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Samantha Gilham

Call for Papers - SocInfo 2012 - 0 views

  • Computational models of social phenomena, social simulation Social choice mechanisms in the e-society Social networks: discovery, evolution, analysis, applications Social Behavior Modeling Web mining and its social interpretations Social Influence and Diffusion Models of Social Influence Security, privacy, trust, reputation and incentive issues Social Communities and Social Network Analysis Design and analysis of social/collaborative Web applications Social Interactions and Collaboration Algorithms and protocols inspired by human societies Socio-economic Systems and Applications Mechanisms for providing fairness in information systems Virtual communities (e.g., open-source, multiplayer gaming) Impact of technology on socio-economic Recommendation systems Visualization of dynamic social networks Social applications of the Semantic Web Social Informatics Theory Social system design and architectures Trust, Privacy, Risk and Security in Social Contexts Social Intelligence and Social Cognition Social media analytics and social media intelligence Emotional Intelligence and Data Mining
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    Page shared by another classmate, topics page may be a good brainstorming page to think of project topics/focus
Jorge Arganza

Howard Rheingold | Exploring mind amplifiers since 1964 - 5 views

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    I have been following Rheingold's work for some time, and I highly recommend falling down through his particular 'rabbit hole' of stuff. He studies online communities and ways in which ICT enhance the individual and the collective group's capabilities.
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    This is an interesting blog as long as you can get around the book promotions :-) I thought the Social Media section on the site particularly interesting. One of the articles I liked was the one on Smartmobbing by Howard Rheingold (http://rebooting.personaldemocracy.com/node/5484). This is an interesting idea because a lot of politically charged organizations are utilizing social media to basically create online mobs. Social media is now used to organize petitions, spread the word about marches, and basically spread information. People who were once sort of out of mainstream politics can now get involved and keep track of what is going on in the world. Social media has definitely influenced politics, changing the way parties endorse their candidates and more.
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    @ Maranda (aside... I didn't see a way to "comment on a comment" so I am posting this directly under the main post) -- I think the the social mobbing you mention is a really interesting trend. In my town, we recently started an online petition through change.org to keep our town pool. It took only a few days to get twice the signatures we needed and no gas was used or feet blisters created. I am trying to think critically of a downside to this manner of using social tools, but I cannot think of one! @Jorge -- Very nice blog. I found a great article (http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428043/there-is-no-digital-divide/) debating the other side of the digital divide argument posed by the NYT's piece from last week. I also like Rheingold's "infotention" invention. I could use a little "infotention" intervention -- every time I get involved with a tech or social tool, a new one is created that seems better and more suited to whatever task I was trying to accomplish. Sometimes I feel as if we are living in a time when nothing remains permanent.
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    This guys seems very clever and witty! I enjoyed reading his blog about Twitter (http://blog.sfgate.com/rheingold/2009/05/11/twitter-literacy-i-refuse-to-make-up-a-twittery-name-for-it/) talking about how this powerful social media can be so influential and useful if the user knows how to utilize it for the right reasons. Being a non-Twitter user, I found it interesting how he explained numerous advantages of being an active member. Now that I've read this, I might reconsider of joining it...
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    This was a very informative blog! Thanks Jorge. Like Pam, I really liked the "infotention" idea. diigo is a perfect example. I really just started looking at it today and was really confused (if you couldn't tell with my questions) on how it worked, where to comment, etc. The more I've looked at it today, the easier it has become to use. But something new will probably come along in the net couple months and then I'll have to learn how something works all over again.
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    Jorge, this guy has been around forever and really has some interesting ideas. Looking through his website, which has a nice design to it, Rheigngold does a great job of talking about the positive impact technology can have on society, particularly from the standpoint of collective cooperation. As recent history shows, the use of technology has the power to bring people together, even to the point of ending a decades-long dictatorship.
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    Howard Rheingold has very interesting points on his website/blogs. I like his Infotention definition and how he believes if we are armed with the right tools/skill-set, we can address information overload. I also liked how he stressed instead of continuing to criticize the negative impacts of the internet on us, that we find better tools and ways to learn to engage the technology in a more mindful and positive manner. it is in our capabilities to do this.
Meaghan Corbett

danah boyd | apophenia - 4 views

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    danah boyd (all lowercase) is one of the leading researchers and thinkers within this developing field of social informatics. Her blog analyzes and provides commentary on social networking and how it's changing the way we communicate with each other.
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    A passionate advocate for LGBTQ youth and outspoken opponent of bullying, cyber or otherwise, she's written extensively about Tyler Clementi and Dharun Ravi, and the role played by serious misuse of digital technology to malign an individual. She also goes into how "media-driven narrative" has shaped public perception of this case: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2012/02/24/stop-the-cycle-of-bullying.html
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    Thanks for sharing this...I saw danah boyd give a keynote at a conference here in Maryland called Theorizing the Web and she was definitely a big deal. Actually, come to think of it, the notes from that conference might have some information to share here as well.
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    An excerpt from boyd's notes on her speech about "the power of fear in networked cultures" "The tools that we build are getting repurposed around the globe by people with all sorts of different agendas. They're being used by activists to challenge the status quo, but they're also being used by the status quo to assert new kinds of authority. People are building the new networks of power on the technological networks that we've generated and they're reinforcing existing power structures. "Through social media, we're ramping up the attention economy. We are setting in motion new networks. We like to think of ourselves as disrupting power systems and, indeed, that's what we were doing for a long time. But now, those in power are leveraging our tools to exert new forms of power. Fear is one of the tools that's being used. People are finding ways to put fear into our systems. "Social media is no longer the great disrupter. It is now part of the status quo. Are we prepared for what that means? Are we prepared for the ecosystem that we've created? Do we even understand how our systems are being employed by those hellbent on maintaining power in a networked age? "I don't have good answers to these socio-technical conundrums. But I think that these are important issues and I need your help in figuring out where to go from here."
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    good find! you will encounter more of her work later on
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    I second on the good find comment! Her post about Ravi's conviction was interesting, not only because it hits home because it happened at RU, but it brings up some extremely important topics when it comes to online bullying, the use of technology/media in the private/personal sphere, privacy etc. And she closes with saying she would hope this case would change others' actions and outlook on the harmful uses of technology and invasion of privacy, but unfortunately it most likely won't and we will continue to see these types of things happening.
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    Thank for that! I'm really enjoying this, and it is helping me think about the culture of unease we seem to be living in. http://talks.webstock.org.nz/speakers/danah-boyd/culture-fear-attention-economy/ where
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    I really like her talk on the culture of fear, and how it relates to the rapidly expanding array of mediums in which to spread this culture. This is a nice counterpoint to Howard Rheingold's view of some of the positive uses of social media to promote engagement and change rather than this focus on isolation and fear.
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    One thing to remember is that Rheingold was very Utopic in his early writings. That becomes more critical later on.
Samantha Gilham

Culture Digitally // Examining Contemporary Cultural ProductionCulture Digitally // Exa... - 0 views

    • Samantha Gilham
       
      I'm extremely interested in this new book, Media, Society, World: Social Theory.  It looks like it draws upon several topics that we have been discussing and deal with on a daily basis!
  • Media are fundamental to our sense of living in a social world. Since the beginning of modernity, media have transformed the scale on which we act as social beings. And now in the era of digital media, media themselves are being transformed as platforms, content, and producers multiply. Yet the implications of social theory for understanding media and of media for rethinking social theory have been neglected; never before has it been more important to understand those implications. This book takes on this challenge.
Amanda Jacobsen

More Than Rumor: Social Media Can Wreak Havoc on the Market - 1 views

http://bx.businessweek.com/social-networking/view?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Fsap%2F2012%2F02%2F23%2Fmore-than-rumor-social-media-can-wreak-havoc-on-the-market%2F%3Ffeed%3Drss_home H...

Social Media facebook business damage_havoc

started by Amanda Jacobsen on 13 Jun 12 no follow-up yet
Ronald Jay Gervacio

How Facebook is ruining sharing - 5 views

  • goal of the initiative is to quantify just about everything you do on Facebook
  • turning out to be really annoying in practice
  • it's killing the possibility of viral hits by generating such an overwhelming flood of mundane shares
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  • Sharing is the key to social networking
  • hurting sharing is a disaster for a social network
  • Sharing and recommendation shouldn't be passive
  • Frictionless sharing via Open Graph recasts Facebook's basic purpose
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    This article discusses about the negative impact of Facebook's Open Graph (frictionless sharing") in the world of social networking. It gets really annoying when someone would share an article/news/video etc, the user would first have to install an app into their profile!
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    RJ, this is a great article. I had noticed those 'trending articles' and spotify things on my facebook page, and I have been avoiding the opt-in's but I wasn't aware of what was going on. This article explains it well.
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    I know right.. me too! I usually have to circumvent the process in order to avoid installing the apps. I would go straight to the website where the news/article is posted instead of clicking the link directly from Facebook.
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    Yes, thank you. I was treating all those "trending articles" like spam. These types of posts have been a recent annoyance with my FB (I've been on since 2007), and I was starting to get the nagging feeling that FB was going to be slowly taken over by information not related to your chosen friends group. I was envisioning having to weed through pages of passive posts to get to your real information. Would this not be the death knell of the service?
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    I'm not a fan of the news sites social readers; most of my network uses the Washington Post one and Yahoo. At first I thought it was cool, but then I got weirded out at the thought of my network being able to "see" what I'm reading at any given time. What if someone made assumptions about me based on what I was reading at any given time? I really wish Google Plus would take off...the only reason I, and I suspect a lot of other people, are holding fast to Facebook is that our friend networks aren't making the switch...and what's the point of being in a social networking site if you're the only person there?
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    I really liked the quote "sharing is the key to social networking" and it shouldn't be passive, but not aggressive either. Oversharing becomes a problem where soon newsfeeds are clogged with a million stories and recommendations. Like others above, I'm immediately turned off when I go to read an article and have to download an app first, it's frustrating when clicking an article becomes a long-winded process. @Meaghan I was also a huge proponent of Google + at first, was one of the only people who originally had it, waited for it to catch popularity, but here it's almost a year later and I still haven't gained any new friends. I wonder what the hesitancy is behind not using Google+. It's interesting to think about the decision and thought processes social media users go through when deciding what forums to use or not use, why do some people actively use Facebook, but not Twitter? I'm guessing theories such as media richness (lean vs rich messages) and other factors come into play, as well as ease of use.
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    I have to say I've never heard of Google +, and have often thought about shutting down my facebook account for good...I wont do Twitter. What does that mean for me as a MLIS major I often thought? Should I be more "plugged in"? I'm becoming nostalgic about old means of communication (letters, books, even phone calls) This is also troubling because I feel that the new open graph is very overwhelming, have have clicked on links and then shut them right back down, because you must enable MORE links, apps, programs, all wanting to get my inforamtion. It's also scary that facebook is becoming a necessity, rather than just a fun social networking site. My old high school depends on it to contact us for reunions, my aunt uses it as her main way of contacting me, and its often the only way I'll ever see those photos my sister took at the beach! We've Created a Monster! Keeping it a simple model would be preferable.
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    Great points Amanda. On the other side, I would say forums like Facebook has allowed us to keep in contact with those we wouldn't normally have access to, or find those we wish to contact but can't find in just the yellow pages. I agree there are times when I wish someone would pick up the phone and just call instead of trying to have a text conversation or email conversation. However in terms of using Facebook and other e-vite sites/modes, sometimes it is the cheapest and easiest mode to send out a mass message i.e. school reunion invite, in as little time and for as little money as possible. Also you can get real-time RSVP, which I'm guessing from the views of the event administrator can be super helpful when trying to get an idea of attendees. I do also feel nostalgic about old means of communication and often wonder how people will communicate in the future, what communication choices they will make, etc.
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    I found Open Graph for the first time writing an report for Library School on my favourite site, Board Game Geek (boradgamegeek.com). It's kinda worrying, in the same way thrid party cookies worry me: it a use of technology that can be used for good that could be so easily subverted. That would make a good project, I reckon.
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    People shouldn't be that surprised that a company that just went public with great fanfare is looking to monetize every single possibility it can. Like Samantha says, Facebook is a great, inexpensive tool for keeping in touch with old friends as well as meeting new friends. Just like with Gmail ads that are based on the contents of the user's emails, there is a price to pay for these 'free' services. As consumers of these services, we all have to decide at what point has the commodification of our private lives gone too far.
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    Brian, I think you really sumed it up when you said "As consumers of these services, we all have to decide at what point has the commodification of our private lives gone too far." This hits home with me because I've been feeling that way lately. Ever since my son was born, and everybody wants pics of him up on facebook, I've been thinking worried, and wondering if it's worth it? How exposed do I want my newborn son to be?
Jennifer Bradley

Social-informatics.org - 1 views

  • Social Informatics
  • Bibliography
  • deals with interaction of modern society and information communication technology (ICT).
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    This is a great resource created by the Social Sciences faculty at the University of Ljubljana. On top of getting information about current projects and events there is also a really great bibliography that might be helpful for our final projects.
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    The website is run by Chair for Social Informatics (CSI) at Faculty of Social Sciences (University of Ljubljana), which deals with interaction of modern society and information communication technology (ICT).
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    Whoops, didn't see that this was already added, and now it won't let me delete!
Samantha Gilham

Twitter Literacy (I refuse to make up a Twittery name for it) | City Brights: Howard Rh... - 0 views

  • To me, this represents a perfect example of a media literacy issue: Twitter is one of a growing breed of part-technological, part-social communication media that require some skills to use productively. Sure, Twitter is banal and trivial, full of self-promotion and outright spam. So is the Internet. The difference between seeing Twitter as a waste of time or as a powerful new community amplifier depends entirely on how you look at it – on knowing how to look at it.
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    I love his quote about Twitter being banal and trivial, all of the superficial characteristics that many social media sites are comprised of, but also can also be a "powerful new community amplifier."  Looking at technology vs. knowing how to look at or use technology are two different things.  
Samantha Gilham

America at the Digital Turning Point - 6 views

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    Stumbled upon this report, published January 2012, from the USC Annenberg School of Comm. Some great statistics and information about the users and non-users of technology and the Internet.
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    What you will find is that there are many centers doing research on the impact of social/digital media, and they are very good resources for primary info
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    I should, however, note that I would like to know more about their survey and how they administered it. From a methods point of view it's always a good practice to learn more.
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    "online behavior changes relentlessly, and users and nonusers develop attitudes and actions that are constantly in flux as technology emerges, and then thrives or withers." This really reminds me of a documentary I watched on trends (mainly youth) and how things changed so often that they were unsure if the media or the children that were really setting the trends. As new trends "emerge" others "wither". Out internet behaviors seems to follow the same patterns as all our other social patterns.
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    This is a really interesting report...it left me with even more questions, though.Particularly interested in the finding that social media had limited credibility among the study participants despite increased use. I wondered what the definition of credibility was in this case...I had before not thought of FB as credible or not credible, unless this is somehow tied to privacy issues.
Jorge Arganza

What Is a Social Business App, Anyway? And Why Is the Market Booming? - 1 views

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    Social media is becoming big business inside businesses.
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    Someone posted an article earlier that was kinda related to this called "Data-mining your desktop." It was about HP's "Collective" project which would basically work like a facebook for the workplace, which would allow others to see what different projects people were working on and thus potentially setup networking opportunities. I wonder, though, if such tools might actually leave a company more vulnerable to corporate espionage.
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    It's funny that you posted this just as I was generating ideas for our final project and completing research on the increasingly important role of apps. I had no idea that social business applications are a $6 billion industry, or that companies are using internal programs such as Yammer to bolster communication lines. After reading this article, it makes perfect sense that business wants to capitalize on the social media market, but I always associated networking sites with personal and professional connections. Thanks for the post!
Meaghan Corbett

Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites | Pew Research Center's Internet & ... - 0 views

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    A report from the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project that deals with the behavior of teens on social networking sites, privacy and safety issues, and the role of parents in online social communities.
Meaghan Corbett

Jed Brubaker » Death and the Social Network: The Persistence of Digital Identity - 0 views

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    A Ph.D candidate at U.C. Irvine, Jed Brubaker's research deals with the topic of death on social networking sites (which, admittedly, is something I've never considered before!). When an individual passes, his or her friends, family, and admirers can gather in a digital community to share memories and grieve together. Brubaker studies the language and rhetoric of posts on the social networking pages of the deceased and analyzes how these posts create a living memory in a digital space.
Kerianne Cassidy

For Children, a Social Network With Training Wheels - 2 views

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    A social networking site for kids under 10 developed by a concerned parent.
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    Interesting -- I wasn't too keen on the business model, but it doesn't seem to matter because it appears the site is no longer in service. When you go to its homepage it redirects you to other "family-friendly" sites like Club Penguin and Disney social networks. So goes life on the wild, wooly web... :)
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    This is a very interesting idea.. At first I thought that maybe the idea of preselected phrases were a bit much, but then I really thought about the goal of teaching children how to be social in an accountable way. My nephew wanted a facebook page when he was 7, and was on my sisters site all the time. It's natural for children to want to be a part of what is happening socially around them, because as a species we are social; it's not practical to expect children not to partake in these activities.
Jennifer Bradley

In Media Res | a mediaCommons project - 1 views

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    From the website: "In Media Res is dedicated to experimenting with collaborative, multi-modal forms of online scholarship. Our goal is to promote an online dialogue amongst scholars and the public about contemporary approaches to studying media. In Media Res provides a forum for more immediate critical engagement with media at a pace closer to how we experience mediated texts. Each weekday, a different scholar curates a 30-second to 3-minute video clip/visual image slideshow accompanied by a 300-350-word impressionistic response. We use the title "curator" because, like a curator in a museum, you are repurposing a media object that already exists and providing context through your commentary, which frames the object in a particular way. The clip/comment combination are intended both to introduce the curator's work to the larger community of scholars (as well as non-academics who frequent the site) and, hopefully, encourage feedback/discussion from that community."
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    One of the fun articles I read on this website was "Yes We Can; Even Though We Say Knope." Here's a link: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2012/06/04/yes-we-can-even-though-we-say-knope Another really interesting one is "Curating the City" (http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2012/05/25/curating-city), which talks about new mobile app, which allows people to explore a geographical map of Cleveland which provides embedded history for various locations. Supposedly a new update will even allow people to provide their own tours and stories.
Pamela Hawks

Citizen Engagement | Media Working Group - 0 views

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    Any interested in how technological and new media is serving the underserved? This organization has a lot going on in terms of how new media is aiding the ability of specific populations to connect and create strategies for civic engagement.
Kerianne Cassidy

Caterpillar Brings Social Media to Blue-Collar Business - US News and World Report - 0 views

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    A news story of a construction company using social media to improve their customer relations. They're keeping up with the times and connecting with their technologically savvy client-base, a smart business move.
Meaghan Corbett

About // // Culture DigitallyCulture Digitally - 1 views

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    Culture Digitally is a gathering space for social informatics scholars around the world, who come from a variety of disciplines (communication, sociology, media studies, computer science, anthropology). to share and comment on the latest research in the field. The idea behind the blog is that social informatics transcends several different areas of study and so cross-disciplinary collaboration is incredibly important.
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    What an interesting blog! The dialogue they had titled "(How) Have Technological Shifts Changed Being A Sports Fan?" was so interesting! My focus as I searched through SI literature tended to focus on issues of censorship and privacy, but the idea that technology would impact sports fandom had never occured to me. The stances made by both participants were very well thought out and presented some really good arguments. The role of technology in fandom studies is an area that could be really interesting to dive deeper into.
Kerianne Cassidy

Facebook for First-Graders? The Social Media Giant Looks to Welcome Kids Under 13 | Hea... - 5 views

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    How young is too young? Are kids today really not interacting in person if they're busy building an online network?? My internet use wasn't policed when I was a kid, but then you couldn't do much via AOL dial-up! What happens when parents aren't as technologically adept as their kids?
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    I think this is not a good trend, although FB will probably make it happen anyway. It is already pretty obvious that today's teens do not know how to interact socially in a proper manner - they text constantly even while standing next to each other because they prefer to send messages and avoid f2f interaction; they construct sentences in a twitter-like manner. Kids need to form friendships and interact socially face-to-face, not just virtually. They need to speak to others live, know how to write coherent sentences, and not spend so many hours glued to their technical devices. Parents need to impose more guidelines. Librarians can help by assisting in finding age-appropriate websites for children. We don't need to take away the technology, but we do need to help teens and children use it in a better way.
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    I guess the logic is that kids under 13 are using the site anyway, by lying about their age or getting someone older to create an account for them, so perhaps the best course of action is to create a space specifically for them--with more restrictions and stricter privacy settings. I hope that this pre-teen space is diligently patrolled, and content vetted thoroughly before it gets posted online (sort of like having a forum moderator approve all posts before they appear on the site). I'm not sure if this is feasible....I suppose it depends on how many pre-teens sign on to this thing.
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    I. don't. like. this. My 12-year old wants a FB account simply because all his friends have one and not for any other reason. It just adds one more layer of policing that schools and parents have to be on top of. I am one of the lucky few parents whose kids are pretty good at self-policing their screen time, but I know that's rare. There are plenty of fun, age-appropriate sites for kids that age -- Pottermore comes to mind... my kids both signed up for accounts there and spend time doing the things tweens like to do, i.e. dueling their friends and socking away Galleons in their Gringotts bank accounts. If they spend a hour on Pottermore, then they know they have to go outside and shoot hoops for an hour. I am a little shocked, actually, that FB thinks tweens are a shoe-in market, since usually that demographic wants NOTHING to do with what their parents do... has FB really cracked the generation gap??
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    While I don't condone kids spending all their time on the internet, interacting with their friends through IM, I do understand the need for Facebook to create a space for kids under 13. Kids *are* using it anyway, so it only stands to reason (in my opinion) that FB do the responsible thing and police them. My step-sons both have accounts on FB. The oldest is now 13, so he's legitimate, but the youngest is 11 and he wanted one because his brother had one. He also so he could keep in touch with us (he's in Kansas, we're in NJ), so his step-father set up the account and monitors it. I would be a lot happier with him being in a policed-by-moderators environment so I didn't have to rely on his step-dad to do it. I think that there's an upside to the possible changes to FB, as long as it can be properly implemented and policed. I'm just an optimist, what can I say? And yes, I also believe that FB has possibly put a little crack in the generation gap.
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    The biggest question for me is how will the children under 13 who desire to have a facebook account react when they learn that to do it, the account must be connected to their parents account? At some point every child does something that they do not want their parents to know about..... would that be a deterrent? Would they continue to lie about their ages and use the other tips and tricks to fool the system? Back when I was 14-15 I had a "LiveJournal" account, that I willingly gave my mother access too. I had nothing to hide. But I lost several friends who felt betrayed that my mom was able to then see their posts through my account. I trusted my mom, but my friends didn't. Its a tricky web of social norms, relationships and technology.
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    I think this an inevitable situation because it's so easy to circumvent the system by just modifying the birth year. Facebook is probably just trying to protect themselves from future legal actions by letting the parents be responsible for accounts of their kids. I still don't like this but let's face the reality, Internet is so big and difficult to be policed.
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    Amanda, I think most young teenagers have accounts in online communities that they're not supposed to be on until they're a little older (those little boxes asking you whether you're over a certain age are pretty much ignored completely). I don't like the idea of young teenagers being on Facebook but my reason is more along the same lines as the first complaints about Facebook expanding: Facebook was awesome because it was a way for those in college to meet, look at each other's pictures and bios, and organize parties. Of course, it's turned into something much bigger but I'm still selfish about it: it's like I'm on vacation and I don't want to have to deal with the loud little kids jumping in the pool.
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    Just off the top of my head, I would say that 1st grade is definitely too young for a Facebook page. This article reminds me of one I read not too long ago about a mother who punished her daughter for posting pictures of herself pretending to drink by making her post new pictures of herself holding a sign warning against such behavior. The punishment photos went viral and served to teach the daughter a valuable lesson about putting compromising information on the internet.
Amanda Jacobsen

When Businesses Use Social Media: How Much Is Too Much? - CBS News - 0 views

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    By now, most businesses know they should have a presence on Facebook or Twitter. But the more digitally-savvy businesses often ask, How many? Should you have only one Facebook page? Or multiple ones?
Jennifer Bradley

FarmVille: The Garden in the Machine | In Media Res - 4 views

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    Here's an interesting article about the social mechanics of Farmville and how it mimics the ideals of "gift economy" often demonstrated by non-western, "primitive" cultures, such as those of native Papua New Guineans.
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    The in-text link to the article: " The High-Tech Gift Economy" is also worth a read. It compares the proliferation of shareware and open source software to the political movement of anarcho-communism.
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    Oh dear. I wasted many an hour on Farmville back when it was big...way more than I'd like to admit. That's a neat connection between the digital farm and the real world--and how people's obsession over the game (though I don't know if it's still the case...I deactivated my Farm because it was, well, eating up my entire life!) speaks to something deeper, like the desire for community.
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    There are some failures in the analysis made in the "High Tech Gift Economy". Thinking that the internet was created by the military is a bit of a canard: in my opinion it was the most inventive misuse of military money by a university. Also there is a conception that the 'net runs on the love of pixies and nerds, where in reality it runs on commercial networks successfully making money. I'd much prefer pixie net, but it just ain't so :(
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    I remember playing farmville and cafeville for a few months. They were catchy, but I felt they were a bit off. The idea of being chained to the computer so my crops would not spoil or my food would not overcook was draining, so I finally gave them up. Plus, the more I read about Zygna, the less I liked them as a company. Here is an blog post about how farmville and the like induce anxiety by design. http://consumerist.com/2010/12/game-developer-says-farmville-is-designed-to-be-negative-and-draining.html
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    That's really interesting Jorge: I used to play civilization, but it doesn't help me relax, it just winds me up for hours, in much the same way. Then I discovered Osmos, and have a game that actually feels calm and meditative, bizarrely enough. I had enough of those damn smirking pigs, that's for sure: no wonder the birds are angry.
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    I never got into Farmville myself, but I do remember my news feed on Facebook being overrun with notifications that friends wanted to share their crops and farm animals with me. I got the feeling there was a mob mentality to the game and I was personally turned off by the idea of buying into a product simply because many of my friends did so. The game shows how much our lives can be affected by technology when a "game" dictates how we schedule much of our time just to ensure our imaginary crops don't wither before we can harvest them.
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    Anton, I agree, Civ would keep me up for hours and hours, but I would argue that Civ is different from the farmville model because it is not oriented towards a repetitive (and time based) requirement that one has to come back to the computer a certain time later to click on stuff. Even the social aspect of farmville is a kind of pressure to get more friends into the game just to unlock more stuff, rather than to share in a community effort or a competition.
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    You should definitely look at Jesse Schell's lecture (I think maybe next week?) I put it as optional but do take a look.
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    I do not understand the appeal of Farmville or any other of the 'games' on FB. I guess I also don't understand some people's obsession with their FB or Twitter accounts. If I want to keep in touch with my friends and family, I text or phone them directly - I feel more connected by having direct interactions with them versus reading their wall or sending them a 'gift' for their fake farm. I feel relieved that I no longer have a FB account, and stay in close contact with those people that I really want to keep in contact with. I don't think the 'social' aspect of FB is a substitute for F2F interactions with people you actually like instead of Like.
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    Jorge, that's an interesting blog post, and does point out one of the big reasons why I stopped playing. It was fun for a bit, watching my crops grow, and even uplifting when my facebook friends helped out my crops or sent me gifts without my ever asking, but the planting schedules and need for "x" amount of friends in order to expand made it get old pretty quickly. And I refused to spend real money it.
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    I am sadly one of the people who is currently in the middle of an obsession with a Facebook game. I was able to get away without ever touching Farmville but then they introduced a Hunger Games-based Facebook game... which is basically Farmville with Hunger Games characters. So, yeah, I know how many hours can be wasted on such games. It's really sad; I try to keep my feed as free from my posts about it as possible for my friends' sakes. I remember there was an article in the NYT a while ago about the fact that these games can be just as much of an addiction as more nefarious-seeming things. I didn't think it was possible but then again... I've also spent quite a lot of time collecting hundreds of items that I will probably never use for a mediocre game. :(
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