Category Archives: Social Media
The Unpredictable Skill Set of a Technical Communicator
Technical communicators are far from being confined to the word processor as their primary tool for producing texts. For as many different job titles and responsibilities that can fall under the umbrella of technical communication (UX designer, copy editor, social media manager), so are there an abundance of tools and technologies that are used in different combinations in the daily workflow of a technical communicator. When asked in a survey to identify the types of writing most often produced in their professional lives, technical communicators named tasks that require completely different sets of skills and technology to accomplish, for example, email, web sites, texting, infographics and press releases (Blythe, Lauer, Curran, 2104). Each format of communication has its own unique set of circumstances surrounding it. Is the audience public or private? Is the standard tone of voice casual or formal? Are there additional technical skills that are required to complete the task like a knowledge of code, or an image editing software?
An example of this phenomenon is the freelance technical communicator who is featured in Stacy Pigg’s 2014 study, Coordinating Constant Invention: Social Media’s Role in Distributed Work. Dave works remotely out of a coffee shop, composing posts for his blog on the topic of fatherhood. In the time that it takes him to compose his blog post (roughly one hour) Dave switches back and forth between several social media platforms that he uses as content reference, networking tools, or to publish his work. For him, and likely for many modern technical communicators, the number of different tools to master increases exponentially when considering not only the service being used to create content, but also all of the other tools that are used to gather, organize, support and distribute the content.
This huge spread of trending tools poses a challenge to educators. How can a professor go about teaching future technical communicators the tools they need for the trade, when the careers available to graduates are so diverse and the tool kit is so rapidly expanding? As noted by Blythe, Lauer and Curran, though the alumni that they surveyed were so disparate in their current job titles, they were all chosen to take part in the survey because they shared a very specific program of study – technical communication. In some ways, the fact that the students went on from receiving their identical diplomas to hold such different job is a testament to the power of a broad education that covers the concepts more than the details of specific software or workflows.
That being said, educators also must embrace uses of media that have historically been thought of as recreational, such as texting or connecting on social network sites. These instruments of communication are more and more being used in professional settings. Just because a student has a personal twitter account doesn’t mean that she has the skill to effectively tweet to a company’s audience. An educator should embrace the new media as it comes, while simultaneously exploring alongside her students how these inventions can be used to communicate professionally. Just like Sherry Turkle describes in her book Alone Together how she bravely brought up Chatroulette on the screen in one of her lectures after she had first learned of its existence from one of her students. She was able to take a new technology that had previously fit squarely in the recreational world of her students and she formed an intelligent discussion around the meaning of the new social platform. (Of course this may be a poor example as I can’t imagine Chatroulette ever being a useful tool for professional technical communicators. Never say never?)
New ways to communicate are bubbling to the surface at an unprecedented rate, and technical communicators are tasked to incorporate them into their broader communication strategies. Despite a shared program title on their diplomas, technical communicators are finding a broad range of professions, each with its own ecology of new media tools. Educators are stuck trying to strike a balance between teaching broadly applicable theory and bringing specific trending technologies into the classroom in order to discuss professional-level communication through typically informal formats of communication. Through studies like the survey in the Blythe, Lauer and Curran essay, at least instructors of technical communication will have more data on current professional practices. Students graduating from a technical communication program will have to be prepared to wear many hats.
Who Are You?
What is it?
In Professional and Technical Communication in a Web 2.0 World, authors Stuart Blythe, Claire Lauer, and Paul Curran (2014) pointed out graduates of this degree “…often begin their careers by gaining experience at several jobs or…struggle to find full-time or stable employment in the current economic market” (p.266). While I believe all of us start out in that scenario, Technical Communication, unlike more specialized degrees, is misunderstood by employers and often students themselves. When someone asks what degree I’m earning I know this will be a conversation rather than a statement. Say Technical and Professional Communication and even my college colleagues aren’t clear on what I’m studying. So I explain that for my purpose it’s primarily professional writing for technologies, business communication, media, and scientific fields, and incorporates rhetoric, ethics, and theory to deliver concise content.
What to do with it?
“What will I do with it?” they ask. So I explain relevancy to website revision, and moving into a faculty position to teach English. “Why not an English degree?” Well, I don’t care for literature (although I’m a voracious reader of it), and don’t want to be pigeonholed as an English instructor. “So why study technology?” My God, it’s gets tiring. But the point is that Technical Communication is not an easy degree or field to describe. Similarly, with my BA where I double-majored in Public Administration and Management, everyone understood Management – but Public Administration? So after awhile I went with “It’s Business Administration without taking quantitative methods.” Whew. Must have been widespread confusion because St. Leo University no longer offers the degree. No wonder students have a hard time defining what they do and finding relevant jobs. As Bernhardt (2010) found, “Our graduates are getting jobs, but it is becoming ever more difficult to say just what kind of jobs are out there and what kinds of skills they demand” (as cited in Blythe, Lauer, and Curran, 2014, p. 266).
(Mari Pierce-Quinonez, “What You Need to Know About Management” https://www.techchange.org/2015/06/16/knowledge-management-explained/)
What’s new?
Confusion continues as communicators embrace new media, roles, job opportunities, and trying to define themselves to meet employer needs. The “typical” communication is no longer. Communicator jobs are not only in flux, but non-fixed. In Coordinating constant invention: Social media’s role in distributed work, Spinuzzi (2007) stated, “Recent scholarship has explored how the ‘‘distributed’’ nature of this work affects career trajectories and work practices of professional and technical communicators (as cited by Pigg, 2014, p.60). Meanwhile, Pigg (2014) considers the decentralization of ”typical” office work, and see’s todays’ “symbolic-analyst” workers method of social media use to be whatever they need, accessed wherever they want. Additionally, Pigg (2014) found, “With knowledge workers increasingly disconnected from desk and office spaces on the one hand, and with contract and freelance work on the rise on the other, professional communicators whose work is symbolic-analytic often face a dual burden: composing an immediate time and space to conduct their work and overcoming a long-term lack of stability related to future professional opportunities” (p. 69).
(Scott Abel (2013) “Technical Communication 2012: Our Biggest Challenge Is Thinking Differently About Being Different” http://thecontentwrangler.com/2011/12/13/technical-communication-2012-our-biggest-challenge-is-thinking-differently-about-being-different/)
Will it matter?
What will Technical Communicators face? Blythe et. al, (2014) indicated, “Job titles that seem to have arisen more directly from a Web 2.0 economy include social media marketing manager, SharePoint engineer, social media consultant, content strategist, knowledge base coordinator, and Web content editor” (p. 272). In their “tcworld blog” ), The evolution of technology, authors Monalisa Sen and Debarshi Gupta Biswas (2013) stated, “technical communication has transitioned from a conventional author-reader engagement to a realm of social collaboration.” Additionally, they redefine technical communication stating “With the use of Wiki and Web 2.0 concepts technical communication has transitioned from being instructional to interactive. A technical writer has truly become “an honest mediator between people who create technology and who use technology” (Sen et al., 2013).
Who Are We?
For me, “Instructional to interactive;” nicely captures the new realm that technical communication has reached, while seamlessly tying in traditional purpose. Yet it makes me wonder – will the roles under this umbrella title continue to swell until communicator means little? Will Technical and Professional Communication become another degree that disappears? What does this mean for us? As the great Roger Daltry asks “Who Are You?”
What do think?
Surveying the landscape
Stuart Blythe, in “Professional and Technical Communication in a Web 2.0 World,” discussed using survey research to get the information you need. At my work, we recently sent out a survey to all staff about internal communications, and I found the process very interesting. We are lucky enough to have a survey research center at the research and education institute where I work; however, because there is a cost associated with using the center, we decided to write, send and tabulate the results ourselves using a free online survey tool. This isn’t the ideal method, as it’s not founded in survey science, but we decided that it would be OK for our nonscientific purposes because they would never be published anywhere.
In our first iteration, we focused on current state issues and multiple-choice questions, because we have found in past surveys on other topics that people tend to provide amorphous, non-useful comments when asked open-ended questions. We asked about specific communications vehicles (ie, e-newsletter, TV monitors with messaging, weekly huddles, staff meetings, email announcements, and monthly email updates). We also made sure that all questions were pertinent to our audience of internal staff.
The questions were very specific, such as “How often do you read the e-newsletter Institute Connection?” and then offered responses such as “I read all of every issue,” “I read some of the content,” or “I don’t read it at all.” Because we were all-inclusive, the survey got to be too long, and we were worried people wouldn’t complete it. We also questioned whether, because the institute is merging with another institute, it was best to focus on current state, because we knew everything could change. Plus, would the questions we were asking provide actionable, useful content?
With that in mind, we ended up rewriting the entire survey to ask much broader questions that could be used to inform future decisions as to what kind of communications vehicles we should offer after the two institutes merge. These questions included such questions as “Please rank the top 5 ways you prefer to receive information about the institute?” The choices were “e-newsletter,” “TV monitors with messaging,” etc. We removed all potentially leading questions. We also significantly shortened the survey and added two open-ended questions. The open-ended questions were “What do you think Central Communications is doing right” and “How do you think Central Communications could improve?”
We had a response rate of about 60% (a very good rate for internal surveys) and received 80 open-ended responses (the survey went out to about 155 people). While some of the open-ended responses were not useful because they were vague or clearly intended to be unhelpful, most responses were very helpful in informing our communications plan for 2016 and beyond. I have to admit that I was skeptical about offering open-ended questions, but I’m glad we did, because most people offered constructive feedback. As a result, I’ve changed some of my communication practices and am researching ways to change others.
Another important lesson learned was about the format itself. Because we used a free online survey tool that couldn’t be customized with the branding of the institute, some people thought it was spam and refused to answer it. It reinforced the idea that everything that comes from us has to be branded, even when it is an internal document. To do otherwise is to confuse the audience and lead them to distrust it.
This is the first survey I’ve helped construct to gauge the effects of our work in central communications, and I found it to be a very valuable one.
Eight Tips for Writing in Distributed Work Groups
Let’s face it: Work life is dispersed. On any given day, we might find ourselves connecting with colleagues at their homes, in another city, or across the world.
If I stop to think about it, in the last two weeks, I’ve had meetings with people in Perth, Beijing, London, and remote parts of the Canadian North. These meetings led to collaboration on documents, document templates, training resources, and technical reports. That collaboration took place by phone, email, social media, video chat, and online meeting software.
I’ve had similar collaborations with colleagues from my office who happen to be working from home. I could also say I’ve had video chats or instant messaging sessions with coworkers down the hall or on another floor in my same building. (I could say that but I’m not going to. While efficient, it’s shameful.)
Stacey Pigg in Coordinating Constant Invention: Social Media’s Role in Distributed Work (p. 70) put it this way:
“Social media offer a means through which individuals can aggregate people and knowledge or, at the least, learn how existing webs of participation are held together.”
This is a thoughtful insight. On one hand she’s stating that social media (and I would add to this a number of online tools), provide means for group collaboration and knowledge sharing. On the other, she’s stating social media (and the other tools), when understood, provide a view to group dynamics.
You can call it distributed work groups with a focus on social media, as Pigg does, or remote collaboration, parallel work-sharing, or something else. But, whatever you call it, these group work tools and scenarios “offer unique affordances for overcoming fragmentation” (p. 73), if you have the right protocols in place.
Here are eight tips you can use to get the most out of distributed work groups…err…online group collaboration.
- Hold a kickoff meeting. This may be the only time everyone in the work group is “together” at the same time. It’s a critical meeting where you can set goals and lay the ground rules. Don’t skip it!
- Define roles and responsibilities. Who are the writers, the editors, the reviewers, the coders, the designers, and so forth? I like to make a contact list with roles and post it in a shared resource (e.g. an online file share).
- Designate a document custodian. All documents from actual documents to web content should have a custodian. This person creates and manages the initial artifact. This person–and only this person–is allowed to up the revision number, which saves having to unnecessarily compile multiple versions.
- Centralize assets. Graphics, sounds, fonts, video, and so on. They all go in a central repository. This is for three reasons: (1) you only need to go to one place to up upgrade or change them, (2) everyone can access them without bottlenecks, and (3) when the project is over it’s easy to archive them.
- Create a style sheet. From terminology to capitalization to colors to handling bullet lists, insist on a one-page style sheet for every project. It’s one page. Everyone can stick to information on one page. (Not really. It boggles my mind, but that’s why we have technical writers and editors.)
- Capture key communication. Put someone in charge of capturing key online discussions where ideas or decisions are made. This makes it easy for newcomers to get up to speed quickly. Using tags in social media is great for this.
- Leverage time zones. For years, I’ve strategically hired contract editors in various time zones. When I’m done for the day, they pick up and vice versa. It’s almost as if there are two of me (a thought that frightens children and coworkers alike).
- Manage Privacy. In Yammer, where I do most of my group collaboration, I close the group to only those working on a project, whenever it makes sense to do so. Despite our increasing ability to work simultaneously on single files and the like, no one likes the feeling of being watched.
These eight tips are a good starting point. Many others, especially for specific circumstances, could be noted. Feel free to add to the list by commenting.
Learning the site. Learning the service. Learning to learn.
Image source: https://www.coursera.org/course/machlearning
What is the difference between a social media “site” and a “service?” At first it might seem that the two words can be used interchangeably to lend a little variety to the wording of a blog post. However, the difference between the two terms is a lot less subtle than that. A “site” is a set of web pages, typically connected by a shared URL. A “service” is an aspect of a site that offers some sort of function (Ferro and Zachry, 2014). For instance, www.twitter.com is a web “site” that offers “services” like microblogging.
In their research published in 2014, Ferro and Zachry take a survey of knowledge workers four years in a row to monitor the frequency of use and the function of publicly available online services (PAOS) in their work. Ferro and Zachry found that the majority of those polled reported using PAOSs during 20% of their workweek (p. 13).
Though the percentage of time spent using PAOSs remained fairly constant each year, the sites and services being used changed from year to year. For instance, the most used site by knowledge workers in 2008 was Wikipedia. In 2009 there was a tie between the use of LinkedIn and Twitter. In 2010, Twitter gained almost 5% in usage over LinkedIn, and then in 2011 Google Calendar took the lead. Not only are the most popular sites different from the previous year, but so are the services provided by the sites. Wikipedia is a wiki, LinkedIn is a network creator, Twitter is a microblogging site and Google Calendar is a knowledge transactor.
What we can learn from this is that, though PAOSs will continue to be important tools in knowledge workers’ professional repertoire, the specific sites and services that are being utilized can rise and fall in popularity in as little as a year’s time.
When reviewing this study I was reminded me of how my undergraduate professors taught my Communications Design cohort how to use the Adobe suite (the industry standard technology in the graphic design profession). To be more specific, they purposefully didn’t teach us a single keystroke. All they did was tell us on our first assignment that we “might want to use PhotoShop” for this assignment, so we should probably go figure it out before coming back to class next week… or at least figure it out well enough to complete the homework. Their philosophy was that the programs that their students use professionally will always be in flux. Whatever software they would have taught us that year would be outdated by the time we graduate. To teach the design students how to use PhotoShop is to make them experts in that specific program only. In forcing them to teach themselves, they are given the resources and confidence to learn to use the next programs after the first ones become out of date.
By the time I graduated I had taught myself the Adobe suite well enough to secure my first job. I have learned a lot since, mostly through continued google searches and discussions with my co-workers, but the knowledge that I can teach myself anything gives me the confidence to jump into the deep end when it’s asked of me.
When a knowledge worker masters the use of a certain social media site, she has no guarantee that that same site will be useful in coming years. If a knowledge worker masters a service, she can apply that knowledge across the range of sites that provide that service. However, we have observed that even the popularity of services seems to fluctuate over the years. Though learning to use a site and a service are both necessary and constructive, the most valuable skill to the knowledge worker looking to stay on top of technology is the ability to learn.
Understanding Social Media Stakeholders and Their Needs
As I read through the Using Social Media for Collective Knowledge-Making, Tweeting and Ethos, and Technical Communication Unbound articles there were two main concepts that really seemed to jump out at me – the idea of social media stakeholders, how those stakeholders use their social media tools, and how [as technical communicators] we may need to adapt our communications based upon social media channels.
The idea of stakeholder analysis is a way to analytically look at individuals who are impacted by a particular event/situation/problem/etc. and understand how they are impacted. As technical communicators, by conducting stakeholder analyses we can better articulate the communication messages and more effectively design systems to better suit the stakeholder needs. As Longo stated in her article on Using Social media for Collective Knowledge-Making, “technical communicators and teachers of technical communication are poised to understand content users now as producers and to work toward relationships between [information and communication technologies] and human interaction to design documents and content in this global context, allowing us to cross community boundaries” (2013).
This statement defines the importance around establishing stakeholders in order to build those relationships Longo describes. If we can understand how those stakeholders use social media, we can in fact, better communicate and refine our messages to those individuals. The following graphic by Meritus Media shows, at a high level, how many stakeholders there can be and drives out what they value. How a customer uses Facebook is different than how an employee uses Facebook. If we can begin to identify and analyze those stakeholders, we can truly begin those targeted communications that means something to our readers.
One thought, however, that was raised after reading Bowdon’s article on Tweeting an Ethos, was on how [technical communicators] use these channels. As Bowdon found in a study he conducted, “[technical communication students] had trouble discerning and articulating the values of their various organizations, but all of the groups faced great difficult when trying to product content to post on Twitter and Facebook in order to keep up a consistent, meaningful presence on behalf of their organizations. They were unsure how to translate that understanding into a Twitter or Facebook thread” (2013). What this called out to me was that we, as technical communicators, need to be cognizant now only about stakeholders and how they use social media channels, but how we use social media channels to communicate with those stakeholders.
One of the biggest challenges for us will be to effectively use and communicate via social media channels. To Bowdon’s point, delivering a message on a social media channel can be very different than drafting an e-mail or writing content for a Web site. Learning how to translate our messages to a 140-character tweet and learning when it is most appropriate to use Facebook to share messages will become part of our skill sets that we will need to master.
A Roadmap to Social Media Success for Your Organization
Of the readings this week, the one that stood out to me the most was Tweeting an Ethos: Emergency Messaging, Social Media, and Teaching Technical Communication by Melody A. Bowdon. Although all the readings* influenced to the contents of this post in some way, Tweeting an Ethos made me think specifically about the roadmap that is needed for ensuring success of an organization’s social media efforts.
The guidelines I offer here are not exhaustive; they are meant to provide a thought framework that can be applied when preparing social media content and subsequently distributing it. This is especially true if, like me, you are being increasingly asked to participate—either developmentally or editorially—in your organization’s social media program.
Here are the guidelines for developing and distributing social media content:
Account for your organization’s core values. Some organizations have documented core values and some do not. If yours is in the former, they should be a core input into your social media editorial calendar (i.e. planned content). If yours is in the latter, your communication team should spend some time assessing what your organization’s core values are and document them. Even if these are not considered formal (i.e. have buy-in from executive leadership) that’s okay. Core values help you know what to write about and what not to, even before you put pen to paper.
Interpret the message. Once you’ve written your social media content, ask yourself three questions: What does this mean? What does this mean to our supporters? What does this mean to our detractors? The answers to these questions should inform the final draft of your content.
For example, you may have had one purpose and intended meaning for your content before you started writing. Is it evident in the file copy? If not, are its purpose and meaning acceptable to you?
Your supporters and detractors will interpret (or seek to interpret) your content in different ways. You should attempt to craft a message that encourages your supporters and discourages your detractors. But, recognize achieving both is not always possible, which is why I recommend the next guideline.
Assess future impact. Remember, at this point your social media content has not been published. It’s a good idea to assess the benefits and risks associated with how the message could be interpreted. This applies to supporters as well as to detractors.
You don’t want supporters to be unhappy and you want detractors to come to your side. Of course, ethics may preclude ameliorating either of those results, but it is better to be fully informed going into a public communication scenario.
Test. Before posting, test content. Big budgets may be available to you to do this with more accuracy. More likely, you will need to take advantage of lower budget, less reliable options. These include running content by objective individuals within the organization (which is why I think I’m getting asked), approaching trusted clients, and following organizations whose social media platforms reflect your own. For the latter case, note responses to content similar to what you intend to post.
Pause before publishing. We’re technical communicators, so this is probably second nature to most of use. We pause and come back to our writing. I once set a “rule” that a 24 hour moratorium on distributing content was in effect, unless an item was time sensitive. I can’t tell you how many times within that 24 hours something changed that either impacted the content, caused a delay in distribution, or cancelled the content all together.
Wrap-up
If I stop to think about it, these five guidelines are really social media inputs into an organization’s ethos. (Bowdon recognizes the idea of ethos is defined in a variety of ways including organizational identity, credibility, or Aristotle’s good sense, good moral character, and goodwill (p. 36).) It’s a circular construct. Organizational ethos drives social media content and distribution. In turn, response based on the content influences organizational ethos—or at least the perception of it.
What have I missed in the guidelines?
*The other readings were Technical Communication Unbound: Knowledge Work, Social Media, and Emergent Communicative Practices by Toni Ferro and Mark Zachry and Using Social Media for Collective Knowledge-Making: Technical Communication Between the Global North and South by Bernadette Longo.
Ethos and Instagram: Essena O’Neil
This week’s post touches on ethos, or identity, image or credibility of an author. Ethos can be used to persuade, relate impressions and convey notions about one’s character. This especially is true in online contexts where it is what we rely upon to communicate our sense of self with others.
In light of the major news story this week I think ethos is an important topic to touch on. For those of you who haven’t heard, Essena O’Neil, a social media starlet from Australia with over 800,000 Instagram followers and 270,000 on You Tube is calling it quits and leaving it all behind. This provides a relevant opportunity to examine social media, ethos and the implications it can have. While she looked like she was at the pinnacle of success, her job of being on social media and the ethos she created was consuming her life.
In an online confessional video explaining why she decided to quite social media O’Neil states,“my whole idea of self worth revolved around my appearance and my social media status. Basically, my self worth relied on social approval.” Everything she did- from the food she ate to the clothes she wore to the exercises she did- was to prove herself online and keep up her credibility as a”perfect person”. Because she created an image of herself that others feel that is unattainable, her success hinged on lies, followers, views and likes. One article even said, “The most authentic girl on Instagram is made of plastic.”
Some may say she is selfish, others may say she is selfless. Is it all a hoax- using social media to criticize social media to become popular on social media?
Real Talk
On Friday we had a slow day at the office, and my coworkers and I spent the better part of yesterday discussing this story. Interestingly, that the group I was discussing this issue with was all female, ranging in age from 23 to 48. While the eldest in our group applauded her efforts to be real, the youngsters of the bunch shot holes in her argument. Below you can find some of the points our conversation brought up:
Pros
- Quitting to get back to a more natural way of existing and reassessing things in her life.
- She was encouraged and rewarded with hundreds of thousands of followers, money, contracts, and fame. If she was uncomfortable with it, it is her decisions. Let it go.
- We shouldn’t feel we have to do anything to be up to someone else’s standards.
- Now she can develop her new audience and approach with her new website and use Social Media differently.
- She can use her tremendously positive force and use her frame to rebrand herself into the way she wants to be.
- Ditching all expectations and pressure is awesome.
Cons
- Ironic that she “got what she wanted” but then bashes it for being fake.
- The reason that she is blaming social media is your classic burn out story. She finally realized that relying on her looks will be unsustainable, so she is cashing out while she is on top.
- What’s wrong with showing a photo or wearing yourself made up?
- Fame doesn’t equate to happiness.
- Just because she views likes and views as validation don’t necessarily mean that everyone is that way. Generalizing they way that people view social media and lumping it together is not true. THE ONLY way she can spread her message is through social media.
- No one talking about social media is trying to deceive you.
- Its a reflection of her in choosing to wear or promote certain brands.
- While her comments certainly make sense in her situation, can they apply to the average Instagrammer in the same way?
Conclusions
What I gathered from her post and confessional like videos is that she wants to be more transparent and honest and not do sponsored or extremely posed shots. While I’m not sure her intentions for quitting are 100% pure, this highlights a few important issues. O’Neil’s story opens a conversation not just about this case, but rather as our use os social media as a whole. The ethos she created is an illusion, yet her essence is so much more. She felt as if her numbers were overshadowing the content- her creativity, her personality, her intellect- the person she is. Social media isn’t the problem, but its how people use it that are the problem. It is how people are comparing themselves to these fake ethos, instead of just letting it motivate them. Particularly, the normality of image obsession, especially with younger girls is concerning. O’Neil’s story is especially important because she grew up with social media and belongs to a generation that did so as well.
Perhaps its time for all of us to take a social media break…
Social Media Relationships
I’ve become a regular at a cute diner in my neighborhood. There’s something cozy about the restaurant’s décor that reminds me of my grandparents’ kitchen. Similarly, I regularly visit Facebook, as there’s something about connecting with old friends and acquaintances that I enjoy. I am a creature of habit in my digital and non-digital life. Do I feel more connected or am I isolating myself? Some argue that social media isolates people. Users may have hundreds of friends on Facebook, but many of those people may not be strong social connections. I used to have a few hundred; seriously. Until I took a look and realized I didn’t “know” these people. Now I’m squarely at 45 and they all connect with my real life. Quality, not quantity is what counts.
Relationships formed through social networking sites may be positive and beneficial. According to the PEW Research Center Facebook users were found to be more trusting than others and have closer relationships than the average “isolated” American. Technology makes it possible for us to maintain relationships with others in ways that were not possible a few decades ago. Conversely, that same technology has contributed to the decline of other technologies – when was the last time you saw a phone booth or used a traditional landline telephone?
Bernadette Longo (2014) in Using Social Media for Collective Knowledge-Making points out that the way we use social media shapes us while we shape the media. Our digital world is now far more collaborative and interactive, and we expect that from all social media. At the same time, the world is shrinking and becoming “borderless” due to the opportunities new technologies afford us. This brings new challenges as different cultures bring very different perspectives. Where I may experience Facebook as a forum for sharing my individual life and experiences, someone from a more collectivist culture may see Facebook as a place to represent the community. The challenge is to recognize that there are multiple cultural perspectives and interpretations of technology and its uses.
(The Social Media HoneyComb, Business Insider, Jan Kietzmann)
Also, each social media platform fills a different role in our social lives. In Social Media? Get Serious! Jan Kietzmann, Kristopher Hermkens, Ian McCarthy, and Bruno Silvestre (2011) describe a framework for understanding social media through the seven functional building blocks: identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups.” (p. 243). Each platform allows users to experience these elements, but each platform gives users different tools that emphasize different building blocks. When Facebook added the feature of posting status updates, (and who doesn’t love seeing what someone cooked, or who’s at the dentist…) it began to emphasize the building block of presence and not just identity. One major building block of social media is the sense of community and how we connect with others. Longo (2014) states, “The desire for community seems to be so strong that we do not often consider how forming a community is as much an act of exclusion as it is of inclusion” (p. 25).
In many ways, social media connects to my life in a way that is different from my non-digital life; yet they clearly intersect. By positively reviewing my favorite diner online, I may help the business thrive and grow which may benefit my connections with the restaurant. Through my classes at Stout, my digital friendship with one classmate has turned into a “real” friendship and even though she graduated, we remain strongly connected. In speaking of the audience and tools of technology, Katz, 1992; Moses & Katz, 2006 stated “It is through processes such as this that we can come to greater understanding of the effects of social media on our relationships—how they extend our ability to engage people and how they impose a machine ethic on human relationships” (as cited in Longo, 2011, p.30). I may find technologies and social media frustrating at times, but I appreciate what it’s done for me. Without it I wouldn’t have found a new job opportunity, be completing my degree, or met a terrific new friend. And while that’s all really important, I have to go now.
Facebook needs an updated picture of my cat.
Creating audience-driven content
I was surprised at how off-base so many of the Tweets were in Melody Bowdon’s study, “Tweeting an Ethos: Emergency Messaging, Social Media, and Teaching Technical Communication.” For example, when tweeting 
to people in an emergency situation such as Hurricane Irene, the three key organizations (the American Red Cross, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and CNN), 31% of the tweets were simply promotion of their organization’s programming, like “More stormy weather in store for the U.S.? Watch on cnn.com/cnndc14.” I would say that the last thing a person in an emergency situation needs is an ad.
Bowdon said these ads “enticed readers with potential information but did not offer inherently useful content for readers.” In another tweet, the American Red Cross instructed people in the storm region to “remember to have a nonelectric can opener,” when one would think that if you don’t already have one, you’re probably not going to rush out into the storm to buy one. And these were just a few examples.
Said Bowdon, “According to our analysis, very few of the tweets conveyed audience-centered, immediately relevant, locally focused information that someone preparing for the storm would need or substantive news updates that would help people in other parts of the country to understand in detail what was happening or specifically how they could help.” This really reflects poorly on these organizations’ ethos that they were taking up people’s valuable time with noise and self-promotion when they could have directed people to local resources that could have helped them. The risks they were running were that people would become frustrated and turn to other organizations for news, perhaps never to return.
Sadly, this is so often the case because we communicators (I’m including myself) often don’t stop to think or try to find out what our audiences really need and want and then we don’t think about the purpose of many of our communications. For example, I’ve been writing my organization’s e-newsletter for the last six years, just cranking out the information that passively trickles in to my inbox without often questioning whether it is really helpful and useful to my audience or whether the articles tie back to my organization’s strategic and annual plans.
It takes a long time to read my newsletter, as it is often 10 or more pages long, and I don’t want to waste people’s time with information that isn’t relevant for useful to them. So thinking in terms of ethos will be helpful for me when I produce future newsletters. For example, what am I saying about my organization’s ethos when I publish my newsletter, and what are the implications of that for leaders, staff and my organization’s standing within a larger organization?
I’m seeing the many different ways, aside from Twitter and aside from communicating in a disaster, that we as technical communicators can try to put a little more distance between ourselves and self-promotion and get a little closer to what readers and viewers really need and want. And we can’t wait for a disaster to start doing this; we should always be asking our readers and viewers what they need in different situations so we can be prepared with audience-driven information.
A Millennials Experience with LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a powerful tool to help professionals connect and stay connected. But treating it as anything more than just another tool in a job seekers utility belt is a mistake. While it has all the bells, whistles, and name recognition, I find that people’s experiences and success with the site very greatly. Contrary to what they may claim, LinkedIn in not the golden ticket to your dream job. Rather than an automatic connection to top recruiters, it is a tool people can use to gain a competitive advantage in the workforce market. But is it really meant for everyone?
Be Your Own Biggest Cheerleader
It’s not enough to create a profile and hope that the right person stumbles upon it. You have to be an active proponent and really sell yourself. This means regularly updating your profile, posting relevant articles and content. But with two to three people joining per second, the network is louder and more crowded than ever before. It’s hard to have your voice heard when it easily can get lost in the chaos.
Who is LinkedIn for?
While it may be a good tool for more experienced individuals mid career, it is extremely difficult for younger generations, including myself to use to help start a career. A recent survey of 23 major social networks ranks LinkedIn as the “oldest” social network, with an average age of 44.2 years old (Tumblr, for example had an average age of 34.6 years). So, while 80 million Generation Y users log on to social media daily, only 23% of Millennials are using LinkedIn. Therefore it makes sense that the majority of the content posted is geared towards more experienced users.
While I may be smart enough to be among the 23% of millennials who do use it, the types of positions listed aren’t for someone in my situation. I found that I was generally was either overeducated or under qualified for the vast majority of the positions listed. While I still applied to positions that interested me, the “1-3” or “3-5” years of related experience many employers required were a major problem. How am I supposed to get my foot in the door if employers are requiring experience upfront? There was no good way to win and little incentive to continually engage in this site.
Unfortunately, this is a large problem across all types of industries. Despite having the drive and ambition, many young graduates simply can’t get a start in the field of their study. Employers want young talent with experience, but with today’s job market they are able to employ experienced professionals just as easily, making it easier for established professionals to move up the corporate ladder, not newbies who have little if any substantial professional experience.
Making New Connections
Making new connections sounds great, but it’s difficult to create new meaningful connections. While relationships certainly matter, it is hard for younger generations to make connections that are actually worthwhile. I could reconnect with my past co-workers from Culvers or my lifeguarding days, but how helpful will those connections really be? If I am trying to break into a certain industry, these are not the people I need to target. Rather, I need to connect with notable people in the company as well as recruiters. Simply adding Bill Gates on LinkedIn probably won’t help me get a job at Microsoft. Similarly, sending inbox messages or stalking recruiters will not help generate a lead. There is a fine line between extending your professional reach and seeming desperate.
A Different Animal
Perhaps LinkedIn is less of a true social network and more like a job board with social components. If younger generations are using Facebook more, why not try to turn the tables and revamp its strategy? If Facebook is the destination, why not transform it into something more? Or, why hasn’t LinkedIn paired with Facebook to become just that? Creating a Facebook app that feeds informed networking and job opportunities to people could be a valuable tool for users- especially younger generations. It could combine forces and become a super social network, improving its strength and recognition.
Conclusion
But, after all the smokes and mirrors you can find a platform than can be quite useful in the proper hands. With over 94% of recruiters using LinkedIn, it would be a waste to dismiss it entirely. It may not appear to be as beneficial in the short term, creating a profile has the potential to connect to others later down the line. While I believe LinkedIn’s greatest asset is its ability to help maintain and foster new professional relationships, this should be taken with a grain of salt. Building professional relationships can be exceedingly helpful, but at its core, these relationships already need to already be in place to be beneficial.
Where’s All of This Going?
Chapter 6 of Spilka’s Digital Literacy for Technical Communication was pretty alarming. The title of the chapter, “Human + Machine Culture: Where We Work” by Bernadette Longo is almost misleading considering where this chapter took me.
The concept of this “all-inclusive” community where there’s a general understanding of “normal discourse” that crosses cultures seemed a lot like most social media/networking platforms I’m familiar with. Longo went on to aruge that any community being all-inclusive defies reason, as exclusions are what define a community.
I believe that even the rejects remain part of the community because upon their exclusion, their existence and identity is still defined by the community they are not part of. As Jameson pointed out (pg. 157) regarding traditional “misfits” such as the homeless, “No longer solitary freaks and eccentrics, they are henceforth recognized and accredited sociological category, the object of scrutiny and concern of the appropriate experts, and clearly potentially oraganizable.”
Relating this concept to the virtual community, Longo mentioned Rheingold’s model of inclusive community (pg. 151) excluding people who can’t afford computers, the technological illiterate, and the “uncool”. I partially agree with this, but I also see Jameson’s point that the members of these three categories are still relevant to mainstream virtual culture.
There’s an abundance of philanthropic organizations dedicated to providing the needy with computers and the training they’ll need to use them such as Connecting for Good, Computers with Causes and Angie’s Angel Help Network. They consider themselves to be “closing the digital divide” and not allowing poverty to prevent people from being connected. These people are very important in digital culture, and helping them become part of it is seemingly paramount.
The “uncool” individuals that have gotten themselves isolated are typically those who spew hateful, and indecent comments/information online. They’re not as relevant as the needy that can’t afford to buy or learn to use a computer, but they’re often the subject of criticism, mockery, and cautionary tales.
For example, I remember the rising reality TV star Tila Tequila who ruined her career with a series of blog posts sympathizing with Adolf Hitler calling him “a man of compassion”. She started out as a MySpace celebrity, and starred on a dating show called “A Shot at Love”. She released an album as a recording musician, and began appearing on reality TV shows more frequently.
In 2013, she began her Hitler blog and was immediately kicked off “Celebrity Big Brother”. I haven’t seen her on any show since, and the word “crazy” follows the only references I hear of her name. She is still part of the virtual world, she’s simply in an unfavorable category with her own following.
Aside from all of this, the “techno scientific categories of legitimated knowledge” Longo equated to the word of God in Western society is what shook me up. Katz’ example of the role technical communication played in Nazi Germany (pg. 155) really opened my eyes to the power technical communicator’s actually have.
He elaborated, “expediency is the only technical ethic, perhaps the only ethic that pure rationality knows”. On page 157, Longo elaborated on Jameson’s argument that, “We find ourselves—a situation in which the ethos of multinational corporations and technoscience profoundly shapes our lived experiences and therefore what we will find persuasive.” They even go as far as helping us relate it to nostalgic concepts we may or may not have even experienced.
As a member of this “all-inclusive virtual community” I do feel the control of the multinational corporations and technoscience influences. There are times I wonder if the options and information presented to me as acceptable are actually the best, but as Longo stated (pg. 164), “We [accept this] because we desire the benefits we derive from these positive aspects more than we reject the negative effects”. I agree with this completely.
My concern is how this situation will evolve. Who are the elitists running this puppet show, and what’s their ultimate goal? Technical communicators do as they’re told, they’re creating the content, but they’re following instructions. It seems as if this super elitist group has immeasurable power, and it will only get stronger through time. Who is holding this super power accountable? More importantly, who are they? The multi-cultural, all-inclusive community is real, and we’re at the mercy of these faceless puppet masters.
Five Topic Areas to Write About on LinkedIn to Survive In a Smart Technology Future
As I watched the debate between Andrew Keen and Jonathan Zittrain, Smart Technology – Future Employer or Job Destroyer, on AspenIdeas.org, I became uneasy. No, I became frightened.
I’m a middle-aged man working on a master’s degree. I’m attempting to stay relevant as younger folks enter the workforce and my knowledge and experience becomes increasingly dismissed. I think I understood this was a part of getting older. (It shouldn’t be, but it is.)
Now, it seems, I must also begin to think about how to contend with non-human competitors aka smart technologies.
What’s Up with That?
“The problem,” says Keen, “with this technological revolution—and your right, no one has any right to a [particular] job and no industry has any right to a continuing existence. The nature of technology…lends itself to permanent destruction. But, the problem is that these old jobs are going away and there doesn’t seem to be any new jobs.”
If you’re my age or older that means one of two things. Maybe you’ll squeak by and retire just before the smart technology revolution is in full binary bloom. Or, maybe you won’t and you’ll be displaced much earlier than you expected.
If you’re somewhat or much younger than me, you’re still faced with these two scenarios. But, you have more time to prepare.
On the Other Hand
What if we have nothing to worry about, young or old older?
“If you can find, I hate to use the word efficiencies,” says Zittrain, “because it masks just how rich what we can find is. But, if you find efficiencies, yes, then society faces a question of ‘We’ve just discovered way more abundance, how might we share it?’”
Zittrain is suggesting that allowing smart technologies to do our work would give us the freedom to do what interests us—mostly anyways.
So Which Is it?
Don’t ask me. I’m your competition. The non-robotic kind—or am I?
I will, however, offer five topic areas you can write about on LinkedIn that should, for the time being, be difficult for smart technologies to produce.
Resistance Is Not Futile
In Using LinkedIn to Get Work from the June 2010 issue of Intercom magazine, Rich Maggiani and Ed Marshall suggest LinkedIn is a good way to find and keep a job. They focus on profiles, connections, and job searches.
“The possibilities for getting work through LinkedIn are boundless,” they say. (Give’em a break. They wrote that in 2010, which is like sooooo like long ago like.)
But, they did give some sage advice: “Remember, though, that as a social media network, your chances are enhanced by relying on your [LinkedIn] connections. So cultivate them.”
These topic areas should help you do just that and they are smart-technology resistant:
- Your Analyses. Only you can analyze an issue in your field, a book review, or a news item and provide your opinion. No smart technology can do that on your behalf.
- Your Ideas. Smart technology can’t yet see what is going on in your head. Leverage your great ideas by carefully fleshing them out and documenting them in your LinkedIn posts.
- Your Accomplishments. It’s okay to post your accomplishments. In fact, LinkedIn often does it for you. Be sure to share the takeaways and stick to relevant and/or significant accomplishments for the LinkedIn crowd. Won an award? Good. Finally cleaned the cat litter box. Not so much.
- Your Experiences. Attended an industry event? Taken a class? Why not write about your experience and related outcomes and findings? Unless you sent your surrogate A.I. robot in your stead, you should have plenty of fodder for your LinkedIn posts.
- Your Curation. No smart technology can curate content on your behalf. Sure you can enslave some feed aggregator to do the dirty work of compiling content. But, only you can choose what to curate. Don’t just focus on your interests. Build a curation profile that people can rely on.
Unless you are assimilated entirely by some social collective network (you know the one I mean), these topic areas should help you stay relevant—at least until the post-apocalyptic war between humankind and machines.
Would you add anything to the list?
I’d like to add you to my professional network
In “Using LinkedIn to Get Work,” the authors conclude that LinkedIn is a fantastic resource for getting
a new job or new projects. As a long-time user of LinkedIn to get more work, I completely agree. I visit LinkedIn only about once a week to check who’s viewed my profile, make new connections, answer email and manage a microsite for a local chapter of a national organization (I approve or disapprove applications to join). And I have gotten many projects for my side business, Synapse Writing & Editing this way.
The secret to success is having a complete profile, which is a lot of work and depends on the cooperation of others. After plugging in all of your information, which can be extensive, you need to ask for and receive three recommendations from people with whom you’ve worked who are also on LinkedIn. After you’ve done this and achieved the “All-Star” status, you are ready for business, which includes keeping the information on the site updated, continually adding trusted connections, joining groups related to your work and, depending on your objective, checking out companies where you might want to work and making connections with people within those companies.
Truth be told, in every instance in which I’ve received a new freelance project on LinkedIn, it was from people who were searching for terms such as “medical writer” or “medical editor.” I’ve never approached a company or individual on LinkedIn for freelance work, although I have approached them about full-time job listings in order to establish some kind of connection–although that has never worked for me.
Some of the functionality on LinkedIn requires you to upgrade to the “Premium” level, in which you can see everyone who has viewed your profile, send “InMail,” see how many other people have applied for a job you’ve applied for and gauge where you stand in comparison to the other applicants. However, LinkedIn allows you to do free one-month trials of Premium every so often, which can be a big help when searching for jobs.
One feature I’ve never understood the value of is the endorsements. This features allows anyone in your network to “endorse” you for different skills, in my case writing, editing, journal management, proofreading and Web content 
and design. Seems fair enough, but an endorsement isn’t the same as a recommendation, which requires you to describe how you know the person you are recommending and where you worked together, facts that increase the legitimacy of the recommender.
But endorsers don’t have to describe your relationship with them or where (if) you worked together, and they don’t have to write anything of value to prospective employers. I have gotten tons of endorsements, many from people I don’t know and who have no idea whether I’m actually proficient at the skill for which they’re endorsing me. I’ve never participated in these endorsements for those reasons.
Overall, though, LinkedIn has been a very valuable tool for me. In many ways, it gives you access to people with whom you would have not been able to contact through traditional means, such as via email or phone. While not every connection leads to a job, or indeed, to anything, you never know when someone will remember seeing you when they need someone like you in the future. And, unless you hide your profile, you’re always visible to a network of thousands while not appearing to your employer like you’re looking for a job, because almost every professional is on LinkedIn.
Source of the graphics: LinkedIn.com
My Relationship With LinkedIn
I love LinkedIn. I visit her regularly, usually sneaking away from my work monitor to check her app on my phone. I’m addicted. But LinkedIn’s like a flirty little hooker – teasing me with options and promises, but only if I pay up front. She is, what Jonathan Zittrain in Smart Technology – Future Employer or Job Destroyer calls, an “owned platform” that supposedly promises “abundance.” But Andrew Keen, referring to Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, says abundance hasn’t happened – it’s just an illusion on a platform that everyone uses. So what? It’s how we find jobs and stay connected and updated to industry happenings. Yet Keen asks, “to what extent do you need a platform” (33:56)? What extent? It’s where I go; it’s expanded my options. Or has it?
Well, it turns out these owned platforms actually make our world smaller, and the platform itself harder to escape. We become reliant on LinkedIn to help us find connections, information and jobs – to the exclusion of other resources. That’s a problem with solely using technology, the Internet, and these “pay for more” networking sites. Plus, it’s expensive. As Zittrain states, “If everybody uses it, it’s going to take a larger cut” (39.56). Which is what really annoys me about LinkedIn. She lets me look around, and browse some resources, but she doesn’t let me look as good as I am to prospective employers, colleagues, and a plethora of professionals who could mentor me or connect me to others. Do I even look good enough; am I creative, relevant, and clear on the benefits I offer…everyone? In Using LinkedIn to Get Work, Rich Maggiana and Ed Marshall (2010) describe a LinkedIn profile as “a living document of your professional life” (p.32). Yikes. And while I think I’m projecting well and tons of people are admiring my skill set, one look at my weekly up/down searched statistics shows that clearly I’m not being “seen.” But I want to be seen!
So she tempts me. Every day. She knows I like the look of her and that I wonder about her “premium services.” Don’t I want an open profile, expanded search options, and to know who’s checking me out and ranking me? I can have it she whispers, if I’d just fork out that teeny-weeny, recently increased price of $30 or $50 a month. But there’s more, and it’s not even a whole $1000 dollars annually. Makes my pulse race, which is why I can’t stay away. In Net Smart, Harold Rheingold (2014) states, “Our hormones reward us for information seeking and social contact…” (p. 246). And he advises that we “regard search as a process of investigation…instead of searching to find, search to discover” (Rheingold, 2014, 248). LinkedIn shows me a “selective audience,” one made of up people similar to myself, but without premium services, I can’t access the broad audience of network contacts that makes LinkedIn valuable. Which means I’m not succeeding at the purpose of LinkedIn. It’s become a second Facebook and I’m a passive spectator.
In Who Owns Your LinkedIn Connections, Dorothy Dalton states, “What is clear is that network contacts are a currency with significant value to anyone as a job seeker.” And I need more. So I guess it’s time for me to follow Maggiana and Marshall’s steps to be successful on LinkedIn: write updates weekly, list awards and conferences, and make sure my profile is set to full view. None of which makes me more searchable…
So she wins. I guess I have to pay up
How do I collaborate?
While reading chapter 4 of Rheingold’s “Net Smart: How to Thrive Online”, I found some difficulty relating to the mentioned online collaborative communities illustrated through online gaming and Wikipedia pages.
If I had to categorize the bulk of my online activities, I would fall mostly in Ito’s “hanging out” situation defined on page 118 in chapter 3. I’ve never been interested in WoW or online gaming in general, and I certainly don’t “geek out” with any obscure Internet subculture. I understand concept of online collaborative communities, but it’s very difficult for me to translate this into my own life.
After thinking long and hard about this concept, two arenas came to mind: Linkedin and my job.
Although I absolutely do not frequent Linkedin the way I do Facebook, Insta, and SnapChat, I have a profile and have used the site while doing freelance assignments. The section on page 155 labeled “What Cooperation Theory Teaches Us About Life Online Today” could be the Bible for success on Linkedin.
At my current job, many of my coworkers are remote, and most of our daily assignments don’t come from a particular manager. There’s typically a collective interest (ex. Getting new products on the website, creating size charts) that can’t be completed without the collaboration of many people. These rules also strangely apply to this situation, as all of our interactions are online.
- Balance Retribution and Forgiveness. When you’re inquiring about a job on Linkedin, soliciting services or requesting a connection, do not harp on uninterested/untrustworthy people. If they don’t reciprocate or cooperate, try someone else and leave them alone. This rule also applies in the workplace, when people aren’t cooperating the way they should be, leave them alone and try one of their colleagues or their manager. In both situations, the “tit for tat” method maintains a healthy environment and prevents bad blood.
- Contribute publicly without requiring or expecting any direct reward. Public contributions make others more likely to help you in the future, it inspires others to contribute, and it builds team morale in both situations. There are many groups in LinkedIn that resemble forums, and active participants are what makes them thrive. People in the workplace also remember those who help them out, and will always return the favor.
- Reciprocate when someone or some group does you a favor. This ties into rule 2, and is what makes this dynamic work.
- Look for ways to seek a sense of shared group identity. At work, this is done by default as people are in different departments, and we’re all familiar with one another’s responsibilities. On Linkedin, this is done by one’s “connections” and groups they’re members of.
- Introduce people and networks to each other in mutually beneficial ways. The “connections” feature on Linkedin takes care of this for users. At work, this is done by using the cc feature on emails, and including people in conference calls.
- When progress is blocked by social dilemmas, create institutions for collective action. When it comes to Linkedin, the “report this user” and “block” features handle most social dilemmas. In the workplace, personal issues can be talked out or reported to HR in serious situations; it is unacceptable for work to stop due to a “social dilemma”.
- Punish cheating, but not too drastically. As with any online community, other participants are quick to publicly and privately call out bad behavior. If the issue persists, they aren’t afraid to report or block the offending user. In the workplace, minor offenses are addressed or coached by management. However major offenses are taken to HR, and may result in suspension or termination.
How do your relate to online collaborative communities?
Movie Hits Are Taking a Hit: Shifting from Mainstream to Streaming Media
The film and TV industries have always been competitive for sure. You have your A-listers, your B-listers, and so called D-listers. The A-listers starred in hit movies and TV shows. Period. The B-listers did made-for-TV movies and some pretty good, if not short-lived TV shows. And, the D-listers, well, they popped up here and there. I’m noticing all that is changing now and I’m not the only one.
A-listers are appearing in TV series and mini-series. B-listers are appearing in movies—good movies, but no one expects them to be hit movies as blockbusters are few and far between. This applies to music and books too, but I’m a movie buff so I’ll mostly stick to what I know best.
Is This All There Is?
In days gone by, our means of accessing content (whether video, audio, or print) were limited. We went to a movie or drive-in movie for, uh, movies. We listened to the radio, groovy records, and later CDs for music and the like. And, we read daily newspapers, monthly magazines, and the latest from the book-of-the-month club.
What you found from those distributions channels were what executives (with the help of media experts and a lot of market study) thought would make the most money. Anything outside of this realm was more difficult to find. (Thinking about if from the other end, if you were the artist, it was difficult to produce because the market couldn’t reach you very easily.) I remember studying aspects of this as an undergrad in various mass communication courses.
But, the reason we see fewer hit movies isn’t because our preferences have changed; it’s because we are finally able to indulge our preferences.
Changing Channels
It’s not that big hits and mainstream content are going away entirely. The reason seems to be our ability to access streaming media—it’s easy. From the content producers end, it’s easier and more affordable to put content online even if you don’t have a robust following yet. The big hit producers are having to compete with these “alternative” content providers. To do that, they have be “in the media” their competitors are in.
A sentence from Howard Rheingold’s Net Smart (p. 251) gives some insight into this process:
“Social media are permitting people to seek support, information, and a sense of belonging from sparsely knit, loosely bound networks as well as the traditional densely knit, tightly bound groups.”’
Those loose networks can be thought of as non-mainstream, alternative content providers and their enthusiasts. So, it’s not that our tastes have shifted, but we’re finally able to access more of what we’ve always wanted to access. Chris Anderson explains it this way in The Long Tail:
“But most of us want more than just hits. Everyone’s taste departs from the main-stream somewhere, and the more we explore alternatives, the more we’re drawn to them. Unfortunately, in recent decades such alternatives have been pushed to the fringes by pumped-up marketing vehicles built to order by industries that desperately need them.
Hit-driven economics is a creation of an age without enough room to carry everything for everybody. Not enough shelf space for all the CDs, DVDs, and games produced.”
I would say it’s been more than recent decades though. It’s too vast a subject for a blog post, but if you look back on the history of mass media and go back just before it began, you’ll find what we call “niche” content today.
Someday soon, I believe that idea will fall away and we’ll just talk about the latest content whether it comes from big-house publishers or sole (and soulful) artists. Someday soon, we’ll watch the Oscars and hear: “And the Oscar for best documentary goes to that woman over there who filmed the entire thing on her mobile phone.” Very respectable.
Netflix and Long Tail Economics
Whenever I open Netflix or Amazon Prime, I notice a large amount of algorithm-fueled recommendations curated and tailored for me. Sometimes I find them helpful, but it makes me wonder: do I actually want all of those recommendations, and are they even necessary? According to the writer Chris Anderson (2004), in The Long Tail, these are part of Long Tail economics – a new age of digital entertainment that’s opened audiences to a greater variety of entertainment, and companies can now make money on more niche products rather than purely relying on hit movies, music, and books.
Making recommendations based on previously watched films benefits me because it exposes me to movies I might not otherwise see, and yes, the more I find, the more I like. But I wonder – how much of a movie do I have to watch for Netflix to generate the recommendation? What if I turn it off after 20 minutes? And the recommendations aren’t just on the streaming service. I get DVD’s I didn’t place in my queue. Has anyone else noticed this? Is Netflix ensuring my queue is never empty? And at what point will there be a need and option to do as Howard Rheingold (2014) asserts with Facebook – “…use…privacy settings to consciously control your boundaries to the degree…it allows” (p.233)?
(System Architectures for Personalization and Recommendation by Xavier Amatriain and Justin Basilico on TechBlog.)
Personally, I find there’s an overwhelming amount of entertainment material online. Just scrolling through my Netflix account and selecting a movie can be time consuming and frustrating. So while the digital world has virtually unlimited amounts of space for storing, selling or streaming media content, I still have a limited number of hours in the day to consume it. I understand that companies must compete for our time and attention, and to be successful, they must collect and analyze vast quantities of data about their clients. But their motivations may not be transparent. As the past few years have illustrated, protecting our privacy in online media use can be difficult to achieve, and is anything really private? And our collective culture is becoming more fragmented as we’re consuming media that purely fits within our niche interests. The drawback to this is that our cultural and daily connections may suffer.
While Long Tail economics revolutionizes how businesses do business, the effects on social media are less clear. In general, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram dominate the market while smaller companies struggle to find an audience. And in the way we use social media there may not be an audience for every story, as ones that are positive and arousing are far more likely to be shared or retweeted. For example, news stories designed to make a reader angry or inspired are far more likely to be shared on Facebook than neutral stories that evoke fewer emotional responses. With the political debates, has anyone else noticed more “us versus them” rants?
The sunny ideas explained by Chris Anderson about Long Tail economics are great in that they show that media is evolving, audiences have greater choices, and we are exposed to less mainstream movies, music, and stories. However, Long Tail economics fails to take into account the complexity of our digital media, which may be reflective of our previous patterns of media consumption. When TV was first invented, there were only a few channels, and frankly, I didn’t mind having just four. As we technology advanced and more channels were added, that meant more choice. At one point I had access to over 600 channels and the time it took to just scroll through the guide was ridiculous. Then I realized the law of diminishing returns for me was 84 channels. So as Steve Jobs observed – “focus is about saying no” (Rheingold, 2014, p. 246), I cancelled the rest. Now I surf less but on more options, and I benefit by the changes in which businesses like Netflix attract and keep customers. As a matter of fact, I intend to benefit from this strategy by re-watching House of Cards, Luther (one of the coolest detectives ever, oh and there’s that serial killer chick), and Sherlock on Netflix – right after I finish scrolling through my recommendations. That could take a while.
Communicating virtually through virtual communities
As I think about the idea of communities, I think about growing up and the vast array of community-based arenas I found myself to be a part of including, 4-H, FFA, my local church affiliate, softball team, basketball team, and so on. Each of these organizations provided me with a different community and each had different, unified goals. But more importantly, these communities allowed me to network, coordinate, cooperate, and collaborate. What is important to highlight is: these four qualities you can find through in-person community based situations are the same qualities that drive virtual communities, in which we are all interconnected through like-minded goals and commonalities.
Graphic courtesy of newmediastudies401
In my previous blog entries, I have at times referred to the work I am currently doing in my organization in order to develop an internal employee blog for my Information Technology (IT) department. This blog, in and of itself, is a form of a virtual community designed to bring like-minded professionals together in order to acquire information. And at the crux of virtual community development is this idea of collaboration, which, as Rheingold puts it, “has transformed not only the way people use the Internet but also how information is found” (2014).
The idea for developing this internal blog as a way to improve staff communication with each other, initially spawned from the excessive time it took to develop an employee newsletter (which I was the only one writing). However, through the development of a blog, I would (in theory) have the opportunity to invite blog authors and co-contributors on board to create content. As a lone communications role in my department, I can tell you it is difficult to build a community of trust and engagement if you’re the only one contributing.
One of the most interesting things that Rheingold discusses in his book Net Smart, How To Thrive Online, is this idea of “collective intelligence” that can be pertinent in order to make an online community successful. The tips he provided are as following (Rheingold, 2014):
- In order to build trust in an online network, foster conversations
- Ensure there is a diversity of participants within your community
- Provide continual options to for all community members to collaborate
- Offer this community as a place to share knowledge and make it easy for people to share
As we think about designing and establishing new online communities, understanding these types of drivers for a virtual community can help us to shape the community group and to foster more of those four qualities I previously referred to: Networking, Coordination, Cooperation, and Collaboration (Rheingold, 2014).
Have you ever participated in online/virtual communities? As a participant what are some of the expectations you have in these communities?
Wiki… Wikipe… Wikipedia!
Thriving online. This brief, but astute concept really makes me step back and re-read it over and over again to really try and understand if it is even possible to thrive online. In this day in age, when we are so seemingly inundated with information – how can we possible muddle through it all?
In reading the Net Smart How to Thrive Online by Howard Rheingold, there were two primary components that I really honed in on. One of the primary concepts was this idea around attention literacy, which the phenomenon of multi-tasking and online activities in search of information.
For example as I was writing this blog post for this week, I was looking up a few thoughts on my end idea and while I had those pages up on Google Chrome, I went searching for what a used pop-up camper might cost (I just in fact had a conversation where I was thinking about possibly purchasing one from a friend). I then went back to find more resources for my post, but then I started wondering – what if the camper is dingy inside? Can I remodel a pop-up camper? So I went online hunting to find if others had this same thought and what ideas they might have had in redoing their pop-up camper (as you’ll find below – there are some neat ideas out there). I finally told myself I had to stop and get to writing my blog post or I was not going to get it done – but then I had to wonder about how I would pull the camper since my vehicle is clearly in a dark place, I would need something different in order to make that happen…
Scattered thoughts (Source: Ironically from a site called Wikimedia)
This image – clearly marks this idea of gaining proper attention towards our online use. But I think, even in my brief example, we can see how having an information genius at our fingertips can really have an impact on this natural “task switching” tendency we have as humans (Rheingold, 2014).
The second concept was equally as intriguing for me to ponder and that was around this idea of “crap detection” (Rheingold, 2014) on the internet. As Rheingold put it, the rule of thumb for crap detection “is to make skepticism your default” (p. 77).
Source: Natalie Dee
But as I read through these thoughts, one of the most interesting correlations I had was this idea of Wikipedia and interchanging that with crap detection. Now I am assuming everyone reading this will know what Wikipedia is, but if not, it is essentially an online free encyclopedia tool. One of the arguments that Rheingold makes in his book, is the idea of creating and developing online collaborative tools and social communities. In fact, Rheingold goes on to say that “web-based tools are particularly important because wikis enable people to collaborate in ways that challenge basic assumptions underlying modern economic theory and contradict older stereotypes regarding human motivation to cooperate.”
This is even more thought provoking as we think about how Wikipedia is often viewed – especially in academia. Without a doubt, Wikipedia is one of the most accessed online tools for gathering information, but we often here from professors that in academia world, Wikipedia is not a credible source. In fact, even Wikipedia says that they are not as they state on their site, “citation of Wikipedia in research papers may be considered unacceptable, because Wikipedia is not considered a credible or authoritative source.” One of the underlying concerns is the amount of editing rights people have – essentially anyone can go in there and edit it.
But what if it were a credible and authoritative source of information? According to Rheingold, this online social network can in fact be a greater asset in terms of collective action. And let’s not forget about the Encyclopedia books we had for year’s growing up. I think I had the same Encyclopedia set in my house for over 15 years. How is that useful and correct information?
But the big question is in the long-term, will Wikipedia become an established tool / credible source that can be used to collect accurate information? Or do you think we will not ever feel like this would be a credible source from a social network perspective?
How Influenced By Twitter/Facebook/Snapchat/Insta Are We?
How well do I know the “technology” that has become the backbone of my existence? Are the programs that are the object(s) of my constant attention, primary tools of expressing myself, and preferred ways of communicating with friends and family structuring me in ways I’ve never realized?
I sat back and took a long hard look at this possibility, and the only way I could attempt to dissect it was to try and imagine how I’d behave without this “technology”. The issue is I’ve been heavily reliant on social media since 2004 (15 years old). I tried to remember how I expressed myself and communicated with friends before MySpace, as well as the way I used MySpace when I first joined.
Before MySpace, I met and built friendships with many people but when life separated us (ex. Changing schools, moving across town), we lost contact and I forgot about them. I wasn’t upset about loosing touch with these people, but I would think about them from time to time. However, I had no desire to keep tabs on every person I’d ever met for the rest of our lives regardless of our relationship.
Upon joining MySpace I was amazed to see profiles of old friends and neighbors I hadn’t seen in years. Aside from getting real time pictures and updates on their lives, I could also see what their siblings and parents were up to as well as their new friends. I began searching for and befriending these old friends and acquaintances to personally reconnect, and to snoop on their personal lives.
This completely evolved when Facebook became popular and people were constantly updating their statuses. I strategically designed my page to present myself in the most impressive fashion possible in sort of a pathetic attempt for people who hadn’t seen me in a while to think my life was better than theirs. I spent hours capturing the perfect pictures, and spent days piecing together clever statuses that supported the image I was promoting.
During the Facebook status update phase, I would scroll through my newsfeed looking for my “friends’” dirty laundry. I’d see couples getting married at 18 and 19 and get so jealous of the beautiful ceremonies and diamond rings. I’d later giggle and text my friends when they changed their relationship statuses to “It’s Complicated” and post long status updates about their marital issues.
Before privacy was a big deal, I even found my favorite C list actor and followed his move from Hawaii to California, his engagement to 3 porn stars, first marriage/divorce, and (more recently) second wife and 2 children. I even told him happy birthday on his real birthday and had a brief conversation with him. I also Facebook stalked his first wife where I learned about his male stripping career, and mistress he met on the job (who he’s married to now).
When my parent’s generation joined Facebook, I began to learn much more than I wanted about their personal lives and personalities. I saw my aunt’s ex-boyfriends, drunken pictures at “Old School” cookouts, and had them reporting my Facebook activity to my grandmother. For this reason, I stopped using Facebook as much and moved on to Instagram and Snapchat.
I mostly use Instagram and Snapchat to showcase how “awesome” my life is as terrible as that sounds. I only post videos and images that make me look interesting, attractive and outgoing while I search for the opposite on my friend’s/acquaintance’s pages. I use these sites to snoop and judge their lives for gossip with mutual friends. We justify our nosiness with “If they didn’t want anybody to know/see, they shouldn’t have posted it”.
As terrible as this is, social media has structured my life and personality. It has made me a nosey, judgmental, and vain person who looks to exploit other’s faults for my own validation. I can relate this to the Enquirer and tabloids of the early 2000’s harassment of Brittany Spears. I also realize that I am not the only one, most people in my age group use these sites for the same reasons.
I recently remember reading that paparazzi make much less for celebrity photos because social media is a direct channel into their lives the same as everyone else. They make snooping and judging so convenient, effortless and common that people don’t even get paid for it the way they did before.
So to answer my question… Yes. Social media has structured my life, personality, and morals similarly to the rest of its long-term users. I am not proud of the habits I’ve developed, but realizing and accepting them is the only way to change. For the first time ever, I understand my grandmother’s condemnation of social media as a trashy “gossip column” that I shouldn’t be on.
To Blog or Not To Blog
Sometime in the late 80s, I was watching one of those daytime talk shows. I don’t remember the hosts or much about the guests. But, I do remember an exchange between two of the guests that bothered me then and still does. The exchange wouldn’t happen today, but I do think it message is relevant to blogging: No matter who you are, if you can blog, you can be heard.
“But, who are you?”
At some point during the talk show, the first guest, an everyday person, sat beside a second guest who had achieved a certain level of celebrity. The host commented about a book being promoted on the show to which the first guest commented “I would like to write a book someday.”
The second guest was perturbed and retorted “But, who are you? And, why would anyone want to read what you have to say.” The first guest was visibly hurt.
As I said, the exchange wouldn’t happen today—it couldn’t. The Internet has made it possible for virtually anyone to build an audience.
Audience Pull vs. Audience Push
What the second guest couldn’t fathom is that an everyday person could possibly draw an audience, let alone have something important to say.
Blogging has enabled us mere mortals to pull an audience, unlike traditional media channels that require pushing content (like books) out to audiences.
David Weinberger in his exchange with Andrew Keen on Web 2.0 (http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB118460229729267677) put it this way:
“So, traditional distribution makes it look like talent is a you-got-it-or-you-don’t proposition—you’re an artist or you’re a monkey. …With the Web, we can still listen to the world’s greatest, but we can find others who touch us even though their technique isn’t perfect.”
In other words, traditional media channels push content out to the market for a known, established audience. Blogging lets you pull audience in by providing content the audience is interested in.
Three Types of Content
In my estimation, audiences are interested three types of content (from bloggers):
- Content that says something. You have an opinion and you want to express it. Blogging can help you do that.
- Content that shares something. A colleague asked me recently to help him plan a keynote address. He showed me some significant research he had done on his topic. At one moment while we were pouring over the data and he was becoming quite excited about its implications to his field, I blurted out “Yes, but none of this means anything until you communicate it.” We both sat stunned by what I had just said. We literally didn’t move or say anything for a few moments; we were both thinking it through. Blogging is a great place to share your ideas.
- Content that explores something. Not unlike this post, you have a topic that you want to explore. Blogging can provide a way for you explore such a topic. Through commenting, you readers can help you explore too.
What’s in a Name?
Okay, okay, that’s one too many Shakespearian references. Contrary to the talk show guest who criticized the other guest for wanting to write book, you don’t need a name (celebrity) to say, share, or explore something.
Blogs give you the opportunity to pull an audience and readers seem to care little who you are—at first. If you do happen to build a name for yourself, then readers seem to care very much: http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/world/worlds-10-top-earning-bloggers/. Until then, keep in mind these words from David Weinberger:
“With the Web, we can still listen to the world’s greatest, but we can find other who touch us even though their technique isn’t perfect.”f
Bonus Content: Two Alternatives to Blogging
Maybe you have something to say, share, or explore, but it’s limited—you have no interest in committing to your own blog. Here are two alternatives to consider:
- Comment on blogs of interest. As you read posts of interest, take time to comment. Well-crafted comments can generate as much interest as the original post.
- Post on an existing blog as a guest. If you build rapport with a bloggers (say, by thoughtfully commenting on their blogs), consider asking if you can write a guest post. Pitch something that fits in with their editorial needs.
Emerging Thoughts Around Social Media – What to Expect with the Unexpected…
As I read through an article called Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship, by Danah M. Boyd and Nicole B. Ellison, I was mentally stalled as I thought about what a social network was and what the purpose was. The question that immediately came to my mind was, what is a social network site?
Boyd and Ellison defined social network as a web-based service that would allow someone to:
- Create a type of profile in a given system
- Create / invite other users with shared commonalities / connections
- View other profiles within the same system
Boyd and Ellison also eluded to a timeline of major social network sites and with the number of sites available, it only seemed to provoke more thoughts around social media.
But what was interesting for me was thinking about what a social network site means to an end user. Is a social network site Facebook? Is a social network site a place where I can post pictures of my children and share with my friends? Is a social network site a place where I can promote my business? Well yes – it is essentially all of those things any more. As a consumer of social media, I am at times dumbfounded by the amount of social media sites that are available. More so, it often turns into “another thing I have to check” or a lost username and password to something I don’t actually ever use.
I am also at times overwhelmed with the growing amount of questions and concerns that come via social media channels. Is it safe? Are the sites (even though a log in and password are required), secure from outside predators. Are there personal (sexual) predators lurking in that background? The use of social media itself has essentially been put onto the people to learn about, however, many important messages are getting missed because the founders of these social media sites are concerned about the marketing – not the education. I can almost see a time where the use of social media channels (good and bad) will be an educational class in high schools.
It was these growing social media thoughts, that as a consumer, intrigued me about the path of where social networking sites have been and where they are going.
Many social networking sites that have been created for a specific purpose either expand beyond their intended creation (as with the development and growth of Facebook) or fail because they did not end up meeting any specific need. As a consumer of these types of information systems, it is important to have a grounded understanding of my goals with social media in order to prepare for the onslaught of social media sites that are coming out in the coming years.
As I looked over the timeline, many of the networking sites listed were so short lived, I didn’t even know about them (even if they might still be going). This is definitely one phenomenon of social media that we need to be cautious and aware of especially as we work towards reusing this type of system for other purposes. Is it worth it? Or will it essentially go out of style?
Ultimately the key might lay with the shared commonalities approach. If a site moves away from the intended purpose does it get lost and ultimately become ineffective? If Facebook were to have stayed more “exclusive to colleges only”, would that have been more lucrative?
Shared your thoughts and comments on what you think social media is and what we can expect to see from it.
Balancing truth and a positive image online
What is our responsibility to the truth when we post online? When representing a business/institution online and on social media, must we always represent it with 100 percent accuracy? What is the truth anyways?
At first glance this question seems pretty straightforward. Always tell the truth. Anything other than the truth is misleading and therefore wrong. How could it be otherwise?
The same straightforwardness seems apparent in Jonathan Zittrain’s talk when considering the ethics of interfering with Facebook or google’s algorithms. He uses as an example the potential power that Facebook would have to sway an election by just leaving a reminder to vote off of a person’s newsfeed who shows a preference that is unfavorable to the powers-that-be at Facebook. It would be unfair for these online giants to use their influence to sway something that is as fair and unbiased as a math-based algorithm to anyone’s benefit.
Screen shot of Facebook’s reminder to vote. Source: TechPresident, Facebook’s Voting Reminder Message Isn’t Working, 2012
But his next example makes the issue a little murkier by explaining how google has removed from its top search results a company that blackmails people by ensuring that their mugshot photos would be prominent when their name was searched unless they paid a steep fee. This seems like justice, even though Google is stepping in to use its power against the cosmic fairness of a mathematically-powered search algorithm.
So when we create a presence for a public institution online – possibly a social network site where we create a public profile, make connections in the community, and gain access to their connections (D. Boyd, Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship, p. 211) – what is our responsibility to the public to represent the institution truthfully?
I’ll use photography as an example that I come up against as a graphic designer in the marketing department of a technical college. Let’s say that we’re posting a picture to facebook of our college’s president smiling next to a student at a college event.
- The lighting is too bad to post this picture without adjusting it in Photoshop. Do I correct it? Yes.
- While I’m here, in this portrait the president clearly has lipstick on her front teeth. Would I remove it? Absolutely.
- How about a couple zits on the student’s face? I would remove most of them or at least lighten them.
- What if the student has a permanent wart or a birthmark? Those stay. That’s part of what the student looks like, and it would be crossing a line to remove that.
But isn’t the student’s zits also part of what he/she looks like on this particular day? Isn’t it the truth that on this day the President attended the event with lipstick on her teeth? Isn’t it also the truth that the lighting in the room was horrible?
In a conversation about Web 2.0 between Andrew Keen and David Weinberger, Keen likens the story of the Internet to Kafka’s Metamorphosis, where the Internet is the mirror that reveals ourselves to be cockroaches. He compares the multitude of contributors of online content to mindless monkeys. This strikes me as counterintuitive when most of us spend our efforts consciously making ourselves look as good or better than we are in real life.
In our office, amongst the graphic designers, the social media administrator, the copywriter and anyone who is creating content to represent the College, our mantra is to represent our community (students, staff, instructors, even the campus) in a way would be recognized by them as having a “good day.” We choose our content and edits with empathy and compassion. We don’t strive to mislead, and we always maintain what participants would recognize as the reality of the moment. The camera is often cruel, picking up details that we would overlook in person. The candy wrapper on the sidewalk in a picture of the facade of the school does not represent how we see the building. It just happens to be there when the information is flattened into a photograph. No one noticed the white specks all over the shoulders of your shirt, but that dandruff sure does shine in the lighting of the photo. To remove these details doesn’t change the reality experienced by the individual in the moment, it just shows it off at its best.
Would you rather that I not clean up your shirt? Lighten the blemish? Subtract the trash? Am I being kind, or deceitful? Is my responsibility to tell the truth of how you experienced the moment, or the truth of the photograph?
The Illusion of Privacy in a Public Space
While we all are vaguely aware of the risks that can occur when we post personal information to social media sites, we still do it. Unfortunately, many of us fall prey to the“Privacy Paradox” that occurs when we are not aware of the public nature of the internet. Oftentimes this is because we believe in the illusion of boundaries, and that these sites will protect us.
Yet, posting to social network sites not only concerns privacy, but can have legal consequences as well. In Boyd and Ellison’s article “Social Networking Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship” they state “The legality of this hinges on users’ expectation of privacy and whether or not Facebook profiles are considered public or private” (p.222). In other words, the uncertain boundaries between whats public and private on social networking sites are forcing us to challenge the legal conception of privacy.
To illustrate, in Wausau Wisconsin, DC Everest High School suspended a group of students from their sports seasons after photos of the students drinking from red solo cups surfaced on Facebook. While school officials couldn’t prove the teens had been drinking, they believed the correlation between the iconic red cups and a beer bash was enough grounds for suspension. As a way “to kind of make fun of the school”, the teens decided to throw a root-beer kegger.
Once the party was in full swing, its no surprise that a noise complaint was called in to the police. At first glance, it looked like an underage party with mobs of teenagers, booming music, drinking games and of course-red solo cups. However, when the cops came to bust what they believed to be a group of underage drinkers, not a drop of alcohol was to be found. Instead, they found a quarter keg containing 1919 Classic American Draft Root Beer. Infuriated, they breathalized nearly 90 teens and every single one blew a 0.0%. As a result, the students were able to prove their point that you can have a party and drink non-alcoholic beverages from red cups.
Needless to say, the story created a buzz and soon made local and national news. Did the school have a right to interject? Or is underage drinking something that should be between students and police? What are our rights concerning online privacy? And how does the law play into all of this?
Stepping away from the light hearted nature of the story above, personal content posted to social media sites can oftentimes have more more serious, threatening ramifications to users. Identify theft, stalking and even murder are all real consequences that can and have occurred. Despite hearing these stories, we continue to make it easy for anyone, including hackers, to access our personal information because it is readily available to anyone with a computer or mobile device.
Consequently, the boundaries between whats public and whats private on social media sites are ambiguous. Even more, “…there often is a disconnect between our desire for privacy and our behaviors” (p.222). So, the real question of how to resolve this issue remains. Would more restrictive settings on these sites help us? Or, as Jonathan Zittrain’s talk suggests, do these sites have a duty to look out for us and minimize potential risks?
While the answers to these questions are uncertain- the need for a more educated and proactive public is. If we are able to fully understand the extent of our actions, perhaps we would take more precautions. Knowledge is the solution to protecting our online privacy and minimizing potential risks. Now it is just up to us to use it.
I am a happy go-lucky monkey cockroach.
Why is it when people want to relax after a hard day at work that some self-appointed authority figures want to try to ruin it for the majority? These uptight authority figures are scholars who found the treasure trove of social media, and have decided that the best way to keep their paychecks rolling is to argue and complain about how social media is not being used to the scholars’ intelligence standards. Well, I cannot argue about them making money with their complaining about social media, as making money from social media is one reason that social media exists.
Most of the people who are posting their thoughts and experiences in social media are using a wide variety of media, such as texts, photos, videos, and etc. Most people are posting for their friends and family; they are not doing it to establish an audience. While some people believe that if you do not like a posting, just move on or post a complaint, or, even better, just block that person, scholars such as Andrew Keen decided write nasty opinions about social media websites’ users. According to The Wall Street Journal‘s article “Full Text: Keen vs Weinberger” (2007), Keen claims that social medias websites’ users are “monkeys” and “cockroaches,” and that our postings are “infantilized self-stimulation rather than serious media for adults.” Furthermore, he states that users’ copy and pasting media (such as YouTube videos, Pinterest, etc.) is “creating a generation of media illiterates.”
Interesting theory, but Keen is wrong. If Keen wants serious adult time on social media, he could create his own online group, or stay at work. When most people need a break from adulthood, they turn to social media, so what? The medical field has stated that we need a work/life balance, so relaxing with a cat video that someone copied and pasted from a social media website is perfect. And from someone whose mother is learning how to use the Internet, copying and pasting anything online is a skill, thus I cannot believe that any generation is media illiterate. Many social media websites were created for connecting with others and allowing users to show off their personality, so social media was created for entertainment, not specifically for intellectual debate, although there could be groups created on these websites for such discussions.
So, how are these scholars finding all of our postings, which are leading to a “digital abundance …to intellectual poverty” (WSJ)? It turns out that what many scholars find disgusting about our postings, they cannot wait to read and analyze. boyd and Ellison, in their article, “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship,” stated that scholars gather information from users’ profiles, forums, and discussion groups for research, and that this information “offers unprecedented opportunities for researchers” (2008, p. 224). I find this very disturbing, that some stranger may be taking much of a user’s posts, friendship connections, and etc. and then analyzing this information for a paper. (Should not the user first be contacted, asked for permission, and receive compensation?) I believe that other people who know about these scholars’ plans do not like this as well, because of the following message that can be found posted on a great number of profiles on FetLife:
I had often wondered why people would have this message posted on their profile page. Who would research people’s profiles? I had never thought to ask, but after reading bodyd and Ellison’s article, I understand that users’ posted information is indeed being used for many purposes. Besides one purpose to tear social media websites down for users’ “digital narcissism” (WSJ), another purpose may be to shape how we see the world, done by website companies themselves.
Now, in Jonathan Zittrain’s talk on the “Is The Internet Taking Us Where We Want to Go?” (Aspen Institute, 2015) panel, Zittrain states that websites like Google and FaceBook use algorithms, that can control what a user sees in a search or in their news feed. For example, he reports that these companies have altered searches (Google can remove people’s history, among other things) and change what appears in a news feed (not letting certain news stories to go viral). In these cases, I do not mind companies not allowing us information because these are free websites, and they have to make their money somehow to pay for all the bandwidth that users burn through. However, if users were paying to use these websites, then whether these companies liked users’ postings, content, etc. or not, users should be able to see everything, and the companies should not be able to force their opinions on the users of how they think the world should be.
Thus, for some social media websites, many users may not be aware that the social websites that they are using for enjoyment and staying connected to others are using their information in way that the user may have never wanted. Because many of these social websites are free to use, some users would be fine with having their information used for marketing, but not for research and analysis. For those who do know what the scholars are doing with their information, some users have posted messages telling people not to use their information for research purposes. If having one’s information used as research was not bad enough, there are scholars complaining how we are using the social media websites for play and not for intellectual discussions. For those scholars, I believe that they need stop forcing a false doomsday on people and enjoy what was meant to be enjoyed. If these scholars feel that they really do not like a path that social media is taking, then they need to stop complaining and find a way to make it better. If they cannot, they can always build something for people like themselves. The Internet is large; there is plenty of space for them, the cockroaches, and the monkeys too.
References
Aspen Institute. (2015, July 4). The Internet Taking Us Where We Want to Go? [Video File]. Retrieved from YouTube https://youtu.be/rGUvi5qv6BU?t=29m34s
boyd, d. m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 224.
The Wall Street Journal. (2007, July 18). Full Text: Keen vs Weinberger [Web log comments]. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB118460229729267677
Social Network Blog
In Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship (2007), Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison catalog the history and rise of social network sites (SNS). They describe and timeline. Social networks emerged, declined; Facebook learned from others mistakes and then took over the world. Boyd and Ellison differentiate that “network emphasizes relationship initiation” whereas “social network sites…enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks” (p.211). Boyd and Ellison show us the “science;” Andrew Keen and David Weinberger argue exposure, fault, privacy – cockroach.
The giant cockroach; I didn’t need that visualization. That’s what The Internet Is Not the Answer (2015) author Andrew Keen calls social media “authors-formerly-known-as-the-audience” in a web 2.0 woe and pro point/counterpoint with David Weinberger. I admit I’m on team Keen and slide more so into negativity as he laments the chattering “digital narcissism,” lack of art, and death of objectivity as more amateurs become authors on the web full of “lost truth.” His point is “the Web is us…a mirror rather than a medium” (214). What happened to us?
Weinberger and Keen bait each other, make good points, and I found myself checking the New York Times (NYT) bestsellers list: http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/combined-print-and-e-book-nonfiction/list.html and the Top 40 hits for today: http://www.at40.com/top-40/chart/38049. Not sure what I thought I could tell from that since I don’t recognize any of the music. But I see Weinberger’s point that the Web is meant to reach far and it’s far-reaching. He sees the good; Keen doesn’t.
This is killing me. Six hours in, numerous edits, and I still haven’t produced anything worthy of a blog. So I throw in a RedBox movie on teens and social media. For someone looking for a ray of sunshine in the cloud of crap online, this choice was a big mistake. Has anyone seen Men, Women, and Children (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHMqpwnUazY) with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Garner?
It’s a worst-case, but probably all-to-real look at what’s going on with our families, and kids constantly exposed to, and numbed by social media. I want to scream. Kids can’t socialize without a device, families can’t communicate, and every tool leads to porn. Mom preaches Internet and social media safety to neighborhood groups, installs cameras in her kid’s rooms, keystroke loggers on computers, and insists her daughter take her phone everywhere “so I can track you.” One girl intent on becoming a Kardashian-ism makes a selfies site so modeling agencies can see her gift. Then Mom adds provocative photos of her in an effort to get her noticed. Oh, it does. Dad laments the missed “rite of passage” of finding his son’s porn magazines – it’s all on the web. So he does what any Dad would; checks it often – and orders an escort. Helicopter Mom psycho-checks daughter’s FB, MySpace, Twitter, and email. She’s safe, right? Except in gym where her friend nonchalantly shares her latest cell phone captured sex act. Everyone is desensitized, devoid of common sense and self-worth, and addicted to technology. Do I have to be that Mom?
I know there’s good stuff out there. TED Talks (https://www.ted.com/talks) amaze me; speakers people are brilliant, inspired, informed, and show me a new way to think. My kids take Udemy (https://www.udemy.com) and Kahn Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org) courses, and I wouldn’t have found this program without the Internet. But I just learned that once you put something on the Web it’s out there forever. Don’t laugh at me. I just realize why I haven’t seen classmate blogs; I’m on the UWStout720 site. Sigh. My kids are on social network sites, but not Facebook (http://facebook.com) since us “old people” took it over. But they tweet, YouTube (https://www.youtube.com), and visit places I don’t know about. I better show them that movie. Right after I install cameras and recording devices on everything. Thank God, they don’t have cell phones.
Natasha’s Test Blog 2
As soon as I began reading “The Rhetoric of Reach: Preparing Students for Technical Communication in the Age of Social Media” by Hurley and Hea, I felt like I was being sold the “social media/blogging ruins professionalism” ordeal that’s been a major part of my young, professional life. I’m often advised to delete all of my social media accounts because simply having one looks bad to potential employers, and many of my friends have actually stopped using social media due to this fear. I feel like the majority of people have a negative connotation about social media because the media showcases the career ending follies of irresponsible, formerly successful professionals.
Examples of the ways social media can hurt you are rampant as ever, however the most brilliantly glorious professional social media successes are so seamless they go unnoticed. The article instantly made me think of 1 company that single handedly proves how essential social media is to technical communication. Apple uses their social media presences like no company I’ve ever seen.
Apple is THE master of social media advertisement and technical assistance. Around a month before the annual iPhone release (that’s completely shrouded in secrecy), new iPhone rumor sites begin popping up in Google searches, and on Facebook to strike up interest. Arguments and debates spring up alongside questionable “leaked images” to get the Apple junkies excited to see the new device. I’m not sure if Apple is actually responsible for this commotion, but it seems unlikely that they aren’t as it’s the perfect marketing strategy.
By the time the iPhone release video is available, the Apple fan base is so anxious to see if their speculations were realized that millions of users stream the live video feed and bombard Twitter, Instagram and Facebook with #iPhone trends. I’ve been around to watch cell phones rise to their current popularity, and I have yet to see an HTC, or Samsung Galaxy raise as much release day insanity as an iPhone.
By the time iPhone pre orders become available, customers can hardly pre-order because within the first 5 hours Apple has literally sold more iPhones than they have in existence at that point. Many pre orders aren’t filled for months, and people just keep on buying. The well produced videos and easily sharable links and videos saturate the internet, convincing America that they need the newest addition.
On the technical communication side, the Apple Support Communities are a series of community forums that are incredibly helpful for tech support. The beauty of this site is that it is the ultimate FAQ, some answers come from Apple Geniuses and others from other users. You simply type in a few key words about the issue you’re facing, and a list of responses appears in past threads. These forums are incredibly useful for customers without AppleCare insurance plans, and for those who don’t have time to wait on hold for 45 minutes.
In conclusion, social media and blogging can destroy a professional image, but they can also make it invincible. It is imperative that technical communications professionals learn how to use social media to strengthen their credibility and introduce clients/readers to their services.
Natasha’s Test Blog 1
As the “Why We Blog” study by Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht, and Swartz highlighted, the most common motivations for creating/ participating in blogs are to document one’s life, blogging as commentary, blogging as catharsis, blogging as a muse, and blogging in a community forum. I typically stick to the community forum style blogging in both academic, and non-academic settings.
Prior to this class I’ve had very general experiences with personal blogging, nothing too involved. Earlier classes I’ve taken in the MSTPC program as well as courses in my undergraduate education included an online “blog as a community forum”. I would actively participate in message boards, and engage in discussions by responding to my classmate’s threads. These were very functional blogs, and I obviously only participated because I was required to.
As mentioned in this article, the motivations for blogging “are not mutually exclusive and might come into play simultaneously”; this is the case in my non-academic community forum blogging. I’m a very private person, and don’t trust the people around me to completely confide my personal problems. I am incredibly dependent on advice forums like enotalone.com where I can anonymously pour my heart out and receive multitudes of responses from complete strangers.
What I love most about enotalone.com is that people of all ages, from all over the world, with entirely different backgrounds can give me raw, unapologetic advice. It can’t offend me because they’re only a name with a smiley face avatar, and I realize they’re also more comfortable sharing things about their lives that may help me. In this situation, I’m getting the help I need, and they’re getting some sort of fulfillment by helping me. I don’t have to worry about gossip or people holding my mistakes against me because these people can hardly determine what country I live in.
A few years ago I created a blog on Tumblr, and used it to journal my personal life. Again, I’m very private so I did not invite my friends and relatives, but I accumulated a decent following of international strangers. This was a bit cathartic for me, as it was another outlet to ramble on about things that were bothering me. However, I eventually lost interest in my Tumblr page and haven’t posted in years. The most enjoyable part of having a Tumblr blog was designing it; I spent more time perfecting its appearance than substantial writing.
In conclusion, I’m not much of a blogger unless it’s required for academic purposes, or I’m going through personal challenges I’m uncomfortable bringing to my friends and family. I have enjoyed the bit of blogging I’ve done so far, but I can think of a million other things I’d rather do.
The Relationship Between Technical Communication and Social Media
Chelsea’s Test Blog 2
The relationship between technical communication, social media, and even the use of Technology is becoming more and more apparent in our everyday lives. As I was reading through the article The Rhetoric of Reach: Preparing Students for Technical Communication in the Age of Social Media, it dawned on me how why this very topic is so important.
Software companies (like Microsoft) are incorporating in their new software releases, the capability to participate in social media much easier and without having to know how to write HTML5 code and still publish to the Web. Let’s look at Microsoft Office. As I draft this blog article, I now have the option to publish this article as a blog post right to my blog site.
Snapshot of Microsoft Word 2010 – Save and Send Features, Taken by Chelsea Dowling.
Moreover, as Hurley and Hea demonstrated the impact of social media and technology is becoming even more prevalent within the medical field, where they provided an example of a 48-year-old individual who was punished for providing enough information about a patient that their identity was eventually revealed. Might this explain the increasing Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations? Just the other day, a friend’s mother who works as a dental hygienist was explaining the increased HIPAA training they are required to take each year. In fact, EHR 2.0 published a presentation on Social Media Compliance for Healthcare Professionals.
But overall, one of the most striking points that Hurley and Hea eluded to in their article, was the importance of educating students and communication professionals around the critical theory aspects of social media. While it is important to deploy social media in our own efforts / initiatives and to debunk the negative assumptions around the use of social media (Hurley & Hea, pg. 58), we also need to understand how / where these assumptions fit within our own situations.
Overall, I think this is one of the most important factors that we need to keep in mind. For example, in my current social setting, I would say there is a large difference in how people of all ages use social media. For example, being in such a rural area of Wisconsin, many Gen Xers and Baby Boomers are limited to the amount of exposure they have to social media as well as limited to the desire to access that type of channel. Therefore, as we begin to understand how we reach out to our stakeholders, we can use critical theory to allow us to “consider how social media fits into our professional lives” and be able to evaluate and use social media responsibly (Hurley & Hea, pg. 58).
Image from: How does social media as a technology affect sleeping patterns?
Posted on April 26, 2013 by insomnicacs
Hurley, E.V. and Hea, A.C.K. (2014). The Rhetoric of Reach: Preparing Students for Technical Communication in the Age of Social Media. Technical Communication Quarterly, 23(1), pp. 55-68.
Aligning Social Media to Organizational Professional Communication
(Chelsea’s Test Blog 1)
Prior to beginning my master’s program at UW Stout, one of the initiatives I began in 2014 was researching and proposing the development of an internal blog for our department. At Organic Valley, our Information Technology department is comprised of approximately 79 employees, ranging anywhere in age from 21 to 61-years-old. As a part of my role, three years ago I developed an internal departmental newsletter which I transformed to be accessible via e-mail (condensed version), a full online version, and a supported printed version.
Someone who has previously developed a newsletter might appreciate the work that goes into, but in case you haven’t done a newsletter here is the tedious process I had to endure each month in order to share the recent happenings with our employees.
The process of creating a printed newsletter.
Needless to say, I missed a few months (since I am the only one who does what I do within my department). In an effort to spread the workload, I begin researching into available options that might not only improve / address the workload that I was dealing with, but to provide an accessible and online platform for our staff to have immediate access to our department and Cooperative news.
Believe it or not but there is actually little research on the use of social media within organizations as a tool to communicate with their own staff (at least it’s not published). So in 2014 I began the effort to have an internal departmental blog established and to have this be an opportunity to develop a new communication channel within our organization and begin moving us away from just communicating via e-mail and an archaic 15-year-old intranet.
Nonetheless, I am sure you can imagine that one of the articles that was tucked away in our Blog Literacy folder on D2L, really grabbed my attention. While The Social Media Release as a Corporate Communications Tool for Bloggers article, written by Pitt, Parent, Steyn, Berthon, and Money, did not specifically articulate this article to be meant for internal communication purposes, there were a number of points that truly resonate with the issues that internal organization often deals with. Pitt et al., found that an increasing number of blogs are becoming a more formalized tool within organizations and, are in fact, being used to keep their stakeholders apprised of the current activities (2011). “Professional business communicators will need to give increased attention to their use of social media release,” (Pitt et al., pg. 7).
As a professional communicator, it is interesting that this became such a natural tendency for me to move towards and begin researching for internal communication purposes. One of the thing we often struggle with, is out do we best manage to spread our information across an organization that reaching almost 1000 employees – especially when face-to-face communication is the most effective way of sending and receiving messages. Notably, this was one point that Pitt et al. addressed in the article in that social media channels are beginning to emulate that face-to-face model (pg. 3), which seemingly matches the growing need for business to use this as a communication tool.
But where is my blog and how is it matching up with this theory of using social media for internal communication purposes? Well… needless to say you will be able to find a number of articles that will give you pointers on writing a great post, how to manage contributors – I even purchased a book called Born to Blog by Mark Schaefer (an excellent read and highly recommended). Unfortunately what these resources don’t tell you is how to maneuver the muddy waters of internal organizational politics to move something along quickly (but that is for the next article).
Let’s just say, when it comes to establishing a brand new “tool”, it’s amazing the amount of push back and stops people go to. Fortunately, as our company is looking at implementing Microsoft SharePoint (which I am told has many blogging capabilities), I am on the road to redemption. Almost. Now the holdup will be the design of the blog, which will lead you to one of my upcoming blog articles on the value of information design.
Pitt, L.F., Parent, M., Steyn, P.G., Berthon, P., and Money, A. (2011). The Social Media Release as a Corporate Communications Tool for Bloggers. IEEE Transactions Professional Communication, 54(2), pp. 1-11.
Writers, writiN & d NXT gnr8n n social media :P
In their article “The Rhetoric of Reach: Preparing Students for Tech Comm in the Age of Social Media” Hurley and Hea asked college student to reflect on the extent that social media influences writers and writing. As a whole, students were able to identity social media’s positive aspects such as staying connected to family and friends and its ability to generate hype over new products. On the other hand, students also agreed that social media generally influences writers to write carelessly and unfinished.
While I was not an English major, I do have an appreciation for good writing. Seeing postings with no particular point that incorporate emojis and shorthand slang make me cringe. Despite this, I agree with the article in that a thoughtful and active presence on social media can be beneficial and bolster careers. However, it made me question what implications will this type of writing have on our younger generations who have grown up with these types of communications?
Besides proper spelling and grammar, penmanship is a concern of mine. I distinctly remember learning cursive in elementary school and laboring over a capital “Z” so I could write my crushes initials next to mine in the margins of my notebook. (For all of you who are wondering it would be SKJ + ZBS). While I eventually was able to master this skill and fill every space I could with our initials surrounded by a bubbly heart, it took time and perseverance.
Largely due to the excessive nature of my “doodling”, one of my friends told Zach and soon everybody in the class knew. To my disappointment, Zach did not share my feelings and that was the end of my third grade crush. While the love between us didn’t pan out, my love of cursive and penmanship did. My handwriting, (most of which is cursive) is something I pride myself on to this day. After a quick Google search, I discovered that many states are no longer are teaching cursive in elementary schools. While its not completely shocking, it is slightly disappointing to learn that good handwriting is no longer a vital form of commutation.
At the same time, I wouldn’t say that computers and our use of social media are entirely to blame. I simply find it interesting how communication has progressed and the effects it has and will have on writers of future generations. The digital landscape is evolving, and if we want to survive we have to keep up– emojis, shrt& & aL 🙂
Emerging Media and the News
Given the recent news surrounding questionable deaths at the hands of the police in both Ferguson, MO and New York, NY, I chose to write my final about emerging medias impact on the way we receive our news. Historically, it could have been days before the public was aware of the incidents, if it was reported at all. I thought it was a worthy topic to explore and see if there were more benefits to breaking a socially important story than the negatives of having so many false rumors circulating before any evidence was released.
It was interesting to see find out that the news anchor, Walter Cronkite, was polled as the most trusted man in America at one time. Today we view our news providers with a certain amount of distrust since most news received has a political spin on it one way or the other.
The most interesting fact I learned in my research proved a misconception I have held for the last few years. I always thought that social media and the internet was a major source of news for most people. On the contrary, over 60% of public still gets their news directly from dedicated news organizations.
Thank you to all my classmates and teacher. Our class this semester was the most unique class I have ever taken, not to mention one of the most enjoyable. Best of luck to everyone and I hope to see some of you next semester.
ajnystuen
aliciaryoung
Allie K
Amery Bodelson
amodioc0599
b0bryan
bngeenen
Angie Myers
crhunter
delwichej8841
Chelsea Dowling
drakek2454
evelynmartens13
AaronF
Gina
heidideckermaurer
Rob_Henseler
jebehles
jeffreyuw
jenlynngregz
jessaclara
jessryter
JJ Miller
jodee14
johnsons0566
jripslinger
kbeecken
knoblockj
lanaksolberg
lanib50
laurajoy79
Dan Lea
Lynn
lihill630
lisamrohloff
lttaylor3
maryvanbe
miriamannelevy
Michelle Mailey Noben
oliver550
paul1838
peahleah
profpignetti
Robyn Gotch
Roger Renteria
Lori R.
scottc0957
season1980
smitht09052013
Jennifer Smoot
Rebecca Snyder
srherbert
voigtb
