Liveness and Liveliness

Questioning liveliness becomes a methodology to understand it

1. Working definitions

Liveness : relative popularity detected by frequency measures.

Liveliness: variation over time, changing associations and composition.

 

Object indicators

  • text
  • relations
  • update frequency, activity
  • actors involved

Process indicators

  • composition: growing, expanding, contracting, decay
  • change
  • activity (live)
  • variation in time
  • and its relation to stability?
  • responsiveness, affection
  • comparability, how do different objects come together?
  • impact, which effects? What does that lead to?

Scale indicators

  • proportion
  • interval
  • linearity and non-linear time
  • Different conceptions of liveliness, different forms of relevance?
  • Liveliness significance
2. Questioning liveliness
  • What does distinguish liveliness from mere activity?
  • getting beyond resonance and mere virality
  • Researchers follow the medium too much

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3. Context specific liveliness
  • Software as lively, custom scripts, context being written into >> Liveliness of scripts, liveliness of tools, liveliness of issues
  • Flatness of indicators?
  • Pace as intensity of liveliness?
  • Liveliness as inherently topological: invariance under deformation (Duffy 2006). Requires variation, morphing, remixing, changing actor compositions.
  • Liveliness re-assemble machine: changes the internal composition, focal points and associated themes of an issue.
  • Critique of resonance?

How yould platforms like Twitter look like if they would prioritise liveliness as opposed to liveness?

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