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Oblique Strategies for Ambient Journalism Alex Burns (alex@alexburns.net) Published in M/C Journal, 13(2), May 2010.  Alfred Hermida recently posited 'ambient journalism' as a new framework for para- and professional  journalists, who use social networks like Twitter for story sources, and as a news delivery platform.  Beginning with this framework, this article explores the following questions: How does Hermida  define 'ambient journalism' and what is its significance? Are there alternative definitions? What  lessons do current platforms provide for the design of future, real-time platforms that 'ambient  journalists' might use? What lessons does the work of Brian Eno provide-the musician and  producer who coined the term 'ambient music' over three decades ago? My aim here is to formulate an alternative definition of ambient journalism that emphasises craft,  skills acquisition, and the mental models of professional journalists, which are the foundations more  generally for journalism practices. Rather than Hermida's participatory media context I emphasise  'institutional adaptiveness': how journalists and newsrooms in media institutions rely on craft and  skills, and how emerging platforms can augment these foundations, rather than replace them.

recommended by Howard Rheingold,  He says: "Mark Elliott claims that Wikipedia is an example of how people use online media stigmergically." Mark Elliott says (from the site): "As stigmergy is a method of communication in which individuals communicate with one another by modifying their local environment, it is a logical extension to apply the term to many types (if not all) of Web-based communication, especially media such as the wiki."

The simplest of the solutions offered by Fair Outcomes, Fair Buy-Sell, is based on an algorithm Brams helped develop in the 1990s. Aimed at delivering the fairest price in buyout situations, such as when two business partners decide to part ways, it requires each side to confidentially submit what he or she believes to be a business's true worth. Each value is absolute; there is no chance to negotiate. The system calls for looking at both bids and determining that the highest bidder will be the buyer. It then sets the price at the mean, or midpoint, of the two values. "They split the difference so that each does better than his offer," says Brams, who chairs the advisory board for Fair Outcomes. "That's the important thing."

Human cooperation is an evolutionary puzzle. Unlike other creatures, people frequently cooperate with genetically unrelated strangers, often in large groups, with people they will never meet again, and when reputation gains are small or absent. These patterns of cooperation cannot be explained by the nepotistic motives associated with the evolutionary theory of kin selection and the selfish motives associated with signalling theory or the theory of reciprocal altruism. Here we show experimentally that the altruistic punishment of defectors is a key motive for the explanation of cooperation. Altruistic punishment means that individuals punish, although the punishment is costly for them and yields no material gain. We show that cooperation flourishes if altruistic punishment is possible, and breaks down if it is ruled out. The evidence indicates that negative emotions towards defectors are the proximate mechanism behind altruistic punishment. These results suggest that future study of the evolution of human cooperation should include a strong focus on explaining altruistic punishment.