Here is my presentation for my @PW: Social Media Class. It is a work in progress, and I have in no way reached any final conclusions. Feel free to leave comments. There is always room for improvement. Thanks for reading and viewing!
What is the impact of Twitter on TV viewing? How as Twitter changed the way that people interact with television as a machine, television programming, and other television viewers?
Those are a few of the questions I plan to explore in my social media project. The desire to pursue this has been festering (that has a negative connotation) since I twittered through the entire VMAs. I actually enjoyed the twitter conversations better than the show itself. I especially loved all the Kanye and Taylor Swift drama and the Lil Mama fiasco (#lilmamis) that ensued. This made me wonder: This is new to me, but how many other people tweet their favorite shows? Why? What are they tweeting?
People tweet everything these days. It is very common for people to tweet throughout conferences and conventions. The infamous backchannel. There is also tweeting at sporting events and the tweeting of celebrities, which has caused a lot of new rules and regulations to be put in place. The impact on events, social activities, and such is obvious; people who aren’t there can know what’s going on and the people that are can have side conversation about it. Is TV tweeting the same?
Television has been around for years with much controversy upon it’s original conception. Viewership was down a few years ago, but now it is steadily rising. Could social networking have something to do with that? The idea of getting together to watch a popular show or a sporting event has been around for ages. Is tweeting a show a big get together to watch the favorite show or popular event?
There are a lot of questions. How to go about finding the answers? Let’s begin with the theoretical framework. I am not going to go into detail here. I am thinking though this as I type. I begin with Henry Jenkins and the idea of convergence . Convergence culture wherein the old media (TV) and the new media (Twitter) come together in unexpected ways. It also connects to the idea he presents of the powers colliding. The producer and the consumer meeting in an unexpected way. This lead me to Stuart Hall Encoding/Decoding. This led me to think about the relationship between producers and consumers. Hall presents the idea that audiences interpret television in their own ways. These ways can be similar or different form what the producers intended. Are the consumers on Twitter interpreting the work of the TV producers as they intended? If consumers take the message as intended then the producer was successful, but when the message is taken differently then there is a miscommunication.
Now bouncing back to Jenkins. I wondered why certain shows could be tweeted about and others ignored. This lead me to collective intelligence. As Jenkins presents it the idea of group think, herd behavior, or hive mind. What is the implication of finding out what shows are tweet worthy and what shows aren’t? Are the popular shows, according to Nielsen ratings, the only one’s tweeted about? Or are shows being tweeted because they have a certain significance?
From here my mind jumped to the idea of appropriation. It seems that twitter is being used in all sorts of ways that it was not originally intended. Now it is a medium by people discuss television programming with friends and/or strangers with similar interests. Are conversations taking place that previously wouldn’t have or couldn’t have taken place? Are “momentary” communities being created out of the urgency to communicate about a particular show? Is it the show and desire for communication the formula for a rhetorical situation (Bitzer)? More questions.
How to go about answering all these questions? This is how I started: TV Guidle, TwitScoop, and Twapper Keeper. I monitored the TwitScoop graph for a week. Keeping track of what the popular trends were. I also downloaded the TV guide for that day to see what shows, movies, programs would be scheduled for the evening. From here, I created a Twapper Keeper for random shows. It just so happens that the Presidential Address occurred during this week. The shows that I created Twapper Keepers for are:
scrubs victoriasecretfashionshow presidentaddresstothenation presidentialaddress soyouthinkyoucandance goonies nationallampoonschristmasvacation cleveland thesantaclause3 thesantaclause soultrainawards happyfeet achristmascarol
I randomly picked shows that were common on basic cable channels and regular TV that can be accessed via antennae. I downloaded the Twapper Keeper results into an excel spreadsheet, and I am now in the process of analyzing the information. I want to look at what kind of information is being shared. Are people simply telling everyone what’s happening (i.e I’m watching x show)? Are people tweeting to tell others to watch x show? Are communities being created? Are people interacting or just commenting? Is information being exchanged? Are people simply telling what they are watching or are they providing their opinion and/or commentary?
Of course, I know that there are many limitations to this project. This is just a random idea right now with a very small sample size, shaky methodology, and some theory. I think there is potential. I will be sure to share some results, conclusions, and ideas for future research.
Here is where I will go from here: The History of TV What is Twitter? What is Social? What is Community? Does twitter impacted TV viewing?
I’m excited to see where this goes. Thanks for reading.
Flickr is a picture and video sharing site. It is the social networking version of the family photo album. The account was easy to set up. I disliked having to create a Yahoo account in order to set up my Flickr account. Creating my profile and uploading photos was very easy. I like that I was able to create tags, titles, and descriptions for the photos. I enjoyed making catchy titles and quirky descriptions.
I see how Flickr can be fun and a great way to share photos. However, I do not have a real use for it. I use picasa. I have been using it for a couple of years. It has always been easy for my family and friends to find. If they have trouble, I simply email the photos to the internet challenged family member.
Basically, I do not see the need for social photo sharing. Flickr seems like a great site. I would recommend it to anyone who wanted to share photos with family, friends, or the world. However, I do not care to use it.
Teaching Copyright is a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The EFF is an organization dedicated to protecting freedoms online (in the networked world is how they state it). The EFF was founded in 1990 and defends issue of free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today. The EFF website provides pages on all major issues related to digital rights: Transparency, Privacy, International, Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Free Speech. They also offer a section on bloggers’ rights coders’ rights. The EFF has a strong online presence with profiles on the major social networking sites.
They have an SSD Project, which is focused on educating America about the law and technology of government surveillance. The website states:
“Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD) exists to answer two main questions: What can the government legally do to spy on your computer data and communications? And what can you legally do to protect yourself against such spying?”
This made we think of our discussion about participatory surveillance. We mentioned being watched and watching others on social networks and in the cyblerworld, but there was limited discussion about the governments role in surveillance.
An interesting part of the EFF website is the Takedown Hall of Shame. This page emphasizes the worst threats to creative expression.
This seems like a very active organization that is focused on fighting against bogus copyright and trademark issues (web page dedicated to legal victories)
Teaching Copyright Teaching Copyright is a web site run by the EFF. The web site’s focus, as stated above, is educating children about digital rights. The EFF believes that there is a lot of misinformation about copyrights. They present the idea that this misinformation is harmful to children’s inquisitive, creative, and innovative spirits. The youth should be aware of what their limitations and freedoms are in the digital world.
This project came about, as stated on the site, from a 2006 law passed in California that required schools that accepted technology funding to educate the students about plagiarism, copyright, and internet safety.
The people at EFF realized that the resources and curriculum were inaccurate and based on generalizations. The EFF decided to take matters into its own hands by “by developing an honest, accurate, and balanced curriculum that would help students understand and exercise their digital rights and responsibilities.”
The site offers a complete curriculum with 5 lessons:
“In five distinct lessons, students are challenged to: * Reflect on what they already know about copyright law. * See the connection between the history of innovation and the history of copyright law. * Learn about fair use, free speech, and the public domain and how those concepts relate to using materials created by others. * Experience various stakeholders’ interests and master the principles of fair use through a mock trial. Teaching Copyright will require your students to think about their role in the online world and provide them with the legal framework they need to make informed choices about their online behavior.”
“In five distinct lessons, students are challenged to:
* Reflect on what they already know about copyright law. * See the connection between the history of innovation and the history of copyright law. * Learn about fair use, free speech, and the public domain and how those concepts relate to using materials created by others. * Experience various stakeholders’ interests and master the principles of fair use through a mock trial.
Teaching Copyright will require your students to think about their role in the online world and provide them with the legal framework they need to make informed choices about their online behavior.”
The site is all about bringing educators, students, and digital rights together. There is a thorough list of resources related to everything from copyright and fair use to P2P file sharing. There are also handouts and support documents such as copyright history worksheets and quizzes. They also offer a list of books, articles, podcasts, videos, and websites related to digital rights.
Bharat Mehra is an assistant professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee.
Bharat Mehra
He states on his web page that his teaching interests are:
“Diversity and Intercultural Issues, Social Justice in Library and Information Science (LIS), Community Informatics, International Perspectives in LIS, Public Library Management, Service Learning, Action Research, Use and Users of Information, Information Representation and Organization”
His undergraduate education took place at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. He earned his MLA (Landscape Architecture) and his MA in South and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was granted his PhD in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
He grew up in India before coming to the United States. He says of his growing up:
“My growing up experiences in India created an awareness and acceptance of human diversity in its multiple forms of expression, thought, and action.”
He has completed a good number of publications, grants and presentations. I was able to find a few of the abstracts online, but I did not find many full articles. A list of his publications, grants, and presentations are on his CV.
An article that I did come across was “The Library-Community Convergence Framework for Community Action: Libraries as Catalysts of Social Change.” I found this article interesting because it discusses how the available technologies and services to empower minorities and underserved groups.
B. Mehra has a short Wikipedia page, Facebook page, a WebJunction profile, and a Linkedin account. His webpage on the UT site seems to be updated regularly with information about upcoming articles and presentations.
An Action Research Manifesto for Cyberculture Power to “Marginalized” Cultures of Difference.”
Mehra’s essay presents characteristics of AR in group projects that he worked with different disenfranchised groups. He worked with African American women, sexual minorities, low-income people in Champaign, and a Puerto Rican community in Chicago. The idea or purpose of the essay was to show how AR in cyblerculture studies could help to give power (digital power) to minorities and the disenfranchised. Mehra believes that AR has the potential to create social justice.
Cyberculture studies currently focus on human behavior, identity, interaction, and participation. Mehra sees the need for a move toward looking at how cyberculture can be a tool for helping marginalized groups.
Action Research AR is a research method that emphasizes collaboration between a researcher and members of a community or organization in order to improve their situation. A big element of AR is participation, which goes back to researchers being active in the communities they research and the ethnographic idea of participant observation.
Main Points (that jumped out at me)
Mehra believes that researchers have the power to create social empowerment, social justice, social change. He believes that researchers should include the marginalized in the research process. An example would be the Afya project website. The African American women add content to the project website. They gained social power by building up their knowledge of the cyberworld (technical knowledge). Mehra calls for researches to step outside of the professional realm and to enter into partnership with the community.
Mehra makes an interesting connection between AR and democracy. He presents the idea that AR connects to democracy because everyone can come together to play a part in creating something new.
Thinking further: AR seems kind of complicated from what I have looked up (it could be me), do the marginalized participants need to have a full understanding of all elements of the research process (methods, theories, etc) for it to be effective?
Will it actually make a difference for social empowerment or social justice to include minorities in the research?
that is the story of the numbers and this is really a story about new forms of expression and new forms of community and new forms of identity emerging.
“An anthropological introduction to YouTube” is a video by Michael Wesch presented to the Library of Congress on June 23, 2008.
Who is Michael Wesch? Michael Wesch is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. On his blog Digital Ethnography @ Kansas State University he states,
I am an assistant professor of cultural anthropology, but first and foremost I am a student of the world. I have the coolest job in the world, organizing massive teams of K-State students into global citizens working for a better tomorrow.
Wesch’s research deals primarily with new media and human interaction. He earned a degree in anthropology from Kansas State University and completed his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Virginia. He was named “Professor of the Year” by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement.
As you can tell from the type of research he does, Wesch has a strong online presence. He is on twitter @mwesch, LinkedIn, and FriendFeed.
What is Anthropology? Anthropology is the study of human beings and their interactions with everyone and everything.
What is Ethnography? Ethnography is situated in anthropology and sociology. It does prescribes to a participant observation. The idea is the researcher immersing himself or herself into the culture or world of what they are researching. It is commonly seen as a holistic approach to studying humans and their culture.
Wesch is studying human beings and their interactions with new media. In the case of this video, YouTube. He also has several other videos that provide insight into how we interact with this new technology. Wesch and his students have a Digital Ethnography of YouTube Project
I have used many of his videos in my Rhetoric classes at ODU. I now use his videos in my composition courses. The Video Showcase on the Digital Ethnography blog has all of his videos from those on anthropology to the vision of students today.
Cultural Tension: The part of this video that stood out to me the most was the idea of networked individualism–”we are becoming increasingly individual but have a desire for community. “We see increasing commercialization around us and long for authenticity.”
Reality and Identity: The idea of YouTube and the process of doing a YouTube video is both a extremely private and extremely public process. Wesch mentions Cooley’s The Looking Glass Self, which is the idea that the self grows out of interactions with and perceptions of others.
Connections: YouTube=profound connections to other humans and freedom to experience humanity without fear or anxiety.
YouTube offers deep connection without constraints It is the answer to cultural tension? It is the answer to the desire for individuality and connection? This connects to what we discussed at the beginning of the course about online relationships being more in “reality” than offline relationships.
YouTube Celebrity: This video also made me think of others, like Souljaboytellem (better known as Souljaboy), who became internet celebrities. A good example is Chris Crocker better known as the BritneyFanatic. He has been given his own TV show. Another example is Justin Bieber, a young kid from Canada, who sang cover songs on YouTube and now has an album coming out.
Identity: Wesch exploration of identity on YouTube reminds me of our talks about identity with Turkle, Goffman, and Sarrera. The videos he displayed addressed issues of how we pick which identity we display and deciding which identity is the real one.
Context Collapse: This reminds me of our discussion as to how our identities can be tampered with on Facebook. You never know when you are being watched or when your comments/actions will be loaded onto YouTube.
There are so many layers to this video. I watched it twice, and I saw something different each time.
I’ll end on the same note as Wesch: “the most public space in the world from the privacy of our own homes…it’s the little glass dot–the eyes of the world.”
This week we discuss social media in use with Public displays of connection by Donath and boyd. Throughout the course we have discussed the significance of the relationships that are made through social networks along with they way identity is constructed online. This article by Donath & boyd explores how we display our social network for other people to browse.
Who is Judith Donath?
Judith Donath, who does not have as strong an online presence as her co-author, is the director of the Sociable Media Group at MIT. She is also a Faculty Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. On her section of the Momentum media website she states:
At the core of my work, I am fascinated by the question of how we communicate to others about who we are, and how we interpret the social messages that we receive. And I am deeply interested in the flow of history, and how tides have shifted over decades and centuries, and in particular, in the role that science and technology has played in reshaping how we think.
Much of her research seems to focus on computer mediated interaction and social visualizations. Her biography on Berkman Center for Internet and Society states:
“She is known internationally for pioneering research in social visualization, interface design, and computer mediated interaction. She created several of the early social applications for the web, including the first postcard service (”The Electric Postcard”), the first interactive juried art show (”Portraits in Cyberspace”) and an early large-scale web event (”A Day in the Life of Cyberspace”). Her work has been exhibited at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston and in several New York galleries; she was the director of “Id/Entity”, a collaborative exhibit of installations examining how science and technology are transforming portraiture.”
She received her doctoral and master’s degrees in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT. She attended Yale Univeristy and earned her bachelor’s degree in History.
She has several talks online. The enjoyed her talk on “Designing Society” and her talk for Google Tech talk titled “Signals, Truth, and Design.”
She has a Facebook page and a twitter account @judithd
There is an interesting interview with Professor Donath here.
An interesting tidbit about Professor Donath is that her favorite childhood toy was her toes: “Favorite childhood toy: early on, probably my toes.”
Who is danah boyd? On her blog apophenia, danah michele boyd (all lowercase) describes herself saying:
At my core, I’m an activist and a scholar.” She has been quoted by media outlets such as NPR, MSNBC, and USA Today. Leigh Bureau refers to her as “an internationally recognized authority on the ways people use networked social media as a context for social interaction —who inhabits the world of online social network sites, what they do there, and why.”
Her research interests as: social media, youth practices, tensions between public and private, social network sites, and other intersections between technology and society. She has written papers on many aspects of online environment and social media, especially teens and social networks. On her blog she states:
“In recent years, I have studied Twitter, blogging, social network sites (e.g. Friendster, MySpace, Facebook…), tagging, and other forms of social media. I have written papers on a variety of different topics, from digital backchannels to social visualization design, sexing of internet interactions to creating artifacts for memory work. I also blog and tweet frequently on a wide variety of topics. Along with other members of the MacArthur Foundation-funded project on digital media and learning, I helped co-author a newly published book: Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media.”
She recently completed her PhD at the School of Information (aka iSchool) at the University of California Berkley. She currently serves as a Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Her dissertation focused on teenagers and how they socialize on social media sites such as MySpace and Facebook. She also looked at LiveJournal, Xanga, and YouTube. She says on her blog, “I was interested in how the architectural differences between unmediated and mediated publics affect sociality, identity and culture.” She completed her Master’s Degree at MIT with Judith Donath, and she did undergraduate work at Brown University in computer science.
She has a very active cyber life. She prides herself on the fact that she blogs and tweets (@Zephoria) regularly. She also has a MySpace and keeps updates on her blog on her del.icio.us account.
She is extremely easy to find online and provides a good deal of information about herself. She has a short autobiography on her blog called “a bitty auto-biography / a smattering of facts.” Also, there are a few interviews online:
Discover Magazine interview she discusses how teens use technology and the MySpace versus Facebook battle. boyd believes that the idea of “white flight” has caused MySpace to crumble.
The website Handheld Learning 2008 has a presentation that delivered at the conference where she discusses learning and technology.
An interesting tidbit is that there is currently a request for mediation on Wikipedia bout capitalization of her name.
When I first began this article, I honestly did not find anything shocking. I blame that on reading this paper in hindsight and after many years and hours of using social networking sites. I feel as if I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.
In “Public displays of connection,” Donath and boyd present idea that the main point of social networks is to make new connections and that public displays verify your identity. They also present the idea that people will have more access to information and new knowledge by having a social network that consists of more ties or connections but with weaker connections. This essay brought to mind our conversations about participation, identity, and cyber-reality.
Social Networking: After almost a semester of looking at social media, I’m sure that we have a clear understanding of what social networking is. Donath and boyd state that social networking is a product of a culture that is focused or centered on making connections and accessing information. Social networks center around creating profiles and linking, friending, and/or following others. What is interesting here are the types of links discussed. The connections that we make on social networking sites fit a particular model; they are mutual, public, unnuanced, and decontextualised.
Connections The “public displays of connection,” as they call it, are the visible links, friends, follows, etc. that a person makes on social networks. They aim to explore the implications of these connections being visible. In the real world we show our connections by name dropping or appearing in public with someone. Online our connections are publicly displayed via our profiles. Donath and boyd note, “Seeing someone within the context of their connections provides the viewer with information about them.”
People (other social network users) can determine who you know and how. These links or connections can be used to verify your identity. Being able to openly see the connections that a person has helps you to decide whether to make a connection with that person. If the person knows people that you already know and trust, you are more likely to enter a new relationship with this person. You can, in a way, weigh the cost and benefit of the interaction.
This leads to the concept that having a “public display of connections” lets other people determine how trustworthy or credible we are as individuals: “A public display of connections is an implicit verification of identity.” Donath and boyd state that public displays of connection help to verify identity, ensue co-operation, and deter identity theft.
We will always have strong connections through family and close friends; however, the weak connections, which are made up of casual acquaintances, the Facebook only friends, and colleagues, have the ability to provide us with a wealth of knowledge and information. The authors state,
As society becomes increasingly dynamic, with access to information playing a growing role, having many diverse connections will be key. Social networking technologies provide people with a low cost (in terms of time and effort) way of making and keeping social connections, enabling a social scenario in which people have huge numbers of diverse, but not very close, acquaintances.
The loose connections or social ties that we have can be “good sources of novel information.” This can be a great way to access new information and knowledge. Donath and boyd do make a point to note that these can be weak ties, but they should be heterogeneous ties. The authors state, “[…]a person who has many weak yet heterogeneous ties has access to a wide range of information.” The benefit of this situation is that weak ties, unlike strong ties, do not take a lot of time to maintain; the cost to you is limited. You do not have to be concerned with the time and care that is needed to develop and maintain strong connections. The weak ties can be maintained easily, which means that you can have more of them. The design of social networking sites is actually perfect for this. I know because I have many “facebook only friends,” who I chat with rarely, but I often find out about interesting events from their profiles, posts, and other connections.
The idea that I liked in this article was that this new technology of social networks and this new way of communicating can “bridge disparate clusters.” I interpreted that as the idea that social media or new communication that is available has the power to uplift and unite (idealistic, I know!). This is the concept that I am trying to explore in my project.
So, in a nutshell, by having connections that can be examined for their credibility and truthfulness, we can also access more credible information.
Call me old fashioned, but I’m not a fan of Linkedin. It may be my lack of desire to network. I’m all for social networking (Facebook and Myspace), but I’m not for professional social networking. The site is easy enough to use. You create profile with professional contacts, inputing career, education, and special areas of focus.
My main problem, besides my lack of interests, is the email invasion. I know it is the quickest way to get contacts, but I don’t like giving access to my email. I do not want those who entrusted me with their “personal” or “real” email address to feel like I have violated that trust.
Overall, if you are searching for a job, this is the perfect place to start. I’m not job hunting and (knock on wood) have never had trouble bouncing from one job to the next. With a certain type of job, I think Linkedin is a great place for networking and making connections. My close friend, who is into politics, swears by it.
I just haven’t reached that level. I mature slowly with much resistance.
Social Media, empowerment, and closing the knowledge gap
How does it feel to be distanced from information? Not because you weren’t interested, but because the access and knowledge to process this information wasn’t available to you? What are the implications of this new, often disenfranchised, group having access to information, news, and knowledge that were not previously available? Do they feel more empowered or informed? Does social media have the power to close the knowledge gap? Can social media end racism?
In this day and age, the haves and the have-nots meet in cyberspace. I often look at the demographics of Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter, thinking to myself: “Wow, there are a lot of minorities up here.” Me being one of them, they stand out to me. The biggest reason that they stand out is because often times they shape the content and direction of these social media networks. Many of the trending topics on Twitter are often related to hip-hop culture, which has become pop-culture (although Biggie is still not as understood by the masses like the Beetles). African-Americans are the majority in cell phone usage and the fasting rising population on the Internet.
I plan to look at how minorities, specifically African Americans, use social media to gain access to information and knowledge that they were previously distanced from. I am beginning with the fact that minorities and previously colonized ethnicities were not allowed, or could be killed, for reading and accessing knowledge. There was a time when a person of color could be killed for knowing how to read or having any information at all. Now the people often distanced from the information have access to it. More importantly, many of them have access and the ability to control the information. How do these change things? It does seem a bit Utopian to think that this access to information will allow the disenfranchised to lose that title. However, I do believe that participation in social media could be a step. Although many may think it a waste of time, social media is not all bad; there is a lot to be learned in these interactions.
I plan to use a survey, interviews, and content analysis to explore this issue. I plan to survey my developmental and beginning composition classes. The next part is to explore websites like blackweb 2.0 and social media demographics. I am grounding my ideas in the History and Perspective section of the course. I think I will draw more from Marx & Engels and Turner. I also have several documents from the AOIR conference related to identity, inequality, race, and political knowledge.
