Social Media

1. Social Media

2. Social Network Sites – SNSs(danah m. boyd & Nicole B. Ellison, 2007) • Definition: Web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site. • Laid the foundation for future studies • boyd and Ellison (2007)

3. Social Network Sites • Features of SNSs • Fairly consistent – cultures vary • Incorporate new information • Propose a comprehensive definition. • Present one perspective on the history of such site • Discuss key changes and developments. • Summarize existing scholarship • Contributes to on going dialogue about SNSs

4. 1st SNS createdin 1997. • Friendster failed • Myspace (2003) attract Friendster followers but upgraded featuresbased on user demand • Facebook (2004) first designedfor college students

5. Social Network(ing) Sites (Dr. David Beer, 2008) • Response to boyd & Ellison • Open debates and questions about study of SNSs • Network – Networking • Online & Offline living • Capitalism • SNSs are commercial spaces • “We should also be thinking about capitalist interests, of third parties using the data, of the organising power of algorithms (Lash,2007a), of the welfare issues of privacy made public, of the motives and agendas of those that construct these technologies in the common rhetoric of the day, and, finally, of the way that information is taken out of the system to inform about the users, or, in short, how SNS can be understood as archives of the everyday that represent”

6. The Benefits of Facebook "Friends:" Social Capital and College Students' Use of Online Social Network Sites(Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield, Cliff Lampe, 2007) • Relationship between use of Facebook and the formation and maintenance of social capital. • Assess bonding and bridging social capital and maintained social capital • Facebook represents an understudied offline to online trend • Social Capital – resources accumulated through the relationships among people (Coleman, 1988) • Internet – foundation of bridging social capital • Relationship between facebook use bridging and bonding social capital and degree of a self-esteem and satisfaction with life

7. Methods & Measures • Random sample: 800 Michigan State University undergraduate students surveyed • A total of 286 students completed the online survey, yielding a response rate of 35.8% • Regression analyses Measures: • Facebook Usage • Psychological well-being • Social capital (bridging, bonding & maintaining)

8. Findings • Use of Facebook to connect with offline friends • Student view primary audience as people with offline connection • Positive relationship between Facebook use and the maintenance and creation of social capital. • Facebook used to keep in touch with old friends or intensify offline relationships • SNSs help maintain relationships as people move communities • Interaction between bridging social capital and subjective well-being measures

9. Here Comes Everybody by: Clay Shirky • New Leverage on Old Behaviors • People form groups/networks that are complex • Ability to organize as a group to complete complicated tasks • “When we change the way we communicate, we change society.” • Self-assembly altered how groups organize • Tectonic Shift • Barriers to group action have collapsed • Competition to traditional institutional forms

10. Cognitive Surplus: Shirky Scarcity vs. Abundance The world is defined by the relationships it contains More media=cheaper=more experimentation Love vs. Money Media world of distributed authority Creativity vs. Creation Kittens on treadmills more creative than watching TV When to publish and when to filter

11. ‘Great Wall of Facebook’by: Fred Vogelstein Google interested in personal data Facebook vs. Google Facebook harbors more information about people than can be googled Logging to comment with Facebook backseats anonymous postings Facebook valuing data over users

12. ‘Year the Audience Keynoted’ by: Lewis Wallace Zuckerberg vs. SXSW New Level of interactivity Direct questioning Simultaneous postings/chats Video 0:35

13. The Twitter ExplosionPaul Farhi | American Journalism Review | April/May 2009 • Twitter explosion is thanks in no small part to its adoption by journalists and news organizations • “Some well-known news-media names now have Twitter followings that are almost as large as the circulation of their newspapers or viewership of their TV shows.”

14. The Twitter ExplosionPaul Farhi | American Journalism Review | April/May 2009 • George Stephanopoulos (ABC News, Good Morning America)—more than 564,000 followers (1,767,583 as of 7/21) • David Gregory (NBC, Meet the Press)— 528,356 followers (1,540,787 as of 7/21) • Rachel Maddow (MSNBC)—506,951 followers (2,162,112 as of 7/21) • Scott Simon (NPR)—360,861 followers (1,230,387 as of 7/21) • David Pogue (New York Times)—306,371 followers (1,432,016 as of 7/21)

15. The Twitter ExplosionPaul Farhi | American Journalism Review | April/May 2009 Benefits of Twitter in Journalism Speed and brevity Tweet from anywhere Is reporting via Twitter appropriate for all kinds of events? News tip line

16. The Twitter ExplosionPaul Farhi | American Journalism Review | April/May 2009 January 15, 2009 Janis Krums tweets a photo of U.S. Airways flight 1549 which crashed into the Hudson River

17. The Twitter ExplosionPaul Farhi | American Journalism Review | April/May 2009 May 1, 2011—Sohaib Athar live tweets raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan

18. The Twitter ExplosionPaul Farhi | American Journalism Review | April/May 2009 • Drawbacks • There’s a lot of garbage to sift through • 140-character limit and shortened links • New ethical territory—think before you tweet

19. Seems Stupid Until You Try It: Press Coverage of Twitter, 2006 −9Arceneaux & Weiss | New Media & Society 2010 • Uses social construction theory and diffusion of innovations theory to explore public response to Twitter by analyzing its press coverage from 2006-2009 • “Purposeful sampling” of newspapers and news wires, magazines and blogs published between March 1, 2006 and March 31, 2009 from the LexisNexis Academic database • Used grounded theory approach to identify categories and develop themes

20. Seems Stupid Until You Try It: Press Coverage of Twitter, 2006 −9Arceneaux & Weiss | New Media & Society 2010 Findings Explanation Theme Brevity Speed Positive Themes New sensibility Commercial use Civic use Negative Themes Information overload Acceptable practices Unanticipated consequences Twitter spam; identity fraud

21. Seems Stupid Until You Try It: Press Coverage of Twitter, 2006 −9Arceneaux & Weiss | New Media & Society 2010 • Conclusion: • There was some skepticism, but coverage, and therefore public reaction, was overwhelmingly positive. • If they can figure out a way to make money off it, Twitter won’t go anywhere any time soon.

22. Twittering The News: The emergence of ambient journalismBy: Alfred Hermida • Twitter - A social media technology that allows instant online dissemination of short fragments of data from a variety of official and unofficial sources. • Micro-blogging – A new media technology that enables and extends our ability to communicate, sharing some similarities with broadcast. • The author suggests that micro-blogging systems that enable millions of people to communicate instantly, share and discuss events are an expression of collective intelligence. • The argument is that new para-journalism forms such as micro-blogging are “awareness systems”, providing journalists with more complex ways of understanding and reporting on the subtleties of public communication. • In newsrooms Twitter is now adopted as an essential mechanism to distribute news quickly. • Twitter is also being used in newsrooms as a tool to solicit story ideas, sources and facts.

23. Twittering The News: The emergence of ambient journalismBy: Alfred Hermida • There are four reasons that people use Twitter: Daily Chatter, Conversation, Sharing Information, and Reporting News. Two of which can be considered as relevant to journalism. • Also directly relevant to journalism are two of the three main categories of users on Twitter: Information Source and Information Seeker. • One concern regarding Twitter has been how journalist should adopt social media within existing ethical norms and values, and how to institute Twitter policies to bring its use in line with established practices. • A few concerns journalist have with Twitter is the validity of messages. • Twitter and other social media technologies undermine the gatekeeping function of journalists by enabling the disintermediation of news. • Journalist can maintain and enforce the gatekeeper role by filtering and selecting what tweets to publish. • While micro-blogging services such as Twitter can be situated within the trend in citizen journalism, it should also be considered a system of communication with its own media logic, shapes and structures.

24. Twittering The News: The emergence of ambient journalismBy: Alfred Hermida • Ambient Journalism – An awareness system that offers diverse means to collect, communicate, share and display news and information, serving diverse purposes. • These systems are always-on and move from the background to the foreground as and when a user feels the need to communicate. • If we consider Twitter as a form of ambient journalism, then the issue becomes the development of systems that can identify, contextualize and communicate news and information from a continuous stream of 140-charater messages to meet the needs of an individual. • Considering Twitter as an awareness system also represents a shift in the consumption of news and information. • Becoming a customized newspaper, tweets provide a diverse mix of news and information, as well as an awareness of what others in a user’s network are reading and consider important. • The link-based nature of many tweets, and the trend to re-send the links as a “retweet”, can be analyzed as both a form of data sharing and as a system for creating a shared conversation (which can be considered as a form of ambient journalism). • Are internet technologies creating a “Daily Me” or a “Daily We”?

25. Gatejumping: Twitter, TV News and the Delivery of Breaking NewsBy: Dale Blasingame • Dale Blasingame, TXST Master’s grad. This paper was originally written for this class. Presented at ISOJ, published in its journal. • Many consider gatekeeping theory to be the core theory of guidance in the news business. In this study, gatekeeping is used as a descriptive framework to explain how Twitter is affecting news business. • “Gatejumping” – Phrase coined by Brogan and Smith (2010) which is finding “a better way to do things while everyone else is too busy to notice.” • “Web first” – Stories are published first to the Web before they are published online. • News happens in real time and the public doesn’t want to wait for the 5, 6, or 10 p.m. newscast or the morning paper the be released. • Twitter users are prime viewers of news and information. They are two to three times more likely to visit a leading news Web site than the average person. Many tweets contain links to articles, videos or other media. • A 2010 study by the Radio Television Digital News Association and Hofstra University found that 77% of television newsrooms have a Twitter account, with more than 70% saying they either use the micro-blogging service constantly or, at the very least, daily.

26. Media personalities use Twitter as a source of delivering news and opinion, sharing links and interacting with viewers. • Twitter has contributed in breaking several huge stories such as Michael Jackson’s death and the 2009 Iran Election protests. • This article used a case study approach to highlight the effectiveness of Twitter, on a date with significant breaking news, in terms of real-time news delivery from a variety of sources. • The case study perfectly illustrates the potential of Twitter as a device to deliver information in a breaking news situation. It also shows how information on Twitter does not pass through the traditional flow of “gates” before reaching the audience. • With Twitter, any newsroom employee involved in the process delivers news. Making each individual employee just as important a gatekeeper as the next. • The case study shows that news is delivered to viewers in real time, if viewers want to receive is in that method. • There is the recognition that the public itself are now gatejumpers. When people see breaking news happen, they have the ability to deliver the news on Twitter just as an employee at a news station would. • “Web first” is now “Twitter first”

27. Twitter represents one of the fastest growing social networking sites in terms of audience Rise of Twitter has created more opportunities for user-generated content sharing Including increased opportunities for news-sharing by journalists Twitter presents the possibility for changes to the journalistic norms Journalists are able to be more open with opinions, more liberal in sharing their gatekeeping roles and more thorough in being transparent about the news process Normalizing Twitter

28. Research Questions How microblogging might be affecting the professional norms and practices of journalist affiliated with mainstream news media RQ1: Do journalists who microblog deviate from their role as nonpartisan impartial information providers by expressing personal opinions through their microblog postings? RQ2: Do journalists who microblog share their gatekeeping role with others by including postings from them in their microblogging? RQ3: Do journalists who microblog provide accountability and transparency by tweeting about their jobs, by engaging in discussions with other tweeters, by tweeting about their personal life or by linking to external sources Normalizing Twitter

29. Method Content analysis of Journalists’ Tweets Results Found the elite journalist were less likely to deviate from traditional norms and practices while the less elite journalist were more willing to deviate from traditional norms and practices Elite journalists entered into discussions with other Twitter users less, they tweeted less about their personal life and they linked less to external websites Journalists vary widely in the extent to which they use Twitter Those working for major national newspapers, broadcasting networks and cable news channels generally appear to be changing less than their counterparts at other news media Normalizing Twitter

30. Reconfiguring Journalism Research About Twitter Defining Twitter • Twitter research is multidisciplinary • 14 Books • Users central to the production and dissemination • Ambient Information Stream • An awareness system that offers diverse means to collect, communicate, share and display news and information, serving diverse purposes • Not the goal to process every fragment of information • Chat and converse; report and share news • Privileges event-based and event-driven, like news • No established hierarchy: fact, opinion, emotion, experience

31. Reconfiguring Journalism Research About Twitter Professional Practice • Shovelware • Marketing, reinforcing relationships; 1 way or 2 way • Adopted by most journalists • Established norms and routines as they integrate Twitter • Differences by host institution and medium, beats • Objectivity? • Personal brand • Tension with gatekeeping role • Emerging Practices in real-time coverage

32. Reconfiguring Journalism Research About Twitter New Paradigms • Twitter blurs differentiation between newsmaker, producer and consumer • Hybrid space for the cultural production of journalism • Examples: Occupy Wall Street, Egypt, • News frames are negotiated through crowdsourced practices • Emerging research suggests new paradigms of collaborative and collective newsgathering, production and management at play, facilitated by the sociotechnical dynamics of Twitter.

33. Other Readings • Jimmy Wales • Yahoo – complete profile of everything you love; lucrative for marketers. Via acquisition • MySpace - central portal for creative types--mainly musicians, but also photographers and videographers--to better manage their business: promoting their work with fans, gathering data about their audience, and, eventually, selling tickets and merchandise. Fan Rewards?