The Future of Digital Archive Collections: Augmenting Public Service Media Geo-Locative Archives

Running head: THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL COLLECTIONS 1

The Future of Digital Archive Collections: Augmenting Public Service Media Geo-Locative Archives

Jonathon P. Hutchinson

University of Sydney, Australia

Author Note

Jonathon Hutchinson, Department of Media and Communication, University of Sydney.

This research was conducted as part of a Queensland University of Technology Postgraduate Research Award (QUTPRA).

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jonathon Hutchinson, Room N233, Woolley Building (A20), Manning Road, New South Wales, 2050,

Australia. Contact: [email protected]

This is a pre-print version of this article. If you have access, please go to the official SAGE Mobile Media & Communication journal for the final print version.

Mobile Media & Communication

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DOI: 10.1177/2050157915590008 mmc.sagepub.com

THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL COLLECTIONS 2

Abstract

During 2011, the now defunct ABC Pool (abc.net.au/pool) project developed an

experiment that sought to combine emerging augmented reality (AR) technology with

the archival collection of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The

MyBurb project attempted to alter experiences of Australian suburbs by augmenting

ABC archives in contemporary suburban environments to explore the blur between

physical and digital spaces with its citizens. Mobile media, specifically geo-locative

AR applications such as Layar are “one of the most widely used mobile AR

applications” (Liao & Humphreys, 2014, p. 2) and challenge the sociological

implications of hybrid spaces as “[m]obile interfaces … allow users to be constantly

connected to the Internet while walking through urban spaces” (de Souza e Silva,

2006, p. 261). The project was successfully implemented, but was rarely utilised by

the audience it sought to engage, revealing a division between aspects of the ABC’s

remit and engaging its audience through mobile technology and environmental

hybridity. This observation supports the cultural production gap Hesmondhalgh

(2007) identified between the production and consumption of cultural goods, which I

argue could be facilitated through technological intermediation as part of the broader

concept of cultural intermediation (Hutchinson, 2013; Maguire & Matthews, 2010;

Negus, 2002). How then could cultural intermediation facilitate the collaborative

production of cultural goods to include the affordances of geo-locative media while

avoiding the disconnection between the MyBurb project and its stakeholders? The

data presented within this paper represents three years of research at ABC Pool where

I was embedded as the community manager/researcher in residence.

Keywords: public service media, archives, mobile media, Australian

Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), ABC Pool, Layar, social media


The Future of Digital Archive Collections: Augmenting Public Service Media

Geo-Locative Archives

Introduction

Cultural institutions are, amongst other cultural facilitating roles, responsible

for the collection, cataloging and preservation processes that make up the archival

systems of cultural artefacts, or the cultural goods that describe our societal networks

and infrastructures. ‘Cultural institution’ is the term given to the publically funded

sector that contains institutions such as galleries, libraries, archives and museums

(GLAM), whose “principles and practices are increasingly influencing the cultural-

heritage sector” (Davis & Howard, 2013, p. 15). However, cultural institutions are not

only responsible for collecting and storing cultural artefacts: most are required to

provide public access to these collections to facilitate improved citizenry. Chatzimitris,

Kavakli and Economou (2013) note “[c]ultural institutions are informal learning

organizations where education and entertainment are often combined” (p. 1),

suggesting a current trend within cultural institutions is to provide accessible and

entertaining projects that enable public access to archive collections.

At the same moment, the rise of ubiquitous computing has enabled the public

to access archival collections while interacting with narrative based content in-situ.

The penetration of smartphones and mobile media has provided sections of the public

a suitable technology to experience geo-located archives. Mobile media can be

defined as “a complex assembly of emergent, hybrid media forms – from smartphones,

tablets, and the apps phenomenon, through new televisual ecologies and locative

media, to pervasive computers and smart cities” (Goggin, Dwyer, Martin, &

Hutchinson, 2013, p. 2). In the context of mobile media and cultural institutions,


Cocciolo and Rabina (2013) rightly question if mobile media and location affect user

understanding and engagement by asking questions such as “was this locale always

like this?” and “what has happened here?” (p. 99). This is surely the role of cultural

institutions to provide context to place and meaning by providing access to historical

content that engage in the increasing usage of mobile media. Farman (2012) also

notes the significance of mapping media “as a means of representing and practicing

space…as a key example in the exploration of what space means in our embodied

practices of mobile technologies” (p. 35). Farman also describes how the Museum of

London used augmented reality and Layar to create an iPhone application called

Streetmuseum. With this example, Farman notes augmented reality technologies that

are coupled with cultural institutions “demonstrate the ways that mobile technologies

are able to imbue space with meaning” (p. 40): a mobile media space.

Given the provocation that cultural institutions should engage in what Farman

(2012) terms ‘mobile media space’ through improved access to archival collections,

many institutions have experimented with hybrid projects to encourage the use of

their collections. As noted above the Museum of London has explored these concepts,

along with Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Similarly, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), one of the publically

funded broadcasters in Australia, facilitated an augmented reality (AR) experiment

during 2011 as a means of understanding how it could leverage mobile media to

promote public access to its archival collections. The development of MyBurb, which

used the now defunct ABC Pool platform and the Sydney inner-city suburb of

Redfern, was to augment ABC archival content, while also encouraging users to

contribute their personal collections to co-create an historical urban landscape.

Burgess and Banks (2010) define co-creation as “the ways in which platform


providers (however imperfectly) integrate user-participation into their own models of

production” (p. 298). MyBurb’s co-creation with the ABC audience aligned with its

public service remit to foster national culture and engage the public sphere

(Cunningham, 2013), as users were asked to contribute their archival collections

while using mobile devices to consume a mobile media space. The users in the

MyBurb: Redfern iteration were primarily the ABC Pool community members and not

the residents of Redfern as such – Redfern was a suitable location because of the vast

amount of archival material that was already available on this suburb. Redfern,

although a historically rich environment that has been a contentious area for Sydney’s

indigenous population, was a test bed for further mobile AR development.

However, augmenting an archival collection that uses multiple technologies

while managing internal and external ABC hierarchies is a complex undertaking. The

coordination of multiple human and non-human actors within this arrangement

represents the strategic efforts of intermediaries who routinely make significant

managerial, design and development decisions. The introduction of intermediation

into the co-creative production environment is a direct result of attempting to bridge

the gulf between cultural artefact production and consumption (Negus, 2002). Co-

creative production in this sense highlights the rise of audience participation within

the production process. Here, calibrating the expectations of the users with the

institution, while ensuring the users align with the rules of the institution, is the

process of cultural intermediation. Moreover, cultural intermediation is the framework

to ensure that non-human actors operate successfully, for example the Drupal content

management system communicating with the Layar database to augment an archive

collection. Cultural intermediation then “occurs across other actors, such as

technological devices, programming, code generation and design. The combination of


all of these human and non- human actors as they negotiate cultural artefact

production is described as cultural intermediation” (Hutchinson, 2013, p. 5)

This paper uses cultural intermediation as a framework to understand how the

mobile media space can assist the future of archive collections that interoperate across

digitally networked technologies and develop new ways of visualising information.

This paper first explores the ABC as an organisation before moving towards some of

the key issues in mobile media, Layar and geo-locating content. The article then

explores the issues in releasing copyright material across mobile media platforms

along with the technical restrictions of such activities through the MyBurb: Redfern

case study. Finally, the article uses cultural intermediation as a framework to

understand how mobile augmented reality is possible within the institutional setting.

This research emerges from a three-year project that investigated ABC Pool, a user-

generated content site for the ABC. Users could contribute audio, video, text and

photography to the platform designed, developed, and resourced by the ABC.

Methodology

This research was conducted over three years where I used ethnographic

within an action research context to observe, understand and describe the environment

in which I participated. While the larger context of this research engaged in an

ethnographic action methodology, this paper presents more of a narrative account of

those events. To arrive at the results, however, it is useful to describe how those

methods are conceived in this paper. Ethnography is defined through two distinctive

phases: firstly, “the ethnographer enters into a social setting and gets to know people

involved in it” (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995, p. 1) and, secondly, the ethnographer

writes down what they observe through ethnographic field notes. Hammersley and


Atkinson (1995) define ethnography as a methodology that: “involves the

ethnographer participating, overtly or covertly, in people’s daily lives for an extended

period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions – in

fact, collecting whatever data are available to throw light on the issues that are the

focus of the research” (p. 11). In regards to the augmented reality data presented in

this paper, ethnography was used as a means of understanding, observing and

describing how the multiple decisions were made to address the input from the ABC

and the ABC Pool community.

The research methodology also incorporated elements of action research,

specifically as a method that attempts to improve the research setting for its

stakeholders. Greenwood and Levin (2007) note “[a]ction research is social research

carried out by … a professional action researcher and the members of an organization,

community, or network (“stakeholders”) who are seeking to improve the participants’

situation” (p: 3). In this research, the action research component was not designed to

understand the residents and improve the suburb of Redfern where the project was

physically located as such. Instead, its use was primarily to improve the online

platform for ABC Pool and improve the internal ABC approach towards mobile

media space projects that incorporate user-created content. Although many questions

were asked of the ABC staff and the ABC Pool participants, the residents of Redfern

were not consulted in its development, purely because of the constraints on research

resources. The combination of ethnography with action research provided a cyclic

research design that evolved as I understood the environment, developed the research

questions and improved the environment that I was participating in and observing. To

engage the action method of my research design, I was embedded at ABC Pool as the


community manager for twelve months to understand the stakeholders and their

interests, but to also understand the role of the community manager.

It is worth disclosing at this point that I was an employee at ABC Pool for

twelve months after my initial twelve months as an embedded researcher. This dual

role required careful management to not compromise my role as a researcher and as

such, I implemented strategies to try to maintain my research integrity. I have

previously outlined this process elsewhere (2012), but will talk to the relationship

here briefly. This type of internal/external researcher contention has been addressed

by scholars under the premise of relational processes within the research setting.

Jorgensen especially (1991) highlights the shifting relationship between the observer

and the observed (researcher and researched). She notes “[h]ow interviewees make

sense of and respond to the interviewer’s questions is embedded in the larger process

of coming to know who the interviewer is” (p: 211). Socially constructing my role as

the researcher, and associating a form of knowledge expertise with this position, the

research participants acknowledged my efforts as someone sincerely invested in the

development of the research site. This relationship developed over the course of both

12-month periods where the researched would treat me as a ‘Poolie’1, and provided

insights that would not be accessible to non-participant researchers.

Public service media and the ABC as a digital archive institution

Before exploring how the ABC has developed its understanding of the mobile

media space through cultural intermediation, it is useful to describe the ABC as a

particular type of cultural institution. Cultural institutions have been incorporated

broadly as the GLAM sector made up of galleries, libraries, archives and museums, 1 A Poolie was the title used by participants to describe other participants in the ABC Pool community. A Poolie indicated that user was a lead contributor that would participate in forum discussions, contribute creative content, and was aware of the larger framework of which the platform operated within – the constraints of the ABC.


where GLAM is responsible for maintaining artefact collections and managing the

public’s access to those collections. Public service media (PSM) is a particular type of

cultural institution within the GLAM sector that manages its archive collection, and

also produces content for its collection to construct a national identity and promote

cultural diversity (McClean, 2008). In this capacity, PSM moves beyond the

expectations of other cultural institutions to establish its unique purpose as a

particular type of cultural institution, which is often legislated by the governments

who administer PSM, see for example the ABC Act (ABC, 1983). As a unique

cultural institution, PSM has gone through a semantic shift from public service

broadcasting (PSB) and its remit of merely ‘broadcasting’ content, towards a public

institution that provides improved services and information. PSM is built on the early

models of PSB, comprised of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Reithian

values: “the application of core principles of universality of availability and appeal,

provision for minorities, education of the public, distance from vested interests,

quality programming standards, program maker independence, and fostering of

national culture and the public sphere” (Cunningham, 2013, p. 62). On top of PSM’s

Reithian foundations, the improved services and information closely aligns with how

the institution manages the public’s access to its archival collection as an improved,

contemporary version of the remit of PSM. The purpose of the remit of PSM then is

to not only produce content, but to provide services that enhance the promotion of

‘social good’ (Finkelstein, 2012).

As a cultural institution that promotes social good, it has been argued that the

ABC has historically been seen as a cultural facilitator to do more than produce

content, but to actively use media as a way to promote a national and cultural identity

in the Australian context. Wilson, Hutchinson and Shea (2010) suggest the ABC is


“engaged to facilitate cultural activity that is not directly related to its role of

producing or procuring content for broadcast” (p. 16), which has in the past been

demonstrated through the ABC’s support of its national orchestras and its promotion

of other musical ensembles through live performance. These activities fall within the

innovation spectrum of the ABC, suggesting the ABC has a role beyond its PSM

remit to experiment and innovate. Indeed Debrett (2010) suggests that national public

service broadcasters must “come into their own as innovators, pioneering new modes

of delivery and experimenting with interactive content, often under specific directives

by government to drive digital take-up” (p. 185). Debrett’s provocation indicates that

PSM should develop new and innovative relationships with its audience beyond the

scope of producing content, and across new digitally networked platforms. The ABC

has been experimenting with inclusive and collaborative projects across the internet

for several years to respond to claims it should be innovating with new services for its

audiences. Until 2011, however, it had never experimented with the mobile media

space to encourage Australian citizens to engage with its extensive archival collection.

MyBurb had indirect support through Australian legislation that suggests the

ABC should continually innovate (ABC Act, 1983) where the ABC is a key cultural

institution under Schedule 5 of the Copyright Regulations Act (1969). Market

research suggested that the ABC is a key social innovation driver in the Australian

media market (Cutler, 2008) as a response “to changes in the media environment

arising from digitisation, convergence and changing societal needs and expectations”

(Flew, Cunningham, Bruns, & Wilson, 2008, p. 1). At a national level, independent

media enquiries were beginning to surface that questioned the role of Australian PSM

in a digital, converged environment, highlighting the necessity for the ABC to be

focussing on the digitisation of archives for improved public access. Thus, at many


levels, a common idea was to consider the scope of user-created content through the

provisions of online and emerging mobile media services. This was a complex

undertaking that required a sophisticated approach to manage the alignment of

stakeholder expectations and technology barriers.

Geo-locating archives with mobile AR technology

In thinking about mobile technologies that engage archival collections, users

are voyeurs (Gazzard, 2011) in how they use the content to not only observe space,

but to add an additional layer of understanding to create unique spatial engagement

(Certeau, 1984). A contemporary environment that uses a unique spatial engagement

develops on the concept of place beyond its space, a concept which is “fundamental to

our everyday experience” (Dourish, 2006, p. 61). Earlier research has indicated that

mobile AR accessed through mobile technologies improved users experienced when

adopted in urban areas (Lee, Dünser, & Kim, 2012). Research by Liao and

Humphreys (2014) returned three significant findings for their recent work on why

users engage Layar AR. Firstly, those who created content for Layar saw it as an

opportunity: “seeing what was possible and then experimenting with augmenting

space motivated a deeper thinking about the variety of places” (p. 9). Secondly, to

share public and private information as a communication device: “helping a number

of people access useful information about their surrounding locations” (p. 9). Third,

creating spaces that serve as memorials, representing a “mutually constitutive

relationship between code and place” (p. 11) thereby creating new meaning in

augmented spaces. Finally, their research leads them to question the authority of place,

whereby the technology enables particular types of users to engage in creative

activities, as they demonstrate with examples of illicit exhibitions in institutions such

as the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and the Venice Biennale. In each of these


findings, it is clear that mobile augmented reality are shifting the meaning of place

and understanding of space, which has been provided to a host of new participants

through mobile technologies.

Farman (2012) makes an extraordinary observation of the exclusionary aspect

of the mobile phone through its interface: “the mode of connectivity [is]

simultaneously an isolating and excluding activity due to the nature of the interface

and its design for individual, rather than group, consumption” (2012, p. 113). In

talking about privileging the individual space over the community space, mobile

technologies can be problematic when incorporated into the online community

environment. What was intended to be a technology that would advance the

interpersonal relationships between online community members and their

environments, quickly became a case of only those with the suitable technological

access could indeed contribute and participate in the MyBurb experiment. This final

observation of the sociality of mobile AR, which is supported by Farman’s

observations of the inherent complications of the mobile interface, is also an issue that

cultural intermediation should address to successfully implement the experimental

project.

These three significant contributions by scholars in the mobile media field

highlight some of the sociological concerns beyond the often cited technological

barriers associated with mobile AR and mobile interface theory. The following

sections build upon these observations while acknowledging the copyright and

technical barriers of implementing a mobile AR project in the institutional Drupal

environment.

Releasing archive collections for open access on ABC Pool


Before exploring the technological issues of such a project, and building on

the previously outlined ABC as an institution and mobile media sociological

challenges sections, it is worth briefly highlighting the issues surrounding copyright

release of archival material. The ABC took a conservative approach to releasing

archives and strategically released content for the public to access and reuse. In 2009,

the ABC released its Open Access Archives Pilot to provide the public access to its

archival collection and align its efforts with other cultural institutions pioneering work

in this area. For example in Sydney, the Powerhouse Museum had successfully

launched its photographic collection to the public through the use of an application

programming interface (API). The Powerhouse’s photographic collection API

prompted the production of a series of innovative projects that utilised their archive

collection. For the ABC, the ABC Open Access Archives Pilot project aimed

“to create a collection of ABC archives (images and short video) and make

them available on ABC online (Radio National Pool site) and on external

platforms (Picture Australia and Flickr commons) for the public to access”

(Potts, 2009).

The ABC Open Access Archives Pilot used ABC Pool as its platform, which

was built in the Drupal content management system and enabled users to publish

content and engage in activities around that content. ABC Pool was one space at the

ABC that enabled user-created content to be incorporated into the publishing practices

of the ABC, for example in the production of radio features and documentaries. Users

were encouraged to upload their photography, audio, video or text to themed projects

that would often have a broadcast outcome. ABC Pool emerged from the Radio

National (RN) network and was closely aligned with the features and documentary

makers of the 360documentaries program. The media could seamlessly move across


mediums, for example from online to radio or television, through the Creative

Commons licensing system.

ABC Pool used Creative Commons to license content, which enabled the ABC

Open Access Archives Pilot to experiment with open licensing of the ABC archival

material. Creative Commons is a series of “copyright licenses [that] provide a simple,

standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work –

on conditions of your choice” (Creative Commons, 2014). Creative Commons is a

suitable licensing mechanism for content creators who encourage others to remix or

reuse their creative work. Thus, for the remix artists that were sought to use MyBurb:

Redfern, Creative Commons is an ideal copyright apparatus to stimulate collaboration

and participation amongst users.

Augmenting archive collections in contemporary spaces: Lessons from MyBurb

This section describes the technological and managerial issues of instigating

the MyBurb: Redfern project by first looking at the concept of mobile media as a form

of ubiquitous computing. The 2013 State of Broadband Report notes, “mobile

broadband is today’s fastest growing Information and Communication Technology”

(ITU, 2013, p. 10) where mobile broadband subscriptions “overtook fixed broadband

subscriptions in 2008, and show an astonishing high growth rate of some 30% per

year” (ibid. p. 12). With the development of versatile operating systems taken up by

mobile phone developers, for example the Android platform in late 2010, mobile

phone users had increased access to smart applications. Smart applications refer to

“rich multimedia support, GPS navigation, versatile connectivity, social networking

and significant computational resources” (Chatzidimitris et al., 2013, p. 1). Improved

user activities have been noted though mobile computing, which “is a technology that


provides a service automatically based in perceived situational information in

personal and ubiquitous environments” where “ubiquitous computing is characterized

by users who are focused on a virtual space established by computers and networks”

(Chung, Yoo, & Kim, 2014, p. 489). The emphasis on virtual spaces has been

popularized in the cultural institution sector, consistent with “a trend towards the

active participation of people visiting historical sites” (Lombardo & Damiano, 2012, p.

11). Cultural institutions have increased participation within cultural sites using

mobile computing, primarily smartphones and devices using mobile internet,

otherwise known as mobile media.

The ABC sought to provide a new way of interacting with its digitised archive

collection: a collaborative project built on the ABC Pool Drupal platform.

The [MyBurb] concept is to build a mobile view within Pool where project

producers can augment their content. This view is linked to a Layar channel

and is triggered by a latitude and longitude pre-determined position. For

example, when a user walks into a specific space, the Layar channel will sense

where the user is and trigger the play back of ABC archive material

(Fieldnotes, 2011).

All content within ABC Pool could be geo-located, which means if a

photograph was taken in Tasmania, the contributor could accurately ‘pin’ the

photograph to a location via a Google Maps module in the Drupal database. With any

user able to geo-locate content, the MyBurb project was co-creative in that users could

contribute their personal collection of locations to the existing ABC archive. Users

were then invited to contribute their content to specific themed projects, for example

MyBurb, to experience their collections alongside the ABC’s, in-situ. The MyBurb


project enabled users to also consume content, when located within an Australian

suburb, by using their smartphone to access ABC archives, also described as a point

of interest (POI). For example, a user could look at the NSW Parramatta Town Hall

through their phone’s camera and superimpose the 1965 street view to experience the

ABC’s archive. The ‘space’ remains the same but the juxtaposition of the different

historical moments across the contemporary environment reveals new meaning to the

‘place’, using de Certeau’s (1984) space and place concept.

MyBurb was developed in the early epoch of smartphone applications, where

Layar was gaining traction as an industry leader for enhancing content as geo-locative

media. The Layar application “mission is to provide the highest quality tools and

services for augmented reality” which “has the power to effect change in the way

people discover and interact with useful and educational information” (Layar, 2014).

Layar emerged as the tool that could connect the ABC archives to a location through a

user’s mobile phone, where ABC management made the decision to implement Layar

based on its market penetration and the ABC Pool developer’s ability to connect the

app to Drupal.

Today I sat in a meeting with Fergus Pitt who is the manager of technology in

the Multiplatform and Content Development department for the Radio

division. We spoke about the development of the augmented project using

ABC archives. I presented him some research data on the usage statistics of

Layar and he also told me some of his technology developer friends in Sydney

had been experimenting with Layar’s platform. He decided there and then that

Layar would be the most appropriate platform to integrate into the Pool

Drupal environment to augment the archives. (Fieldnotes, 2011).


The decision to implement Layar as the platform was the first in a series of

decisions to develop an augmented experience of the ABC archive collection. The

more complex areas of management became obvious through the technical

development of the project, and simultaneously through the selection of content and

the rights management of the content. The MyBurb project was designed to launch in

regional areas of Australia, but for the purposes of this paper, I will focus on the

MyBurb: Redfern iteration, which explores the social history of a politically volatile

Sydney based suburb.

The technology design and development was, in the end, a reasonably simple

process that involved generating XML code and installing it on the ABC Pool server

to enable the Layar and ABC Pool platforms to communicate across a common

protocol. Layar’s application programming interface (API) enabled the two platforms

to communicate via one communication protocol. The flow of signal starts from the

mobile device that uses the Layar application (see Appendix A for schematic

drawing). The mobile device sends the location data to the Layar server, which in turn

sends a query string to the ABC Pool server. When this query string is received, the

ABC Pool server sends back a point of interest (POI) – the geo-located content – to

the Layar server, and finally the information is sent to the mobile device.

As the technology was developed for MyBurb, the members of the ABC Pool

team were selecting content with the ABC archive and rights management teams. As

highlighted previously, copyright release is a troublesome task. Content with ‘low

value copyright material’ was selected on the basis it avoided any material concerned

with the Royal Family, embedded copyright music, indigenous Australians, or

children. The content was finalised and released after a complex process of selecting

potential material, ensuring it was low risk, digitising the content, securing copyright


clearance, and editing the content into small file sizes deliverable across mobile

internet connections. During the latter months of 2011, MyBurb: Redfern was

successfully launched to signify a new experimental era of archival content delivered

across mobile internet for augmented reality technology.

The public use of MyBurb: Redfern was less than anticipated. One notable

piece of content was Paul Keating’s 1992 Redfern Park Speech for the United

Nation’s International Year of the World’s Indigenous People. Aside from being a

monumental moment in Australian politics, the release of this material under Creative

Commons licensing drew attention from a large audience including archivists,

creatives and digital historians. However, the project was not widely received for two

reasons. First, the ABC did not promote this project, as it was unstable and

unpredictable. Second, the technology was cumbersome and required a high level of

interaction with participants to use the interface. The combination of these two factors

resulted in usage statistics that suggested some interest, while indicating users were

not motivated to participate as either a contributor or consumer of content.

The two processes outlined above, the technology development and rights

management, build on the nuances highlighted in the first two sections of this paper

including the uniqueness of the ABC as an institution and the sociological challenges

for mobile media. In each of the four areas, there were multiple human and non-

human stakeholders involved. Each stakeholder had agency and would demonstrate

that during any negotiation process. During these moments of possible contention, an

intermediary is required that understands each stakeholder to ensure consensus is

achieved. The following section uses the cultural intermediation framework to

highlight how specific expertise is required to navigate the problematic areas of

mobile media, Layar and geo-locative content within the PSM sector.


Cultural intermediation to facilitate future archival interactivity

The term cultural intermediary was first used by Bourdieu (1984) to indicate

the intermediary between societal classes in France, and was later applied by Negus

(2002) to the cultural industries. Negus grounds the role of the cultural intermediary

as located within the “practices that continue to proliferate in the space between

production and consumption” (Negus, 2002, p. 501). He notes the “central strength of

the notion of cultural intermediaries is that it places an emphasis on those workers

who come in-between creative artists and consumers (or, more generally, production

and consumption)” (Negus, 2002, p. 503). Negus is referring to roles within the

creative industries similar to accountants, A&R people or senior executives, where he

argues that cultural intermediaries “reproduce rather than bridge the distance between

production and consumption” (Negus, 2002, p. 509). Within the online co-creative

environment that is housed within media institutions, the role of the cultural

intermediary is somewhat different in terms of their supportive and collaborative

responsibility. Within the ABC Pool project, it was the role of the cultural

intermediary to bridge the cultural production canyon between professional media

producers and the contributors to the project. Within the MyBurb: Redfern project, it

was the role of the cultural intermediary to successfully negotiate the process of

archival release between the multiple stakeholders who each had an interest in the

content. This included the internal ABC archival staff, the rights management team,

the design and development team and the management within the Radio

Multiplatform and Content Development department. However, given the high

technical demand of this project, the cultural intermediary not only had to

intermediate between human actors, they also had to translate and negotiate between

non-human actors. With technology however, it is not a translation role as such, rather


it is a facilitating role to ensure the design, development and implementation of

technology aligns with the focus of the human actors. In other words, the cultural

intermediary ensures the human and non-human actors align to achieve the goals of

the creative project that is producing cultural artefacts.

I have previously argued, “cultural intermediaries operate between multiple

stakeholders concerned with cultural production in an online environment. They are

primarily in a supportive and encouraging role to engage in the production of cultural

artefacts” (Hutchinson, 2013, p. 224). However mediation also occurs across

technological devices such as design, code generation, and programming by ensuring

some platforms are not privileged over others through inherent coding and design,

which has previously been described as platform politics (Gillespie, 2010). Further,

cultural intermediation is responsible for navigating the authority of place highlighted

by Laio and Humphreys (2014) by ensuring participation is an open and legitimate

process.

Building on these issues, cultural intermediation enabled a complex project

like MyBurb: Redfern to operationalise within the constraints of a PSM institution. In

this context, cultural intermediation is essentially knowledge and expertise wrangling

that enables the translation of one actor’s language to another actor. This translation

process enables actor agency to be introduced, but does not enable the agency to

inhibit the progression of cultural artefact production. For successful cultural

intermediation to occur, it requires granular knowledge of each actor within the

creative arrangement.

As each actor appeared in the complex process of releasing archives across

new media technologies, so too was a new agency. To undertake the negotiation


process that is associated with the production of cultural goods, the cultural

intermediary will use what has been highlighted within the social sciences as

management and expertise models, specifically interactional expertise. “Interactional

expertise is a translation role that facilitates and supports communication, dialogue

and exchange across expertise domains” (Banks, 2009, p. 85). Combined with

interactional expertise, the cultural intermediary uses contributory expertise and

referred expertise. Contributory expertise is defined as expertise in ‘tacit knowledge,

practical or craft skill’ that enables the cultural intermediary to be recognised as a

useful contributor based on their historical participation (Evans, 2008). Referred

expertise stems from “skills that have been learned in one scientific area are directly

applied to another” (Collins & Sanders, 2007, p. 622), where the cultural intermediary

displays skills from other areas that are useful in their current context. For example,

bringing a design and development background to the development of the MyBurb:

Redfern project was extremely valuable to be able to translate the technical

requirements to the managerial teams. Likewise, being able to translate the concerns

of the management team to the archive team was as useful as understanding the

technological constraints. A combination of these three expertise models enables a

cultural intermediary to understand the language and nuances of individual actors,

both human and non-human, and translate those languages to the other actors.

Conclusion

This paper has highlighted the role of cultural institutions as the appropriate

bodies to oversee public collections, with PSM as a particular type of cultural

institution that facilitates and creates digital archives. Recent technological advances

in how the public access cultural artefacts via connected devices utilising mobile

internet, indicate cultural institutions should digitise their archive collections to make


them searchable and accessible by the public. Open access digital archives improve

the citizenry of those societies that provide these opportunities for its citizens.

Projects such as MyBurb: Redfern indicate how digital archives purposed for open

access can bring mobile AR technologies to previously closed collections to satisfy

the trend of improving citizenry. The juxtaposition of old collections augmented

across contemporary environments produced new knowledge inaccessible via other

methods. However, beyond the limitations of current copyright laws, developing these

types of projects are difficult given the negotiation involved between disparate

stakeholders involved in these collaborative projects. This is also obvious within the

sociological challenges of mobile media, Layar and geo-locative media, along with

the technical issues associated with these projects. I have demonstrated how the work

of the cultural intermediary can successfully negotiate between the actors to ensure

these types of cultural production projects operate and develop for future digital

collections within cultural institutions.

By implementing a combination of expertise, cultural intermediation is

essential for developing augmented reality projects to ensure not only successful

implementation, but to also maintain legitimate participation across these emerging

platforms. In this regard, more research is required to understand the role of cultural

intermediation that operates alongside mobile media platforms within the cultural

industries, to understand the increased agency of users who influence an iterative

creative industry model. In other words, understanding how users are making cultural

products with mobile media to construct meaning in everyday life demonstrates how

new cultural intermediaries are redefining media and power relationships within

traditional cultural institutions.


Acknowledgements

Danielle Fagerstrom, Alexandra Porter-Hepworth, Graham Hill, Fergus Pitt,

Sherre DeLys, John Jacobs, Andrew Davies, David Hua, Axel Bruns, John Banks,

Oksana Zelenko, Monique Potts, Natasha Marfutenko

Declaration of conflicting interest

The ABC employed the author in a part-time capacity during 2011 and 2012,

which also aligned with the author’s embedded position as an ethnographic researcher

for his PhD dissertation through the Australian Research Council’s Centre of

Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, Queensland University of

Technology.


Appendix A

The schematic flow of data from mobile device to Layar server

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The Future of Digital Archive Collections: Augmenting Public Service Media Geo-Locative Archives

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