This post was written by Anthony Burton, Data Fluencies Fellows and PhD Candidate at SFU.
Dr. Ibrus is professor of media innovation at the Baltic Film, Media and Arts School (BFM) of Tallinn University, where he researches public value production in datafying media industries, especially with regard to data technologies such as Semantic Web and blockchain.
In his talk, Dr. Ibrus interrogated different ways of measuring the public value of media data, especially in the public sphere. Taking the position that an effective media system includes a diversity of actors, rewards value creation work, and facilitates a diverse public sphere, these media systems can result in the sorting of public value. The question, then, is what innovations in related legacy media businesses can inform the understanding of public data as news media increasingly moves towards entirely digital models. Investigating public value creation in this sense allows the investigation of how to build better data systems that will reveal how public value is created, undermine value extraction, and reveal what value is provided to the public.
One such method that was presented was the attempt to quantify public value creation by public service media through the lens of diversity. Using data from broadcast management systems (systems that broadcasters use to manage the delivery of content, advertising, and their data), specifically program, catalogue, and collaboration diversities as well as people-based metrics such as engagement diversity of people and firms. Dr. Ibrus’ research uses diversity as a marker for public value, with diversity here meaning variety, balance, and disparity of content. Dr. Ibrus and his colleagues applied this lens to global film festival circuits, using the data to build datasets based on programming content. These datasets are designed in such that anyone would be able to study public sphere dynamics and public histories through this public value test.
Dr. Ibrus also presented work on the relationship betweeen community maintenance, platform governance, and individual careers through studies of blockchain-based video streaming plaatforms Theta.tv and Odysee. This approach to investigating the blockchain involves interrogating its qualities as an immutable ledger–something that records all entries and is not subject to the possibility of centralized control or editing–in the case of Digiciti, a startup developing rights management infrastructure as a public service.
Dr. Ibrus then presented his research group’s next steps, to work on analytical and developmental projects (especially regarding the covergence of linked data and distributed ledgers). This work also serves a wider theoretical goal of conceptualizing the role of data relationships, their diversities, evolutions, and effects on sustainable development. They plan to look at how this conceptual development intersects with public value theories, institutional economics, and cultural semiotics.