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I think this article is really spot on in providing an important model for empirically studying and representing the spread of ideas (or controversies) between media and how participatory and professional media influence one another. The fact that this article is written as much for academics as for activists is also exciting (and scary) to me, as a means of thinking about agenda-setting and influence. How might access to these tools help activist campaigns, and how might they swing back to challenge them? How can you really measure effect? "Even when we are able to access the data we need for analysis, interpretation is complicated by the specificity of individualized media experiences, where we've each curated our own individualized lists of sources on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. This can leave us with very different understandings of the day's news. Is it possible to speak meaningfully about a media agenda when agendas are set by individuals following a combination of friends and professional sources they've chosen to meet personal preferences and needs?"

An interesting look at Facebook, Twitter, Google, and LinkedIn considering where these each will be 5 years from now and 10 years from now.

Just testing diigo, but thought this service provided by WalMart(!) was interesting.

Nothing better than Walmart trying to control the media world :)

This is a book that I have read through in my previous attempts to approach the online-life of legends and ghost narratives. I found it really helpful to see how Kinsella approached the online community, and perhaps this might help some of you to read through some of his ideas. 

I keep intending to pass along this site - folkstreams.net - which has digitized and archived a number of "canonical" ethnographic films. You can watch them for free - check out Salamanders!

This is an interesting article I stumbled across the other day. It's discussion of changes in technology, methodology, and data and their influence on framing the popularity of music, particularly in regards to race, is really interesting.

The example of a web forum turning their "newbie" section into essentially an "unconverted" section very interesting example of how communities separate "us" and "them." I don't know how broadly we can apply that example, though. Vegans are an easy target as a community that identifies largely in opposition to an "other," since most definitions of veganism lay out what vegans *don't* do, eg use animal products. I'd be interested to see if other communities with, for lack of better phrasing, more "positive" or additive identifications, similarly segregate "others" on their sites. Then of course the question becomes, what do the "others" get out of being segregated on a community's site? Do they have their own subcommunity?

I do believe that it was religious scholar Robert Ellwood that said that a group most identifies in what they are not. So I do think that they create their own subcommunity, because they are identifying with the fact that they are the "other" and that they are not the "us." To give a real life example (but not a digital one, sorry) Dianic Paganism was created in response to second-wave feminism, they did not allow men into their circles. In response, you see this rise of men-only circles.

You can watch Open Folklore's Twitter Feed for the latest updates on all things digital and folklore/antho/&ct. and the discussions surrounding them. The latest from Open Folklore (@openfolklore). OF is a scholarly resource that will make a greater range of useful resources available for folklorists and for other interested communities

Another source for data illustration.