This article analyzes how a city can generate instrumental, intrinsic, and institutional value from its event-related networks and platforms, based on the Hieronymus Bosch 500 program in the Dutch city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch). Interviews with key stakeholders traced program dynamics over more than a decade to reveal processes of network and platform development, encapsulated in a conceptual model of strategic value creation. The results indicate that networks served to generate flows of resources, while programming helped develop platforms for knowledge generation and dissemination, helping to focus attention on the city. The Bosch 500 Foundation managing the program played an effective role in developing and supporting networks, which in turn generated significant short-term instrumental and intrinsic value. However, the failure to establish a sustainable city-wide platform related to the Bosch program caused institutional value destruction, which many saw as a missed opportunity. The study of networks and platforms can benefit from a longitudinal approach as well as a broader, contextual view of event networks.
MULTIFILE
This introduction to the special issue on events as platforms, networks, and communities reviews recent research on these subjects. It outlines the previous work of the ATLAS Events Group in developing a “network approach to events,” as well as conceptualizing the differences between event networks and platforms.
MULTIFILE
The pervasive use of media at current-day festivals thoroughly impacts how these live events are experienced, anticipated, and remembered. This empirical study examined event-goers’ live media practices – taking photos, making videos, and in-the-moment sharing of content on social media platforms – at three large cultural events in the Netherlands. Taking a practice approach (Ahva 2017; Couldry 2004), the author studied online and offline event environments through extensive ethnographic fieldwork: online and offline observations, and interviews with 379 eventgoers. Analysis of this research material shows that through their live media practices eventgoers are continuously involved in mediated memory work (Lohmeier and Pentzold 2014; Van Dijck 2007), a form of live storytelling thatrevolves around how they want to remember the event. The article focuses on the impact of mediated memory work on the live experience in the present. It distinguishes two types of mediatised experience of live events: live as future memory and the experiential live. The author argues that memory is increasingly incorporated into the live experience in the present, so much so that, for many eventgoers, mediated memory-making is crucial to having a full live event experience. The article shows how empirical research in media studies can shed new light on key questions within memory studies.
MULTIFILE
This paper provides an introduction to Special Issue on ‘Event Experiences: Measurement and Meaning’. It reviews the research conducted by the ATLAS Event Group over the past decade, and highlights the interplay between qualititative and quantitative research on events during this period. Major research themes related to the event experience are analysed, including the social dimension of events, event design, visitor engagement, eventful cities and event networks and platforms. The different quantative and qualitative contributions to the issue are introduced and compared.
LINK
Short abstract:This paper brings a media theoretical perspective on mediatized wars. It argues that the affordances and use cultures of popular social media platforms turn wars into live media events, involving both people who are living under war and those joining in from a distance.Long abstract:This paper brings a media theoretical perspective on mediatized wars. It argues that the affordances and use cultures of popular social media platforms turn wars into live media events in which liveness – a sense of “being now here together” (Hammelburg, 2021) – involves both people who are living under war and those joining in from a distance.This involvement is of a very different kind than what we know from earlier wars that were mediated through radio and television; the logics of platformed media have permeated and transformed everyday life (Altheide, 2018; Deuze, 2012; Hepp, 2019). Many people living under war share their personal experiences and thoughts through TikTok and Instagram, involving followers worldwide as witnesses at a distance. Further, these war followers are not only involved as witnesses, very often they also add their own social media content to the “event-sphere” (Volkmer and Deffner, 2010) of the war, and by doing so they write themselves into it.Drawing from media theory on liveness and empirical material – photos and videos – from TikTok and Instagram concerning the wars in Ukraine and Russia, and Israel and Gaza, this paper shows how wars as live events are constructed. In its analyses of different modes of involvement in these live war event-spheres, it addresses the issue of positionality.
MULTIFILE
Liveblogs are very popular with the public and journalists alike. The problem, though, is their credibility, given the uncertainty of the covered events and the immediacy of their production. Little is known about how journalists routinize the unexpected—to paraphrase Tuchman—when journalists report about an event that is still unfolding. This paper is about makers of liveblogs, livebloggers, so to speak, and the routines and conventions they follow. To better understand the relationship between those who do the “liveblogging” and how the “liveblogging” is done, we interviewed a selection of nine experienced livebloggers who cover breaking news, sports, and politics for the three most-visited news platforms in the Netherlands. Based on our results, we concluded that journalists working at different platforms follow similar routines and conventions for claiming, acquiring, and justifying knowledge. Journalists covering news in liveblogs must have expert knowledge, as well as technical and organizational skills. Liveblogging—in contrast to regular, online reporting—is best summarized as a social process instead of an autonomous production. These findings are important for three reasons: first, to understand how journalists cope with uncertainty covering events under immediate circumstances using liveblogs; second, to understand the workings of this popular format; and third, to contribute to literature about journalistic genres, discourse communities and, more specifically, generic requirements of liveblogs for effects of credibility to take place.
MULTIFILE
In dit proefschrift worden de resultaten beschreven van een studie die online wijkplatformen voor thuiswonende ouderen evalueert die werden ontwikkeld op basis van wensen en behoeften van eindgebruikers. Middels deze online wijkplatformen worden ouderen gestimuleerd om maatschappelijk te participeren en wordt gepoogd om in wijken vraag en aanbod van inwoners bij elkaar te brengen. Via deze online platformen kunnen wijkbewoners, zo ook thuiswonende ouderen, verschillende applicaties raadplegen.
DOCUMENT
While live event experiences have become increasingly mediatized, the prevalence of ephemeral content and diverse forms of (semi)private communication in social media platforms have complicated the study of these mediatized experiences as an outsider. This article proposes an ethnographic approach to studying mediatized event experiences from the inside, carrying out participatory fieldwork in online and offline festival environments. I argue that this approach both stimulates ethical research behavior and provides unique insights into mediatized practices. To develop this argument, I apply the proposed methodology to examine how festival-goers perceive differences between public and private, permanent and ephemeral when sharing their live event experiences through social media platforms. Drawing on a substantial dataset containing online and offline participant observations, media diaries, and (short in situ and longer in-depth) interviews with 379 event-goers, this article demonstrates the value of an ethnographic approach for creating thick descriptions of mediatized behavior in digital platforms.
DOCUMENT
The World Rowing Championships (WRC) took place at Amsterdam’s Bosbaan from 24 to 31 August 2014. In organising this event, the World Rowing Federation (FISA) raised the bar for world class rowing events. Athletes, spectators, sponsors and rowing fans around the world followed the event on different media platforms. Those who were able to attend in person enjoyed an exciting sporting competition, as well as Amsterdam’s scenic sites and festive atmosphere. Behind the scenes, hundreds of volunteers worked to make this event possible.
DOCUMENT
Dit document geeft een overzicht van de bevindingen over het Factory-as-a service concept. Gedurende het SMITZH project heeft het lectoraat Smart Sustainable Manufacturing gezocht naar antwoorden op een aantal vragen: Welke initiatieven bestaan er, waar ondernemers elkaar helpen via het beschikbaar stellen en delen van productiecapaciteit? Wat zijn de randvoorwaarden om zo’n initiatief te laten slagen? Wat kan bijdragen om belemmeringen voor de toekomst weg te nemen? De voordelen zijn zeker aanwezig, maar obstakels ook. Met name dat laatste kan de voortgang en innovatief denken over de inrichting van flexibele en ‘Smart Manufacturing’ in de weg zitten. Het verhogen van de flexibiliteit om de maakindustrie concurrerender en veerkrachtiger te maken is een van de doelstellingen van het Smart Industry Programma, SMITZH en het lectoraat.
MULTIFILE
