Group items tagged

Fascinating defensive of new social media in journalism and a critique of those who miss the good old days. Reminded me of the book "The Good Old Days, They Were Terrible". from the article "At an individual level, I think the "distracted Americans" scare will pass. Either people who manage to unplug, focus, and fully direct their attention will have an advantage over those constantly checking Facebook and their smart phone, in which case they'll earn more money, get into better colleges, start more successful companies, and win more Nobel Prizes. Or they won't, in which case distraction will be a trait of modern life but not necessarily a defect. At the level of national politics, America is badly distracted, but that problem long predates Facebook and requires more than a media solution. "

Many of the ideas that we are discussing are not so new and even predate the Internet. Marshall McLuhan made a name for himself dealing with these issues in the 1950's and 60's. Although some of his ideas have perhaps not proved true his basic concepts were on the money. From a CBC broadcast May 18, 1960.

This is fantastic! Worth watching. I want to read up more on McLuhan's work. Which of McLuhan's works do you recommend?

My favorite is "The Mechanical Bride" - a great critique of new (at the time) electronic media, consumerism, marketing and how they could affect the way we perceive ourselves. "The Media is the Massage" is a fun and relatively quick read and covers many of McLuhan's key concepts.

"The Internet doesn't steal our humanity, it reflects it. The Internet doesn't get inside us, it shows what's inside us. And social media isn't cold, it's just complex and hard to define."

An article from "Teaching Tolerance" magazine that deals with how social media can be, perhaps, used in the classroom to engender community based learning and social justice.

Corporate America uses social media for advancing its services. Now organizations need to write policies on appropriate use of it tools to protect the company and its employees.

Not an article but an ad I saw while watching a TV episode online. It struck my interest because it's main point was that media has changed how kids do homework and spend their time but parenting hasn't changed with it. There are many articles and discussions for parents that I felt were relevant to our course.

Another ICT article

Transliteracy is defined by Sue Thomas, a professor of new media at De Monfort University, as "the capacity to read, write, and interact across a range of platforms, tools, and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio, and film, to digital social networks."

Using social media to drive social change

Discussion of our over-use of generalizations when talking about social media's effects.

Worst news: The New York Times rolled out a plan on Thursday to begin charging the most frequent users of its Web site $15 a month in a bet that readers would pay for news they have grown accustomed to getting free.

How depressing.

update: I found in the comments section a comment from a NYTimes spokesperson who said that it will be free for students. I haven't been able to find that in the subscription section.

This article discusses SXSW-Interactive, the technology portion of the festival. This is the festival where Twitter was first launched in 2007. Theme so far: the blurring of real life and online life is happening. Other topics discussed: web 3.0, asymmetry of privacy, biomimicry (designing technology to mimic nature), work/life balance. Clay Shirky also gave a presentation on social media and revolution: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/12/sxsw-2011-clay-shirky-social-media

Interesting talk- makes a good counter-argument to those who only see social media and the internet as disconnecting us or increasing depression. Like my best friend I can see clearly how the internet and having a 'voice' can be helpful :)

Did anyone else notice this link from the previous week? Left wing gad about Douglas Rushkoff starts to question the unintended consequences for the user of social media. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc. may have created exciting new ways for us to interact "virtually", but we pay for it, even when it's free.

I really like that he advocates that students (& all people) learn to program. People resisted learning to type too! And while it is harder, no harder than learning to read or write.

In many ways, this is just one more pundit (and we know how much attention they can get by being contrary), but he does provide a counterpoint to much of the enthusiasm over the democratizing effects of social media.

Author finds that young people do care about privacy, but are more concerned with social privacy, rather than institutional privacy. "Contrary to much of the rhetoric in the debate around online privacy, the use of Facebook is not necessarily a choice free of coercion, nor are the reasons for sharing information on the site simply about self-obsession or exhibitionism." Rather it is a dominate expression of online identity and a way to communicate with peers. This is following one of the important points of Wesch - that there is no opting out of new media once the community starts to participate.

I find this interesting because it begins the notion of transforming an online content source to a book, and moreover it is built around a social application with the potential for multiple authors. Essentially, Anthologize allows the authors of the blog to take specific posts and generate them into a book. By the way, the developers of this are from the Center for History and New Media, see the next post!

A group effort sharing information about all literacies (digital literacy, media literacy, information literacy, visual literacy, 21st century literacies, transliteracies ) with special focus on all libraries.

Just realized this is missing "geospatial literacy" which is one of the areas I am interested in, but this looks like a great site. Similar to what we are doing on the topic of social informatics via diigo.

I like that there is so much interest in Transliteracy! We have to include Henry Jenkin's blog as well: http://www.henryjenkins.org/

Young people are leaving blogs to run twitter and fb pages.... unique page views for blogger are down domestically (although up internationally). Tumblr & wordpress use remains consistent. Does anyone agree that blogger still feels like it's stuck in 2003 with its look, feel and usage?

Doug Gross (2011 Feb 21) discusses a new app for breakups and recent changes in FB friends' relationships.