Tufekci makes some excellent observations (extrapolated from a large amount of data) on the benefits of social media. It’s a refreshing counter to the panicky things we hear from friends.
For most people, the choice is not leisurely walks on Cape Cod versus social media. It’s television versus social media.
I worry at times about my peers who feel they must define society and social interactions as one sort of thing: face-to-face conversation. Sorry, but conversations and interactions mediated by technological tools have existed for decades. Non-social media (anti-social media?) like television, newspapers, books, recorded audio, are far more dangerous in creating isolation and blocking out social contact. Social media promote relationships, enable communication, demand conversations.
I’ve heard arguments about the forcing of voyeuristic habits – turning ‘friends’ into objects of observation – and the like, but call bunk on them. You make decisions. If you choose to watch, that’s not the fault of the medium. Place blame and responsibility where it is due.
During his visit to the Google campus, Conan ended up speaking on digital participatory culture and how the power of the online masses has affected his life, his live show, and his future as an entertainer. He gets it, and he embraces it. It’s a great talk, really funny, and Conan gives some insightful remarks.
The section I’m referring to starts about 17 minutes in, but you really should watch the whole thing. It’s hysterical.
The following is a discussion topic that I am leading with @paisian in our Media Literacy course at The New School.
As this week’s topic is Digital Participatory Culture we (Neal and Joel) thought it only suitable to collaborate entirely on the discussion piece to kick this off. We used Google Wave to formulate our ideas and get a basic outline of what’s to come and then moved it into a shared Google Document to put the last formatting touches on it.
The discussion this week will break down what we took away as the most significant aspects of the new digital participatory culture and attempt to stratify all of these new ideas with your experiences, thoughts, ideas and research.
Many of us in this course have grown up with computers and the Internet present for most of our lives. Those of us who were recently undergrads most likely connected pretty distinctly with both the Jenkins and Watkins readings.
Jenkins defines this new participatory culture as,
“A culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices.”
(pp. 3)
With so much of our day-to-day lives wrapped up in the digital world, at some point you have to jump in and start contributing to the discussion. As Jörg has mentioned, Jenkins has shown us that in order to stay relevant and alive in the digital culture, we need to participate in it. Today, that takes many forms. ¶ Read More…
Online search giant Google recently made its foray into the formal social media sphere with its Google Buzz service. Tied into the popular Gmail web-based email client, Buzz was rolled out to Google’s approximately 146 million most active users, the company saying that a social network has always been beneath the surface of its email technology (WSJ.com). But even with the current social-media craze, many users were unhappy with what seemed to be an intrusion on their everyday social routines. We’ll look at some of these users’ comments and I’ll espouse what I see to be some of the possibilities that we might not be hearing over the Buzz. ¶ Read More…
It’s no secret that I’m addicted to social media, or that my favourite outlet is Twitter.
Why? So many people I (or my friends) come into contact with don’t get it. They say Twitter is stupid. Given, most of them haven’t checked out the service. But while they’re making fun of Twitter, they’re off spending hours on end on Facebook or MySpace. You know, the old social media. (Strange we have old New Media already, yes?)
But Twitter is the anti-Facebook. On Facebook you’re bombarded with photos, fan suggestions, ‘Become a Zombie’ requests, snowballs, and God knows what else that is hiding in the depths of their app schemas. Last week it was suggested I become a fan of curly fries. Really? Curly fries? ¶ Read More…
