Social media blurs private and public, production and consumption, play and work, physical and digital. There. I just saved myself about 500 words worth of work.
Now with this blurring framework in mind, let us take a look at Facebook’s newest feature: Pay-to-Promote posts. more...
Presidential debates might be the single political event where Marshall McLuhan’s infamous phrase “the medium is the message” rings most true. Candidates know well that content takes the back seat, perhaps even stuffed in the trunk, during these hyper-performative news events. The video above of McLuhan on the Today show analyzing a Ford-Carter debate from 1976 is well worth a watch. The professor’s points still ring provocative this morning after the first Obama-Romney debate of 2012; a debate that treated the Twitter-prosumer as a television-consumer and thoroughly failed the social medium. more...
The video above is a “funny” take on the role of Twitter in our everyday lives from this past summer (I think). I know, who cares about celebrities and nothing is less funny than explaining why something is funny. But because the video isn’t really that funny to begin with, we’ve nothing to lose by quickly hitting on some of the points it makes. Humor is a decent barometer for shared cultural understanding for just about everything, indeed, often a better measure than the op-eds and blog posts we usually discuss in the quasi-academic-blogosphere. Those who made this video themselves are trying to tap into mainstream frustrations with smartphones and social media and their increasingly central role in many of our lives. So let’s look at the three main themes being poked at here, and I’m going to do my best to keep this short by linking out to where I’ve made these arguments before.
Photos by Nathan Jurgenson, taken in Washington, D.C., 17, January 2012.
Malcolm Harris has posted one of the most provocative things I’ve ever read about social media, “Twitterland.” I’d like to point you the story and go through some of the many issues he brings to light. Harris’ story is one of theorizing Twitter and power; it can reinforce existing power imbalances, but, as is the focus here, how it can also be used to upset them.
Digital Dualism
Harris begins by taking on the idea that Twitter is a “tool” or an “instrument”, arguing that, no, Twitter is not a map, but the territory; not the flier but the city itself; hence the title “Twitterland.” However, in nearly the same breath, Harris states he wants to “buck that trend” of “the faulty digital-dualist frame the separates ‘real’ and online life.” As most readers here know, I coined the term digital dualism and provided the definition on this blog and thus have some vested interest in how it is deployed. And Harris’ analysis that follows indeed bucks the dualist trend, even though I would ask for some restating of the more theoretical parts of his argument. I’d like to urge Harris not to claim that Twitter is a new city, but instead focus on how Twitter has become part of the city-fabric of reality itself. more...
Before the 2012 meeting of the American Sociological Association kicked off last week, I challenged those of us who tweet at conferences—or “backchannel”—to reach out to those who don’t. (Nathan Jurgenson has since made a convincing argument for why ‘backchannel’ isn’t the right word for this practice, though I’m not yet aware of a good replacement term.) This week, I want to share some of my preliminary observations and questions about gender and Twitter use at ASA2012 by looking at Marc Smith’s (@marc_smith) Twitter NodeXL social network analysis maps.
So first off, what are we looking in the graph above?
Bodies and screens, voices and tweets, hallways and backchannels, experiencing the American Sociological Association meetings this weekend in Denver means stepping into an atmosphere oversaturated with information. The bombardment can sometimes be overwhelming, with more sessions than you can attend and more tweets than you can read. This isn’t going to be a post on why we should use Twitter at conferences, Whitney Erin Boesel already did that more diplomaticly than I could pull off. Anyways, framing it as ‘why do we continue to meet face-to-face?’ would be more interesting for me. Instead, I simply want to argue that there will not be separate online and offline conferences happening, that Twitter isn’t a backchannel and the session room isn’t the front. The reality of the conference is always both digital and physical for everyone whether their noses are buried in a screen, sheets of paper, or staring unblinkingly at the podium. more...
As the 2012 meeting of the American Sociological Association (#ASA2012) kicks into gear, I want to use this post to start a conversation about a somewhat-contentious topic: academics’ use of Twitter, particularly at conferences. I begin by extending some of what’s already been written on Cyborgology about the use of Twitter at conferences, and then consider reasons why some people may find Twitter use off-putting or intimidating at conferences. I close by considering what Twitter users in particular can do to ease the “Twitter tensions” at ASA by being more inclusive. The stakes here include far more than just “niceness”; they include as well an opportunity to shape the shifting landscape of scholarly knowledge production.
Recently mentions of a new “real-time social feed” called App.net have been creeping into my Twitter feed. Just as the quietly simmering Diaspora and the running joke that is G+ were geared to seize on collective Facebook malaise, it seems App.net is trying to seize on some degree of unrest among Twitter users before taking on Facebook as well. In this case, App.net promises that “users and developers [will] come first, not advertisers”; in an era of “if it’s free, you’re the product”—remember that the much love/hated Facebook “[is] free and always will be”—App.net proposes to offer a Twitter-like social feed (and eventually a “powerful ecosystem based on 3rd-party developer built ‘apps’”) on a paid membership basis instead.
Chick-fil-A has delicious waffle fries. So delicious. But before getting in to the content of this post, I should locate myself by stating that I have not purchased anything from this company in over a year, and I will never consume those warm checkered squares of potato-y goodness again. The reason for this (in case anyone has been living under a rock/in a dissertation shaped bubble) is that the company explicitly opposes same-sex marriage. I am explicitly anti-bigotry, and so I do not purchase food from Chick-fil-A
Okay, now I can theorize. more...
Discussing the relative strengths and weaknesses of education as it occurs on and offline, in and outside of a classroom, is important. Best pedagogical practices have not yet emerged for courses primarily taught online. What opportunities and pitfalls await both on and offline learning environments? Under ideal circumstances, how might we best integrate face-to-face as well as online tools? In non-ideal teaching situations, how can we make the best of the on/offline arrangement handed to us? All of us teaching, and taking, college courses welcome this discussion. What isn’t helpful is condemning a medium of learning, be it face-to-face or via digital technologies, as less real. Some have begun this conversation by disqualifying interaction mediated by digitality (all interaction is, by the way) as less human, less true and less worthy, obscuring the path forward for the vast majority of future students.
This is exactly the problem with the op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times titled, “The Trouble With Online Education.” more...
