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Abstract
What happens when a media innovation encounters the marketplace in the form of critical bloggers and commentators? This paper adapts conceptual frameworks from science and technology studies – particularly actor-network theory (ANT) and social construction of technology (SCOT) – in order to analyse the process of introducing new media devices and the role of users and mediators in this process, by way of an empirically based study on digital strategy and marketing by a traditional book industry actor. The case studied is the Kibano Digireader, introduced to the Norwegian book market in 2011 and immediately heavily criticized. Looking into the role of tech bloggers and social media pundits, the paper argues that the success of consumer technologies relies upon an alignment with particular social groups, and their perceptions of relevance and demand. I further argue that the specific insights gained on book industry digitalization are applicable across other media industries and aim at a theoretical contribution by discussing and applying ANT/SCOT concepts on new media development. Based on analyses of press coverage and social media commentaries from November 2011, the paper addresses the following questions: What were the perceived demands and problems intended to be solved by the Digireader? How did the controversy over the Digireader play out and what arguments were raised against and in favour of the device? How can the social media commentators be categorized in terms of their engagement with and interpretation of the Digireader?
Notes
1. The blogger, Chaffey, is recently (October 2013) appointed State Secretary to the Minister for Local and Regional Government and Administration Reform.
2. As of today, Amazon does not allow Norwegian language content at all. It is noteworthy that the publisher Aschehoug in 2013 actually allowed the distribution of their ebooks sold through its publisher's website to be distributed to Kindle devices. The online store ebok.no similarly offers the ability to port ebook files to Kindle devices.
3. The app- and cloud storage solutions were in fact implemented at a later stage.
4. Since we have not conducted any scientific user study, the network is mostly for illustrative purposes; it does not necessarily reflect the actual problems or solutions of empirical social groups. Furthermore, the network could of course be expanded substantially, but that would be unnecessary for the purposes.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Terje Colbjørnsen
Terje Colbjørnsen is a PhD candidate at the University of Oslo, Department of Media and Communication. The PhD project examines digitalization in the trade book industry. [email: [email protected]]