I just finished reading a killer classic fiction mashup (literally), Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It’s a parody of the Jane Austen novel (which I tried to read in college and found unbearably tedious).

I must admit, though: The addition of a Night of the Living Dead-style zombie plague made all the endless fretting and plotting over how to present  oneself as appropriately marriageable in polite society surprisingly entertaining and understandable.

Because the thing is: The strictures of British aristocratic society — particularly how women were held in chattel status, and the ceaseless power plays of verbal indirection — were indeed nightmarish, soul-destroying, and cannibalistic.

Therefore, I don’t think it’s a stretch to consider this book a seminal feminist treatise. (God knows we need more entertaining seminal works of feminism!)

If you read this book (and I recommend it) don’t miss the reader’s discussion guide at the end. It contains 10 questions. Here are a couple of my favorites…

2. “Is Mr. Collins merely too fat and stupid to notice his wife’s gradual transformation into a zombie, or could there be another explanation for his failure to acknowledge the problem? If so, what might that explanation be? How might his occupation (as a pastor) relate to his denial of the obvious, or his decision to hang himself?”

6. “Some critics have suggested that the zombies represent the authors’ views toward marriage — an endless curse that sucks the life out of you and just won’t die. Do you agree?”

So: Discuss….

Ditto for the terms “new media” and even “online media”, which imply that channels other than print and broadcast are somehow separate or niche.

The best take on why it’s important to update and integrate assumptions about the nature of media (and how that affects news) is shown in this hilarious skit from Landline.TV:

Here’s where media is at today: In the current integrated media ecosystem, every print and broadcast organization has an Internet and mobile presence — and most of these now go beyond bare “shovelware”. Also, more and more of these organizations are distributing their content online first, making print and broadcast secondary channels (if not secondary markets). In contrast, most media outlets and public discussion venues that began life on the Internet do not have a print or broadcast presence. These vastly outnumber print and broadcast media outlets.

Consequently, when you consider the number and diversity of media outlets, print and broadcast media have become the exception — not the rule…

So it probably makes sense to start assuming that the umbrella term “media” now includes things like the Web, podcasting, and text messaging. This is the new default. It also probably makes more sense now to call special attention to “print media” or “broadcast media” by using those terms than it does to refer to “multimedia”, “online media”, or “new media”.

This is not a superficial matter of trendiness (which terms are “in” and “out”). Rather, it’s about updating default assumptions about what media is and how it works.

Viewing integration and distribution via multiple channels and content types as the norm, and specifying specifics as needed, is probably more useful and practical to anyone involved with making media these days. Reframing the issue in your head this way can constructively influence editorial and journalistic decisions, media business opportunities, and more.

I tweeted to ask whether I am the only person who thinks “multimedia” now sounds retro, and I got some interesting and fun responses:

• Perry Hewitt: “Multimedia is beginning to sounds 90s like multipurpose room sounds 70s.”
• Mark Gammon: “Funny, I had just thought that about multimedia a few days ago. Its day in the sun is waning for sure.”
• David Stanton: “Absolutely. I really don’t like the term ‘multimedia’. Completely uninformative.”
• Mary Maher: “No you’re not. And I’m thinking ‘new media’ and ’2.0′ aren’t so right either…”
• Joey Baker: “I’d gladly welcome a better term than ‘new media’ — got one?” (This triggered a fun conversation.)
• Mactavish: “I remember our ‘multimedia’ library in seventh grade — books, tapes, LPs, and little filmstrip thingies!”
• Daniel Bachhuber: “Ditto ‘online journalism’.”

(Thanks to David Cohn for the tip on the video.)

According to Nieman Lab, “Media Cloud is a massive data set of news — compiled from newspapers, other established news organizations, and blogs — and a set of tools for analyzing those data.

Here’s what Berkman’s Ethan Zuckerman had to say about Media Cloud:

Ethan Zuckerman on Media Cloud from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.

Some of the kinds of questions Media Cloud could eventually help answer:

• How do specific stories evolve over time? What path do they take when they travel among blogs, newspapers, cable TV, or other sources?
• What specific story topics won’t you hear about in [News Source X], at least compared to its competitors?
• When [News Source Y] writes about Sarah Palin [or Pakistan, or school vouchers], what’s the context of their discussion? What are the words and phrases they surround that topic with?”

The obvious use of this project is to compare coverage by different types of media. But I think a deeper purpose may be served here: By tracking patterns of words used in news stories and blog posts, Media Cloud may illuminate how context and influence shape public understanding — in other words, how media and news affect people and communities.

This is important, because news and media do not exist for their own sake. It seems to me that the more we learn about how people are affected by — and affect — media, the better we’ll be able to craft effective media for the future.

(NOTE: I originally published this article in Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits.)

Huessner interviewed me for this story because I’ve been blogging about it on Contentious.com and on E-Media Tidbits. She chose to include a few highly edited and interpreted quotes from me that I think grossly misrepresent my own views and the character of our conversation.

Yeah, being a journalist, I know that no one is ever completely happy with their quotes. I’ve been misquoted plenty in the past, and normally I just roll with it. But this particular case is an especially teachable moment for my journalist colleagues in mainstream media about understanding and covering the role of social media in today’s media landscape.

Today’s a pretty busy day for me, but I didn’t want to let this go unsaid any longer. So I made a little Seesmic video response to this story. Here I am speaking strictly for myself — not on behalf of any of my clients or colleagues. Yes, I am very emphatic here and somewhat critical. Please understand that my frustration is borne of seeing this particular problem over and over again.

For example, see Inquisitr.com: Indian Government trying to block Twitter as Terrorists may be reading it.

Rumors — even fairly innocuous ones — really bug me. Mainly because they’re so easy to prevent!

I’m trying to track this particular rumor down, but haven’t been able to confirm anything yet. At this point I’m skeptical of this claim. Here’s what I’ve found so far…

Newstrack India reports:

“[Yesterday] evening, there were suddenly a lot of ‘tweets’ reporting that the Indian government had asked that there should not be online updates of military operations against the holed-up terrorists, citing a BBC news source. But, the BBC actually quoted ‘tweets’, which in fact had no independent confirmation.”

BBC’s timeline of the Mumbai attacks (which is an excellent resource, by the way!) reported at 11:08 GMT:

“Indian government asks for live Twitter updates from Mumbai to cease immediately. ‘ALL LIVE UPDATES – PLEASE STOP TWEETING about #Mumbai police and military operations,’ a tweet says.”

The BBC included no link to that alleged tweet from the Indian government. A simple Twitter search for “please stop tweeting” showed the earliest occurrence of this phrase in connection to the Mumbai attacks came from the MumbaiUpdates account, which appears to be run by a Twitter user named Mark Bao — a high school junior based in Boston, who apparently is not in Mumbai at the moment.

Several hours ago, MumbaiUpdates tweeted: “ALL LIVE UPDATERS – PLEASE STOP TWEETING about #Mumbai police and military operations.”

Prior to that, he tweeted (in chronological order):

1. “Due to military action happening very soon, @mumbaiupdates may have little information to report to protect the rescue operations”
2. “I am not updating on any details about #mumbai operations until futher notice to protect the operatoin”
3. “Indian government is asking that the twitter search page #mumbai be shut down.”
4. “or possible clarification: to just stop live updating about the situation pertaining to #mumbai”

UPDATE: Bao just e-mailed me to let me know that his tweet was not the original report on this event. Here’s what he said:

“The rumour started on via another twitter post that retweeted from another person that was a trusted source IN mumbai. Later, it was confirmed on video that the police wanted live updates of the operations to be stopped, though they did not mention the hashtag #Mumbai, though they asked media outlets to stop reporting live.

“The purpose of [the MumbaiUpdates] stream was to disseminate info from the CNN-IBN, NDTV and those twittering from Mumbai. With any news reporting and re-reporting it’s possible errors got in the way. I’m sorry if it caused any confusion.

“If anything, even if NDTV and CNN-IBN were still reporting, it is best practice, and I think justified, to stop tweeting and disseminate more information on the operation that could be spread and could be useful to those that we don’t want to let know the info.”

Also, on Twitter he wrote:

“It was confirmed by Mumbai police on video that they don’t want live updates. Don’t think they mentioned Twitter but it is possible that they did. If not, then that is the rumour that evolved, yet still good practice.”

I’m really glad that Bao elaborated on this, and I’d like to say that I think he did a good job with quickly starting the MumbaiUpdates account to aggregate information on the attacks in India.

Parsing out Bao’s response, it looks like we still don’t know the exact source of this rumor’s first report, but apparently it might have come from a Twitter user in Mumbai. He also said it was “confirmed by video” — but we don’t know where that video was, whether that confirmation was an on-camera statement by police, whether someone was relaying on video information they’d gotten first-hand from the police, or whether someone was simply repeating an unsourced rumor on video.

If you have any further information on this (especially specific links, cites, video clips, etc.), please leave that information in a comment to this post.

TAKEAWAY LESSONS

Media is increasingly unmediated. People are communicating directly, on a global level. We don’t all have to be journalists — but we’d all be better off by adopting stronger media-literacy skills.

Specifically, when you hear something that sounds surprising or important, CHECK OR ASK FOR THE PRIMARY SOURCE before you share the news. It’s not hard to do, and it’s a crucial step.

If something just sounds like common sense (like, “Hey, tweeting details of police movements here might endanger police and hostages, so don’t do that!”), there’s no need to appeal to authority (i.e., saying the police said so) to make people listen. A true common-sense message stands on its own — and in social media like Twitter, it could  carry more credibility as a peer recommendation than if positioned vaguely as an order from “above.”

In this case, many, many well-meaning Twitter users simply repeated the alleged government/police request as if it were established fact. This could cause ripple effects in future interactions between the Indian police and the public (in person and online). There’s a power dynamic in play here that deserves attention and care.

Of course, if an important primary source (like a government official) does offer crucial or interesting information, attribute it clearly. Just a like when professional journalists rely on source documents or press releases, transparency counts! It doesn’t take much time to include a link in your tweet, or just say you heard it firsthand.

Rumors and misinformation, even if well-meant, don’t help. In this case, what if the Indian government made no such request regarding Twitter? What if this call for social media restraint actually arose from concerned Twitter users? Actually, that might be far more interesting than a governmental request.

Imagine the precedent that a true government or police request regarding live tweeting might set for possible future police policy or requests during other events, such as political demonstrations, natural disasters, or a food riot.

Finally, if there was a police or government request, it may have had nothing to do with social media. It’s possible that any official move to get people to stop tweeting details of police/military location and actions, or victims’ locations and circumstances may have actually been a side effect of incautious TV coverage. Many people in India and around the world were watching network TV coverage (especially NDTV and IBN) and tweeting what they saw.

I think in this case it would be useful to know whether the police were mainly requesting cooperation from TV news organizations, or from individuals with cell phones. If the latter, that might mark an interesting turning point in the intersection of government, public safety, and free speech.

——————

NOTE: The original version of this post included the following information about my initial assessment of the situation and attempt to get clarification:

So far I can tell, the source for this alleged request by the Indian government is someone based in the U.S. who is monitoring the situation by remote online. He did not cite or link to a primary source for his allegation. It’s unknown whether he got this news firsthand, is repeating what he heard secondhand, or simply made it up. (I’m not saying he would fabricate that info; I’m just saying it’s possible that he could have done so — and that possibility needs to be ruled out before making this news worthy of repeating as fact.) On that basis, I personally would not repeat this rumor as fact.

That’s why, just now I asked Bao about his source: “@mumbaiupdates: What’s the source of your info that Indian government was seeking to curtail tweeting about #mumbai? Link or cite, please?”

UPDATE: I just received this response from Bao:

MumbaiUpdates: “@agahran ~14 hours ago police were asking that the live updates (incl from media) stop. not sure if it is still in effect.”

…Which really doesn’t answer my question. So I just asked for clarification:

@mumbaiupdates My question is, did you get that info 1st-hand? If not, what’s yr source? Also, did the police specifically mention Twitter?

…Soon after Bao transmitted his “PLEASE STOP TWEETING” request, he noted via MumbaiUpdates:

• “Requesting that if live updates are stopped, that when operations are happening, that NDTV and CNN/IBN stop broadcast also. #Mumbai”
• “This is exactly what #Mumbai doesn’t need: a certain tv station following the configuration of the police. That’s what I’m getting at.”
• “SUCCESS – the NDTV website is no longer broadcasting live video from the #Mumbai front. Thank you NDTV.”
• “TV MEDIA, BE RESPONSIBLE. RT @MumbaiAttacks CNN-IBN just gave out a room number from a guest that called them. What are they thinking?”
• “If in #Mumbai pls call +91-120-4341818, or if anywhere email editor@ibnlive.com to tell to stop broadcstng operations info.”

“Journalism requires that stories been constructed, facts be tied together, narratives presented, and context created. In short, journalism is the big picture.

“No one would argue that you can get the pig picture in 140 characters. But what about aggregate tweets? One person over a long time, or many people over a large subject?

“Is Twitter a viable, standalone medium for journalism?”

I think this quesion misses the mark regarding the nature of journalism. It confuses the package with the process. That’s understandable, because in the history of mainstream news, journalists and news organizations have often taken a “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” approach to revealing their own processes. When all the public sees is the product, it’s easy to assume that’s all there is to journalism.

Here’s the comment I left on his post:

Hmmmm…. I do journalism, and I know a lot of journalists, and I’ve seen what Twitter can do. It seems to me that any medium — from Twitter to broadcast news to smoke signals — has potential journalistic uses.

Journalism is a process, not just a product. For many professional journalists and other people who commit acts of journalism, Twitter is already an important part of their journalistic process (i.e., connecting with communities and sources, and gathering information). And it can also be part of the product (i.e., live coverage of events or breaking news, or updates to ongoing stories or issues)

So yes, Twitter CAN be a real news platform. As well as lots of other things. Just like a newspaper can be the Washington Post, the National Enquirer, or a free shopper’s guide. It all depends on what you choose to make of it.

And also: These days, almost no news medium is “standalone.” Every news org has a web presence, and many have a presence in social media, and also in embeddable media.

…That’s my take. What’s yours? Please comment below — or send a Twitter reply to @agahran

I’m happy to report that there has been some progress (small, but real) from Nokia in terms of addressing it US service problems, which I’ve written about extensively.

First, here’s their most concrete step forward so far: Today, Nokia announced that the long-awaited firmware update for the US N95-3 should be available by early June.

Note that this does not mean Nokia has improved its firmware update process — which (as Beth Kanter, Robert Day, and I noted) is PC-only and very cumbersome, confusing, and annoying. And, in my experience, Nokia’s firmware update process is also risky — it’s what bricked my N95 in April.

…But still, a lot of US N95-3 users have been waiting (and waiting) for this firmware update. News that it’s coming soon appears quite welcome in that community, judging by the initial comments to the announcement.

Also, I’m encouraged to see that Nokia’s Conversations Blog yesterday launched a series of posts on its myriad US service problems. So far, there’s been:

• May 15: Introductory post, in which Nokia promises to specifically respond to my six suggestions for their US operations.
• May 15: A post on US repair turnaround time.
• May 16: A post about the forthcoming N95-3 firmware update.

I think the fact that Nokia has made this discussion so public, and is respecting and addressing concerns raised by users, is a very positive step. Frankly, this is far more than most major companies are willing to do. Nokia is willing to publicly acknowledge its significant problems, and doesn’t seem to consider this inherently risky or bad for business. Many, many companies and organizations could take a lesson from Nokia on this front.

That said, Nokia’s blog does try (understandably) to put as positive a spin as possible on its US service problems. As far as I can tell, they’re not painting a specifically inaccurate rosy picture — but so far they haven’t directly tackled the hardest issues.

Therefore, it’s still up to current and would-be US users of Nokia N-Series phones to keep pushing for clear answers to our most pressing questions and concerns. This is going to take time, folks.

Here’s what I mean…

US SERVICE TURNAROUND TIME:

Short-term fix: Earlier I suggested that one measure Nokia could implement immediately that would help restore US consumers’ confidence would be to guarantee a 7-day US repair/replacement turnaround time. On May 15, James at Nokia wrote:

“Whilst there is a stated 30 day turnaround in the warranty policy, this is designed to capture all Nokia products and typically applies to older products where spares may not be readily available. Nokia USA assures us devices are typically returned within 7-10 days and that 85 per cent of those returns happen within seven days. This is much closer to the time frame Amy (and we) feel is acceptable. To be special, we reckon a five day turnaround for Nseries devices would help boost confidence somewhat.”

To put this in context, this is not new information, and it doesn’t address the issues I raised, which focus on certainty:

• Certain about maximum wait time. The 30 days that Nokia’s warranty currently allows for turnaround time is far too long for such a must-have device. Overnight replacement or loaners (similar to what AT&T offers, according to Ricky Cadden) would be ideal — but for now I’d be willing to settle for just being certain that I’d have a working unit back in my hands in a week. Nokia’s 30-day wiggle room, plus numerous user reports of longer waits, is a worry I’m not willing to tolerate for a $600 must-have device. The point here is not average speed, but a guarantee.
• Certainty that the problem will be fixed. User James Roblimos commented, “What about the numerous reports of people who get their phones back with the same issues they’ve sent them in for? I’ve read numerous horror stories of owners sending in their phones …with hardware problems, only to get them back several weeks later and the only thing the warranty techs did was flash the firmware (sometimes not even that).” [Examples here.]

In this comment I asked Nokia to please respond directly to these core concerns. We’ll see what they have to say next.

US SERVICE LOCATIONS:

In the post about US repair turnaround time, James of Nokia also wrote:

“If you live in NYC or Chicago, you can roll your phone into the local Nokia Flagship store where it’ll be repaired within three days. This is on a par with other device manufacturers in the US, but as Amy rightly points out in another part of her post, there simply isn’t the breadth of Nokia service centres in the US to make this feasible for the masses. That though, could be about to change.”

This is good news for Nokia users in those two cities — which doesn’t include, well, the vast majority of the US. And I’m also curious what user actual experiences with Nokia’s in-store service have been in those cities.

If you’re in NYC or Chicago, I’d love it if you could drop by the Nokia store there and see what the in-store staff have to say about how they handle service, replacements, and loaners. And if you’ve had service done in those stores, how did it go? As we’ve seen with Nokia’s phone customer service, sometimes the reps say very different things from Nokia corporate. It’s worth an on-site reality check.

CLUNKY, RISKY FIRMWARE UPDATE PROCESS

Again, Nokia’s notoriously clunky, PC-only firmware update process is what bricked my N95. Today, James at Nokia contended that Nokia’s update proces really isn’t very risky:

“The NSU [Nokia Software Update] team tells us that over 8 million devices have successfully been through the update process and the failure rate is ‘very low’.”

…If that’s true, then why did the Nokia customer service rep who Beth Kanter spoke to on April 17 tell her that Nokia discourages users from doing the firmware update except as a last resort to combat severe functionality loss? That doesn’t sound very “safe” to me.

Also, Nokia support has claimed that the firmware update bricking problem happens when you try to install a US firmware update on a non-US phone. Since I bought a US N95-3 from Amazon, that creates further concern — are N95 retailers selling non-US phones as US phones?

Who needs all these layers of fear, uncertainty, and doubt? It may be that Nokia needs to train its customer service reps better on this issue, they’re sowing considerable concern in the US market.

In this comment today I reiterated to Nokia that their firmware update process (not just the firmware version) is a huge hassle for US consumers — and far inferior to the user experience offered by their main US competitor, Apple.

In my comment I’ve asked Nokia to specifically comment on whether, when, and how they plan to make firmware updates less painful — and also Mac-friendly. We’ll see what they say.

NEW PHONES SHOULD HAVE NEW FIRMWARE

Especially since Nokia’s firmware update process is so awful, it’s especially discouraging that right now brand-new N95-3s are being shipped to US customers with old firmware. ZDnet’s Matthew Miller wrote:

“Nokia’s support for these high end devices will have to get much better before I can recommend people go out and spend US$500+ for a device optimized for U.S. 3G bands. Every other Nokia N95 has received a firmware upgrade, except for the N95-3 North American version that actually came out before some other devices. This apparent lack of support for loyal N95-3 buyers has left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth and this kind of treatment should not occur in the future if Nokia wants to reach U.S. customers.”

In my comment today, I asked Nokia if they could update their existing inventory of N95-3s so that no device is shipped with outdated software. Again, we’ll see what they have to say.

KEEP TALKING

…So that’s where this conversations stand as of today. I’m grateful to everyone who’s added their voice to this discussion. I’ve notified several Nokia and N95 user forums about this ongoing discussion on the Nokia blog, so hopefully even more folks will be chiming in.

In my opinion, so far Nokia does seem to want to improve its US service — and they can only do that if we’re telling them what we really need from them, to keep them on target and accountable

(Note I also posted a video overview of this situation on Seesmic.)

This morning I listened to an excellent Radio Open Source interview. Host Christopher Lydon was talking to Global Voices Online founder Ethan Zuckerman and GVO managing editor Solana Larsen. I’m a huge fan of GVO and read it regularly — mainly since I enjoy hearing from people in parts of the world I generally don’t hear much about (or from) otherwise.

One of the most interesting parts of the discussion concerned how homophily shapes our individual and collective view of the world. Homophily is a fancy word for the human equivalent of “birds of a feather flock together.” That is, our tendency to associate and bond with people we have stuff in common with — language, culture, race, class, work, interests, life circumstances, etc.

Zuckerman made a profound point: Homophily makes you stupid. Which is another way of saying something my dad told me a long, long time ago:

“You’ll never learn anything if you only talk to people who already think just like you.”

Here’s what Zuckerman actually told Lydon about how homophily makes it hard for people from around the world to relate constructively…

“We know so little about one another, and what we do know is generally so wrong, that our first instinct is to try to shut each other off. …We have to work a whole lot harder. We can’t just assume that being connected [via the net] solves these problems. If you let us work it out on our own, we tend to reinforce our own prejudices and stereotypes.

“If you look at sites like Digg and Reddit, these are sites that promised the future of journalism, where we would all get together and decide what’s important. …But that begs the question: Who’s ‘we?’ If you’re getting your news from these sites, you’re getting a fairly focused, tech-heavy view of the world. You start to fall victim to homophily. It’s a basic human trait, but it’s probably worth fighting.

“Cass Sunstein, an amazing legal scholar, says that one of the dangers of the internet is that we’re only hearing like voices, and that makes us more polarized. Homophily can make you really, really dumb. What’s incredible about the net is we have this opportunity to hear more voices than ever. But the tools we tend to build to it have us listening to the same voices again and again.

“Search in the future needs to lead us to people, to places, to voices. My hope is that in the future we get over homophily and we start looking for really productive serendipity — the sort of serendipity when you go to that shelf in the library and you think you know the book that you’re looking for, but you actually find the book you’re really looking for within 2-3 shelves of it. You think you’re looking for info on the US elections, but you end up finding info on how the Jamaicans are viewing the US elections. You think you’re looking for info on network security and you en d up finding information on why Pakistan is so afraid of YouTube.”

I figured if Zuckerman had so much to say in an interview, he must have written more about the dangers of homophily. And indeed he has. Read his Dec. 17 post, Social software, serendipity and salad bars. A couple of quotes from that post:

“Newspapers like the New York Times have a terrific mechanism to encourage serendipity. In many major newspapers, the lower right-hand side of the front page is reserved for a story that readers would otherwise likely miss. …These stories aren’t selected by algorithms — they’re chosen by editors who want to feature content in the paper that might otherwise be ignored, which frequently includes stories on topics other than Iraq, US elections or terror. Dan Gillmor describes this feature as ‘institutionalized serendipity‘.

“It’s less clear where the institutionalized serendipity lives on the New York Times site. The NYTimes.com homepage features several times as many stories than the front page of the paper edition, but it’s much less clear which ones you’re encouraged to read. There’s more choice and less guidance… which isn’t a bad description for the information universe opened by the Internet. And the guidance that’s offered may be a homophilic form of guidance — in the bottom right of the homepage is a box that offers a list of the 10 most popular stories, as measured by e-mail traffic, blog links and searches. In other words, these are the stories that fellow websurfers found most interesting, not the stories the editors felt you should read, even if you didn’t know you were interested in them.

“The serendipity box in the paper New York Times is a form of persuasive technology — it convinces us to pay attention to information we’d otherwise ignore.

And the finale, in which Zuckerman nails it all:

“Encountering new ideas isn’t a supply problem in today’s internet — it’s a demand problem. There’s a near infinity of people unlike you creating content and putting it online for you to encounter. But it’s entirely possible that you’ll never encounter it if you don’t actively look for it… or unless the systems you use to find ideas start forcing you outside your usual orbits into new territories. Don’t fear the serendipity.”

Zuckerman also linked to some great further reading:

• Republic.com 2.0, a book by Cass Sunstein
• Salon.com interview with Cass Sunstein about Republic.com 2.0
• Zuckerman’s review of Susstein’s latest book, Infotopia.
• Homophily in Social Software, Oct. 2006 O’Reilly Radar article by Nat Torkington
• Echo chambers and homophily, by Danah Boyd

Plus, here are a few more resources I found by following those breadcrumbs:

• Why Everyone You Know Thinks the Same as You, Washington Post, Oct. 16, 2006
• Social Cataloguing for Book Lovers, an IT Conversations interview with Tim Spalding, creator of LibraryThing, a service that offers an intriguing unsuggest feature that directly counters homophily.

On the other hand:

Some people think homophily is a wonderful thing. And they’re not wrong.

For instance, in a homophily theory backgrounder, ChangHyun Jin (Univ. TX, Austin) wrote: “Homophily and effective communication breed one another. …Individuals who …attempt to communicate with others who are different from them often face the frustration of ineffective communication. Differences in technical competence, social status, beliefs, and language, lead to mistakes in meaning, thereby causing messages to be distorted or to go unheeded.”

I’m sure that’s true. It is definitely easier to communicate clearly and with fewer interpretive errors when the sender and recipient have much in common. Which is one possible definition of “effective communication.”

Socially constructive communication is another matter, of course.

What’s the point of fighting homophily?

Seems to me the reason to fight our tendency toward homophily is not to do dismiss the value of commonalities, but rather to broaden our basis for common understanding by being willing to learn more about each other, directly from each other. It’s improving our pattern recognition skills and our ability to reality-check each other. It’s a way to recognize broader and subtler commonalities — even if only by gaining respect for divergent views and experiences.

While this may sound uncomfortable and difficult, I tend to think of it as perpetually working to expand my comfort zone — rather than simply stepping outside it. The bigger and more diverse my comfort zone becomes, the less tunnel vision I will have, and the more interesting my life and work will become. And if a lot of people start thinking that way, then… we’ll all have that much in common.

Which is probably a good place to start.

Thanks, Ethan.

Picking up on my post yesterday, Univ. of Florida journalism professor Mindy McAdams challenged me (and her other readers) to translate my quick list of what j-schools should be teaching into a something more testable and measurable that could be translated into a curriculum.

Here’s my first shot at that:

• Content management systems (including blogging tools): First, I’d have the students run a group blog on a topic of their choosing for a year to get comfortable with the content and commenting apects of blogging. (A group blog is likely to get more activity and discussion than individual blogs.) This blog should be based on an expandable, customizable tool like WordPress. Then the students should be taught the basics of information architecture, and from that figure out how to expand or customize their blogs to deliver or integrate new kinds of content or services. This could be as simple as finding and installing WordPress plugins to add features, or integrating content from other places (such as Flickr or del.icio.us). The goal would be to get them to not just understand, but demonstrate that on their own they can envision, research, evaluate, and act upon options to do more with their content online. There’s a lot you can do without getting too geeky. They need to gain the confidence that many options are within their personal grasp — they don’t always need to get permission or beg someone else to do things for them.

There’s a lot more on my list, of course…

• Mobile tools and mobile media strategies. These students all have cell phones anyway. Require them to subscribe to mobile news and information services, and critique the quality of the service and user experience. Also, require them to create whatever kind of content their phones support (photos, video, audio, GPS data, even just SMS to Twitter, etc.) and post or stream it from their cell phones. Include participatory exercises based on SMS or MMS to include students who don’t have data plans on their phones. Free services like NowPublic, Flickr, Qik and CNN’s iReport could be especially helpful and even fun for your exercises.

• Social media. The point here is to help students learn a key tool for engaging communities, while also gaining experience with how influence works and information travels through social media. I suggest starting with whatever social media services most of the students are already using (like Facebook, MySpace, Ning, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Twitter) and explore both the one-to-one and group interaction options through exercises. For groups, it’s probably better to get them involved with existing, active groups on these services — rather than try to start a new group from scratch. Where possible, use both web-based and mobile options for these services. They should learn to use these tools for community outreach, story/issue research, and promotion of their work.

• Economics and business theory/models. Journalism students should be taking courses in the media business that offer the fundamentals of historical, current, and emerging media business models. They should learn what budgets and balance sheets look like, how grant funding and investment works, and how to evaluate the economic environment they’re operating in — including how it’s changing. Get them used to seeing the big picture and looking ahead. Practical skills could include analyzing the economic environment of the local community, spotting emerging trends that could offer journalistic or other media opportunities, and writing a basic business plan to capitalize on those opportunities.

• Business skills. This could involve evaluating and estimating revenue options from grants to investors to advertising to subscriptions to partnerships and more, as well as knowing what steps to take to pursue that funding. Example exercise: Develop a strategy and action plan for increasing online revenues for the campus or local daily paper — including calculation of expenses and revenues, and a timeline for implementation. In addition, they should be aware of what it takes to start and run a business — requirements for taxes, healthcare, getting SMS shortcodes, working with advertisers, etc. No part of the business that supports their journalism should be alien to them.

• Management skills. I’m envisioning this both from an entrepreneurial and organizational perspective. In all exercises, put the students in a decisionmaking role and guide them through learning how to manage time, resources, and people — whether employees, collaborators, or community members. For instance, if a class project is increasing online revenues for the campus paper, divide that mission into sub-tasks, assign someone to manage each part of that project, and require them to make decisions and delegate. Teach them how to use tools like Basecamp to coordinate team efforts. In fact, it might be a good idea to coordinate projects with other j-schools around the country or world, since increasingly in the media business project teams are widely distributed. The point is to encourage them to take charge of the process, not just to pigeonhole themselves as content creators.

• Marketing, advertising, and SEO. In addition to taking a marketing basics class oriented toward media products and services, j-students should learn the basics of search engine optimization — since findability generally translates into traffic, engagement, and revenue for most media ventures. Exercises can include learning to use Wordtracker to optimize headlines, stories, and metadata to increase both traffic and relevance; using Google Analytics to analyze traffic patterns to a news/info site (such as for the campus paper) and suggest strategies to boost traffic and engagement; developing and running Adwords campaigns (with a modest budget) to promote a class project; researching niche ad networks that might help support various types of coverage or beats, etc.

• Community engagement and management. This is perhaps one of the most marketable skills any journalist can have for the next several years or decades. The point is to get them used to creating news as part of a conversation, rather than simply as a one-way product for publication. It’s about promoting constructive public discourse through active engagement. Exercises could include participating in an active community forum; working as a volunteer moderator for an active forum where contentious topics arise; taking and active role in editing and discussing a Wikipedia page of interest; helping to coordinate (not just cover) local events like town hall meetings, conferences, or festivals; participating in or running local meetup groups, etc. These experiences tech how to handle conflict, foster consensus and diversity, produce events, and demonstrate respect and understanding for communities in order to build credibility. In this respect, working through local government, advocacy groups, social service agencies, neighborhood associations, and ethnic or religious groups could be as valuable (maybe more valuable) than working through journalistic or media organizations.

…I realize that my list sounds like a hell of a lot of stuff, but I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface in terms of what today’s journalists really need in order to take advantage of current opportunities, spot emerging opportunities, and take charge of their own destinies (rather than relying on a paternalistic news org to shelter them while they write, write, write).

I realize also that there may be resistance in journalism schools to much of what I propose, for reasons ranging from “we’re not a vocational school,” to IT staff resisting implementing the kinds of tools I’ve mentioned, to the need to integrate curricula more closely with business schools, to the tenured faculty who must teach at least some of these topics not knowing or caring much about them.

I’m not saying this would be easy. But I do think what I’ve outlined, in addition to teaching core journalism skills and values, is what today’s j-students really need to prepare for the kinds of careers they are most likely to have — and the kinds of media they can play a key role in inventing or developing.

Thoughts?

(And thanks, Mindy, for making me think this through more.)

(Thanks to David Sasaki of Global Voices Online for the tip.)