Fitna: the video battle. Outreach, impact and creative dissemination.

Farida VisLiesbet van Zoonen

Sabina Mihelj

Part of larger funded project: ‘Fitna, the video battle: how YouTube enables the young

to perform their religious and public identities’

Fitna: the video battle

Fitna – 16 minute short film (Geert Wilders, March 2008). International outcry. Immediate global online response. Dutch news coverage not about Islam, but whether to ban or not. Relied on elite sources (Dutch New Monitor, 2008)

Struggle over meaning construction. Popular culture as a battle ground > Web 2.0 as alternative access for young people to be part of media debates.

YouTube allows for immediate andcreate ways to have voice.Main site for responses.1413 videos included for analysis.

AHRC: Public value from public funding

Necessary to show public value from public funding > demonstrating the economic, social and cultural benefits of publicly funded research to wider society. (e.g. the public sector, private sector, third sector, or wider general public)

Impact: the ‘influence’ of research or its ‘effects on’ an individual, a community, the development of policy, or the creation of a new product or service. It relates to the effects of research on our economic, social and cultural lives.

> Many of the fastest growing parts of the UK economy sit within the AHRC’s subject domains including new media, computer games, music, textiles and fashion, design, film and television.

How to measure impact?

Criticism:

metrics, unclear methods for measurement, time-line of impact, not everything can/should have ‘impact’, 25% of REF.

‘The model also stands accused of confusing dissemination with research. It is unable to account for the mediated culture in which we live, in which high impact (in the realm of ideas and culture) may have nothing to do with the quality of research and everything to do with the effectiveness of its dissemination and self-marketing strategies’.

How to measure impact?

Media, communication and cultural studies not part of current pilot study.(Nathalie Fenton, Three-D, MeCCSA newsletter, April 2010)

AHRC impact case studies incl.: economic (Polynesian Visual Arts - £8.1 million UK), policy (crime tackling design - Grippa), local community (mining heritage)

How can our web 2.0 project have impact and how to measure this?

Traditional Innovative/adventurous UnexpectedConference papers E-research tool YouTube response

Journal articles Active website (250 hits/month) video (630 views)Invited presentations Weekly project ‘blog’ De Jaap (31

comments)

(mixed audiences) NL blog on religion & media HP de Tijd (8/4) YouTube channel (268 views)* (179 comments)

Project cards > general public

(international)

Still to come: non-academic online report, outreach with help of AHRC (e-tool), YouTube project film (starring PI), BBC Religion radio, Op Eds (NL election).

How can our web 2.0 project have impact and how to measure this?

Traditional Innovative/adventurous UnexpectedConference papers E-research tool YouTube response

Journal articles Active website (250 hits/month) video (630 views)*

Invited presentations Weekly project ‘blog’ De Jaap (31 comments)

(mixed audiences) NL blog on religion & media HP de Tijd (8/4) YouTube channel (268 views) (179 comments)

Project cards > general public

(international)

Still to come: non-academic online report, outreach with help of AHRC (e-tool), YouTube project film (starring PI), BBC Religion radio, Op Eds (NL election).

How to measure impact?

How can our web 2.0 project have impact and how to measure this?

Traditional Innovative/adventurous UnexpectedConference papers E-research tool YouTube response

Journal articles Active website (250 hits/month) video (630 views)Invited presentations Weekly project ‘blog’ De Jaap (31

comments)

(mixed audiences) NL blog on religion & media HP de Tijd (8/4) YouTube channel (268 views) (179 comments)

Project cards > general public

(international)

Still to come: non-academic online report, outreach with help of AHRC (e-tool), YouTube project film (starring PI), BBC Religion radio, Op Eds (NL election).

Online current affairs?

De Jaap: 717 unique views (3:38 mins.), 31 comments. Very negative about academia.HP de Tijd: 179 comments. Negative > debate largely about pro/anti Islam, flaming. Article very popular, quickly became most read article on the site.

Public engagement: De Jaap comments

The articles didn’t highlight the core of the project (De Jaap editorial decision)

‘senseless conclusion, pointless research… Is there even money for this work? What is the relevance? What are we supposed to do with the conclusions?Jesus, I have always though that the academic world was weird en wrong, but this takes the biscuit… What’s next? … my blood begins to boil from this kind of work. (JM)

Negative about the project > ‘but research budgets have to be spent otherwise the ministry will cut off funding’. (JM)

Social science = pseudo science. ‘science’ (Maarten); ‘Those researchers are only doing this work to get notices? Right?’ (Bart van de Hulsbeek)

Personal attacks on Linda Duits and Liesbet van Zoonen (PvdA professor)

Concluding remarksHow to qualify this as ‘impact’ and how to measure it in a Web 2.0 environment?

Count number of site visits/page hits?; number of comments; views of video?

Academia: very positive feedback for the project (including from the funders)

What to do with a negative public response? > When speaking about ‘publicvalue’ what role should ‘the public’ have and how to value this?

Multiple possible publics for research on new/online media. If ‘the public’ is the ‘general public (2.0)’ (our unexpected outreach) how can they best be engaged?

Dissemination ≠ research (Nathalie Fenton). Quality of the research main priority. Quality of the engagement is important (Simon Frith).

Additional publics (public & third sector) to engage with in the future > ongoing.