The Curious Case of Steve Jobs

An attempt to characterize the content deluge following the death of the cofounder and former CEO of Apple Inc.
Governance and Strategy in Cultural Firms and Institutions - Group Assignment

Rosario CORNEJO 1608488 Samar EL ZEINI 1352608 Glce MARABACI 1574607 Federica PINI 1317908

1. We declare that this written assignment is our own work and does not include (i) material from other sources used without proper acknowledgment or (ii) material copied from the work of other students. 2. We declare that this assignment has not been submitted for assessment in any other course at any university. 3. We have a copy of this assignment in our possession.

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to define and characterize the vast amount of flooded content, or the content deluge, that accumulated following the death of the Apple co-founder and former CEO, Steve Jobs. The paper begins with an introduction, where the broader notion of content deluge and the research question are presented subsequently. Then, after a theoretical discussion of the very parallel concept of media hype, the three proposed criteria for characterizing this deluge -the explosive growth and gigantic size, the ephemeral lifespan, the circulation of a unilateral perspective-, namely the research hypotheses, are listed. The next section sheds light upon the mechanisms that lead to the formation of this content deluge, followed by an attempt to uncover the reasons why Steve Jobs death, in particular, was the key event to have triggered this process. Finally, the three proposed criteria are verified through empirically derived or gathered online data where a matrix of the deluge is drawn with all its dimensions. The paper concludes with an overview of the analysis and possible limitations, and further with a discussion of the whole process with respect to value creation and future consequences.

Index: 1. Introduction 2. From Media Hype to Content Deluge 3. The Mechanisms of Content Deluge 4. The Key Event: Why Steve Jobs? 5. The Matrix of Deluge 6. Conclusion 7. Bibliography 3 4 6 8 10 25 27

"A liquid modern, consumer-oriented economy relies on a surplus of its offerings, their rapid aging, and an untimely withering of their seductive powers." Zygmunt Bauman, Culture in a Liquid Modern World

1. Introduction
Steve Jobs, the renown American entrepreneur, co-founder and long-time former CEO of Apple Inc., passed away on 5th October 2011 at the age of 56 after a prolonged battle with pancreatic cancer. Within minutes of the announcement of his death, digital channels of all variety were flooding with outpourings of grief for the man who is said to have left a phenomenal footprint on the world. The process of generation of a gargantuan dust of content rapidly accumulating within the online medium thus began. This paper deals with characterizing and delineating a definition for the relatively recent notion of content deluge, taking the particular event of the death of Steve Jobs as the framework within which this deluge is created and shaped. It is highly anticipated that the death of a significant global character will garner humungous attention, and a pretty straightforward conclusion to arrive at is that this attention will result in people talking about the event. It can fairly be questioned what it is, then, that makes the death of Steve Jobs an extraordinary situation worthy of a case study. The simple answer to that question is given by the mere existence of the Internet as it is being used today. Until recently, all that a common person could possibly do, following the death of an important actor within the global community, was to be the recipient of a vast coverage by the traditional media and to talk in return; producing nothing but words that evaporated and disappeared into thin air. The wind has changed tremendously since then: Today, online platforms and social media enable for the interaction and sharing of users to an enormous stretch; not to mention the speed of information travel and the all-encompassing reach of information and content worldwide. People now produce content that stays and accumulates one on top of the other; by writing, creating, commenting, posting and through many other participatory ways that digital media enable; thus turning every event of substantial significance into a big-bang. The dramatic effect of this process is what can be called the content deluge phenomenon: a huge flood of content made available mainly in the online medium; contributed to, placed or created by various actors; intensified and gigantified through the possibilities and technologies endowed by digital media. The specific case of Steve Jobs death was chosen for the analysis of the content deluge phenomenon broadly defined above; a choice which can hardly be called arbitrary. Impossible to avoid or eschew as it was; the ubiquity of the event is not the only thing that makes it relevant for this research. Barack Obama, the U.S. president at the time, included a crucial sentence in his statement regarding the death of the Apple co-founder: And there may be no greater tribute to Steves success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.1 This highly agreeable claim was in fact only the trigger: The same millions that came to know about Jobs death did not stop at that point but they commented, shared, tweeted, designed logos, posted photographs and watched videos; again, mostly, with and through the devices invented by Steve Jobs and with the possibilities granted by the technology he had developed. He was, in a way, the grandest cause and the originator of this massive noise; he himself was one of the biggest reasons behind the content deluge aggregated around his own death. This cyclic cause-and-effect relationship offered a highly intriguing perspective signifying a strange bond among the concept and the case; giving a different meaning to the choice of analysing the notion of content deluge through the passing of the renown entrepreneur. It can be stated, after all that has been said above, that this paper is an attempt to grasp, define and understand this ongoing phenomenon through all of its dimensions. Thus, the basic aim of this piece of work is to answer the research question: How can the content deluge that accumulated following the death of Steve Jobs, the acclaimed former CEO and co-founder of Apple Inc., be characterized? In the next section entitled From Media Hype to Content Deluge, the paper will try to propose a first response to this research question based on the theoretical background regarding the very relevant notion of a media hype. Three criteria, which will later serve as the
1

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/05/president-obama-passing-steve-jobs-he-changed-way-each-us-sees-world

hypotheses to be proven, will be suggested to characterize the phenomenon and to shape its narrowed-down definition. Following this proposed definition, the mechanisms and dynamics that are most likely to have caused this deluge, and the reasons behind Steve Jobs death acting as a key event to have led to such a deluge will be discussed in the sections The Mechanisms of Content Deluge and The Key Event: Why Steve Jobs? subsequently. Finally, in the section The Matrix of Deluge, this phenomenon will be tried to be measured to see if it verifies the three criteria proposed for its definition. The paper will conclude with the discussion of the whole process in terms of value creation and the underlying future consequences.

2. From Media Hype to Content Deluge

In order to move forward with our investigation, a more precise description of what content deluge is should be provided to make room for proper empirical analysis. For the purpose of narrowing down and fine-tuning the definition of the notion from its initial depiction as a huge flood of content made available mainly in the online medium; contributed to, placed or created by various actors; intensified and gigantified through the possibilities and technologies endowed by digital media, we will try to suggest certain criteria for its characterization based on the relevant literature. A clear portrayal of the content deluge accumulated upon the death of Steve Jobs can only be achieved if the definition is rooted in the widely discussed and commonly accepted notion of a media hype. This section will mainly concern the delineation of what a media hype is and how it can be appropriated to the phenomenon of content deluge; in particular with reference to the case of Steve Jobs. The idea of media hype -sometimes referred to as media storm or media tsunami- has been developed theoretically for the first time by Peter Vasterman; who defined it as a media-generated, wall-to-wall news wave, triggered by one specific event and enlarged by the self-reinforcing processes within the news production of the media2. Vasterman further extends this definition by claiming that the sharp rise in news stories during a media hype is the result of making news and covering media-triggered social responses but not reporting news. Wien and Elmelund-Prstekr mainly agreed with Vastermans initial definition; with the exception of the crucial difference of news making and news reporting in Vastermans theory: They considered this difference so hard-to-find in practice3. Giasson and his colleagues constructed the notion of a media tsunami as the succession of several waves of increasing coverage on an underlying issue4. Finally, Boydstun, Walgrave and Hardy coined the concept of a media storm based on the common core shared by all the previous definitions of the same notion, as an explosive increase in news coverage to a specific item constituting a substantial share of the total news agenda during a certain time.5 Note that, for clarity purposes, this notion will be solely referred to as media hype from this point onward; independent from how the different authors called it. The characteristic feature of all the descriptions of a media hype summarized above is that, for some reason, the media devotes a huge, almost disproportional, amount of attention to a specific issue, and does so quite abruptly. From a more practical point-of-view, Boydstun and his colleagues give a definition of media hype as the phenomenon of sudden high media attention to a problem or event, a ubiquitous coverage, when media consumers cannot avoid an issue wherever they look. 6 Although some scholars believe that certain unforeseen

Vasterman, P.L.M. (2005). Media-Hype Self-Reinforcing News Waves, Journalistic Standards and the Construction of Social Problems. Europe Journal of Communication. 20(4): 508-530. 3 Boydstun, A. Walgrave, S. Hardy, A. An Empirical Anatomy of Media Storms. 4 Id. 5 Id. 6 Id.

events trigger the attention; Vasterman points to the existence of a key event that initiates the whole media hype phenomenon and feeds on the self-reinforcing processes of news production. When the death of Steve Jobs is read as an example of the above-mentioned key event, a striking analogy is immediately apparent between the flood of information and content surrounding it, and the concept of media hype as described above. In the light of this similarity, we will try to structure our definition of content deluge using some characteristics proposed for a media hype as our building bricks. There is, nevertheless, the need to make an important note before moving on. Since the definition of content deluge will be motivated, as stated, by the immense parallelism perceived of the media hype concept with the Steve Jobs case; what we will try to define in this paper is a portrait of the content deluge phenomenon in accordance with the particular case in consideration. This being said; the definition proposed can certainly be applied to the cases of content deluge that share close kinship with the massive buzz created around the death of Steve Jobs. Almost all previous definitions of a media hype consider the explosiveness -a sudden materialization of a newsand the subsequent huge size of the media coverage as a crucial aspect. We happen to believe that this immediate and exponential growth is ever more evident for the notion of content deluge. Nevertheless, a substantial discrepancy to mention concerns the initiating mechanisms. All the scholars describing a media hype have studied this notion with reference to the traditional media; thus, they perceive this explosion as being media-generated: the traditional one-sided media on the one hand as the transmitter, and the audience on the other, as the receiver. On the contrary, the concept of content deluge can be said to have been born through the dynamics and the reciprocal nature of the social media. The mechanisms that lead to the amplification of content among the digital platforms will be discussed in further detail in the relevant section. For now, what can be said is that the explosion and the breadth of content deluge is due to the magnification effect of the online medium; with the constant rebounding, cumulating, aggregating and reflecting of content. Another characteristic of interest to our research is the lifespan of the phenomenon. For the case of a media hype, all scholars agree on a short duration; some suggest one week for the peak time7; whereas others predict an approximate three weeks lifetime for the hype8. As for the content deluge; our provision is an even shorter stretch. Taking into consideration the velocity of information travel in the online medium, the attention cycle moves much more rapidly, whereby the incoming information, news and content swiftly crowd out the attention previously given to the key event that initiated the content deluge, in order to make room for what is new. After all, the media attention is a zero-sum game as pointed out by Zhu9. Yet one more topic that could be investigated, although much more tentatively, is related to the existence of a unilateral perspective. Vasterman states that a media hype is based on self-reinforcing processes whereby one specific frame guides the media hunt for ever more facts and opinions to confirm the established frame with a positive feedback loop10. We claim that such a self-referential momentum exists likewise for the concept of content deluge. Boydstun and his colleagues quote McCombs and Shaw, pointing out the agenda studies which show that once the media increases its attention to an issue, the public follows suit.11 Social media is no exception: what is posted is disseminated and re-posted; what has been seen by a great number tends to create a gravity around itself,
7 8

Boydstun, A. Walgrave, S. Hardy, A. An Empirical Anatomy of Media Storms. Vasterman, P.L.M. (2005). Media-Hype Self-Reinforcing News Waves, Journalistic Standards and the Construction of Social Problems. Europe Journal of Communication. 20(4): 508-530. 9 Boydstun, A. Walgrave, S. Hardy, A. An Empirical Anatomy of Media Storms. 10 Vasterman, P.L.M. (2005). Media-Hype Self-Reinforcing News Waves, Journalistic Standards and the Construction of Social Problems. Europe Journal of Communication. 20(4): 508-530. 11 Boydstun, A. Walgrave, S. Hardy, A. An Empirical Anatomy of Media Storms.

attracting more and more others to watch it; the same content, and thus the same point of view is distributed and radiated through the previously mentioned rebounding and reflecting dynamics of the social media. The very relevant notion of the long tail describing the massive online attention disproportionally concentrated around a very few number of contents will be later discussed in the section The Mechanisms of Content Deluge, to support this point of view. Extrapolating from the comparisons and claims made above, we may now propose our criteria of definition for the content deluge that agglomerates around a certain triggering event, as follows: 1. The Exponential Growth and the Colossal Size: The content deluge demonstrates a sharp and explosive pattern of growth following the key event and subsequently reaches an enormous breadth. 2. The Ephemerality: The content deluge is highly impulsive with a swift peek, an abrupt saturation and a very short lifespan. 3. The Unilateral Perspective: The deluge appears as a bulk of content reinforcing and rebounding mainly a single viewpoint of the key event through reflective mechanisms. These three criteria will serve as our hypotheses and will later be tried to be proven through data either empirically derived or gathered from online resources in the section The Matrix of Deluge.

3. The Mechanisms of Content Deluge

Before moving on to supporting the proposed definition for content deluge with the data, it is necessary to give an overview of how this content deluge accumulates; namely, the mechanisms of content deluge. The death of Steve Jobs was subject to intense media coverage; both offline and online. The news broke headlines on the major TV networks12, obituaries were published by numerous newspapers, statements of condolence were given by several acclaimed people, and commemorative works were published by notable media13. The interesting thing to notice in this news wave is the transformation of the content, from a simple and mere documentation of an event into a gigantic and scattered pile of creation around the news of the death and also around the person, Steve Jobs. The actual news the objective reality that Steve Jobs died after a long battle with cancer- was thus surrounded by a huge subjective buzz consisting of the thoughts, comments, statements of people; most of which were expressed online. The latter, after a while, also turned into an objective reality to report: the massive news wave itself became the news. One can, therefore, talk about an ambiguity among covering and creating, among cause and impact, when talking about content deluge. The media, and ever more the social media, are enhancing the continuous flow between these two different dimensions. It can be suggested that content deluge is yielded as a result of social media pulling people together and making them contribute to a common experience, creating a domain of sharing that allows them to go beyond a mere news event. Following this path of thought leads us to introduce and look further into the distinction between declaratory media, the single-sided media that transmits or tells, and participatory media, the media which allows people to speak to each other and deal with an experience collectively. Declaratory media comprises the traditional channels of communication: newspapers, television and radio, which combine content delivery with content production and tightly control the messages that they publish or broadcast, without any space for modification or manipulation by other subjects or any allowance of the public to communicate

12 13

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvvm-CCdSdI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Death

with each other through them.14 They are still substantially important, if not central, to the culture: they set the agenda for public discussion and also dominate the online circulation of information (much of the blogosphere, for example, comments on and reacts to what is said by the traditional media). The significance of declaratory media is nevertheless being diminished in opposition to the rise of participatory media. The so-called participatory media offers online platforms through which people can find content, create new content, transform existing content, and broadcast the content to others. Margaret Soltan argues that the nature of the internet allows for a much more dramatic intensification effect than traditional newspapers were ever able to achieve, with its speed and reach, its being instantaneous, global, and subject to international commentary and analysis; whereby the connected world can grab a story and, in a matter of hours, gigantify it15. This is what might be called the online amplification effect. Most of the platforms mirroring the theory of participatory media allow comments, thumbs, sharing, likes and dislikes; all further amplifying the content and moving single stories up more and more. This spiral movement inexorably leads to what we define as the content deluge. The case is additionally supported by the notion of Web 2.0, a name given to todays internet, including social networking websites, blogs, microblogs, wikis, video-sharing sites, mashups and web applications, that facilitate participatory sharing of information and interoperability. Web 2.0 allows interaction and collaboration of a virtual community within a social media dialogue, with users as creators of user-generated content; referred to as the Read/Write Web16. Content creation, thanks to Web 2.0, is not geographically bounded, hence constraints in delivery time and space are evicted. With the technological developments that led to the production of ultraportable internet devices (a salute to Steve Jobs), the interactivity seems to be limitless. People can get access online, interact with previous content and generate new content anytime, anywhere; which makes room by and large for the content deluge phenomenon. One can also mention Andersons theory regarding the long tail, when discussing the topic of Web 2.0. The long tail, acclaimed as a phenomenon of the 2.0 society, is the notion where a small number of hits reaches a huge number of audience, demonstrated as the red area in Figure 3.1 below; while going along the tail an immense number of niche products with very little audience is found; shown, this time, as the yellow area in Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1: The depiction of the long tail theory.17

This theory can be applied to digital content; taking YouTube as an example. Evidence can be found to support that on the one hand, very few videos gather millions of views; while on the other, there is an enormous number of videos uploaded which do not attract substantial views individually; yet only altogether do they match the few
14 15

http://groups.law.gwu.edu/LR/ArticlePDF/76-4-Balkin.pdf http://www.frostburg.edu/fsu/assets/File/Administration/pair/Planning%20Readings%20and%20Resources/TheOnlineAmplifi cationEffect.pdf 16 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4132752.stm 17 Anderson, C. (2006). The Long Tail: Why The Future Of Business Is Selling Less Of More. New York, Hyperion

number of hits in popularity18. This is a direct example of the rebounding effect of Web 2.0, a collateral effect of the amplification; and it is even more evident within the social media. Every content that tends to get popular is subject to an exponential amplification with thumbs, posts and shares; thus the online media is reigned by the presence of a small number of extremely popularized content; whereby that same content is rebounded, mirrored and reflected through various channels; while huge numbers of alternative content lie unattended in the cyberspace. The long tail is mobilized by three main forces: the democratization of the tools of production, the democratization of the tools of distribution and the connection between supply and demand19. The first two forces are better suited here to explain the relationship between this theory and the phenomenon of content deluge. On the one side, the possibility of using a variety of new ways to produce content, and then to share it on the internet, yields in more production, namely more newly-generated content is made available; the final result being the lengthening of the tail. The arrival of social media (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace), new platforms (social blogs, Wikipedia, Pinterest) and new devices able to create content are the major sources of this lengthening. On the other side, the openness of many online distribution platforms, e.g. iTunes, cuts the cost of consumption; thereby facilitates the process of reaching content and increases the possibility to have better access to niches, which fattens the tail itself. Therefore, one might speak of a general increase in the available online content, both prodouced and accessed; notwithstanding that the monopoly of fewer number of contents among the audience still holds within a relative perspective. It should be noted that this issue of the monopoly of fewer number of contents will later be dealt with in the section The Matrix of Deluge, while trying to explain the third criterion proposed for the definition of content deluge (the unilateral perspective). Altogether, in terms of its mechanism and leading dynamics, content deluge can be deemed a process of creation, rebounding and amplification of content; incarnated within the participatory media allowed by Web 2.0; empowered by the democratization and facilitation of the tools of content production and distribution.

4. The Key Event: Why Steve Jobs?

Yet one last thing to address before drawing the matrix of deluge regards the previously-mentioned notion of the key event. Vasterman points out that the key event for a media hype must, of course, satisfy the general news values, but should also contain some violation of norms and be suitable for public debate20. This section of the paper will deal with how the key event of the death of Steve Jobs qualifies as a trigger for the subsequent content deluge. The first thing that can be said to have influenced the massive noise surrounding the passing of Steve Jobs is his image as known to the society. Although a very private man, many identified with his image and felt to know him closely. The questions to be asked, therefore, are what the main components of this image were, and why this image was capable of creating such a buzz. As a person, Jobs represented middle-class California, where in the 60s the counter-cultural movement encountered Silicon Valley technology. He took pride and inspiration from his origins and even used it as an excuse for his brusque managerial style:

18 19

Anderson, C. (2006). The Long Tail: Why The Future Of Business Is Selling Less Of More. New York, Hyperion Id. 20 Vasterman, P.L.M. (2005). Media-Hype Self-Reinforcing News Waves, Journalistic Standards and the Construction of Social Problems. Europe Journal of Communication. 20(4): 508-530.

Maybe theres a better waya gentlemens club where we all wear ties and speak in this Brahmin language and velvet code wordsbut I dont know that way, because I am middle-class, from California.21 His informal dressing style was another demonstration of his trueness to thinking outside the box and to being different. These elements nurtured his cool image; which advertising campaigns like Think Different (Here is to the Crazy Ones),22 I am Mac and I am a PC23 reinforced. Moreover, by associating his company and his products to great artists and geniuses, he further differentiated his works from others. In another interview, he stated: It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you are doing. I mean, Picasso had a saying: Good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have been shameless about stealing great ideas. And I think part of what made Macintosh great, was that the people working on it were musicians and poets, and artists and zoologists and historians, who also happen to be the best computer scientists in the world.24 It is interesting that many of the things that were said after he passed away correspond to the message he had created to market his company and its products. Indeed, he was portrayed as a genius and a visionary, compared to Henry Ford as an industrialist and Thomas Edison as an inventor.25 It seems that the most popular responses to his death were very much tied to his managerial style and marketing technique. Another thing that contributed greatly to the buzz after Jobs death is, undoubtedly, the widespread use of Apple products. Steve Jobs vision and managerial style have been described as focused, pushing for perfection and simplification, taking responsibility end to end, putting the products before profits, knowing both the big picture and the details.26 This managerial vision has inevitably been translated into Apples products. A quote from Jobs reads, One of the things Ive always found is that youve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.27 The products focus on improving the user experience explains, indeed, much of Apples and Steve Jobs popularity. In fact, as reflected in a similar sentiment in the speech of Barack Obama quoted in the introduction of this paper, among more than 3 million tweets analyzed related to Jobs passing, more than half of them were found to have been generated via Apple devices28. In essence, it can be said that the attachment to the figure of Steve Jobs reflects the recognition of Apples breakthrough products with which many interact on a daily basis. It would be hard to argue that the affection is directly and intimately connected with Steve Jobs, for little is known about his private life29. Thus, it seems fair to say that much of Steve Jobs remains a mystery to many of those mourning his death. Another fundamental reason to explain why the death of Jobs resulted in a deluge appears to be that Jobs had a great relationship with the press during his lifetime (despite the fierce action by Apple against any unauthorized news, rooting from the intense secrecy policy of the company)30. A Washington Post article recognized that Steve

21 22

Isaacson, Walter. The real leadership lessons of Steve Jobs Harvard Business Review April 2012: 92-102 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rwsuXHA7RA 23 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCL5UgxtoLs&feature=related 24 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU 25 Mossberg, Walt. The Steve Jobs I Knew. Transformative Entrepreneurs. 26 Isaacson, Walter. The real leadership lessons of Steve Jobs Harvard Business Review April 2012: 92-102 27 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE 28 http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2011/6127/half-of-tweets-about-steve-jobss-death-sent-via-apple-devices 29 He did father an illegitimate child during his early 20s and despite being considerably wealthy, did not provide financial support and even blatantly lied about it. (Source: Elkind, Peter, and Doris Burke. "THE TROUBLE WITH STEVE. (Cover Story)." Fortune 157.5 (2008): 88-160. Business Source Complete. Web. 7 June 2012.) 30 http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/07/entertainment/la-et-onthemedia-20111008

Jobs enjoyed almost worshipful media coverage. 31 It further explains that Jobs genuine charm, coupled with the fact that many journalists used his products, cemented a solid relationship. Interestingly enough, it finally points out that Apple mastered the technique of the selective leak: The secrecy surrounding its new products is legendary, which only intensifies journalists desire to know whats afoot. The iPad generated more than 25,000 stories before anyone outside the company had actually seen one but Jobs and his underlings became masters at passing off-therecord tips into the ears of eager reporters.32 In other words, Apple and Steve Jobs knew exactly how to create a media buzz. His death, although unintentionally so, was no exception: the news of the death was handled with the similar huge attention, explosion and breadth that used to be associated with the previous news coverages about Apple and Jobs; further fostered by the curiosity created due to the discreteness of Jobs privacy and intensified among the people because of the giant role Apple products play in their everyday life. The death of Steve Jobs thus fulfilled all the elements described by Vasterman as those which construct a key event. It satisfied the general news values, for Steve Jobs was a relevant figure in the media and in the technology world, and further because his products alone were able to create a buzz. Secondly, his lifetime story, as cleverly crafted in the Apple commercials and in the media, violated all norms: He was a genius, an artist and an exceptional; a school-dropout-become-billionaire. Finally, his media persona was complex enough for there to be a discussion from various perspectives; from his sickness, to his lasts words, to his inventions, to the Apple keynotes, to his secretive lifestyle and his seemingly careless image. In a nutshell, it can be said that Steve Jobs death qualified in every aspect for becoming a key event to bring together a deluge of content with enormous scope and variety.

5. The Matrix of Deluge

After his passing on Oct 5th 2011, the web was completely overwhelmed by the circulation of information about Steve Jobs. This section of the paper will aim at supporting the proposed definition of content deluge that occurs around a certain key event; the hypotheses being that it is characterized by an exponential growth and an enormous size, a fast condensation which leads to a consequent short life-cycle, and a unilateral perspective. These characteristics will be tried to be proven through numbers, charts and data readily available online; as well as some empirical analyses performed via online tools (such as Google trends, hashtag records) or on social media platforms. Thus, a Matrix of the deluge with its all three suggested dimensions will be drawn. We will first look at the initial attention gathered; and then address the three hypotheses consequently. In order to demonstrate the explosive attention that Steve Jobs death has generated, we will start with geographical and language-based data. Figures 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 display the distribution of the buzz, showing that although the stream was undoubtedly global, the majority of it can be attributed to the U.S.; and once again most of the mentions were in English.

31 32

Farhi, Paul. (2011 October 7). Steve Jobs and the media: For the most part, it was a love affair Washington Post Id.

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Figure 5.1: Areas of the world that buzzed about Steve Jobs with social media mentions.33

Figure 5.2: The research of New England Complex Systems Institute that shows the percentages of languages spoken by people when tweeting about Steve Jobs. Each dot represents 1,000 tweets and are colored according to the language.34

33 34

http://blog.sysomos.com/2011/10/06/end-of-an-era-talk-and-tribute-to-steve-jobs-through-social-media/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/10/global-mourning-for-steve-jobs/

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Figure 5.3: Percentages of mentions about Steve Jobs from countries all around the world.35

The content deluge related to Steve Jobs spread through all types of media. The French-Canadian company Cedrom SNI measured the news about Steve Jobs from Oct 7th to Oct 9th 2011. According to its findings, the noise created was 16% of the total information worldwide.36 Steve Jobs death was also included in the 18 representative moments of 2011 by Flickr37. The web searches about Steve Jobs are reported to have increased by 982% overall in 201138 and they were not strictly of his name, but also of many items related to him -e.g. Apple, Bill Gates, Microsoft, iPhone, pancreatic cancer, Stanford University- (Note that the Youtube video of Steve Jobs Stanford commencement speech reached more than 20 million views in the days right after his death. 39). Figures 5.4 and 5.5 demonstrate the trends around some search topics related to Steve Jobs.

35 36

http://www.digitaria.com/blogs/measuring-steve-jobs-impact http://www.key4biz.it/News/2011/10/17/eSociety/Apple_Steve_Jobs_Pixar_Microsoft_Tsunami_DSK_206113.html 37 http://socialnetwork.toweb.co/facebook-memology-la-top-ten-mondiale-degli-argomenti-del-2011/ 38 www.goggle.com/zeitgeist/ 39 http://www.key4biz.it/News/2011/10/17/eSociety/Apple_Steve_Jobs_Pixar_Microsoft_Tsunami_DSK_206113.html

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Figure 5.4: The Google Zeitgeist graph which shows the increased percentage of searches for each item related to Steve Jobs in 2011.40

Figure 5.5: The figure demonstrating that at least 8 out of 10 top U.S. search terms on Google were Steve Jobs-related on Thursday morning, Oct 6th. 41

We may as well look at the trends of the year analyzed by Google Zeitgeist, only to find that Steve Jobs is among the top ten trends of 2011, as expected together with two more apple-related topics- depicted in Figure 5.6. The various topics that emerged through the buzz are also apparent in the buzzgraph given in Figure 5.7.

Figure 5.6: The Google Zeitgeist diagram demonstrating the top trends of 2011.42

40 41

http://www.googlezeitgeist.com/en/top-searches/steve_jobs http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/10/06/technology-steve-jobs-internet.html 42 http://www.googlezeitgeist.com/en/

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Figure 5.7: The buzzgraph showing which words and topics the talk about Steve Jobs was focused on.

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After having left no doubt that the death of Steve Jobs was a magnet for online attention, we may move on to address our first criterion: the exponential growth and the gargantuan size of content. Already on the very day of his death, the total mentions of Steve Jobs had reached an enormous height. Segmented by media-type; the number of mentions on October 5th were as follows: Micromedia (Twitter and FriendFeed) 3,834,301 Blogs 47,215 Forum Replies 65,630 Facebook 28,160 Comments 27,802 Aggregators 12,485 Mainstream News 9,221 Forums 6,528 Images 1,361 Videos 1,71944

Sysomos -Social Media Monitoring Tools for Business-, a provider of social media monitoring and analytics tools, tried to inspect to what scope people were tweeting, posting and blogging about Steve Jobs. On Wednesday night Oct 5th 9.30 pm, there were 1,905 blog posts, 3,836 online news articles, 1,483 message board posts and more than 579,400 tweets. Substantially large as these numbers are, this was only the beginning and the growth was remarkable: on Oct 6th 8.30 am, there were 13,284 blog posts, 25,704 message board posts and 30,905 news mentions.45 A more detailed glance at the continuous process of an exponentially growing flood of content can be seen by looking at the monitoring done by the same source. The talk about and the tribute for Steve Jobs on social

43 44

http://blog.sysomos.com/2011/10/06/end-of-an-era-talk-and-tribute-to-steve-jobs-through-social-media/ http://www.digitaria.com/blogs/measuring-steve-jobs-impact 45 http://www.scribbal.com/2011/10/steve-jobs-death-garners-2-5-million-tweets-over-13000-blog-posts/

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media were recorded at different intervals starting from Oct 5th, soon after the news was disclosed. Below, in Figures 5.8 through 5.15 are given the monitoring process of this explosive overflow.46

Figure 5.8: Mentions of Steve Jobs on Oct 5 , 8.30 pm.

th

Figure 5.9: Mentions of Steve Jobs on Oct 5th, 9.30 pm.

Figure 5.10: Mentions of Steve Jobs on Oct 5th, 10 pm.

Figure 5.11: Mentions of Steve Jobs on Oct 5th, 12 pm.

Figure 5.12: Mentions of Steve Jobs on Oct 6 , 1 am.

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46

http://blog.sysomos.com/2011/10/06/end-of-an-era-talk-and-tribute-to-steve-jobs-through-social-media/

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Figure 5.13: Mentions of Steve Jobs on Oct 6th, 4 am.

Figure 5.14: Mentions of Steve Jobs on Oct 6th, 8.30 am.

Figure 5.15: Mentions of Steve Jobs on Oct 6th, 9.30 am.

In 12 hours, from 9.30 pm to 9.30 am, a massive buzz around Steve Jobs had formed: blog mentions rose from 1,905 to 13,611 (+614%); news mentions from 3,836 to 33,484 (+773%); tweets from 570,414 to 2,500,000 (+338%); and forum mentions from 1,483 to 27,832 (+1776%). The content deluge created around the event was notably powerful and outlined by an increasing explosion. One particular platform upon which this exponentiality has been enormous is Twitter. On Wednesday 5th October, around 5.00 pm when the news about the death was spreading all over the world, the Twitter community dedicated 6,049 TPS (tweets per second) to Steve Jobs, contributing to the tribute through the hashtags #ripstevejobs and #thankyoustevejobs.47 The trend topics in the Twitter community by Thursday morning, October 6th included some of Jobs famous expressions Stay hungry and Think different48. An Australian social media monitoring firm, SR7, estimated a TPS peak around 10,000 for the same day.49 Although it is not clear if Steve Jobs death set a record in Twitter traffic, (the competing trend is 8.868 TPS, set during the MTV Video Music Awards 2011 when Beyonce announced being pregnant) it created one of the most powerful buzzes ever seen: Indeed, the time to access the Twitter homepage prolonged from 3 seconds to 20 or 30 seconds for many users.50 The burst was not just an individual-level phenomenon of people posting through social networks, commenting, searching or producing their own tribute videos to Steve Jobs. Many politicians, celebrities and culture-makers, including the already-mentioned Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates made statements in Jobs honor
47 48

http://socialnetwork.toweb.co/twitter-ed-i-suoi-record-infografica/ http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/10/06/technology-steve-jobs-internet.html 49 http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/10/06/no-steve-jobss-death-did-not-set-a-twitter-record/ 50 http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9220647/Steve_Jobs_death_creates_Twitter_surge

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through online channels51, and many other similar statements done via the traditional media found their way online pretty fast. A lot of companies paid tribute to the former CEO of Apple as well, from competitors like Blackberry and Google (Figure 5.16 demonstrates Googles tribute to Jobs) to all the major international newspapers -which dedicated their cover pages to Jobs and published his obituary both offline and online- and news channels, including their websites, worldwide. Moreover, some sources, such as the Australian Online, created a live blog The Media Coverage of Steve Jobs Death- immediately on October 6th, keeping the readers posted on what the entire world was saying about him.52 Numerous sites across the web, from blogs to humor sites dedicated their homepages to the Apple co-founders memory.53 CNN let people share their thoughts on a page they called the iWall.54

Figure 5.16: The minimalistic doodle by Google dedicated to Steve Jobs.

Apple, after dedicating the front page of its website to the announcement of the news on the day of the event, very soon created a page in Steve Jobs honor which is permanently accessible, where people can express their feelings about him and his passing. Figures 5.17 and 5.18 demonstrate the minimalistic announcement of Steve Jobs death by Apple, whereas Figure 5.19 demonstrates the look of Apples permanent Remembering Steve Jobs page.

Figure 5.17 -Figure 5.18: Apple website on Oct 5 , 2011

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51 52

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/reaction-steve-jobs-death/story?id=14678187#.T9RzU9XcSyU http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/live-blog-media-coverage-of-steve-jobs-death/story-e6frg6n6-1226160131350 53 http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/technology/1110/gallery.steve_jobs_homepage_tributes/index.html 54 http://ireport.cnn.com/topics/683476?hpt=hp_t1

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Figure 5.19: The Remembering Steve Jobs page by Apple in tribute to its former CEO.

Steve Jobs death made its vast presence within Facebook as well. After Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg posted a eulogy to Jobs as a status update, thanking him for being a mentor and a friend, the post elicited 47,484 likes and 3,879 comments within ten minutes of hitting the site.55 A growing number of people began to change their main profile images to a picture of Steve Jobs and either shared Zuckerbergs tribute or wrote their own eulogy for Jobs in their status updates. In fact, the death of Steve Jobs was one of the top ten global topics of 2011 on Facebook as for status updates, as shown in Figure 5.20.56

Figure 5.20: The chart showing the ranking for events that attracted Facebook status updates in 2011; where the death of Steve Jobs is one of the top ten global topics in 2011 on the social network.

Pages devoted to the Apple co-founders memory immediately began to sprout up on Facebook. A very recent search conducted on 30th May 2012 on Facebook for the terms RIP Steve Jobs results in 546 tribute pages created in his honour, depicted in Figure 5.21.

55 56

http://allfacebook.com/facebook-jobs-2_b61534 http://socialnetwork.toweb.co/regalo-natale-flickr-2011-18-foto/

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Figure 5.21: A segment of the RIP Steve Jobs search term results on Facebook.57

The death of Steve Jobs had such an emotional impact on people that some expressed their homage not only through words, but also images. Jonathan Mak, a Japanese 19-year-old graphic design student, invented a new version of the famous Apple logo in which a black Steve Jobs profile is set on a white apple, instead of the usual bite as seen in Figure 5.22.58 Figure 5.23 and 5.24 show some alternative doodles proposed by fans in Steve Jobs memory.

Figure 5.22: The logo created by a young Japanese designer in tribute to Steve Jobs.

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https://www.facebook.com/search/results.php?q=rip%20steve%20jobs&init=quick&tas=0.6060515358112752&search_first_f ocus=1339326727782 58 http://dataloker.com/steve-jobs-tributes-in-pictures.html

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Figure 5.23 - Figure 5.24: Fan-suggested doodles in honor of Steve Jobs.

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A recent search on the web performed in May 2012 yields 19.5 million Google images in response to the search terms Steve Jobs tribute; with different creations including visual designs, photographs and slogans such as iLegend iCon iGenius iSad. With all that has been shown, the lightspeed explosion and the humongous size of the attention, as well as the breadth of content creation around the death of Steve Jobs is apparent. This brings us to the verification of the second hypothesis: the very short lifespan. First and foremost, the situation of the tweets will be reported, almost seven months after Jobs death. It can instantly be seen that the number of tweets has decreased tremendously compared to the initial 6,049 TPS, demonstrating how short-durable this overflow of attention was. On June 2nd 2012, 12 am, only 5 tweets had been published using #thankyoustevejobs in the last 24 hours; while only 19 had been generated using #ripstevejobs.60

Figure 5.25: Analysis conducted on June 2nd, 2012, 12 am. Published tweets in the last 24 hours, using the hashtag #thankyoustevejobs

Figure 5.26: Analysis conducted on June 2nd, 2012, 12 am. Published tweets in the last 24 hours, using the hashtag #ripstevejobs
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http://socialmediaowl.com/2011/the-google-doodle-that-never-was-a-tribute-to-steve-jobs/ http://www.hashtracking.com

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Figure 5.27, obtained from Google Zeitgeist, demonstrates that the web searches for Steve Jobs had its peak during the 41th week of the year from October 2nd 2011 to October 8th 2011. It has been mentioned before that the amount of searches related to Jobs had increased by 982% during the entire year. However, looking at the graph, it can clearly be noticed how the search volume rapidly decreases in the week right after his death (week 42, from October 9th 2011 to October 15th 2011) and keeps falling increasingly by the day as time passes: a clear evidence that much of the 982% increase in searches can be attributed to the immediate week following the death of the entrepreneur.

Figure 5.27: Trend of volume of searches related to Steve Jobs, from the 33 week of the year to the 48 week of the year.

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The ephemerality can be clearly depicted by looking at Google Trends as well, specifically focusing on the words tags related to Steve Jobs, for which people were searching. Figures 5.28 to 5.30 display the retrieved search trends for topics related to Steve Jobs. The increase of searches is evident; but a focus on their duration proves that the attention is indeed tremendously short-lived.

Figure 5.28: Trend of searches for Apple. The search volume index in Sep 2011 was less than 1; became 4 on 6 Oct 2011; decreased again to 1 62 in the following days.

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61 62

http://www.googlezeitgeist.com/en/top-searches/steve_jobs http://www.google.it/trends/?q=apple.com&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0

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Figure 5.29: Trend of searches for Steve Jobs. Point E represents 6 October 2011.

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Figure 5.30: Trend of searches for pancreatic cancer. Point F represents 6th October 2011.64

In fact, zooming in to some graphs, the findings are incredible: The attention does not last for more than a couple of days; let alone weeks or months. Figure 5.31 depicts the same Google trends scheme for Steve Jobs as shown above, only with a more in-detail timeframe. It can be seen that the increase in the search volume makes its peak on 6th October 2011; only to return to a relatively ignorable level in mere 4 days, around 10 th October 2011. Figure 5.32 points to an even more dramatic result: the total number of posts in different media increase drastically upon the announcement of the death, and die out within approximately one days time.

63 64

http://www.google.it/trends/?q=steve+jobs&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0 http://www.google.it/trends/?q=pancreatic+cancer&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0

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Figure 5.31: The zoomed-in Google search trends for Steve Jobs

Figure 5.32: The graph showing the reaction in terms of number of posts on different media blogs, mainstream news, micromedia, comments and facebook- from Oct 5th 12 am to Oct 6th 9 pm. 65

A similar decreasing trend is to be found for related search topics Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement, RIP, Stay Hungry66, and many others. A fading-out of attention is easily seen on Facebook as well; judging by the huge difference between the likes for the initial posts and the recent posts on Steve Jobs Tribute pages.67 With all these data, it would not be a far stretch to assume that the death of Steve Jobs was, in fact, an event that enjoyed its fifteen minutes of fame, almost literally. The last dimension of the matrix comprises the third hypothesis: the unilateral perspective. When we look at what aspects of Steve Jobs personality were highlighted within the described deluge, we see that he was depicted more or less with an indistinguishably similar definition on every online platform; from online news channels to blogs, from mere Facebook updates to tweets, by celebrities as well as by unknown people. Some quotations from various resources read as follows: Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius68

65 66

http://www.digitaria.com/blogs/measuring-steve-jobs-impact http://www.google.com.tr/trends/?q=stay+hungry&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2011-10&sort=0 67 https://www.facebook.com/Miss.Steve.Jobs 68 http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/technology/1110/gallery.steve_jobs_homepage_tributes/index.html

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Steve was an extraordinary visionary69 Steve Jobs had verve, determination and a creative genius70 "The industry lost its top visionary"71 One of the world's greatest innovators72 A unique story of revolutionary genius73 Tonight, America lost a genius who will be remembered with Edison and Einstein74 Steve Jobs was a visionary who changed the way we live75 Steve Jobs expanded technology and the progress of computerization from the 20th to the 21st century as Ludwig van Beethoven transcended the world of music 76 @AlecBaldwin: Sad about Steve Jobs. On par with Henry Ford, Carnegie and Edison77 (Alec Baldwins tweet) "@ariannahuff: My thoughts go out to Steve Jobs' family and friends. Thank you for changing our world.78 (Arianna Huffingtons tweet) Although we present only a few examples, it is safe to say that all the various content created following Jobs death were drawing his portrait almost identically: he was a visionary and a genius, being compared to the most influential scientists and artists of all time. It should be noted that this issue of unilaterality is closely linked with the notion of Long Tail presented in the section The Mechanisms of Content Deluge: what reaches the majority of online audience is a handful of vastly-popular content; inevitably dictating and monopolizing the common opinion. Some alternative perspectives have been spoken of, like the perfectionist side of Steve Jobs; nevertheless, these do not refute the unanimous talk about the visionary; but only feed it from other branches. A look at the Google trends for the words visionary and genius verify our observation. In fact, the attention for these words show exactly the same tendency with the trends dealt with in the section concerning the ephemerality of content deluge: A huge explosion is observed for the search of these words corresponding to the time of the death of Steve Jobs 79; giving us an insight about the image associated with him. It is not for us to judge if Jobs was in fact a genius or not; nevertheless, it is unconventional to see a businessman and an entrepreneur being deemed as changing the world and peoples lives forever, compared to the brightest minds that ever crossed the earth. Although the veracity of the content feeding this unilateral perspective that circulated around Jobs personality is not easy to test; it is fair to say that a critical evaluation of his image was not apparent whatsoever among what emerged through the deluge. He was telling people to think different, but when it comes to him, ironically, everyone has been thinking the same.
69 70

http://www.pixar.com/stevejobs.html http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/07/entertainment/la-et-onthemedia-20111008 71 http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/05/technology/steve_jobs_legacy/index.htm 72 [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs_(book)#cite_note-8 73 Id. 74 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/reaction-steve-jobs-death/story?id=14678187#.T8klBNXcSyU 75 Id. 76 Id. 77 http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/technology/1110/gallery.steve_jobs_homepage_tributes/index.html 78 Id. 79 http://www.google.com.tr/trends/?q=visionary&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

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6. Conclusion
The main purpose of this paper has been to comprehend and define the content deluge accumulated upon the death of Steve Jobs in all its aspects. Subsequent to our empirical analysis, we believe to have shown that this deluge can be characterized as an explosive phenomenon of immense breadth and very short lifespan, dominated by the circulation of a unilateral perspective; thus fulfilling all three of the proposed hypotheses for its characterization. We have also tried to shed light upon the constructive mechanisms of this phenomenon; as well as investigating how the event of the death of Steve Jobs in particular, has qualified to become the key event that triggered this whole process. Overall, we hope to have provided a more exhaustive understanding of the notion of content deluge agglomerating around a specific event; which can serve as a framework to evaluate other occurrences sharing close kinship. This having been said, it is necessary to note some inevitable limitations that our analysis is subject to. The utmost impediment has been brought by the impossibility to conduct a longitudinal investigation; qualifying this piece of work as an ex post analysis. Had the research process started immediately following Jobs passing, a day-to-day monitoring would have been possible; allowing us to gather data over an observational period of time. Such a longitudinal research could have naturally allowed for a much more diligent assessment of the whole process. Furthermore, due to the privacy policies held by some of the most significant online platforms (Facebook, Youtube, Twitter); it was impossible to quantify the exact effect in some cases (for example, the viewing trends for Jobs Stanford commencement speech could not be acquired). Finally, despite having defined content deluge as an online phenomenon, it would have been interesting to have inspected the traditional offline channels as well, in order to observe the interplay among the declaratory and the participatory media for a more thorough understanding of the process. After having listed possible limitations of the research, we may now try to make sense of this piece of work in a broader context; first and foremost evaluating it within the value creation perspective. It can be claimed that the deluge of content following Steve Jobs death has its highest value in how the process of grief is handled by the social community. The deluge acts as a means to ease the sorrow by extensive sharing of the outpourings of feeling; taking the form of a collective catharsis. Within this perspective, what the content is, in other words the intrinsic quality of the content, is of secondary importance. What matters primarily is that the content is there: the words, the images, the videos of and about Steve Jobs are present whenever one switches on the computer with a desire to see and talk about him. It will not be a far stretch to say that the process of grief has thus evolved into grief in the time of social media. The once physical settings where gestures of homage were aggregated (Lady Diana-the flowers at the door of Buckingham Palace) are replaced by online platforms pulling eulogies and tributes upon websites (Steve Jobs-the Remembering Steve Jobs page), making room by and large for global participation. Despite its substantial emotional value, however, the informative value of this content deluge is highly debatable. In accordance with what has been discussed regarding the unilateral perspective, there is a considerable problem with additive and elaborative information being disseminated. It would be fair to say that the issue at hand is not an intense coverage, but more a phantom of a coverage, where everyone got grabbed by the slogans and the myth whereby a massive re-circulation of those dominated the online medium. There has been no widespread debate over some crucial topics; such as the role of entrepreneurs in todays business world, the role Steve Jobs played within the global community beyond his immediate achievements, or the critical assessment of the space that design and technology occupy in peoples lives. Instead, Jobs has been idolized in a way that very little alternative information about him came into light. We should also refer back to the immense similarity between what has been said for Steve Jobs, constituting the single perspective, and the image that Apple and Jobs had been trying to craft for the company itself a topic discussed in the section The Key Event: Why Steve Jobs? in more detail. The words that were used to label Jobs 25

posthumously -creative, genius, artist, visionary, revolutionary- were in fact words very often used by Apple in its commercials (even the famous quotation Think different attributed to Jobs was born as the slogan of a 1997 TV ad by Apple80). This opens up to question the dynamics of the process: if, in fact, the content deluge was formed bottom-up; or if a pipeline for the flow of information and thoughts had been long before created by Apple itself. Despite all that has been said, the circulation of a single perspective is not a problematic situation per se: There is no intrinsic trouble with discussing Steve Jobs over and over again, even if through the same viewpoint. The issue arises once we look at what consequences might underlie the whole process. A first concern might be that this process reinforces the shift towards scandal fetching in media (a tendency already evidently present within the traditional channels), lowering the level of public debate around significant happenings ever more. This inclination for a shift is highly anticipated, since the massive news wave itself acquires news value after passing a certain threshold, nurturing the agenda with a positive-feedback loop. But since circulation is the dominating mechanism for the spreading of news today, as opposed to carefully planned distribution; the creation of agenda tries to reformulate itself in order to fit these new dynamics. By the critically sculpted use of language; slogans and catch-phrases become more and more the best tools to acquire widespread circulation and hence to disseminate a crafted agenda as demonstrated for the case of Apple. Another very important consequence is the crippling of any radical perspective. Among such ubiquitous coverage, an alternative viewpoint is so much harder to rise; since once it has been raised, it is either subject to virtual lynching via dislikes or comments- or gets drowned among the confronting crowd. It is thus very tricky to talk about more democratized ways of content production and distribution; since on the one hand the online media immensely facilitates the channels for one to speak and be heard -in theory-; while on the other, the vast size of content thereby produced does not allow for this democratization to operate in practice. At this point, we may also pay a tribute to Theodor Adorno and talk about the hindrance of critical capability: With such a colossal overflow of information and content, can we really distinguish and cherrypick quality? Or else do we simply float among the sea of content and see merely those that happen to come in our way which, most of the time, are representative of the dominating perspective? These bring us to the ultimate issue: What is to be done with this dust? How do we valorise all this noise and this pile of created content? What is worth keeping and preserving among this deluge over a longer duration? Although these questions are of extreme importance, we argue that the impact is yet too young for them to be answered healthily. It is by order that first comes a full understanding of the buzz; which can only then be managed and sustained. What this piece of work has tried to do was to take a step backwards to comprehend the whole process, by uncovering the operating mechanisms and the nature of such a content deluge. What emerges through this work is an empowering finding: We live in a pass-along culture where we ourselves are the most important actors in the process of how value is generated. The crucial thing, therefore, is how we handle the dynamics granted by technological development as a culture; charging us with a huge responsibility in the choice of language to use, the choice of what to watch, circulate, produce and disseminate. We should be sceptical both as actors who contribute to the creation of such a deluge, and as researchers trying to assess and later on manage the same issue. The curious notion of content deluge thus requires a truly critical approach for any future evaluation; and this paper hopes to provide the first step to enable such a possibility.

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7. Bibliography

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