelvey. “Bugging Out: Darknets as Parasites of Large-Scale Media Objects.” Media, Culture & Society 41.2 (2019): 219–35. Gillespie, Tarleton. “The Politics of ‘Platforms.’” New Media & Society 12.3 (2010): 347–64. Hall, Jonathan D., et al. “Is Uber a Substitute or Complement for Public Transit?” Journal of Urban Economics 108 (2018): 36–50. Henman, Paul. “Improving Public Services Using Artificial Intelligence: Possibilities, Pitfalls, Governance.” Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration 42.4 (2020): 209–21. Henman, Paul, and Greg Marston. “The Social Division of Welfare Surveillance.” Journal of Social Policy 37.2 (2008): 187–205. Héritier, Adrienne, and Dirk Lehmkuhl. “Introduction: The Shadow of Hierarchy and New Modes of Governance.” Journal of Public Policy 28.1 (2008): 1–17. Janssen, Marijn, et al. “Benefits, Adoption Barriers and Myths of Open Data and Open Gov ernment.” Information Systems Management 29.4 (2012): 258–68. Jenkins, Shannon. “Visa Privatisation Plan Scrapped, with New Approach to Tackle ’Emerging Global Threats’.” The Mandarin. 23 Mar. 2020. 19 Jan. 2021 〈 https://www.themandarin.com.au/128244-visa-privatisation-plan-scrapped-with-new-approach-to-tackle-emerging-global-threats/ 〉 . Jirotka, Marina, et al. “Responsible Research and Innovation in the Digital Age.” Communications of the ACM 60.6 (2016): 62–68. Kitchin, Rob. The Data Revolution: Big Data, Open Data, Data Infrastructures and Their Consequences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2014. Konkel, Frank. “CIA Awards Secret Multibillion-Dollar Cloud Contract.” Nextgov 20 Nov. 2020. 19 Jan. 2021 〈 https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2020/11/exclusive-cia-awards-secret-multibillion-dollar-cloud-contract/170227/ 〉 . Lance, Kate T., et al. “Cross‐Agency Coordination in the Shadow of Hierarchy: ‘Joining up’Government Geospatial Information Systems.” International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 23.2 (2009): 249–69. Lee, Ashlin J., and Peta S. Cook. “The Myth of the ‘Data‐Driven’ Society: Exploring the Interactions of Data Interfaces, Circulations, and Abstractions.” Sociology Compass 14.1 (2020): 1–14. Lyons, Glenn, et al. “The Importance of User Perspective in the Evolution of MaaS.” Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 121(2019): 22-36. MacKenzie, Donald. “‘Making’, ‘Taking’ and the Material Political Economy of Algorithmic Trading.” Economy and Society 47.4 (2018): 501-23. Mayer-Schönberger, V., and K. Cukier. Big Data: A Revolution That Will Change How We Live, Work and Think. London: John Murray, 2013. Michel Foucault. Discipline and Punish. London: Penguin, 1977. Nardi, Bonnie, and Hamid Ekbia. Heteromation, and Other Stories of Computing and Capitalism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017. O’Neil, Cathy. Weapons of Math Destruction – How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. London: Penguin, 2017. Obermeyer, Ziad, et al. “Dissecting Racial Bias in an Algorithm Used to Manage the Health of Populations.” Science 366.6464 (2019): 447-53. Plantin, Jean-Christophe, et al. “Infrastructure Studies Meet Platform Studies in the Age of Google and Facebook.” New Media & Society 20.1 (2018): 293–310. Rosenblat, Alex, and Luke Stark. “Algorithmic Labor and Information Asymmetries: A Case Study of Uber’s Drivers.” International Journal of Communication 10 (2016): 3758–3784. Sawers, Paul. “Uber Drivers Sue for Data on Secret Profiling and Automated Decision-Making.” VentureBeat 20 July. 2020. 19 Jan. 2021 〈 https://venturebeat.com/2020/07/20/uber-drivers-sue-for-data-on-secret-profiling-and-automated-decision-making/ 〉 . Services Australia. About MyGov. Services Australia 19 Jan. 2021. 19 Jan. 2021 〈 https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/subjects/about-mygov 〉 . Star, Susan Leigh. “Infrastructure and Ethnographic Practice: Working on the Fringes.” Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems 14.2 (2002):107-122. Stilgoe, Jack, et al. “Developing a Framework for Responsible Innovation.” Research Policy 42.9 (2013):1568-80. Suzor, Nicolas. Lawless: The Secret Rules That Govern Our Digital Lives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Thomas, John Clayton, and Gregory Streib. “The New Face of Government: Citizen‐initiated Contacts in the Era of E‐Government.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 13.1 (2003): 83-102. Van Dijck, José. “Datafication, Dataism and Dataveillance: Big Data between Scientific Paradigm and Ideology.” Surveillance & Society 12.2 (2014): 197–208. ———. “Governing Digital Societies: Private Platforms, Public Values.” Computer Law & Security Review 36 (2020) 13 Apr. 2021 〈 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0267364919303887 〉 . ———. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Webster, Elizabeth, and Glenys Harding. “Outsourcing Public Employment Services: The Australian Experience.” Australian Economic Review 34.2 (2001): 231-42.
    Type of Medium: Online Resource
    ISSN: 1441-2616
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    Publisher: Queensland University of Technology
    Publication Date: 2021
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  • 2
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Queensland University of Technology ; 2020
    In:  M/C Journal Vol. 23, No. 5 ( 2020-10-07)
    In: M/C Journal, Queensland University of Technology, Vol. 23, No. 5 ( 2020-10-07)
    Abstract: I have decided to launch a campaign against the skyscraper, that hideous, mediocre form of architecture…. Today we only have an empty version of it, only competing in height.— Rem Koolhaas, “Kool Enough for Beijing?”Figure 1: The CCTV Headquarters—A Courtyard in the Air. Cher Coad, 2020.Introduction: An Anomaly within an Anomaly Construction of Beijing’s China Central Television Headquarters (henceforth CCTV Headquarters) began in 2004 and the building was officially completed in 2012. It is a project by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) headed by Rem Koolhaas (1944-), who has been called “the coolest, hippest, and most cutting-edge architect on the planet”(“Rem Koolhaas Biography”). The CCTV Headquarters is a distinctive feature of downtown Beijing and is heavily associated in the Western world with 21st-century China. It is often used as the backdrop for reports from the China correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Bill Birtles. The construction of the CCTV Headquarters, however, was very much an international enterprise. Koolhaas himself is Dutch, and the building was one of the first projects the OMA did outside of America after 9/11. As Koolhaas describes it: we had incredible emphasis on New York for five years, and America for five years, and what we decided to do after September 11 when we realized that, you know, things were going to be different in America: [was] to also orient ourselves eastwards [Koolhaas goes on to describe two projects: the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia and the CCTV Headquarters] . (Rem Koolhaas Interview) Problematically, Koolhaas claims that the building we created for CCTV could never have been conceived by the Chinese and could never have been built by Europeans. It is a hybrid by definition. It was also a partnership, not a foreign imposition…. There was a huge Chinese component from the very beginning. We tried to do a building that conveys that it has emerged from the local situation. (Fraioli 117) Our article reinterprets this reading. We suggest that the OMA’s “incredible emphasis” on America—home of the world’s first skyscraper: the Home Insurance Building built in 1885 in Chicago, Illinois—pivotally spills over into its engagement with China. The emergence of the CCTV Headquarters “from the local situation”, such as it is, is more in spite of Koolhaas’s stated “hybrid” approach than because of it, for what’s missing from his analysis of the CCTV Headquarters’ provenance is the siheyuan or classical Chinese courtyard house. We will argue that the CCTV Headquarters is an anomaly within an anomaly in contemporary Beijing’s urban landscape, to the extent that it turns the typologies of both the (vertical, American) skyscraper and the (horizontal, Chinese) siheyuan on a 90 degree angle.  The important point to make here, however, is that these two anomalous elements of the building are not of the same order. While the anomalous re-configuration of the skyscraper typology is clearly part of Koolhaas’s architectural manifesto, it is against his architectural intentionality that the CCTV Headquarters sustains the typology of the siheyuan. This bespeaks the persistent and perhaps functional presence of traditional Chinese architecture and urbanism in the building. Koolhaas’s building contains both starkly evident and more secretive anomalies. Ironically then, there is a certain truth in Koolhaas’s words, beneath the critique we made of it above as an example of American-dominated, homogenising globalisation. And the significance of the CCTV Headquarters’ hybridity as both skyscraper and siheyuan can be elaborated through Daniel M. Abramson’s thesis that a consideration of unbuilt architecture has the potential to re-open architecture to its historical conditions. Roberto Schwarz argues that “forms are the abstract of specific social relationships” (53). Drawing on Schwarz’s work and Abramson’s, we conclude that the historical presence—as secretive anomaly—of the siheyuan in the CCTV Headquarters suggests that the building’s formal debt to the siheyuan (more so than to the American skyscraper) may continue to unsettle the “specific social relationship” of Chinese to Western society (Schwarz 53). The site of this unsettlement, we suggest, is data. The CCTV Headquarters might well be the most data-rich site in all of China—it is, after all, a monumental television station. Suggestively, this wealth of airborne data is literally enclosed within the aerial “courtyard”, with its classical Chinese form, of the CCTV Headquarters. This could hardly be irrelevant in the context of the geo-politics of globalised data. The “form of data”, to coin a phrase, radiates through all the social consequences of data flow and usage, and here the form of data is entwined with a form always already saturated with social consequence. The secretive architectural anomaly of Koolhaas’s building is thus a heterotopic space within the broader Western engagement with China, so much of which relates to flows and captures of data. The Ubiquitous Siheyuan or Classical Chinese Courtyard House According to Ying Liu and Adenrele Awotona, “the courtyard house, a residential compound with buildings surrounding a courtyard on four (or sometimes three) sides, has been representative of housing patterns for over one thousand years in China” (248). Liu and Awotona state that “courtyard house patterns could be found in many parts of China, but the most typical forms are those located in the Old City in Beijing, the capital of China for over eight hundred years” (252). In their reading, the siheyuan is a peculiarly elastic architectural typology, whose influence is present as much in the Forbidden City as in the humble family home (252). Prima facie then, it is not surprising that it has also secreted itself within the architectural form of Koolhaas’s creation. It is important to note, however, that while the “most typical forms” of the siheyuan are indeed still to be found in Beijing, the courtyard house is an increasingly uncommon sight in the Chinese capital. An article in the China Daily from 2004 refers to the “few remaining siheyuan” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). That said, all is not lost for the siheyuan. Liu and Awotona discuss how the classical form of the courtyard house has been modified to more effectively house current residents in the older parts of Beijing while protecting “the horizontal planning feature of traditional Beijing” (254). “Basic design principles” (255) of the siheyuan have supported “a transition from the traditional single-household courtyard housing form to a contemporary multi-household courtyard housing form” (254). In this process, approaches of “urban renewal [involving] demolition” and “preservation, renovation and rebuilding” have been taken (255). Donia Zhang extends the work of Liu and Awotona in the elaboration of her thesis that “Chinese-Americans interested in building Chinese-style courtyard houses in America are keen to learn about their architectural heritage” (47). Zhang’s article concludes with an illustration that shows how the siheyuan may be merged with the typical American suburban dwelling (66). The final thing to emphasise about the siheyuan is what Liu and Awotona describe as its “special introverted quality” (249). The form is saturated with social consequence by virtue of its philosophical undergirding. The coincidence of philosophies of Daoism (including feng-shui) and Confucianism in the architecture and spatiality of the classical Chinese courtyard house makes it an exceedingly odd anomaly of passivity and power (250-51). The courtyard itself has a highly charged role in the management of family, social and cultural life, which, we suggest, survives its transposition into novel architectural environments. Figure 2: The CCTV Headquarters—Looking Up at “The Overhang”. Cher Coad, 2020. The CCTV Headquarters: A New Type of Skyscraper? Rem Koolhaas is not the only architect to interrogate the standard skyscraper typology. In his essay from 1999, “The Architecture of the Future”, Norman Foster argues that “the world’s increasing ecological crisis” (278) is in part a function of “unchecked urban sprawl” (279). A new type of skyscraper, he suggests, might at least ameliorate the sprawl of our cities: the Millennium Tower that we have proposed in Tokyo takes a traditional horizontal city quarter—housing, shops, restaurants, cinemas, museums, sporting facilities, green spaces and public transport networks—and turns it on its side to create a super-tall building with a multiplicity of uses … . It would create a virtually self-sufficient, fully self-sustaining community in the sky. (279) Koolhaas follows suit, arguing that “the actual point of the skyscraper—to increase worker density—has been lost. Skyscrapers are now only momentary points of high density spaced so far apart that they don’t actually increase density at all” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”).  Foster’s solution to urban sprawl is to make the horizontal (an urban segment) vertical; Koolhaas’s is to make the vertical horizontal: “we’ve [OMA] come up with two types: a very low-rise series of buildings, or a single, condensed hyperbuilding. What we’re doing with CCTV is a prototype of the hyperbuilding” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). Interestingly, the “low-rise” type mentioned here brings to mind the siheyuan—textual evidence, perhaps, that the siheyuan is always already a silent fellow traveller of the CCTV Headquarters project. The CCTV Headquarters is, even at over 200 metres tall itself, an anomaly of horizontalism amidst Beijing’s pervasive skyscraper verticality. As Paul Goldberger reports, “some Beijingers have taken to calling it Big Shorts”, which again evokes horizontality. This is its most obvious anomaly, and a somewhat melancholy reminder of “the horizontal planning feature of traditional Beijing” now mutilated by skyscrapers (Liu and Awotona 254). In the same gesture, however, with which it lays the skyscraper on its side, Koolhaas’s creation raises into the air the shape of the courtyard of a classical Chinese house. To our knowledge, no one has noticed this before, let alone written about it. It is, to be sure, a genuine courtyard shape—not merely an archway or a bridge with unoccupied space between. Pure building entirely surrounds the vertical courtyard shape formed in the air. Most images of the building provide an orientation that maximises the size of its vertical courtyard. To this extent, the (secret) courtyard shape of the building is hidden in plain sight. It is possible, however, to make the courtyard narrow to a mere slit of space, and finally to nothing, by circumnavigating the building. Certain perspectives on the building can even make it look like a more-or-less ordinary skyscraper. But, as a quick google-image search reveals, such views are rare. What seems to make the building special to people is precisely that part of it that is not building. Furthermore, anyone approaching the CCTV Headquarters with the intention of locating a courtyard typology within its form will be disappointed unless they look to its vertical plane. There is no hint of a courtyard at the base of the building. Figure 3: The CCTV Headquarters—View from “The Overhang”. Cher Coad, 2020.Figure 4: The CCTV Headquarters—Looking through the Floor of “The Overhang”. Cher Coad, 2020.Visiting the CCTV Headquarters: A “Special Introverted Quality?” In January 2020, we visited the CCTV Headquarters, ostensibly as audience members for a recording of a science spectacular show. Towards the end of the recording, we were granted a quick tour of the building. It is rare for foreigners to gain access to the sections of the building we visited. Taking the lift about 40 floors up, we arrived at the cantilever level—known informally as “the overhang”. Glass discs in the floor allow one to walk out over nothingness, looking down on ant-like pedestrians. Looking down like this was also to peer into the vacant “courtyard” of the building—into a structure “turned or pushed inward on itself”, which is the anatomical definition of “introverted” (Oxford Languages Dictionary). Workers in the building evinced no great affection for it, and certainly nothing of our wide-eyed wonder. Somebody said, “it’s just a place to work”. One of this article’s authors, Patrick West, seemed to feel the overhang almost imperceptibly vibrating beneath him. (Still, he has also experienced this sensation in conventional skyscrapers.) We were told the rumour that the building has started to tilt over dangerously. Being high in the air, but also high on the air, with nothing but air beneath us, felt edgy—somehow special—our own little world. Koolhaas promotes the CCTV Headquarters as (in paraphrase) “its own city, its own community” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). This resonated with us on our visit. Conventional skyscrapers fracture any sense of community through their segregated floor-upon-floor verticality; there is never enough room for a little patch of horizontal urbanism to unroll. Within “the overhang”, the CCTV Headquarters felt unlike a standard skyscraper, as if we were in an urban space magically levitated from the streets below. Sure, we had been told by one of the building’s inhabitants that it was “just a place to work”—but compared to the bleak sterility of most skyscraper work places, it wasn’t that sterile. The phrase Liu and Awotona use of the siheyuan comes to mind here, as we recall our experience; somehow, we had been inside a different type of building, one with its own “special introverted quality” (249). Special, that is, in the sense of containing just so much of horizontal urbanism as allows the building to retain its introverted quality as “its own city” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). Figure 5: The CCTV Headquarters—View from “The Overhang”. Cher Coad, 2020.Figure 6: The CCTV Headquarters—Inside “The Overhang”. Cher Coad, 2020. Unbuilt Architecture: The Visionary and the Contingent Within the present that it constitutes, built architecture is surrounded by unbuilt architecture at two interfaces: where the past ends; where the future begins. The soupy mix of urbanism continually spawns myriad architectural possibilities, and any given skyscraper is haunted by all the skyscrapers it might have been. History and the past hang heavily from them. Meanwhile, architectural programme or ambition—such as it is—pulls in the other direction: towards an idealised (if not impossible to practically realise) future. Along these lines, Koolhaas and the OMA are plainly a future-directed, as well as self-aware, architectural unit: at OMA we try to build in the greatest possible tolerance and the least amount of rigidity in terms of embodying one particular moment. We want our buildings to evolve. A building has at least two lives—the one imagined by its maker and the life it lives afterward—and they are never the same. (Fraioli 115)  Koolhaas makes the same point even more starkly with regard to the CCTV Headquarters project through his use of the word “prototype”: “what we’re doing with CCTV is a prototype of the hyperbuilding” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). At the same time, however, as the presence of the siheyuan within the architecture of the CCTV Headquarters shows, the work of the OMA cannot escape from the superabundance of history, within which, as Roberto Schwarz claims, “forms are the abstract of specific social relationships” (53). Supporting our contentions here, Daniel M. Abramson notes that unbuilt architecture implies two sub-categories … the visionary unbuilt, and the contingent … . Visionary schemes invite a forward glance, down one true, vanguard path to a reformed society and discipline. The contingent unbuilts, conversely, invite a backward glance, along multiple routes history might have gone, each with its own likelihood and validity; no privileged truths. (Abramson)Introducing Abramson’s theory to the example of the CCTV Headquarters, the “visionary unbuilt” lines up with Koolhaas’ thesis that the building is a future-directed “prototype”. while the clearest candidate for the “contingent unbuilt”, we suggest, is the siheyuan. Why? Firstly, the siheyuan is hidden in plain sight, within the framing architecture of the CCTV Headquarters; secondly, it is ubiquitous in Beijing urbanism—little wonder then that it turns up, unannounced, in this Beijing building; thirdly, and related to the second point, the two buildings share a “special introverted quality” (Liu and Awotona 249). “The contingent”, in this case, is the anomaly nestled within the much more blatant “visionary” (or futuristic) anomaly—the hyperbuilding to come—of the Beijing-embedded CCTV Headquarters. Koolhaas’s building’s most fascinating anomaly relates, not to any forecast of the future, but to the subtle persistence of the past—its muted quotation of the ancient siheyuan form. Our article is, in part, a response to Abramson’s invitation to “pursue … the consequences of the unbuilt … [and thus] to open architectural history more fully to history”. We have supplemented Abramson’s idea with Schwarz’s suggestion that “forms are the abstract of specific social relationships” (53). The anomaly of the siheyuan—alongside that of the hyperbuilding—within the CCTV headquarters, opens the building up (paraphrasing Abramson) to a fuller analysis of its historical positioning within Western and Eastern flows of globalisation (or better, as we are about to suggest, of glocalisation). In parallel, its form (paraphrasing Schwarz) abstracts and re-presents this history’s specific social relationships. Figure 7: The CCTV Headquarters—A Courtyard of Data. Cher Coad, 2020.Conclusion: A Courtyard of Data and Tensions of Glocalisation Koolhaas proposes that the CCTV Headquarters was “a partnership, not a foreign imposition” and that the building “emerged from the local situation” (Fraioli 117). To us, this smacks of Pollyanna globalisation. The CCTV Headquarters is, we suggest, more accurately read as an imposition of the American skyscraper typology, albeit in anomalous form. (One might even argue that the building’s horizontal deviation from the vertical norm reinforces that norm.) Still, amidst a thicket of conventionally vertical skyscrapers, the building’s horizontalism does have the anomalous effect of recalling “the horizontal planning feature of traditional Beijing” (Liu and Awotona 254). Buried within its horizontalism, however, lies a more secretive anomaly in the form of a vertical siheyuan. This anomaly, we contend, motivates a terminological shift from “globalisation” to “glocalisation”, for the latter term better captures the notion of a lack of reconciliation between the “global” and the “local” in the building.  Koolhaas’s visionary architectural programme explicitly advances anomaly. The CCTV Headquarters radically reworks the skyscraper typology as the prototype of a hyperbuilding defined by horizontalism. Certainly, such ho rizontalism recalls the horizontal plane of pre-skyscraper Beijing and, if faintly, that plane’s ubiquitous feature: the classical courtyard house. Simultaneously, however, the siheyuan has a direct if secretive presence within the morphology of the CCTV Headquarters, even as any suggestion of a vertical courtyard is strikingly absent from Koolhaas’s vanguard manifesto. To this extent, the hyperbuilding fits within Abramson’s category of “the visionary unbuilt”, while the siheyuan aligns with Abramson’s “contingent unbuilt” descriptor. The latter is the “might have been” that, largely under the pressure of its ubiquity as Beijing vernacular architecture, “very nearly is”. Drawing on Schwarz’s idea that “forms are the abstract of specific social relationships”, we propose that the siheyuan, as anomalous form of the CCTV Headquarters, is a heterotopic space within the hybrid global harmony (to paraphrase Koolhaas) purportedly represented by the building (53). In this space thus formed collides the built-up historical and philosophical social intensity of the classical Chinese courtyard house and the intensities of data flows and captures that help constitute the predominantly capitalist and neo-liberalist “social relationship” of China and the Western world—the world of the skyscraper (Schwarz). Within the siheyuan of the CCTV Headquarters, globalised data is literally enveloped by Daoism and Confucianism; it is saturated with the social consequence of local place. The term “glocalisation” is, we suggest, to be preferred here to “globalisation”, because of how it better reflects such vernacular interruptions to the hegemony of globalised space. Forms delineate social relationships, and data, which both forms and is formed by social relationships, may be formed by architecture as much as anything else within social space. Attention to the unbuilt architectural forms (vanguard and contingent) contained within the CCTV Headquarters reveals layers of anomaly that might, ultimately, point to another form of architecture entirely, in which glocal tensions are not only recognised, but resolved. Here, Abramson’s historical project intersects, in the final analysis, with a worldwide politics.  Figure 8: The CCTV Headquarters—A Sound Stage in Action. Cher Coad, 2020. References  Abramson, Daniel M. “Stakes of the Unbuilt.” Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative. 20 July 2020. 〈 http://we-aggregate.org/piece/stakes-of-the-unbuilt 〉 .Foster, N. “The Architecture of the Future.” The Architecture Reader: Essential Writings from Vitruvius to the Present. Ed. A. Krista Sykes. New York: George Braziller, 2007: 276-79. Fraioli, Paul. “The Invention and Reinvention of the City: An Interview with Rem Koolhaas.” Journal of International Affairs 65.2 (Spring/Summer 2012): 113-19. Goldberger, Paul. “Forbidden Cities: Beijing’s Great New Architecture Is a Mixed Blessing for the City.” The New Yorker—The Sky Line. 23 June 2008. 〈 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/30/forbidden-cities 〉 .“Kool Enough for Beijing?” China Daily. 2 March 2004. 〈 https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-03/02/content_310800.htm 〉 . Liu, Ying, and Adenrele Awotona. “The Traditional Courtyard House in China: Its Formation and Transition.” Evolving Environmental Ideals—Changing Way of Life, Values and Design Practices: IAPS 14 Conference Proceedings. IAPS. Stockholm, Sweden: Royal Institute of Technology, 1996: 248-60. 〈 https://iaps.architexturez.net/system/files/pdf/1202bm1029.content.pdf 〉 .Oxford Languages Dictionary. “Rem Koolhaas Biography.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. 20 July 2020. 〈 https://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ge-La/Koolhaas-Rem.html 〉 . “Rem Koolhaas Interview.” Manufacturing Intellect. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 2003. 〈 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW187PwSjY0 〉 .Schwarz, Roberto. Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture. New York: Verso, 1992. Zhang, Donia. “Classical Courtyard Houses of Beijing: Architecture as Cultural Artifact.” Space and Communication 1.1 (Dec. 2015): 47-68. 
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    Queensland University of Technology ; 2023
    In:  M/C Journal Vol. 26, No. 1 ( 2023-03-15)
    In: M/C Journal, Queensland University of Technology, Vol. 26, No. 1 ( 2023-03-15)
    Abstract: Introduction Daffodil Day, usually held in spring, raises funds for cancer awareness and research using this symbol of hope. On that day, people who donate money to this good cause are usually given a yellow daffodil pin to wear. When I lived in Auckland, New Zealand, on the last Friday in August most people walking around the city centre proudly wore a cheerful yellow flower. So many people generously participated in this initiative that one almost felt obliged to join the cause in order to wear the ‘uniform’ – the daffodil pin – as everyone else did on that day. To donate and to wear a daffodil is the social expectation, and operating in social environment people often endeavour to meet the expectation by doing the ‘appropriate things’ defined by societies or communities. After all, who does not like to receive a beam of acceptance and appreciation from a fellow daffodil bearer in Auckland’s Queen Street? States in international society are no different. In some ways, states wear ‘uniforms’ while executing domestic and foreign affairs just as human beings do within their social groups. States develop the understandings of desirable behaviour from the international community with which they interact and identify. They are ‘socialised’ to act in line with the expectations of international community. These expectations are expressed in the form of international norms, a prescriptive set of ideas about the ‘appropriate behaviour for actors with a given identity’ (Finnemore and Sikkink 891). Motivated by this logic of appropriateness, states that comply with certain international norms in world politics justify and undertake actions that are considered appropriate for their identities. This essay starts with examining how international norms can be spread to different countries through the process of ‘state socialisation’ (how the countries are ‘talked into’ wearing the ‘uniform’). Second, the essay investigates the idea of ‘cultural match’: how domestic actors comply with an international norm by interpreting and manipulating it according to their local political and legal practices (how the countries wear the ‘uniform’ differently). Lastly, the essay probes the current international normative community and the liberal values embedded in major international norms (whether states would continue wearing the ‘uniform’). International Norms and State Socialisation: Why Do States Wear the ‘Uniforms’? Norm diffusion is related to the efforts of ‘norm entrepreneurs’ using various platforms to convince a critical mass of states to embrace new norms (Finnemore and Sikkink 895-896). Early studies of norm diffusion tend to emphasise nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) as norm entrepreneurs and advocates, such as Oxfam and its goal of reducing poverty and hunger worldwide (Capie 638). In other empirical research, intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) were shown to serve as ‘norm teachers,’ such as UNESCO educating developing countries the value of science policy organisations (Finnemore 581-586). Additionally, states and other international actors can also play important roles in norm diffusion. Powerful states with more communication resources sometimes enjoy advantages in creating and promoting new norms (Florini 375). For example, the United States and Western European countries have often been considered as the major proponents of free trade. Norm emergence and state socialisation in a normative community often occurs during critical historical periods, such as wars and major economic downturns, when international changes and domestic crises often coincide with each other (Ikenberry and Kupchan 292). For instance, the norm entrepreneurs of ‘responsible power/state’ can be traced back to the great powers (mainly the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union) and their management of international order at the end of WWII (see Bull). With their negotiations and series of international agreements at the Cairo, Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam Conference in the 1940s, these great powers established a post-World War international society based on the key liberal values of international peace and security, free trade, human rights, and democracy. Human beings are not born to know what appropriate behaviour is; we learn social norms from parents, schools, peers, and other community members. International norms are collective expectations and understanding of how state governments should approach their domestic and foreign affairs. States ‘learn’ international norms while socialising with a normative community. From a sociological perspective, socialisation summarises ‘how and to what extent diverse individuals are meshed with the requirement of collective life’ at the societal level (Long and Hadden 39). It mainly consists of the process of training and shaping newcomers by the group members and the social adjustment of novices to the normative framework and the logic of appropriateness (Long and Hadden 39). Similarly, social psychology defines socialisation as the process in which ‘social organisations influence the action and experience of individuals’ (Gold and Douvan 145). Inspired by sociology and psychology, political scientists consider socialisation to be the mechanism through which norm entrepreneurs persuade other actors (usually a norm novice) to adhere to a particular prescriptive standard (Johnston, “Social State” 16). Norm entrepreneurs can change novices’ behaviour by the methods of persuasion and social influence (Johnston, “Treating International Institutions” 496-506). Socialisation sometimes demands that individual actors should comply with organisational norms by changing their interests or preferences (persuasion). Norm entrepreneurs often attempt to construct an appealing cognitive frame in order to persuade the novices (either individuals or states) to change their normative preferences or adopt new norms. They tend to use language that can ‘name, interpret and dramatise’ the issues related to the emerging norm (Finnemore and Sikkink 987). As a main persuasive device, ‘framing’ can provide a singular interpretation and appropriate behavioural response for a particular situation (Payne 39). Cognitive consistency theory found in psychology has suggested the mechanism of ‘analogy’, which indicates that actors are more likely to accept new ideas that share some similarities to the extant belief or ideas that they have already accepted (see Hybel, ch. 2). Based on this understanding, norm entrepreneurs usually frame issues in a way that can associate and resonate with the shared value of the targeted novices (Payne 43). For example, Finnemore’s research shows that when it promoted the creation of state science bureaucracies in the 1960s, UNESCO associated professional science policy-making with the appropriate role of a modern state, which was well received by the post-war developing countries in Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia (Finnemore 565-597). Socialisation can also emanate actors’ pro-norm behaviour through a cost-benefit calculation made with social rewards and punishments (social influence). A normative community can use the mechanism of back-patting and opprobrium to distribute social reward and punishment. Back-patting – ‘recognition, praise and normative support’ – is offered for a novice’s or member’s cooperative and pro-norm behaviour (Johnston, “Treating International Institutions” 503). In contrast, opprobrium associated with status denial and identity rejection can create social and psychological costs (Johnston 504). Both the reward and punishment grow in intensity with the number of co-operators (Johnston 504). A larger community can often create more criticism towards rule-breakers, and thus greatly increase the cost of disobedience. For instance, the lack of full commitment from major powers, such as China, the United States, and some other OECD countries, has arguably made global collective action towards mitigating climate change more difficult, as the cost of non-compliance is relatively low. While being in a normative environment, novice or emerging states that have not yet been socialised into the international community can respond to persuasion and social influence through the processes of identification and mimicking. Social psychology indicates that when one actor accepts persuasion or social influence based on its desire to build or maintain a ‘satisfying self-defining relationship’ to another actor, the mechanism of identification starts to work (Kelman 53). Identification among a social group can generate ‘obligatory’ behaviour, where individual states make decisions by attempting to match their perceptions of ‘who they are’ (national identity) with the expectation of the normative community (Glodgeier and Tetlock 82). After identifying with the normative community, a novice state would then mimic peer states’ pro-norm behaviour in order to be considered as a qualified member of the social group. For example, when the Chinese government was deliberating over its ratification of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in 2003, a Ministry of Environmental Protection brief noted that China should ratify the Protocol as soon as possible because China had always been a country ‘keeping its word’ in international society, and non-ratification would largely ‘undermine China’s international image and reputation’ (Ministry of Environmental Protection of PRC). Despite the domestic industry’s disagreement with entering into the Protocol, the Chinese government’s self-identification as a ‘responsible state’ that performs its international promises and duties played an important role in China’s adoption of the international norm of biosafety. Domestic Salience of International Norms:  How Do States Wear the ‘Uniforms’ Differently? Individual states do not accept international norms passively; instead, state governments often negotiate and interact with domestic actors, such as major industries and interest groups, whose actions and understandings in turn impact on how the norm is understood and implemented. This in turn feeds back to the larger normative community and creates variations of those norms. There are three main factors that can contribute to the domestic salience of an international norm. First, as the norm-takers, domestic actors can decide whether and to what extent an international norm can enter the domestic agenda and how it will be implemented in policy-making. These actors tend to favour an international norm that can justify their political and social programs and promote their interests in domestic policy debates (Cortell and Davis, “How Do International Institutions Matter?” 453). By advocating the existence and adoption of an international norm, domestic actors attempt to enhance the legitimacy and authority of their current policy or institution (Acharya, “How Ideas Spread” 248). Political elites can strengthen state legitimacy by complying with an international norm in their policy-making, and consequently obtain international approval with reputation, trust, and credibility as social benefits in the international community (Finnemore and Sikkink 903). For example, when the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), only four states – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States – voted against the Declaration. They argued that their constitutional and national policies were sufficiently responsive to the type of Indigenous self-determination envisioned by UNDRIP. Nevertheless, given the opprobrium directed against these states by the international community, and their well-organised Indigenous populations, the four state leaders recognised the value of supporting UNDRIP. Subsequently all four states adopted the Declaration, but in each instance state leaders observed UNDRIP’s ‘aspirational’ rather than legal status; UNDRIP was a statement of values that these states’ policies should seek to incorporate into their domestic Indigenous law. Second, the various cultural, political, and institutional strategies of domestic actors can influence the effectiveness of norm empowerment. Political rhetoric and political institutions are usually created and used to promote a norm domestically. Both state and societal leaders can make the performative speech act of an international norm work and raise its importance in a national context by repeated declarations on the legitimacy and obligations brought by the norm (Cortell and Davis, “Understanding the Domestic Impact” 76). Moreover, domestic actors can also develop or modify political institutions to incorporate an international norm into the domestic bureaucratic or legal system (Cortell and Davis, “Understanding the Domestic Impact” 76). These institutions provide rules for domestic actors and articulate their rights and obligations, which transforms the international norm’s legitimacy and authority into local practices. For example, the New Zealand Government adopted a non-nuclear policy in the 1980s. This policy arose from the non-nuclear movement that was leading the development of the Raratonga Treaty (South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone) and peace and Green party movements across Europe who sought to de-nuclearise the European continent. The Lange Labour Government’s 1984 adoption of an NZ anti-nuclear policy gained impetus because of these larger norm movements, and these movements in turn recognised the normative importance of a smaller power in international relations. Third, the characteristics of the international norm can also impact on the likelihood that the norm will be accepted by domestic actors. A ‘cultural match’ between international norm and local values can facilitate norm diffusion to domestic level. Sociologists suggest that norm diffusion is more likely to be successful if the norm is congr uent with the prior values and practices of the norm-taker (Acharya, “Asian Regional Institutions” 14). Norm diffusion tends to be more efficient when there is a high degree of cultural match such that the global norm resonates with the target country’s domestic values, beliefs or understandings, which in turn can be reflected in national discourse, as well as the legal and bureaucratic system (Checkel 87; Cortell and Davis, “Understanding the Domestic Impact” 73). With such cultural consistency, domestic actors are more likely to accept an international norm and treat it as a given or as ‘matter-of-fact’ (Cortell and Davis, “Understanding the Domestic Impact” 74). Cultural match in norm localisation explains why identical or similar international socialisation processes can lead to quite different local developments and variations of international norms. The debate between universal human rights and the ‘Asian values’ of human rights is an example where some Asian states, such as Singapore and China, prioritise citizen’s economic rights over social and political rights and embrace collective rights instead of individual rights. Cultural match can also explain why one country may easily accept a certain international norm, or some aspect of one particular norm, while rejecting others. For example, when Taiwanese and Japanese governments adapted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into their local political and legal practice, various cultural aspects of Indigenous rights have been more thoroughly implemented compared to indigenous economic and political rights (Gao et al. 60-65). In some extreme cases, the norm entrepreneurs even attempt to change the local culture of norm recipients to create a better cultural match for norm localisation. For example, when it tried to socialise India into its colonial system in the early nineteenth century, Britain successfully shaped the evolution of Indian political culture by adding British values and practices into India’s social, political, and judicial system (Ikenberry and Kupchan 307-309). The International Normative Community: Would States Continue Wearing ‘Uniforms’? International norms evolve. Not every international norm can survive and sustain. For example, while imperialism and colonial expansion, where various European states explored, conquered, settled, and exploited other parts of the world, was a widely accepted idea and practice in the nineteenth century, state sovereignty, equality, and individual rights have replaced imperialism and become the prevailing norms in international society today. The meanings of the same international norm can evolve as well. The Great Powers first established the post-war international norms of ‘state responsibility’ based on the idea of sovereign equality and non-intervention of domestic affairs. However, the 1980s saw the emergence of many international organisations, which built new standards and offered new meanings for a responsible state in international society: a responsible state must actively participate in international organisations and comply with international regimes. In the post-Cold War era, international society has paid more attention to states’ responsibility to offer global common goods and to promote the values of human rights and democracy. This shift of focus has changed the international expectation of state responsibility again to embrace collective goods and global values (Foot, “Chinese Power” 3-11). In addition to the nature and evolution of international norms, the unity and strength of the normative community can also affect states’ compliance with the norms. The growing size of the community group or the number of other cooperatives can amplify the effect of socialisation (Johnston, “Treating International Institutions” 503-506). In other words, individual states are often more concerned about their national image, reputation and identity regarding norm compliance when a critical mass of states have already subscribed into the international norm. How much could this critical mass be? Finnemore and Sikkink suggest that international norms reach the threshold global acceptance when the norm entrepreneurs have persuaded at least one third of all states to adopt the new norm (901). The veto record of the United Nation Security Council (UNSC) shows this impact. China, for example, has cast a UNSC veto vote 17 times as of 2022, but it has rarely excised its veto power alone (Security Council Report). For instance, though being sceptical of the notion of ‘Responsibility to Protect’, which prioritises human right over state sovereignty, China did not veto Resolution 1973 (2011) regarding the Libyan civil war. The Resolution allowed the international society to take ‘all necessary measure to protect civilians’ from a failed state government, and it received wide support among UNSC members (no negative votes from the other 14 members). Moreover, states are not entirely equal in terms of their ‘normative weight’. When Great Powers act as norm entrepreneurs, they can usually utilise their wealth and influence to better socialise other norm novice states. In the history of promoting biological diversity norms which are embedded in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the OECD countries, especially France, UK, Germany, and Japan, have been regarded as normative leaders. French and Japanese political leaders employed normative language (such as ‘need’ and ‘must’) in various international forums to promote the norms and to highlight their normative commitment (see e.g. Chirac; Kan). Additionally, both governments provided financial assistance for developing countries to adopt the biodiversity norms. In the 2011 annual review of CBD, Japan reaffirmed its US$12 million contribution to assisting developing countries (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 9). France joined Japan’s commitment by announcing a financial contribution of €1 million along, with some additional funding from Norway and Switzerland (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 9). Today, biological diversity has been one of the most widely accepted international environmental norms, which 196 states/nations have ratified (United Nations).  While Great Powers can make more substantial contributions to norm diffusion compared to many smaller powers with limited state capacity, Great Powers’ non-compliance with the normative ‘uniform’ can also significantly undermine the international norms’ validity and the normative community’s unity and reputation. The current normative community of climate change is hardly a unified one, as it is characterised by a low degree of consensus. Major industrial countries, such as the United States, Canada, and Australia, have not yet reached an agreement concerning their individual responsibilities for reducing greenhouse emissions. This lack of agreement, which includes the amount of cuts, the feasibility and usefulness of such cuts, and the relative sharing of cuts across various states, is complicated by the fact that large developing countries, such as China, Brazil, and India, also hold different opinions towards climate change regimes (see Vidal et al.). Experts heavily criticised the major global powers, such as the European Union and the United States, for their lack of ambition in phasing out fossil fuels during the 2022 climate summit in Egypt (COP27; Ehsan et al.). In international trade, both China and the United States are among the leading powers because of their large trade volume, capacity, and transnational network; however, both countries have recently undermined the world trade system and norms. China took punitive measures against Australian export products after Australia’s Covid-19 inquiry request at the World Health Organisation. The United States, particularly under the Trump Administration, invoked the WTO national security exception in Article XXI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to justify its tariffs on steel and aluminium. Lastly, norm diffusion and socialisation can be a ‘two-way path,’ especially when the norm novice state is a powerful and influential state in the international system. In this case, the novices are not merely assimilated into the group, but can also successfully exert some influence on other group members and affect intra-group relations (Moreland 1174). As such, the novices can be both targets of socialisation and active agents who can shape the content and outcome of socialisation processes (Pu 344). The influence from the novices can create normative contestation and thus influence the norm evolution (Thies 547). In other words, novice states can influence international society and shape the international norm during the socialisation process. For example, the ‘ASEAN Way’ is a set of norms that regulate member states’ relationships within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It establishes a diplomatic and security culture characterised by informality, consultation, and dialogue, and consensus-building in decision-making processes (Caballero-Anthony). From its interaction with ASEAN, China has been socialised into the ‘ASEAN Way’ (Ba 157-159). Nevertheless, China’s relations with the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) also suggest that there exists a ‘feedback’ process between China and ARF which resulted in institutional changes in ARF to accommodate China’s response (Johnston, “The Myth of the ASEAN Way?” 291). For another example, while the Western powers generally promote the norm of ‘shared responsibility’ in global environment regimes, the emerging economies, such as the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), have responded to the normative engagement and proposed a ‘Common but Differentiated Responsibilities’ regime where the developing countries shoulder less international obligations. Similarly, the Western-led norm of ‘Responsibility to Protect’, which justifies international humanitarian intervention, has received much resistance from the countries that only adhere to the conventional international rules regarding state sovereignty rights and non-intervention to domestic affairs.      Conclusion International norms are shared expectations about what constitutes appropriate state behaviour. They are the ‘uniforms’ for individual states to wear when operating at the international level. States comply with international norms in order to affirm their preferred national identities as well as to gain social acceptance and reputation in the normative community. When the normative community is united and sizable, states tend to receive more social pressure to consistently wear these normative uniforms – be they the Geneva Conventions or nuclear non-proliferation. Nevertheless, in the post-pandemic world where liberal values, such as individual rights and rule of law, face significant challenges and democracies are in decline, the future success of the global normative community may be at risk. Great Powers are especially responsible for the survival and sustainability of international norms. The United States under President Trump adopted a nationalist ‘America First’ security agenda: alienating traditional allies, befriending authoritarian regimes previously shunned, and rejecting multilateralism as the foundation of the post-war global order. While the West has been criticised of failing to live up to its declared values, and has suffered its own loss of confidence in the liberal model, the rising powers have offered their alternative version of the world system. Instead of merely adapting to the Western-led global norms, China has created new institutions, such as the Belt and Road Initiatives, to promote its own preferred values, and has reshaped the global order where it deems the norms undesirable (Foot, “Chinese Power in a Changing World Order” 7). Great Power participation has reshaped the landscape of global normative community, and sadly not always in positive ways. Umberto Eco lamented the disappearance of the beauty of the past in his novel The Name of the Rose: ‘stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus’ ('yesterday’s rose endures in its name, we hold empty names'; Eco 538). If the international community does not want to witness an era where global norms and universal values are reduced to nominalist symbols, it must renew and reinvigorate its commitment to global values, such as human rights and democracy. It must consider wearing these uniforms again, properly. References Acharya, Amitav. “How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localisation and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism.” International Organisations 58.2 (2004): 239-275. Acharya, Amitav. “Asian Regional Institutions and the Possibilities for Socializing the Behavior of States.” Asian Development Bank Working Paper Series on Regional Economic Integration 82 (June 2011). Ba, Alice D. “Who’s Socializing Who? Complex Engagement in Sino-ASEAN Relations.” The Pacific Review 19.2 (2006): 157-179. Hedley Bull. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Caballero-Anthony, Mely. “The ASEAN Way and The Changing Security Environment: Navigating Challenges to Informality and Centrality.” International Politics, June 2022. Capie, David. “Localization as Resistance: The Contested Diffusion of Small Arms Norms in Southeast Asia.” Security Dialogue 36.6 (2008): 637–658. Checkel, Jeffrey T. “Norms, Institutions, and National Identity in Contemporary Europe.” International Studies Quarterly 43.1 (1999): 83-114. Chirac, Jacques. Statement by the President of the French Republic to the International Conference on ‘Biodiversity: Science and Governance’, UNESCO, 24-28 Jan. 2005. 〈 https://cbd.int/kb/record/statement/9026?RecordType=statement 〉 . Cortell, Andrew P., and James W. Davis, Jr. “How Do International Institutions Matter? The Domestic Impact of Intentional Rules and Norms.” International Studies Quarterly 40.4 (1996): 451-478. Cortell, Andrew P., and James W. Davis, Jr. “Understanding the Domestic Impact of International Norms: A Research Agenda.” International Studies Review 2.1 (2000): 65-87. Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. London: Penguin, 2014. Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink. “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change.” International Organization 52.4 (1998): 887-917. Finnemore, Martha. “International Organizations as Teachers of Norms: The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and Science Policy.” International Organization 47.4 (1993): 565-597. Florini, Ann. “The Evolution of International Norms.” International Studies Quarterly 40.3 (1996): 363-389. Foot, Rosemary. “Chinese Power and the Idea of a Responsible State.” The China Journal 45 (2001): 1-19. ———. “Chinese Power and the Idea of a Responsible State in a Changing World Order.” The Centre of Gravity Series, Australian National University, Feb. 2018. Gao, Xiang, et. al. “The Legal Recognition of Indigenous Interests in Japan and Taiwan.” Asia Pacific Law Review 24.1: 60-82. Glodgeier, James M., and Philip E. Tetlock. “Psychology and International Relations Theory.” Annual Review of Political Science 4 (2001): 67-92. Gold, Martin, and Elizabeth Douvan. A New Outline of Social Psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1997. Hybel, Alex R. How Leaders Reason: U.S. Intervention in the Caribbean Basin and Latin America. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. Ikenberry, Gilford J., and Charles A. Kupchan. “Socialization and Hegemonic Power.” International Organization 44.3 (1990): 283-315. Johnston, Alastair I. “The Myth of the ASEAN Way? Explaining the Evolution of the ASEAN Regional Forum.” Imperfect Unions: Security Institutions over Time and Space. Eds. Helga Haftendorn, Robert O. Keohane, and Celeste A. Wallander. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. 287-324. ———. “Treating International Institutions as Social Environments.” International Studies Quarterly 45.4 (2001): 487–515. ———. Social States: China in International Institution, 1980-2000. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008. Kan, Naoto. Statement by the Prime Minister of Japan at the opening of the High Level Segment of the Tenth Meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 27 Oct. 2010. 〈 https://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/pm/kan/address101027.html 〉 . Kelman, Herbert C. “Compliance, Identification and Internalisation: Three Processes of Attitude Change.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 2.1 (1958): 51-60. Long, Theodore E., and Jeffrey K. Hadden. “A Preconception of Socialization.” Sociological Theory 3.1 (1985): 39-49. Masood, Ehsan, et al. “COP27 Climate Talks: What Succeeded, What Failed and What’s Next.” Nature 29 Nov. 2022. 〈 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03807-0 〉 . Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People’s Republic of China. Shewu duoyangxing lvyue jianbao 生物多样性履约简报 [Brief of Implementing Convention on Biological Diversity] 4 (2003). Moreland, Richard L. “Social Categorization and the Assimilation of ‘New’ Group Members.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48.5 (1985): 1173-1190. Payne, Rodger A. “Persuasion, Frames and Norm Construction.” European Journal of International Relations 7.1 (2001): 37-61.  Pu, Xiaoyu. “Socialisation as a Two-way Process: Emerging Powers and the Diffusion of International Norms.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 5.4 (2012): 341-367. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Convention on Biological Diversity: Year in Review 2011. 2011 〈 https://www.cbd.int/doc/reports/cbd-report-2011-en.pdf 〉 . Secrity Council Report. "The Veto." 16 Dec. 2020. 〈 https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/un-security-council-working-methods/the-veto.php 〉 . Thies, Cameron G. “Sense and Sensibility in the Study of State Socialisation: A Reply to Kai Alderson.” Review of International Studies 29.4 (2003): 543-550. United Nations. “Convention on Biological Diversity, Key International Instrument for Sustainable Development.” 〈 https://www.un.org/en/observances/biological-diversity-day/convention 〉 . Vidal, John, Allegra Stratton, and Suzanne Goldenberg. “Low Targets, Goals Dropped: Copenhagen Ends in Failure.” The Guardian, 19 Dec. 2009. 〈 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/dec/18/copenhagen-deal 〉 .
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    ISSN: 1441-2616
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    Publisher: Queensland University of Technology
    Publication Date: 2023
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    Online Resource
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    Queensland University of Technology ; 2022
    In:  M/C Journal Vol. 25, No. 2 ( 2022-04-25)
    In: M/C Journal, Queensland University of Technology, Vol. 25, No. 2 ( 2022-04-25)
    Abstract: Introduction 2021 was the year that NFTs got big—not just in value but also in terms of the cultural consciousness. When digital artist Beeple sold the portfolio of his 5,000 daily images at Christie’s for US$69 million, the art world was left intrigued, confused, and outraged in equal measure. Depending on who you asked, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) seemed to be either a quick cash-grab or the future of the art market (Bowden and Jones; Smee). Following the Beeple sale, articles started to appear indicating that the film industry was abuzz for NFTs. Independent filmmaker Kevin Smith was quick to announce that he planned to release his horror film Killroy Was Here as an NFT (Alexander); in September 2021 the James Bond film No Time to Die also unveiled a series of collectibles to coincide with the film’s much-delayed theatrical release (Natalee); the distribution and collectible platforms Vuele, NFT Studios, and Mogul Productions all emerged, and the industry rumour mill suggests more start-ups are en route (CurrencyWorks; NFT Studios; NewsBTC). Blockchain disciples say that the technology will solve all the problems of the Internet (Tewari; Norton; European Business Review); critics say it will only perpetuate existing accessibility and equality issues (Davis and Flatow; Klein). Those more circumspect will doubtless sit back until the dust settles, waiting to see what parts of so-called web3 will be genuinely integrated into the architecture of the Internet. Pamela Hutchinson puts it neatly in terms of the arts sector: “the NFT may revolutionise the art market, film funding and distribution. Or it might be an ecological disaster and a financial bubble, in which few actual movies change hands, and fraudsters get rich from other people’s intellectual property” (Hutchinson). There is an uptick in the literature around NFTs and blockchain (see Quiniou; Gayvoronskaya & Meinel); however, the technology remains unregulated and unstandardised (Yeung 212-14; Dimitropoulos 112-13). Similarly, the sheer amount of funding being put into fundamental technical, data, and security-related issues speaks volumes to the nascency of the space (Ossinger; Livni; Gayvoronskaya & Meinel 52-6). Put very briefly, NFTs are part of a given blockchain system; think of them, like cryptocurrency coins, as “units of value” within that system (Roose). NFTs were initially rolled out on Ethereum, though several other blockchains have now implemented their own NFT frameworks. NFTs are usually not the artwork itself, but rather a unique, un-copyable (hence, non-fungible) piece of code that is attached, linked, or connected to another digital file, be that an image, video, text, or something else entirely. NFTs are often referred to as a digital artwork’s “certificate of authenticity” (Roose). At the time of writing, it remains to be seen how widely blockchain and NFT technology will be implemented across the entertainment industries. However, this article aims to outline the current state of implementation in the film trade specifically, and to attempt to sort true potential from the hype. Beginning with an overview of the core issues around blockchain and NFTs as they apply to film properties and adjacent products, current implementations of the technology are outlined, before finishing with a hesitant glimpse into the potential future applications. The Issues and Conversation At the core of current conversations around blockchain are three topics: intellectual property and ownership, concentrations of power and control, and environmental impact. To this I would like to add a consideration of social capital, which I begin with briefly here. Both the film industry and “crypto” — if we take the latter to encompass the various facets of so-called ‘web3’ — are engines of social capital. In the case of cinema, its products are commodified and passed through a model that begins with exclusivity (theatrical release) before progressing to mass availability (home media, streaming). The cinematic object, i.e., an individual copy of a film, is, by virtue of its origins as a mass product of the twentieth century, fungible. The film is captured, copied, stored, distributed, and shared. The film-industrial model has always relied on social phenomena, word of mouth, critical discourse, and latterly on buzz across digital social media platforms. This is perhaps as distinct from fine art, where — at least for dealers — the content of the piece does not necessarily matter so much as verification of ownership and provenance. Similarly, web3, with its decentralised and often-anonymised processes, relies on a kind of social activity, or at least a recorded interaction wherein the chain is stamped and each iteration is updated across the system. Even without the current hype, web3 still relies a great deal on discourse, sharing, and community, particularly as it flattens the existing hierarchies of the Internet that linger from Web 2.0. In terms of NFTs, blockchain systems attach scarcity and uniqueness to digital objects. For now, that scarcity and uniqueness is resulting in financial value, though as Jonathan Beller argues the notion of value could — or perhaps should — be reconsidered as blockchain technology, and especially cryptocurrencies, evolve (Beller 217). Regardless, NFT advocates maintain that this is the future of all online activity. To questions of copyright, the structures of blockchain do permit some level of certainty around where a given piece of intellectual property emerged. This is particularly useful where there are transnational differences in recognition of copyright law, such as in France, for instance (Quiniou 112-13). The Berne Convention stipulates that “the subsistence of copyright does not rest on the compliance with formal requirements: rights will exist if the work meets the requirements for protection set out by national law and treaties” (Guadamuz 1373). However, there are still no legal structures underpinning even the most transparent of transactions, when an originator goes out of their way to transfer rights to the buyer of the accompanying NFT. The minimum requirement — even courtesy — for the assignment of rights is the identification of the work itself; as Guadamuz notes, this is tricky for NFTs as they are written in code (1374). The blockchain’s openness and transparency are its key benefits, but until the code can explicitly include (or concretely and permanently reference) the ‘content’ of an NFT, its utility as a system of ownership is questionable. Decentralisation, too, is raised consistently as a key positive characteristic of blockchain technology. Despite the energy required for this decentralisation (addressed shortly), it is true that, at least in its base code, blockchain is a technology with no centralised source of truth or verification. Instead, such verification is performed by every node on the chain. On the surface, for the film industry, this might mean modes of financing, rights management, and distribution chains that are not beholden to multinational media conglomerates, streamers like Netflix, niche intermediaries, or legacy studios. The result here would be a flattening of the terrain: breaking down studio and corporate gatekeeping in favour of a more democratised creative landscape. Creators and creative teams would work peer-to-peer, paying, contracting, servicing, and distribution via the blockchain, with iron-clad, publicly accessible tracking of transactions and ownership. The alternative, though, is that the same imbalances persist, just in a different form: this is outlined in the next section. As Hunter Vaughan writes, the film industry’s environmental impact has long been under-examined. Its practices are diverse, distributed, and hard to quantify. Cinematic images, Vaughan writes, “do not come from nothing, and they do not vanish into the air: they have always been generated by the earth and sun, by fossil fuels and chemical reactions, and our enjoyment of them has material consequences” (3). We believe that by watching a “green” film like Avatar we are doing good, but it implicates us in the dirty secret, an issue of “ignorance and of voluntary psychosis” where “we do not see who we are harming or how these practices are affecting the environment, and we routinely agree to accept the virtual as real” (5). Beyond questions of implication and eco-material conceptualisation, however, there are stark facts. In the 1920s, the Kodak Park Plant in New York drew 12 million gallons of water from Lake Ontario each day to produce film stock. As the twentieth century came to a close, this amount — for a single film plant — had grown to 35-53 million gallons per day. The waste water was perfunctorily “cleaned” and then dumped into surrounding rivers (72-3). This was just one plant, and one part of the filmmaking process. With the shift to digital, this cost might now be calculated in the extraction of precious metals used to make contemporary cameras, computers, or storage devices. Regardless, extrapolate outwards to a global film industry and one quickly realises the impact is almost beyond comprehension. Considering — let alone calculating — the carbon footprint of blockchain requires outlining some fundamentals of the technology. The two primary architectures of blockchain are Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS), both of which denote methods of adding and verifying new blocks to a chain. PoW was the first model, employed by Bitcoin and the first iteration of Ethereum. In a PoW model, each new block has a specific cryptographic hash. To confirm the new block, crypto miners use their systems to generate a target hash that is less than or equal to that of the block. The systems process these calculations quickly, as the goal is to be “the first miner with the target hash because that miner is the one who can update the blockchain and receive crypto rewards” (Daly). The race for block confirmation necessitates huge amounts of processing power to make these quick calculations. The PoS model differs in that miners are replaced by validators (or staking services where participants pool validation power). Rather than investing in computer power, validators invest in the blockchain’s coins, staking those coins (tokens) in a smart contract (think of this contract like a bank account or vault). When a new block is proposed, an algorithm chooses a validator based on the size of their stake; if the block is verified, the validator receives further cryptocurrency as a reward (Castor). Given the ubiquity and exponential growth of blockchain technology and its users, an accurate quantification of its carbon footprint is difficult. For some precedent, though, one might consider the impact of the Bitcoin blockchain, which runs on a PoW model. As the New York Times so succinctly puts it: “the process of creating Bitcoin to spend or trade consumes around 91 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, more than is used by Finland, a nation of about 5.5 million” (Huang, O’Neill and Tabuchi). The current Ethereum system (at time of writing), where the majority of NFT transactions take place, also runs on PoW, and it is estimated that a single Ethereum transaction is equivalent to nearly nine days of power consumption by an average US household (Digiconomist). Ethereum always intended to operate on a PoS system, and the transition to this new model is currently underway (Castor). Proof of Stake transactions use significantly less energy — the new Ethereum will supposedly be approximately 2,000 times more energy efficient (Beekhuizen). However, newer systems such as Solana have been explicit about their efficiency goals, stating that a single Solana transaction uses less energy (1,837 Joules, to be precise) than keeping an LED light on for one hour (36,000 J); one Ethereum transaction, for comparison, uses over 692 million J (Solana). In addition to energy usage, however, there is also the question of e-waste as a result of mining and general blockchain operations which, at the time of writing, for Bitcoin sits at around 32 kilotons per year, around the same as the consumer IT wastage of the Netherlands (de Vries and Stoll). How the growth in NFT awareness and adoption amplifies this impact remains to be seen, but depending on which blockchain they use, they may be wasting energy and resources by design. If using a PoW model, the more valuable the cryptocurrency used to make the purchase, the more energy (“gas”) required to authenticate the purchase across the chain. Images abound online of jerry-rigged crypto data centres of varying quality (see also efficiency and safety). With each NFT minted, sold, or traded, these centres draw — and thus waste, for gas — more and more energy. With increased public attention and scrutiny, cryptocurrencies are slowly realising that things could be better. As sustainable alternatives become more desirable and mainstream, it is safe to predict that many NFT marketplaces may migrate to Cardano, Solana, or other more efficient blockchain bases. For now, though, this article considers the existing implementations of NFTs and blockchain technology within the film industry. Current Implementations The current applications of NFTs in film centre around financing and distribution. In terms of the former, NFTs are saleable items that can raise capital for production, distribution, or marketing. As previously mentioned, director Kevin Smith launched Jay & Silent Bob’s Crypto Studio in order to finish and release Killroy Was Here. Smith released over 600 limited edition tokens, including one of the film itself (Moore). In October 2021, renowned Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai sold an NFT with unreleased footage from his film In the Mood for Love at Sotheby’s for US$550,000 (Raybaud). Quentin Tarantino entered the arena in January 2022, auctioning uncut scenes from his 1994 film Pulp Fiction, despite the threat of legal action from the film’s original distributor Miramax (Dailey). In Australia, an early adopter of the technology is director Michael Beets, who works in virtual production and immersive experiences. His immersive 14-minute VR film Nezunoban (20 20) was split into seven different chapters, and each chapter was sold as an NFT. Beets also works with artists to develop entry tickets that are their own piece of generative art; with these tickets and the chapters selling for hundreds of dollars at a time, Beets seems to have achieved the impossible: turning a profit on a short film (Fletcher). Another Australian writer-producer, Samuel Wilson, now based in Canada, suggests that the technology does encourage filmmakers to think differently about what they create: At the moment, I’m making NFTs from extra footage of my feature film Miles Away, which will be released early next year. In one way, it’s like a new age of behind-the-scenes/bonus features. I have 14 hours of DV tapes that I’m cutting into a short film which I will then sell in chapters over the coming months. One chapter will feature the dashing KJ Apa (Songbird, Riverdale) without his shirt on. So, hopefully that can turn some heads. (Wilson, in Fletcher) In addition to individual directors, a number of startup companies are also seeking to get in on the action. One of these is Vuele, which is best understood as a blockchain-based streaming service: an NFT Netflix, if you like. In addition to films themselves, the service will offer extra content as NFTs, including “behind the scenes content, bonus features, exclusive Q & As, and memorabilia” (CurrencyWorks). Vuele’s launch title is Zero Contact, directed by Rick Dugdale and starring Anthony Hopkins. The film is marketed as “the World’s First NFT Feature Film” (as at the time of writing, though, both Vuele and its flagship film have yet to launch). Also launching is NFT Studios, a blockchain-based production company that distributes the executive producer role to those buying into the project. NFT Studios is a decentralised administrative organisation (DAO), guided by tech experts, producers, and film industry intermediaries. NFT Studios is launching with A Wing and a Prayer, a biopic of aeronaut Brian Milton (NFT Studios), and will announce their full slate across festivals in 2022. In Australia, Culture Vault states that its aim is to demystify crypto and champion Australian artists’ rights and access to the space. Co-founder and CEO Michelle Grey is well aware of the aforementioned current social capital of NFTs, but is also acutely aware of the space’s opacity and the ubiquity of often machine-generated tat. “The early NFT space was in its infancy, there was a lot of crap around, but don’t forget there’s a lot of garbage in the traditional art world too,” she says (cited in Miller). Grey and her company effectively act like art dealers; intermediaries between the tech and art worlds. These new companies claim to be adhering to the principles of web3, often selling themselves as collectives, DAOs, or distributed administrative systems. But the entrenched tendencies of the film industry — particularly the persistent Hollywood system — are not so easily broken down. Vuele is a joint venture between CurrencyWorks and Enderby Entertainment. The former is a financial technology company setting up blockchain systems for businesses, including the establishment of branded digital currencies such as the controversial FreedomCoin (Memoria); the latter, Enderby, is a production company founded by Canadian film producer (and former investor relations expert in the oil and uranium sectors) Rick Dugdale (Wiesner). Similarly, NFT Studios is partnered with consulting and marketing agencies and blockchain venture capitalists (NFT Investments PLC). Depending on how charitable or cynical one is feeling, these start-ups are either helpful intermediaries to facilitate legacy media moving into NFT technology, or the first bricks in the capitalist wall to bar access for entry to other players. The Future Is… Buffering Marketplaces like Mintable, OpenSea, and Rarible do indeed make the minting and selling of NFTs fairly straightforward — if you’ve ever listed an item for sale on eBay or Facebook, you can probably mint an NFT. Despite this, the current major barrier for average punters to the NFT space remains technical knowledge. The principles of blockchain remain fairly opaque — even this author, who has been on a deep dive for this article, remains sceptical that widespread adoption across multiple applications and industries is feasible. Even so, as Rennie notes, “the unknown is not what blockchain technology is, or even what it is for (there are countless ‘use cases’), but how it structures the actions of those who use it” (235). At the time of writing, a great many commentators and a small handful of scholars are speculating about the role of the metaverse in the creative space. If the endgame of the metaverse is realised, i.e., a virtual, interactive space where users can interact, trade, and consume entertainment, the role of creators, dealers, distributors, and other brokers and players will be up-ended, and have to re-settle once again. Film industry practitioners might look to the games space to see what the road might look like, but then again, in an industry that is — at its best — somewhat resistant to change, this may simply be a fad that blows over. Blockchain’s current employment as a get-rich-quick mechanism for the algorithmic literati and as a computational extension of existing power structures suggests nothing more than another techno-bubble primed to burst (Patrickson 591-2; Klein). Despite the aspirational commentary surrounding distributed administrative systems and organisations, the current implementations are restricted, for now, to startups like NFT Studios. In terms of cinema, it does remain to be seen whether the deployment of NFTs will move beyond a kind of “Netflix with tchotchkes” model, or a variant of crowdfunding with perks. Once Vuele and NFT Studios launch properly, we may have a sense of how this all will play out, particularly alongside less corporate-driven, more artistically-minded initiatives like that of Michael Beets and Culture Vault. It is possible, too, that blockchain technology may streamline the mechanics of the industry in terms of automating or simplifying parts of the production process, particularly around contracts, financing, licensing. This would obviously remove some of the associated labour and fees, but would also de-couple long-established parts and personnel of the industry — would Hollywood and similar industrial-entertainment complexes let this happen? As with any of the many revolutions that have threatened to kill or resurrect the (allegedly) long-suffering cinematic object, we just have to wait, and watch. References Alexander, Bryan. “Kevin Smith Reveals Why He’s Auctioning Off New His Film ‘Killroy Was Here’ as an NFT.” USA TODAY, 15 Apr. 2021. 〈 https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2021/04/15/kevin-smith-auctioning-new-film-nft-killroy-here/7244602002/ 〉 . Beekhuizen, Carl. “Ethereum’s Energy Usage Will Soon Decrease by ~99.95%.” Ethereum Foundation Blog, 18 May 2021. 〈 https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-power-no-more/ 〉 . Beller, Jonathan. “Economic Media: Crypto and the Myth of Total Liquidity.” Australian Humanities Review 66 (2020): 215-225. Beller, Jonathan. The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College P, 2006. Bowden, James, and Edward Thomas Jones. “NFTs Are Much Bigger than an Art Fad – Here’s How They Could Change the World.” The Conversation, 26 Apr. 2021. 〈 http://theconversation.com/nfts-are-much-bigger-than-an-art-fad-heres-how-they-could-change-the-world-159563 〉 . Cardano. “Cardano, Ouroboros.” 14 Feb. 2022 〈 https://cardano.org/ouroboros/ 〉 . Castor, Amy. “Why Ethereum Is Switching to Proof of Stake and How It Will Work.” MIT Technology Review, 4 Mar. 2022. 〈 https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/03/04/1046636/ethereum-blockchain-proof-of-stake/ 〉 . CurrencyWorks. “Vuele - CurrencyWorks™.” 3 Feb. 2022 〈 https://currencyworks.io/project/vuele/ 〉 . Dailey, Natasha. “ Quentin Tarantino Will Sell His ‘Pulp Fiction’ NFTs This Month despite a Lawsuit from the Film’s Producer Miramax.” Business Insider, 5 Jan. 2022. 〈 https://www.businessinsider.com.au/quentin-tarantino-to-sell-pulp-fiction-nft-despite-miramax-lawsuit-2022-1 〉 . Daly, Lyle. “What Is Proof of Work (PoW) in Crypto?” The Motley Fool, 27 Sep. 2021. 〈 https://www.fool.com/investing/stock-market/market-sectors/financials/cryptocurrency-stocks/proof-of-work/ 〉 . Davis, Kathleen, and Ira Flatow. “Will Blockchain Really Change the Way the Internet Runs?” Science Friday, 23 July 2021. 〈 https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/blockchain-internet/ 〉 . De Vries, Alex, and Christian Stoll. “Bitcoin’s Growing E-Waste Problem.” Resources, Conservation & Recycling 175 (2021): 1-11. Dimitropoulos, Georgios. “Global Currencies and Domestic Regulation: Embedding through Enabling?” In Regulating Blockchain: Techno-Social and Legal Challenges. Eds. Philipp Hacker et al. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2019. 112–139.  Edelman, Gilad. “What Is Web3, Anyway?” Wired, Nov. 2021. 〈 https://www.wired.com/story/web3-gavin-wood-interview/ 〉 . European Business Review. “Future of Blockchain: How Will It Revolutionize the World in 2022 & Beyond!” The European Business Review, 1 Nov. 2021. 〈 https://www.europeanbusinessreview.com/future-of-blockchain-how-will-it-revolutionize-the-world-in-2022-beyond/ 〉 . Fletcher, James. “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the NFT!” FilmInk, 2 Oct. 2021. 〈 https://www.filmink.com.au/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-nft/ 〉 . Gayvoronskaya, Tatiana, and Christoph Meinel. Blockchain: Hype or Innovation. Cham: Springer. Guadamuz, Andres. “The Treachery of Images: Non-Fungible Tokens and Copyright.” Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice 16.12 (2021): 1367–1385. Huang, Jon, Claire O’Neill, and Hiroko Tabuchi. “Bitcoin Uses More Electricity than Many Countries. How Is That Possible?” The New York Times, 3 Sep. 2021. 〈 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/03/climate/bitcoin-carbon-footprint-electricity.html 〉 . Hutchinson, Pamela. “Believe the Hype? What NFTs Mean for Film.” BFI, 22 July 2021. 〈 https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/nfts-non-fungible-tokens-blockchain-film-funding-revolution-hype 〉 . Klein, Ezra. “A Viral Case against Crypto, Explored.” The Ezra Klein Show, n.d. 7 Apr. 2022 〈 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/05/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-dan-olson.html 〉 . Livni, Ephrat. “Venture Capital Funding for Crypto Companies Is Surging.” The New York Times, 1 Dec. 2021. 〈 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/business/dealbook/crypto-venture-capital.html 〉 . Memoria, Francisco. “Popular Firearms Marketplace GunBroker to Launch ‘FreedomCoin’ Stablecoin.” CryptoGlobe, 30 Jan. 2019. 〈 https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2019/01/popular-firearm-marketplace-gunbroker-to-launch-freedomcoin-stablecoin/ 〉 . Miller, Nick. “Australian Start-Up Aims to Make the Weird World of NFT Art ‘Less Crap’.” Sydney Morning Herald, 19 Jan. 2022. 〈 https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/australian-startup-aims-to-make-the-weird-world-of-nft-art-less-crap-20220119-p59pev.html 〉 . Moore, Kevin. “Kevin Smith Drops an NFT Project Packed with Utility.” One37pm, 27 Apr. 2021. 〈 https://www.one37pm.com/nft/art/kevin-smith-jay-and-silent-bob-nft-killroy-was-here 〉 . Nano. “Press Kit.” 14 Feb. 2022 〈 https://content.nano.org/Nano-Press-Kit.pdf 〉 . Natalee. “James Bond No Time to Die VeVe NFTs Launch.” NFT Culture, 22 Sep. 2021. 〈 https://www.nftculture.com/nft-marketplaces/4147/ 〉 . NewsBTC. “Mogul Productions to Conduct the First Ever Blockchain-Based Voting for Film Financing.” NewsBTC, 22 July 2021. 〈 https://www.newsbtc.com/news/company/mogul-productions-to-conduct-the-first-ever-blockchain-based-voting-for-film-financing/ 〉 . NFT Investments PLC. “Approach.” 21 Jan. 2022 〈 https://www.nftinvest.pro/approach 〉 . NFT Studios. “Projects.” 9 Feb. 2022 〈 https://nftstudios.dev/projects 〉 . Norton, Robert. “NFTs Have Changed the Art of the Possible.” Wired UK, 14 Feb. 2022. 〈 https://www.wired.co.uk/article/nft-art-world 〉 . Ossinger, Joanna. “Crypto World Hits $3 Trillion Market Cap as Ether, Bitcoin Gain.” Bloomberg.com, 8 Nov. 2021. 〈 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-08/crypto-world-hits-3-trillion-market-cap-as-ether-bitcoin-gain 〉 . Patrickson, Bronwin. “What Do Blockchain Technologies Imply for Digital Creative Industries?” Creativity and Innovation Management 30.3 (2021): 585–595. Quiniou, Matthieu. Blockchain: The Advent of Disintermediation, New York: John Wiley, 2019. Raybaud, Sebastien. “First Asian Film NFT Sold, Wong Kar-Wai’s ‘In the Mood for Love’ Fetches US$550k in Sotheby’s Evening Sale, Auctions News.” TheValue.Com, 10 Oct. 2021. 〈 https://en.thevalue.com/articles/sothebys-auction-wong-kar-wai-in-the-mood-for-love-nft 〉 . Rennie, Ellie. “The Challenges of Distributed Administrative Systems.” Australian Humanities Review 66 (2020): 233-239. Roose, Kevin. “What are NFTs?” The New York Times, 18 Mar. 2022. 〈 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/18/technology/nft-guide.html 〉 . Smee, Sebastian. “Will NFTs Transform the Art World? Are They Even Art?” Washington Post, 18 Dec. 2021. 〈 https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/12/18/nft-art-faq/ 〉 . Solana. “Solana’s Energy Use Report: November 2021.” Solana, 24 Nov. 2021. 〈 https://solana.com/news/solana-energy-usage-report-november-2021 〉 . Tewari, Hitesh. “Four Ways Blockchain Could Make the Internet Safer, Fairer and More Creative.” The Conversation, 12 July 2019. 〈 http://theconversation.com/four-ways-blockchain-could-make-the-internet-safer-fairer-and-more-creative-118706 〉 . Vaughan, Hunter. Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: The Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies. New York: Columbia UP, 2019. Vision and Value. “CurrencyWorks (CWRK): Under-the-Radar, Crypto-Agnostic, Blockchain Pick-and-Shovel Play.” Seeking Alpha, 1 Dec. 2021. 〈 https://seekingalpha.com/article/4472715-currencyworks-under-the-radar-crypto-agnostic-blockchain-pick-and-shovel-play 〉 . Wiesner, Darren. “Exclusive – BC Producer – Rick Dugdale Becomes a Heavyweight.” Hollywood North Magazine, 29 Aug. 2017. 〈 https://hnmag.ca/interview/exclusive-bc-producer-rick-dugdale-becomes-a-heavyweight/ 〉 . Yeung, Karen. “Regulation by Blockchain: The Emerging Battle for Supremacy between the Code of Law and Code as Law.” The Modern Law Review 82.2 (2019): 207–239.
    Type of Medium: Online Resource
    ISSN: 1441-2616
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    Publisher: Queensland University of Technology
    Publication Date: 2022
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    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Queensland University of Technology ; 2022
    In:  M/C Journal Vol. 25, No. 2 ( 2022-04-25)
    In: M/C Journal, Queensland University of Technology, Vol. 25, No. 2 ( 2022-04-25)
    Abstract: Introduction In a 2019 report for the International Journal of Communication, Baym et al. positioned distributed blockchain ledger technology, and what would subsequently be referred to as Web3, as a convening technology. Riffing off Barnett, a convening technology “initiates and serves as the focus of a conversation that can address issues far beyond what it may ultimately be able to address itself” (403). The case studies for the Baym et al. research—early, aspirant projects applying the blockchain concept to music publishing and distribution—are described in the piece as speculations or provocations concerning music’s commercial and social future. What is convened in this era (pre-2017 blockchain music discourse and practice) is the potential for change: a type of widespread, broadly discussed, reimagination of the 21st-century music industries, productive precisely because near-future applications suggest the realisation of what Baym et al. call dreams. In this article, we aim to examine the Web3 music field as it lies some years later. Taking the latter half of 2021 as our subject, we present a survey of where music then resided within Web3, focussing on how the dreams of Baym et al. have morphed and evolved, and materialised and declined, in the intervening years. By investigating the discourse and functionality of 2021’s current crop of music NFTs—just one thread of music Web3’s far-reaching aspiration, but a potent and accessible manifestation nonetheless—we can make a detailed analysis of concept-led application. Volatility remains throughout the broader sector, and all of the projects listed here could be read as conditionally short-term and untested, but what they represent is a series of clearly evolved case studies of the dream, rich precisely because of what is assumed and disregarded. WTF Is an NFT? Non-fungible tokens inscribe indelible, unique ledger entries on a blockchain, detailing ownership of, or rights associated with, assets that exist off-chain. Many NFTs take the form of an ERC-721 smart-contract that functions as an indivisible token on the Ethereum blockchain. Although all ERC-721 tokens are NFTs, the inverse is not true. Similar standards exist on other blockchains, and bridges allow these tokens to be created on alternative networks such as Polygon, Solana, WAX, Cardano and Tezos. The creation (minting) and transfer of ownership on the Ethereum network—by far the dominant chain—comes with a significant and volatile transaction cost, by way of gas fees. Thus, even a “free” transaction on the main NFT network requires a currency and time investment that far outweighs the everyday routines of fiat exchange. On a technical level, the original proposal for the ERC-721 standard refers to NFTs as deeds intended to represent ownership of digital and physical assets like houses, virtual collectibles, and negative value assets such as loans (Entriken et al.). The details of these assets can be encoded as metadata, such as the name and description of the asset including a URI that typically points to either a file somewhere on the Internet or a file hosted via IPFS, a decentralised peer-to-peer hosting network. As noted in the standard, while the data inscribed on-chain are immutable, the asset being referred to is not. Similarly, while each NFT is unique, multiple NFTs could, in theory, point to a single asset. In this respect ERC-721 tokens are different from cryptocurrencies and other tokens like stable-coins in that their value is often contingent on their accurate and ongoing association with assets outside of the blockchain on which they are traded. Further complicating matters, it is often unclear if and how NFTs confer ownership of digital assets with respect to legislative or common law. NFTs rarely include any information relating to licencing or rights transfer, and high-profile NFTs such as Bored Ape Yacht Club appear to be governed by licencing terms held off-chain (Bored Ape Yacht Club). Finally, while it is possible to inscribe any kind of data, including audio, into an NFT, the ERC-721 standard and the underpinning blockchains were not designed to host multimedia content. At the time of writing, storing even a low-bandwidth stereo audio file on the ethereum network appears cost-prohibitive. This presents a challenge for how music NFTs distinguish themselves in a marketplace dominated by visual works. The following sections of this article are divided into what we consider to be the general use cases for NFTs within music in 2021. We’ve designated three overlapping cases: audience investment, music ownership, and audience and business services. Audience Investment Significant discourse around NFTs focusses on digital collectibles and artwork that are conceptually, but not functionally, unique. Huge amounts of money have changed hands for specific—often celebrity brand-led—creations, resulting in media cycles of hype and derision. The high value of these NFTs has been variously ascribed to their high novelt y value, scarcity, the adoption of NFTs as speculative assets by investors, and the lack of regulatory oversight allowing for price inflation via practices such as wash-trading (Madeline; Das et al.; Cong et al.; Le Pennec, Fielder, and Ante; Fazil, Owfi, and Taesiri). We see here the initial traditional split of discourse around cultural activity within a new medium: dual narratives of utopianism and dystopianism. Regardless of the discursive frame, activity has grown steadily since stories reporting the failure of Blockchain to deliver on its hype began appearing in 2017 (Ellul). Early coverage around blockchain, music, and NFTs echoes this capacity to leverage artificial scarcity via the creation of unique digital assets (cf Heap; Tomaino). As NFTs have developed, this discourse has become more nuanced, arguing that creators are now able to exploit both ownership and abundance. However, for the most part, music NFTs have essentially adopted the form of digital artworks and collectibles in editions ranging from 1:1 or 1:1000+. Grimes’s February 2021 Mars NFT pointed to a 32-second rotating animation of a sword-wielding cherubim above the planet Mars, accompanied by a musical cue (Grimes). Mars sold 388 NFTs for a reported fixed price of $7.5k each, grossing $2,910,000 at time of minting. By contrast, electronic artists Steve Aoki and Don Diablo have both released 1:1 NFT editions that have been auctioned via Sotheby’s, Superrare, and Nifty Gateway. Interestingly, these works have been bundled with physical goods; Diablo’s Destination Hexagonia, which sold for 600 Eth or approximately US$1.2 million at the time of sale, proffered ownership of a bespoke one-hour film hosted online, along with “a unique hand-crafted box, which includes a hard drive that contains the only copy of the high-quality file of the film” (Diablo). Aoki’s Hairy was much less elaborate but still promised to provide the winner of the $888,888 auction with a copy of the 35-second video of a fur-covered face shaking in time to downbeat electronica as an Infinite Objects video print (Aoki). In the first half of 2021, similar projects from high-profile artists including Deadmau5, The Weekend, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Blondie, and 3Lau have generated an extraordinary amount of money leading to a significant, and understandable, appetite from musicians wanting to engage in this marketplace. Many of these artists and the platforms that have enabled their sales have lauded the potential for NFTs to address an alleged poor remuneration of artists from streaming and/or bypassing “industry middlemen” (cf. Sounds.xyz); the millions of dollars generated by sales of these NFTs presents a compelling case for exploring these new markets irrespective of risk and volatility. However, other artists have expressed reservations and/or received pushback on entry into the NFT marketplace due to concerns over the environmental impact of NFTs; volatility; and a perception of NFT markets as Ponzi schemes (Poleg), insecure (Goodin), exploitative (Purtill), or scammy (Dash). As of late 2021, increased reportage began to highlight unauthorised or fraudulent NFT minting (cf. TFL; Stephen), including in music (Newstead). However, the number of contested NFTs remains marginal in comparison to the volume of exchange that occurs in the space daily. OpenSea alone oversaw over US$2.5 billion worth of transactions per month. For the most part, online NFT marketplaces like OpenSea and Solanart oversee the exchange of products on terms not dissimilar to other large online retailers; the space is still resolutely emergent and there is much debate about what products, including recently delisted pro-Nazi and Alt-Right-related NFTs, are socially and commercially acceptable (cf. Pearson; Redman). Further, there are signs this trend may impact on both the willingness and capacity of rightsholders to engage with NFTs, particularly where official offerings are competing with extant fraudulent or illegitimate ones. Despite this, at the time of writing the NFT market as a whole does not appear prone to this type of obstruction. What remains complicated is the contested relationship between NFTs, copyrights, and ownership of the assets they represent. This is further complicated by tension between the claims of blockchain’s independence from existing regulatory structures, and the actual legal recourse available to music rights holders. Music Rights and Ownership Baym et al. note that addressing the problems of rights management and metadata is one of the important discussions around music convened by early blockchain projects. While they posit that “our point is not whether blockchain can or can’t fix the problems the music industries face” (403), for some professionals, the blockchain’s promise of eliminating the need for trust seemed to provide an ideal solution to a widely acknowledged business-to-business problem: one of poor metadata leading to unclaimed royalties accumulating in “black boxes”, particularly in the case of misattributed mechanical royalties in the USA (Rethink Music Initiative). As outlined in their influential institutional research paper (partnered with music rights disruptor Kobalt), the Rethink Music Initiative implied that incumbent intermediaries were benefiting from this opacity, incentivising them to avoid transparency and a centralised rights management database. This frame provides a key example of one politicised version of “fairness”, directly challenging the interest of entrenched powers and status quo systems. Also present in the space is a more pragmatic approach which sees problems of metadata and rights flows as the result of human error which can be remedied with the proper technological intervention. O’Dair and Beaven argue that blockchain presents an opportunity to eliminate the need for trust which has hampered efforts to create a global standard database of rights ownership, while music business researcher Opal Gough offers a more sober overview of how decentralised ledgers can streamline processes, remove inefficiencies, and improve cash flow, without relying on the moral angle of powerful incumbents holding on to control accounts and hindering progress. In the intervening two years, this discourse has shifted from transparency (cf. Taghdiri) to a practical narrative of reducing system friction and solving problems on the one hand—embodied by Paperchain, see Carnevali —and ethical claims reliant on the concept of fairness on the other—exemplified by Resonate—but with, so far, limited widespread impact. The notion that the need for b2b collaboration on royalty flows can be successfully bypassed through a “trustless” blockchain is currently being tested. While these earlier projects were attempts to either circumvent or fix problems facing the traditional rights holders, with the advent of the NFT in particular, novel ownership structures have reconfigured the concept of a rights holder. NFTs promise fans an opportunity to not just own a personal copy of a recording or even a digitally unique version, but to share in the ownership of the actual property rights, a role previously reserved for record labels and music publishers. New NFT models have only recently launched which offer fans a share of IP revenue. “Collectors can buy royalty ownership in songs directly from their favorite artists in the form of tokens” through the service Royal. Services such as Royal and Vezt represent potentially massive cultural shifts in the traditional separation between consumers and investors; they also present possible new headaches and adventures for accountants and legal teams. The issues noted by Baym et al. are still present, and the range of new entrants into this space risks the proliferation, rather than consolidation, of metadata standards and a need to put money into multiple blockchain ecosystems. As noted in RMIT’s blockchain report, missing royalty payments … would suggest the answer to “does it need a blockchain?” is yes (although further research is needed). However, it is not clear that the blockchain economy will progress beyond the margins through natural market forces. Some level of industry coordination may still be required. (18) Beyond the initial questions of whether system friction can be eased and standards generated without industry cooperation lie deeper philosophical issues of what will happen when fans are directly incentivised to promote recordings and artist brands as financial investors. With regard to royalty distribution, the exact role that NFTs would play in the ownership and exploitation of song IP remains conceptual rather than concrete. Even the emergent use cases are suggestive and experimental, often leaning heavily on off-chain terms, goodwill and the unknown role of existing legal infrastructure. Audience and Business Services Aside from the more high-profile NFT cases which focus on the digital object as an artwork providing a source of value, other systemic uses of NFTs are emerging. Both audience and business services are—to varying degrees—explorations of the utility of NFTs as a community token: i.e. digital commodities that have a market value, but also unlock ancillary community interaction. The music industries have a longstanding relationship with the sale of exclusivity and access tailored to experiential products. Historically, one of music’s most profitable commodities—the concert ticket—contains very little intrinsic value, but unlocks a hugely desirable extrinsic experience. As such, NFTs have already found adoption as tools of music exclusivity; as gateways into fan experiences, digital communities, live events ticketing and closed distribution. One case study incorporating almost all of these threads is the Deathbats club by American heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold. Conceived of as the “ultimate fan club”, Deathbats is, according to the band’s singer M. Shadows, “every single thing that [fans] want from us, which is our time, our energy” (Chan). At the time of writing, the Deathbats NFT had experienced expected volatility, but maintained a 30-day average sale price well above launch price. A second affordance provided by music NFTs’ ability to tokenise community is the application of this to music businesses in the form of music DAOs: decentralised autonomous organisations. DAOs and NFTs have so far intersected in a number of ways. DAOs function as digital entities that are owned by their members. They utilise smart contracts to record protocols, votes, and transactions on the blockchain. Bitcoin and Ethereum are often considered the first DAOs of note, serving as board-less venture capital funds, also known as treasuries, that cannot be accessed without the consensus of their members. More recently, DAOs have been co-opted by online communities of shared interests, who work towards an agreed goal, and operate without the need for leadership. Often, access to DAO membership is tokenised, and the more tokens a member has, the more voting rights they possess. All proposals must pass before members, and have been voted for by the majority in order to be enacted, though voting systems differ between DAOs. Proposals must also comply with the DAO’s regulations and protocols. DAOs typically gather in online spaces such as Discord and Zoom, and utilise messaging services such as Telegram. Decentralised apps (dapps) have been developed to facilitate DAO activities such as voting systems and treasury management. Collective ownership of digital assets (in the form of NFTs) has become commonplace within DAOs. Flamingo DAO and PleasrDAO are two well-established and influential examples. The “crypto-backed social club” Friends with Benefits (membership costs between $5,000 and $10,000) serves as a “music discovery platform, an online publication, a startup incubator and a kind of Bloomberg terminal for crypto investors” (Gottsegen), and is now hosting its own curated NFT art platform with work by the likes of Pussy Riot. Musical and cross-disciplinary artists and communities are also exploring the potential of DAOs to empower, activate, and incentivise their communities as an extension of, or in addition to, their adoption and exploration of NFTs. In collaboration with Never Before Heard Sounds, electronic artist and musical pioneer Holly Herndon is exploring ideological questions raised by the growing intelligence of AI to create digital likeness and cloning through voice models. Holly+ is a custom voice instrument that allows users to process pre-existing polyphonic audio through a deep neural network trained by recordings of Holly Herndon’s voice. The output is audio-processed through Holly Herndon’s distinct vocal sound. Users can submit their resulting audio to the Holly+ DAO, to whom she has distributed ownership of her digital likeness. DAO token-holders steward which audio is minted and certified as an NFT, ensuring quality control and only good use of her digital likeness. DAO token-holders are entitled to a percentage of profit from resales in perpetuity, thereby incentivising informed and active stewardship of her digital likeness (Herndon).   Another example is LA-based label Leaving Records, which has created GENRE DAO to explore and experiment with new levels of ownership and empowerment for their pre-existing community of artists, friends, and supporters. They have created a community token—$GENRE—for which they intend a number of uses, such as “a symbol of equitable growth, a badge of solidarity, a governance token, currency to buy NFTs, or as a utility to unlock token-gated communities” (Leaving Records). Taken as a whole, the spectrum of affordances and use cases presented by music NFTs can be viewed as a build-up of interest and capital around the technology. Conclusion The last half of 2021 was a moment of intense experimentation in the realms of music business administration and cultural expression, and at the time of writing, each week seemed to bring a new high-profile music Web3 project and/or disaster. Narratives of emancipation and domination under capitalism continue to drive our discussions around music and technology, and the direct link to debates on ecology and financialisation make these conversations particularly polarising. High-profile cases of music projects that overstep norms of existing IP rights, such as Hitpiece’s attempt to generate NFTs of songs without right-holders’ consent, point to the ways in which this technology is portrayed as threatening and subversive to commercial musicians (Blistein). Meanwhile, the Water and Music research DAO promises to incentivise a research community to “empower music-industry professionals with the knowledge, network and skills to do more collaborative and progressive work with technology” through NFT tokens and a DAO organisational structure (Hu et al.). The assumption in many early narratives of the ability of blockchain to provide systems of remuneration that musicians would embrace as inherently fairer is far from the reality of a popular discourse marked by increasing disdain and distrust, currently centred on NFTs as lacking in artistic merit, or even as harmful. We have seen all this talk before, of course, when jukeboxes and player pianos, film synchronisation, radio, recording, and other new communication technologies steered new paths for commercial musicians and promised magical futures. All of these innovations were met with intense scrutiny, cries of inauthentic practice, and resistance by incumbent musicians, but all were eventually sustained by the emergence of new forms of musical expression that captured the interest of the public. On the other hand, the road towards musical nirvana passes by not only the more prominent corpses of the Digital Audio Tape, SuperAudio, and countless recording formats, but if you squint and remember that technology is not always about devices or media, you can see the Secure Download Music Initiative, PressPlay, the International Music Registry, and Global Repertoire Databases in the distance, wondering if blockchain might correct some of the problems they dreamed of solving in their day. The NFT presents the artistic and cultural face of this dream of a musical future, and of course we are first seeing the emergence of old models within its contours. While the investment, ownership, and service phenomena emerging might not be reminiscent of the first moment when people were able to summon a song recording onto their computer via a telephone modem, it is important to remember that there were years of text-based chat rooms before we arrived at music through the Internet. It is early days, and there will be much confusion, anger, and experimentation before music NFTs become either another mundane medium of commercial musical practice, or perhaps a memory of another attempt to reach that goal. References Aoki, Steve. “Hairy.” Nifty Gateway 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://niftygateway.com/marketplace/collection/0xbeccd9e4a80d4b7b642760275f60b62608d464f7/1?page=1 〉 . Baym, Nancy, Lana Swartz, and Andrea Alarcon. "Convening Technologies: Blockchain and the Music Industry." International Journal of Communication 13.20 (2019). 13 Feb. 2022 〈 https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/8590 〉 . Barnett, C. “Convening Publics: The Parasitical Spaces of Public Action.” The SAGE Handbook of Political Geography. Eds. K.R. Cox., M. Low, and J. Robinson. London: Sage, 2008. 403–418. Blistein, Jon. "Hitpiece Wants to Make Every Song in the World an NFT. But Artists Aren't Buying It." Rolling Stone 2022. 14 Feb, 2022 〈 https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/hitpiece-nft-song-controversy-1294027/ 〉 . Bored Ape Yacht Club. "Terms & Conditions." Yuga Labs, Inc. 2020. 14 Feb. 2022 〈 https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/terms 〉 . Carnevali, David. "Paperchain Uses Defi to Speed Streaming Payments to Musicians; the Startup Gets Streaming Data from Music Labels and Distributors on Their Artists, Then Uses Their Invoices as Collateral for Defi Loans to Pay the Musicians More Quickly." Wall Street Journal 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://www.wsj.com/articles/paperchain-uses-defi-to-speed-streaming-payments-to-musicians-11635548273 〉 . Chan, Anna. “How Avenged Sevenfold Is Reinventing the Fan Club with Deathbats Club NFTs”. NFT Now. 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://avengedsevenfold.com/news/nft-now-avenged-sevenfold-reinventing-fan-club-with-deathbats-club/ 〉 . Cong, Lin William, Xi Li, Ke Tang, and Yang Yang. “Crypto Wash Trading.” SSRN 2021. 15 Feb. 2022 〈 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3530220 〉 . Das, Dipanjan, Priyanka Bose, Nicola Ruaro, Christopher Kruegel, and Giovanni Vigna. "Understanding Security Issues in the NFT Ecosystem." ArXiv 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.08893 〉 . Dash, Anil. “NFTs Weren’t Supposed to End like This.” The Atlantic 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/nfts-werent-supposed-end-like/618488/ 〉 . Diablo, Don. “Destination Hexagonia.” SuperRare 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/d%CE%BEstination-h%CE%BExagonia-by-don-diablo-23154 〉 . Entriken, William, Dieter Shirley, Jacob Evans, and Nastassia Sachs. “EIP-721: Non-Fungible Token Standard.” Ethereum Improvement Proposals, 2022. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.08893 〉 . Fashion Law, The. “From Baby Birkins to MetaBirkins, Brands Are Facing Issues in the Metaverse.” 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://www.thefashionlaw.com/from-baby-birkins-to-metabirkins-brands-are-being-plagued-in-the-metaverse/ 〉 . Fazli, Mohammah Amin, Ali Owfi, and Mohammad Reza Taesiri. "Under the Skin of Foundation NFT Auctions." ArXiv 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.12321 〉 . Friends with Benefits. “Pussy Riot Drink My Blood”. 2021. 28 Jan. 2022 〈 https://gallery.fwb.help/pussy-riot-drink-my-blood 〉 . Gough, Opal. "Blockchain: A New Opportunity for Record Labels." International Journal of Music Business Research 7.1 (2018): 26-44. Gottsegen, Will. “What’s Next for Friends with Benefits.” Yahoo! Finance 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/next-friends-benefits-204036081.html 〉 . Heap, Imogen. “Blockchain Could Help Musicians Make Money Again.” Harvard Business Review 2017. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://hbr.org/2017/06/blockchain-could-help-musicians-make-money-again 〉 . Herndon, Holly. Holly+ 2021. 1 Feb. 2022 〈 https://holly.mirror.xyz 〉 . Hu, Cherie, Diana Gremore, Katherine Rodgers, and Alexander Flores. "Introducing $STREAM: A New Tokenized Research Framework for the Music Industry." Water and Music 2021. 14 Feb. 2022 〈 https://www.waterandmusic.com/introducing-stream-a-new-tokenized-research-framework-for-the-music-industry/ 〉 . Leaving Records. “Leaving Records Introducing GENRE DAO.” Leaving Records 2021. 12 Jan. 2022 〈 https://leavingrecords.mirror.xyz/ 〉 . LePenne, Guénolé, Ingo Fiedler, and Lennart Ante. “Wash Trading at Cryptocurrency Exchanges.” Finance Research Letters 43 (2021). Gottsegen, Will. “What’s Next for Friend’s with Benefits?” Coin Desk 2021. 28 Jan. 2021 〈 https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/culture-week/2021/12/16/whats-next-for-friends-with-benefits 〉 . Goodin, Dan. “Really Stupid ‘Smart Contract’ Bug Let Hacker Steal $31 Million in Digital Coin.” ARS Technica 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/12/hackers-drain-31-million-from-cryptocurrency-service-monox-finance/ 〉 . Grimes. “Mars.” Nifty Gateway 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://niftygateway.com/itemdetail/primary/0xe04cc101c671516ac790a6a6dc58f332b86978bb/2 〉 . Newstead, Al. “Artists Outraged at Website Allegedly Selling Their Music as NFTS: What You Need to Know.” ABC Triple J 2022. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/news/musicnews/hitpiece-explainer--artists-outraged-at-website-allegedly-selli/13739470 〉 . O’Dair, Marcus, and Zuleika Beaven. "The Networked Record Industry: How Blockchain Technology Could Transform the Record Industry." Strategic Change 26.5 (2017): 471-80. Pearson, Jordan. “OpenSea Sure Has a Lot of Hitler NFTs for Sale.” Vice: Motherboard 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://www.vice.com/en/article/akgx9j/opensea-sure-has-a-lot-of-hitler-nfts-for-sale 〉 . Poleg, Dror. In Praise of Ponzis. 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://www.drorpoleg.com/in-praise-of-ponzis/ 〉 . Purtill, James. “Artists Report Discovering Their Work Is Being Stolen and Sold as NFTs.” ABC News: Science 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-03-16/nfts-artists-report-their-work-is-being-stolen-and-sold/13249408 〉 . Rae, Madeline. “Analyzing the NFT Mania: Is a JPG Worth Millions.” SAGE Business Cases 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://sk-sagepub-com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/cases/analyzing-the-nft-mania-is-a-jpg-worth-millions 〉 . Redman, Jamie. “Political Cartoonist Accuses NFT Platforms Opensea, Rarible of Being 'Tools for Political Censorship'.” Bitcoin.com 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://news.bitcoin.com/political-cartoonist-accuses-nft-platforms-opensea-rarible-of-being-tools-for-political-censorship/ 〉 . Rennie, Ellie, Jason Potts, and Ana Pochesneva. Blockchain and the Creative Industries: Provocation Paper. Melbourne: RMIT University. 2019. Resonate. "Pricing." 2022. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://resonate.is/pricing/ 〉 . Rethink Music Initiative. Fair Music: Transparency and Payment Flows in the Music Industry. Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship, 2015. Royal. "How It Works." 2022. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://royal.io/ 〉 . Stephen, Bijan. “NFT Mania Is Here, and So Are the Scammers.” The Verge 2021. 15 Feb. 2022 〈 https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/20/22334527/nft-scams-artists-opensea-rarible-marble-cards-fraud-art 〉 . Sound.xyz. Sound.xyz – Music without the Middleman. 2021. 14 Feb. 2022 〈 https://sound.mirror.xyz/3_TAJe4y8iJsO0JoVbXYw3BM2kM3042b1s6BQf-vWRo 〉 . Taghdiri, Arya. "How Blockchain Technology Can Revolutionize the Music Industry." Harvard Journal of Sports & Entertainment Law 10 (2019): 173–195. Tomaino, Nick. “The Music Industry Is Waking Up to Ethereum: In Conversation with 3LAU.” SuperRare 2020. 16 Feb. 2022 〈 https://editorial.superrare.com/2020/10/20/the-music-industry-is-waking-up-to-ethereum-in-conversation-with-3lau/ 〉 .
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  • 6
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    Online Resource
    Queensland University of Technology ; 2021
    In:  M/C Journal Vol. 24, No. 2 ( 2021-04-27)
    In: M/C Journal, Queensland University of Technology, Vol. 24, No. 2 ( 2021-04-27)
    Abstract: Introduction This article situates the dark as a liminal and creative space of experimentation where tensions are generative and people tinker with emerging technologies to create alternative futures. Darkness need not mean chaos and fear of violence – it can mean privacy and protection. We define dark as an experimental space based upon uncertainties rather than computational knowns (Bridle) and then demonstrate via a case study of cryptocurrencies the contribution of dark and liminal social spaces to future(s)-making. Cryptocurrencies are digital cash systems that use decentralised (peer-to-peer) networking to enable irreversible payments (Maurer, Nelms, and Swartz). Cryptocurrencies are often clones or variations on the ‘original’ Bitcoin payment systems protocol (Trump et al.) that was shared with the cryptographic community through a pseudonymous and still unknown author(s) (Nakamoto), creating a founder mystery. Due to the open creation process, a new cryptocurrency is relatively easy to make. However, many of them are based on speculative bubbles that mirror Bitcoin, Ethereum, and ICOs’ wealth creation. Examples of cryptocurrencies now largely used for speculation due to their volatility in holding value are rampant, with online clearing houses competing to trade hundreds of different assets from AAVE to ZIL. Many of these altcoins have little to no following or trading volume, leading to their obsolescence. Others enjoy immense popularity among dedicated communities of backers and investors. Consequently, while many cryptocurrency experiments fail or lack adoption and drop from the purview of history, their constant variation also contributes to the undertow of the future that pulls against more visible surface waves of computational progress. The article is structured to first define how we understand and leverage ‘dark’ against computational cultures. We then apply thematic and analytical tactics to articulate future-making socio-technical experiments in the dark. Based on past empirical work of the authors (Maddox "Netnography") we focus on crypto-cultures’ complex emancipatory and normative tensions via themes of construction, disruption, contention, redirection, obsolescence, and iteration. Through these themes we illustrate the mutation and absorption of dark experimental spaces into larger social structures. The themes we identify are not meant as a complete or necessarily serial set of occurrences, but nonetheless contribute a new vocabulary for students of technology and media to see into and grapple with the dark. Embracing the Dark: Prework & Analytical Tactics for Outside the Known To frame discussion of the dark here as creative space for alternative futures, we focus on scholars who have deeply engaged with notions of socio-technical darkness. This allows us to explore outside the blinders of computational light and, with a nod to Sassen, dig in the shadows of known categories to evolve the analytical tactics required for the study of emerging socio-technical conditions. We understand the Dark Web to usher shifting and multiple definitions of darkness, from a moral darkness to a technical one (Gehl). From this work, we draw the observation of how technologies that obfuscate digital tracking create novel capacities for digital cultures in spaces defined by anonymity for both publisher and user. Darknets accomplish this by overlaying open internet protocols (e.g. TCP/IP) with non-standard protocols that encrypt and anonymise information (Pace). Pace traces concepts of darknets to networks in the 1970s that were 'insulated’ from the internet’s predecessor ARPANET by air gap, and then reemerged as software protocols similarly insulated from cultural norms around intellectual property. ‘Darknets’ can also be considered in ternary as opposed to binary terms (Gehl and McKelvey) that push to make private that which is supposed to be public infrastructure, and push private platforms (e.g. a Personal Computer) to make public networks via common bandwidth. In this way, darknets feed new possibilities of communication from both common infrastructures and individual’s platforms. Enabling new potentials of community online and out of sight serves to signal what the dark accomplishes for the social when measured against an otherwise unending light of computational society. To this point, a new dark age can be welcomed insofar it allows an undecided future outside of computational logics that continually define and refine the possible and probable (Bridle). This argument takes von Neumann’s 1945 declaration that “all stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control” (in Bridle 21) as a founding statement for computational thought and indicative of current society. The hope expressed by Bridle is not an absence of knowledge, but an absence of knowing the future. Past the computational prison of total information awareness within an accelerating information age (Castells) is the promise of new formations of as yet unknowable life. Thus, from Bridle’s perspective, and ours, darkness can be a place of freedom and possibility, where the equality of being in the dark, together, is not as threatening as current privileged ways of thinking would suggest (Bridle 15). The consequences of living in a constant glaring light lead to data hierarchies “leaching” (Bridle) into everything, including social relationships, where our data are relationalised while our relations are datafied (Maddox and Heemsbergen) by enforcing computational thinking upon them. Darkness becomes a refuge that acknowledges the power of unknowing, and a return to potential for social, equitable, and reciprocal relations. This is not to say that we envision a utopian life without the shadow of hierarchy, but rather an encouragement to dig into those shadows made visible only by the brightest of lights. The idea of digging in the shadows is borrowed from Saskia Sassen, who asks us to consider the ‘master categories’ that blind us to alternatives. According to Sassen (402), while master categories have the power to illuminate, their blinding power keeps us from seeing other presences in the landscape: “they produce, then, a vast penumbra around that center of light. It is in that penumbra that we need to go digging”. We see darkness in the age of digital ubiquity as rejecting the blinding ‘master category’ of computational thought. Computational thought defines social/economic/political life via what is static enough to predict or unstable enough to render a need to control. Otherwise, the observable, computable, knowable, and possible all follow in line. Our dig in the shadows posits a penumbra of protocols – both of computational code and human practice – that circle the blinding light of known digital communications. We use the remainder of this short article to describe these themes found in the dark that offer new ways to understand the movements and moments of potential futures that remain largely unseen. Thematic Resonances in the Dark This section considers cryptocultures of the dark. We build from a thematic vocabulary that has been previously introduced from empirical examples of the crypto-market communities which tinker with and through the darkness provided by encryption and privacy technologies (Maddox "Netnography"). Here we refine these future-making themes through their application to events surrounding community-generated technology aimed at disrupting centralised banking systems: cryptocurrencies (Maddox, Singh, et al.). Given the overlaps in collective values and technologies between crypto-communities, we find it useful to test the relevance of these themes to the experimental dynamics surrounding cryptocurrencies. We unpack these dynamics as construction, rupture and disruption, redirection, and the flip-sided relationship between obsolescence and iteration leading to mutation and absorption. This section provides a working example for how these themes adapt in application to a community dwelling at the edge of experimental technological possibilities. The theme of construction is both a beginning and a materialisation of a value field. It originates within the cyberlibertarians’ ideological stance towards using technological innovations to ‘create a new world in the shell of the old’ (van de Sande) which has been previously expressed through the concept of constructive activism (Maddox, Barratt, et al.). This libertarian ideology is also to be found in the early cultures that gave rise to cryptocurrencies. Through their interest in the potential of cryptography technologies related to social and political change, the Cypherpunks mailing list formed in 1992 (Swartz). The socio-cultural field surrounding cryptocurrencies, however, has always consisted of a diverse ecosystem of vested interests building collaborations from “goldbugs, hippies, anarchists, cyberpunks, cryptographers, payment systems experts, currency activists, commodity traders, and the curious” (Maurer, Nelms, and Swartz 262). Through the theme of construction we can consider architectures of collaboration, cooperation, and coordination developed by technically savvy populations. Cryptocurrencies are often developed as code by teams who build in mechanisms for issuance (e.g. ‘mining’) and other controls (Conway). Thus, construction and making of cryptocurrencies tend to be collective yet decentralised. Cryptocurrencies arose during a time of increasing levels of distrust in governments and global financial instability from the Global Financial Crisis (2008-2013), whilst gaining traction through their usefulness in engaging in illicit trade (Saiedi, Broström, and Ruiz). It was through this rupture in the certainties of ‘the old system’ that this technology, and the community developing it, sought to disrupt the financial system (Maddox, Singh, et al.; Nelms et al.). Her e we see the utility of the second theme of rupture and disruption to illustrate creative experimentation in the liminal and emergent spaces cryptocurrencies afford. While current crypto crazes (e.g. NFTs, ICOs) have their detractors, Cohen suggests, somewhat ironically, that the  momentum for change of the crypto current was “driven by the grassroots, and technologically empowered, movement to confront the ills perceived to be powered and exacerbated by market-based capitalism, such as climate change and income inequality” (Cohen 739). Here we can start to envision how subterranean currents that emerge from creative experimentations in the dark impact global social forces in multifaceted ways – even as they are dragged into the light. Within a disrupted environment characterised by rupture, contention and redirection is rife (Maddox "Disrupting"). Contention and redirection illustrate how competing agendas bump and grind to create a generative tension around a deep collective desire for social change. Contention often emerges within an environment of hacks and scams, of which there are many stories in the cryptocurrency world (see Bartlett for an example of OneCoin, for instance; Kavanagh, Miscione, and Ennis). Other aspects of contention emerge around how the technology works to produce (mint) cryptocurrencies, including concern over the environmental impact of producing cryptocurrencies (Goodkind, Jones, and Berrens) and the production of non-fungible tokens for the sale of digital assets (Howson). Contention also arises through the gendered social dynamics of brogramming culture skewing inclusive and diverse engagement (Bowles). Shifting from the ideal of inclusion to the actual practice of crypto-communities begs the question of whose futures are being made. Contention and redirections are also evidenced by ‘hard forks’ in cryptocurrency. The founder mystery resulted in the gifting of this technology to a decentralised and leaderless community, materialised through the distributed consensus processes to approve software updates to a cryptocurrency. This consensus system consequently holds within it the seeds for governance failures (Trump et al.), the first of which occurred with the ‘hard forking’ of Bitcoin into Bitcoin cash in 2017 (Webb). Hard forks occur when developers and miners no longer agree on a proposed change to the software: one group upgraded to the new software while the others operated on the old rules. The resulting two separate blockchains and digital currencies concretised the tensions and disagreements within the community. This forking resulted initially in a shock to the market value of, and trust in, the Bitcoin network, and the dilution of adoption networks across the two cryptocurrencies. The ongoing hard forks of Bitcoin Cash illustrate the continued contention occurring within the community as crypto-personalities pit against each other (Hankin; Li). As these examples show, not all experiments in cryptocurrencies are successful; some become obsolete through iteration (Arnold). Iteration engenders mutations in the cultural framing of socio-technical experiments. These mutations of meaning and signification then facilitate their absorption into novel futures, showing the ternary nature of how what happens in the dark works with what is known by the light. As a rhetorical device, cryptocurrencies have been referred to as a currency (a payment system) or a commodity (an investment or speculation vehicle; Nelms et al. 21). However, new potential applications for the underlying technologies continue emerge. For example, Ethereum, the second-most dominant cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, now offers smart contract technology (decentralised autonomous organisations, DAO; Kavanagh, Miscione, and Ennis) and is iterating technology to dramatically reduce the energy consumption required to mine and mint the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) associated with crypto art (Wintermeyer). Here we can see how these rhetorical framings may represent iterative shifts and meaning-mutation that is as pragmatic as it is cultural. While we have considered here the themes of obsolescence and iteration threaded through the technological differentiations amongst cryptocurrencies, what should we make of these rhetorical or cultural mutations? This cultural mutation, we argue, can be seen most clearly in the resurgence of Dogecoin. Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency launched in 2013 that takes its name and logo from a Shiba Inu meme that was popular several years ago (Potts and Berg). We can consider Dogecoin as a playful infrastructure (Rennie) and cultural product that was initially designed to provide a low bar for entry into the market. Its affordability is kept in place by the ability for miners to mint an unlimited number of coins. Dogecoin had a large resurgence of value and interest just after the meme-centric Reddit community Wallstreetbets managed to drive the share price of video game retailer GameStop to gain 1,500% (Potts and Berg). In this instance we see the mutation of a cryptocurrency into memecoin, or cultural product, for which the value is a prism to the wild fluctuations of internet culture itself, linking cultural bubbles to financial ones. In this case, technologies iterated in the dark mutated and surfaced as cultural bubbles through playful infrastructures that intersected with financial systems. The story of dogecoin articulates how cultural mutation articulates the absorption of emerging techno-potentials into larger structures. Conclusion From creative experiments digging in the dark shadows of global socio-economic forces, we can see how the future is formed beneath the surface of computational light. Yet as we write, cryptocurrencies are being absorbed by centralising and powerful entities to integrate them into global economies. Examples of large institutions hoarding Bitcoin include the crypto-counterbalancing between the Chinese state through its digital currency DCEP (Vincent) and Facebook through the Libra project. Vincent observes that the state-backed DCEP project is the antithesis of the decentralised community agenda for cryptocurrencies to enact the separation of state and money. Meanwhile, Facebook’s centralised computational control of platforms used by 2.8 billion humans provide a similarly perverse addition to cryptocurrency cultures. The penumbra fades as computational logic shifts its gaze. Our thematic exploration of cryptocurrencies highlights that it is only in their emergent forms that such radical creative experiments can dwell in the dark. They do not stay in the dark forever, as their absorption into larger systems becomes part of the future-making process. The cold, inextricable, and always impending computational logic of the current age suffocates creative experimentations that flourish in the dark. Therefore, it is crucial to tend to the uncertainties within the warm, damp, and dark liminal spaces of socio-technical experimentation. References Arnold, Michael. "On the Phenomenology of Technology: The 'Janus-Faces' of Mobile Phones." Information and Organization 13.4 (2003): 231-56. Bartlett, Jamie. "Missing Cryptoqueen: Why Did the FCA Drop Its Warning about the Onecoin Scam?" BBC News 11 Aug. 2020. 19 Feb. 2021 〈 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53721017 〉 . Bowles, Nellie. "Women in Cryptocurrencies Push Back against ‘Blockchain Bros’." New York Times 25 Feb. 2018. 21 Apr. 2021 〈 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/25/business/cryptocurrency-women-blockchain-bros.html 〉 . Bridle, James. New Dark Age: Technology, Knowledge and the End of the Future. London: Verso, 2018. Castells, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Cohen, Boyd. "The Rise of Alternative Currencies in Post-Capitalism." Journal of Management Studies 54.5 (2017): 739-46. Conway, Luke. "The 10 Most Important Cryptocurrencies Other than Bitcoin." Investopedia Jan. 2021. 19 Feb. 2021  〈 https://www.investopedia.com/tech/most-important-cryptocurrencies-other-than-bitcoin/ 〉 . Gehl, Robert, and Fenwick McKelvey. "Bugging Out: Darknets a s Parasites of Large-Scale Media Objects." Media, Culture & Society 41.2 (2019): 219-35. Goodkind, Andrew L., Benjamin A. Jones, and Robert P. Berrens. "Cryptodamages: Monetary Value Estimates of the Air Pollution and Human Health Impacts of Cryptocurrency Mining." Energy Research & Social Science 59 (2020): 101281. Hankin, Aaron. "What You Need to Know about the Bitcoin Cash ‘Hard Fork’." MarketWatch 13 Nov. 2018. 21 Apr. 2021  〈 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-bitcoin-cash-hard-fork-2018-11-13 〉 . Howson, Peter. "NFTs: Why Digital Art Has Such a Massive Carbon Footprint." The Conversation April 2021. 21 Apr. 2021 〈 https://theconversation.com/nfts-why-digital-art-has-such-a-massive-carbon-footprint-158077 〉 . Kavanagh, Donncha, Gianluca Miscione, and Paul J. Ennis. "The Bitcoin Game: Ethno-Resonance as Method." Organization (2019): 1-20. Li, Shine. "Bitcoin Cash (Bch) Hard Forks into Two New Blockchains Following Disagreement on Miner Tax." Blockchain.News Nov. 2020. 19 Feb. 2021 〈 https://blockchain.news/news/bitcoin-cash-bch-hard-forks-two-new-blockchains-disagreement-on-miner-tax 〉 . Maddox, Alexia. "Disrupting the Ethnographic Imaginarium: Challenges of Immersion in the Silk Road Cryptomarket Community." Journal of Digital Social Research 2.1 (2020): 31-51. ———. "Netnography to Uncover Cryptomarkets." Netnography Unlimited: Understanding Technoculture Using Qualitative Social Media Research. Eds. Rossella Gambetti and Robert V. Kozinets. London: Routledge, 2021: 3-23. Maddox, Alexia, Monica J. Barratt, Matthew Allen, and Simon Lenton. "Constructive Activism in the Dark Web: Cryptomarkets and Illicit Drugs in the Digital ‘Demimonde’." Information Communication and Society 19.1 (2016): 111-26. Maddox, Alexia, and Luke Heemsbergen. "The Electrified Social: A Policing and Politics of the Dark." Continuum (forthcoming). Maddox, Alexia, Supriya Singh, Heather Horst, and Greg Adamson. "An Ethnography of Bitcoin: Towards a Future Research Agenda." Australian Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy 4.1 (2016): 65-78. Maurer, Bill, Taylor C. Nelms, and Lana Swartz. "'When Perhaps the Real Problem Is Money Itself!': The Practical Materiality of Bitcoin." Social Semiotics 23.2 (2013): 261-77. Nakamoto, Satoshi. "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System." Bitcoin.org 2008. 21 Apr. 2021  〈 https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf 〉 . Nelms, Taylor C., et al. "Social Payments: Innovation, Trust, Bitcoin, and the Sharing Economy." Theory, Culture & Society 35.3 (2018): 13-33. Pace, Jonathan. "Exchange Relations on the Dark Web." Critical Studies in Media Communication 34.1 (2017): 1-13. Potts, Jason, and Chris Berg. "After Gamestop, the Rise of Dogecoin Shows Us How Memes Can Move Market." The Conversation Feb. 2021. 21 Apr. 2021 〈 https://theconversation.com/after-gamestop-the-rise-of-dogecoin-shows-us-how-memes-can-move-markets-154470 〉 . Rennie, Ellie. "The Governance of Degenerates Part II: Into the Liquidityborg." Medium Nov. 2020. 21 Apr. 2021  〈 https://ellierennie.medium.com/the-governance-of-degenerates-part-ii-into-the-liquidityborg-463889fc4d82 〉 . Saiedi, Ed, Anders Broström, and Felipe Ruiz. "Global Drivers of Cryptocurrency Infrastructure Adoption." Small Business Economics (Mar. 2020). Sassen, Saskia. "Digging in the Penumbra of Master Categories." British Journal of Sociology 56.3 (2005): 401-03. Swartz, Lana. "What Was Bitcoin, What Will It Be? The Techno-Economic Imaginaries of a New Money Technology." Cultural Studies 32.4 (2018): 623-50. Trump, Benjamin D., et al. "Cryptocurrency: Governance for What Was Meant to Be Ungovernable." Environment Systems and Decisions 38.3 (2018): 426-30. Van de Sande, Mathijs. "Fighting with Tools: Prefiguration and Radical Politics in the Twenty-First Century." Rethinking Marxism 27.2 (2015): 177-94. Vincent, Danny. "'One Day Everyone Will Use China's Digital Currency'." BBC News Sep. 2020. 19 Feb. 2021  〈 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54261382 〉 . Webb, Nick. "A Fork in the Blockchain: Income Tax and the Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork." North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology 19.4 (2018): 283-311. Wintermeyer, Lawrence. "Climate-Positive Crypto Art: The Next Big Thing or NFT Overreach." Forbes 19 Mar. 2021. 21 Apr. 2021 〈 https://www.forbes.com/sites/lawrencewintermeyer/2021/03/19/climate-positive-crypto-art-the-next-big-thing-or-nft-overreach/ 〉 .
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    ISSN: 1441-2616
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  • 7
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Queensland University of Technology ; 2021
    In:  M/C Journal Vol. 24, No. 5 ( 2021-10-05)
    In: M/C Journal, Queensland University of Technology, Vol. 24, No. 5 ( 2021-10-05)
    Abstract: Over the past century, many books for general readers have styled sharks as “monsters of the deep” (Steele). In recent decades, however, at least some writers have also turned to representing how sharks are seriously threatened by human activities. At a time when media coverage of shark sightings seems ever increasing in Australia, scholarship has begun to consider people’s attitudes to sharks and how these are formed, investigating the representation of sharks (Peschak; Ostrovski et al.) in films (Le Busque and Litchfield; Neff; Schwanebeck), newspaper reports (Muter et al.), and social media (Le Busque et al., “An Analysis”). My own research into representations of surfing and sharks in Australian writing (Brien) has, however, revealed that, although reporting of shark sightings and human-shark interactions are prominent in the news, and sharks function as vivid and commanding images and metaphors in art and writing (Ellis; Westbrook et al.), little scholarship has investigated their representation in Australian books published for a general readership. While recognising representations of sharks in other book-length narrative forms in Australia, including Australian fiction, poetry, and film (Ryan and Ellison), this enquiry is focussed on non-fiction books for general readers, to provide an initial review. Sampling holdings of non-fiction books in the National Library of Australia, crosschecked with Google Books, in early 2021, this investigation identified 50 Australian books for general readers that are principally about sharks, or that feature attitudes to them, published from 1911 to 2021. Although not seeking to capture all Australian non-fiction books for general readers that feature sharks, the sampling attempted to locate a wide range of representations and genres across the time frame from the earliest identified text until the time of the survey. The books located include works of natural and popular history, travel writing, memoir, biography, humour, and other long-form non-fiction for adult and younger readers, including hybrid works. A thematic analysis (Guest et al.) of the representation of sharks in these texts identified five themes that moved from understanding sharks as fishes to seeing them as monsters, then prey, and finally to endangered species needing conservation. Many books contained more than one theme, and not all examples identified have been quoted in the discussion of the themes below. Sharks as Part of the Natural Environment Drawing on oral histories passed through generations, two memoirs (Bradley et al.; Fossa) narrate Indigenous stories in which sharks play a central role. These reveal that sharks are part of both the world and a wider cosmology for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (Clua and Guiart). In these representations, sharks are integrated with, and integral to, Indigenous life, with one writer suggesting they are “creator beings, ancestors, totems. Their lifecycles reflect the seasons, the landscape and sea country. They are seen in the movement of the stars” (Allam). A series of natural history narratives focus on zoological studies of Australian sharks, describing shark species and their anatomy and physiology, as well as discussing shark genetics, behaviour, habitats, and distribution. A foundational and relatively early Australian example is Gilbert P. Whitley’s The Fishes of Australia: The Sharks, Rays, Devil-fish, and Other Primitive Fishes of Australia and New Zealand, published in 1940. Ichthyologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney from the early 1920s to 1964, Whitley authored several books which furthered scientific thought on sharks. Four editions of his Australian Sharks were published between 1983 and 1991 in English, and the book is still held in many libraries and other collections worldwide. In this text, Whitley described a wide variety of sharks, noting shared as well as individual features. Beautiful drawings contribute information on shape, colouring, markings, and other recognisable features to assist with correct identification. Although a scientist and a Fellow and then President of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, Whitley recognised it was important to communicate with general readers and his books are accessible, the prose crisp and clear. Books published after this text (Aiken; Ayling; Last and Stevens; Tricas and Carwardine) share Whitley’s regard for the diversity of sharks as well as his desire to educate a general readership. By 2002, the CSIRO’s Field Guide to Australian Sharks & Rays (Daley et al.) also featured numerous striking photographs of these creatures. Titles such as Australia’s Amazing Sharks (Australian Geographic) emphasise sharks’ unique qualities, including their agility and speed in the water, sensitive sight and smell, and ability to detect changes in water pressure around them, heal rapidly, and replace their teeth. These books also emphasise the central role that sharks play in the marine ecosystem. There are also such field guides to sharks in specific parts of Australia (Allen). This attention to disseminating accurate zoological information about sharks is also evident in books written for younger readers including very young children (Berkes; Kear; Parker and Parker). In these and other similar books, sharks are imaged as a central and vital component of the ocean environment, and the narratives focus on their features and qualities as wondrous rather than monstrous. Sharks as Predatory Monsters A number of books for general readers do, however, image sharks as monsters. In 1911, in his travel narrative Peeps at Many Lands: Australia, Frank Fox describes sharks as “the most dangerous foes of man in Australia” (23) and many books have reinforced this view over the following century. This can be seen in titles that refer to sharks as dangerous predatory killers (Fox and Ruhen; Goadby; Reid; Riley; Sharpe; Taylor and Taylor). The covers of a large proportion of such books feature sharks emerging from the water, jaws wide open in explicit homage to the imaging of the monster shark in the film Jaws (Spielberg). Shark!: Killer Tales from the Dangerous Depths (Reid) is characteristic of books that portray encounters with sharks as terrifying and dramatic, using emotive language and stories that describe sharks as “the world’s most feared sea creature” (47) because they are such “highly efficient killing machines” (iv, see also 127, 129). This representation of sharks is also common in several books for younger readers (Moriarty; Rohr). Although the risk of being injured by an unprovoked shark is extremely low (Chapman; Fletcher et al.), fear of sharks is prevalent and real (Le Busque et al., “People’s Fear”) and described in a number of these texts. Several of the memoirs located describe surfers’ fear of sharks (Muirhead; Orgias), as do those of swimmers, divers, and other frequent users of the sea (Denness; de Gelder; McAloon), even if the author has never encountered a shark in the wild. In these texts, this fear of sharks is often traced to viewing Jaws, and especially to how the film’s huge, bloodthirsty great white shark persistently and determinedly attacks its human hunters. Pioneer Australian shark expert Valerie Taylor describes such great white sharks as “very big, powerful … and amazingly beautiful” but accurately notes that “revenge is not part of their thought process” (Kindle version). Two books explicitly seek to map and explain Australians’ fear of sharks. In Sharks: A History of Fear in Australia, Callum Denness charts this fear across time, beginning with his own “shark story”: a panicked, terror-filled evacuation from the sea, following the sighting of a shadow which turned out not to be a shark. Blake Chapman’s Shark Attacks: Myths, Misunderstandings and Human Fears explains commonly held fearful perceptions of sharks. Acknowledging that sharks are a “highly emotive topic”, the author of this text does not deny “the terror [that] they invoke in our psyche” but makes a case that this is “only a minor characteristic of what makes them such intriguing animals” (ix). In Death by Coconut: 50 Things More Dangerous than a Shark and Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of the Ocean, Ruby Ashby Orr utilises humour to educate younger readers about the real risk humans face from sharks and, as per the book’s title, why they should not be feared, listing champagne corks and falling coconuts among the many everyday activities more likely to lead to injury and death in Australia than encountering a shark. Taylor goes further in her memoir – not only describing her wonder at swimming with these creatures, but also her calm acceptance of the possibility of being injured by a shark: "if we are to be bitten, then we are to be bitten … . One must choose a life of adventure, and of mystery and discovery, but with that choice, one must also choose the attendant risks" (2019: Kindle version). Such an attitude is very rare in the books located, with even some of the most positive about these sea creatures still quite sensibly fearful of potentially dangerous encounters with them. Sharks as Prey There is a long history of sharks being fished in Australia (Clark). The killing of sharks for sport is detailed in An American Angler in Australia, which describes popular adventure writer Zane Grey’s visit to Australia and New Zealand in the 1930s to fish ‘big game’. This text includes many bloody accounts of killing sharks, which are justified with explanations about how sharks are dangerous. It is also illustrated with gruesome pictures of dead sharks. Australian fisher Alf Dean’s biography describes him as the “World’s Greatest Shark Hunter” (Thiele), this text similarly illustrated with photographs of some of the gigantic sharks he caught and killed in the second half of the twentieth century. Apart from being killed during pleasure and sport fishing, sharks are also hunted by spearfishers. Valerie Taylor and her late husband, Ron Taylor, are well known in Australia and internationally as shark experts, but they began their careers as spearfishers and shark hunters (Taylor, Ron Taylor’s), with the documentary Shark Hunters gruesomely detailing their killing of many sharks. The couple have produced several books that recount their close encounters with sharks (Taylor; Taylor, Taylor and Goadby; Taylor and Taylor), charting their movement from killers to conservationists as they learned more about the ocean and its inhabitants. Now a passionate campaigner against the past butchery she participated in, Taylor’s memoir describes her shift to a more respectful relationship with sharks, driven by her desire to understand and protect them. In Australia, the culling of sharks is supposedly carried out to ensure human safety in the ocean, although this practice has long been questioned. In 1983, for instance, Whitley noted the “indiscriminate” killing of grey nurse sharks, despite this species largely being very docile and of little threat to people (Australian Sharks, 10). This is repeated by Tony Ayling twenty-five years later who adds the information that the generally harmless grey nurse sharks have been killed to the point of extinction, as it was wrongly believed they preyed on surfers and swimmers. Shark researcher and conservationist Riley Elliott, author of Shark Man: One Kiwi Man’s Mission to Save Our Most Feared and Misunderstood Predator (2014), includes an extremely critical chapter on Western Australian shark ‘management’ through culling, summing up the problems associated with this approach: it seems to me that this cull involved no science or logic, just waste and politics. It’s sickening that the people behind this cull were the Fisheries department, which prior to this was the very department responsible for setting up the world’s best acoustic tagging system for sharks. (Kindle version, Chapter 7) Describing sharks as “misunderstood creatures”, Orr is also clear in her opposition to killing sharks to ‘protect’ swimmers noting that “each year only around 10 people are killed in shark attacks worldwide, while around 73 million sharks are killed by humans”. She adds the question and answer, “sounds unfair? Of course it is, but when an attack is all over the news and the people are baying for shark blood, it’s easy to lose perspective. But culling them? Seriously?” (back cover). The condemnation of culling is also evident in David Brooks’s recent essay on the topic in his collection of essays about animal welfare, conservation and the relationship between humans and other species, Animal Dreams. This disapproval is also evident in narratives by those who have been injured by sharks. Navy diver Paul de Gelder and surfer Glen Orgias were both bitten by sharks in Sydney in 2009 and both their memoirs detail their fear of sharks and the pain they suffered from these interactions and their lengthy recoveries. However, despite their undoubted suffering – both men lost limbs due to these encounters – they also attest to their ongoing respect for these creatures and specify a shared desire not to see them culled. Orgias, instead, charts the life story of the shark who bit him alongside his own story in his memoir, musing at the end of the book, not about himself or his injury, but about the fate of the shark he had encountered: great whites are portrayed … as pathological creatures, and as malevolent. That’s rubbish … they are graceful, mighty beasts. I respect them, and fear them … [but] the thought of them fighting, dying, in a net upsets me. I hope this great white shark doesn’t end up like that. (271–271) Several of the more recent books identified in this study acknowledge that, despite growing understanding of sharks, the popular press and many policy makers continue to advocate for shark culls, these calls especially vocal after a shark-related human death or injury (Peppin-Neff). The damage to shark species involved caused by their killing – either directly by fishing, spearing, finning, or otherwise hunting them, or inadvertently as they become caught in nets or affected by human pollution of the ocean – is discussed in many of the more recent books identified in this study. Sharks as Endangered Alongside fishing, finning, and hunting, human actions and their effects such as beach netting, pollution and habitat change are killing many sharks, to the point where many shark species are threatened. Several recent books follow Orr in noting that an estimated 100 million sharks are now killed annually across the globe and that this, as well as changes to their habitats, are driving many shark species to the status of vulnerable, threa tened or towards extinction (Dulvy et al.). This is detailed in texts about biodiversity and climate change in Australia (Steffen et al.) as well as in many of the zoologically focussed books discussed above under the theme of “Sharks as part of the natural environment”. The CSIRO’s Field Guide to Australian Sharks & Rays (Daley et al.), for example, emphasises not only that several shark species are under threat (and protected) (8–9) but also that sharks are, as individuals, themselves very fragile creatures. Their skeletons are made from flexible, soft cartilage rather than bone, meaning that although they are “often thought of as being incredibly tough; in reality, they need to be handled carefully to maximise their chance of survival following capture” (9). Material on this theme is included in books for younger readers on Australia’s endangered animals (Bourke; Roc and Hawke). Shark Conservation By 1991, shark conservation in Australia and overseas was a topic of serious discussion in Sydney, with an international workshop on the subject held at Taronga Zoo and the proceedings published (Pepperell et al.). Since then, the movement to protect sharks has grown, with marine scientists, high-profile figures and other writers promoting shark conservation, especially through attempts to educate the general public about sharks. De Gelder’s memoir, for instance, describes how he now champions sharks, promoting shark conservation in his work as a public speaker. Peter Benchley, who (with Carl Gottlieb) recast his novel Jaws for the film’s screenplay, later attested to regretting his portrayal of sharks as aggressive and became a prominent spokesperson for shark conservation. In explaining his change of heart, he stated that when he wrote the novel, he was reflecting the general belief that sharks would both seek out human prey and attack boats, but he later discovered this to be untrue (Benchley, “Without Malice”). Many recent books about sharks for younger readers convey a conservation message, underscoring how, instead of fearing or killing sharks, or doing nothing, humans need to actively assist these vulnerable creatures to survive. In the children’s book series featuring Bindi Irwin and her “wildlife adventures”, there is a volume where Bindi and a friend are on a diving holiday when they find a dead shark whose fin has been removed. The book not only describes how shark finning is illegal, but also how Bindi and friend are “determined to bring the culprits to justice” (Browne). This narrative, like the other books in this series, has a dual focus; highlighting the beauty of wildlife and its value, but also how the creatures described need protection and assistance. Concluding Discussion This study was prompted by the understanding that the Earth is currently in the epoch known as the Anthropocene, a time in which humans have significantly altered, and continue to alter, the Earth by our activities (Myers), resulting in numerous species becoming threatened, endangered, or extinct. It acknowledges the pressing need for not only natural science research on these actions and their effects, but also for such scientists to publish their findings in more accessible ways (see, Paulin and Green). It specifically responds to demands for scholarship outside the relevant areas of science and conservation to encourage widespread thinking and action (Mascia et al.; Bennett et al.). As understanding public perceptions and overcoming widely held fear of sharks can facilitate their conservation (Panoch and Pearson), the way sharks are imaged is integral to their survival. The five themes identified in this study reveal vastly different ways of viewing and writing about sharks. These range from seeing sharks as nothing more than large fishes to be killed for pleasure, to viewing them as terrifying monsters, to finally understanding that they are amazing creatures who play an important role in the world’s environment and are in urgent need of conservation. This range of representation is important, for if sharks are understood as demon monsters which hunt humans, then it is much more ‘reasonable’ to not care about their future than if they are understood to be fascinating and fragile creatures suffering from their interactions with humans and our effect on the environment. Further research could conduct a textual analysis of these books. In this context, it is interesting to note that, although in 1949 C. Bede Maxwell suggested describing human deaths and injuries from sharks as “accidents” (182) and in 2013 Christopher Neff and Robert Hueter proposed using “sightings, encounters, bites, and the rare cases of fatal bites” (70) to accurately represent “the true risk posed by sharks” to humans (70), the majority of the books in this study, like mass media reports, continue to use the ubiquitous and more dramatic terminology of “shark attack”. The books identified in this analysis could also be compared with international texts to reveal and investigate global similarities and differences. While the focus of this discussion has been on non-fiction texts, a companion analysis of representation of sharks in Australian fiction, poetry, films, and other narratives could also be undertaken, in the hope that such investigations contribute to more nuanced understandings of these majestic sea creatures. 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    Publisher: Queensland University of Technology
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    Queensland University of Technology ; 2023
    In:  M/C Journal Vol. 26, No. 3 ( 2023-06-27)
    In: M/C Journal, Queensland University of Technology, Vol. 26, No. 3 ( 2023-06-27)
    Abstract: Introduction This article arises from recent industry-partner research between the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, the LEGO Group, and Edith Cowan University (ECU), examining new ways of communicating children’s perspectives of digital citizenship to policy makers and industry in a project called Digital Safety and Citizenship Roundtables: Using Consultation and Creativity to Engage Stakeholders (Children, Policy Influencers, Industry) in Best Practice in India, South Korea, and Australia. We posed the research question: What are children’s everyday experiences of digital citizenship in these countries, and how might these contribute to digital citizenship policy and practice? In research roundtables, we immersed children aged 3 to 13 in a three-pronged child-centred multimodal methodology that included drawing, show-and-tell discussion, and a block building activity. It is this third block-related method that this article investigates: the project’s adoption of an activity using the LEGO® brick whereby the children expressed their views about their everyday digital worlds via brick toy constructions. In this article, we explain how such toy play can be used as a communicative strategy to give children agency so that they can creatively interject their voices into ongoing discussions about children’s digital citizenship. Such an approach takes a children’s rights perspective and considers the ethics of research with children, whereby “young children have rights; [and] they are agents and active constructors of their social worlds” (Sun et al.). The project was also subject to a rigorous human ethics approval process at ECU. This article highlights the benefits of the brick toy as a communicative device for amplifying children’s voices about their everyday experiences of media and digital cultures and ends by illustrating some of the children’s views depicted in their brick toy creations. Rationale Taking a child-centred approach using play-based participatory methods provides a window into children’s everyday media and digital cultures that may not be accessed through traditional qualitative techniques. Gennaro and Miller (xxxi) argue that “the impact of technology upon children remains so complicated to grasp, assessing the extent to which digital – and specifically social media – plays a role in the lives of youth is still a prerequisite for our discourse”. This provided an imperative for our research to find a child-centred method to grasp this complication. Furthermore, asking children about their experiences of media and digital cultures is a key aim of the Centre for the Digital Child researchers who led this project. It is also emphasised as a research imperative by the ‘Growing Up in a Connected World’ study conducted for UNICEF and the Global Kids Online team led by Sonia Livingstone in 2019. They identify that, if we are going to understand children’s media and digital cultures, we need to ask children about this: The starting point must be children themselves – asking about the barriers they face in accessing the internet, the opportunities they are discovering online and the digital skills they are acquiring. Children can also report on the online risks they have encountered and the possible harms, as well as on the support and protection they receive from family, friends, teachers, and wider society. (UNICEF 7) The Project: What We Did In 2022, ECU and Digital Child researchers conducted a series of research roundtables with a total of 45 children in India, the Republic of Korea, and Australia with the intention of gathering children’s perspectives of digital safety and citizenship. Subsequent adult roundtables were held in which the children’s views along with findings from a deep literature review were conveyed to the adult policy, education, and academic stakeholders. In the research, children were positioned as key stakeholders in conversations about their digital citizenship. Three children’s roundtables were held in each country: one for pre-primary school children (3-5 years of age), one for early primary school children (6-10 years of age), and one for late primary school children (10-13 year of age). The roundtables included three activities: first, the use of ten image cards depicting digital activities as iceb reakers and as prompts for a drawing activity; second, a talking activity in which children explained their drawings and then talked about their experiences of digital citizenship; and third, a toy play activity in which children had access to a table of LEGO brick toys where they were asked to make a construction that showed the roundtable participants and facilitators something about their existing knowledges and comprehension of digital citizenship. It is the latter activity with brick toys that this article will explore. Multiple Play-Based, Child-Friendly Participatory Methods Play-based participatory methods such as visual prompts, drawing, and toy play, unlike a traditional qualitative focus group that centres on discussion, establish a less formal atmosphere for the children more akin to their recreational play activities. Not only do these methods build rapport, but they also elicit a more authentic reflective response from children. (For a review of participatory research with children, see Montreuil et al.) As Literat (88) argues about child-friendly methods, “unlike in interviews or focus group sessions where an instantaneous response is expected, the research participants are given time to reflect on their responses, which encourages active conceptualization and contemplation”. This additional time for reflection through multiple modes of communication – drawing, show and tell, talking, block play – also gives the child participants an opportunity to craft a more complete depiction of their digital lives, with the added advantage of more easily navigating age-defined literacy, language, and cultural boundaries. The variation and combination of three visual play-based activities along with the children’s verbal explanations of their creations attended to how “visual images and the verbal exchanges are central to the children’s meaning making process” (Tay-Lim and Lim 65). This approach aided in amplifying the children’s authentic voices in the research data gathered in the roundtables. The LEGO brick toy proved to be particularly effective as a mechanism for the children to communicate their views, as it had done in a preceding context, because it gave them a visual mode of expressing tacit experiences of media and digital cultures that had become embedded in their everyday lives. The Precedent of the Brick Toy to Communicate Children’s Views The inspiration for employing LEGO brick toys to communicate children’s views in the digital citizenship roundtables project came from work done by the LEGO Group itself. In 2021, the LEGO Group collated workshop feedback and survey data concerning climate change from over 6,000 children aged 8–18. The resulting ten requests depicted through brick constructions were conceptualised as Building Instructions for a Better World and were presented to climate and government policymakers who attended the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021 (LEGO, Children Call; Building Instructions). Affirming our project’s adoption in January 2022 of LEGO toy play for children to communicate important perspectives of digital citizenship to adult stakeholders, LEGO subsequently developed their COP26 approach into the more general Build the Change strategy: “a powerful way for children to express their hopes and dreams for the future with LEGO bricks and other creative materials, plus their own imagination” (LEGO, Building the Change). This child-led and play-based pedagogical approach exemplifies the LEGO group’s ongoing remit for social good via its child-led brand framework and how the company is conscious of the leadership role it possesses in regard to education and its environmental footprint (Wood). It also demonstrated to the researchers of the Digital Safety and Citizenship Roundtables research project, though not concerning climate change activism, how the LEGO brick toy is a highly effective communicative tool through which children aged 3 to 13 can express their views about their digital lives to adults. Thus, we employed a LEGO brick toy building activity in our project’s play-based participatory research methods. As a creative visual method, such a way to capture a range of children’s views also aligned with the international research network, Global Kids Online, which advocates in its ‘Method Guide 8’ that creative visual methods are “useful for engaging children in joint knowledge production, as literacy is not required, and such methods are less associated with formal settings such as school” (Kleine et al. 9). Toy Play as a Research Method When children symbolise their experiences of digital contexts in brick toys, this is a form of symbolic play, a foundational element of children’s developing meaning-making (Vygotsky). The children’s representation of their lives in such play involves three things, as discussed by Bruner in his analysis of culture and education: thought and emotion enacted through physical action; expression through imagery; and the construction of symbols. LEGO brick toy play as a research method in the children’s digital citizenship project involves all three of these: firstly, children are actively enacting their thoughts about their digital lives through physical toy play; secondly, they create visual images via brick toy constructions as representations of their digital experiences; and thirdly, they are using the brick toys to symbolically express their inner worlds. In discussing their similar use of small world toys, which are “scaled down items for children to create and play with small-scale scenarios or world, typically toy animals and people”, Gripton and Vincent (226) identified that such methodological toy play has the “advantage of being within the child’s world and harnessing the children’s ability to communicate through symbolic representation and natural affinity to play” (238). In this way, the toy is a communicative device that does not require a dependence on written or verbal literacies, but rather multiliteracies common in the arts (Wright) that transcend age barriers and reflect children’s everyday cultures, including media and digital cultures. A Convergence of Children’s Cultures and Media Cultures Whilst it could be suggested that the use of the LEGO brick toys as a communicative tool too closely aligns with growing commercialisation of children’s play, reflecting the convergence of children’s cultures and media cultures (Ponte and Aroldi), we would argue that a project which attends to children’s perspectives of their digital lives needs to reflect the worlds, and the toy play in those worlds, that children currently inhabit. Indeed, it is children’s familiarity with LEGO that created a communicative shortcut that quickly facilitated the children’s expressiveness in the project across the age range 3 to 13. (DUPLO was used with the 3-5 year old age group; smaller LEGO bricks were used in groups 6-13.) This is not a commercial endorsement of the brick but an attempt to meet the children in their own play worlds. Our experience of children’s familiarity with LEGO echoed other research: “as a familiar medium, LEGO allows participants to express thoughts, share and reflect without relying on technical ability” (Hickman-Dunne and Pimlott-Wilson 94). LEGO has proved to be a ubiquitous element of toy play in the contemporary child’s life, not just in European cultures where the toy originated but across cultures. Certainly, the children in India and Korea were as familiar with LEGO as the children in Australia. Ponte and Aroldi (9) argue that “the connection between children’s cultures and media cultures can be considered a privileged area of innovation … [and] research into children’s and digital media is also an area of methodological innovation”. We see the use of LEGO brick toys in research as one such innovative method that attends to children’s authentic perspectives through participatory approaches. Children’s Rights Perspective Taking a participatory approach in the research method design of the Digital Safety and Citizenship Roundtables project meant that the researchers were not just attending to child-friendly methods whereby researchers “adopt practices that resonate with children’s cultures of communication, their own concerns and fit in to their everyday routines” (Christensen and James 2) but also paid due respect to “a global agenda of children’s rights in the digital age” (Livingstone and Bulger 1). Such rights around children’s digital lives came to further prominence in 2021 when the United Nations Committee for the Rights of the Child released General Comment No. 25 on Children’s Rights in Relation to the Digital Environment, “encouraging innovation in digital play and related activities that support children’s autonomy, personal development and enjoyment” (UNCRC 18). Whilst specifically referring to rights in digital contexts, as researchers from the Centre for the Digital Child we felt it was important to reflect in our research design this approach to children’s rights, and respect for children’s autonomy and enjoyment. We also were committed to the General Comment 25 principle of “children’s right to participate in the decision making that impacts their lives” (Third and Moody 9). Thus, we communicated the children’s perspectives including their LEGO brick toy creations to adult stakeholders and we also produced a children’s version of the final report for the project (See et al.). An Ethic of Empowerment When Researching Young Children In addition to this children’s rights perspective, we paid heed to the Early Childhood Australia (ECA) principle that research with young children should amplify their voices, ensuring they are afforded “the right to be heard”; thus the researchers were committed to ECA’s principle of “promoting children’s voice and participation in decision-making processes, and enabling greater opportunities to hear from children about their concerns” (ECA 3). Our child-participatory research about children’s experiences of digital safety and citizenship that employed the toy brick as a communicative device for amplifying children’s voices by contributing these perspectives back to policy making and influencing stakeholders is also aligned with moves for child participation in decision-making over recent years. For example, in 2015 the Irish Department of Youth Affairs released a National Strategy on Children and Young People’s Participation in Decision-Making, 2015 – 2020; in 2021, Save the Children released their publication Together We Decide about strengthening child participation in UN decision-making processes (Diop, Keating, and Trapp); and in 2022, the Council for Europe released Listen – Act – Change: Handbook on Children’s Participation for Professionals Working for and with Children (Crowley, Larkins, and Pinto).  What all these child participation approaches have in common is a need to heed the voices of children and to amplify these voices so children can contribute to decisions being made about their digital and everyday lives. The researchers of the Digital Safety and Citizenship Roundtables project, through our adoption of the LEGO brick toy as a communicative device, agreed with Iivari (290) in ensuring that “children of today should be empowered in and through their digital technology education to switch from mere users of digital technologies created by adults to makers and shapers of such technologies and, along these lines, to transformers of culture”. Exemplars of the Children’s Toy Brick Creations It is not in the scope of this article to provide a complete analysis of the children’s brick creations; this can be found in the full report of the children’s digital citizenship roundtables project, which is available open access (Stevenson et al.), and the project final report (Jayakumar et al.). However, below we have included in this article a gallery of some of the children’s brick toy creations that exemplify the communicative outcomes of children across the age groups using the toy brick to convey their experiences of their digital and everyday lives. To amplify the children’s voices, we have included the children’s verbatim explanation of their creation. As mentioned previously, the toy brick creations for the 3-5-year-old roundtables used DUPLO, and the roundtables of age groups 6-10 and 11-13 used LEGO bricks. You will note that the youngest age group, 3-5 years of age (whose parents were often present in the roundtable groups), conveyed less about the digital in their toy creations and more about their everyday lives and loves. Interestingly, this young age group was able to convey their digital experiences more clearly via the drawing activities than the LEGO toy brick activity. (All names and identifying characteristics have been deidentified and/or removed.) Figure 1 (3–5 age group): Nabha explained that “Here are two cameras, and I’ve added flowers for decoration. Here is my window, and you can enter from here … there’s a bird which can fly … My castle!” Figure 2 (3–5 age group): Noah explained that “I’m going to do a Brontosaurus … I’m doing a dinosaur with a very long neck”. Figure 3 (6–10 age group): Mia conveyed her sense of digital safety and explained that “I’ve made a device that means there’s like a lock on it”. Figure 4 (6–10 age group): Jack also conveyed something about digital safety and explained that “it’s basically a[n] eye monster thing ... So, it’s supposed to symbol what you have to face when you do something wrong that you know you’re not supposed to do.” Figure 5 (11–13 age group): Han-Na, who was passionate building games, explained that “I mostly play Minecraft, and this is the character, and there’s a diamond underground … here … It’s difficult to find a diamond in the wild, but I found it.” Figure 6 (11–13 age group): Inesh conveyed nuanced ideas about digital safety and citizenship and made a LEGO representation of “a firewall to keep you safe online”. Figure 7 (11–13 age group): Gitali, who enjoyed a rich gaming life, explained that “I know it’s cute and not even scary. This monster has been inspired by the game Roblox.” Figure 8 (11–13 age group): Will, who recounted an experience of being cyber-stalked, explained that his creation represents “this person [who] tried to stalk me and I just decided to leave the game and then they somehow managed to find me all over again”. Figure 9 (11–13 age group): Nirav explained about his creation reflecting his room at home, “this is a PS5. This is a gaming setup - mouse, mouse pad, two speakers, computer, keyboard and CPU”. Figure 10 (11–13 age group): Sophia, who told us about an experience of online and offline bullying, explained that “this is my bully detector for online... If you aren’t a bully, it will turn the green bit but if you are a bully, it will turn to the pink and then it will kick you out.” Limitations There are limitations in both the application of the toy brick as a method and in what this article itself can address. Firstly, as a method, there is further work awaiting those interested in using toy play, particularly brick toy play, to apply this method in contexts that explore children’s everyday experiences in general, not just their experiences of the focus of this research project, children’s digital citizenship. Secondly, it is not possible in an article of this length to present a complex testing of the LEGO brick toy method against other forms of brick toy – that would be an entirely different project to the children’s digital citizenship project that we conducted. Furthermore, word limits mean it is not possible to present the full analysis of the children’s brick toy creations, and the authors would encourage those interested in more in-depth findings and more images of the children’s brick creations and drawings to seek these, as noted previously, in the report authored by Stevenson et al. Conclusion This article h as explained the rationale for using the LEGO brick toy as part of participatory play-based methods in our recent research project, Digital Safety and Citizenship Roundtables: Using Consultation and Creativity to Engage Stakeholders (Children, Policy Influencers, Industry) with industry partner the LEGO Group, the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, and Edith Cowan University. This rationale placed the child as the expert informant about the media and digital cultures in their everyday experiences of digital citizenship. Through multiple play-based, child-friendly participatory methods, following the precedent of the brick toy being used to communicate children’s views about climate change to adult climate policymakers, we sought the views about digital safety and citizenship of children aged 3 to 13 years in three Asia-Pacific countries – India, Korea, and Australia. We then conveyed these to adult stakeholders who contribute to and influence children’s digital citizenship policy in these countries. It is our view that such a participatory, play-centred approach respects children’s rights to express themselves in authentic and creative ways and is in keeping with the turn to children’s participatory frameworks that provide the steps for children to contribute to policy that impacts on their digital and everyday lives. From the experience of conducting the children’s roundtables in the project, we encourage other researchers to take a children’s rights approach and embed an ethic of empowerment through toy play-based methods when researching young children. We argue that such toy play in research provides vivid windows into children’s media and digital cultures, whilst at the same time empowering today’s digital child to be agentic in discussion that impact their digital futures. 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