The Illusion of Privacy in a Public Space
While we all are vaguely aware of the risks that can occur when we post personal information to social media sites, we still do it. Unfortunately, many of us fall prey to the“Privacy Paradox” that occurs when we are not aware of the public nature of the internet. Oftentimes this is because we believe in the illusion of boundaries, and that these sites will protect us.
Yet, posting to social network sites not only concerns privacy, but can have legal consequences as well. In Boyd and Ellison’s article “Social Networking Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship” they state “The legality of this hinges on users’ expectation of privacy and whether or not Facebook profiles are considered public or private” (p.222). In other words, the uncertain boundaries between whats public and private on social networking sites are forcing us to challenge the legal conception of privacy.
To illustrate, in Wausau Wisconsin, DC Everest High School suspended a group of students from their sports seasons after photos of the students drinking from red solo cups surfaced on Facebook. While school officials couldn’t prove the teens had been drinking, they believed the correlation between the iconic red cups and a beer bash was enough grounds for suspension. As a way “to kind of make fun of the school”, the teens decided to throw a root-beer kegger.
Once the party was in full swing, its no surprise that a noise complaint was called in to the police. At first glance, it looked like an underage party with mobs of teenagers, booming music, drinking games and of course-red solo cups. However, when the cops came to bust what they believed to be a group of underage drinkers, not a drop of alcohol was to be found. Instead, they found a quarter keg containing 1919 Classic American Draft Root Beer. Infuriated, they breathalized nearly 90 teens and every single one blew a 0.0%. As a result, the students were able to prove their point that you can have a party and drink non-alcoholic beverages from red cups.
Needless to say, the story created a buzz and soon made local and national news. Did the school have a right to interject? Or is underage drinking something that should be between students and police? What are our rights concerning online privacy? And how does the law play into all of this?
Stepping away from the light hearted nature of the story above, personal content posted to social media sites can oftentimes have more more serious, threatening ramifications to users. Identify theft, stalking and even murder are all real consequences that can and have occurred. Despite hearing these stories, we continue to make it easy for anyone, including hackers, to access our personal information because it is readily available to anyone with a computer or mobile device.
Consequently, the boundaries between whats public and whats private on social media sites are ambiguous. Even more, “…there often is a disconnect between our desire for privacy and our behaviors” (p.222). So, the real question of how to resolve this issue remains. Would more restrictive settings on these sites help us? Or, as Jonathan Zittrain’s talk suggests, do these sites have a duty to look out for us and minimize potential risks?
While the answers to these questions are uncertain- the need for a more educated and proactive public is. If we are able to fully understand the extent of our actions, perhaps we would take more precautions. Knowledge is the solution to protecting our online privacy and minimizing potential risks. Now it is just up to us to use it.
I am a happy go-lucky monkey cockroach.
Why is it when people want to relax after a hard day at work that some self-appointed authority figures want to try to ruin it for the majority? These uptight authority figures are scholars who found the treasure trove of social media, and have decided that the best way to keep their paychecks rolling is to argue and complain about how social media is not being used to the scholars’ intelligence standards. Well, I cannot argue about them making money with their complaining about social media, as making money from social media is one reason that social media exists.
Most of the people who are posting their thoughts and experiences in social media are using a wide variety of media, such as texts, photos, videos, and etc. Most people are posting for their friends and family; they are not doing it to establish an audience. While some people believe that if you do not like a posting, just move on or post a complaint, or, even better, just block that person, scholars such as Andrew Keen decided write nasty opinions about social media websites’ users. According to The Wall Street Journal‘s article “Full Text: Keen vs Weinberger” (2007), Keen claims that social medias websites’ users are “monkeys” and “cockroaches,” and that our postings are “infantilized self-stimulation rather than serious media for adults.” Furthermore, he states that users’ copy and pasting media (such as YouTube videos, Pinterest, etc.) is “creating a generation of media illiterates.”
Interesting theory, but Keen is wrong. If Keen wants serious adult time on social media, he could create his own online group, or stay at work. When most people need a break from adulthood, they turn to social media, so what? The medical field has stated that we need a work/life balance, so relaxing with a cat video that someone copied and pasted from a social media website is perfect. And from someone whose mother is learning how to use the Internet, copying and pasting anything online is a skill, thus I cannot believe that any generation is media illiterate. Many social media websites were created for connecting with others and allowing users to show off their personality, so social media was created for entertainment, not specifically for intellectual debate, although there could be groups created on these websites for such discussions.
So, how are these scholars finding all of our postings, which are leading to a “digital abundance …to intellectual poverty” (WSJ)? It turns out that what many scholars find disgusting about our postings, they cannot wait to read and analyze. boyd and Ellison, in their article, “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship,” stated that scholars gather information from users’ profiles, forums, and discussion groups for research, and that this information “offers unprecedented opportunities for researchers” (2008, p. 224). I find this very disturbing, that some stranger may be taking much of a user’s posts, friendship connections, and etc. and then analyzing this information for a paper. (Should not the user first be contacted, asked for permission, and receive compensation?) I believe that other people who know about these scholars’ plans do not like this as well, because of the following message that can be found posted on a great number of profiles on FetLife:
I had often wondered why people would have this message posted on their profile page. Who would research people’s profiles? I had never thought to ask, but after reading bodyd and Ellison’s article, I understand that users’ posted information is indeed being used for many purposes. Besides one purpose to tear social media websites down for users’ “digital narcissism” (WSJ), another purpose may be to shape how we see the world, done by website companies themselves.
Now, in Jonathan Zittrain’s talk on the “Is The Internet Taking Us Where We Want to Go?” (Aspen Institute, 2015) panel, Zittrain states that websites like Google and FaceBook use algorithms, that can control what a user sees in a search or in their news feed. For example, he reports that these companies have altered searches (Google can remove people’s history, among other things) and change what appears in a news feed (not letting certain news stories to go viral). In these cases, I do not mind companies not allowing us information because these are free websites, and they have to make their money somehow to pay for all the bandwidth that users burn through. However, if users were paying to use these websites, then whether these companies liked users’ postings, content, etc. or not, users should be able to see everything, and the companies should not be able to force their opinions on the users of how they think the world should be.
Thus, for some social media websites, many users may not be aware that the social websites that they are using for enjoyment and staying connected to others are using their information in way that the user may have never wanted. Because many of these social websites are free to use, some users would be fine with having their information used for marketing, but not for research and analysis. For those who do know what the scholars are doing with their information, some users have posted messages telling people not to use their information for research purposes. If having one’s information used as research was not bad enough, there are scholars complaining how we are using the social media websites for play and not for intellectual discussions. For those scholars, I believe that they need stop forcing a false doomsday on people and enjoy what was meant to be enjoyed. If these scholars feel that they really do not like a path that social media is taking, then they need to stop complaining and find a way to make it better. If they cannot, they can always build something for people like themselves. The Internet is large; there is plenty of space for them, the cockroaches, and the monkeys too.
References
Aspen Institute. (2015, July 4). The Internet Taking Us Where We Want to Go? [Video File]. Retrieved from YouTube https://youtu.be/rGUvi5qv6BU?t=29m34s
boyd, d. m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 224.
The Wall Street Journal. (2007, July 18). Full Text: Keen vs Weinberger [Web log comments]. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB118460229729267677
Social Network Blog
In Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship (2007), Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison catalog the history and rise of social network sites (SNS). They describe and timeline. Social networks emerged, declined; Facebook learned from others mistakes and then took over the world. Boyd and Ellison differentiate that “network emphasizes relationship initiation” whereas “social network sites…enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks” (p.211). Boyd and Ellison show us the “science;” Andrew Keen and David Weinberger argue exposure, fault, privacy – cockroach.
The giant cockroach; I didn’t need that visualization. That’s what The Internet Is Not the Answer (2015) author Andrew Keen calls social media “authors-formerly-known-as-the-audience” in a web 2.0 woe and pro point/counterpoint with David Weinberger. I admit I’m on team Keen and slide more so into negativity as he laments the chattering “digital narcissism,” lack of art, and death of objectivity as more amateurs become authors on the web full of “lost truth.” His point is “the Web is us…a mirror rather than a medium” (214). What happened to us?
Weinberger and Keen bait each other, make good points, and I found myself checking the New York Times (NYT) bestsellers list: http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/combined-print-and-e-book-nonfiction/list.html and the Top 40 hits for today: http://www.at40.com/top-40/chart/38049. Not sure what I thought I could tell from that since I don’t recognize any of the music. But I see Weinberger’s point that the Web is meant to reach far and it’s far-reaching. He sees the good; Keen doesn’t.
This is killing me. Six hours in, numerous edits, and I still haven’t produced anything worthy of a blog. So I throw in a RedBox movie on teens and social media. For someone looking for a ray of sunshine in the cloud of crap online, this choice was a big mistake. Has anyone seen Men, Women, and Children (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHMqpwnUazY) with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Garner?
It’s a worst-case, but probably all-to-real look at what’s going on with our families, and kids constantly exposed to, and numbed by social media. I want to scream. Kids can’t socialize without a device, families can’t communicate, and every tool leads to porn. Mom preaches Internet and social media safety to neighborhood groups, installs cameras in her kid’s rooms, keystroke loggers on computers, and insists her daughter take her phone everywhere “so I can track you.” One girl intent on becoming a Kardashian-ism makes a selfies site so modeling agencies can see her gift. Then Mom adds provocative photos of her in an effort to get her noticed. Oh, it does. Dad laments the missed “rite of passage” of finding his son’s porn magazines – it’s all on the web. So he does what any Dad would; checks it often – and orders an escort. Helicopter Mom psycho-checks daughter’s FB, MySpace, Twitter, and email. She’s safe, right? Except in gym where her friend nonchalantly shares her latest cell phone captured sex act. Everyone is desensitized, devoid of common sense and self-worth, and addicted to technology. Do I have to be that Mom?
I know there’s good stuff out there. TED Talks (https://www.ted.com/talks) amaze me; speakers people are brilliant, inspired, informed, and show me a new way to think. My kids take Udemy (https://www.udemy.com) and Kahn Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org) courses, and I wouldn’t have found this program without the Internet. But I just learned that once you put something on the Web it’s out there forever. Don’t laugh at me. I just realize why I haven’t seen classmate blogs; I’m on the UWStout720 site. Sigh. My kids are on social network sites, but not Facebook (http://facebook.com) since us “old people” took it over. But they tweet, YouTube (https://www.youtube.com), and visit places I don’t know about. I better show them that movie. Right after I install cameras and recording devices on everything. Thank God, they don’t have cell phones.
Natasha’s Test Blog 2
As soon as I began reading “The Rhetoric of Reach: Preparing Students for Technical Communication in the Age of Social Media” by Hurley and Hea, I felt like I was being sold the “social media/blogging ruins professionalism” ordeal that’s been a major part of my young, professional life. I’m often advised to delete all of my social media accounts because simply having one looks bad to potential employers, and many of my friends have actually stopped using social media due to this fear. I feel like the majority of people have a negative connotation about social media because the media showcases the career ending follies of irresponsible, formerly successful professionals.
Examples of the ways social media can hurt you are rampant as ever, however the most brilliantly glorious professional social media successes are so seamless they go unnoticed. The article instantly made me think of 1 company that single handedly proves how essential social media is to technical communication. Apple uses their social media presences like no company I’ve ever seen.
Apple is THE master of social media advertisement and technical assistance. Around a month before the annual iPhone release (that’s completely shrouded in secrecy), new iPhone rumor sites begin popping up in Google searches, and on Facebook to strike up interest. Arguments and debates spring up alongside questionable “leaked images” to get the Apple junkies excited to see the new device. I’m not sure if Apple is actually responsible for this commotion, but it seems unlikely that they aren’t as it’s the perfect marketing strategy.
By the time the iPhone release video is available, the Apple fan base is so anxious to see if their speculations were realized that millions of users stream the live video feed and bombard Twitter, Instagram and Facebook with #iPhone trends. I’ve been around to watch cell phones rise to their current popularity, and I have yet to see an HTC, or Samsung Galaxy raise as much release day insanity as an iPhone.
By the time iPhone pre orders become available, customers can hardly pre-order because within the first 5 hours Apple has literally sold more iPhones than they have in existence at that point. Many pre orders aren’t filled for months, and people just keep on buying. The well produced videos and easily sharable links and videos saturate the internet, convincing America that they need the newest addition.
On the technical communication side, the Apple Support Communities are a series of community forums that are incredibly helpful for tech support. The beauty of this site is that it is the ultimate FAQ, some answers come from Apple Geniuses and others from other users. You simply type in a few key words about the issue you’re facing, and a list of responses appears in past threads. These forums are incredibly useful for customers without AppleCare insurance plans, and for those who don’t have time to wait on hold for 45 minutes.
In conclusion, social media and blogging can destroy a professional image, but they can also make it invincible. It is imperative that technical communications professionals learn how to use social media to strengthen their credibility and introduce clients/readers to their services.
Natasha’s Test Blog 1
As the “Why We Blog” study by Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht, and Swartz highlighted, the most common motivations for creating/ participating in blogs are to document one’s life, blogging as commentary, blogging as catharsis, blogging as a muse, and blogging in a community forum. I typically stick to the community forum style blogging in both academic, and non-academic settings.
Prior to this class I’ve had very general experiences with personal blogging, nothing too involved. Earlier classes I’ve taken in the MSTPC program as well as courses in my undergraduate education included an online “blog as a community forum”. I would actively participate in message boards, and engage in discussions by responding to my classmate’s threads. These were very functional blogs, and I obviously only participated because I was required to.
As mentioned in this article, the motivations for blogging “are not mutually exclusive and might come into play simultaneously”; this is the case in my non-academic community forum blogging. I’m a very private person, and don’t trust the people around me to completely confide my personal problems. I am incredibly dependent on advice forums like enotalone.com where I can anonymously pour my heart out and receive multitudes of responses from complete strangers.
What I love most about enotalone.com is that people of all ages, from all over the world, with entirely different backgrounds can give me raw, unapologetic advice. It can’t offend me because they’re only a name with a smiley face avatar, and I realize they’re also more comfortable sharing things about their lives that may help me. In this situation, I’m getting the help I need, and they’re getting some sort of fulfillment by helping me. I don’t have to worry about gossip or people holding my mistakes against me because these people can hardly determine what country I live in.
A few years ago I created a blog on Tumblr, and used it to journal my personal life. Again, I’m very private so I did not invite my friends and relatives, but I accumulated a decent following of international strangers. This was a bit cathartic for me, as it was another outlet to ramble on about things that were bothering me. However, I eventually lost interest in my Tumblr page and haven’t posted in years. The most enjoyable part of having a Tumblr blog was designing it; I spent more time perfecting its appearance than substantial writing.
In conclusion, I’m not much of a blogger unless it’s required for academic purposes, or I’m going through personal challenges I’m uncomfortable bringing to my friends and family. I have enjoyed the bit of blogging I’ve done so far, but I can think of a million other things I’d rather do.
The Relationship Between Technical Communication and Social Media
Chelsea’s Test Blog 2
The relationship between technical communication, social media, and even the use of Technology is becoming more and more apparent in our everyday lives. As I was reading through the article The Rhetoric of Reach: Preparing Students for Technical Communication in the Age of Social Media, it dawned on me how why this very topic is so important.
Software companies (like Microsoft) are incorporating in their new software releases, the capability to participate in social media much easier and without having to know how to write HTML5 code and still publish to the Web. Let’s look at Microsoft Office. As I draft this blog article, I now have the option to publish this article as a blog post right to my blog site.
Snapshot of Microsoft Word 2010 – Save and Send Features, Taken by Chelsea Dowling.
Moreover, as Hurley and Hea demonstrated the impact of social media and technology is becoming even more prevalent within the medical field, where they provided an example of a 48-year-old individual who was punished for providing enough information about a patient that their identity was eventually revealed. Might this explain the increasing Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations? Just the other day, a friend’s mother who works as a dental hygienist was explaining the increased HIPAA training they are required to take each year. In fact, EHR 2.0 published a presentation on Social Media Compliance for Healthcare Professionals.
But overall, one of the most striking points that Hurley and Hea eluded to in their article, was the importance of educating students and communication professionals around the critical theory aspects of social media. While it is important to deploy social media in our own efforts / initiatives and to debunk the negative assumptions around the use of social media (Hurley & Hea, pg. 58), we also need to understand how / where these assumptions fit within our own situations.
Overall, I think this is one of the most important factors that we need to keep in mind. For example, in my current social setting, I would say there is a large difference in how people of all ages use social media. For example, being in such a rural area of Wisconsin, many Gen Xers and Baby Boomers are limited to the amount of exposure they have to social media as well as limited to the desire to access that type of channel. Therefore, as we begin to understand how we reach out to our stakeholders, we can use critical theory to allow us to “consider how social media fits into our professional lives” and be able to evaluate and use social media responsibly (Hurley & Hea, pg. 58).
Image from: How does social media as a technology affect sleeping patterns?
Posted on April 26, 2013 by insomnicacs
Hurley, E.V. and Hea, A.C.K. (2014). The Rhetoric of Reach: Preparing Students for Technical Communication in the Age of Social Media. Technical Communication Quarterly, 23(1), pp. 55-68.
Aligning Social Media to Organizational Professional Communication
(Chelsea’s Test Blog 1)
Prior to beginning my master’s program at UW Stout, one of the initiatives I began in 2014 was researching and proposing the development of an internal blog for our department. At Organic Valley, our Information Technology department is comprised of approximately 79 employees, ranging anywhere in age from 21 to 61-years-old. As a part of my role, three years ago I developed an internal departmental newsletter which I transformed to be accessible via e-mail (condensed version), a full online version, and a supported printed version.
Someone who has previously developed a newsletter might appreciate the work that goes into, but in case you haven’t done a newsletter here is the tedious process I had to endure each month in order to share the recent happenings with our employees.
The process of creating a printed newsletter.
Needless to say, I missed a few months (since I am the only one who does what I do within my department). In an effort to spread the workload, I begin researching into available options that might not only improve / address the workload that I was dealing with, but to provide an accessible and online platform for our staff to have immediate access to our department and Cooperative news.
Believe it or not but there is actually little research on the use of social media within organizations as a tool to communicate with their own staff (at least it’s not published). So in 2014 I began the effort to have an internal departmental blog established and to have this be an opportunity to develop a new communication channel within our organization and begin moving us away from just communicating via e-mail and an archaic 15-year-old intranet.
Nonetheless, I am sure you can imagine that one of the articles that was tucked away in our Blog Literacy folder on D2L, really grabbed my attention. While The Social Media Release as a Corporate Communications Tool for Bloggers article, written by Pitt, Parent, Steyn, Berthon, and Money, did not specifically articulate this article to be meant for internal communication purposes, there were a number of points that truly resonate with the issues that internal organization often deals with. Pitt et al., found that an increasing number of blogs are becoming a more formalized tool within organizations and, are in fact, being used to keep their stakeholders apprised of the current activities (2011). “Professional business communicators will need to give increased attention to their use of social media release,” (Pitt et al., pg. 7).
As a professional communicator, it is interesting that this became such a natural tendency for me to move towards and begin researching for internal communication purposes. One of the thing we often struggle with, is out do we best manage to spread our information across an organization that reaching almost 1000 employees – especially when face-to-face communication is the most effective way of sending and receiving messages. Notably, this was one point that Pitt et al. addressed in the article in that social media channels are beginning to emulate that face-to-face model (pg. 3), which seemingly matches the growing need for business to use this as a communication tool.
But where is my blog and how is it matching up with this theory of using social media for internal communication purposes? Well… needless to say you will be able to find a number of articles that will give you pointers on writing a great post, how to manage contributors – I even purchased a book called Born to Blog by Mark Schaefer (an excellent read and highly recommended). Unfortunately what these resources don’t tell you is how to maneuver the muddy waters of internal organizational politics to move something along quickly (but that is for the next article).
Let’s just say, when it comes to establishing a brand new “tool”, it’s amazing the amount of push back and stops people go to. Fortunately, as our company is looking at implementing Microsoft SharePoint (which I am told has many blogging capabilities), I am on the road to redemption. Almost. Now the holdup will be the design of the blog, which will lead you to one of my upcoming blog articles on the value of information design.
Pitt, L.F., Parent, M., Steyn, P.G., Berthon, P., and Money, A. (2011). The Social Media Release as a Corporate Communications Tool for Bloggers. IEEE Transactions Professional Communication, 54(2), pp. 1-11.
Test Blog #2: User Beware!
It is easy to see why so many of us back away from recognizing social media as a serious communication tool. Who hasn’t scanned a friend’s Facebook page only to see a post and think, “Eck! Why on earth would they post that for everyone to see?” We have all heard about teachers who have lost their jobs for posting snarky comments about students or politicians who have lost respect for their social media faux pas. The cautionary tales are endless.
And then, there is always that “friend” on social media who just seems oblivious to his or her inability to put together coherent thoughts. While we may not judge them as harshly as we do the ones who make the ethical mistakes via Facebook and Twitter, we still walk away with certain ideas about their intelligence or attentiveness to detail. When we look at the assortment of photos on a person’s Facebook page, we make certain conclusions about how they spend their time. With one click our comments, photos, thoughts, and stories can be seen by anyone. People can access our list of “friends.” They can see what sites we are linking to and make assertions about what is important to us. Our life is naked for (potentially) everyone to see. The opportunities for drawing conclusions, and often negatives ones, are endless when so much information is visible.
It’s hard to not judge someone by the quality and content of their social media use. That judgment that we feel towards others, can translate into a fear that prevents us from fully harnessing the positive power that social media can provide us in our professional careers. However, we damage our careers by not adopting a positive relationship with social media in the professional arena.
In “The Rhetoric of Reach: Preparing Students for Technical Communication in the Age of Social Media” (https://uwstout.courses.wisconsin.edu/d2l/le/content/3019142/viewContent/17759443/View), Hurley and Hea discuss the reasons many students are reluctant to accept social media as a legitimate and necessary tool in their professional careers, while they may utilize it–albeit cautiously–in the personal lives. Within the technical writing community, “assumptions about professionalism and credibility seem too high a price to pay for (social media’s) use (p. 56).” There is fear that one poorly thought out post or “tweet” will make us look incompetent or worse. Your reputation or job may hang in the balance and throwing something out to the public that could strip you of those, can be scary business.
Hurley and Hea also point out that students have “concerns about the immediacy of social media–that users can write something and instantly send it to numerous audiences on the Web–suggested for them a carelessness about the craft of writing (p.60).” That immediacy may seem fine in your social circles, where friends are posting photos of what they ate for dinner. It may not seem so simple when you are representing your company. But it is precisely that same immediacy that allows a company to reach the desired audience, with a message that is effective for them (the audience), at precisely the right time. It can be an extremely targeted method of communication with consumers and therefore vital to most businesses.
Potential technical writers must begin to get comfortable with professional social media practices while they are still pursuing their formal education. It is not for social or professional purposes; it is an intrinsic part of both. It is no longer an optional tool in the technical communicator’s “tool belt,” but a necessity.
Test Blog #1: Loving my blogs from afar
I love my blogs a lot… from afar. I have several blogs that sit largely abandoned on the hosting site. They are all lifestyle and home related, all were brought into existence with passion and love, but I can’t find the focus and energy to consistently post to any of them. I’m starting to think I’m only addicted to the “idea” of my blogs, because despite the lack of attention they get, I still shell out for the hosting and reregister the domain names when I get the reminders.
Lost on The Way To Blog
Some days I wake up and spend the entire day trying to get to the computer to get some blogging time in. I am the only adult in my house though. My roommate is my five year old daughter. I will never cry the blues about being a single mom, but you are the only one that is going to get the things done that need to be done. And trust me, my daughter does not make it easier. I adore her, she’s a wonderful child, but she is five. She is messy and into everything. She has lots of ideas for me, and, for that matter, I have a long list of things I want to do with her each day. We are mutual distractions. We stay busy all day.
Every now and then, I will go searching for the forgotten passwords (since it’s usually been a while since I last used them and inevitably I forget them). She senses my concentration. She could get absorbed in playing with Barbie dolls for an hour, but the minute I sit down at the computer, she smells that I’m doing something that requires a little of my focus. Within minutes she will be in the bathroom yanking my eye shadows out of the drawer and asking if I mind if she puts green eye shadow on my cheeks. (For the record, the answer is usually “yes.” She will only be little once.)
And when I do get alone time with my blogs?
Every once in a while, I actually manage to sit down at my desk and get logged into one of my blogs. I usually start out excited about the topic of my post, but I begin to struggle over the mechanics of what I am writing and question the content. The clock starts ticking and I begin to feel guilty. The list of “to do’s” starts going through my head. Often I find myself wondering about things like “Did I pay the phone bill yet?” A thought like that almost always means the end of my blogging time is near. Inevitably, I will have to click open the AT&T site, just to check the due date and quiet my brain. Once I find myself off my blog site, my thought off my topic, who knows what other “must do’s” will pop into my head. And if I wait long enough, my little pumpkin will come in asking me to help her put on her Belle costume… it doesn’t matter. The end result is the same. Another half written entry will sit there for a month until I come back and no longer remember my train of thought or feel interested in the topic. This has happened over and over, too many times to possibly count.
Is There Hope?
Clearly, I never give up hope on my blogs. The file folder on my nightstand is stuffed full of papers and post-its with topics and ideas I want to add… when there is time. Alex Reid’s article “Why Blog? Searching for Writing on the Web” (https://uwstout.courses.wisconsin.edu/d2l/le/content/3019142/viewContent/17759448/View) presents a novel idea. Blogging doesn’t have to be a major event on my schedule. I don’t necessarily have to clear up a whole block of time. He mentions devoting just 10 minutes, a couple of times a week (p. 313). He even talks about using a mobile device for frequent short posts (p. 314). And Reid doesn’t seem alone in this idea that a blog can be done regularly without taking up lots of time. Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht and Swartz echo this idea in “Why We Blog” (https://uwstout.courses.wisconsin.edu/d2l/le/content/3019142/viewContent/17759450/View) when they note that some bloggers post once a month (p. 42). Instead of feeling guilty for neglecting my blogs or feeling pressured to write a full-length article I could start with baby steps… habitual baby steps. Even on the busiest of days, there is a good possibility I can lock myself in the bathroom with a tablet for ten minutes, before anyone notices I’ve left the room.
Writers, writiN & d NXT gnr8n n social media :P
In their article “The Rhetoric of Reach: Preparing Students for Tech Comm in the Age of Social Media” Hurley and Hea asked college student to reflect on the extent that social media influences writers and writing. As a whole, students were able to identity social media’s positive aspects such as staying connected to family and friends and its ability to generate hype over new products. On the other hand, students also agreed that social media generally influences writers to write carelessly and unfinished.
While I was not an English major, I do have an appreciation for good writing. Seeing postings with no particular point that incorporate emojis and shorthand slang make me cringe. Despite this, I agree with the article in that a thoughtful and active presence on social media can be beneficial and bolster careers. However, it made me question what implications will this type of writing have on our younger generations who have grown up with these types of communications?
Besides proper spelling and grammar, penmanship is a concern of mine. I distinctly remember learning cursive in elementary school and laboring over a capital “Z” so I could write my crushes initials next to mine in the margins of my notebook. (For all of you who are wondering it would be SKJ + ZBS). While I eventually was able to master this skill and fill every space I could with our initials surrounded by a bubbly heart, it took time and perseverance.
Largely due to the excessive nature of my “doodling”, one of my friends told Zach and soon everybody in the class knew. To my disappointment, Zach did not share my feelings and that was the end of my third grade crush. While the love between us didn’t pan out, my love of cursive and penmanship did. My handwriting, (most of which is cursive) is something I pride myself on to this day. After a quick Google search, I discovered that many states are no longer are teaching cursive in elementary schools. While its not completely shocking, it is slightly disappointing to learn that good handwriting is no longer a vital form of commutation.
At the same time, I wouldn’t say that computers and our use of social media are entirely to blame. I simply find it interesting how communication has progressed and the effects it has and will have on writers of future generations. The digital landscape is evolving, and if we want to survive we have to keep up– emojis, shrt& & aL 🙂
Test Post #1: Blogs vs. more tailored publishing platforms
Blogging is a useful format for many people to get their ideas out into the world, but I’m noticing that it’s increasingly having to compete with other publishing platforms for my participation.
In their essay titled “Why We Blog,” Bonnie A. Nardi, Diane J. Schiano, Michelle Gumbrecht, and Luke Swartz observed five reasons why their subjects wrote in blogs; “documenting one’s life; providing commentary and opinions; expressing deeply felt emotions; articulating ideas through writing; and forming and maintaining community forums.” (“Why We Blog,” pg. 43.)
When I kept a blog as a teenager I used it as a journal. As a college student, I blogged while studying abroad to share my adventures with family and friends back home. Later I maintained a tumblr page that reblogged design-related images and links that I found elsewhere on the internet. I read blogs to learn about the thoughts and ideas of interesting people.
All of these motivations are still driving my online behavior today, but they manifest through other platforms. I keep my family and friends posted through Facebook. I edit and share photos that document my day-to-day life through Instagram. I follow designers, celebrities and interesting people on Twitter and Instagram, and repost interesting content through Twitter and Facebook. For me, all of these platforms are more centralized, easier to post to and to browse than a blog.
I am looking forward to exploring this class’s use of a blog as the nucleus of course discussions. As I don’t have a background in writing, I’m hoping that frequent blog posts and responses can help me improve my writing skills. I am curious, though, to compare my experience in this class using a blog to post our discussions to my experience in the other course that I’m taking simultaneously. In that class we post our responses to a discussion board. How does one format compare to the other?
Test Blog #2: The art of a tweet
It’s not hard for me to see how skills in technical writing can be immensely useful in constructing a professional presence with social media. The most recent example in my life is my experience of trying to familiarize myself with Twitter. Tweeting didn’t seem all that hard until I tried it myself. As an initial “lurker” on Twitter, I spent a long time building up a twitter feed full of interesting people and organizations without actually posting myself. On the surface, composing a good tweet doesn’t seem like it should be that difficult. It’s only 140 characters. It can be an offhand comment, or three words before re-tweeted content from another user. It can be a series of emoticons and a link. How could that be difficult?
Sometimes it takes trying to do something myself for me to be able to recognize the artistry in others’ efforts. Since I took my own name as a twitter handle I decided that it was a good idea to start using it to establish a presence on Twitter. I struggle. It can easily take me 15+ minutes to compose a good tweet. It requires consideration and skill to be able to compose an eloquent thought with a bit of humor, the correct attributions and maybe a link, all under 140 characters. My favorite Twitter personalities make it look so effortless. Now my goal is to tweet more often to refine my own skills, and hopefully to fill my account with enough decent posts for any interested party to kindly ignore a couple duds. After all, it’s under my actual name. I have my reputation to consider.
This experience of mine came to mind while reading “The Rhetoric of Reach: Preparing Students for Technical Communication in the Age of Social Media” by Hurley and Hea. It’s so easy for someone who is not familiar with a social media platform to disregard it. The overwhelming cultural narrative, as expressed by Hurley and Hea’s undergraduate students is that, “Social media often influences writers to write carelessly and unfinished. Because the social media may just be a way to communicate with others, people often forget the structure of the English language and instead just abbreviate words in the quickest manner to get a simple point across, not leaving room for proper punctuation or spelling.” (Hurley and Hea, p. 60).
Before I tried tweeting, even though I was reading other’s tweets, I didn’t have an appreciation of the skill needed to be an effective communicator in this medium. Just like the students in Hurley and Hea’s class, it took to experience of actually engaging in the platform myself before I was able to see the talent that goes into composing relevant and poignant content within the confines of the media. These talented authors have to consider their audiences and make themselves a peer in order to appeal to their readers. Additionally, they have to distill their thoughts to fit eloquently into the word limit. While I struggle to improve my own use of twitter, at least now I have a better eye for what makes a good tweet. I can appreciate the contributors in my twitter feed, not just for their content but also for their skill.
Test Blog #1: Good, Better, Best.
“Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Until your good is better and your better is best.”― Tim Duncan
My only experience blogging was during college while I was a marketing intern at RNR Realty. Among other things, I was responsible for doing a bi-weekly blog post using WordPress to promote their business and generate leads. The majority of posts pertained to real estate, home buying or home improvement, and the content was largely up to me to decide. Additionally, each month, I would pick an area around the Twin Cities to use as our “Neighborhood Feature” and write about the areas highlights, attractions and housing markets. Unknowingly at the time, I incorporated several of Belle Beth Cooper’s “16 Top Tips from Blogging Experts for Beginners” into my work.
Despite being short lived, my foray into blogging was beneficial in that with practice and over time I was able to improve and my “good” and become “better”. The question now is how can my prior experiences coupled with the readings from this class enable my “better” to become “best”?
Good
When I first began my internship I was largely writing for myself and wrote to topics that were of interest to me. However, a few weeks in I discovered my audience and I did not share similar interests. While I found sustainable housing, up-cycled furniture and Frank Lloyd Wright homes intriguing, my audience clearly felt otherwise. Eventually, I realized I wasn’t writing for myself; I was writing for RNR Realty, and if I wanted my numbers up, I needed to re-vamp my strategy. As a result, I had to dig a little deeper and try to get a better handle on my audience.
Better
To that end, I started to run the analytical reports at the end of each week so I was able to see my viewers and where they came from. Because RNR Realty represented residential, commercial and international buyers and sellers, the audience stemmed from a diverse background. Yet, when I ran the demographics of past customers as well as people who followed the company on social media, certain patterns began to emerge. I discovered that most of them were first time homebuyers with credit issues- many of whom had young children or pets. With this deeper understanding of my audience I was able to tailor my posts to these specific interests and increase my numbers. While my internship and subsequent blogging for RNR Realty came to an end, a new chapter of blogging through the MSTPC program with UW Stout has just begun.
Best
In Alex Reid’s “Why we blog? Searching for Writing on the Web” he recalls Malcom Gladwell’s observation that “it takes over some 10,000 hours of dedication to a craft or profession to become an ‘expert’”. Thus, expert status of anything, including blogging, takes an immense amount of time, repetition and perseverance. However time isn’t all that it takes to become a good blogger. Moreover, the supplemental articles point to other areas of interest that can improve bloggers including Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow, the appropriate length for a blog post and finding the perfect balance between academic and conversational tone.
Obviously there is more to good blogging than the points mentioned above, however I think these are great additions that can aid my own (or any blogger’s) “better” to become their “best.
Test blog #1 – What not to do. Van Beusekom
As a favor to my brother, I write a small blog to promote his business’s products: food industry-related items like cuptake towers and cake pop holders. I call it a “small” blog because I don’t follow many of the blogging best practices, mainly because neither one of us is very serious about it, we don’t have a lot of extra time and I don’t do it for pay. I write a blog post every quarter, which I guess is consistent, according to “16 Top Tips from Blogging Experts for Beginners.” But it certainly isn’t often enough to maintain any followers.
Problem No. 2 is that I’m no expert on the subjects of which I write about: fancy cupcakes and cake pops. Since our audience is people who are experts on fancy cupcakes and cake pops, we should have an expert voice. I did try recruiting top bakers in the field to write blog posts about their businesses, favorite recipes, etc., but although some agreed to do it, no one ever followed through–despite my nagging. So, while I know who are audience members are (Tip No. 2), and I did try to get ideas from the audience (Tip No. 1), it didn’t happen as I envisioned it. That’s how I ended up writing the blog myself, and I don’t think I sound very authentic.
I have to mention that our audience is made up largely of very busy small-business owners (bakeries, cake makers), so I’m not sure how much time they have to peruse a blog when they’re trying to order a cupcake tree for an upcoming event.
And that brings me to Problem No. 1: I don’t really write very much at all. Basically, I asked some baker bloggers if I could repost some content from their own blogs, and one or two agreed as long as I give them credit and link to their site, which I always do. Sometimes I find a cool recipe or project online and link to it. I write a nice, creative, enthusiastic introduction, but I don’t bring a lot of added value to the content. I am not writing for myself (Tip No. 3).
The blog is part of the business’s Web site, which is connected to a Facebook account, but that’s the only marketing we do (vs. Tip No. 4). We’re hoping to use lots of keywords to help us get found online, and I do have to say that our Facebook page is getting more and more likes and views than ever. However, I’m not sure how much the two are related, if at all, because we haven’t looked at the blog analytics for awhile. We also didn’t want to bother monitoring comments, so it’s not interactive at all (so many comments now are from spambots, etc.).
So that’s the status of my small blog and why it’s not thriving but simply existing. I learned a few things from the Top 16 tips, though. For example, I’m going to start issuing a call to action, something I’d never done before except on Facebook (Tip. No. 6). Seems obvious, but I’d never thought of it.
Actually, I think a lot of blogs are like mine: poorly maintained and underperforming due to benign neglect. I can’t tell you the number of blogs I’ve seen in which the writer obviously started with enthusiasm but then just couldn’t maintain the momentum–either due to lack of time or lack of engaging content. One of them I saw was for a deck-maintenance business. The owner started out writing things like “Just did another deck,” but that got pretty repetitious, and apparently, he couldn’t think of anything else to say. He stopped writing after a few weeks. That blog should obviously be taken down.
One other problem I’ve seen with a lot of blogs is that the writer just does not have a unique voice or anything new to say about a topic covered by tons of other blogs. How many blogs about wedding dresses with pictures of elegantly dressed people in front of old barns and decrepit cars does one need?
I also think that many bloggers just aren’t very well informed, nor good writers. Not just anyone can write a good blog; you have to have something to say and the ability to say it in a compelling way. Now, I’m not talking about the guy who wrote a blog to document his wife’s health, as in the article, “Why We Blog.” Like CaringBridge entries, that blog probably saved that guy a lot of time and helped keep people connected with what’s going on. I’m talking about poor writers who could accomplish their goals just as well on Facebook. Blogs have their place, but I don’t think everyone has the skills to write a good one.
My post was about a lot of things not to do–but, in my experience, the most valuable advice comes from one who’s been there and learned a few things. These things likely won’t save my blog because I just don’t have a strong motivator to do it. But I do know that, going forward, if I’m going to write a blog, I’ll be more ready to step up to the plate.
What is Content Strategy?
Content strategy is a buzzword that people have been using the past few years, but what does it mean and why should organizations care? We can all agree that Web 2.0 technology and applications have changed how people use content. We can also agree that if content is not useful and easy to find, customers and users will move on. My paper considers how a technical communicator can transform content into a business asset by responding to the following questions:
- What is a content strategy? What is it not?
- How do you develop a content strategy?
- What is a content audit?
- How do you implement a content strategy?
Once the above questions are answered, my paper concludes with my own case study in understanding what is involved in a content strategy and some of the challenges faced when I converted my company’s FrameMaker files into DITA.
Prior to this class, I had never blogged. I kind of like it. I also learned that I hold my breath when I check my work email. 🙂
Emerging Media and the News
Given the recent news surrounding questionable deaths at the hands of the police in both Ferguson, MO and New York, NY, I chose to write my final about emerging medias impact on the way we receive our news. Historically, it could have been days before the public was aware of the incidents, if it was reported at all. I thought it was a worthy topic to explore and see if there were more benefits to breaking a socially important story than the negatives of having so many false rumors circulating before any evidence was released.
It was interesting to see find out that the news anchor, Walter Cronkite, was polled as the most trusted man in America at one time. Today we view our news providers with a certain amount of distrust since most news received has a political spin on it one way or the other.
The most interesting fact I learned in my research proved a misconception I have held for the last few years. I always thought that social media and the internet was a major source of news for most people. On the contrary, over 60% of public still gets their news directly from dedicated news organizations.
Thank you to all my classmates and teacher. Our class this semester was the most unique class I have ever taken, not to mention one of the most enjoyable. Best of luck to everyone and I hope to see some of you next semester.
Vacations from Technology
For workers, the Internet and its supporting technologies have changed the way businesses are run. With all the benefits, there are also drawbacks. The work/family borders can easily blur, as employees can be accessible throughout the entire waking hours, both during work and family times. This paper aims to analyze the expectations of digital technology, and specifically, how we define a successful work/family dynamic, best communication methods, and examples of planning for a vacation from technology. It also attempts to examine the broader implications of always being tethered to the workplace.
Civility in online news comments sections
I chose to write my final paper about an issue that’s frustrated me for years, the basic lack of quality and accountability in online news site comment boards. It always felt like such a disconnect to me. Here we have reputable news sources, the format of which (a newspaper, let’s say) has evolved over about 600 years to really reach a pinnacle of social necessity in the mid- and late-20th Century. Journalism has evolved into a profession rooted in ethics and the pursuit of meaning and truth for the purpose of educating and informing the public. Pretty lofty and important concepts, for sure. And then the internet comes along and there’s an incredible opportunity for news outlets to distribute information to audiences never possible before and to actually engage with readers in real time. Twenty or so years after people really started turning to the internet for news, these interactions with the public have devolved into virtual places belonging to trolls and spammers, extremists of all kinds, bullies and liars, totally inconsistent with journalistic values of truth, fairness, accuracy and integrity.
Referencing the expansion of digital literacy described by Rheingold, I took a look at a variety of third-party comment systems designed specifically to improve the level of discourse in comment sections, finding many features and concepts in use that align much more closely to the goals of reputable news sources than the lawless site-run comment system can be. Facebook Comments is widely used, as well as Disqus as embeddable comment systems. IntenseDebate and Livefyre offer communities centered on sharing and commenting on news links, and some new platforms like Kinja and a yet-unnamed partnership between the Washington Post, New York Times and Mozilla offer promising ideas in encouraging true connectedness and interactivity between journalists, editors and commenters, what I believe will be the next step in online journalism.
Thanks everyone for your entertaining and informative posts and thought provoking comments during this semester! Have a wonderfully relaxing break and a successful Spring semester.
Michelle
Using Social Media and Corporate Philanthropy to Drive Traffic
Champion for Kids social media campaign – Giving Tuesday (12/2/14). Source: https://www.facebook.com/ChampionsForKids
One of the aims of my final paper was to identify whether promoting a cause marketing campaign (Giving Tuesday) on social media platforms could increase web traffic to the campaign’s landing page on my company’s own website. In several studies of communication strategies, the effects across multiple platforms are examined. However, the focus of my final paper explains the Champions for Kids’ (a non-profit organization) campaign strategy for Giving Tuesday to engage employees in donating, promote materials on Facebook and drive traffic to the organizations landing page.
In my final paper, I first build on scholarship relating to social media and consumer behavior scholarship to identify digital platforms in cause marketing as a significant method of consideration for communication strategies. For the purposes of the paper, I limit the data findings to two platforms: a website landing page and a Facebook page. I find data to prove a correlation between social media posts on Facebook to drive landing page traffic and the effects of cause marketing campaign in increasing a social media audience.
The digital divide and how technical communicators can help close it
My paper was inspired by my personal experiences from working in the mobile sales industry and encountering people from all types of different backgrounds that did not know how to use their mobile devices for basic functions. The main complaint I heard from each of these people is that the instruction manual that comes with the phone is not helpful. My paper discusses the vast differences in the technological skill levels of people and seeks to discover ways that technical communicators can improve or wholly change their methods to better help people master new and emerging technologies.
Web 2.0 and the Modern Workplace
My paper focuses on the changes Web 2.0 and social networking have brought to the modern workplace. Many employers have introduced various social networking platforms and software to enhance connectivity and productivity among the workforce. Benefits of these programs include facilitating open communication, compatibility with mobile devices for traveling workers, and allowing instant updates on progress and sales. Most of these programs and platforms can be customized to cater to each company’s unique needs, style and culture.
Although Web 2.0 and social networking offers employers undeniable benefits, it also has a downside. Companies may fall into the habit of imprisoning employees with mobile devices, and the convenience of impersonal communication could possibly shift the social dynamic. This paper will analyze the ways emerging media and digital technologies are changing our workplaces and social lives in the workplace. The pro’s and con’s of these technologies will be weighed, along with their potential long term effects on both companies and employees.
Written items: Most often vs. Most valued
I enjoyed Blythe, Lauer, and Curran’s (BLC) article immensely because it directly ties into my post from last week that discussed the value of a writer.
In one section of their study, BLC display a graph that shows the most often produced written materials as well as the most valued written materials. The first four items in each graph (email, websites, instructions/manuals, presentations) are the same, which did not surprise me because these seem to be the standard documents any tech writer is responsible for in a modern workplace.
However, a trend began to emerge after the first four. I noticed that it seemed as if the writings that had more value were written the least often. This appears to be true, save for the top four items, which may require further exploration and research to find out why these four things are mirrored on both lists.
For example, press releases are not highly-valued yet they are written quite frequently. Research papers on the other hand are written less frequently, but have a high value. The most interesting aspect of this article was the inclusion of fiction, which I found odd for an article regarding tech writing. What is even more interesting is that fiction is listed as being valuable, but it is nowhere to be found on the most often written chart.
These graphs and discussion of the value and frequency of different writing types was a small section in this paper, but a very important one that I think has the potential to be explored in more detail in future research studies. BLC may be well on their way to pinpointing exactly why writers are often undervalued and understand what makes other types of writing more or less valuable than others, even if it is written at high frequencies.
Grammar Girl
Pigg (2013) uses a case example to explain how one writer, Dave, was able to successfully use social media for employment. In my career, I’ve spent four years as a contractor for different projects and corporations. While I enjoyed reading about Dave, I was slightly jealous of the fact that he is able to use a coffee shop as his office. As a contractor, I was never allowed to work remotely. In fact, even the full-time employees were discouraged from working from home. It would be awesome to get paid to work at a coffee shop, just like Dave did in “Social Media’s Role in Distributed Work.” My most important takeaway from reading Dave’ case study on using social media for employment is that he used social media at two levels: project or task work and an ongoing professional trajectory to network with others for future work (p. 82-83).
As a contractor, most of Dave’s writing assignments are short-term, and I find it interesting that he uses social media as a way to find future writing opportunities. Because he works hard to get a large following on his popular blog, he is able to find additional work. I live in Austin and since it is the capital of Texas, there are a lot of technical writing contracts available at the various state agencies. I think it’s cool that I too could use social media (Twitter, Facebook, and blogs) to find employment.
Dave’s story reminds me of Grammar Girl. I have “liked” Grammar Girl on Facebook for several years. Grammar Girl posts frequently on Facebook; uses a cute avatar; and posts videos, links, and hashtags to promote her books. Several of her posts appear to be well thought-out ways to link back to her book –her background photo indicates that she has seven books. With almost 500,000 likes, she too has been able to successfully use social media to network and find employment opportunities. Can you imagine how long it took her (and how many hours at a coffee shop) to get that many likes?
(Source: https://www.facebook.com/GrammarGirl)
This article taught me that to be a great technical communicator, I must also be a bit of an entrepreneur. Hence, if I am passionate about something, am willing to invest time, and treat social media as a project/task and plan long-term goals on how to use it to professionally network for future employment, I too can be successful. Dave had an idea to blog about fatherhood and Grammar Girl had an idea to provide tips on tricks on language and grammar. Both have used social media to generate income. I am passionate about running and CrossFit. Maybe I should start blogging about it and one day I could have a following. And in my wildest dreams I could get advertisers or sponsors one day. What about you, what ideas do you have to use social media for profit?
Special Agent Pigg
I had a tough time reading Pigg’s “Coordinating Constant Invention: Social media’s role in distributed work.” Although I found the majority of her article to be convoluted and lacking conciseness, it was her observation of participants in a coffeehouse that I couldn’t look past. I questioned everything from her description of the coffeehouse to the participants she used and how she chose them. I will go through her process and ask the questions I had when reading Pigg’s article.
http://www.amsterdam-advisor.com
1-Pigg picked an independent coffeehouse, on major avenue, which links the university and government districts-
Q1-Where is this establishment? Certainly people in Minnesota would have different habits from people in California which would have different habits from people in New York. What season was it? Again, this would dictate behaviors and which clientele frequented and stayed at this establishment. Why an independent coffeehouse? Isn’t Starbucks the most prestigious coffeehouse? Was the study looking for anti-establishments types that avoided chain restaurants?
2-Pigg observed for 6 weeks, 5 days a week, at varying times of the day-
Q2-Where these observation times random? Did she do it in her spare time? If she observed before work, after work, and sometimes on lunch or breaks, she would fail to see a true representation of people frequenting the coffeehouse. Was there a systematic approach to observing the patrons? Did she creep around and spy on people? Did she sit in a corner? Was she in the same spot every day or different spots at different times? What happened when someone confronted the creepy lady that kept staring at people all the time? Surely this would have altered people’s behavior. The necessary explanation by Pigg to keep people from asking for her removal from the building would have changed their behavior.
Parature.com
3-Pigg selected four patrons that would be ideal case study participants-
Q3-How many did she select initially? Did she select four and all four were willing to be part of the study? Did she select ten and only four gave consent? Were these people professional writers getting paid for their work? Were they black, white, Asian, affluent, poor, single, or did they have kids? Did they have an option to go to an office and chose to go to the coffeehouse instead?
4-Pigg videotaped the participants to see the interaction between the bodies and technologies-
Q4-Have you ever been in a coffeehouse and had to fart, pick your nose, scratch your wherever places, or just sit and space out for 15 minutes? If you were being recorded, would you participate in any of the activities mentioned above? Regarding the camera pointing at the computer/phone screen. Would you visit a naughty site, sext a significant other, look at a racy email, post an inappropriate picture, or carry on an extremely personal Instant Messenger conversation knowing that it was all being recorded and you had signed your rights away? Would you go out for five cigarettes an hour or spit your Copenhagen into a cup knowing you were being recorded? It’s absurd to think that the recordings were a 100% truthful representations of the participant’s day.
These are just four small pieces that bothered me. They may seem trivial and petty, but I think an honest answer to any of them could have far reaching implications for the study. The lack of scientific methods in this study brings its credibility into question. The basic point that I got from this article was that Pigg maintains that workers, technical writers in particular, are moving more towards non-conventional freelance roles. In doing so, they use social media to create the conventional “office space” around them. By using social media, they can essentially carry their office with them no matter where they choose to rest their laptop that day. They use social media to replace the office chit chat, the exchange of ideas and suggestions, and the personal interaction that they all go without due to the writer’s ever changing locations. I agree with her conclusions, but I don’t believe the study helped me get there.
How do we manage contextual mobility in the workplace?
Ishii’s article is somewhat dated, as the statistics for mobile telephone conversations have probably increased sine 2006 when the article “Implications of Mobility” was published. However, Ishii’s implications have merit eight years after publication. I was particularly struck with the three types of mobility (spatial, temporal, and contextual) outlined (p. 347).
A recent New Girl episode deals with the spacial mobility of a landline phone. Source: http://emertainmentmonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/newgirllandline2.jpeg
Contextual mobility, while potentially liberating for users–as they can turn off their phone if they wanted–is a double edged sword. In the workplace, with mobile phones, the expectation is for all employees to be “on” at all times, no matter the hour. I have gotten emails from work at 9:30 at night. This mobility and the implications of so much mobility and accessibility is something that we must be aware of, and intentional about creating boundaries.
I’m not sure if I’m the only one, but after reading Turkle’s Alone Together, I’ve been reading all our assignments through the lens of whether or not we’re allowing the technology to dictate our attention spans and stress levels. Perhaps I should get a landline and an answering machine to cut down on my accessibility. But then again, how could I read that 9:30 pm email from my coworker right when she sent it if I didn’t have my cell phone near me (and synced with my email account)?
Necessary Networking
While reading “Social Media’s Role in Distributed Work”, I began to realize how essential social networking has become in the workplace during these past few years. It is true that many of these once “personal” forms of communication and entertainment have recently become the primary method of communication in many workplaces. Most employers are now looking for experience with social networking when hiring new employees, so I was motivated to research the pros and cons of this trend. I ran into an article on CeraIt.com titled “5 Problems with Social Networking in the Workplace”, and found these points highlighted:
The Benefits
Expanding Market Research
Social networking sites give businesses a fantastic opportunity to widen their circle of contacts. Using Facebook, for example, a small business can target an audience of thousands without much effort or advertising. With a good company profile and little in terms of costs, a new market opens up, as do the opportunities to do business.
Personal Touch
Social networks allow organizations to reach out to select groups or individuals and to target them personally. Businesses can encourage their customers to become connections or friends, offering special discounts that would be exclusive to online contacts. This personal touch is not only appreciated but may give the business access to that customer’s own network of contacts.
Improve Your Reputation
Building strong social networks can help a business to improve its reputation with as little advertising as possible. Social networks can boost your image as thought leaders in the field and customers/contacts start to acknowledge your business as reliable and an excellent source of information/products that suit their requirements.
Low-Cost Marketing
Once social networks have become established and people become familiar with the brand, businesses can use the sites or applications to implement marketing campaigns, announce special offers, make important announcements and direct interested people to the specific Web sites. It is mostly free advertising, and the only cost to the business is the time and effort required to maintain the network and the official Web site.
The Concerns
Social networking sites are applications and, as such, are generally not a problem for organizations. It is the people who use them that are a cause for concern. Social networkers, if one can call them so, are the root of five problems for an organization that allows social networking at work.
Productivity
One reason why organizations on social networking in the workplace is the fact that employees spend a great deal of time updating their profiles and sites throughout the day. If every employee in a 50-strong workforce spent 30 minutes on a social networking site every day, that would work out to a loss of 6,500 hours of productivity in one year! Although this may be a generalization, organizations look very carefully at productivity issues, and 25 hours of non-productive work per day does not go over well with management. When you factor in the average wage per hour you get a better (and decisive) picture.
There is also an effect on company morale. Employees do not appreciate colleagues spending hours on social networking sites (and others) while they are functioning to cover the workload. The impact is more pronounced if no action is taken against the abusers.
Resources
Although updates from sites like Facebook or LinkedIn may not take up huge amounts of bandwidth, the availability of (bandwidth-hungry) video links posted on these sites creates problems for IT administrators. There is a cost to Internet browsing, especially when high levels of bandwidth are required.
Viruses and Malware
This threat is often overlooked by organizations. Hackers are attracted to social networking sites because they see the potential to commit fraud and launch spam and malware attacks. There are more than 50,000 applications available for Facebook (according to the company) and while FaceBook may make every effort to provide protection against malware, these third-party applications may not all be safe. Some have the potential to be used to infect computers with malicious code, which in turn can be used to collect data from that user’s site. Messaging on social networking sites is also a concern, and the Koobface worm is just one example of how messages are used to spread malicious code and worms.
Social Engineering
Social engineering is becoming a fine art and more and more people are falling victim to online scams that seem genuine. This can result in data or identity theft. Users may be convinced to give personal details such as Social Security numbers, employment details and so on. By collecting such information, data theft becomes a serious risk. On the other hand, people have a habit of posting details in their social networking profiles. While they would never disclose certain information when meeting someone for the first time, they see nothing wrong with posting it online for all to see on their profile, personal blog or other social networking site account. This data can often be mined by cybercriminals.
Employers must be on the lookout for information that their employees may post, as this may have an impact on the company. People often post messages without thinking through what they’ve have written. A seemingly innocuous message such as “I’m working this weekend because we’ve found a problem in our front-end product” may be a spur-of-the-moment comment but could raise concern among customers who may use that system, especially if the company handles confidential or financial detail.
Reputation and Legal Liability
At then time of authorship, there have been no major corporate lawsuits involving evidence from social networking sites. However, organizations need to watch for employees who may be commenting publicly about their employer. For example, one young employee wrote on her profile that her job was boring and soon received her marching orders from her boss. What if a disgruntled employee decided to complain about a product or the company’s inefficiencies in his or her profile? There are also serious legal consequences if employees use these sites and click on links to view objectionable, illicit or offensive content. An employer could be held liable for failing to protect employees from viewing such material. The legal costs, fines and damage to the organization’s reputation could be substantial.
Do you guys think this trend is a beneficial one that should be continued considering the pros and cons?
References:
Kelleher, D. (n.d.). 5 Problems with Social Networking in the Workplace. Retrieved November 16, 2014, from http://www.cerait.com/5-problems-social-networking-workplace
What’s Wrong with the Landline? We Prefer Text.
Imagine this: You are at a dinner with friends, either out at a restaurant or in someone’s home, and know only one or two people in the room. Although you’ve had a lovely conversation with one young woman, she has excused herself to the restroom and you are no longer tethered to a conversation. What is your first reaction?
More than likely, you turn to your phone either to check the time or fill time.
Welcome to the world of contextual mobility 2.0.
While reading “Implications of Mobility” by author Kenichi Ishii (2006), I could not help but trace the eight-year-ago paper’s summary to new examination of mobility, as described by Turkle (2012) and Rheigngold (2014). The author’s work seems almost a forshadowing of current social forms of communication. The idea of contextualized communication has, since the paper’s publication, become a norm. For example, the author gives an overview of young people using mobile phones to maintain social networks beyond parental grasp, and that mobile phones “…[are] used to obtain freedom from family grip” (Ishii, 2006, p. 348).
With the decline of landline usage, the contextualization for youth using mobile phones has shifted to a norm of communication, leading to Turkle’s (2012) point that humans expect more from technology and less from each other. This, perhaps, rising from the idea that contextual mobility has “….enable[d] mobile phones users to communicate more freely from an existing social context” (Ishii, 2006, p. 350). Published shortly after the birth of Facebook, I see the author’s paper as forbearance of future events.
Perhaps most prophetical is the author’s illumination between low social skills and mobile use. Today, millennials hate getting voicemail, and prefer text over actual phone conversations. This hyper-contextualization of communication is pointed out in the author’s note that “…it is hypothesized that people with low social skills prefer mobile mail to mobile voice phone as compared to people with higher social skills” (Ishii, 2006, p. 351). Taken in context of Turkle’s point that “…Some of the things we do now with our devices, only a few years ago we would have found odd. We would have found disturbing” (Turkle, TEDtalk, February 2012), such as prefering text over voicemail
What do you think? Is Ishii’s (2006) work a foreshadowing of contextual communication mentioned by Turkle (2012)?
The value of a writer
Zachry and Ferro’s article, Technical Communication Unbound, helped me organize my thoughts on a topic that has been circulating in my mind for some time: the value of a writer.
This particular part of their article was the source of inspiration for the topic of this post:
“..it now appears that the tasks of those working in the profession are necessarily expanding to include such concerns as real-time monitoring of texts and other communicative performances that circulate in the network of social media.”
Since the responsibilities of a writer are evolving and expanding, I would hope that this means that the respect and appreciation for tech writers is increasing with it.
In my own personal experience, this is not so. At my place of employment, more importance is placed on skills such as design or coding, which has been made completely clear to me from recent conversations with my boss. In fact, I’ve been told that my position as a content writer, “requires no real skills.”
With the emergence of social media and its emphasis on shorthand writing forms, it is easy for one to think less of writing or not even think of it as a useful skill at all.
I suppose that I worry that, with the increase of responsibilities, tech writers will be thought of more as an administrative assistant with a laundry lists of tasks to accomplish and less like a professional with useful skills.
Our View of Social Media and Technology
While reading Ferro and Zachry’s “Using Social Media for Collective Knowledge Making”, I ran across the statement that:
Technology ranks high on the worldwide list of tools promising to foster economic growth, social well-being, and environmental sustainability, especially in the global south.
I began thinking of my personal “northern” view of social media and technology, and I personally view it as essential part of my lifestyle. Although I’m sure technology plays it’s part in the economy, I see it on a more personal level. I did some research to see how people in other countries viewed the social media and technology, and ran across this article titled “Around the World, Net Neutrality Is Not a Reality”. The article examined the general view of technology and social media in developing countries, and mentioned that in Kenya:
In the United States it’s practically free for you to get on Google and Facebook, as Wi-Fi is almost everywhere or cheap relative to income. Here, that’s not the case, It’s a different relationship to the Internet when you only get it on your phone, and you don’t have a traditional Internet connection at home or work.
For poorer people, Internet access will equal Facebook. That’s not the Internet—that’s being fodder for someone else’s ad-targeting business. That’s entrenching and amplifying existing inequalities and contributing to poverty of imagination—a crucial limitation on human life.
I found this article incredibly interesting and was wondering what technology and social media meant to you all?
References:
Talbot, D. (2014, January 20). In Developing Countries, Google and Facebook Already Defy Net Neutrality | MIT Technology Review. Retrieved November 10, 2014.
Inclusive Design for Social Media Tools
I was interested in the global aspect of Longo’s article and colloquium and the desire to bring the cultural implications of the internet and social networking to the fore. It was important to me that the needs and considerations of the globally disenfranchised were so strongly considered. Truthfully, I find myself often forgetting that so much of the world is generally without the networked capabilities I take for granted.
Longo had a point that spoke to me especially as a designer interested in the best communication practices between all types of people, across cultures:
However, as we embrace and use these tools to open communication and design processes, we need to look at cultural assumptions underpinning the design of these tools and how we envision people using them. Through this mutual analysis of our audience, our tools, and ourselves, we are able to devise technology design and diffusion practices that profoundly include the perspectives and feedback of people whose lives are affected by those technologies. (pg. 26)
Especially in a hyper-connected world where the latest designed artifacts are largely of the digital, interactive variety, there are incredible opportunities to design interaction in the most inclusive and universal ways possible. Designers and writers today should assume that their works can be accessed and used by people in widely differing cultures and create with the goal to successfully reach as many people as possible. This is such a challenging aspect of design today. It is challenging to design for the entire range of participants in our own culture, much less cultures we are wholly unfamiliar with. The desire to create universal works needs to be accompanied by a drive for intense research and an abstract way of thinking that can allow the creator to place themselves in another’s shoes. It is a balancing act between clearly communicated content and accessible design.
Think about your own favorite social media technology, and think of yourself as someone from the Global South. How does the technology translate? Is the technology primarily word-based? This clearly creates limitations. Maybe there’s extensive use of icons, some of which have come to represent technology in a universal way (think of a “settings” icon, often represented by a gear shape, or a “location” or “GPS” icon, wholly derived from graphic interface of the technology itself). Some social media tools are very minimal in prompts design, relying on swipes and taps to function.
As we begin to collaborate and seek feedback from across cultures and continents, we may find ourselves thinking in terms of the most basic forms of communications. The universal solution might rely on a design of simplicity to facilitate and negotiate the complexity of the inner workings.
LinkedIn for Employment
I have been actively seeking employment since early this year and have tried all of the job boards (Monster, Indeed, Career Builder), numerous temp agencies (KForce, Robert Half, Jaci Carroll), and have been visiting company websites for open positions with no luck. A good friend of mine who is an aspiring career coach always tells me to try LinkedIn, but never gave me any solid instruction. I created a profile a few years ago, but deleted it when I realized my cell phone number and address were showing up in Google searches along with my picture. I definitely need a new approach, but I was very uncertain of how LinkedIn may help.
One day while researching the benefits of LinkedIn vs. Indeed, I ran across this wonderfully titled article on ZipRecruiter called “LinkedIn vs. Indeed: The Apply Button Smackdown!” The article recounted how ZipRecruiter added both “apply buttons” for Indeed and LinkedIn and tracked the number of applicants that used each. The monthly results:
FEBRUARY
Indeed Apply: 6.9% (12,564)
LinkedIn Apply: 6.4% (11,599)
ZipRecruiter Apply: 86.7% (157,589)MARCH
Indeed Apply: 10.1% (22,003)
LinkedIn Apply: 6.6% (14,377)
ZipRecruiter Apply: 83.3% (180,616)JUNE
Indeed Apply: 16.0% (38,610)
LinkedIn Apply: 5.4% (13,017)
ZipRecruiter Apply: 78.6% (188,747)
The article went on to ask why the Indeed apply button outperformed the LinkedIn button, and came to the conclusions that:
- When someone gives their resume to Indeed, they do so with the explicit intent of finding a job or changing jobs. Even though LinkedIn has a multi-year head start collecting resumes, the majority of their users are not engaged in an active job search.
- Indeed is RAPIDLY building the size of their resume database. We asked Indeed for a run-rate and they told us they are adding more than 1 million new resumes a month. That’s a staggering volume of active job seekers set up to use the Indeed Apply button.
I found this article interesting as it seems more serious applicants are using Indeed and probably similar search engines. I have gotten most of my job interviews off Indeed.com and I truthfully think it’s an excellent resource. Rich Maggiani and Ed Marshall’s article seemed like a how-to for LinkedIn, and I appreciate the concept of connections. However I wonder how far connections of connections who are virtually strangers would go to act as a job reference for you. It seems very abstract and absurd, but it is worth a try.
Have any of you had any luck with finding work on LinkedIn?
References:
Siegel, I. (2012, July 18). LinkedIn vs. Indeed: The Apply Button Smackdown! – ZipRecruiter. Retrieved November 3, 2014, from https://www.ziprecruiter.com/blog/2012/07/18/linkedin-vs-indeed-the-apply-button-smackdown/
Image:
(2011, 10 02). Job Search [Web Photo]. Retrieved from http://mbahighway.com/2011/10/top-10-mba-job-search-websites/
Digital Communication: Accomodate differences or establish a universal standard?
Barry Thatcher’s article, Understanding Digital Literacy Across Cultures, brings up one of the most important, but rarely discussed aspect of digital communication: cultural differences. No matter where we are in the world, we can access the Internet from the same types of devices, but not always the same websites. Or, sometimes one website is adapted to display differently according to region and native language. We are using the same Internet, but not always viewing, absorbing and processing the same things.
I work for an ecommerce web design company that is based in the US but works with several contractors in Pakistan and India. Aside from working with people overseas on a regular basis, we get clients from all over the world. Lately, I have been noticing that a lot of our clients want bi or multilingual websites, which, from a coding and design standpoint, can be complicated and ultimately expensive. Additionally, a lot of the major ecommerce platforms we work with will allow multi-language support, but only with a lot of custom coding, which, again, can be quite expensive.
One of the most complex problems we have yet to find a solution to is the ability to create a bi or multilingual ecommerce store with the checkout process to be in the language of the shoppers’ choosing. Yes, even with custom-coding and advanced functionality, it is incredibly difficult to translate the checkout process in a language other than English with a hosted ecommerce platform.
Thatcher’s article had me thinking of this particular issue because we are able to translate every part of the online shopping experience except for the most important: the checkout. This is where actual money is exchanged and people want this to feel the most comfortable, but we are unable to do that for them. I’ve been doing some research on this for work and I have discovered that many international shoppers simply accept this as the norm, but I feel like it is unfair for this to be so.
Ultimately, cultural differences on the Internet have led me to contemplate the benefits and downfalls of ignoring cultural norms an instead create a universal, digital culture with its own set of beliefs, language and functions. Some may argue that this already exists, but as Thatcher has us realize, we have only been viewing the Internet through a North American lens. The Internet is different everywhere and we need to take that into consideration more often.
Audience Analysis: Who are we writing for and who is using this?
Audience analysis is something that I’ve always struggled with in my career. As a technical communicator who has spent more than seven years documenting various software products, I often wonder why it is so difficult to understand the users of a particular product or why it is impossible to have contact with them. Since documentation is so important, why does all customer contact and audience analysis come from product management, marketing, or support? If we are providing information to customers, shouldn’t we as technical communicators be the first line of contact? I understand that the main reason is to respect customers’ privacy and time, but that just seems like an excuse.
Similar to cases three and four in Addressing Audiences in a Digital Age, my company also provides enterprise network security services and products. We produce 500+ page PDFs and HTML help. We want to improve our documentation, but we don’t truly know our reader’s needs. Like most linear-based PDFs, our content is not chunked and some of the important tasks are buried in paragraphs. We are also interested in providing tutorials, but since we have absolutely no contact with our customers, we don’t know if creating these tutorials would be valuable.
Blakeslee explains that there are three things writers need about audiences:
- How readers will read and interact
- What context will readers use the information
- What expectations do the readers have before using the information
The chapter then gives detailed examples in the case studies of the strategies and methods writers use to analyze their audience. Some use bulletin boards, personas, and support call logs. Others use industry conference proceedings, whitepapers, or training materials. At my company, we get some feature request information from product management. We also receive software bugs that are logged if customers or employees find issues in our documentation. While our current methods aren’t the best, I feel encouraged to apply some of the questions listed in Appendix A to improve our documentation and to provide the best user experience possible.
Task-based communication: Should we change the online infrastructure?
Where do we come off knowing how a user will access the web? With Google, I can find something that’s deep within a site, and avoid all the crumbs to get to the page I wanted. In Spilka’s book, Ann Blakeslee makes the good point that technical communicators need to shift from “developing documentation based on what writers think their readers need,” to how they “will actually use the information to complete a task” (p. 216). Luckily, we expect repetition in both communication and online. So we can have the same information on more than one page on a website to make sure someone sees it, even if they skipped the two pages leading up to the page they sought.
That is the science. The art is how much to say and what to omit so as to keep the added value of visiting the site (so it’s not just ten pages of the same information over and over again). But, I think that’s a secondary concern. The first concern is to have a task-based infrastructure so that the audience can find what they’re looking for, and not have to sift through paragraphs of information. About the ‘how much to add where’ question, I think it’s a constant challenge to keep tweaking. From my personal experience, I’d rather have a straightforward answer to my query, and then I can dive into the hyperlink tunnel to find more answers if I so wish. That way I do get to know what the website has to offer, just not in a linear manner.
So should we change to a task-based communication? Yes. If you think not, I’d love to hear why; I am open to changing my mind on this if I hear a compelling reason.
Communicating Across Cultures
I was especially interested in the topic of cross-cultural communication in Chapter 7 of Digital Literacy for Technical Communication, titled “Understanding Digital Literacy Across Cultures” by Barry Thatcher. I personally have always enjoyed the research portion of communications work, and learning about the audience and applying that knowledge to convey information to a particular demographic is an indispensable part of designing and writing successful communications.
It is because of this research interest, paired with a fascination of world cultures that I found the information in Thatcher’s chapter of particular value. I think it can be easy as an American to feel isolated from international culture, especially for Midwesterners and people who live outside of major metropolitan areas, so this article also serves as a reminder that our communication methods are particular to this culture and not always directly applicable to others.
My favorite part of the article was Thatcher’s research into websites of 27 universities around the world, looking at purpose, audience, information, organization and style in terms of the cultural values of “how a single person relates to others” (pg. 175), universal or particular approach to rules and norms (pg. 176) and the “degree of involvement across different spheres of life” approach of diffuse or specific (pg. 177) as illustrations of these cross-cultural communications considerations. When reading about this research and Thatcher’s case study involving Texas Tech University, I couldn’t help but think of Stout’s website and how, not surprisingly, it embodies many of the same cultural communications values Thatcher describes as particular to Western cultures.
Like the Texas Tech website, the homepage emphasizes cultural values of “individualism, universalism, and specific orientation.” (pg. 190). This is shown by the featured image of a lone, individual student in the header as well as links that are specific to types of users the website aims to serve. The purpose is to give users quick and direct access to whatever information they seek.
The audience for the Stout website is those disparate individuals looking for quick access to specific types of information. Like Texas Tech’s site, it is “designed for the reader’s specific needs at the moment.” (pg. 191)
The information presented is, again, all about the individual user’s needs for specific answers. Collective and historic information about Stout and the Menomonie community is buried within the site. Many photos do include collaborative themes and groups of students, but the relationships are often vague. Language is at a universal level, designed to be easily understood by most potential users.
The organization of the Stout site is based on the specific needs of the audience mentioned above. The site as a whole is “highly templated”, much like Texas Tech’s site (pg. 193). The overall organization follows strict guidelines which dictate menus, headers and hierarchy, dividing information immediately along user types like “Future Students”, “Current Students”, “Parents”, etc.
Looking at these cultural values evident in a familiar website has made me realize how much I am oriented to think along these lines when organizing information in publications and website design without much thought about how else it could be done, certainly not in terms of how international users might prefer to be communicated to. As world cultures become more connected through the network, cross-cultural considerations become increasingly relevant during the design process, and I certainly plan on applying the concepts presented in this chapter in my work. Did this article make you think about the cultural assumptions you make in your work?
A Rheingold Application
LinkedIn.com
The LinkedIn article by Maggiani and Marshall outlines a few ways to use the site to your benefit. With over 300,000,000 profiles, it makes sense to utilize it for expanding your network or looking for new employment opportunities. Although LinkedIn was associated with white collar users in its infancy, it is now being used by people from all economic and social classes. A class on how to effectively use LinkedIn is even taught in Minnesota Workforce Centers around the state. After thinking about the readings this semester, it struck me that LinkedIn may be a perfect place to put my new found Rheingold knowledge to use.
An article by Cheryl Connors in Forbes outlines a few interesting statistics LinkedIn has experienced in the last year:
1-41% of people now report 500+ connections, up from 30%in 2013
2-58% of people spend more than two hours a week on the site, up 10% from 2013
3-16% of people are in the maximum number or groups allowed (50)
4-Company page usage jumped from 24% to 57%
Full article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2014/05/04/new-research-2014-linkedin-user-trends-and-10-top-surprises/
Having just finished Rhenigold, I questioned how to use the knowledge that he presented. Before I set out to topple a dictatorship, perhaps I should start with LinkedIn. Although I have a LinkedIn profile, I only view it once every two weeks, don’t post updates, and am generally a lurker when my Facebook News Feed is stagnant. When reading this article, there are definitely parallels from what Maggiani and Marshall have discussed and the concepts that Rheingold discussed.
Maggiani and Marshall: Connect with all STC colleagues and people you work with
Rheingold: Building a network
MM: Utilize 1st connections to connect with their 2nd and 3rd connections
R: Utilizing bridges to connect to other networks
MM: Updating your status often
R: Putting in the effort
MM: Ed helped steer connections away from a problem company
R: Adding value
Reading through the blogs, it seems most people would like to utilize the knowledge we have learned from Rheingold and some of us have even posed the question of where to start. More than half the people I know would classify themselves as unemployed or underemployed. Given that, it would seem that utilizing Rheingold’s concepts, while using LinkedIn, would be time well spent to experience some real world benefits. It seems like a better place to start than over-throwing a government.
Endless Options
While reading Chris Anderson’s “The Long Trail”, I found that I could relate to mostly everything he was saying. It is true that my friends and I followed popular trends, but starting a few years ago, websites like Pandora began leading me to more obscure things I would have never discovered on my own. About 5-6 years ago I simply downloaded MP3 files both legally and illegally. It was a bit difficult to discover new artists, because I’d search for specific songs and people. I did the same with movies, I downloaded hundreds of torrent files (which ultimately ruined my computer), but they were all similar popular movies.
Ever since streaming music and movies became popular, I haven’t purchased a CD or downloaded a music file. I’ve even seen on the news that sales in CDs and music files have significantly decreased. I read a New York Post article that mentioned:
Total sales, including physical CDs and albums, digital downloads and streaming, slipped 3.3 percent year-over-year through June 30, to 227.1 million units, according to Nielsen/Billboard stats released Wednesday. The decline is smaller than the 4.6 percent fall music labels tallied in the first half of 2013. A 42 percent increase in on-demand audio and video streams helped to stem the slippage.
Apple has even caught onto the new trend by launching iTunes Radio and acquiring Dr. Dre’s Beats Music & Beats Electronics. An apple press release mentioned:
Beats Electronics has brought the energy, emotion and excitement of playback in the recording studio back to the listening experience and has introduced an entirely new generation to premium sound entertainment. Beats Music was developed by a team of people who have each spent their entire career in music and provides music fans with an incredible curated listening experience.
“Music is such an important part of Apple’s DNA and always will be,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “The addition of Beats will make our music lineup even better, from free streaming with iTunes Radio to a world-class subscription service in Beats, and of course buying music from the iTunes Store as customers have loved to do for years.”
I see where Anderson was going when he said, “If the 20th-Century entertainment industry was about trends, the 21st will be equally about misses”. What other areas do you see this change affecting?
References:
Atkinson, C. (2014, July 2). CD Sales Decline as Music Streaming Takes Off. Retrieved October 28, 2014, from http://nypost.com/2014/07/02/cd-sales-decline-as-music-streaming-takes-off/
Neumayr, T., & Joyce, S. (2014, May 28). Apple – Press Info – Apple to Acquire Beats Music & Beats Electronics. Retrieved October 28, 2014, from http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/05/28Apple-to-Acquire-Beats-Music-Beats-Electronics.html
Crowdfunding
Rheingold discusses three terms in great detail in chapter 4, “Social-Digital Know How: The Arts and Sciences of Collective Intelligence”: coordination, cooperation, and collaboration. To understand the differences between these components, Rheingold provides a great analogy, “You need coordination to dance, cooperation to dance with a partner, and collaboration to dance with a flash mob” (p. 153).
However, Rheingold provides a lot of rules and best practices (almost too many to categorize and remember) to understand the social digital know-how, including:
- Four understandings needed to effectively deliver Web collaboration skills (p.149).
- Eight design principles that successful groups use to organize and govern behavior (p.152).
- Four descriptions of the related components of collaboration (p. 153-154).
- Seven rules on what cooperation theory teaches us (p.155).
- Five different ways that we can learn from collaboration theory (p. 155).
- Three things needed in a model of how collaboration superpowers work (p.157).
- Four collective intelligence tips (p.162).
- Four “netiquette” norms (p.163-165).
- Ten ways be a good virtual community organizer (p.165).
- Six critical success factors for crowdsourcing/crowdfunding projects (p. 172-173). These factors are: vision and strategy, human capital, infrastructure, linkages and trust, external environments, and motive alignment of the crowd.
- Three factors for social production to work (p. 175).
- Eight general principles that capture the essence of the open source process (p.176).
- Five things needed to understand Wikipedia (p. 185).
- Four steps on how to contribute to Wikipedia (p. 185-186).
- Thirteen words of advice about wiki collaboration in general (p.186-187).
I don’t know where to begin or what to write for this week’s blog – I am overwhelmed. I’m interested in gamification and what it can do, but my manager is more interested in augmented reality. While I enjoy using Wikipedia, I have never contributed or edited a topic. And I have never played World of Warcraft. In flipping through the pages in the chapter again, crowdfunding grabs my attention.
Rheingold provides 5 examples of crowdfunding; each is described below.
Spot.us “allows journalists to pitch stories they would like to pursue and enables individuals to pledge financial support; pledges are held in escrow until the journalist’s goal is reached” (p.172). However, they are no longer accepting new pitches or donations. They claim to be reassessing their business model and that the evaluation will be completed by June 1, 2014, but they provide no additional information on the results of their evaluation.
(Source: http://spot.us/pages/status)
Kickstarter.com “permits anyone to define a project in need of funding, set the rewards […] for different funding levels, and establish a monetary and time goal” (p.172). From here, you can search for projects according these categories: art, comics, crafts, dance, design, fashion, film & video, food, games, journalism, music, photography, publishing, technology, and theater. I’m drawn to the journalism project, and am excited that it is a project in my great state of Texas. The Rio Grande Rift – Print Issue #1
Kiva.org “matches microbusinesses in the developing world with microlenders” for as little as $25 (p.172). There are four steps in this process: choose a borrower; make a loan; get repaid; repeat. I search for Austin, but there are no requests. There are 59 requests in the United States. The other country that jumped out at me is the Phillippines with 1,296 requests.
Inuka.org “enables lenders to microfinance projects by women in sub-Saharan Africa” (p. 172). This is a dead link. I was able to find it on crowdsourcing.org, but even the link the link listed under URL does not work.
DonorsChoose.org “allows classroom teachers to post requests” (p.172). From here you can search from the following things that teachers need for students: art, books, math, science, field trips, match offers, project of the day, and projects near me. I’m curious to see what the schools located in Austin need (if any are listed), and am surprised to see that my younger son’s elementary school has two requests listed–one from his former kindergarten teacher. I had no idea this site existed and plan on making a donation.
I’m happy that looked up the examples that Rheingold provided in the chapter as I was able to find some crowdfunding opportunities in my city. I challenge you to also visit these sites and see what opportunities are available in your geographic location.
What’s The End Goal?
After reading through Rheingold’s book Net Smart, I have been many things. I have been confused, I have been enlightened, I have had my ‘aha’ moments and I have even been inspired. Closing in on the end of Chapter five, a disturbing question crept into my mind. What is the goal? Perhaps a question more to the point is-what should my goal be?
Rheingold has covered getting online, navigating information, how to participate and contribute online, creating social capital, gaining attention, and the inner workings of social networks. What am I supposed to do with this? Rheingold writes books and contributes to the online community for monetary compensation. He may be helping the greater good by sharing (adding value), but in the end, he does it because it allows him to make a living. Should I be blogging and tweeting in order to drive traffic to my blog in order to make a living? In order to keep the scope of this blog focused, I will use an example situation.
I have a passion for land stewardship e.g. cultivating crops, timber stand improvement, wildlife habitat improvement, soil health, and native flora and fauna enrichment. If I decide to blog about this topic, I will definitely be in the long tail…I have a feeling more towards the tip. I understand the principles of developing relationships inside this community and creating social capital. Am I doing something wrong by stopping there? Would being a bridge within that community be enough? Should I still be linked to and follow people in the tech world, politics, and the business world? Would only investing in my passion erode my online health?
I could go on with a hundred questions along those lines. The obvious answer would be “whatever makes you happy”, but I don’t think that is it. Can the concepts laid out in the book be a guide to an overall more enriched life? Is that the goal? In the end, I understand the ideas presented in the book, but I am questioning the application.
Did this book change your idea of online navigation and interaction? Will it change the way you participate within online groups? Most important, what will you do with the information that Rheingold has discussed?
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