Help make MediaCommons

Ben Vershbow, making MediaCommons, if:book, November 2, 2006.  Excerpt:

Back in July, we announced plans to build MediaCommons, a new kind of scholarly press for the digital age with a focus on media studies....At its core, MediaCommons will be a social networking site where academics, students, and other interested members of the public can write and critically converse about a mediated world, in a mediated environment....At the same time, MediaCommons will be a full-fledged electronic press dedicated to the development of born-digital scholarship: multimedia "papers," journals, Gamer Theory-style monographs, and many other genre-busting forms yet to be invented.

Today we are pleased to announce the first concrete step toward the establishment of this network: making MediaCommons, a planning site through which founding editors Avi Santo (Old Dominion U.) and Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Pomona College) will lead a public discussion on the possible directions this all might take.

The site presently consists of three simple sections:

1) A weblog where Avi and Kathleen will think out loud....

2) A call for "papers" ...

3) In Media Res -- an experimental feature where each week a different scholar will present a short contemporary media clip accompanied by a 100-150 word commentary, alongside which a community discussion can take place. Sort of a "YouTube" for scholars and a critically engaged public...

Other features and sections will be added over time and out of this site the real MediaCommons will eventually emerge. How exactly this will happen, and how quickly, is yet to be seen and depends largely on the feedback and contributions from the community that will develop on making MediaCommons. We imagine it could launch as early as this coming Spring or as late as next Fall. Come take a look!