Constructive Media

Constructive media is an approach to communications that is designed for enhancing the understanding of its participants with the minimum of effort and errors.

Context

Background by Jon Garfunkel of Civilities.net

"If this definition makes it sounds like it was written by a process engineer, that's because it was. If it sounds like a pedagogical approach, that's because the name was inspired by Seymour Papert's Constructionist theory of learning. Constructionism, in short, stresses doing and making over rote learning (Papert's best known tangible creations are the LOGO/Lego educational tools).

Constructive media is also indebted to the work of John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid: I read their essay “The Social Life of Documents" and subsequent book The Social Life of Information ten years ago. What I learned from this work was that I no longer saw a document as a fixed thing; it had a lifecycle where new knowledge could be brought to it and integrated in. Brown and Duguid drew on insights by social scientists Anselm Strauss and Benedict Anderson, who saw that documents are fundamental as organizing centers societies; Anderson cited the U.S. Constitution as a solid example. Brown and Duguid took this further by looking at more intimate groups like communities of practices."

Related Concepts

By Jon Garfunkel:

“Communities of Practice" has also emerged as a useful term to describe groups which function together, such as businesses, governments, nonprofits. The intermediate goals, on the path towards enhancing understanding, are the development of knowledge artifacts-- laws, policies, reports, articles-- which are viewed as normative by the community. By contrast, “communities of interest," such as those common on the Internet, generate documentary material in the form of email, comments, polls, etc; but tend to stop short of producing normative output. Thus there is no constructive effort.

I've suggested the term “constructive media" since “the social life" escapes easy conjugation. Also, the social life theories presumed that social motivations were key factors to collaborative efforts. This has evolved towards the concept of social media, or alternatively, social software. With constructive media, that isn't necessarily the case; the participants' main focus should be the documents. I go into more depth in the differences between the two in my article The Yin to Social Software's Yang.

In addition, the term citizen media has blossomed over the last couple of years. It covers similar territory, but is there are key differences. Citizen media is often about giving tools to ordinary “citizens" (non-professionals) to produce and share content. Constructive media, on the other hand, is strictly about process and outcome, and is independent of the players involved." (http://civilities.net/ConstructiveMedia)

The Constructive Media Process

Jon Garfunkel:

"The constructive media process

Constructive media is built upon the the process of inquiry, which is at the heart of academic, legal, governance, and journalistic proceedings. It follows this general model:

1.The author constructs a hypothesis or a question, and sets about to answer it, or seek answers to it.

2.Active readers provide direct feedback, public or private.

3.Passive readers provide feedback through indirect means (polling, ViewPoints, etc.)

4.The author/publisher integrates the results within a newer version of the document.

5.Overall, the author and the audience negotiate meaning and value of the content." (http://civilities.net/ConstructiveMedia)