Week 3 Participation

This week I completed the following tasks for class participation:

• Completed all week three assigned readings.
• Posted three blog entries (this makes four).
• Read all my classmates' blogs and the official class blog, and posted comments on 12 separate entries.
• Read week three discussion board content and contributed three comments.
• Read some blogs on Web 2.0 and marketing, including investing in your audiences.
• Researched online communities for the observations paper. Began lurking/participating in said communities.
• Researched possible formats/hosts for my produsage project, including checking out a few leads from my fellow classmates. At this point, I haven’t made a decision though.
  

Has Facebook Changed Your Life?

According to this article, sometime next week Facebook will reach 500 million users. To celebrate, Facebook will launch a visual memorial to all the ways that the social network has changed people’s lives, such as through finding love or documenting natural disasters.

I give kudos to Facebook for being able to attract such an overwhelming following to their social utility, but I also find myself somewhat skeptical to the idea that Facebook has actually changed lives. Our lives are altered by momentous experiences such as being accepted to college, getting married, having children, losing loved ones, being diagnosed with illness, etc. Does Facebook really qualify as one of these life-changing experiences? I’m not so sure. Perhaps there are a handful of people who did fall in love through a Facebook connection or landed a job because of their social networking skills, but I can’t imagine that the majority of those 500 million users would fall into that category.

Has Facebook changed my life? Somewhat. Now, I have an excuse not to travel to my high school reunion because I can stalk all my old classmates on Facebook. Now, when I go out to dinner with friends I have to make sure that I don’t let anyone take pictures of me a martini in hand because those pictures will surely end up tagged on Facebook. Now, I have to monitor my privacy settings in case potential employers or old boyfriends decide to look me up on Facebook. For me, Facebook is a double-edged sword. I enjoy the connectivity, but I don’t enjoy that increasing levels of personal information are floating around in cyberspace for people to access.

Would you say that Facebook has changed your life in a positive way, negative way, or not at all? What about other social networks?

Biologically Wired for Connectivity?

This morning I stumbled across the Sunday Book Review of “Hamlet’s Blackberry” from the New York Times, and was intrigued by the article title, “Born to Check Mail.”

The author, Laurie Winer, comments on society’s “obsessive connectivity and its effect on our brains and very way of life.” Winer in fact, admits to frequently tearing herself away from reading to address the email notification pings on her iPhone. This made me chuckle to myself, as I also frequently pause during reading or my favorite episode of Grey’s Anatomy to make sure nothing new and exciting has popped up on my Facebook wall.

According to the article, these kinds of notifications may actually set off a “dopamine squirt” in our brains. Marketers told us that we need to be connected, but our genetic brain processes may have solidified the need to repeatedly do so. We are literally getting a high from the attention delivered through social connectivity.

This information led me to think about the vaguebooking phenomenon posted by Vanessa earlier this week. Are vaguebookers actually being compelled to seek attention through biological chemical processes in their brain? Just some food for thought…

Week 3 Prompt Response

I currently work for a small office that is a division of a state agency in Florida. In this environment, an office wiki would be very useful in the following ways.

For one, new employees coming into the office receive an agency-wide HR handbook but they don’t receive any information on policies and procedures within our specific office. A wiki would be a great way to explain simple items like our organizational chart, emergency notification tree, employee roles and areas of focus, how to reserve a meeting room or conference line, etc. Then, as policies and procedures are changed, the wiki could be added to or edited appropriately.

I also collaborate with a large advisory council and hundreds of partners around the state on a regular basis. One major project we have underway is revising the goals and objectives in our statewide strategy. In order to get feedback, I have to email documents out to everyone, ask them to track changes or write out edits, email it back to me, and I then incorporate changes. If all of this were done in a wiki, it would save a lot of time and cost.

As another class blogger mentioned, a wiki would be a great way to keep track of bills, amendments, committee meetings and so forth during legislative session. Right now we use Lobby Tools to track this information, but it would be easier if everything could be maintained in one space for our internal office and we were all consistently up-to-date.

One challenge to implementing these kinds of changes is Florida’s broad public record laws. At times, our office receives requests for all documents, emails, and notes regarding specific topics. The multiple contributors to a wiki would make it difficult to determine specific authorship and extract the needed information for public record. Another challenge I foresee is management being unwilling to relinquish control over the content and information contained in a wiki. Many management officials within my agency are very specific about having complete oversight into agency work projects, content, who does what, etc.

So, although a wiki would be a useful tool, I don’t see it being implemented in the near future. The State has rarely been accused of being an early adopter of new technology (as I type in software from 2003). We will probably only be able to begin thinking about these possibilities when a national agency, or other state agency, starts modeling them.

Week 2 Participation

This week I completed the following tasks for class participation:

• Completed all week two assigned readings.
• Posted three blog entries (this makes four).
• Read all my classmates' blogs and the official class blog.
• Read discussion board content.
• Researched flash mobs, viral communication, and watched some fun, related YouTube videos.
• Searched for information on "pro-ana/mia" communities (as was referenced in Shirky) and other pro-self-harm social communities.
• Looked into Diigo and what it does. Although I know more, I'm still not entirely clear on how to use it, or pronounce it.

For those interested in learning more about Diigo, try checking out this slideshare presentation that provides some background. This web site also provides many related videos such as a "Diigo tutorial" and "Diigo in Education."

It was difficult for me to keep up this week because I spent 5 days in airports and hotels where I was asked to pay $15+ per day for Internet which my budget does not allow. Next week I hope to be overall less research-oriented and more interactive.

Solving Social Dilemmas

Chapter 8 of Here Comes Everybody titled “Solving Social Dilemmas” especially struck a chord with me this week. From the reading, I felt that Shirky was making the point that Web 2.0 facilitates connectedness among social groups that normally would in some way be ostracized or forced to overcome barriers to prosper. Case in point: the list on page 197 citing 6,757 witches and 1,339 vampires. (Who knew there were so many vampires out there?!)

Putting the supernatural aside, I wanted to look into the positive and negative sides of these kinds of online communities and websites linking social groups that would otherwise be underground due to the nature of their interest and content. Through Google searching, it was rather disturbing to find how many explanatory web sites and message boards exist that aid young women in losing weight, promoting anorexia/bulimia, and posting “thinspiration.” As I delved further into these deviant communities, I also found web sites that provided guides for self-mutilation (e.g., cutting, burning, etc.), and even sites that list recommended methods for attempting suicide based on effectiveness, pain threshold, and more. From what I understand, the powers that be will not shut down these kinds of sites because it infringes on the right to free speech. (In Shirky’s YM example, I’m guessing they were able to shut down their message board because they were a private company.) In my personal opinion however, I cannot help but wonder what good could possibly come from these sites that promote self-harm.

On the other side of the spectrum, there are positive outlets to connect these same groups of people. For those who are looking for self-help to overcome anorexia, self-mutilation, and suicidal ideation there are websites which serve as online support groups. In particular, via Dr. Phil’s blog I was linked to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Gallery. This is a website where visitors pick a self-representative avatar and then record their own personal story to be posted on the site. People visit this website to share and listen to stories of hope and recovery. I was impressed that this website allows people to reach out and feel connected but still maintain a level of anonymity. In this example, those with mental illness and their family and friends can overcome stigma and open up a dialogue that may not always be acceptable in real life social settings.

This information serves to reinforce the belief that there are positive and negative sides to every coin and the Internet can be a very dangerous tool in the wrong hands.

Empowerment through Web 2.0

When people talk about Web 2.0, many immediately associate it with social networking web sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, blogs, etc., but do not link it with a concrete instrumental purpose. Because of this, I found it especially fascinating in this week’s assigned reading that many oppressed regions and groups have been using Web 2.0 communications to empower their communities.

One particular point of interest is flash mobs. For any readers out there who aren’t already aware, a flash mob is “a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an act for a brief time, and then disperse.” (Thank you, Wikipedia for that fine definition.) In countries that have strict, repressive communication policies such as Internet monitoring, secret police, and so forth it can be very difficult for citizens to exercise free speech or peacefully protest against government. This is where new communication technology such as text messaging and mobile applications comes into play. These applications allow masses to assemble very quickly with little “tracked” planning efforts and allow citizens to participate in protests.

These flash mob protests lead me to examine protesting in the past and potential for the future. It is likely that previous rights movements, such as for women’s rights or civil rights, would have advanced much more quickly with the organizational tools that are available today. Even in the introduction scenario of the Shirky text regarding the crusade to get back a lost cell phone demonstrates how information can now “go viral,” whereas in the past everything was dependent on word of mouth. I can only imagine the innovative ways in which groups will take advantage of this technology in the future, and adversely, the measures government will take to combat it.

And just for fun, take a look at this YouTube video of a flash mob of more than 200 dancers in the Central Station of Antwerp Belgium. If you read the caption, you will learn that this was a promotional stunt for a Belgian television program. How would you have reacted if you had been there?