Livestreaming, blogging and twittering are more and more – and also more easily – explored by different kinds of organisations. Today I am attending the Glocal conference in Macedonia, Skopje on social media. And you can join the conference from a distance.

Here we (Niels Hendriks and me) presented a critical reflection on social media and design and how they are used in our (Media & Design Academy, Genk, Belgium) research and educational work in cultural, social and commercial contexts (most of the time the context is mixed).

The presentations here are of very different kinds and adress different contexts. Very interesting contributions were made by…

Biljana or @motokko (twitter name) studies the Otaku phenomenon. A Japanese term for strange geeks, information festishists,.. They are examples of hardcore fanculture,… who subvert intensively collected ready made objects http://bi.taneski.com/otaku/

Also interesting were the contributions by
-Nada Švob-Dokic about the transformations Cultural Industries. She states that social media are impacting the cultural production and particularly cultural industries in many different ways. Cultural consumption is according to her, very much connected with the increased communication and socialization among consumers. She focusses on the evolutions in this subject in Southeast European post-socialist countries.

-Kevin Robins deals with the phenomenon of crossing borders and the way European media and cultural studies deal with this subject.

-Paul Bradshaw – the famous expert on online journalism issues – was supposed to talk about his latest project named Help Me Investigate (HMI). The “live” skype lecture was not a success though. Luckily Faik Uyanik adressed the use of social media in journalism, through an explanation of his work in the Turkish section of the BBC.

Many other interesting themes were adressed at the conference. If you want to have an overview, you can follow the presentations “live”, or you can scroll through the intense documentation of the research presentations via several social media gathered in the Glocal conference site.

The link: http://glocalconference.com/live/

In the meantime I – from Skopje – will today be able to enjoy the live internet radio of  the event that celebrates 30 years of the independent Radio Scorpio in Leuven, Belgium.

A hybrid experience…