Ranking (part 6): Randomness and lists

In the last post I have stated that random lists are boundary objects: They include a low level of list-ness, and can therefore often better be described as sets or groups (I used these two terms quite carelessly as interchangeable - I wil…

Ranking (part 5): Lists as one form of assemblage

What distinguishes lists form other forms of assemblages? Well, to start with a pretty simple observation: Lists are pretty simple forms of assemblage. They are nothing near the complexity of an organism, not even of a network. They have a…

Ranking (part 4): Assemblage as a start for a theory of lists and rankings

Nico Nico Douga’s ranking is one form of ranking. Rankings are one form of lists. So what is a list? What looks like a simple question turned out to be a rather complicated one. To develop a sytsematical approach, I moved up even one branc…

Ranking (part 3): Lists and rankings as an undervalued dimension of the Internet

The British media theorist and sociologist Adrian McKenzie has recently sketched out his idea about the Internet as a medium of lists. I found his talk on a workshop at Goldsmiths highly inspiring. It struck me that rankings in particular,…

Ranking (part 2): Nico Nico Douga’s recent ranking revolution

Like most video community websites, Nico Nico Douga does not have one single form, but a plurarity of rankings. The most important form is called, tellingly, “ranking”, but it is not the only one. The “ranking” button is placed in the uppe…

Ranking (part 1): Intro and overview – plus some remarks about this blog

There is hardly a week without a new twist in the development of Nico Nico Douga. But even said that, the last weeks were particularly exciting for us at the metadata project. Niwango, the company behind Nico Nico Douga, re-organised its r…

Story and backstory in the age of metadata - A conversation with Sikii-san

With Sikii-san (id:sikii_j) we were able to interview another highly prominent Imas-blogger. Sikii-san is based in Kyoto, but Takashiro-san originally met him in Tokyo, where the members of Nico Nico Bu organised an offline meeting to meet…

Part 2 about Japaneseness – and some scenarios for Nico Nico Douga in the West

Triggered of by the launch of Nico Nico Douga’s German and Spanish version, I asked myself in the last post (“Wunderbar – Nico Nico Douga goes German….”) two questions that I evaded up to this point: How Japanese is Nico Nico Douga? And wh…

Wunderbar! Nico Nico Douga goes German – and some hesitant reflections on Japaneseness (pt 1)

Nico Nico Douga has now released a Spanish (http://es.nicovideo.jp/) and a German version (http://de.nicovideo.jp/). The German translation of the interface is still a bit shaky, but hey, who would complain? This makes life so much easier …

Beyond Sklavenmoral - Kanamaru Toshiyuki and Harry Graf Kessler

Kanamaru-san (id:kana0355) is a pragmatic linguist based in the languages department of Kyoto University. The same Kanamaru-san is also a deep Nico Chuu, who has not one, but two Nico Nico Douga premium accounts, so that both he and his wi…

Matsuri! Talking to Nico Nico Bu members in Kyoto

We didn't really plan to do a focus group in Kyoto. I wanted to see temples, eat, sit at the river, do all the classical Kyoto things, before the research would continue in Osaka. However, Takashiro-san soon found out that many Nico Nico B…

Nico Nico Douga Version upgrade

Nico Nico Douga is taking another major step. On July the 2rd Dwango announced an agreement with three associations of film and video industry, to delete all videos that infringe copyright, including MAD movies. Then, after the release sho…

Clubbing in the afternoon: Dancing on a Nico Nico Caravan in Osaka

Later on I learned that the pre-party had started at 9.30 … 9.30 AM that is! We arrived at 3PM, but even then it was a surprising sight, as I would normally associate dance ecstasy in a club with nighttime, but not with Sunday afternoons. …

My favourite translaters and my favourite video

Today is my last day in Japan. I will keep on posting about the amazing encounters that I had in the last weeks (I mentioned the time delay on this blog before). There is good stuff to come: Encounters with the likes of Shikii-san, Taitoku…

Secret Nico Nico Douga: Meeting Arimura Yuu san and three of his junior fellows

Arimura-san is new. He is new in many respects. He is new on Nico Nico Bu, the community of Nico Nico Douga bloggers on Hatena. His popular blog, which existed before he entered Nico Noco Bu, provides a new take on anime: Faster, and more …

Nico Politics in a Cosplay Cafe: A conversation with Midouoka-san

Midouoka-san is a much debated figure on the Japanese Internet. He has gained his fame on 2channel. Though 2channel is usually a place for anonymous posting, Midouoka-san became a known figure (don’t ask me, how he did that). He says he li…

Meanwhile on the West Coast – Nico-ish platforms in the West

Oregon-based tech blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick has just posted an introduction into Nico Nico Douga on ReadWriteWeb. The article compares Nico Nico Douga favorably to Youtube Annotations, which allows uploaders to add comments to their own…

Life and death on Nico Nico Douga – a conversation with Hikawa Ryusuke san

Hikawa-san is probably the most prominent Anime critic of Japan. You can find his articles in prominent magazines, he has written several books and you can also see him often on TV. His writing is known for having a high analytical depth: …

AcFun.cn - The red star has arrived in Mainland China

It was only a matter of time until the idea of Nico Nico Douga would be taken up in Mainland China. Now, a website seems to do exactly this: AcFun.cn takes up speedYou can access the website directly without becoming a member. As you can s…

Chanting Jokes: A conversation with Anehime-san

“Lucky Star” is an anime series produced by Kyoto Animation. Some say that it was the first major anime series, which was produced deliberately for the Nico-Nico-Douga-age: Lots of dancing, for example, and its lyrics are fast, and therefo…

Nico Nico Douga on US Wired, and live "on air"

It is a good feeling to be as an Academic research project up speed with Wired (US edition) ...http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-06/mf_hiroyuki?currentPage=1The article focuses in large parts on Hiroyuki, and gives a useful i…

Quick note on the time delay on this blog

There are around ten posts queuing up. Takashiro-san and me are feeling bad about that. The last weeks have been very intense and very, very fruitful. New interviews come first, and as ethnographers we also have to write diaries, organise …

Swinging Tags: A conversation with Koizuka Akihiko san

Koizuka-san is a programmer. No. This gives you the wrong idea. Better might be: Koizuka-san is the programmer. He created the original version of Nico Nico Douga in the course of 3 days, and has been the key person in its development ever…

Kuuki dissected: A conversation with Kishino Yusuke san

I met Kishino-san in our first focus group. On his Mixi diary he described afterwards his experiences in this group (which is what many of our participants do). There, Kishino-san made some suggestions, how “kuuki” could have been analysed…

Greasemonkey for tags? A conversation with Noriaki-san

Ginza is a different world from Ikebukuro, where I stay and hang out most of the time: While Ikebukuro is becoming the “real Akihabara” (Akihabra got so famous that Otakus tend to evade it more and more), Ginza is full of suits, lots of sk…

Dimensions of Nico Nico Douga: Talking to members of Nico Nico Bu

‘Nico Nico Bu’ is a network of around 200 bloggers on Hatena, who all blog about Nico Nico Douga. A lot of these blogs recommend specific Nico videos, but there are also bloggers, who tackle technical problems, generate Nico Nico Douga sta…

Tetsugaku (= philosophy) on Nico Nico Douga: More about tags

Each time I do a focus group, my list of questions gets longer: By now, the questionnaire contains 15 pages, and in the end of each focus group I have to admit to myself that I not even managed to ask one quarter of these. Instead, I often…

A first crack on theory: Reading Nico Nico Douga with Gerard Genette

Inspired by the discussions with Takashiro-san, Hamano-san and Yoshikawa-san, I think it might be just about time to start and come forward with some of my own initial ideas, how an analysis of Nico Nico Douga could be pushed forward. What…

Evolution as narrative: A conversation with Yoshikawa Hideyuki san

Yoshikawa-san is the second “organic intellectual” of the Nico Nico Douga community that we meet (the first one was Hamano-san, you can read about him in an earlier post). Even though Yoshikawa-san never uses this word, “organic intellectu…

So what is “kuuki”? Our first focus group

Wow! My head is still spinning from a whole afternoon and evening with a group of 9 Nico Chuus, all of them very generous and interesting. They gave 6 hours of their precious time, which they could have used otherwise to watch Nico videos.…