We No Longer Search for “All the News that Isn’t”–It Finds Us (And then we copy it)

In his book Socialnomics, Qualman reminds us of the Tina Fey/Sarah Palin skits on Saturday Night Live.

Do you remember how much fun people had watching and talking about these satires? Qualman finds the skits interesting in terms of how popular they were, and where people watched them. According to NBC estimates, 50 million people watched the skits, but according to Solutions Research Group, more than half the viewers saw these over the internet. People had it pushed directly to their social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

I wonder if that’s how Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gets his news from The Onion. Does he have The Onion “liked” on his Facebook page? Maybe not anymore. The satirical news source, The Onion fooled Ahmadinejad and Iran’s official news agency with a story titled “Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama.” The spoof article states that results of a recent poll show that rural white Americans would rather vote for, go to a ball game with, and have a beer with Ahmadinejad than President Obama.

Well, not only has the internet made it really easy to share the news with others, it has made it really easy to steal the news as well. Iran’s official news agency took the article (you remember it was a satire, right?), passed it off as their own journalism, and then published it in Iran.

I suspect heads may roll over this goof-up.

Qualman’s book says that some people think the SNL skits with Tina Fey may have influenced the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. Did some people think that was actually Sarah Palin? Did people mistake SNL’s comedy for serious journalism?

Similar questions can be asked of The Onion incident. Does Ahmadinejad really think I’d rather share a home brew with him than with President Obama? Really? The Iranian news agency can’t recognize the satire in The Onion?

Actually, I’m not surprised. Sad, but not surprised. Satire and verbal irony can be tough to catch. (Every time I go through Stephen Crane’s poem “Do Not Weep, Maiden, For War Is Kind” with my sophomores, I have a frightening number of students who insist that Crane’s message was pro-war, despite me and other students pointing out the gruesome battle imagery and lines such as “… a field where a thousand corpses lie.”)

So what if people get fooled by internet content? A lot of people are being fooled by what’s on the internet. It used to be that the reliable news sources “looked” reliable. They hade professional layout, quality graphics, good photography, and they were the only sources that could afford to be published or televised. Now, digital technology and the internet give everyone the ability to self-publish professional-looking content. If our material is packaged right, it might get passed along to others. The problem is that it takes a more sophisticated audience to recognize credible sources today than it did ten years ago. Maybe satirical internet content should have to carry a warning label or start with the standard opening, “A funny thing happened on the way to Tehran the other day…”

Roles change for technical communicators

For this post I decided to write about Rachel Spilka’s book, Digital Literacy For Technical Communication. I learned a lot from the first chapter regarding the evolution of technology and thus the evolution of the role of the technical writer.

Chapter one, in Digital Literacy For Technical Communication by Rachel Spilka provides a straightforward description of how technical communication as a field has evolved with technology. In this chapter, Saul Carliner analyzes one company—the largest employer of technical communicators—to represent the field at large. The result, in my opinion, is a robust essay that suggests technology has indeed altered the roles of technical writers. Carliner’s analysis begins in the 1970’s, “In a few instances, people were hired with formal training in technical writing, but during the 1970s, this employer typically emphasized technical knowledge over writing skill” (23). The primary reason for this was that they were writing for individuals who already had an in-depth knowledge of computers, who didn’t need a step by step guide or manual (22-23).

However, as technology progressed into more and more people’s homes, the audience of the technical writers began to change. That is, Carliner states, “Both the change in markets for computers and the rise of word processing and desktop publishing led to profound changes in the work of technical communicators in this organization” (26). As a result, the emphasis of the technical communicator shifted to include writing technique, audience analysis, and the ability to prepare user friendly guides. To show when each significant advancement in technology occurred and how each advance in technology affected technical communicators, Carliner breaks a 40 year period, 1970-2010 (roughly) down into five phases.

The fourth and fifth phases, the rising popularity of the internet as a communication tool are perhaps the most relevant to me, since this is what I have grown up with. It seems clear that the internet has had a large impact on virtually all aspects of daily life. For technical communicators, the internet created not only new topics to write manuals for, but also provided a new method to transfer the information from those documents. Carliner states, “Electronic file transfer had many effects on technical communication (38). Indeed, the internet made possible email and on-line meetings/discussions. Thus, Carliner notes, “Electronic file transfers also facilitated remote work, as workers in one location could now easily collaborate on or manage projects across multiple locations” (38).

In essence, technical communicators transformed from being product specialists to product designers/explainers. Their primary roles changed from writing for a few individuals with an advanced knowledge of a product, to writing for potentially millions of users with limited or no knowledge of a product. The primary result of the advent and popularity of the internet on technical communicators then is that, technical communicators of today need to have specialized writing skills. They need to be able to write across cultural borders, across many levels of user experience, and in such a way that all audience members find the technical documents useful. This is a large task and why we are all learning how to do this in the MSTPC program!

“Thank you, old media.” “No. TY, new media.”

Qualman’s first chapter brought on this little post.

Oh, yes.  Old media vs. new media: the oft-discussed subject in the Technical Communication and MSTPC programs.  Both have their pros and cons, and I think that at this point in time, each has its proper place.  Since my son just celebrated his 9^th birthday and we’ve been working on thank-you notes, I’ll go with this comparison:

Old media is to handwritten thank-you notes

as

New media is to sending thank-you e-mails.

Handwritten thank-you notes are a must for grandparents and other respected individuals. This thank-you media requires more thought, effort, and even comes at a higher monetary cost (stationery, stamps, smiley-face stickers, etc.)  We are likely to send them out with correct spelling, capitalization and punctuation.  Errors or missing details can’t be added once the thank-you is sent without going through the entire process again.

E-mail thank-yous, however, will suffice for close friends and other situations in which informality is acceptable.   We may let punctuation and spelling slide, and e-mail is a free service, so it costs us nothing.  An e-mail can come across as more of an afterthought, with generally less time and effort put into it.  We could turn around and send an additional e-mail correcting errors or adding things we forgot in minutes.  There is a more fleeting feeling to them, and recipients are not very likely to keep them once they are read.

Likewise, old media creates more of a record, whereas new media seems fleeting and fickle.  I think of watching a story develop over the course of a day, and watching the headlines change on CNN.com.  We can get very different information, depending on at what point of the day we check the website, and we understand it’s best to wait until everything is sorted out before taking the online news reports as complete and accurate.  Old media (newspapers in particular) gather the information once per day, so there is really only one opportunity per day for erroneous stories.  While the possibility of misinformation still certainly exists, it is not nearly as rampant, and it is not acceptable when misinformation appears in hardcopy print because we expect these outlets to verify their sources and information.  They, themselves, are often considered to be more respectable organizations because their reports are more reliable.

This might seem like a case against my argument, but it demonstrates that when old media gets something wrong, it’s a big deal, but when new media reports something erroneously, it’s no big whoop.

For similar reasons, I think we are more likely to keep, for example, a newspaper clipping of our graduation announcement rather than printing out the online version of the article.  We might see the article online first, but we would be prompted to go out and buy that day’s hardcopy newspaper for scrapbooking or archiving.  It is my opinion that we have a lot more trust in old media than new, but we are drawn to new media because of our love of instant gratification.  Humans are a pretty impatient species, and new media can give us what we want instantly.  There’s a saying at my place of employment: Do you want it done now, or do you want it done right?  New media does it now, but old media is more likely to do it right.

Encyclopedia Titanica (Qualman Ch 1)

“Internet dead ahead!”  The thing that interests me most when I look over the carnage that the internet has left in its wake is at what point did these industries–encyclopedias, newspapers, record labels, magazines and book publishers–realize that they were doomed.  Was it something specific like the papers piling up at the end of all their neighbors driveways or their kids getting busted using Napster, or did/will they live in denial all the way to the bitter end?

The publishers of Encyclopedia Britannica probably never thought that it would be possible for unpaid and unvetted people to equal the quality of the articles produced by paid professionals, but recent studies have shown that Wikipedia is at least the equal of Britannica.  Is Wikipedia the first real example of large-scale crowd sourcing?

In chapter one of Socialnomics by Erik Qualman, he summarizes how technology and human nature conspired to overthrow industries that have existed for hundreds of years.  For example, Encyclopedia Britannica began publication in 1768 (I looked that up in Wikipedia ironically).  The big surprise to me–and maybe to these industries–isn’t that they disappeared, but the fact that it all happened so fast.  As Qualman points out, social media has only been around for a few years, but it is so perfectly aligned with our basic human need for connectedness that it is like the internet on steroids.  I mean, it has surpassed porn as the most popular activity on the internet (p 1).  I never thought I’d see the day when porn was overthrown on the internet.

According to Qualman, “As human beings we have the dichotomous psychological need to be our own individual, yet we also want to feel that we belong to and are accepted by a much larger social set.” (p. 2) Why have an editor of a newspaper that doesn’t even know me decide what I see in the newspaper when I can have my friends and colleagues on LinkedIn and Facebook recommend stories based on a personal/professional relationship?

Newspapers aren’t doing themselves any favors by moving to a subscription model for internet content locking it behind a firewall.  That only works if you have a product that can’t be obtained elsewhere.  News and commentary are available from tons of sources for free, and, as Wikipedia has demonstrated, just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s bad.  Qualman’s scenario about the Idaho-senators blogger (p. 14 – 21) did a good job capturing the futility of the old business model.

There was really only one area where I question Qualman’s argument.  He contends that the time that appears to be a waste on Facebook, actually makes us more productive since we gain access to potentially critical information much faster.  I’ll admit that that can be the case, but sometimes it’s like drinking from a fire hose of  Zynga requests, political status updates, and funny cat pictures to find the kind of useful tidbits that Qualman uses in his example.  Have you ever had your boss walk by while you had Facebook open?  Did they think you were being productive?  Did you?

Is Social Networking Right for School?

According to Jack Molisani and his article “Social networking for you” “Our job is not to write user manuals and sales brochures. Our job is to get user-optimized content to people when they need it and where they want it. In other words, follow your audience.”

What if my audience ranges in age from 15 to 18 years old? What if my audience is already physically captive in my room? What if my audience is my Literature of the Land class or my American Studies class? What if I’m my audience’s teacher? Do I still have to follow them? Yes I do.

And that’s a tough task because they come from so many different backgrounds and are going in so many different directions with so many different talents, concerns, questions, and challenges that it’s hard to follow them all.

Ah, but perhaps social networking will actually make it easier—or at least more successful since that’s what so many of them are familiar with anyway.

Sure, Molisani is talking about social networking to advance a career or business, but many of the arguments he uses make sense in education too.

The ease of finding information. Right. So why would students want to listen to a teacher lecture about the difference between alliteration, assonance, and consonance when they’d be able to google the terms and find definitions and examples in about 45 seconds if they ever found a need to? Since students don’t need help finding such information anymore, teachers need to find ways to push students to put the information and technology tools they have to good use.

Ask a friend. Molisani suggests that web sites should allow people to interact since they may have valuable information to share and will find a way to talk about a product anyway. The most engaging classrooms encourage student interaction and input. Wouldn’t it be nice if students could interact in an extension of that classroom (the web) after the bell rings. Teachers might as well help provide the structure for that.

Molisani says, “You are the master of your career.” Students could become the masters (or at least very active advocates) of their education too. Rather than wondering where the teacher’s plan is going, the internet offers students the opportunity to have some say in the direction a lesson takes. If the curriculum states that everyone has to learn how to write persuasively, why do all students have to show that the same way and to the same audience. The answer is they don’t, and social networking on the internet gives students the opportunity to reach an audience that may be more meaningful–outside the walls of the school.

Since students are already so good at social networking in the halls and after school, why not harness their natural talents for class-related purposes too?

RE: Social Media Taking Over

Chapter two in Qualman’s book: Socialnomics was interesting to read because I related to much of the content being covered. Qualman suggests, “ Cameras document everything, and technologies like Facebook’s Mobile Upload and ‘tagging’ can disseminate a naked keg stand to your network faster than you can count to five.” I recently attended a birthday party for a relative, and my niece recorded the whole thing via her smart phone. I don’t think she ever actually watched the party through her own eyes—rather through her display screen. After the recording was finished, she was so excited to upload it to Facebook. I didn’t understand this—I asked myself: why can’t we just enjoy the moment anymore? I asked her why she recorded the party to put on Facebook, she didn’t have much of an answer.

This need to record and post everything is also true in other situations. Anytime I go out with my friends, someone is taking pictures and uploading them to Facebook, no longer does privacy exist. I am not sure if this is bad necessarily, but it is different. The notion of connecting with one’s children via social media rather than through oral conversation is also different. Qualman notes, “In many instances, social media can help bring families a little closer by enabling parents to unobtrusively follow their kids’ lives.’” Perhaps in some cases, but I can certainly see how this may backfire. More to the point however, if parents begin to rely solely on social media to communicate with their children—to find out about their day—what is lost as a result? To argue that passive communication is better than active is also interesting to consider.

One topic that I have not considered, addressed in chapter 3 is the notion that email may go extinct. I send many emails everyday, so the idea that in the not so distant future email will be obsolete is hard to fathom. However, I don’t doubt it. The rate at which technology now evolves is staggering. For instance, as Qulaman notes, even the way we date has changed due to technology. Qualman states:

First, people used to give out their home phone number. Then people began to give out their email address instead. At first it seemed odd to ask someone for a date over email, but then it became quite natural. Then we progressed to mobile phone numbers because some people didn’t have land lines anymore. Besides it was easier to message one another—it was less intrusive and awkward: ‘What are you doing tonight?’

To some extent I think it is appropriate to ask the tough questions in person, or over the phone, rather that take the passive approach—perhaps I am just a traditionalist. While text messaging and social media offer a means to gain knowledge about another person—it is only portrayed information. That is, what you see on Facebook may not be what you get in real-life. As such, in-person conversations may still be the most fruitful. Overall, chapter 2 and 3 in this book forced me to question my own decision regarding my use (or lack their of) of social media. Further, it provided a lot of good insight regarding why social media is so popular which is beneficial to someone like me who does not have a very good understanding of it due to never participating in it.

It’s All About Attitude

Chapters two and three of Eric Qualman’s Socialnomics do a great job of explaining how companies can leverage social media to build and enhance their image and reputation. The key, it seems, is to focus on the positive. Some companies take a very reactive approach, viewing critical feedback on various social media outlets as something to be controlled or contained. Responding in this way (essentially by stifling the opinions of consumers) really doesn’t do much for the company or the consumer. Companies that are truly successful use criticism in a more productive way, as Qualman explains,

“Effective companies and people relish online feedback. They use the information to make themselves more competitive by improving their products and services in the eyes of the consumer . . . Good companies view it as an opportunity to prove to the customer that they are willing to go the extra mile for them” (p. 40).

Personally, I hadn’t thought about it this way before. It’s really in a business’s best interest to respond to online criticism proactively. Then, they can not only acknowledge the consumer’s complaint, but also create an opportunity for themselves. If they are able to rectify the situation, they demonstrate—in a very public way—their willingness to help and that they care about their customers’ satisfaction.

Today, the companies that embrace the social capabilities of an online environment are in the best position to thrive. While doing this week’s readings, I found a good example. Zappos, the online shoe retailer, uses Twitter to as a way for employees to communicate directly with customers about their products. This is exactly the type of positive, proactive interaction Qualman is talking about. Not only can employees assist customers, if needed, but they can also interact with them on a personal level—in front of a presumably large audience in the public sphere.

Companies who are struggling to develop a social media strategy would do well to examine their approach. Using lemons (criticism and complaints) to make lemonade (a lasting, positive impression to customers and their social networks) is an invaluable tool. The company doesn’t necessarily control what the online community is saying, rather it uses it to positively influence the way consumers feel.

SNS = Social Network Sites (not Super Nintendo System) Boyd and Ellison

I’m guessing that most Americans understanding of the history of Social Network Sites (SNS) comes from the movie The Social Network, myself included.  Based on that, I assumed that there was MySpace and Friendster and then Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook smote them.  Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison, however, clear that all up in their article Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.  I think the thing that surprised me the most about the history part of this article is how quickly the members of the various social networks abandoned them when they got annoyed.

When Friendster got more popular, the network performance suffered and then as more and more people joined it became less cool, “. . . exponential growth meant a collapse in social contexts: Users had to face their bosses and former classmates alongside their close friends.”  If FB messes up bigtime could they fold up too?  I can’t remember where I read this, but I have heard that many young people are abandoning FB (or are at least downplaying it) in favor of Twitter since their Mom and Dad haven’t joined Twitter yet and they can still say what they want.

Now Facebook has been pretty stable in terms of performance, but it definitely seems to be declining in the coolness area.  Maybe it is just me, but the more people I add to my “Friends” the less I post to FB.  Yes, there are privacy settings, but figuring them out is like doing one of those logic puzzles.  You know, “Jane likes bananas and grapes, but only on Sundays.  Bill hates grapes and likes bananas, but will only eat them in the morning.  What kind of fruit can Jane and Bill eat on Tuesday afternoon.”  Is there anyone out there that hasn’t been burned by a status update that somehow made it to someone that it shouldn’t have?

And now our employers are busy implementing their own internal SNSs, “This growth has prompted many corporations to invest time and money in creating, purchasing, promoting, and advertising SNSs.”  It’s one thing to post something that annoys your Sister-in-Law, it is something else entirely to offend the Director of Marketing (or some other muckety-muck).  I have no evidence of this, but I suspect that this is a significant reason why most corporate social networks are lame: no one wants to offend anyone so no one challenges anything–no matter how stupid.

In our private life we can choose our friends and we stand a chance in understanding our audience, “In listing user motivations for Friending, boyd (2006a) points out that “Friends” on SNSs are not the same as “friends” in the everyday sense; instead, Friends provide context by offering users an imagined audience to guide behavioral norms.”  But corporate SNSs are guided by org charts and not personal relationships.  Without having this guide, how can companies leverage the power of social networking for collaboration and sharing without triggering all the bad aspects–misunderstanding and mistrust?  And add cultural differences to the list and it starts to look a little hopeless.

But Boyd and Ellison do offer a little hope, I think, when they say, “Although exceptions exist, the available research suggests that most SNSs primarily support pre-existing social relations. Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe (2007) suggest that Facebook is used to maintain existing offline relationships or solidify offline connections, as opposed to meeting new people.”  Maybe rather that dictating to people who their “friends” should be inside a company, they should allow people to share comments with colleagues of their choosing. It seems counterintuitive, but maybe we need less connections to get more sharing.

Final Paper | How Did Social Media Effect Occupy UC Davis?

As I was searching for a paper topic, one was unfolding before me over the Thanksgiving holiday. I am writing about how social media played a role in the Occupy UC Davis movement and pepper spray incident that happened in the city I live. Maybe you heard about it on the news. My family in Wisconsin called the day after students were pepper sprayed and were surprised Davis made the national news. So, below is my proposal:

YouTube videos of the pepper spray incident shed light on campus police taking extreme measures to clear away non-violent protesters.

Education is very important to the citizens of the State of California. For a long time, tuition had been free or very inexpensive to residents of the state who were accepted at the University of California (UC) System. It is part of the California culture that low-cost higher education is a right and not a privilege. Within the past years due to a major budget crisis, the state has significantly increased tuition for its UC schools. A significant increase in tuition was one of the main reasons students have recently protested as part of the Occupy UC Davis movement.

While tuition increases have been protested in the past, the Occupy UC Davis movement has gained special attention due to social media. On November 18, campus police used pepper spray as self-defense on non-violent student demonstrators. The pepper spray incident was caught on video and uploaded to YouTube. The video went viral, and it gained national and international attention as the campus community and nation scrutinizes what went wrong. The incident even caught the attention of Jon Stewart, satirist and host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central who mocked the event on his show, stating there were better ways than pepper spray to get the attention of college students, like free tacos or Green Day in the quad.

College students are heavy social media users. Student protesters are heavily utilizing social media, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, creating wikis, and blogging. Social media gave them power to communicate what happened, and because of its viral nature, news of the event spread quickly to many people, including people across the country and across the globe. This is a paradigm shift in power from few distributing information to many, to many creating and distributing information. 

Campus administration and others with high authority roles on campus, including Chancellor Linda Katehi, do not implement social media the same way the students do. People like the chancellor have less time available to interface with social media and tend to rely on more traditional communication devices, including email, press releases, and websites. The chancellor’s staff assists her with communication duties, including sending and answering emails, facilitating her blog, and writing speeches. While Chancellor Katehi emailed the campus community after the pepper spray incident occurred, several hours had passed while her email statement made its way through the appropriate channels before it could be sent to all students, faculty and staff. While her email had an air of authority, the lag in time opened the opportunity for information from other sources to fill in the gaps of what happened. Timeliness of a message is important. Breaking the story first, whether completely accurate or not, is worth more now than it ever use to be due to social media.

There are positive and negative consequences of social media, including the speed and accuracy of the message. This includes accuracy of the message context. Other important issues include an increased participation and awareness, increased two-way interaction between sender and receiver, and an increased authority given to messages that appear online. By examining these issues, I hope to better understand social media’s role in the events that unfolded surrounding the Occupy UC Davis pepper spray incident.

 

The Final Paper is Only the Beginning!

Emerging Media Topic

Because these are my first final papers as a Graduate Student, I am a bit anxious.  Luckily, I have been able to nail down a good paper topic that I feel comfortable researching and presenting.  I will be doing my paper about:

Are iPads Suitable Substitutes for Manuals, Textbooks and Other Paper Documents in the Business and Educational World?

This topic will allow me to present information relating to how people in education and business have fared in the past utilizing paper documentation as well as present how iPads can make life easier.

I know people who like to redecorate. One of the ways they find inspiration is to use one picture, pillow, rug or piece of furniture and then design the room around this piece.  A similar opportunity afforded itself to me.  As I was researching a similar topic for another course, I came across an article by the Air Force:

Fontaine, S., & Blake Johnson, N. (2011, September 19). Table takeover. Air Force Times, pp. 18-20. In this article from the Air Force’s own publication a realistic review of the role of the iPad is presented. In early phases of testing, there is a very optimistic outlook for the iPad tablet as it is charged with being able to reduce costs and weight on flights. While the Air Force and other branches of our armed forces are beginning to utilize the iPad because of the need for added mobility, there are also concerns regarding security. These concerns are also identified.

 

Looking to the Future

While working on this one project is important, the process overall has been enlightening in many ways. The past two weeks have been spent in contemplation of what my (3) final projects will be about.  What started out as separate thought processes has coalesced into a realization that all that I do while here at UW Stout is of value farther down the line. 

As I was perusing topics on graduate studies on the internet, I stumbled across an article at the Dartmouth Writing Program website relating to Writing a Thesis. The information presented, though quite simple, is also very powerful. It de-mystified the process for me and urged me to begin “thinking” about how I want to finish.

To this end, I am designing a data base to house information relating to my time at UW Stout – more particularly to organize and add notations to articles, books, chapters, magazines and other print media (both on the internet and hard copy).  I really think that by doing a lot of reading, making a few notes here and there and being able to search and re-read, I can save an enormous amount of wasted time later on and have a much better understanding of my choices when the time comes.

Once I have a workable version, I would be happy to share it with anyone else that would like to use this as a tool.

Week 12 | Ethics Versus Framed Value Systems

Digital technology is rapidly developing, and people are struggling to keep up with its rate of change and effect on society.  Katz and Rhodes have developed frames that define what levels people have adopted technology, but the authors are confusing ethics with value systems. The authors have failed to discuss the impact of digital communications in terms of what is ethical (good or bad), but instead discuss value systems in a range of frames that guide peoples’ behaviors (such as whether people adopt technology or not). Whether people adopt technology or not is not an ethical decision in itself. How people decide to use the technology deals with ethics.

Technology is not new. For instance, a fountain pen is technology, and it has been around for over a thousand years. Fountain pens replaced writing with quills. Fountain pens were replaced by typewriters, and typewriters were replaced by computers. A person cannot call a computer ethical or not ethical, just as they would not call a hammer ethical or unethical. Technology is not advancing itself. It is people behind it that are driving it. People who make a website may try to achieve certain results, like increase visitor traffic. A computer isn’t the means to this end, but the people behind it are.

The Katz and Rhodes article also misses the point of technology, which is to improve the quality life for humans. The introduction of digital technology has not changed ethics. Ethics is fundamentally the same. I agree with the authors that technology’s impact is greater than it was in the past (p. 231), but this does not necessarily change how we determine what is ethical. For example, if a student decides to cheat on an exam, is it any more or less ethical if the student cheats on the exam with a smartphone than with notes written on the palm of his hand? Both are ethically wrong. The only difference is one involves digital technology.

 

 

 

Please Trust Me

Spilka, Chapter 9—E-mail in the workplace seems to mean different things to different people. I think e-mail is only as strong as a company allows it to be. It seems that some companies prefer to only use e-mail when you need to involve a group of people in the communication. At my company, we are supposed to use e-mail all the time. Even if I want to talk to the person that sits next to me, I’m supposed to e-mail them instead of talking to them face-to-face. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever been a part of.

I think the most important aspect when using e-mail is to remember that the person(s) you sent the e-mail to can also send that e-mail message to other people. I think this is why it is very important to be ethical and professional in all e-mail communications. The important thing that I’ve learned is that just because I authored and e-mail, it doesn’t mean that I own it and have control over who views it.

Privacy, Trust, and Disclosure—I thought this was a great article. I pretty much shop online whenever I can and if I don’t trust the company that I’m buying from, I will not purchase anything. I trust Ebay because they’ve always refunded my money when something has gone wrong with a different company that sold me an item through their Web site.

Trust

In August, I ordered some seat covers for my golf cart. The company that I bought them from through Ebay sent me the wrong items. I e-mailed the company to get my money back. The company wanted me to pay for the return shipping and then they would refund my money. I told the person that I was e-mailing that I didn’t trust them so I wasn’t going to pay for shipping with the hope that I would get all my money back. The company told me that I can trust them but I didn’t because trust takes a long time to develop in a relationship.

If you’re a company and selling things online, you need to make sure that people get what they expect. If customers are receiving what they expect then they will trust your company and buy more items from you in the future.

Week 12: Machines Me

The two subjects for this week’s readings – ethics and privacy – are some of the most controversial issues that digitally literate people have to deal with. Both readings kind of gave me the creeps. I chose to focus on Katz & Rhodes.

I found this reading to be both interesting and frustrating. I disagree with many of their ideas about the ethical frames of technical relations.

I do not believe in the false frame. The Platonic belief that technology only an “imitation of Knowledge” (p. 233), is not entirely accurate. Technology is the result of knowledge. As such, I do believe that technology fits in the tool frame, “as mechanisms and systems to help their users meet their work goals” (p.234). I can even buy into the means-end frame because it makes sense that technology can be used for “production and profits” and “meeting technical requirements of the technology” (p. 234).

As for the autonomous frame: just no. Their questions, “Have you ever noticed how some systems…are more adapted to themselves, more focused on their own efficiency than on the human being who is the ostensible…user?” (p.234). That argument completely dismisses the role of agency and volition. It’s not the computers that are focused on their own efficiency: it is the people who programmed the computers. Taking agency out of the question renders the argument invalid.

Thought frame is less ridiculous. We do use machines as external extensions of our memories, like phones and PDAs. People, admittedly, even have machines within themselves (pacemakers, hearing aids). However, at my work at least, we do not “…refer to people, things, and actions with words like information, function, connection, transmission, input, output, processing, short-term and long-term memory, and noise in the system…” (p. 236). These terms aren’t exclusive to digital technology. Every one of them existed before the advent of computers. Applying them to a new paradigm is fine, but their logic doesn’t work.

The being frame is a result of the preceding frames. Since many of those are fallacious, the being frame doesn’t hold a lot of water for me. I do believe that people are depersonalized and are often treated as “standing reserve,” but that concept is not acknowledged, nor is it easily proven.

One of the parts that was most interesting to me, and not entirely preposterous, is their proposal that our relationships with machines may go from an “I-It” relationship to an “I-You” relationship, which means that at some point we may refer to machines as other sentient, self-aware beings. I can see that happening if machines become more autonomous and are programmed with beliefs. I do not see this happening in our lifetime. The technology might be there, but acceptance of it is doubtful.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Now for the fun part.

Background information: In my study of memes, I came across a team of folks (Autotune the News) who take daily news, autotune the speakers in the news clips, and set the fabricated “singing” to music.

They might be best known for setting to music the rant of Antoine Dodson, a citizen of Huntsville, Alabama, who was interviewed for a news story about someone breaking into his family’s apartment and attempting to assault his sister.

Autotune the news “songified” the incident:

The folks at Autotune the News have an app that lets you “songify” yourself. This week’s readings talked about how “humans and technology (often merged)” would have relationships with one another.

I decided to preempt this merging and created a song from a paragraph in our text. I read it into an iPad and here is the result. Yes, this is me “singing.” Lyrics are included if you want to sing along. Machine Me

What Will You Share Online?

Privacy has and I venture always will be a hot topic when dealing with the internet. If you are a Facebook fan, do you recall a recent post being circulated that indicated to look at the address bar while in Facebook? You were to determine whether your present location prefix was http or https.  The (s) at the end of http in the URL indicates the information shared is being done so via secure settings.  But, how many people really look for this and/or that telltale closed padlock that could also exist on the lower right of their browser?

Amazon.com is more trusted than a bank

I want to share with you an actual conversation that occurred in my Chiropractor’s office the other day.  I had my IPad out as usual while waiting and this usually creates a few questions. The conversation moved on to internet access and how people use the internet. The receptionist, who is approximately 60 years of age, made the statement that she doesn’t understand how anyone could use internet banking. To do financial transactions online is just too risky.  I asked her if she ever purchased anything online, and she responded that she did. She even added that the sites she goes to she “knows” are safe.  I asked her how she knows and she responded “I trust the companies”.

As we continued talking, I told her that I felt that the bank was much safer to deal with online because of a variety of issues:

• The banks are regulated and are mandated to make sure through multiple different strategies that our transactions are safe
• The banks already use the internet to do transactions themselves whether we partake or not
•  Banks have a larger stake in our safety than does any other random vendor online

What creates trust on the internet?

The interesting issue here is that even armed with this knowledge, she was not convinced that her bank was at least as safe as Amazon.  I wonder if this has to do with the advertising and global presence of companies like this as opposed to the businesslike demeanor of her local bank.  Or maybe it is the locality that used to instill trust, but now when it is coupled with the World Wide Web, presents an image of distrust – or, at least incompetence with new technology.

So now I begin to wonder.  I know many people who blurt out on Facebook personal information, when they will be out of town and the like, but are oblivious to the securities on the site. I also know many of these same people who will not utilize their bank’s online features because they are unsafe.  They have been using Facebook for 3 years but have been with their bank for 20.  What is up with this?  In addition, they will click randomly on links that cause malicious events on their computer (could even be installing keyloggers) then trot on down to Amazon.com or TigerDirect to make a purchase.

 I am not saying that these websites are not secure – I use them myself. I just do not understand the rational as to what is secure and what is not. And once again, I have posted more questions than answers!!

 In weeks past, we have discussed many elements of social interaction on the internet and one of these may, indeed be an indicator as to why people trust on the internet the way they do.  Facebook comes up again as a huge meeting place for people on the internet. People trust people.  When a person visits a social site each day or even each week and see others in their group trusting online businesses, they are much more likely to trust them also. In addition, just the presence of these businesses as advertisements on the social networking page can add to that trust factor.  Does the local bank advertise online? Probably not.

Image References:

http://www.unitedfcs.com/assets/images/secure_messaging_new.jpg

http://www.unitedfcs.com/assets/images/online_banking(2).jpg

Technical Communication for Emerging Media – Global Edition

Both the readings by Spilka and Ishii were eye-opening to me and went quite far to validate the fact that we see the world through our own eyes.  Up until this time, I had been considering emerging media in general as an American artifact, when there is no question this has to be taken as a global event.

This is not to say that each country or culture has an obscure view of media relations. In fact, there are many similarities. Ishii’s references to Japanese youth when she says “there has been a trend for young people to create their own unique subcultures in which they communicate predominately through SMS…” (Ishii, p 346) is a compelling likeness to what has been happening in the United States during the same timeframe.  What is different, as she indicated through research findings, is that Japanese young people are more introverted and this leads to a greater tendency to use text messages over face-to-face conversations or even telephone.

These global differences continue on in Spilka’s writings. These references to the ways that other countries conduct business hit very close to home for me.  I work for a company, Energy Control Systems, which has both a National and International presence. The international side includes a few salespeople in countries such as Asia, South America, Central America, Mexico, South Africa and others.  Their main product is Sinetamer, a line of surge suppression equipment that is quite useful in these countries. The main impetus to our overseas sales; however, is the owner of our company.  I always thought that he traveled 75% of the time because he liked it. Now I realize that there is more to it than that.  Without his ability to meet face-to-face with contacts in these countries, we would have a lot less international business.  I now have a much better picture of not only what my company does, but of my own responsibilities when I have opportunities to sell overseas.

It seems that culture is a much bigger issue today, than language is.  When I was just out of High School, the biggest issues for college admittance was having so many credits of a foreign language. Today, most colleges no longer have these requirements. It makes me think that culture is, indeed, a more prevalent issue.  It is interesting how my thoughts keep coming back to culture.

 

Week 11 | Consider Cultural Differences for Social Media

The use of social media sites are exploding across the globe.

I enjoyed Thatcher’s Understanding Digital Literacy Across Cultures. He laid the chapter out well, first defining digital literacy (“accessing, understanding, and appropriately using in specific communication situations”) and ethnocentrism (assuming that another culture will use digital media the same as your own), p. 169. He then presented an excellent example where he had to make adjustments in an email that was presented to two different cultures in the U.S. and Mexico. He then discussed the background for understanding how digital literacy relates to cultural conventions (through I/Other, Norms/Rules, and Public/Private degree of involvement). Lastly, he discussed how technical communicators can make adjustments to communication practices for other cultures through five strategies (determining the purpose of the communication, determining the audience, determining the information needs, determining organization strategies, and determining style preferences. Thatcher illustrates his strategies for transforming the Texas Tech University homepage into something that would be more suitable to an audience from Mexico.

Thatcher’s email and website examples are very thorough, and I agree that technical communicators should adapt their digital communication to account for cross-cultural differences. How, though, can technical communicators adapt digital communications for social media, and do these strategies apply?

One company’s blog, Global Partners International Translation Blog states that marketers must localize content for different cultures. Communication through social media in other cultures means determining what local social media networks to use, what languages to use, what topics are trending, and information about the culture. I think this is only the starting point because as the use of popular social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are exploding worldwide, technical communicators should realize that using social media effectively means more than just knowing which medium to use or translating words into another language. I think that Thatcher’s strategies apply to social media. Let’s say Coca Cola wants to have a presence on China’s most popular social media network. The company would have to think about its purpose, audience information needs, style preferences, and maybe to a lesser degree its organization strategies (as social media sites tend to have already set structures).

E-mail–Yes Please

Spilka, Chapters 7—The way Spilka talked about how e-mail worked great in some situations but not so great with “delicate interpersonal communications” is totally true.

At my old job, e-mail was the communication of choice. Everyone used e-mail because it would track your conversation and people could view the content of the e-mail anytime of the day or night. The problem with e-mail was when you would get into an argument with a coworker.

I had a coworker that lived in Indianapolis, Indiana and I lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My coworker showed a customer a confidential drawing that I was going to use in an instruction. The problem was the drawing wasn’t approved and it was going to change. I e-mailed the drawing to my coworker because he wanted to see it so he could get an idea of what was going on. My coworker then e-mailed the drawing to a customer in California to show the customer what was going on. When I found out that the customer had the unapproved drawing, I e-mailed my coworker and told him to call me. He e-mailed me back and told me that he didn’t have time to talk on a phone. The problem was this situation was a delicate interpersonal issue where e-mail would not meet my communication objective because my coworker needed to understand that what he did was completely wrong. After I finally talked to him on the phone, things got figured out and everything was okay in the end.

Spilka, Chapter 8—Writing for cyberspace is always challenging and I think Spilka covered that point. The main thing that kept jumping out to me is when you write anything (paper or digital), you always, always always always have to ask yourself two questions—who is my audience and what is the purpose. When you know the answers to both those questions, you are more likely going to write something that actually communicates with your audience.

A final question: Can someone tell me where the “Ishii, K. (2006).  “Implications of Mobility: The Uses of Personal Communication Media in Everyday Life.” Journal of Communication. 56.2, 346-365” reading is located? I checked all the books and D2L but I couldn’t find it.

Photo found at: http://www.google.com/imgres?q=e-mail&um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&sa=N&rls=en&biw=1280&bih=702&tbm=isch&tbnid=nhJ6lnxYlZ4MQM:&imgrefurl=http://ohinternet.com/E-mail&docid=kWhEyKUxI3JS4M&imgurl=http://cache.ohinternet.com/images/f/f5/E_mail.jpg&w=300&h=336&ei=mQ7ATrScGouEtgeviN21Bg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=877&vpy=135&dur=1194&hovh=238&hovw=212&tx=157&ty=145&sig=110374838443503213469&page=1&tbnh=154&tbnw=138&start=0&ndsp=17&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:0

Social Media and Aps

Please bear with me as I post this. I am using a WordPress ap on my IPad and unfortunately it is a bit clunky. Over the last week, I have tried to find a way to view more than only my own posts, but alas I have yet to figure that out. So far, this ap only allows me to see and edit my own posts. It seems to be an interface for posting alone.

To this end, it is quite elementary at best for even posting, but I am tenacious – I will see how this works out.

As my topic suggests, this is about more than just WordPress. Tonight, as I was checking out some Twitter posts, I came across a tweet that did more for me than any other since I started stalking the Twitterverse.

http://stumpteacher.blogspot.com/2011/01/twitter-102.html

The above link is a must-see for any aspiring Twitter-er? Tweetster? Oh heck, you get the picture. Unfortunately, his reference to an IPad ap (TweetDeck) is a bit premature – there is only a workable ap for the iphone. But, never fear, I plan on testing it out on my laptop.

Oh yea, I suppose I need to take a picture to test this ap and post it here. Let me see if there is a photo option….. alas there is not, but that is all the better because I look like hell right now.

Wait, I found it – here is a picture of my puppy, Spaz. She is sitting here waiting to watch the #DWTS result show – OOPS, I mean Dancing with the Stars.

Well, for some reason,I am having trouble now seeing what I type because the program will not scroll. In the end, I think this ap needs a bit of work!

One last thing, are we allowed to link our posts here to twitter if we want to share them?

alone together etiquette

Ever since I read Alone Together last Spring, my husband and I use Turkle’s book title to describe moments like these, especially when we’re out to eat and I’m tweeting or texting someone.

A friend of mine posted this image on Facebook with the caption, “For my bosses at work.” He works at a management consulting firm, not on a laptop campus like I do, but this led me to wonder about a committee meeting I was at a few weeks ago.

Instead of printing out documents or carrying my laptop with me, I only brought my iPhone and accessed the documents from it. While there were plenty of people at the meeting with laptops and iPads, I felt self-concious after a few minutes because I wondered if people thought I was texting or checking Facebook. For this reason, I made consistent eye contact with whomever was speaking and also kept my iPhone screen visible to anyone near me so they knew I was only looking at meeting-related documents.

Who knows, perhaps no one even noticed, but as the youngest and newest person on this committee, I had to wonder what people might be thinking. What would you have thought about a person reading from his/her phone? Do you work in places where the laptop or Ipad might be more accepted at a meeting than an iPhone or Blackberry? Or does it even matter since we know what Smartphones are capable of these days?

Week 10 Readings: Human + Machine

The Longo reading from the Spilka book was interesting, even though the article was all over the place. She makes several statements about the genuineness of computer mediated interaction:

Virtual communities encourage simulated social interactions that lead to simulated human connections” (p. 148).

Those of us who inhabit digital worlds often claim that virtual communities are like “real” communities or are even better than “real communities, reassuring ourselves that a virtual life is OK, that it is not detrimental to “real” life (p. 155).

As people become more removed from one another in the physical world, we assure ourselves that the technological revolution enabling this alienation facilitates an idealized community, while also dismantling our physical community. This assertion comforts us, because we come to believe that an online virtual world such as Second Life is just like “real” life and is, therefore, OK (p. 156).

These statements just really set me off. I think it is because of the “normal-centrism” of her statements. Both Long and Turkle are criticizing a milieu that attracts people who are often marginalized within their physical communities. People who like games like Second Life, World of Warcraft and other online games are considered “geeky” or “nerdy.” They are either shy or have been teased into isolation or otherwise rejected by others. Now that a different environment has been created where they can thrive, scholars are trying to assert that what they are doing is somehow wrong. Longo asks, “Can virtual social connections established within a human + machine culture satisfy our human need to connect with other people?” (p. 148). If that’s the only kind of interaction wherein these people have been successful, I say, YES!

One of the sources she quotes says “…to “simulate is to feign to have what one hasn’t,” and “simulation threatens the difference between ‘true’ and ‘false,’ between ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’”(Baudrillard p. 167-168). If the choice is to continue to try and insert yourself into a physical social construct that rejects you over and over again versus thriving in an environment where people accept you, most people are going to choose acceptance over rejection.

One of the silly things about this argument is the fact that nobody gets their pants in a bunch when people talk on a home phone. That’s machine-mediated communication, and it is so unsophisticated as to only let you talk to one person at a time. Why aren’t scholars freaking out about telephone calls? They’re studying cell phone use, but why not the cordless we carry all over our homes?

The geeks finally have someplace to be. Like it or not.

Here’s my creative bit for this week. It’s a rap about geeks, to the tune of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, which you can listen to before reading the rap to yourself.

Now, this is a story all about how
My life got flipped-turned upside down
And I like to take a minute: just sit right there
I’ll tell you how I kill a dragon in its lair.

Now out in a suburb born and raised
I was a chubby kid with a funny old face
Kinda getting’ teased when I’m going to school
By the jocks and the greasers who thought they were cool
When a couple of guys who were up to no good
Startin making trouble in my neighborhood
I got in one little fight and my mom got scared
She said ‘You’re playin’ in the basement, now stay down there.”

I begged and pleaded with her day after day
But she bought me a computer and some games to play.
She gave me a keyboard and then she gave me my mouse.
I put my headphones since I was stuck in the house.

World of Warcraft, yo this is bad
Drinking potions out of a round flask.

Is this what the people of Azeroth living like?
Hmmmmm this might be alright.

I joined up in a guild and we had no fear
The monsters said “RAAAR” and we put it in gear
If anything I can say the treasure was rare
Told my guildies – “To the big boss, we’re just about there.”

I pulled up to the dragon cave at 7 or 8
And I yelled to the my guildies “Yo homies this is fate”
I looked at the dragon
We were finally there
I was having an adventure sittin’ right in my chair.

Addendum: I found this yesterday on the internet:

 

PPS. For some reason I thought the creative tag meant I should separate it. Don’t know where I got that idea from but I put it back together with its original post and just clicked the “creative” category. DERP!

Electronic Cultures

 As I contemplate the concept of culture, more specifically cultures in an electronic sense, I find that there are some elements that do not necessarily jibe with main-stream cultural ideas. Online or electronic cultures seem to be a bit more malleable. The members of these cultural communities tend to fade in and out and change much more easily than members of a culture rooted in long-term traditions.  As I thought about this, it seems to me that the reasons could be attributed to the internet itself. As a medium of expression and communication, the internet is a virtual (no pun intended) infant. If this is the case, then how can a culture even exist? Wouldn’t you consider a culture to be something of a more static and solid nature?  Because the traditional connotation of culture conjures images of generations of members who have developed traditions and morals over a period of time, how can the internet produce cultures of its own in such a short period of time?

I would venture to say that the internet has not produced culture.

Culture has been uncovered and nurtured through this device; however, the internet is just this – a portal to view people through and bring them together.  Because you can boot up, log in and figuratively “step through” the portal to a new land, a room full of friends or even the halls of an institution, I see the internet not as the culture, but as a venue for people of similar interests to come together and be recognized.

I have belonged to many cultural societies over the course of my time perusing the internet. What I find interesting is that these societies are not new to my being; they are merely doorways that I step through to do something that I am already inclined to be a part of. I play games (World of Warcraft, Asheron’s Call and others), go to school, and talk about family and other interests that are mere extensions of me, not new me’s.  This is what I mean: The internet did not make me play games; I already played similar games with my family on Nintendo. The internet did not make me learn to cook, sew, bead or do other crafts – it was merely a tool to help me learn.  I could have gotten a book or asked someone or joined a local club for this type of support.  The internet did not make me go to UW Stout; I could have gone to the University in person if I had to.  Facebook was not necessarily for me to speak to my family and friends. If these activities create what someone would call a new culture, then I believe the term needs to be re-thought.

Bernadette Longo makes some great references to online communities in her article: Human + Machine Culture.  Here she refers to the differences between the way non-electronic communities and the universal community that can occur online.  I believe that her reference to the impossibility of a universal community is something I very much agree with. In mainstream communities, there are those that are included and others that are left out.  While this may seem to happen online, (maybe through a facebook page that friends and unfriends), this is but a small aspect of the larger whole.  But what I think is more interesting than this is the commitment that is lacking online. People hope from site to site, and literally take a bit from here and a bit from there but really do not have to commit to anything on the internet. Yes, in our courses we are making commitments; however, can the instructor really holler to you as you leave class and hold you back?  Even an email request can go ignored and later some electronic glitch of an excuse can be noted.

This is actually a first post this week.  As I was reading about culture in Spilka, I just could not resist “sounding off” about the concept of culture.  I also want to post about  LinkedIn as well because this is an amazing resource that I am still getting used to. One of the questions I want to ask is: Should I pay for the full service?

We Gain Nothing If We Lose Our Humanity By Utilizing Technology.

The Rise and Fall of a Company

The evolution from dependence on IT to an overflow of unemployed IT professionals (along with the rest of the company) is something I can relate to.  The company my husband used to work for grew at an astounding rate in the 90’s. In fact, they would hire 20-30 temps each week and as long as they worked out, by end of 30 days, they would be on the permanent payroll. Here is a picture of how fast this company grew: (numbers are estimated)

They needed an entire infrastructure to link the hundreds of employees that worked full time in house as well as programming to handle sales, service and manufacturing. The IT professional was GOD!

The company began their rise to fame, so to speak, with a modest 12 employees, and as you can see by the general timetable above, they were gobbled up and thrown to the wind with little effort.  Six months after this company was bought out, there were 100 scattered employees who were systematically absorbed or let go. The facility is now a ghost town. What used to be miles of corridors marked like streets of a small town is now a molding mess of stagnant air. Because this all occurred in a very small town, the implications for the residents were amazing.

This  company was a pioneer in a field that was very technical and highly in demand, their own need for technology was tremendous. During their hay day, there was an army of IT professionals, miles of coax cable which was then replaced by Cat5 cables connecting a network of computers. An intranet for the entire company with submissions by the departments and a large security force was in evidence.

That was then – This is now

So, why did this company sell out?  There are many thoughts on the subject, but one of them is that the owners were old-school and could not understand the value of the internet. After their rocket rise, they began to falter and lose ground in the industry. They felt that their level of technology should be enough and to spend more on IT functions was frivolous – they were very wrong.

What they were not wrong about is the time it takes to take good care of the customer.  When the new company took over, there was no question that the concern was for the bottom line.  Special programs were designed to track time on call or bring about data to analyze the total amount of cost per intervention on average.  The same technology that was supposed to make life easier for the employee and customer was now being used to squeeze every moment out of every day and pack as much profit into every second. 

As our reading “A Sea Change in Enterprise IT” illustrates (AIIM P. 5), there is a definite evolution of content and I am not sure it is totally for the good.

What I don’t get

I understand that our technology is changing so fast that it is difficult for the professionals to keep up, much less the business people who will be using it.  I also understand that profits, especially in these economic times, are a high concern for businesses.

What I do not understand is how companies can utilize more technology to cut out the personal touch that customer service used to provide, but then use our personal social networking interactions to get into our pockets.  This seems to be like burning a candle at both ends.

I do not agree with the AIIM white paper when it claims that B2C will “use social media to extend and IMPROVE customer service” (AIIM p. 8).  Customer service SUCKS in our country and further automization will only erode what little confidence we have in customer service centers. I do not understand how talking to a computer will be any better than talking to someone who hardly speaks English. 

We definitely need to foster advancements, but I fear that we are replacing humanity with technology all too much.

IMAGE CREDITS:

http://www.communication-type.com/technology-and-human-communication/

Understanding through Poetry

For this week’s reading on information design, I decided to get a little creative. Therefore, I explored three different information architectural elements presented in the article by Salvo and Rosinski through the lens of a Shakespearean sonnet, employing his ab, ab; cd, cd; ef, ef; gg rhyme scheme and using iambic pentameter.

Sitemap: A Sonnet
When writing for the web a scribe should know,
That men and women often can get lost.
Their quest is: ride the information flow;
But sanity could be the reader’s cost.

They ride the ship that leaves behind the shore,
Their origins these people can’t recall.
And find themselves distracted evermore
With hyperlinks that whisper siren’s call.

But like the sextant and compass used past,
There is a tool that saves these weary souls.
A sitemap shows them site from first to last
And helps them reach their information goals.

Once these travelers tame the digi-seas,
They can explore most other sites with ease.

Using Granularity: A Sonnet
As all know, puzzle pieces have their place
With websites info comes in large and wee.
The principle that governs placement space
Is something we call granularity.

When pictures take up every bit and byte,
And text is crammed in tiny as a speck
Applying granularity is right
To keep the page’s balances in check.

Should TPS report be sent by post?
Or sent through faster electronic mail?
Which mode of message can convey the most?
When using granularity: no fail.

Identifying granularity
The finer is increased technology.

The Many Forms of Tags: A Sonnet
If only metadata were applied,
Each piece of info could be simply found.
By labeling each doc you will have tried
To organize and find your way around.

Taxonomy’s another way we can
Form stronger links leading us to the docs.
A limited vocabulary, man.
Like Dewey dec’mal’s system really rocks.

Folksonomy tags info in the cloud,
But keeping tabs on older stuff is hard.
So hash your tweets and keep your trending proud,
But from your past tags you may well be barred.

These types of tools help readers find their way
Through pages on the web both night and day.

But seriously, the Salvo and Rosinski article was an excellent way to learn about the different ways to conscientiously design information so that users can find it. I am glad that we went through all of the spatial metaphors. Right now at work, I am in charge of scanning all existing paper documents and tagging them for retrieval in the Image Now system. Not only do I have to tag documents, I have to come up with tagging classifications and criteria for the different areas (department governance, curriculum, the new school structure, etc.) and I am having a hell of a time wrapping my mind around what I think future users might use as criteria to find a particular type of document. It’s been kind of a nightmare.

Reading up on these concepts gave me a bird’s eye view of what I am doing. It is a whole different way of thinking of things. I have been banging my head against the proverbial wall trying to cram this tagging stuff into a metaphor of a filing cabinet so I could understand how to set up tagging fields. That isn’t working. This reading has helped me gain more insight into what I am doing.
It’s also kind of neat that I AM learning how to set up the criteria and classification. It ties in with what Hart-Davidson says about the future role of technical communicators as content managers. One of the areas that he talks about is “Creating and managing information assets, defining relationships between these and specifying display conditions for specific views of these” (p. 135). I am learning to bring about his “tangible outcomes” by using “Taxnomies, Object metadatas, document type, definitions and schema” (p. 136). Although Image Now management is for an internal document retrieval system, many of the principles cross directly over into content management. The more of these skills I am able to master, the better my chances will be when I look at other jobs.

Week 8 | Social Media are Tools of Influence

This week’s readings cover many topics relating to how people use social media, including Twitter, product reviews (which I feel are a form of microblogging), and Facebook as tools of influence. Dave Clark’s chapter, Shaped and Shaping Tools on the rhetoric of technology is complex by the nature of its subject matter. He says that both rhetoric and technology are difficult to define individually, yet the two concepts go hand-in-hand. Nevertheless, it is even harder to define the rhetoric of technology. Clark says by its very essence, technology is rhetorical. When it comes down to it, Dave is examining how “technologies structure, shape, and influence the ways we communicate (p. 87).”

Twitter’s Influence
The structure of the author’s latest muse was 140 characters. He was marveling at the fact that while it was a simply coded program and a basic concept, the rhetorical implications of Twitter were very powerful. This was because Tweets are public (unless the author has an account with protected Tweets), Tweets are searchable and allow trends to surface, and Tweets in large numbers about the same subject can be powerful. Those who don’t use Twitter, yet have something powerful to say, lose an opportunity to compound the message through this potentially influential tool.

Product Reviews Influence
Twitter is changing how people communicate and who people communicate with. Similarly, other social media outlets are changing the way people shop online. I like how social media influences the way my friends and I shop. “Socialommerce is a referral program on sterroids (Qualman, p. 94), and “consumers are taking ownership of brands and their referral power is priceless (p. 97).” Qualman says that retailers are encouraging consumers to review products because whether a product is good or bad, eliciting feedback only helps the brand either sell more of the product or improve it. I look at online product reviews when I purchase things online and in the store. They often influence my purchasing decisions, too. Sometimes I write product reviews, too.
Yesterday I received an email request from Eddie Bauer to rate some outerwear I recently purchased online. Since reviewing seemed easy to do, and I liked my new purchases, I took a minute to review the products. On the other hand, I have also reviewed products I didn’t think were that great. I bought a clothes drying rack at a Target store. The rack is low quality and keeps falling apart. While I could no longer return it to the store because the 90-day return period had passed, I decided I could at least write an online review in hopes others not to make the same purchasing mistake I did.

Facebook’s Influence
Shoppers consider anonymous online product reviews, but shoppers also seek the advice of people they know via social media. Just the other day, I saw my friend recruited her friends’ advice on Facebook. She wanted recommendations on best smartphones, but not from anonymous reviewers or technology experts. Since people generally feel strongly about phone brands like Droid and iPhone, her friends and family rushed to her aid. She received many comments on the best phones to buy. Seeking advice gave my friend a list of phones to consider and hopefully helped her narrow down her options.
Companies miss an opportunity to connect with consumers when they don’t utilize social media like Facebook. I love shopping at Trader Joe’s, but I feel the company is missing out on a great advertising opportunity by having a profile on Facebook. The store could tell people about new products, new store locations, specials, and fun recipes to try.

Other Clever Ways to Influence Consumers
In “Winners and Losers in a 140-Character World,” Qualman discusses how integrating product advertising into the programming like the Charles Schwab podcast is smart, but it is not new. When I was young, my mom listened to famous announcer, Paul Harvey on the radio. Paul often endorsed products on air like the Bose Wave Radio. He was known for endorsing his favorite products on air (in turn for advertising support for his program). I felt that when Qualman talked about product advertising incorporated into programming, it was a tangent and not so much about social media. However, maybe it is best to think about it as talking to people where they are and where they will listen. Social media are powerful tools, and they shape the way people and companies communicate.

My friend receives many product recommendations on Facebook from friends and family.

This request was for my review of a recent purchase.

I left a rating for the junky drying rack on Target’s website.

Is it time for a Different Social Network?

Is it time for Twitter, is it time for a different  Social Network?

I am not old – I am busy! 
This is my excuse for not utilizing Twitter up until this semester. Of course, when I realized what the content of this particular course would be like, it became apparent that the only way to really understand this phenomenon was to experience it firsthand.

Because the majority of my experience lately is with Facebook, I just assumed that there would be similarities – there are not.  Dave Clark, in his article:  Shaped and Shaping Tools presented me with a much different perspective of Twitter.  When he described his frustration with a program, subsequent Tweet and then an answer from a perfect stranger, it became apparent to me that, unlike Facebook, what we say and do on Twitter reaches the world.

So far, I have found some very interesting Twitter feeds to follow including Mashable, Lifehacker others specifically relating to our school and my own personal interests.  Mashable is purported to be the largest independent online news site and caters to social media. Lifehacker is such an interesting feed and so far. I have seen everything from holiday decorating ideas to feeds about our cyber lifestyles.

This brings to mind our conversations regarding social networking. Because there is not only a possibility, but a probability to meet new people daily through Twitter, I find that this is, indeed a social networking activity.  Not only that, it is much more organized than I ever imagined. My initial impression was that this was a random, willy nilly type of activity where people posted randomly everything from where they were and what they were doing. It is much more than this.  The quality of information available via links and searchable content make this a very powerful resource.

Of course, you will note that what I mostly took away from Clark’s work was his introduction. As he continued on in his writings and the concepts got thicker and thicker, I found that it was increasingly difficult to maintain focus. This is not to say that his concepts and information is not valid and worth study.  I just find a more direct and lest scholarly approach easier to digest.

This being said, Qualman’s readings are much easier to assimilate and compare to real-life situations. His references to the power of social networking are such amazing information. I equate his references to the proverbial drop of water in a bucket. My one purchase may not really mean much on its own, but couple that with the purchases of my friends and their friends and everyone that I am a fan of on Twitter and our bucket is overflowing.

Social Networking on Blogs by Penny C. Sansevieri CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc. is an amazing reference to the power of blogs and their place in the land of social networking.  Penny states in her blog post that

“Commenting on blogs posts is a sort of social networking, even better in fact because blog posts and their associated comments are searchable.”

Just like Twitter, we are able to search blog posts for pertinent information and use this information however we desire.  While Penny’s post relates to the trials of getting a publication noticed, it is a powerful statement about the uses and abuses of blogging.

After going through this week’s readings and paying a bit closer attention to both Twitter and blogs posted on the net, I am coming to feel the immense power of social networking. I am also becoming very disillusioned with Facebook. I am starting to yearn more for interesting concepts and tire of daily drama.  Does this make me a bad person? I am curious – how do you answer the following?

All Restaurants Are Taco Bell (language)

Ok, so I was so tired tonight –  hard day at work. To relax, I grabbed my Ipad, pressed the icon for Netflix and started watching the first fun, sci-fi movie that I saw: Demolition Man (1993).  The movie had not gone very far when I realized the number of references to elements that are in our Turkle readings.

When I think of the “reduction in meaning” that is referenced by Turkle, I think of a lack of intimacy and even a dehumanizing factor that occurs when using technology.  This movie was absolutely packed full of references to just this.  Here are a few:

• The dispatcher answers a call and says something like: “911 – if you would like to speak to a recording, press 1 now”.  DAMN!
• People die and the squad room is shocked, sort of. Moments later when a conveyance is located through technology, everyone is elated and cheers. The deaths are all but forgotten.
• The Compu-Chat program takes on a human personality and is deferred to as such. Even to go so far as to have an upset individual go to the computer for guidance.
• The human police officers utilize a computer to walk them, step-by-step, through a narrative in order to act human.
• The only person (Simon Phoenix), who can master technology can control it. All others are helpless.

Here we have a movie going on 20 years old that is addressing issues that concern us today.  Of course, I am not saying that all restaurants will one day be Taco Bell, but I am saying that to a degree, we are all concerned with technology dehumanizing us.

Customer Centered – Not Corporate Centered

In with the old –In with the new!

I consider myself a pretty computer-savvy and up to date kind of gal; however, right out of the box, many of the concepts that R. Stanley Dicks presented refreshed my thinking. Ok, I was not surprised to find out that “Today, a majority of technical communicators are women…” (Spilka, 51).  What was a wakeup call was the concept that our industry is not only about the here and now – it encompasses generations of techniques and information.

EXAMPLE:

This should not have come as a surprise to me because in my own present industry, we have UPS (uninterruptible power systems) units in the field that were manufactured in the 80’s and earlier. In order to provide technical assistance, we have to utilize old manuals. Sometimes, it is necessary to recap these dusty tomes or adjust our present technology to work on these older units. One example is the ports they provide. A technician can easily communicate with a newer unit via the communications card; however, an older unit used a serial port. As many of you know, serial ports are no more standard today on a laptop than a 3 ½ inch floppy drive. This creates an element of transition and clarification when dealing with these older systems.

Present your greater worth or prepare to be outsourced!

Here is a concept that sends shivers up my spine.  Then again, I suppose there are levels and levels of justification to contend with here. A company that does not make a profit cannot afford to hire and if outsourcing menial tasks keeps the boat afloat, then so be it.  I know that many charge ahead with “buy American!” I agree with this sentiment; however, I am
also a realist and what is real to me is that we live in a global world, not just a local neighborhood. We no longer compete with only the talented individuals in our home town. We now compete with people all over the country and world!

It hit home with me when the book’s discussion centered on a post industrialist society and referred to technical communicators of old as “word smiths” (Spilka 54).  This scenario is
nothing new to our society. There was a time when a person graduated high school (or most often not), went to the factory and worked there as unskilled labor for 40 years until they retired with a pension. These jobs have also been mostly outsourced – it is time for America to work smarter!

EXAMPLE:

As many of you know, I work for a company as a Technical Sales Specialist. What is this? It is not simply a salesperson. In order to protect my job, I need to bring many skills to the table while at the same time helping to keep down costs.  I do this by providing the following:

• Work from home which saves over $600 per month in office expense alone
• Maintain my own records, do my own calls and provide sales and service to my customers as:
  • Main contact
  • Dispatcher for Technicians
  • Quoting units, services, batteries, parts and other for a variety of manufacturers
  • Provide pricing, availability and freight along with tracking information for orders
  • Maintain a database of technical documentation that can be distributed at need
  • Handle technical calls when they arise, and whenever possible at all hours

Customer Centered

There are other benefits that I provide as well, but in the end it is all about planned job security.  I know that I cannot just sit back and do the minimum – this will flag me for replacement.

As is exemplified in the model by Zuboff and Maxim, I have already placed my customer at the center of my universe – I am ahead of the game.  As a matter of fact, I would consider my
model to be one of Customer-Centered, not Corporation-Centered.

Week 6 | Obama Drove His Own Success

I was listening to NPR on the radio on the way home from work on Thursday when an interesting story came on the air. Ahmed Al Omran, a NPR social media intern was discussing the how social media was helping to influence political change in the Middle East in an interview on Morning Edition with host, Renee Montagne. Omran spoke about how new technologies and tools like Twitter and Facebook allowed bloggers in Arab countries to “stimulate and accelerate political change in the region.” He was on a panel at a meeting for bloggers discussing the role of the social media, and discussed this with Montagne:

MONTAGNE: You know, much was said about Twitter at the time because Twitter, of course, is much quicker and can really, you know, help organizationally. What are people there saying about the role of Twitter?

OMRAN: I was sitting on a panel about the role of Twitter on the first day, and most people on the panel seemed to agree that while Twitter was important to help people to organize and also to get the word out, and then it’s just a tool. You know, we cannot call this a Twitter revolution or a Facebook revolution. It’s the revolution of the people. And the people in that revolution would use whatever tools that are available to them.

I thought, bingo, Omran—it wasn’t Twitter or Facebook that caused Obama to be elected to presidency in 2008. Obama was just using whatever tools he had available on the road to presidential victory, and using them extremely well. I disagree with Qualman’s comment in Socialnomics that “Obama would not be president without the Internet (Qualman, p 87).” It’s hard to say what would have happened if Obama ran a traditional advertising campaign. That is a speculative premise. Would Obama not have used traditional media well enough to win the election?

When all was said and done, the campaign was still about people casting votes. People voted for Obama because he connected with them. He was extremely charismatic, he had a popular message of political change, and he didn’t have much political baggage. Like Montagne said with tools like Twitter, his messages were delivered quickly, and the conversation between presidential hopeful and voters was a two-way conversation. People connected with the man through his camp’s tweets and behind the scenes footage. Obama’s eloquent speaking abilities sealed the deal with the American public.

This reminds me of another presidential hopeful who used new media to his advantage. John F. Kennedy used television to his advantage over Richard Nixon during the famous televised debate between the two. Kennedy looked glowing and calm while Nixon looked haggard and nervous. That was a milestone debate because after it, everyone learned that makeup and camera charisma was essential to putting the right foot forward on TV. Obama wasn’t elected because he had the internet, although he was the first presidential candidate to utilize social media tools extremely well to connect with people.

Dicks and Qualman: Thematic Trends

During this week’s readings, I identified a few shared themes that both authors touched on – although their approaches were very different. In this week’s post, I’ll review both authors’ ideas about two topics: middlemen and specialization.

Middlemen Beware

Both authors agree that, in the new information economy, there will be fewer communication obstacles between parties in corporate relationships. That means fewer “middlemen,” no matter what relationship.

The first example of middleman elimination is in regards to internal corporate communication. According to R. Stanley Dicks in his article “The Effects of Digital Literacy” from the anthology Digital Literacy for Technical Communication, supervisors are becoming less and less necessary as knowledge workers become more savvy and come into the workplace at a similar educational level as their supervisors. During the industrial age, supervisors oversaw eight to ten workers. Dicks asserts that supervisors can now lead 30-40 workers due to their education and motivation levels (p. 67-68).

Qualman, in his book Socialnomics, makes a similar argument about the layers; however, his assertions cover the relationship between company and consumer. Web 2.0 has given customers the power to communicate directly with the company – and with their peer groups in regard to a company’s products, services and behaviors. In the past if a customer had a complaint, the only recourse they had was to contact customer service. Since customer service calls were private, one-on-one conversations the general public wouldn’t know anything about problems. Compaines could more easily get away with shoddy products or services. These days, companies need to be watchful. With the transparency of Web 2.0, customer experiences – whether good or bad – are broadcast to the world. Qualman states, “…the  iddlemen are becoming less important than they’ve been in the past, and the rise in power is shifting rapidly to the social graph” (133).

Specializing

The authors both touch on the idea of specialization, but approach them from very different angles.

A running theme in the Dicks reading is the idea that technical communicators must abandon the old paradigm of being solely writers and editors, and embrace a broader view of their role in the future. He asserts that technical communicators should become “symbolic-analytic workers,” who are able to “analyze, synthesize, combine, rearrange, develop, design and deliver the same information that they or others will then modify for multiple audiences” (p.54). He also claims that technical communicators may want to learn skills outside their normal purview, like “…learning about Extensible Markup Language (XML), databases, and some light programming…” (p. 70). Workers who develop these skills are less likely to be casualties of companies outsourcing writing and editing duties.

Qualman explores the importance of specialization from a company marketing perspective. He discusses the fact that many companies try have a broad appeal by advertising many of their features rather than homing in on a specialty. Rather than use scattershot marketing to hit as many potential targets as possible, these days companies have to emphasize how they’re unique, both to set themselves apart and to let their niche customers find them. “If you don’t have a niche position in a marketplace that you are  attempting to defend from your competition, and you are trying to be all things to all people, then you are doomed to failure” (p 128).

As can be seen from the readings, experts are finding trends in this new information age of ours. Although their approaches are different, I think it’s interesting that these themes keep popping up on parallel tracks. Has anyone else noticed any interesting trends in our readings?

Steve’s Apple

“Three Apples changed the World, one seduced Eve,one fell on Newton and the third was offered to the World,half bitten by Steve Jobs.” – BBC

 

RIP Steve Jobs

In Laura Gurak’s 2001 book Cyberliteracy: Navigating the Internet with Awareness, she defines “cyberliteracy” as inherent of four traits:

• SPEED:  the Internet inspires speediness; it is one of the key features of Internet communication.  And this speed inspires certain behaviors and qualities.
• REACH:  partner of speed and one of the axioms of communication technology.  Digitized discourse travels quickly and it also travels widely to reach thousands, even millions, quickly!
• ANONYMITY:  sometimes you really never know who is at the other end of an electronic text.  In cyberspace, the identity behind what you see floating on the screen is not always what you imagine.
• INTERACTIVITY:  online communications technologies allow you to talk back.  Interactivity inspires us to consider—access to the inner circle [everyone can be part of the discussion and step through the screen], capacity to talk back [form communities of common interest], a two-way presence online [the lure of an audience of millions], ecommerce and connections to the customer [ways for customers to interact with each other and with customer service], privacy [more interactive a site, the greater the potential for privacy problems]

I mention this tonight to call attention to the first two traits. The speed with which news of Steve Jobs death has spread across Twitter and Facebook is astounding. And many of the “RIP” messages and memorials exemplify the reach he and Apple products have had over the years.

Apple.com now looks like this:

 

 

 

with the following call on http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/:  “If you would like to share your thoughts, memories, and condolences, please email rememberingsteve@apple.com.”

Google and Wired.com already have tributes up as well, but I’m most interested in seeing what Apple does with the emails it receives. Online memorials & crisis communications are very interesting to me…I’ll write more on this as the news emerges.

Oh, yeah. And Qualman too…

I think it is very interesting to see Qualman’s “Jane the Idaho Blogger” scenario in action. Initially there was little to no major media coverage of the Wall Street protests that are happening. I kept getting updates on my Facebook page linking to blog stories about the protests. I think that so many people were disseminating information that the major media outlets were forced to cover it or look like they were siding with corporate. Silence can be an endorsement.

Back in the olden days, big media could have ignored this and Nobody Would Have Known About it. Had it not been for social media, this would have been a non-story, and the lack of viral information would probably have killed it after the first couple of protests.

Here’s the most recent story one of my friends linked on Facebook: http://wapo.st/qXQExI

Week 5 Reading Response

The Spilka reading covered a lot of ground. The forward and intro were good to put everything into context.

It’s true that the digital revolution has changed everything. After having done the digital narrative about myself, this was another way for me to see how I grew up in tandem with technology. Everything that was mentioned is stuff I worked with, dabbled in, or was away from by one  degree of separation. My husband has been a computer guy since I met him, so even if I didn’t work with programs myself, I learned from him what they were and how they worked.

I was just a kid during Phase 1, was in junior high and high school during the Desktop Revolution of Phase 2, was in college and in my first jobs during Phase 3 and was working in advertising during Phase 4. How exciting to be on a parallel track with the technology that has changed the world so much.

In a lot of ways, this article has bummed me out. I am on the wrong end of the seemingly two-pronged path of technical communication. I’m on the creative side that’s being farmed out or shipped overseas. I feel that the creative skills are not valued as much as those of the technical/programmer/software engineer. In some ways even I feel like they have the “money” skills, but I think writing has to be valued differently. To communicate effectively, you need to be able to write clearly. If you want to convey meaning or persuade, you need to have a much more subtle grasp of the English language. Just like some people have talent to program script, some people can see shades of meaning within words that can make the difference between a good piece of copy and a great one.

It makes me worry about the career path that I’ve chosen. If it is of so little value, what can be done to change the field enough to be relevant again? One of the paragraphs that stuck out the most for in the introduction is the section where Spilka asks,

“How many of us fully understand all new types of technology that have sprung up in recent years?…Do the changes mean that we need to abandon skills that we have worked so hard to acquire and to set aside strategies that have worked for us in the past, but that have become   outmoded? Has the time arrived that we now need to work especially hard to acquire new skills and to develop and try out new strategies?” (Spilka, p.9)

As the meme says: “Wat do?” http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wat-do

Week 4 | It’s a Social Media Explosion!

Upon reading this week, I gained a better understanding of social media. I see it as an influential exploding social force. Having a social media presence is not just for teenagers, but for professionals and companies alike. The readings better defined social media, and I picked up a few great vocab words along the way. These include:

• Braggadocio-describing Facebook posts that boast of awesome fun adventures one recently had (I went mountain climbing and parasailing last weekend, and wow it was awesome—aren’t you jealous sort of thing).
• Vanity search-Using a search engine to search oneself and especially one’s company to get a clear picture of what the public is saying about the person or the company.
• Microblogging-Short form of blogging, like Twitter
• Web 2.0-Website view interacts with the website, as opposed to viewing it passively
• Social Media-Content developed by users
• Social Networking-Building relationships and sharing information (a part of social media)

All the readings did not draw a clear line between personal social media use and professional social media use. They all bounced back and forth between the two. It is somewhat symbolic though, as I read in Socialnomics that the lines between work and play for young generations tend to be fuzzy. For this generation, some would prefer, using some of the the work weekday for play (i.e., social networking) and using the weekends to catch up on work (Qualman, 55).

I was surprised to read that social media was overtaking email and that young generations feel that it is yesterday’s method of communication (Qualman, 46).I was even more surprised to read that Boston College was no longer providing students with BC email addresses. An article on Read Write Web stated that students already have online identities established, including email addresses.

Companies are discovering how to leverage influence in consumers’ eyes. Companies like Nike are providing valuable and useful tools like jogging aps. The consumer uses the tool and feels like they own the brand—make it a part of who the person is. The person using the ap shares results of a jog with friends on Facebook (with subtle Nike branding), and voilà, Nike’s sphere of influence expands to all the people on the jogger’s Facebook page.

My company started a Facebook page. It’s safe to say that whatever is posted on the Facebook page is a part of the West Yost brand. Whatever I put on my own Facebook page becomes my individual brand. A corporate Facebook page is slightly different in that it’s more about what other people are saying—good or bad.

Comcast came up several times in the readings as case studies. Comcast provides internet, cable, and phone to millions of customers. However, Comcast has strong competition, including Time-Warner, AT&T, DirecTV, Dish Network, and others. Comcast must pay attention to what people say about the it, especially customers who make decisions about which service provider to use. People—potential customers—pay attention to what others are saying. What was said about a company use to be more company controlled. With social media, the user now plays a strong role in what is said about a company. Companies like Comcast must find out what others are saying and make sure
customers are happy.

Social media is influential in behavior modification, in both companies and individuals. If a company with a Facebook page doesn’t have anything to brag about (like winning awards), social media dictates that the company might modify its behavior and do things that are more interesting or beneficial. Likewise, a teenager might be influenced to behave herself if she knows that her mother, who is in her social friend network, might see whatever mischief the teen has been up to if it is posted on Facebook.

Social media is definitely influential at a corporate and individual level. I thought of a few types social media may not be as compatible with. This includes psychologists  with crazy stalker patients, recluses, members of the CIA, indigenous tribes on remote tropical islands, criminals, and antidisestablishmentists. The article, “Is Social Networking for You?” discusses that in claiming and shaping an online footprint, businesses can grow their sphere of influence and take charge of their initiatives (Molisani, 11). Professionals alike should use social media because having an internet footprint can bolster credibility. (Molisani, 12-13). Those not in the groups I mentioned should give social media and social networking a shot.

Just what is Social Networking, and can we learn about society by studying this phenomenon?

Reading Response:

Just by looking at the titles to read, it is plain that the beginning of our blogging starts at – the beginning. While this may seem simplistic to some, it is a vital art of setting the stage for the articles that lay ahead. As communicators, it is always a great idea to lay everything out so that we are all on the same page.

My reference above to laying everything out was definitely confirmed when I began to read Boyd’s definitions.  More specifically, I always wondered about the term “social networking” it almost gave me the impression of working to socialize with people you do not know.  I always felt that this was not an apt identifier for blogs, Facebook and the like because as we know, these sites are most often utilized between people that already know one another. Our text agrees when it says “…instead, they are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network” (Boyd, 2).

The site that most accurately fits this description for me is LinkedIn. Here I have not only linked to others in my own industry, I have made connections to people that I have yet to meet.

Early Development:

It was quite refreshing to see how many references there were to the actual development of Social Networking. The internet itself did not develop into this full-blown entity over night, and neither did sites like Facebook.

Technology:

The references made to the fact that “…servers and databases were ill-equipped to handle its rapid growth…” (Boyd, 6), are so accurate. I remember early internet usage being so frustrating due to the hardware issues at many different sites not to mention providers themselves.  But, we didn’t know any better and most often took it with a grain of salt.  If these same issues would happen today – it would get quite ugly.

Networks and Network Structure:

I have to say that the most interesting section for me was in the Boyd paper under Networks and Network Structure. At the very outset when the author states: “Social network sites also provide rich sources of naturalistic behavioral data” (Boyd, 10), I got a glimpse of some of the ways automatically collected data could produce interesting sets of information.  What concerns me about this data is its credibility. Can we really rely on this information when the people providing it are hidden from our view and used to putting on a show? Or, is it the show that provides for the best data?

On this note, I found an amazing video featuring Jon Kleinberg, the Tisch University Professor in Cornell’s Department of Computer Science. This speech was recorded on July 20, 2011 so has a great deal of relevance and immediacy.

http://www.cornell.edu/video/?videoID=1648

In this 1 hour 22 minute video: What can Facebook, Amazon and Google teach us about society and about ourselves? Jon provides insights not about what the “answer” to the question is, but to how to think about the question to obtain answers.

On a Personal Note:

My first experience with a social networking site was MySpace and I only became interested in it because I was monitoring what our teenage children were doing on the Internet. Prior to this, the other social experience was with Microsoft’s chat rooms and online games.  I was what was considered a “sysop” for the
community along with my husband.  We were empowered with special tools throughout the system. Our job was to monitor openly and in a hidden mode, the gaming chat rooms to be sure that codes of conduct were followed. Our toolset allowed us to gag, kick and ban people from these rooms.

In addition to the job at hand, I also spent a great deal of time “training” other sysops.  This entire structure fell apart as the internet grew more sophisticated. Eventually (not unlike the Musketeers) our ranks were disbanded and technology took over.

This was an early trial and error attempt at social networking. I can only look at where we are now, and wonder where we will be tomorrow.

This Week’s Readings: Likes and Dislikes

Boyd & Ellison: Like

I have long been a fan of danah boyd. Ever since I first heard of her back in 2009 when I started the program, she has been a great source – my go-to specialist when it comes to social media. She seems to be very tapped into the social aspect of social media and I appreciate her insight
and the way she interweaves herself into her commitment of the discipline. I’d love to meet her someday.

Her collaborative “Social Network Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship,” with Karen Ellison was an excellent look into the background
of the phenomenon that so many of us are interested in. I especially was fascinated by the idea that who you are friends with is a social marker showing how you fit into the context of your peer group. They state, “Another aspect of self-presentation is the articulation of friendship links, which serve as identity markers for the profile owner (boyd & Ellison, 2007).

I also enjoyed reading the history of the different forms of social media, just like I enjoyed watching the fictionalized movie The Social Network. I like to know where our overarching, taken-for granted phenomena come from. I’m kind of a history nerd that way.

Qualman: Like…with reservations

I’ve read either all or most of Socialnomics before. In the portion that we read, I am fascinated by the fact that people are, “…willing to have open diaries within social media because their ultimate desire is to feel a part of something larger” (Qualman p.42). Although I agree, (as I do with most of his points), sometimes the evidence backing his very broad assertions just isn’t there. He does a good job of using quotes and giving examples, but I don’t see any hard research backing a lot of his stuff up.

For chapter three, he uses one anecdote of an 83-year-old man and one of a “mother of three” to back up his claim that social media makes
us more reflective on our lives. Maybe, but that’s shaky evidence. Also, his claim that “reality tv” is out and is being replaced by “reality social media,” seems ridiculous. If anything, the horror that is reality tv seems to be expanding and driving out all semblance of common sense and dignity from television programming. (Ask me how I really feel…)

Turkle: Dislike

The ethics of this study are mentioned a few times, but this trainwreck of a study is unconscionable. Testing AI dolls on vulnerable populations (emotionally fragile children) made me sick. Exploiting them by writing about it in this book is horrible. I read most of this book before for another class, and I don’t remember reading this. It was painful. “What we ask of robots shows us what we need” (Turkle, p.87) may have turned out to be true for these kids, but the cost of finding out was too much, in my opinion. It was like pulling the wings of an insect to see what it would do.

Molisani: Like

This quick overview of uses for social networking was concise, yet comprehensive. It showed social  networking benefits that many may have been overlooked by newcomers. It also reinforced the idea that what you put out there tells people a lot about you, so be careful what you say. I also appreciated the mention of the importance of one’s “internet footprint.” That’s something I am hoping to develop through this class.

Baron: Like

I remember having read this a while back, and it’s a good refresher. It’s interesting to read this stuff that was – just a few years back – so fresh. Although the technology has zoomed along apace, I think that the behaviors (avoidance, screening people, racking up the friends) is as true today as it was five years ago when they did the study.

I have to admit that I am totally addicted to Facebook. I am kind of an introvert in a lot of ways, so Facebook allows me to stay in contact, without it being too overwhelming. That’s part of why I like this major, too, is because I like time to be able to digest information before I interact. Don’t get me wrong – I like hanging out with people and being around people, but it often wears me out rather than gives me energy. Facebook provides me the information and light interaction that I crave, and it also provides a platform for further contact.