Critical Mash-up 2012

This is a very brief plenary of the critical mash-up event hosted in the level five studio. The main topics were social media, traditional media, identity, psychology and creativity. Perhaps social media being the most dominant but with a variety of different focus points, such as 'the viral', mobile advertising and location-based advertising. Identity ranged from branding to gender and even to advertising itself. There were some excellent examples of  triangulation where different sources representing a range of viewpoints were used to interrogate an interesting debate. There were many successes where a range of critical theories were used to critically analyse and evaluate an issue from Althusser to more contemporary critical theory. There were some new phrases used to describe the nature of contemporary audiences such as on-demand society, producers (as opposed to consumers). Conversation and collaboration cropped up a lot as well as new challenges to creativity. One of the many insights that came out of this sharing of  critical activities was that social or media has a new, sometimes very physical relationship to 'producers'. Anyway, many thanks to all the delegates for contributing to this event, which was quite difficult to summarise (due to my depreciating memory skills). So, please lend a hand by leaving a mention of the many interesting exchanges omitted.