Cult and Community

Michu's comments in class on cults brought to mind this excellent and sad feature piece I read yesterday on Lyndon LaRouche, the recent suicide of his longtime printer and confidant, and the subsequent collapse of LaRouche's strange media empire. The point is raised repeatedly in the article that while LaRouche was an early-adopter of computer technologies (he owned the first computer-run printing press in New York), he was suspicious of the Internet - and that ultimately his unwillingness to move online (despite his longtime proto-bloggy rantings) led to the fracturing and dissolution of his movement and businesses. An excellent view of a bizarre little community of American politics.

Club or community?

After a good bit of discussion on the formation of online communities, it seems like we've agreed that the formation of some (if not many) of these communities are interest based. In some cases, like the ACL forums, deviation from the explicit topic may be hard to come by (excluding the occasional spam message). In others, like OrangePolitics some deviation is allowed, but while it is somewhat based on the political interests of the community, they are just that; one facet. Even when some deviation is allowed (or comes naturally... the origin really doesn't matter) there is an overwhelming gravitational pull of some special interest or topic that most groups seem to champion.
The idea of many of these so called communities leads me to think of their physical counterparts. I would be hard pressed to call the members of Jenny Craig or the African drum circle a community, yet in cyberspace, special interest groupings get that label. Are there different standards upon which we judge something to be a community? Or is the discourse simply different (e.g. there probably is more discussion in an african drum circle chatroom than an actual drum circle). What are the prerequisites for 'community' - and could they be applied uniformly to internet and physical groups? are these communities just online clubs?

Designing Online Communities

First, I must begin with a brief introduction. I develop web applications, including e-commerce and content management applications. My opinions may perhaps be influenced by my own contextual vantage point in relation to this reading.

I believe Preece has a valid point when she says, "[the] commercialization of the Internet is sweeping online communities along in its wake, thereby diluting the potency of the concept" (14). Many of Preece's observations stem from discussions on UseNet, ICQ, bulletin boards, and mailing lists. These old forms of communication originated from early uses of the Internet. For example, ARPANET began as a method to communicate with and share computer resources among mainly scientific users at connected institutions; the Internet was a medium for document and information exchange. However, users quickly realized there was a killing to be made (i.e., money money money). Current trends encourage developers to find ways to draw visitors to their websites — to increase participation and, therefore, to increase potential profit through direct sales or through advertisement click-through (Google Adsense). This entire evolution can be seen in the development of Facebook. Facebook began as a portal for information exchange and maintaining relationships. Recently, Facebook has exposed an API for third party applications. Facebook has also been including inline advertising in News Feeds, and Facebook has sold a stake in the company to Microsoft to sell banner ad space. This trend of monetization has enveloped many many more web sites in the social sphere. Where there is a community there is potential money to be made.

Of course, I blame Google (others too, but Google is a great example). There will be individuals with truly novel ideas (i.e., YouTube, StumbleUpon, Jaiku, Writely). These communities and tools successfully enable users to share information and ideas. However, I feel that many newer communities are no longer built for the noble or novel intention of community-building. Instead, many communities (but not all, of course) are built hoping to be bought by Google (or others) for millions upon millions of dollars.

This want for profit leads to several worthy concerns, the primary concern being usability. Usability encourages and facilitates easier participation, and therefore a higher probability that the user will purchase a product or encourage others to participate in the community. Preece cites many examples and characteristics of usability, participation, and design: how users communicate (159), how types of users influence communication (125), the "Magic Number Seven, Plus Or Minus Two" by George Miller, and more. But I feel that communities nowadays focus more on money than on "community".

E-commerce and monetization also leads to the restriction of "community" and communication. For example, Preece describes the specialization of conversation on e-commerce sites on page 68. E-commerce sites must create a sense of privacy and trust amongst its users. Preece cites Amazon.com and REI.com as examples of restricted (or focused) communication to aid user participation and increase potential sales. Both web sites implement forms of communication that help users find information; however, both forms of communication ultimately help further the "bottom line" — profit.

Do others see this trend? Is this trend only a branch of the larger "online community" tree? Or does this represent a more global shift in the philosophy of the online community?

Privacy on Facebook

I feel compelled to clarify a couple things I said in class today, for fear of having come across as a paranoid reactionary when discussion turned to privacy on Facebook. I reacted to Paul's assertion that the Facebook community had retained much of its openness and relative lack of privacy as compared to MySpace, in spite of its launch beyond just college-age users, by saying maybe that wasn't such a great value to uphold. What I meant by that was simply that young people, and sadly young women in particular, may be putting themselves at risk by revealing too much information about themselves; that perhaps the sense of assumed protection from the outside world that existed before the site went "post-college" continues to be taken for granted by many young people who use Facebook.

I'm certainly not one of these alarmist critics of the Internet or social networking; far from it in fact. But I do think it's foolish to ignore the potential downside of the open flow of information in this specific context. And no, I'm not interested in "projecting my fears onto my children," as Paul half-jokingly suggested. Rather, I only hope to instill a modicum of common sense in them (my daughter AND my son) so that by the time they start dabbling online and joining their own social networking sites (who knows what they may be in 5-7 years?), they exercise good judgment and a fair degree of restraint.

I also hope, like Lori opined in her previous post, that my kids continue to thrive in their offline lives and grow to appreciate the wonders of the physical world as much as they learn to delight in the riches of the digital one.

Detached Children

I think the article Michu linked to from del.icio.us was really interesting. I'm referring to the one about how Children detach from natural world as they explore the virtual one. Oddly, I was just thinking about that last night as I used World of Warcraft to settle down after a long and busy day. As I led my gnome mage through the snowfields of Dun Morogh, I could see my footprints in the snow and had the volume loud enough to hear the wintery winds blowing through the woods. It reminded me of the part of my childhood that I spent in Manitoba, where it was not unusual in the winter to wake up and find that our front door was completely covered by a snow drift, and where 40 degrees below zero was common as well. (And haha, I can honestly one day tell my grandkids that I walked to school on those days.)

At that moment two things happened - I remembered the sound of the wind blowing across the snowy prairie land in the middle of Winter. I also had a profound sense of disconnect as the rational thought suddenly hit me -- children who play this game who have never experienced a winter like that, or for that matter, have never really spent any time in nature at all, will never have that gut-level physical reaction to a memory; that feeling of almost shivery "thank god I'm inside a warm house right now" sense of recognition of the potential harshness of nature.

I really have to wonder how increasing virtual "worlds" will impact children growing up, who may never have the actual physical experience with which to relate to the online depiction.

Online Communities

I had forgotten that this afternoon I had my once-per-semester parent-teacher meeting with my fifth grader's teacher. The good news - no surprises and she's doing fine, in spite of her noticeable aversion to mathematics. The bad news - I had to miss class.

So I am going to add a few notes about the reading from today's assignment on Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability.

Overall, it is interesting, although certainly during the first two chapters it really seemed that much of what was said could have been said in (at least) half the space. I realized, however, that some of that perception may have come from already having read many of the authors that Preece cites in this book. In addition, given that Preece's book was published in 2000, it is only fair to note that much of this material would have seemed much more novel to me then.

Overall, I couldn't find any points of disagreement with Preece's exposition, although there were a couple of places that it seemed she made some flat-out assertions that were more in the realm of opinion than proven fact, and that she would have done well to justify them. For example, on p. 63 she says, "Should all classes be held online? Absolutely not, students need face-to-face interaction, too." Now, I actually agree with her on this, but the trends in distance education do seem to be toward increasingly web-oriented coursework. Unfortunately, Preece offers no real rationale for her preference for face-to-face interaction or for this assertion.

I thought Chapter 3 would make a good template of topics to begin looking at the online communities we will be reviewing in our term projects. She provides a good structure for analyzing a particular community, or even for thinking about necessary community elements when considering the possibility of starting up such a community. One thing I would have liked to see a bit more emphasis on was the tendency (or lack thereof) for communities to expand beyond what was originally intended by its developers, but perhaps that will come in a later chapter. For instance, do certain software structures, by-laws, or moderating techniques tend to support or reduce organic growth and change? Preece does mention this briefly, but more discussion of empirical examples would've been cool.

Chapter 4 also provided an interesting list of attributes one could use to analyze a community, and I was especially interested in Preece's mention on p. 126 of the desirability of creating "broad, shallow menus rather than narrow, deep ones." I was also interested in her comment that the gap between the use of the Internet by the rich and poor, the well-educated and less education is increasing . (pp. 130-131) I was wondering, since this book was published 7 years ago, whether that is still a trend we are seeing. Does anyone know this?

Finally, Preece notes that MUDS have their instances of "killers." What's that?

Interesting Article on Social Capital

From Ted Mouw of UNC-Chapel Hill's Sociology Department:

Estimating the Causal Effect of Social Capital: A Review of Recent Research

Underspecification of a model

To clarify what I was talking about today when I mentioned the problems with underspecifying one's model (that is, leaving out some relevant independent variables), one can look at a discussion by economist Razvan Vlaicu (in his econometrics' class notes) at . . .

What Happens if we Underspecify or Overspecify a Linear Model?"

Now in fact, there are situations where underspecification of the model may be, if not desirable, at least understandable. One possible situation is where there is multicollinearity (i.e., the independent variables in the model are correlated with each other). That was why I suggested that there may be a question of whether the ethnicity is correlated with the family structure variables. (That could be why they didn't include those variables, but it would have been desirable for them to let the reader know that.)

Also, in other types of regression, underspecifying a model can sometimes be desirable to achieve precision.

However, I just didn't see anything in this article to suggest it was an explicit decision to leave out those family structure variables.

Which is not to say that the article and the research is invalid -- there is still good reason to have faith in their conclusions, just that if it is underspecified then some of the values they felt were insignificant may actually prove significant with a more complete model and the overall significance of the findings may be skewed with an underspecified model.

Geographic, Ethnic, and Internet Spaces

I forgot to tell our distinguished professor that I'll be absent again tomorrow, away in Asheville, taking in what I hope will be some autumnal splendor...as well as seeing and hanging out with the Black Crowes...yes, I know, they're so entirely un-hip, not mod, and, ahem, not Radiohead, but they remain a somewhat guilty pleasure nonetheless. (DISCLAIMER: Despite what you may think, no one was stoned when this picture was taken.)

But I digress!

Due to my absence, I thought I'd be the dutiful student and post some thoughts on this week's reading, Chapter 14 in our current book. I found this article quite interesting and refreshing in terms of its hypothesis and primary research question, excellent lit review, and well-written summary of findings. As the research indicates a strong correlation across ethnic lines between making friends online and maintaining personal ties within real communities, I found myself asking, does this finding hold true for less urban populations, more geographically isolated and less culturally diverse communities (e.g., a small town in central Iowa). Does the average middle American Goth kid, dressed in black and ostracized as a "freak" at school, with few real world social contacts and little social support, suffer from an equal lack of contact and support online? I would guess the answer may be no. I know this is drawing on a stereotype, but you get the point.

I wonder too whether there wasn't enough focus on the socio-economic influencing factors, rather than socio-cultural. Except for the unique case of the economically challenged Koreatown residents, who registered high levels of online social connectedness, all other low income groups fell into the bottom end of the spectrum. This might suggest that everyday access to technology--or lack thereof--may have been as strong an influencing factor as ethnic and cultural variables. (See chart 14.1 on page 416 and look at the values for the income variable.)

Finally, I was curious to know whether Korean websites still comprised about a third of the top 10 most popular in the world (p. 419), so I Googled it. This result doesn't seem to support that finding anymore, but it has some interesting facts and footnotes. Alexa's latest results don't show any foreign sites in the top 10 either.

Last year's reports as examples

The reports from last year's class are all linked to from, where else, last year's syllabus here. Only one is a Word document. The others were done on blogs.

Our readings are not exactly the same, but you'll see a lot that is familiar to you.

About those presentations, here are some suggestions that helped folks last year:
# choose a virtual community or blog
# describe the community or blog in terms we’ve used in the class (relate to readings and discussion of community and Into the Blogosphere and others where appropriate)
# evaluate the community’s or blogs potentials and inherent conflicts and resolutions
# does the community or blog develop trust? how? is it an example of citizen journalism? how?
# are there hierarchies in place? are issues of gender or age or ethnicity or other issues and raised in Internet in Every Day Life readings — who are the community of readers and participants? is the social network
measurable?
# are “loose ties” apparent (Granovetter)? how do they work in this community or blog?
# how does the interface (see Preece) allow for sociability or block social interactions?
# how is social capital expressed within the site and beyond that site?

Wikipedia's "Good Samaritans"

Interesting little piece in the Chronicle about unregistered Wikipedia users and how they play a crucial role in the ecology of the site (at least for a couple foreign language versions of it).

Chronicle Wikipedia article

Most LIbrarians say, "Facebook outside the purview of professional librarianship"

In a recent issue of Information Technology & Libraries, Laurie Charnigo and Paul Barnett-Ellis report on a survey of 126 academic libraries. Their article, called "Checking Out Facebook.com: The Impact of a Digital Trend on Academic Libraries," discusses their results. Their abstract says:

"While the burgeoning trend in online social networks has gained much attention from the media, few studies in library science have yet to address the topic in depth. This article reports on a survey of 126 academic librarians concerning their perspectives toward Facebook.com, an online network for students. Findings suggest that librarians are overwhelmingly aware of the “Facebook phenomenon.” Those who are most enthusiastic about the potential of online social networking suggested ideas for using Facebook to promote library services and events. Few individuals reported problems or distractions as a result of patrons accessing Facebook in the library. When problems have arisen, strict regulation of access to the site seems unfavorable. While some librarians were excited about the possibilities of Facebook, the majority surveyed appeared to consider Facebook outside the purview of professional librarianship."

I'm always fascinated by the sometimes diametric opposition of librarian attitudes toward things like this to the attitudes of people outside academic librarianship.

Ch.10 and 12 Commentary

I promised Paul I would compose some thoughts on the readings since I was out last Monday taking my SILS comp exam. Not sure if you talked mostly about Chapter 10 (Capitalizing on the Net) or 12 (The Not So Global Village of Netville), but I'll focus mainly on the latter. I will say about the former that the results were rather unremarkable. Given the years in which the study was undertaken and the data was originally gathered (2001 and 2000, respectively), I'd be curious to know whether some of the findings still hold true today. For instance, the fact that the telephone (45%)--as opposed to email (24%)--was the predominant medium for communication for people within a 50km distance in the network may have shifted considerably. And in general, across all distances, email may have since been surpassed by other modes of communicating (IM, SMS, social network sites), at least among the under 25 crowd. (A colleague of mine shared an anecdote with me on Friday, saying that an undergrad recently had told him that email is for "old people and institutions." Ouch.) One other takeaway from Ch. 10 for me was, "The results show that the Internet supplements political activities but does not change people's level of involvement" (p.312) Again, maybe not surprising, but perhaps subject to a slight uptick in recent years of Internet use.

As for Ch. 12 on Netville, although it wasn't exactly a stinging defeat for the utopians who saw huge potential for social change in the form of a highly-connected planned community, the data surely didn't offer a great deal of evidence that such a setup leads to an increase in overall social contact or support. I found it interesting that two of the only statistically significant factors in the former case were age and level of education. As stated on page 357, "Being connected to the local network has the same effect on boosting social contact as four more years of education or nearly thirteen years of increased age." See kids, you just need to stay in school and get older! Who needs the bleedin' Internet?! ;)

It was encouraging to read that the wired members of Netville managed to maintain pre-move levels of support for contacts across all distances and that on average they knew more names of their neighbors than did non-wired community members. But I liked the point near the end of the chapter that equally important to the forming of ties is the presence of gathering places (cafés and such) and access. I think these crucial real-world contributing factors are what makes a place like Carrboro such a vibrant and connected community, whatever the level of CMC that exists among its generally well-educated population.

Age of Propoganda

I am now looking to read Pratkanis and Aronson's book The Age of Propoganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion. The book is essentially aimed at helping people "arm themselves" against propoganda spread by governments and businesses. I discovered it via a review written by J. Scott Armstrong from the Department of Marketing at The Wharton School.

The book discusses the power of rhetoric and the use of persuasion, and collects and summarizes numerous published works on persuasion. Citing Klamer and McClosky's "One Quarter of GDP is Persuasion", Armstrong concludes that "persuasion is big business."

Klamer and McClosky's piece itself, although dated (1995), is interesting. Besides having been written by McClosky back when she was still Don and not Deirdre and back when I was in frequent communication with him(her) as a potential scholar to serve on my then-still-in-the-"someday"-stage dissertation committee, it contains a subtle tint of much of McClosky's searing critique of economics as a so-called "value free" science while still effectively using the statistics that economists love so much to convince them of its argument.

Nonetheless, I am going to read Age of Propoganda and see if it convinces me, or at least makes me more aware of when someone is sweet talking me with rhetoric that needs a deeper examination.

Potentially Interesting Odum Short Course Coming Up

Odum Institute will be offering a short course on October 29 called Visual Design and Layout of Self-Administered Questionnaires. It offers the following description:

This course focuses on how and why words, numbers, symbols and graphics independently and jointly influence answers to questions in Internet and paper surveys. It begins with theoretical background on why and how the visual aspects of questions are interpreted by respondents and guide their reading and comprehension of meaning. Applications of the theory and research to designing individual person and establishment surveys in ways that improve their usability for respondents will be provided. The course ends with a discussion of the substantial implications these ideas have for the design of mixed-mode surveys in which some respondents are asked to report aurally (e.g. telephone) and others are asked to complete visually communicated (web or mail) survey questions.

For people interested in doing (or understanding) Internet surveys, it sounds like it could be good. So Paul, how would you feel if someone missed class that day to go to this course and then report back to the class? (hint hint)

Neighborhoods in Network Society

In a new study in Information Community and Society, Keith Hampton revisits his "Neighboring in Netville" study from 2003. Abstract of current paper, "Neighborhoods in Network Society: The e-Neighbors Study":

This study examines whether the Internet is increasingly a part of everyday neighborhood interactions, and in what specific contexts Internet use affords the formation of local social ties. Studies of Internet and community have found that information and communication technologies provide new opportunities for social interaction, but that they may also increase privatism by isolating people in their homes. This paper argues that while the Internet may encourage communication across great distances, it may also facilitate interactions near the home. Unlike traditional community networking studies, which focus on bridging the digital divide, this study focuses on bridging the divide between the electronic and parochial realms. Detailed, longitudinal social network surveys were completed with the residents of four contrasting neighborhoods over a period of three years.
Three of the four neighborhoods were provided with a neighborhood email discussion list and a neighborhood website. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to model over time the number of strong and weak ties, emailed, met in-person, and talked to on the telephone. The neighborhood email lists were also analyzed for content. The results suggest that with experience using the Internet, the size of local social networks and email communication with local networks increases. The addition of a neighborhood email list further increases the number of weak neighborhood ties, but does not increase communication multiplexity. However, neighborhood effects reduce the influence of everyday Internet use, as well as the experimental intervention, in communities that lack the context to support local tie formation.

Given that it addresses pretty much everything we've been discussing with a good methodological approach and what looks like some tasty longitudinal data, definitely worth a read (er, assuming we have access to the journal, which I can't tell right now, not being on campus).

Does the Internet take away time from our offline friends?

Hey I found an article that actually says that it does not. It was a six-year study done by Univ of South California. It has some other interesting numbers in there but this was the main paragraph that basically said people spending time in front of their computers all day really didn't take time away from their real-life friends:

"What might be a surprise, though, is that all of this online interaction is apparently not detracting from interaction with close friends and family offline. While 37.7 percent of respondents said that the Internet helps them communicate more with family and friends, "almost all" users reported that increased Internet interaction has no effect on the amount of time spent with those people in real life."

My question is do you think this is accurate or do you think "almost all" users responded that way because they didn't want to say they were neglecting their offline friends because they were participating too much with online activities?

Here's the link

Tangent Roundup - 8/10/07

Class on Wednesday began with tangents - which is awesome.

From Post Secret we moved directly onto the illustrious acting careers of classmates and were treated to a special viewing of Doug's Dark Past, complete with ghost girls on buses. That's hott.

Early in class, Paul also referenced his all powerful Facebook Zombie and talked about how his knowledge of social networks has allowed him to reach his mogul status. Little did we know, he was perfectly seguing into a discussion of Granovetter's "Strength of Weak Ties".

One of the points we discussed was how the more tightly bound a community is, the faster info travels through it, and that there's greater trust. Of course there's an opposite view -- information from the outside is less trusted. Here, Paul very quickly mentioned Vannever Bush and memex and a 1945 article in The Atlantic Monthly called "As We May Think".

He went on to discuss the English longbow vs. the Turkish composite bow and the rigging of Arabic ships. Basically, throughout history groups have resisted new information and innovations (More on this in the Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. Also, disruptive technologies in general.).

So how does new info get in?

Grannoveter thinks he knows a way - through people who are respected. Here we mention Malcolm Gladwell. You could read The Tipping Point but this New Yorker article has the gist: "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg".

Mavens, connectors, whatever. Paul says it all boils down to the age-old storytelling device: A stranger comes to town and something happens. Otherwise there's no story -- people stay in town. The end.

So, we move later in class to a discussion of Pew Internet and this somehow transitions into Fred Stutzman's Facebook research. Paul makes a comment about how would you feel if everyone came up to you and told you all of their personal preferences -- my hobbies are this and I like these movies and I listen to x... reminding me of this comic from XKCD. (Sorry, that tangent is completely mine).

Finally, class ended with a discussion about how hard it is to get information that's unframed by some source -- and basically, would you want it? Information like so many people yelling at you unfiltered? Paul compared this to Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale.

And so class went from ghosts to zombies to mavens to aliens, oh my.

Tangent Roundup - 8/8/07

I've been slow to get on this here blog thing, for mostly the same reasons I don't have a blog of my own -- basically, I never know what to write about. But I was struck in class the other day with the following idea: someone should be collecting the many tangents and sidebars that happen in the course of our hour+ with Paul and linking them up. And dagnabit... that should be me! Because I love tangents! And the internet! It's like chocolate and peanut butter -- put the two together and you can do no wrong.

So in customary fashion, I sat on the idea for a week.

But, now, I sit no longer! Or well, I am still sitting, but now I am also typing. We'll see what we end up with.

Most of the class discussion centered around the opening pages of Internet and Everyday Life. One of the key messages (I starred it in my notes, and everything) seemed to be that despite what people will always write about new technologies, technology doesn't really change people, people adapt the new technologies to do things they've always done. Paul, in discussing how the need is to connect to people and the node is the internet, had a nice analogy about the high school girl in crisis through the years: We've gone from the "Please Mr. Postman" deliver de letter to the lonely girl by the phone to the refresh refresh refresh of today's email.

Big Ideas in little bitty references
In looking at Wellman's chart of change, we talked about whether networked individualism really does have the results he lists, and this led to referencing Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, in which he argues that social capital has declined since the 1950s, using your local bowling team -- or lack thereof -- as proof. Read more in Wikiland >>

Richard Florida was also namedropped for his The Rise of the Creative Class, as an example of how the more people are networked and able to establish voluntary connections with special interests, the more powerful they'll be. Or -- as stated in this Washington Monthly article -- why cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic development race. See fancy pants site >>

Death by Video Game
Not sure how we went from networked individualism and Bowling Alone to here, but we moved on to discuss the ultimate "game over" -- starting with the first case in S. Korea and confirming there have been several incidents since. Some links:

• BBC: S. Korean dies after games session


• Second gamer dies after massive binge


• More recently: Man dies after three-day web bender
  


• A much older death from 1982

Left Behind: Eternal Forces
A more natural jump from video games -- we briefly touched on this Shoot 'em up for the End Times. From Wikipedia: "In addition to extensive spiritual warfare, armed conflict ... is an additional aspect of the game ... In its description of the game the Left Behind Games Company states 'The remaining population – those who were left behind – are then poised to make a decision at some point. They cannot remain neutral.' "

A reflection on Paul, pre-internet
This was the parting thought the class was left with: Who was Paul Jones before the internet? Feel free to post your own hypothesis in the comments.

Social Networking - The Analog Version

There was an interesting piece in todays NY Times's Style section on Facebook and how geezers like myself may use it differently than twenty-somethings (see my del.icio.us feed). I love the opening:

"WHEN Amy Waldman first signed on to Facebook last year and started to send joking messages about good grammar back and forth with a new 18-year-old friend, Ms. Waldman’s 19-year-old daughter, Talia, upbraided her for not revealing that she was actually in her 40s.

“You have to tell her you’re old,” she explained, “because on Facebook, that’s creepy.”"

That's actually sort of how I felt when the guy who ended up as the guitar player in my new band first messaged me via Facebook, if only to tell me he dug my musical tastes. I felt a bit odd replying to him that first time, partly out of self-concsiousness for thinking maybe *he* would be creeped out that I was pushing 40 (at the time) while also clearly "engaged" in the social networking game. Turns out I was dead wrong and that a genuine friendship and musical collaboration developed out of this random first encounter. This is social networking at its finest, thought I!

But this past Friday night I couldn't help thinking how rewarding the original version of social networking (analog, real-world, that is) truly was and still is. I decided at the last minute to cruise into town from Hillsborough to check out the Donnas at the Cradle. I knew of only one person who was going, but I've never seen them and thought it would be a good way to blow some steam before heading into a weekend of reviewing for the comp exam. Turns out I run into a law professor who I've gotten chummy with at work, a guy who hails from Memphis and has deep ties to the Memphis music scene. So we end up hanging out for the surprisingly short and somewhat perfunctory Donnas set. In front of us for some time is Glenn Dicker, who co-owns and runs local indie label/distributor YepRoc/RedEye (which happens to be distributing the Donnas new independent release). Glenn went to high school in Pennsylvania with my best friend, Matt, who later went on to road manage the Flaming Lips. Well, it turns out that Adam (my professor friend) was good friends with an RA in college at Yale who also happened to become one of Dicker's closest associates at Rounder Records a few years after that. (The RA happens to be none other than Jake Guralnick, son of noted rock critic/writer, Peter, but that's just a cool aside.) Small world. Adam had never met Glenn so I said I'd have to make introductions later, as I'm casually friendly with Mr. Dicker myself (the strength of weak ties??).

Later, when we all end up at the Nitelight to see some band called Tulsa from Boston, Glenn graciously offers to buy us all a round. That's not before Adam and I discover that we both know another RedEye employee: one of his pool playing pals is another old acquaintance of mine, Mary Gunn. Then, before I even get in the door, my massage therapist's son, Jesse, who I've known since he was about 8 years old, shouts out, "Doug!", makes some chitchat, and asks what I'm doing Halloween night. "Going to see Nada Surf at the Cradle, dude" I reply. "Right on, man, because my band is opening for them!" he responds excitedly. "Wow--how did you score that gig?" I ask. Turns out Jesse used to serve the lead singer espresso every weekday morning the few years he lived up in Brooklyn. So on a whim he emailed the Nada Surf frontman and asked if his band might please have the opening slot. The strength of weak ties yet again, version 1.0.

I had a great night out on Friday and really enjoyed the randomness of connections that went on all around me that night. It left me feeling that facebook and myspace, for all their relative grooviness, leave a lot to be desired when all is said and done.

Does the Internet mean being alone?

Does the Internet mean being alone (Internet and Everyday Life, p25)? This question certainly led me to pay attention to my own habits and the transformation of my own social sphere as I began to use the Internet more and more in my daily life. Internet and Everyday Life states "being alone may also mean abandoning ties with those physically nearby. Individuals may feel this loss, as may the individuals with whom they no longer spend time" (25). Is this statement true? Does the Internet deteriorate physical relationships in lieu of digital relationships?

Yes, my time online subtracts from time I would otherwise spend with others nearby. Instead, I rely on the Internet, for better or worse, to construct weaker but far more numerous relationships than I ever could in person. These weaker relationships (i.e., Twitter, AIM, Facebook, etc.) allow more distant connections. But are these distant and weaker connections more valuable than fewer face-to-face relationships? This depends entirely on the situation. My website and targeted forum participation has allowed me to gain far more clients from many different countries than I could ever hope to gain from face-to-face discussions or even paper advertisements. These distant but numerous connections created by my website and work-related social networking have created a tremendous increase in business profit. However, I feel the quality and time devoted to my close and physical relationships here at home has deteriorated. I spend less time in person with less people. Granted, Facebook does enlarge the social sphere of weaker ties, but is this necessarily a good thing? Does Internet time mean sacrificing your stronger face-to-face ties? Or do you believe the Internet compliments, or even strengthens, already close ties?

Thoughts on the "Meyer" readings

OK, round two of day-late, dollar-short commentary, this time on the two articles that Phil Meyer wanted to discuss last Wednesday, when half of us (including myself) decided to miss class.

I liked the Saul Friedman piece, though I thought if was fairly obvious. I mean, when *are* the MSM going to get the freakin' picture on this?! It was one thing to see MSM cave into the sort of phony baloney "fair and balanced reporting" in the wake of 9/11, where suddenly every major media outlet seemed hellbent on positioning itself as somehow more patriotic than the next (i.e., by NOT disagreeing too too much with any of the B.S. emanating from Washington). However, it's been 6 long years since then, and only now, a year after the opposing party made it hip and safe again for MSM to paint the administration in a bad light, do we see a significant shift away from the kind of faux-objective journalism Friedman disparages.

On the other hand, I think Friedman and I are being too broad here...the MSM reports on a whole lot more than just politics, and they often do offer intelligent, bold reporting on many other topics, where they may qualify assertions with counter opinions but do enough investigating to effectively squash specious arguments and "take a stand" on a given topic. I think in that sense the criticism of the MSM has gone a bit far of late.

The climate change piece by Steve Outing didn't sit quite as well with me. While I agree that climate change is a critical issue that deserves all the well-investigated press and MSM coverage it can get, I don't think it is the job of a MSM outlet--be it print newspaper, weekly newsmagazine, or online paper--to serve as the champion for any particular cause, constantly reminding its readers of that cause's importance and devoting inordinate amounts of space to convincing readers to "make a difference." Just give me the facts, please, mixed with a healthy dose of informed opinion, yes. But leave the persuasive advocacy to the Oxfams, Greenpeaces, Doctors Without Borders, and (on the other side of the political spectrum) NRAs or Focus on the Families of the world. You can avoid bogus "objectivity" without becoming a mouthpiece for the cause of the moment.

Thoughts on Granovetter

Being among those who shamefully failed to complete this important reading prior to today’s class, I humbly submit the following…

First of all, I’m stunned that Granovetter’s piece first appeared over thirty years ago, at a time when only the most forward-thinking computer scientists could have envisioned what the Internet could become. Although he doesn’t frame his argument at all around technology-based communities (how could he have then?), the applicability of his ideas to today’s online social networks and virtual communities is, indeed, striking.

Second, I struggled with some of the more abstract concepts in his article, not least of which was his point about “local bridges.” He states on the one hand “only weak ties may be local bridges” (p.1365). But he also writes that weak ties “are certainly not automatically bridges” (p.1364). I think I get what he’s trying to convey, insofar as only those weak ties that represent the shortest path between two points constitute a local bridge; but this portion of his treatise left me scratching my head a bit.

Later in the article this did become clearer in the example of two Boston communities whose success in organizing against an urban renewal plan was markedly different. In one community (the West End), where organizing efforts failed to take root, weak ties existed but almost all originated from a singular context: people meeting friends of friends. This did NOT lead to his so-called local bridges and instead left the community fragmented. As Granovetter points out about the community that was successful in organizing against the urban renewal (Charlestown), it benefited from a richer social organization presence and greater number of locally employed citizens. He concludes that “there must be several distinct ways or contexts in which people may form [weak ties]” (p.1375) in order for them to become effective bridges.

Finally, I take exception with some of Granovetter’s broader generalizations, especially the bit about trust and leaders, wherein he posits, “Leaders, for their part, have little motivation to be responsive or even trustworthy toward those to whom they have no direct or indirect connection” (p.1374). What?! A true leader, in my eyes, is someone who inspires trust not just in those with whom he or she has direct contact, but in a broad audience of people, known and unknown. I also don’t agree that people’s trust in a leader is based largely on the existence of “intermediary personal contacts” who can basically vouch for the leader’s legitimacy and trustworthiness. I’ll be my own judge of character, thank you very much.

Internet in Everyday life

We didnt get a chance to touch on it in class but I was intrigued by the idea of the internet not changing behavior but exaggerating what we already do (22) The example the book offers is "increasing circles of friends for the outgoing and successful among us, and decreasing social circles for the rest". I'm willing to accept that internet behavior does exaggerate our social tendencies thus the "popular" kids maybe have more facebook friends than the not so popular. But the internet allows more people to unite in a comfortable atmosphere based on common interests, so introverts may have more friends online than they would have otherwise not acquired because of their timidness. It seems like this idea that extroverts benefit more from the internet than introverts is in essence belittling virtual communities. I was just curious as to what other people thought about this idea.

Citizen Media Sites

I'm posting the information I gathered for the current status of the sites mentioned in the citizen media article on here because I have been trying for weeks to post it on the wiki but I am having difficulties.
Northwest Voice: This site is still up and active. There are postings but the site lacks a lot of interaction. The most recent postings have no responses or comments and also have a low number of viewings.

Newwest.net: The site is active. There are little comments in response to the articles. The site does not appear to be a successful social community.

an informal survey

I think by this point of the course, it is more than established that virtual communities do form and count by classical terms as communities (Geimenshaft) I wonder, though, how through the ethos of these communities (which are invariably, recent) a rudimentary moral code could form. Is virtual morality an extension of real-world morality, or does it follow a different pattern in permissibility? I would think it important to consider the cross-cultural hybrid communities that form. Maybe the fact that actual (i use actual to mean real-world) societies' differ in their concepts of moral vs. conventional rules a renegotiation of what the filter is for morality is necessary.
Can virtual communities be, in a sense, liminal spaces for morality? Does a moral code necessarily arise from a community? Does the lack of physical presence limit the need for a moral code (limited ability to produce physical harm etc)

I just want to know what others think.

Facebook steals first base from Myspace

I thought this article was interesting because I've always assumed Myspace was more popular than facebook because it appears to have alot more members. Even after Facebook opened its social network up for users not in the college network, and added several application features that will allow users to mimick myspace sites in a sense, I still am surprised. Although I prefer facebook over myspace, I have experienced many inquiries on whether I have a myspace account, and I can't say the same for facebook. My guess, based on our discussions in class is that facebook must have a stronger social community which is not surprising at all. Myspace seems to lack the idea of community and ends up looking like a type of advertising device for those seeking "celebrity status", at least as far as the internet goes. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=137

Journalism 2.0

What should come up in my RSS reader this afternoon but a post from Warren Ellis linking back to a new J-Lab study on citizen media - Journalism 2.0 (pdf) -written by Mark Briggs and with an introduction by Phil Meyer. Haven't read through it yet but seems - timely.

What's with the link-weighted searching, anyway?

Well, I am finally a little satisfied. I have my own (relatively) new blog and no real readership (which is actually fine with me, since I'm just co-dependent enough that I would feel responsible for blogging very regularly if I had a more regular readership). However, I do have Sitemeter and am able to track the referrals that lead to my blog.

So far they have been totally ho-hum and mostly related to a post I wrote on nature vs. technology: the lead-in apparently occurs when people search for "nature vs. nurture," which is in the text of the post. Another person searched for "documentation strategy." Someone else for Derrida.

I'm pleased to see that today, however, a search worthy of being called odd led to my blog. I can't even begin to explain what did it. The search was for "energy feeding aliens."

Radiohead to Smother Music Industry with Pillow

As has been noted in several places, Radiohead today announced their plans for distribution of their forthcoming album, In Rainbows. I've been speculating on this for a while, as I noted a year or so back that they were without record contract, and didn't really need one. And I'm not in the least surprised by what they're doing - letting fans decide how much to pay:

This weekend the band announced that its new album, called "In Rainbows," will go on sale on Oct. 10. They still haven't signed with a label, and the album won't be available in record stores nor on iTunes or any other online music shop. You'll find it only on the band's site, and if you're looking for a digital version, the price is very attractive: Whatever you'd like to pay.

You can pre-order the new album here. Click to purchase the download and you're presented with a simple screen at which you've got two boxes to fill in, quantity and price (in pounds). "It's up to you," the site says.

This makes me incredibly happy. Not just that there's a new Radiohead album dropping two days after my birthday, and not just that it'll be as free as I want it to be, but that they're doing their part to bring to a close the current structure of the corrupt, extortionist record industry:

Radiohead completed their contract with the EMI label with their last album, "Hail to the Thief," and since then have not kept their antipathy toward record companies very secret. In this clip a fan pleads, "Tell us about the new album!" Yorke answers, "Who says there's an album?" And when the New York Times asked him about it last year, Yorke drew a picture of a band deeply disillusioned with the state of the music industry today. "We were having endless debates, spending entire afternoons talking about, 'Well, if we do something, how do we put it out?' ... It just became this endless and pointless discussion. Because in our dreams, it would be really nice to just let off this enormous stink bomb in the industry."

...

For every $1 song sold on iTunes, according to reports, Apple keeps about 30 cents, giving about 70 to the record label. But activists say artists typically get just 8 to 14 cents per song from the deal -- or about $0.80 to $1.40 per album sold digitally.

So that's the main test here; in order for the band to come out ahead, Radiohead needs to clear only more than a buck-50 per sale. Easy.

And that's supposing that they even care about making money from the album (as opposed to their sold-out-in-perpetuity tours) which, millionaires many times over, they don't really need to worry about.

Yet another emergent model for how to make money online for creative efforts, and one that bears watching both for its own success (highly likely) or further adoption (also likely).

Is MySpace Really That Popular?

It's a little bit of an old article but I thought it had some things that supported our thoughts on how some social networks can look huge and extremely interactive but in reality their users do not use the site that often. It also touched on the idea we talked about with the coffee cards and how it's more attractive before it starts to go mainstream. Mainly I just like the article cause I've never been a fan of MySpace and now I know someone else out there agrees with me that it's huge numbers of registered users doesn't really mean much!

Enjoy!