Exploring “A Million Penguins:” Order and Chaos in a wiki novel.
IOCT Research Seminar by Bruce Mason
IOCT Lab, Wednesday April 23, 2008 4:30-5:30pm
This seminar is free and open to the public.
In February 2007,
DMU and
Penguin Publishing collaborated to host the world’s first wiki novel - "
A Million Penguins" - using the same software that runs Wikipedia. Over a five week period nearly 1,500 people signed up to edit the novel, over 11,000 edits were made and it was viewed over 500,000 times leading the CEO over Penguin Publishing to muse that it was maybe the "most written novel in history."
In this seminar, Bruce Mason will outline the results of a research project held at the
IOCT which investigated the social behaviour that unfolded during the writing of "A Million Penguins." What kinds of collaboration, conflict and compromise occurred and what did it tell us about future online writing possibilities? Did a sense of community arise or did we see nothing but chaos and vandalism?
The seminar will not require any particular knowledge of wikis or online writing.
About the presenter
Bruce Mason is an IOCT Post-Doctoral Research Fellow specialising in social research and web2.0 activities. He previously worked at DMU with Professor Sue Thomas on an
Arts and Humanities Research Council Funded Project that investigated the potential for folksonomy in academic research.
About A Million Penguins
A Million Penguins is a collaborative online novel, a wiki which was open to anyone in the world to write and edit. The project ran from 1st Feb to 7th March 2007, was organised by
Kate Pullinger of De Montfort University and Jeremy Ettinghausen of
Penguin, with Sue Thomas, Professor of New Media at De Montfort and an editorial team of students enrolled on De Montfort’s
Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media.
Links
Further Information
If you have any questions about this seminar or the research project, please contact Bruce Mason by email: bmason01 at dmu.ac.uk
In February 2007, DMU and Penguin Publishing collaborated to host the world’s first wiki novel - "A Million Penguins" - using the same software that runs Wikipedia. Over a five week period nearly 1,500 people signed up to edit the novel, over 11,000 edits were made and it was viewed over 500,000 times leading the CEO over Penguin Publishing to muse that it was maybe the "most written novel in history."
In this seminar, Bruce Mason will outline the results of a research project held at the IOCT which investigated the social behaviour that unfolded during the writing of "A Million Penguins." What kinds of collaboration, conflict and compromise occurred and what did it tell us about future online writing possibilities? Did a sense of community arise or did we see nothing but chaos and vandalism?
The seminar will not require any particular knowledge of wikis or online writing.
