Group items tagged

A paper on smart mobs (a group centered around an online social network, unified by a cause or goal, who have a time frame to accomplish said goal) and social capital and authority gets established and transferred

Really great working paper on trolling in a feminist forum -- what do communities do when outsiders attempt to derail conversation by intentionally trying to start arguements and cause rifts in the community.  A case study of two incidents within the same message board.

Oh rad! I was thinking about focusing on trolling specifically for my project. I've actually done a little research on Anonymous/4chan too if you ever want to share sources!

Started laughing when I saw that they did a study on trolling, so I had to read the article. Really interesting piece on technology and gender.

This is a phenomenal resource for demographic analysis of internet and social media use. Please take some time too look through it.

Actually, I was just looking at a summary of a 2009 Pew Internet study that related directly to our discussion of the Wesch videos last week. The study dealt focused on the issue of whether engaging with others over the Internet causes feelings of loneliness and isolation. (Spoiler alert: they concluded that people feel more connected, not lonelier, thanks to technology.)

Looking at the Pew Internet Topics list (http://www.pewinternet.org/Topics.aspx) was also helpful in finding some background reading for my group project and also in identifying some potential areas for my final project.

This is an interesting article which highlights how large companies failed in the social media world. Because Web 2.0 is a fairly new concept, there are new "rules" for businesses to follow, or they may face damaging results.

I think part of it is that the mistakes are made more glaring because they spread so quickly. That Motrin campaign might not have caused such as backlash if it appeared in women's magazines - even though it might have angered the moms, the response isn't as instantaneous and it doesn't build momentum in quite the same way. This was an excellent collection of articles, in my opinion, from the Economist last year. Most of the pieces came down on the side of social media as an opportunity, but it did talk a little about the loss of control, and worry about unforseen instances like the Domino employees. http://www.economist.com/node/15351002

I can't believe we're fourth on the list of facebook "hours." I would have definitely thought Americans were first!

Another product of social media - insta-internet star! BTW, Rebecca's Black's video is now up to over 159 million views and the song was covered on Glee!

Now I see how people on youtube make money...I didn't know they paid per view...makes sense.

I think that this is one of the great benefits of social media. People have a chance to make something of themselves without spending millions of dollars in advertisements. It's not just about celebrity status, but more importantly, people can create businesses or help causes using these cheaper tools.

This book review seems a good companion to Justin's post below on artificial intelligence/human-computer interaction. The reviewer ties three different books together under the theme of how humanity seems to be integrating itself with its digital machines - including discussion of brain-computer interaction (whoa.) and Google's search algorithms or "contouring."

The section on the ideological dissemination of information as it relates to Google is eye-opening (and really worrisome). I think when we talk about Singularity, "fear" will continue to be at the center of our discussions. For some, the biological integration with machines is just too radical to fathom, though the daily use of the Internet is now commonplace. I think we can rightly call certain technologies "external minds" (@ Mary, above) - so it's really not so much the shifting sense of what are bodies are as it is the effect - or danger - of increasingly personalized information certain technologies host that should be cause for concern.

Later in the article she talks about the same concepts as Jesse Schell, in terms of racking up points for online activity, though she draws the conclusion that your information will be sold to advertisers. Really a fascinating article!