David Marshall is treading familiar waters (at least for me) in this week’s readings as he discusses the “rejuvenation” of film and television in the new media age. The affective results of a decidedly technologically driven medium such as filmmaking are certainly worth considering. From CGI effects building on classic, and more simplistic “illusions” to an increased awareness and prediction of future means of interactivity in films such as Westworld, Brainstorm and Strange Days, Marshall is on a quest to talk about humankind as represented in Science Fiction films. It is unfortunate that according to the predicted cinematic outcome, our increase in interactivity usually results in horrific scenarios. Marshall also outlines the democratization of media made possible by widespread, relatively inexpensive digital filmmaking equipment. I am a great believer in filmmaking for the people as a means of communication and community education. As for distribution, Marshall was still writing inside the DVD boom bubble, when video rental stores were doing really well, when this book was published and only briefly alludes to Internet streaming possibilities with Atomfilms and iFilm, both early incarnations of VOD. As far as the rejuvenation of television, it is amusing how much weight Marshall bestows upon “reality shows,” certainly a domain of entertainment worth critically studying now more than ever, especially since the popularity of such programming has waned.

Lawrence Lessig is all about the democratization of media, and the mashup/remix. In, “Remix: How Creativity is Being Strangled by the Law,” he very convincingly argues for copyright authorities to chill out and consider the hybridized state of the amateur creative media on the Internet, particularly works that incorporate other works. He rightfully states (comparing the current state of things to Prohibition) that the war for control of creative properties is a losing battle that will result in the demonization of the young creators (many of whom are “children”) of new media. The question of difference between offline and online copyright procedures is covered by Fred Von Lohmann in, “Your Intermediary is Your Destiny,” an essay in which he compares traditional offline copyright lawyers to “doormen” and online copyright lawyers to “bouncers.” With offline intermediaries running a sizeable risk when showing any kind of commercial material that might have copyright infringement, it is very important for the lawyers to have all the necessary releases and paperwork. For online creative works, the process is that creators post their videos on Youtube or a similar website and then have the potential to get “bounced” as a result of copyright infringement. Whether or not legal action will be taken is up to the individual copyright holders and their lawyers. Lohmann seems very supportive of going ahead and posting your mashup/remix/copyright infringing work first and asking questions later. Finally, Patricia Aufderheide has gone and written an essay that seeks to empower Internet video makers, particularly those who wish to make us of pre-existing works under copyright. It’s really a beautiful use of scholarly research to inform creative individuals with the necessary knowledge of their rights to make works demonstrating “transformativeness,” because let’s face it, the history of creative endeavors has thrived by way of influence and cross pollination of ideas.  If Disney can do it, why can’t anybody?

Hell yea. Star Wars chapter, and only two weeks after Lucasfilm was sold to Disney. How timely. This week’s readings act as a natural extension of our readings from last week and our discussion, particularly concerning the Beyonce fan video which feeds directly into Jenkins’ consideration of “grassroots” contributions to culture. The notion that fan culture is suddenly highly visible due to technology has forced corporations to mull over what it means for their business to have a bunch of consumers contributing content. The big question asked by all three articles this week is whether this helps or hurts the situation. Does this result in exploitation or innovation? I’m inclined to support the innovation standpoint myself. Jenkins defines “interactivity” as controlled by a designer and “participation” as controlled by the consumers. Companies can either be “prohibitionists” (against) or “collaborationists” (supportive) toward the notion of consumer participation. By mentioning a bunch of Star Wars fan videos that I need to view immediately, Jenkins brings up the notion of “folk culture” and how, as filmmakers like Lucas borrowed from mythology and Walt Disney borrowed from the Brothers Grimm, creators of fan content borrow from mass culture as a wellspring shareable stories and anecdotes.

Then come limitations. Reading about the restrictions by Lucasfilm on fan fiction are humorous: no erotica or story deviations from the already established PG universe. I am curious what kind of compromising situations these fans had my beloved characters in?! But the most interesting response to restrictions arose concerning the Star Wars Galaxies game. When the company changed the rules of the game and ignored the contributions of fans, the fans became disenchanted and many left. A similar negative response was charted in the Banks and Humphreys article concerning Auran Trainz. When fan content creators, who were essential participants and co-creators of a gaming community, began to feel the increasingly rigid, deadline oriented structure of work, the community vibe soured. The question of exploitation comes up in Andrejevic article as he discusses the method of trolling Facebook for employees because, ya know, people with a lot of friends have a huge network to access. The social network as a privatized “social factory” is an interesting (and depressing) way of viewing the website, I must say. But in the end, I still think that despite our efforts as co-creators in the online spaces we inhabit, there is more benefit in being connected, accessible and potentially exploited to a degree. Even if consumers end up laboring in a certain sense for little or no immediate reward, there is the point made by Banks and Humphreys that skills learned while contributing to websites, gaming forums and fan zones can serve individuals for future work and involvement in technological innovations. Then there is the purified joy of sharing humorous versions of our favorite mass media culture. Bring on the remixes.

I found this week’s readings quite fascinating as both a continuation/elaboration of previously discussed topics within the class as well as being representative of the enigmatic claim to identity and individual creation on the Internet (or anywhere for that matter). The question of the week is what does it mean to be an audience in the shadow of this new and ever-expanding network form? Marshall comes at the problem from a cultural studies perspective, and I must say that his approach is one that I like. His consideration of the interpretation of texts as a creative act is spot on (and manages to sum up the importance of academia as a world where students require and thrive from the interpretation of more skilled and knowledgeable professors in an effort to learn how to interpret for themselves). How then does the interpretation and engagement with the Internet tell us about the overall structured apparatus but more importantly about ourselves? Marshall hits on point after point of relevant ideas, whether in regard to control and surveillance within the Internet (with a dash of Foucault) and the visibility (even as seemingly anonymous avatars) the Internet provides. Then there is the co-creation and prosumption of the “environment” of the network with the concept of  “feedback loops” seems to indicate that users within the network invariably become that medium. What would Marshall McLuhan and his “medium as the message” have to say about this? Perhaps we have never stopped being the medium. Just as our physical bodies serve our souls/identities, the Internet network becomes the new body, the new medium of transport for our avatars, digitized representations, co-creations, flaneur-style odysseys of exploration in an infinitely expanding wonderland of opportunity.

Also, Marshall inspired me remember the Tamagotchi (the digital pet), something I haven’t thought about in a very long time.

Shirky won my heart with his light-hearted romp of an essay talking about surplus time, sitcoms, and dealing with our problems by drinking gin. This kind of theoretical lark is great to shake things up, making evident the notion of “cognitive surplus” without getting too terribly in-depth. By using humorous anecdotes, Shirky confronts the rapidly changing technological age and how “we” consider our involvement in the network temporally and in terms of surplus, something we seemingly want to deny most of the time.

My intrigue with Marshall and smiles with Shirky should not discount the other articles/essays of the week, all of which adequately confronted the question of the unknown digital terrain of the Internet as a space in which participation and creation both empower and reconfigure previously maintained perceptions. “Race and Online Content Creation..” by Correa and Jeong is an important study and particularly interesting in the wake of our election. Though I haven’t seen any racism on my Facebook feed, I have read posts from numerous friends who are suddenly feeling the need to “purge” their friends list due to savage racist posts from their more conservative “friends.” Though the space of the Internet allows for beneficial identity creation for minorities, it still remains a place for backward thinking and terrible negativity.

The first article, “Social Media and…Tahrir Square” by Tufekci and Wilson highlights the activism that can arise when using SNSs, pointing out how sites like Facebook get the word “revolution” associated with them. The possibilities for communication represented by these websites represents a threat to the authoritarian style of government that exists in the Middle East and provides a space for a rallying cry from protestors and disseminators of “citizen journalist” media. A quarter of the participants heard about the protests from Facebook. Another quarter used Facebook to distribute their documentation of the event.

In “Democracy on the Web…” Loveland and Popescu seem a little disturbed by the opportunities for engaging in meaningful exchange on Internet forums. Using the website of an American northeastern newspaper as their model, they found that anonymity inherent to Internet forums creates problems of mutual respect and accountability. They also found that discussion becomes less of a conversation and more of a place to state one idea and withdraw, or suffer the asynchronous effects of Internet inter-communication. There is an evident longing in the article for a forum style that approximates the face-to-face style of discussion.

In “Playing with Politics…” Wilson, analyzing within an Australian context, considers online impersonation of political figures through Twitter. In class, we’ve discussed the notion of famous figures having their assistant tweet for them, but the notion of mimicking a public figure raises the stakes considerably. What’s interesting is that the “fakers” by necessity must be well informed and up to date on current news and identity quirks so there is a level of accuracy to the representation. The corruption of the real political figures as “brands” gets a moment of consideration, but I think the inherent revolt and humor in this kind of faking is a wonderful inroad to considering our increasing dependence upon digital identities and what this means in terms of individuality.

The attitudes toward  civic  websites in British youths are assessed in the article “Online Youth Civic Attitudes…” by Gerodimos. The findings are not too surprising, with political discourse generally coming off as “inaccessible” and “intimidating.” And paired with what Gerodimos considers a “lack of efficacy” in today’s youth, there needs to be a push toward connecting with them. Gerodimos finds that the information needs to be practical and straightforward (if such a thing is possible in the political sphere), and the appeal needs to be direct and emotional, utilizing empathy and visual stimuli. With the inclusion of such factors, the “misperception” of civic websites seemingly held by British youth can begin to be ameliorated.

Manuel Castells, who I’m glad to be reading again, considers the nature of power relations within an ever-advancing system of mass communication in his article, “Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society.” I’m inclined to agree with lines like, “What does not exist in the media does not exist in the public mind, even if it could have a fragmented presence in individual minds” (Castells, 241). The media exists as a “space where power is decided,” (242) not held. He refers to the “personality politics” of political leaders, which relates back to the notion of branding identity. When it comes to a cynical public choosing a political leader to support, “they choose among all the immorals the kind of immoral that they find more akin or closer to their interests”(243). More relevantly to this week’s consideration of inspired activism, Castells emphasizes the current “culture that emphasizes individual autonomy, and the self-construction of the project of the social actor”(249) with the allowances of current technologies.  The “autonomous communication networks” are no longer confined but exist within a “global space of flows” between mediums and destabilized spaces. This guy is awesome.

The political conversation in the network society has become a new forum of sorts. This being an election year, there has been no shortage of response on my Facebook stream to the presidential debates. From saddened reactions regarding Obama’s first debate performance to humorous references to the potential loss of PBS, and then there were the binders full of women. Simply put, the debate doesn’t end when the broadcast stops. The various articles from this week observe the relatively new phenomenon of politics and civic involvement in the age of the SNS and mobile connectivity.

In “United We Stand?” Johnson et al fire things up by considering Facebook and Youtube as sources of conversation, consumption and calls to action in the wake of the 2008 election (many of these articles take the 2008 election as a starting point due to the game change in political strategy and viral campaigning). Facebook and Youtube become both a source and a place to share information from other sources. The study found a large female audience (might have had to do with their mostly female respondents) for SNSs and Youtube, and most interestingly to me an inclination not to vote the more you watch Youtube. “Between Barack and a Net Place,” by Kaye shows an inclination in males to seek out political information from blogs, and that those who use SNSs are more trusting of the government that “blogophiles.” There was also a correlation between Democrats and SNS users. “Mobile Communciation and Civic Life…” and “Political Involvement in Mobilized Society…” both articles by Campbell and Kwak found a positive correlation between using technology for information exchange and political participation. They found that female respondents were more civically engaged. They also studied size and its relation to homogeneity and heterogeneity of a network. The larger, more homogeneous groups tended to have increased participation levels. Finally, “Mobilizers Mobilized…” by Rojas and Puig-i-Abril considered similar aspects to the rest of the articles except from the context of the non-democratic Colombia. The general consensus among these articles supports the idea that mobile devices and social network use encourages and opens a new field of political awareness and involvement. It might be tempting to think that in an increasingly technologically infused society, that politics might begin to recede into oblivion but it just isn’t the case. It’s stronger than ever, heightened and alive.

The digital distribution of movies is taking the network society by storm. According to Rick Burgess on the website Techspot: Technology News and Analysis, “Americans will watch 3.4 billion movies online in 2012 as opposed to 2.4 billion DVD and Blu-ray discs expected to sell.” Well-known and highly trafficked websites such as Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and iTunes are changing the way consumers experience moving pictures. The business of home video entertainment once required a trip to the local brick and mortar video store to rent or purchase the movies of your choice. Now, with ever-increasing catalogues of movie titles, websites such as the ones mentioned above are providing instant and immediate entertainment satisfaction. It is called Video on Demand, or VOD.

The advancement presented by VOD technology changes our temporal experience of acquiring and consuming visual media. Access is instantaneous and divorced from the expectation of watching movies in the living room of one’s home. Mobile phones and tablets have become new, transportable platforms for movie viewing anywhere with an Internet connection. The cost of consumption is negligible when compared to physical media. The quality, given current streaming standards, is high. The materiality of the medium, represented by tangible home movie collections that take up space on shelves, is dissipating into immaterial, computer accessible files that accumulate on hard drives.

Kevin Zhu writes that, “Not since the introduction of the videocassette recorder has a disruptive technology so threatened the very heart of Hollywood”(273), in his article “Internet-based Distribution of Digital Videos: The Economic Impacts of Digitization on the Motion Picture Industry.” Though written in 2001, Zhu’s article is able to quickly identify and consider the rapidly changing release style of movies, drawing on early examples of VOD websites such as Atomfilms, Sightandsound, and Mediatrip. In addition to access, the ability to stream VOD effectively requires a decent connection to the network. Sungjoon Nam, Puneet Manchanda and Pradeep K. Chiintagunta consider neighborly word of mouth impact on acquiring VOD in the home in their article “The Effect of Signal Quality and Contiguous Word of Mouth on Customer Acquisition for a Video-on-Demand Service.” They find that “contiguous word of mouth effects about 8% of the subscribers with respect to their adoption behavior”(690). Anirban Mukherjee and Vrinda Kadiyali analyze the choice between the multiple home viewing platforms in their article “Modeling Multichannel Home Video Demand in the U.S. Motion Picture Industry,” shedding light on patterns of choice when consumers must select between several viewing options. Internet piracy, always a hot button issue, is scrutinized in Michael Smith and Rahul Telang’s article “Competing with Free: The Impact of Movie Broadcasts on DVD Sales and Internet Piracy” as well as the article “Analysis of Security Vulnerabilities in the Movie Production and Distribution Process,” by Simon Byers, Lorrie Crano and Eric Cronin. Both of these articles consider the perceived cannibalization of the profit shares represented by “free” movies.

As a struggling filmmaker the ways movies reach consumers, provide opportunities for exposure, create profit, and encourage the continuation of film production, are of great importance to me. VOD represents a significant alteration in the way movies are dispersed and experienced. The marketplace and the cinematic playing field are undergoing major adjustments while simultaneously opening up exciting channels of expression that have yet to be seen. Paired with the reduced expense of creating one’s own movies, the ability to broadcast and experience the viewpoints of a greater multitude through the VOD experience makes for increased diversity and a rapid influx of material. Certainly, this means navigating through a higher volume of poor products, but the potential for finding specific, niche market material also increases. VOD represents a voyage into the immaterial connectivity of content made possible by the network society. My essay will depict the evolution and history of the VOD medium while analyzing the current highly saturated state of this ever-changing new form of experience.

Burgess, Rick. “Online Movie Streaming Will Overtake DVD Sales This Year in U.S.” Techspot: Technology News and Analysis. March 23, 2012.

Byers, Simon, Lorrie Crano, Eric Cronin. “Analysis of Security Vulnerabilities in the Movie Production and Distribution Process.” September 13, 2003: 1-18.

Mukherjee, Anirban, Vrinda Kadiyali. “ Modeling Multichannel Home Video Demand in the U.S. Motion Picture Industry.” Journal of Marketing Research (2010) 1-11.

Nam, Sungjoon, Puneet Manchanda, Pradeep K. Chintagunta. “The Effect of Signal Quality and Contiguous Word of Mouth on Customer Acquisition for a Video-on-Demand Service.” Marketing Science 29.4 (2010) 690-700.

Smith, Michael, Rahul Telang. “Competing with Free: The Impact of Movie Broadcasts on DVD Sales and Internet Piracy.” MIS Quarterly 33.2 (2009): 321-338.

Zhu, Kevin. “Internet-based Distribution of Digital Videos: The Economic Impacts of Digitization on the Motion Picture Industry.” Electronic Markets 11.4 (2001): 273-280.

I’m intrigued by the notion of social capital, something I haven’t ever consciously named but think about a good deal. It feels good to hang out with people and socialize regularly. Similarly, it feels good (though in a different way) to interact with fellow humans within digital spaces. Taking these two notions of social capital and juxtaposing them creates the connective line of thought for all three of our readings. What Ellison, Lampe, Steinfield and Vitak begin in “With a Little Help from My Friends,” Burke, Kraut and Marlow continue in “Social Capital on Facebook…” There is great attention given to how online social interactions within the frame of SNSs, specifically Facebook, impact and coexist with offline social interactions. Does Facebook function similarly to a dating site where users meet one another and become friends? Do people use Facebook to support already existent offline relationships? The answer, found by these two articles, seems to favor the latter option, meaning that Facebook exists as a continuation of an already active offline network. Though, two strangers with the same mutual friend can enter into conversations facilitated and encouraged by “broadcasted” posts and become friends.

I enjoyed Burke, Kraut and Marlow’s classification of the three types of social interactions on Facebook: “directed communication, passive consumption, and broadcasting.” Directed communication is the most pointed, and my personal preference for interaction on Facebook. If someone posts “how are you, David?” on my timeline, I will always respond with a private message. Though unnecessary for this kind of simplistic chit-chat, I find the wall/timeline of Facebook a rather impersonal space designed mostly for broadcasting statements and performative/show-off conversations meant for the spectators in your friend list. As for SNSs being opportunities for less publicly extroverted individuals to shine and interact, it seems like an obvious bi-product of this kind of virtual space.

Lastly, I was moved by the approach of Vitak and Ellison’s “There’s a network out there you might as well tap: Exploring the benefits of and barriers to exchanging informational and support-based resources on Facebook.” The consideration of Facebook as a space that allows commiseration among those suffering ills and losses hit home for me. Also, Facebook as a kind of workshop where one can obtain information outside of a limited specialty of interest makes it a great place to exploit “bridging” relationships. The weak links, discussed early on in the class, between nodes can often carry some of the most valuable information since that weaker link represents a connection outside of one’s normal field of “bonded” interactions.

The network has gone digitally mobile. It is with us all the time. Danah Boyd is correct in her assessment of the modern predicament as being “always on.” The kind of connectivity permitted by the Internet is the result of an embedded desire within the culture at large. We have always been a network society. It has only ever been a question of saturation, of how heightened and boundless the net can become. Technology allows the connections to spread with unheard of rapidity. To envision the Internet and try to understand its machinations is to look into a mirror. Is it any surprise that what that mirror reflects is the poetry of destruction mixed with creation? The predicament of Internet identities and spokespeople, whether bloggers, Twitter marketers, or fellow SNS users who talk about and inadvertently sell perspectives and memberships into select groups/clubs/cliques, is how to remain current, hip, and seductive. As creatures of consumption, we cannot ignore these seductions, only accept or reject them.  The real question boils down to what we will purchase next (or buy into), and from whom. Who shall we be tomorrow and from what immaterial means shall the new we be composed?

The professional identities investigated by Dawn R. Gilpin in her chapter, “Working the Twittersphere,” were intriguing as examples of online identity construction, a phenomenon shown to be more a result of peer to peer interactions, or conversations, (at least within the context of Twitter) than solitary constructs. This kind of identity building extends beyond Twitter and into SNS and even the websites we choose to frequent, blogs included. Whether we, as users, comment on blog sites and the like, there is a creation of identity as a singular unit and also as a member of a group of followers or professional compatriots assembled and unified by the websites from which we choose to seek out information. It is a kind of branding as a member of a gang while at the same time striving to exist as a unique individual. No brand is exactly the same, but there is always another brand that is rather similar. Mendelson and Papacharissi’s chapter “Look at Us,” about college Facebook photo galleries, gives the impression of a stream of similarly composed and performed photographs chronicling the newly (semi) independent youths of America. While the study continues the identity construction hit upon in the essay by Gilpin, the investigation of pictorial evidence as visual proof of individual and group identity heightens the impact and co-constructed meanings therein.

Immaterial labor seems like the natural way of things on the net. Ritzer, Dean and Jurgenson’s “The Coming of Age of the Prosumer,” provides a nice summary of prosumption as an idea that runs rampant on the Internet but isn’t limited strictly to computer-based activities. Mixing production with consumption has wormed its way into our lives in how we shop for food in supermarkets (cutting out the old-fashioned grocer and more recently the living cashier) and how we dine in fast food restaurants such as McDonalds. We, the prosumers, very willingly engage in labor that cuts costs for businesses. As this article hints at and this week’s other readings take on fully is the sense of community that is tied to the notion of prosumption and how that community perception and loyalty waxes and wanes dependent on the perceived influence of marketing and truthfulness.

The immediate formal result of prosumption on the Internet is evidenced in our co-creation of social network sites (something I had never considered as labor before), blogs, and virtual marketplaces such as Amazon.com. Interestingly, Jenny Davis’ article on Transableism, introduced in “The Coming of Age of the Prosumer,” is about healthy people who want to be disabled, which is relevant to prosumption as a co-creation of identity made possible by a website. I was reminded of Tobias Funke’s “never-nude” affliction on the show Arrested Development. With a supportive online community, a wide variety of identity-shaping psychic alterations seem likely to occur.

The rest of the readings took on the complicated task of figuring out how influence can be judged amongst the prosumer community. From weighing the “usefulness” of online peer reviews to the effects of blog advertising on the community of blog readers, the articles considered the issue from many angles. The ethical concerns of blogs measured in “Blogola…” by Ric Jensen were fascinating in a comparative consideration to journalism, a tradition that upholds certain frameworks and expected behaviors of reportage in an effort to remain a credible source of information. Being a credible source of information also means that you are who you say you are, not a corporation posing as a citizen news source/promotional opportunity.  “Networked Narratives: Understanding WOMM in Online Communities,” by Kozinets, Valck, Wojnicki and Wilner extends the ethical analysis to the blog reader community and how perception of a trustworthy, or at least consistent, blogger may shift when he or she is enlisted by marketers to participate in advertising campaigns. The case studies depicted in this article were a cool way of integrating empirical research.

This week’s readings felt like a statistical roller coaster ride that efforted to map the mind of Internet users by considering receptivity of mobile phone advertising, Youtube PSAs and social network site (SNS) advertising (SNA). There were also a bunch of acronyms. As a video guy, the “Peer or Expert?…” article by Paek, Hove, Jeong and Kim was of particular interest to me in its exploration of consumer perceptions of PSA video producers. The article displays that there is a  correlation between perceived similarities in those who produce a video and those who view that video with receptivity to the message with that video. This, of course, is a question of persuasion through identification, both of which are ideas linked directly with rhetoric and its reception. Kenneth Burke strikes again. One of the big questions of the article pertains to how, with this knowledge of positive peer response, corporations will be able to resist the urge to mimic and simulate the appearance of peer creation.

The field of ethical landmines becomes more saturated when one considers the impending proliferation of mobile phone advertising, a problem symbolized by Wilken and Sinclair in their article “Waiting for the Kiss of Life,” as a “Sleeping Beauty” awaiting the kiss of her prince. These guys can’t hide their whimsical natures when they reference the problem of whether to send advertisements to users or to lure users toward advertisements as a “Dr. Dolittle Dilemma” of “push” versus “pull.” Add to the many pitfalls outlined by Wilken and Sinclair the questions raised by Kolsaker and Drakatos in their essay “Mobile Advertising: The Influence of Emotional Attachment to Mobile Devices on Consumer Receptiveness.” In the article, the authors attempt to hypothesize on how advertising might be received considering how mobile phone users associate a connective/emotional link between their phones and their families and friends. The kind of cautious approach these two sets of authors support is wise when considering the encroachment on perceived privacy in a population that is increasing “cyborg” in its phone usage. But perhaps it is this “cyborg” nature that makes advertising a natural addition to the increasingly digitized state of mind.

The final two articles, “Friends, Fans, and Followers…” by Taylor, Lewin and Strutton, and “Introducing Cobras…” (great title) by Muntiga, Moorman and Smit, attempt to highlight and scientifically classify the consumption and creation habits of users who populate social network sites. Reading these two articles was like walking through an experiment guided by the presiding scientists. They were very detailed and precise when it came to methodology. From considering motivations of being on social network sites, to a gender-based breakdown of habits while interacting within such websites, the articles, or should I say reports, were thorough, giving names to actions that hitherto might be considered nebulous habits. I can now classify myself as a “lurker” instead of a “socialiser” when it comes to my chosen interactions in the field of SNS.