contentious.com » Net Effects on Society

AVG: Kids are learning computer skills before life skills

Amy Gahran — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 02:37:55 +0000

“While we had a hunch that the skills of today’s 2-5 year olds would be very different to those of kids 20 to 30 years ago, we were surprised to find out just how much the childhood experience has evolved. According to our survey, while most small children can’t yet swim, tie their shoelaces or make breakfast on their own, they do know how to turn on a computer, point and click with a mouse, and play a computer game.

Take a look at some of the findings:

More young children know how to play a computer game (58%) than swim (20%) or ride a bike (52%)

28% of young children can make a mobile phone call, but only 20% know to dial 911 in case of an emergency
69% of children aged 2-5 can operate a computer mouse, but only 11% can tie their own shoelaces
Perhaps the most important piece of data to come out of this survey: the fact that 69% of children aged 2-5 are using a computer in the first place.

It’s exciting and commendable that so many parents are teaching their children such valuable computer skills so early on—they will need these skills to succeed later in life, and perhaps increasingly, not so later in life.

Future of Journalism Webcast: My Twitter Coverage

Amy Gahran — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:14:13 +0000

On Oct. 28, the 100-year-old Christian Science Monitor sent shockwaves through the news business when it announced that in April 2009 it will switch from daily to weekly print publication, and invest more resources in its online operations. (Poynter coverage by Rick Edmonds.)

This set some pretty interesting context for the Future of Journalism panel discussion that the Monitor hosted last night in Boston. This session was webcast live. (Video will be available later today.) I watched it online and covered it via Twitter.

As I always do, I used my amylive account to provide this live coverage to over 200 people who specifically want it. That’s because my volume of live-coverage posts would tend to overwhelm the nearly 1400 people who follow me at agahran.

Several other Twitter users were also covering or discussing this event, including the Monitor, Jeff Cutler, Wayne Sutton, and Dave Poulson. Many of used the hashtag #CSMFOJ to make all of this easier to find.

Here’s my complete Twitter coverage of this event. I’m posting this as an experiment, to see if this kind of archiving helps me or others. What do you think? Please comment at the end — and bear in mind that posting this compilation is very different from the Twitter experience…

(NOTE: This is Twitter. Things move fast here. Please excuse typos and abbreviations.)

Moderator: John Yemma, CSMonitor editor.

Panelist: Ellen Hume, Research Dir., MIT the Center for Future Civic Media: http://civic.mit.edu

Panelist: Mark Jurkowitz: Associate Director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism: http://journalism.org (good domain grab!)

Panelist: Douglas K. Smith: Exec. Director, Sulzberger News Media Executive Leadership Progam, Columbia U: http://snurl.com/56qey

Panelist: Sree Sreenivasan: Columbia J-school new media program head & Dean of Student Affairs: http://sree.net

Context for this talk: Monitor is switching to weekly rather than daily print edition, beefing up web news operation. Somewhat controversial

@100yearsofcsm Name, title of woman speaking now, please?
Up now: Moderator: John Yemma, CSMonitor editor. Panelists are seated.

If you’re on a mac and having trouble viewing this webcast, I made it work by selecting the Windows Media Player version via safari

Yemma mentioned a bunch of people who are watching this webcast online — but they didn’t mention Twitter

Jurkowitz: “Who’s going to pay for quality journalism? Cheap news = TV pundits. $$$ news = investigative, bureaus, beats (incl. envt.)”

Jurkowitz: Seems to be defining “quality journalism” only as packaged stories by pro news orgs. I strongly disagree. Process, not product!

IMHO, this will be the big hurdle: Getting journalists (but NOT the public) to understand that quality journalism can take very diff forms.

Jurkowitz: “10-15 yrs ago, media world would have recoiled about wealthy private financing of journalism like Propublica.”

Jurkowitz: “A little good news: 91% news execs surveyed think investigative journalism is still important: http://snurl.com/56r0h

@100yearsofcsm They still haven’t mentioned Twitter yet, any way to nudge moderator on that?

Ellen Hume, MIT Center for Civic media up now…

Hume: “The yen for real information in communities is pracitally universal. People want to know what’s going on.”

@100yearsofcsm My Q: Can the panelist envision journalism that isn’t confined to pckgd stories, but rather is conversation, updates, etc.?

Hume is mentioning that TalkingPointsMemo community is where atty gen scandal emerged.

Hume: “You (anyone) can commit an act of journalism” (I like that she talks about tasks of journ, not just stories.)

Hume: “Journalists should not be popular. If they’re popular, there’s something wrong. If J’s just popular/comml. viable, something’s wrong.”

Hume is describing Ft. Myers News-Press crowdsourcing effort on sewer billing: http://snurl.com/56r6x

Up now: Douglas K. Smith: Exec. Director, Sulzberger News Media Executive Leadership Progam, Columbia U: http://snurl.com/56qey

Smith: “News orgs were 1:many. Technically monopolies or oligopolies. We need to deal with that.”

Smith: “News org cultures grew up around biz/editorial Berlin wall for 40+ years. There are consequences to that.”

Smith: “News orgs have inherited armed camps, internally. That’s a problem.”

Smith: “What’s broken today? Who is the audience, what do they have in common w/ ea. oth? How do you find/keep them?”

@DPoulson I agree, but I’m surprised the sewer bill anecdote is still news to a lot of MSM folks

Smith: “Existing news orgs have very few gen mgrs – broken leadership/mgmt model. Most impt broken piece of news biz today.”

Smith: “If you don’t have gen mgmt perspective, you don’t have any way to blend components to creat sustainable news orgs.”

Smith: “Most of us, we live our lives in markets, networks, orgs, friends, family.”

Hashtag to follow for Monitor webcast on future of Journalism (live now): #CSMFOJ http://snurl.com/56rhj

Up now: Sree Sreenivasan: Columbia J-school new media program head & Dean of Student Affairs: http://sree.net #CSMFOJ

Sree post-election context: “Smart use of tech had a central role in eventual victor of pres. race.” #CSMFOJ

Sree: “Obama campaign brought a souped-up NASCAR engine to a go-cart race.” #CSMFOJ

Sree: “Hard to imagine, but in last pres. election cycle, YouTube did not even exist!” #CSMFOJ

Sree: “Old news tech was abt perfection. New news tech is abt good enough. We shouldn’t lower our stds, but learn from new tricks” #CSMFOJ

Sreetells how Flip video connects his kids’ grandparents in India to his kids lives fast. #CSMFOJ

Sree: “Google is celebrating its 10th anniversary NOW. Looking fwd, we need to blieve & know there’s good stuff still coming.” #CSMFOJ

Sree: “Keep an open mind (to media future) but don’t let your brains fall out.” #CSMFOJ

Q&A starting now;

Hume: “Media channels are merging — on your phone, computer. Much richer experience, but puts more pressure on journalists.” #CSMFOJ

Hume: “MIT is developing tools to select video clips by finding a few words, being able to search & select.” #CSMFOJ

Hume: “Video is at the heart of everything.” #CSMFOJ

Smith on broadcast future: “Inside ABC news, for Iraq coverage the expectations for perfection were very expensive.” #CSMFOJ

Jurkowitz: “Will broadcast journ students have anywhere to go? Yes. Things change, but not instantly.” #CSMFOJ

Jurkowitz: “Perpetual Q: When is nightly newscast gonna end? It won’t. TV is a powerful, persuasive advertising medium.” #CSMFOJ

Q: “How do you verify info (esp photos) in crowdsourcing situation?”

Hume: “We all have to develop more new media literacy. You have to take more responsibility for what you take seriously.” #CSMFOJ

Yemma: “When you’ve got the ‘good’ and not the ‘perfect,’ how do you deal with veracity concerns?” #CSMFOJ

Sree: “Audience has responsibility. If you get a photo and are not sure it’s true, don’t forward it.” #CSMFOJ

Sree: “What I see: recommendations from friends taking precedence over recommendations from news orgs.” #CSMFOJ

Sree on Friend recommendation priorities: If 1 friend recommends, skeptical. If lots, pay more attention. #CSMFOJ

Sree: Even Wikipedia says it’s not a first source. THEY tell you to stuff out. #CSMFOJ

@jeffcutler I don’t think entire population needs to be a “skilled reporter.” Just more caveat emptor mindset, which IS possible.

Hume: “Journalism is a flow, but news *papers* are not. Big Q is how do we serve democracy by distributing facts, not just opinion?” #CSMFOJ

Jurkowitz: “Print newspaper will continue to evolve into more niche, less time-sensitive channel.” #CSMFOJ

Yemma: “Print increasingly seems like a specialty product.” #CSMFOJ

Yemma: “Online you have infinite space, but not infinite access to attention.” #CSMFOJ

Jurkowitz: “On NY subways everyone IS readin print paper; The Express: Cliffnotes version of todays news.” #CSMFOJ

YAY! Yemma just acknowledge us here on Twitter!

Sree: “Still photos remain powerful. I think you’ll have both — stil photog AND video. Doesn’t have to be either/or. #CSMFOJ

Sree: “We’re in a golden age of radio now! We just call it audio. #CSMFOJ

Hume: “Can a pro photog get paid for taking pictures when everyone has a dig cam? I don’t have the answer for that.” #CSMFOJ

Q: Are j-schools really prepping students for the work & jobs they will be doing? Great Q! My answer: Mostly not #CSMFOJ

Yemma just admitted that the narrative lede doesn’t really work well in print, let alone online. I agree. #CSMFOJ

Hume: “I love that when you do the story online, you can assemble not just info & content assets, but access to active groups.” #CSMFOJ

Sree: “It was a lot easier to teach online media in 1999 because no one knew anything.” #CSMFOJ

@jeffcutler pretense of not existing is ONE WAY to do journalism. Not the only (or only valid) way.

Q: Monitor reader: “Online J does not need a newspaper. So how does news biz preserve editorial integrity to sustain print journ? #CSMFOJ

Smith: “J values incl accuracy, skepticism, effective storytelling. But diff audiences have diff needs, weight those differently.” #CSMFOJ

Smith: “News orgs NEED aud members to interact to help guide how the news org brings those values together in coverage.” #CSMFOJ

ACK! I just lost the streaming video & audio! #CSMFOJ

OK, just refreshed browser window, stream back now #CSMFOJ

Q for Sree: How do we marry “perfection” with “good enough?”

Sree: “I hesitate to romanticize great historical journalism like Watergate coverage like it only existed in the past.” #CSMFOJ

Sree: “You see new examples, new voices of great new journalism. like Nate Silver of http://fivethirtyeight.com” #CSMFOJ

Sree: “http://fivethirtyeight.com had best polling this election of all poling operations, using technology & ground reports.” #CSMFOJ

Sree: “Nate Silver is a baseball stats geek, not a trained journalist!” #CSMFOJ

Great idea! RT @waynesutton: I really think it’s time for @newmaya & I to start our journalism camp for newspapers & journalist #csmfoj

RT @100yearsofcsm: @BarbaraKB The entire video of tonight’s event will be posted on the FOJ website tomorrow afternoon.

Sree: “If I’d invested in Rafat Ali years ago, I’d eventually be a millionaire many times over. http://paidcontent.org” #CSMFOJ

Hume: “J-students: The public will capture the moment/headline. Your job is to be a tour guide in media landscape, bring expertise. #CSMFOJ

Hume: Face time is still deeply important with sources, community. Don’t just rely on tech, even phones. #CSMFOJ

Jurkowitz: “When you watch “All the President’s Men,” today, amazing how slowly it’s paced. No studio wld greenlight today.” #CSMFOJ

@100yearsofcsm Oh bummer, are they just going to blow off all Twitter questions for this event? :-/ #CSMFOJ

@100yearsofcsm People have always chosen news/channels that suit their worldview. That’s not really new to online/mobile.

@100yearsofcsm Ok, so conversation “continues” at monitor, but how can people not at the monitor participate?

Apparently, entire video of this webcast will be posted on tomorrow pm: http://snurl.com/56tfn

This concludes my live coverage. My main twitter ID is @agahran, please follow me there. I use this ID only for event coverage. Thanks!

@100yearsofcsm When you say “check back w/ us for updates” – where? Twitter? Web? Other? about 14 hours ago from twhirl

My main twitter ID is @agahran, please follow me there. I use this ID only for event coverage. Thanks!

Working with Journalists: What’s in It for Geeks?

Amy Gahran — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:59:50 +0000

NOTE: This post originally appeared on Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits, and there are some comments over there. I’m reposting this here because, frankly, this site poses fewer hurdles to commenters, and I’d like to get some diverse discussion happening.

Earlier this week I wrote about the internal and external obstacles journalism schools face when trying to achieve collaboration with other academic departments (such as computer science). That spurred a pretty interesting discussion in the comments.

This discussion got me thinking: Right now, it’s becoming obvious to many journalists that our field sorely needs lots of top-notch, creative technologists. Developers for whom software is a medium, and an art form. Developers with a deep passion for information, credibility, fairness, usefulness, and free speech.

However, my impression is that, so far, it’s not nearly so obvious to most “geeks” (and I use that term with the utmost affection and respect, as do many geeks themselves) how they might benefit from collaborating with journalists, j-schools, and news organizations.

So if journalists need geeks, but right now they don’t need (or even necessarily want) us as much, the question becomes: What’s in this for the geeks? Why might they want to work with us? Where’s their incentive?…

There is a bright spot of opportunity: Many hardcore geeks (especially those who create free software, where the mantra is “free as in speech, not free as in beer“) share core goals with journalists — especially regarding public service and free speech. That’s a solid launching point.

One of the people whose views on bridging the journo/geek culture gap I respect most is my Tidbits colleague Rich Gordon, from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. He runs a pioneering program that offers scholarships to Medill’s graduate journalism program to people with education and/or expertise in computer programming. (This effort is funded by a Knight News Challenge grant — and they’re seeking a followup grant.)

In his comment to my earlier post on J-schools, Gordon wrote, in part:

“Journalism and computer science partnerships will work only if the two academic departments see these collaborations as equally valuable. In my experience, there are cultural and communication gaps that need to be closed.”

And in this MediaLab post, Gordon elaborated:

“Journalists and technology professionals do have two things in common. First, the best people in both fields really do want to change the world and make it a better place. Second, both believe that people want and deserve access to the best possible information. But there also is a substantial gap between journalism and computer science.

“Too many journalists don’t respect technology development as a creative activity — they think developers should just build stuff they want. Too many technologists don’t respect journalism as an intellectual activity — they think journalists just pump out content for their algorithms to process.

“Too many journalists really don’t like technology change; they blame it for hurting media businesses, threatening their livelihoods and diminishing the quality of news available in local communities. Too many technologists think it’s not their job to worry about the negative impact of technology innovation on media companies and journalism — and when they do think about the consequences, think only about information at the national and global level (which is broader, deeper and more accessible than ever) and not at the local level (where online news ventures rarely do the kind of original reporting that newspapers do).”
…I think that pretty much nails the key mindset differences that define this culture gap. But there’s also the organizational angle. I was discussing this recently with Brian Boyer (a programmer currently in Gordon’s graduate journalism program, and part of Medill’s Crunchberry Project team). He observed that generally news organizations don’t see themselves as tech companies. Yet, he said, geeks “want to work at a place where tech is at the core of the ideas. News orgs need to realize that they’re tech organizations now — they live and die by the Web.”

Given that context, I ask again: What’s in this for the geeks? How can we foster more mutual understanding and respect? What compelling reasons can journalists offer that honor geek values, culture, and goals? How can journalists demonstrate that we can and will respect talented, passionate geeks as full partners (or even potential leaders) in collaborative efforts — not pigeonhole them as IT lackeys?

I’m asking journalists to start from this point: “Journalism: So what?” I’m also asking geeks to speak up about how they view journalists: our efforts, our culture, our goals, and what might make us more appealing as collaborators.

Any ideas? Please comment below.

Being a Citizen Shouldn’t Be So Hard! Part 2: Beyond Government

Amy Gahran — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:28:48 +0000

NOTE: This is part 2 of a multipart series. See the series intro. More to come over the next few days.

This series is a work in process. I’m counting on Contentious.com readers and others to help me sharpen this discussion so I can present it more formally for the Knight Commission to consider.

So please comment below or e-mail me to share your thoughts and questions. Thanks!

To compensate for our government’s human-unfriendly info systems, some people have developed civic info-filtering backup systems: news organizations, activists, advocacy groups, think tanks, etc.

In my opinion, ordinary Americans have come to rely too heavily on these third parties to function as our “democracy radar.” We’ve largely shifted to their shoulders most responsibility to clue us in when something is brewing in government, tell us how we can exercise influence (if at all), and gauge the results of civic and government action.

Taken together, these backup systems generally have worked well enough — but they also have significant (and occasional dangerous) flaws. They’ve got too many blind spots, too many hidden agendas, insufficient transparency, and too little support for timely, effective citizen participation…

In other words, the patchwork network of backup systems often fail to supply enough civic information to precisely those people who are most likely to be involved or affected by civic issues, in ways that engage them and support participation. Also, often the civic info they offer generally reflects the providers’ own agendas, assumptions, habits, and preferences — about which they may or may not be conscious or transparent.

Yes, having these backup civic info systems is certainly better than relying solely on the government’s own information systems — but too often, not by much. And sometimes they can even be much worse.

JUST GIVE ME THE DATA

The Knight Foundation has been supporting some efforts to make civic and public info more user-friendly and direct, like Adrian Holovaty’s Everyblock project. This is another third-party civic info “backup system” that aims to provide a more direct experience of civic info. They try (and mostly succeed) to improve upon government communications by enhancing relevance and usability. Everyblock empowers users to search and filter civic info as they choose (at least within a geographic context).

…But there’s a big catch to offering this valuable service: Everyblock must cope with the fact that usually getting raw civic info from government and public sources is a huge pain. It requiring considerable tweaking and maintenance to constantly adapt their “screen scraping” processes.

Screen scraping is a painstaking, cumbersome programming technique. A screen scraper program extracts data from the final display output of another program (what gets shown in, say, your web browser). According to Wikipedia: “The key element that distinguishes screen scraping from regular parsing is that the output being scraped was intended for final display to a human user, rather than as input to another program, and is therefore usually neither documented nor structured for convenient parsing.” That means the whole process is inherently pitfall-prone and inefficient.

Blogger and author Jon Udell nailed the underlying problem of data friction inherent in situations where civic media are forced to resort to screen scraping to obtain public information:

“Data friction can be intentional or not. When it’s intentional, you might have to file a FOIA request to get it. But in a lot of cases, it’s unintentional. The data is public, and intended to be widely seen and used, but isn’t readily reusable.

“…Now it’s time to grease the wheels. Here’s one way that can happen. An enlightened city government can decide to publish [its] data in a reusable way. I’ve written extensively about Washington DC’s groundbreaking DCStat program which does exactly that. I can’t wait to see what happens when EveryBlock goes to Washington.

“But city governments shouldn’t have to go out of their way to provide web-facing data services and feeds. Databases should natively support them. That’s the idea behind Astoria (ADO.NET Services), which is discussed in this interview with Pablo Castro. If the NYC Department of Health had that kind of access layer sitting on top of its [restaurant inspection] database, it wouldn’t put EveryBlock’s screen-scraper out of a job — it would just make that [person's] job a whole lot more interesting and effective.”

This all leads back to why I like what the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy is doing: They’re flipping the focus around, to put people’s needs first.

They’re doing this by starting from the question “What kind of information do communities need?” — rather than simply settling for “How can we tweak the badly designed, human-unfriendly entrenched patchwork system of civic information so that it becomes at least slightly less painful or more useful?”

…Well, they’re doing that to a point, anyway. The crucial limitation I see in their approach lies in how the Knight Commission has chosen to define “community.”

(COMING THURSDAY: Part 3, Beyond Geography…)

Breaking Out of the Echo Chamber

Amy Gahran — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:20:02 +0000

OpenDemocracy, via Flickr (CC license)

What might this Malian girl and I have in common, and what might we learn from each other? How could we know if we can’t really connect?

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.

Web 3.0: Patchwork Quilt of Viral Online Applications, Says Google CEO

Amy Gahran — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:53:43 +0000

OK, excuse me for delving into buzzwords here, but this is actually potentially important. Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently spoke at the Seoul Digital Forum. Someone asked him about what his vision of “Web 3.0″ might be. Here’s his reply:

The bottom line is that he predicts the software we use will not be something packaged that we buy, but rather something we cobble together from modular components available online that get recommended to us by communities. This could have a lot of implications for flexibility, customization, security, and speed.

Makes me think of how I use the Firefox web browser right now. I couldn’t do my work without my Firefox add-ons. And yes, GTDinbox is quickly proving indispensable to me for managing tasks.

Thanks to Amy Webb for the tip.

Online Political Coverage: Communities Matter More than Elections

Amy Gahran — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:10:24 +0000

Night2

View of downtown L.A. from my hotel window. This town looks better at night.

I’m in Los Angeles right now, where on Thursday I’ll be giving a session at a Knight New Media Center seminar on Election ’08: Covering Politics in Cyberspace.

My session is called: "Tools of Engagement: It’s a Conversation, Stupid." No, I didn’t come up with that title, but I really like it. My audience will be a mix of journalists, online-media pros, geeks, and political experts. I hope they’re ready to talk, because I don’t really do lectures; I start conversations.

I’ll admit, in my journalistic work I’ve generally avoided covering elections — for good reason. Generally, the way most news orgs handle that assignment bugs the hell out of me. The press conferences, the pundits, the posturing, the race metaphors… in all that, communities, issues, and the real workings of government tend to get pushed into the background. It feels fake and even counterproductive to me. I’m tired of it, and for the most part I tune it out.

That’s not to say I tune out politics. On the contrary, I follow certain aspects of politics very closely: local, state, national, and international. And I do note how elections affect the politics that interest or affect me. However, I don’t believe elections should garner the lion’s share of political coverage.

It seems to me that the best political coverage is ongoing, not cyclical. Ideally, coverage of elections or other political events should support and enhance the public conversation about issues and communities.

To accomplish this with online political coverage, I think we need to get our priorities straight. Here are some thoughts on how we might do that, so we might collectively avoid turning the 2008 election season into a complete three-ring circus…

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE, and comment if you like, over at my other blog The Right Conversation…

Social Media Spam: Ick!

Amy Gahran — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:52:57 +0000

(NOTE: I originally wrote this for Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits blog. Since it’s also relevant here, I’m cross-posting it.)

Spammer

What does "Digg bait" look like? These screen grabs from a site that sells dental insurance via an affiliate program show how out-of-place the article "Geek’s Guide to Getting in Shape" is. (Click to enlarge)

Well, I knew it would happen. Spammers have figured out how to game social media news aggregation sites like Digg, Reddit, and Newsvine.

On Nov. 21, blogger Niall Kennedy examined one example of this kind of spamming in detail, explaining how it happened and why it’s a problem.

Here’s his explanation of how this particular instance of social media spam worked:

"Last weekend I noticed a Digg submission about weight loss tips had climbed the site’s front page, earning a covetous position in the top 5 technology stories of the moment. The 13 sure-fire tips were authored by ‘Dental Geek’ and posted to the ‘Discount Dental Plan’ category on his WordPress blog. Scanning the sidebar links and adjacent content it was obvious this content was out of place on a page optimized for dental insurance. The Webmaster of i-dentalresources.com had inserted some Digg bait, seeded a few social bookmarking services, and waited for links and page views to roll in, creating a new node in a spam farm fueled by high-paying affiliate programs and identity collection for resale."

Ick! Now, I’m all for posting valuable content as a way to engage communities and attract audiences. But this really crosses a line, I think…

Clearly a lot of people found this particular article useful — just check out the comments. That said, relevance is the true currency of online communities. Using apparently relevant content as bait to lure people to an irrelevant destination is indeed an insidious type of spamming, I think.

WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?

Well, I don’t know — but Ravi, who commented on Kennedy’s post, offered this idea: "I hope that social networking sites evolve to behave more like Wikipedia, in the sense that the crowd can become smart enough to quickly detect and ‘blacklist’ sites that are obviously out there just to game the system."

Also, bdeseattle offered this idea: "I find it fascinating to watch Digg Swarm and actually see how readers gravitate from story to story in real time. I’d love to mine that data and have the ability to trace diggs user by user, story by story, and then look for common patterns for how
users navigate in real time from story to story. Would also likely help with exposing spammers and others who are exploiting the social networks. Maybe we need to whip up some spambots that crawl the social networks and nuke all spam-related content/comments/etc. Your post
underscores the importance of baking anti-spamming ninjas directly into socially-driven systems in the hopes of slaying the spammers."

Meanwhile, Jupiter Research analyst Barry Parr observed, "Our research shows that consumers see social news sites as less trustworthy than news media or portal sites — by a fairly wide margin. Stories like this tell us it’s going to take a while for social news aggregators to win the trust they need to be more than a fringe source for most consumers."

Buh-Bye Old Stars, and Good Riddance

Amy Gahran — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 18:06:01 +0000

Santa_fe_hat

Independent music journalist Michael Kirk.

This morning I was having an interesting conversation with my friend, independent music journalist Michael Kirk. We were tossing around observations on how the conventional "star system," at least in the entertainment business, appears to be waning with the rise of the internet — particularly with easy access to social and conversational media.

Anyway, with Michael’s permission, here are some excerpts from our conversation…

(READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE over at my other blog, The Right Conversation. You can comment there, if you like.)

Blogs: Popularity Doesn\’t Equal Influence

Amy Gahran — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 22:32:47 +0000

Technorati

Technorati’s latest snapshot of blog influence (click to enlarge). Consider what this data really shows.

(NOTE: I originally posted this item on Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits blog. I’m cross-posting it here because I think it’s also relevant to Contentious readers.)

On Nov. 6, Technorati published its latest quarterly state of the blogosphere report. Currently, this search service tracks 57 million feeds, mostly from blogs — with a strong focus on English-language blogs, especially from North America.

One of the most controversial sections of this report discusses a key concern for any media: influence or perceived authority. Personally, I think Technorati’s interpretation is rather awry…

Technorati measures influence by counting inbound links to blogs.
This report ranks the approximately 1.5 million blogs it tracks which
have attracted at least three inbound links into these groups:

Low Authority: Three to nine blogs linking in the last six months (1,111,882 blogs, average 12 posts/month)
Middle Authority: 10-99 blogs linking in the last six months (416,073 blogs, average 18 posts/month)
High Authority: 100-499 blogs linking in the last six months (26,418 blogs, average 25 posts/month)
Very High Authority: 500 or more blogs linking in the last six months (4,070 blogs, average 53 posts/month)

What’s wrong with this picture? Well, Technorati’s ranking mostly reflects popularity and the effects of posting frequency. In some cases these may correlate with influence or authority — but not always.

First of all, people link to blogs for all sorts of reasons — not always because they consider a particular posting authoritative. Often people link to blog postings in order to question, disagree with, refute, or even ridicule them. Or they may link to blogs strictly for entertainment. Also, people often link to blogs in the hope of attracting return links — and thus traffic. Most serious bloggers watch their referral logs closely, and this strategy does often work.

Posting frequency also can drive inbound links, because if you give people more stuff to read, it’s more likely they’ll find something worth a link. But more frequent posts aren’t always better or more authoritative. In fact, often I’ve found just the opposite. Some of the blogs I consider most influential don’t post daily. Thoughtfulness counts in many circles.

The truth is, influence depends entirely upon the audiences each blog reaches. Sometimes those audiences or communities are very small in terms of numbers. For instance, Alaskablawg is a pretty authoritative blog for certain types of legal and political issues affecting Alaska. It undoubtedly attracts a much smaller audience and fewer inbound links than Firedoglake, currently the top-ranked blog in the "law" category in Technorati’s blog directory. Does that make Alaskablawg less influential or authoritative? Probably not — at least not among the communities it aims to reach.

Influence also depends on the range of topics a blog addresses. A given blogger may be considered extremely authoritative on green chemistry, but less so on parenting or Chinese cooking (even though her blog may address all three topics).

I don’t think Technorati’s view of influence is entirely amiss. Inbound links can indeed be one factor to gauge influence — but it can never be the only one. Companies like BuzzLogic have a better grasp of what really constitutes influence in conversational media. Of course, Buzzlogic isn’t free, and Technorati is. And in this case of Technorati’s analysis, I think you get what you pay for.