Mediamum » Papers & Presentations

Fostering future women in tech begins with the women already there

mediamum — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 07:02:48 +0000

Women face a lack of representation in many industries. (In other breaking news, the sky is blue.) It’s still the same old, same old. Except that today we have lots of women and men talking about it, but not putting the next foot in front of the other in an attempt to really make a change. Oh isn’t it a shame that there are not more women in tech… but I’m going to go put booth babes on my stand at the next tech conference. I’m going to go speak on yet another panel which is full of … men. I’m going to invite a new block of mentors to my incubator program – who all happen to be men.

For the first time in my career, I have mentors who are women. Focused, passionate women who are interested in fostering achievement and growth. Women who are changing the face of industry, not just for women, but for everyone. Because ultimately, it’s not about your sex, but about the work. Nobody wants a token representation of women, but we all want to encourage diversity. When we do that, we achieve a cohesive, balanced approach to the work that needs to be done for the people who will ultimately access the result.

With the leadership of these women, it was natural for me to not only support their work by speaking to young women in Colorado high schools about the work of Project EPIC, but also now I’m in Sydney for the American summer, it was natural for me to reach out and also do that at my old high school. So on Tuesday I’ll be presenting to the young women at Beverly Hills Girls’ High in Sydney – a school which has an incredibly high immigrant and non-English speaking background, mostly muslim, population. A school full of young women who are able to build a brilliant future in the broad arena of tech. I’ve been invited to speak during the school assembly, in front of the entire school, about the work done by Project EPIC as well as the enormous potential a career in tech can offer.

It’s an incredibly emotional opportunity. I’ll be walking back into those high school gates for the first time in over 20 years. I can tell from the outside that the place has changed. But the curriculum has changed far more.

When I was graduating high school, computers were just being introduced as a 1-unit subject for the HSC (not even a complete course). Girls who took it were usually the math brains, and instead of computers to work on, they used printouts of keyboards and pretended to push the keys. The line was that “girls can do anything” and that we should all consider a job in a bank or something to do with computers, but nobody really knew what careers in computers meant – we all thought of hard core coding and data.

Meanwhile I took photography and legal studies as my 1 unit courses, and while I wanted to be a journalist I never dreamed I’d get the grades to enter the highly competitive tertiary education it required. So I applied to a teaching degree instead, which I thought I’d get offered – and when the offer came I defered, because I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted to do anyway. Years down the track, I love teaching at college level (never really wanted to be a school teacher), have had a fabulous career as a journalist and have taught the classes in college that I never thought I’d be able to take as a student. I’ve even written the curriculum for TAFE’s national framework standards.

It goes to show that you can’t tell the future, and that there are many roads to a goal, if you’re prepared to forge them and not listen to naysayers. I hope to open the minds of the young women of Beverly Hills Girls High on Tuesday.

Today, more than ever before, the pathways to success are many. You just have to be prepared to push the branches back to see the way. And I truly believe it’s our responsibility to hold those branches back for the next young women on the track.

So I’m about to become known as that woman who researches death in social media.

mediamum — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 19:22:03 +0000

My dissertation topic is coming together. What a fun little journey (also known as screwing with my mind) this is.

I research social media. I’ve written a paper on the best way to construct a tweet. I watch how people use their streams. I’m interested in how they construct their online lives, communities and identities. The stories (lies) people tell; the release people feel in ‘oversharing’; the flirting; the stupidity; the bravery. How people create, condition, and curate their intertwingled on- and offline lives. I’m the Penn and Teller of social media. (Probably the Penn. Because the other one doesn’t speak. That’s totally not me.

I’m not sure how I fell into the death realm. I’ve decided, though, that this will be my area of adventure for the dissertation. It’s fascinating. While we all know the ‘proper’ behaviours and practices when you physically die (the ulitmate form of identity management), today we need to get our heads around what will happen to your social media representations when you pass away. We haven’t prepared ourselves for this – people have online lives, and these don’t stop when you do.

Facebook initiated a Facebook Memorial Page where loved ones of the deceased can opt to have the page effectively closed, but still visible. It’s getting a heap of flack on that – mainly because it’s difficult to ensure the person moderating the page is who they say they are. Some people think they want their page closed down, others want them to remain. It’s not easy.

I’m considering three areas of death in social media:

1. The appropriation of your social media profile to become akin to a memorial upon your passing. How the community, friends, etc engage with each other, and with the ongoing digital representation of the deceased.

2. People who commit what has become known as ‘virtual suicide’. The closing down of all social media profiles (and commonly, reopening them). This is a great way of controlling identity both on and offline. Check out the suicide machine for a little more of this.

3. Finally, the people who use social media as a part of their offline suicide toolkit. Posting status updates as they say goodbye and end their lives, or live broadcasting it in social media.

Right now I’m engaging with the 1st one. I’ve developed a research proposal to examine Facebook’s Memorial Pages. I’ve got a list of reading as long as my arm – including areas as diverse as post mortem photography and roadside memorials as well as the scant work done in HCI so far in this area - thanatosensitive design, which is what I’m seeking to write in.

Interestingly, one paper says that it’s not trying to say we should design for the dead. I laughed out loud at that. But two weeks later, while walking the dog this morning, I realised that is exactly what we do need to do. We need to design for the dead as well as for the living. (Have I weirded you out yet?) My thinking is that if identity continues in social media after death (even if it’s managed by a loved one, which is common) then there is also agency that continues. We need to create design, spaces and opportunities for the dead to engage. And suddenly dead gets inverted commas around it. ‘Dead’. Because when you die, you don’t really. Jed says this makes me a “freaky weird kind of person.” I’m cool with that.

Yeah, I think you want to invite me to dinner parties. Meanwhile, ponder this – there are over 3 million dead people with Facebook pages. What do you want to have happen to yours when you pass away, and how will you prepare for it?

The future of higher education – crowdsourcing reappointments

mediamum — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 00:05:00 +0000

Recently a guy claiming to be the author of myriad types of scholarly pieces which are being paid for by students received some decent amount of attention. He claims he writes stacks of work, faking his way through credentials for both himself and the students he writes for. Right through to thesis work, he claims he writes it all.

Well, of course, he does. He writes lots of work. I’ve seen paid-for work. And it’s garbage.

The paid-for work may or may not have been done by this guy (but there are plenty of others like him, just do a search for sites using the keywords: term papers), will barely get a passing grade – especially if the TAs who grade them are remotely interested in locating losers in the classroom, and believe me most TAs are pretty bitter about being poverty stricken students and can’t wait to grab a little power.

For another thing, the guy says he writes at all levels, including PhD dissertations. Let me tell you, that would be surprising to get away with at any university worth paying to go to. We have committees of academics. The rigor is not purely borne in the final written work, and everything written is quizzed at length. Besides that, no graduate student is getting a job in academe after they graduate unless they also are publishing in journals/books and presenting at conferences – there is too much competition. Basically, at the really important end, the discussion isn’t worth having.

So what is worth talking about?

But… there is a duty that all educators have. It’s to do due diligence on the content submitted by students, as well as put a committed amount of energy and time into teaching and assessing students in an adequate manner. This teaching and assessing must reflect the quality of student they wish to have come through their institutions. More than that, these institutions need to realise that the type of student they deliver to the world has a direct effect on society.

Ryan Esgus is up for reappointment, and you can stop him

It’s been brought to my attention that the University of Centerford is the first to recognise that the public should have a voice. They are inviting everyone to express their opinion on whether or not to re-appoint an instructor. This particular instructor,
Ryan Esgus, is known, it seems, for the type of educating that anyone paying a fortune (or on a scholarship equivalent to that fortune) would shudder at. Students are saying he gives them easy As. There are no comments on the papers he returns. He is typically unavailable for office hours. And he just reads directly from the textbook in lectures.

I hear complaints about 19th century styles of educating, but this type of education is even more backward than that.

The reason I’m writing about this is because everyone actually gets a voice here. The University is inviting comment and voting on this guy’s reappointment at the University in their interests of being more open to public opinion.

So I’m asking you to vote (just click this link to go to the survey). No matter where you live, or what your history. Vote, and let’s weed out some of the sick fish.

The IKEA effect and online community

mediamum — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 20:36:39 +0000

Is it possible that your online communities (Facebook, Twitter, etc) are more important to you, and that you share more with them than the offline communities you are part of?

Research has shown that we feel more strongly about people online than we do offline. Sometimes, I suppose those feelings are based on very little detailed information. Nevertheless, the (somewhat disputed) assertion that today, two out of every 10 marriages in the US evolve from an online dating site (I’d guess it’s actually higher than that but not recorded because I think many people meet online first, just not on dating sites) means that all of us connect real, tangible feelings to our online communities – whether or not we went there to find attachments of the heart.

Photo: Flickr by lovelypetal under Creative Commons License 2.0

Plenty of people have real emotional connections with those they’ve never physically met. Some feel so connected with their online communities, they feel compelled to share their most heart-wrenching, private thoughts and experiences. When, for example, a mother shares the incredibly difficult experience of losing her spouse with the online world, this is not because she’s defective or lacking in offline relationships. It’s because she feels a real, personal, connection to the people in her online community. She knows them as a group. She gives out loving connection in the form of her painful honesty, and hopes for the same in return. She seeks more than just sympathy. She seeks resonance.

This is not a technological construct. It’s actually human centered computing at it’s most obvious. It’s very, very real.

Arguably, this connection of the mind and heart is more ‘real’ than the connections we have offline. Far more real than the connections with neighbours we say hi to each day, but little else.

More real are these connections, than the ones many say we ‘should’ be having.

But the fact is, we have been disengaged with offline communities for a long time. Neighbourhoods are largely dead. I am interested in doing a research paper on how many times newspapers report quotes from people who live in the vicinity of victims of domestic violence, who use the phrases, “they kept to themselves” or “they were a quiet family.”

Why do we connect with the heart online?

Other research, by Dan Ariely, talks about the IKEA effect. This theory says we attribute a greater sense of emotional attachment to things we build ourselves, and hold onto them even though the product is well, not entirely the best produced item ever. He calls it the IKEA effect. While I totally agree that it makes sense that we would feel greater attachment to things we build ourselves, I’m not convinced it’s that simple. In his study, he built an IKEA toy box for his son. That’s the connection. Our relationships, not things, are the reason we have bigger connections. They ‘why’ you’re building it matters more so than simply building it.

Or is it?

When instant cake mixes were introduced to the market in the 1950′s, they did not do well. Housewives (the market) felt that the mixes didn’t make their efforts easier, but that they undermined their effort and commitment to their families (the people they were making the cakes for). Adjustments were made to the mixes so they required the addition of an egg. And sales increased. That was the thing – make it easier for us, but don’t take away our involvement completely – it’s for our families – after all, that’s our identity.

I still know women who have ridiculous work and family schedules, and insist on cooking personally for bake sales, family events, and so on – even if it means staying up until 3am when a store-bought cake would have been perfectly acceptable.

Your online community

So what does all this mean for your online community? You build it, like an IKEA product. But you’re building it for you. Is it possible that the community you’re creating is a reflection of how much you value yourself? Do you want to just buy in to pre-made communities like Ning groups, or do we value the ones we spend our own time on more, like your personal groups on Twitter and Facebook? And where does your blogging community come in?

Teaching New Media Literacy

mediamum — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 06:17:13 +0000

I was delighted to have presented at the Colorado Learning and Teaching with Technology conference at the University of Colorado yesterday. This was my second year at this conference, and it was incredibly well attended. As usual, some of the best moments came in the smaller discussions and conversations had over the lunch break.

In Australia, the curriculum in K-12 includes aspects of Media Literacy. In the US, each state has a different set of required things to be taught, and many don’t include media literacy at all. That’s just plain scary.

Today’s media is pervasive. It’s no longer identifiable as something separately held within the bounds of a newspaper or tv set, that you access to inform yourself as you go about your day. Instead today media is everywhere. It’s in your pocket. It’s part of who we are, our culture and identity.

On top of that, we are no longer just receivers of media. Today we create it. Critical analysis is not enough. We must equip ourselves and students, and our own children, with the tools and savvy they must have in order to be responsible creators, receivers and engagers with media in all its forms. As the Daily Camera quoted me from my presentation today on its front page, banning media forms doesn’t make people media literate. In fact, I believe it does the opposite.

I thoroughly enjoyed the session and the response was eager. If you’re an educator or a parent – or a college student – this is a presentation I hope you get some value out of too, so I’ve decided to add it here on my blog as well as on the conference wiki. Please feel free to use it as if it were under a creative commons license (ie just give me credit when you feel it’s due). And of course, your comments, responses and input are worth their weight in chocolate.

My thesis, mom bloggers and understanding brand relationships

mediamum — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:16:21 +0000

News flash: I’m not your average mom blogger.

I do research in social media and post that along with my posts about my family, my work, my life and beliefs. Like most women I wear many hats, and I blog a little about them all. Sometimes it’s academic (like this one could be if I hadn’t just had 3 hours sleep), other times it’s more focused on how many things people throw away that are perfectly good. My blog is three dimensional – it’s a pretty transparent view of me in all my roles.

Many people and companies know I do humanities focused research in social media. Some are really interested – it sounds so fun to work on that stuff! But I’m kind of sucking the fun out of social media. I am very interested in how little details like word choice and sentence structure contribute to identity work (how we see people, and how we construct what we want others to see us as being). I find I need to speak about stuff in very much a short elevator pitch style rather than give full answers to those who ask about my research – because you know what? They really don’t care about the structure of a tweet the way I do. They want to connect and get stuff. I want to know why. While these overlap, they’re not exactly the same. To use an academic term, we have different lenses.

Luckily, my friends/colleagues are typically one of the following:

a. Too polite to say how truly boring they find it, or how I’m destroying the ‘fun aspects’ of social media for them by analyzing everything they do/post.

b. Care more about me as a person than my work.

c. Actually like talking about the research and how it fits with what they’re interested in (these people tend to be other academics, people in industry concerned with social media, or startup people.)

d. Someone I used in my research data collection.

e. On drugs/alcohol.

Or a little of some of all of the above.

In any case, whatever area you fit in – I’m posting my full Masters Thesis here. Because it’s my blog and I can. And also because I spent a heck of a lot of time researching and writing it. The realm of the mom blogger is a crazy and at times convoluted one. Not all of us get along – in fact I’m waiting for a “Real Housewives” version of mom bloggers. (If you giggled/smiled at that, you know what I mean.) And that friction is because we are all passionate, opinionated and sassy. Even though I disagree with some of the things people do, I respect them for making their own way.

So enjoy my thesis for what it is. For those who are not seasoned academics and want to actually find out what it was all about, probably the best thing for you to do is just read the intro and then skip to the conclusion – and trust that I did all the data work in between – that will stop boredom setting in.

I am moving on with my work, and have entered the realm of crisis informatics – looking at how people use new tools of technology to communicate during emergencies and disasters. I am very lucky to be working in the EPIC lab at the University of Colorado. I continue to be interested in digital marketing, social media and as a mom blogger (self identified as well as identified by others), I look forward to seeing how and if brands and women finally work out how to work together.

FINAL MASTERS THESIS

Mom 2.0 Summit: You’re a ninja

mediamum — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:37:05 +0000

There were so many amazing aspects to the Mom 2.0 Summit in Houston, Texas this last weekend that it’s hard to really pinpoint the essence of just one takeaway. There is a great range of posts coming together about the event and you can sort of lose your entire day surf them all through this great link list by Misty Khan. But read this first, right? Come back to the top after you’re done. It will still be here. Promise.

The tagline of the conference was “What you’re doing matters,” and the theme was “Definining a movement.” At one stage of the conference Laura Mayes (@lmayes) said they weren’t entirely sure what that definition was, but it would come together.

Well, it totally did.

The words of my new buddy (one of my new buddies. I now have heaps and heaps of them. And they’re all amazing!) @Mir on my panel, “Got Strategy,” also with the amazing Susan Getgood and Isabel Kallman of Alpha Mom really resonated with me as a definition of the mommyblogging movement. Mir said that recognising she was a ninja shopper, and that she could celebrate that through her blog, was a big deal for her.

And I went “aha!” And then I went NINJA! Oh my gosh. NINJA!

As mums, we wear so many different hats – and we secretly reckon we are pretty crappy at most of them. Sometimes we share that secret suspicion with the world. And we roll around in it. We’re ready to see our faults and failures instead of embracing our brilliance and abilities. Sometimes that’s kind of fun. Most of the time though, it leaves us feeling a little less than amazing.

The Mom 2.0 Summit gave us all the invitation to embrace our inner mummy ninja. When Mir talked about realising how awesome she was at getting a bargain, and deciding to share that “shopping ninja” quality with the rest of the world through her blog, it was a way of standing up and saying “I’m really great at this, and readers of my blog will love hearing about how they can leverage my ninja quality.” And they bloody well do. I sat there, next to her on stage – and wrote it down. Really. I did. I was taking notes on the stage.

I wanted to kiss her. I reached out. And you know what, she would have totally let me if I had gone through with it. A big sloppy one. Right on the lips.

Why was being a ninja such a big deal for me? The only ninja’s I’ve run across before have been startup wankers who associate it with being awesome testosterone laden risk takers who take no prisoners. (They’re the ones that rant on about ramen noodles, and eat the expensive dishes at Hapa Sushi instead.) That’s okay if you’re five. And have a plastic samurai sword.

But the mummy ninja doesn’t pretend.

At the Juiceboxjungle Ad Network gathering, with Lauren from Vizit and Andrea of Savvysassymoms..

We don’t have the testosterone “I’m an awesome wanker” attitude. Instead, we mums are incredible at getting stuff done that shouldn’t be able to be done given the time and resources on our hands. We make it all just work. You know that loaves and fishes thing? That’s our daily reality. We pitch companies, wear an apron (even if only in the bedroom, @mublogger) and get dinner (or order it). We wash, get stains out (or leave them in and casually cover them with a loosely knotted cardi), battle tooth decay in the kids and keep them .. ahem…regular. We’re mums. And we make it all happen. And sometimes we’re just freaking dangerous. (You know, in that daring Fear Factor good way type of danger.)

I’m a startup founder mum ninja. I do frugal family stuff because I have to – and I’m really good at it. (I loved getting the coupons that came with our Mom 2.0 Summit welcome bag.) I can create a kick-ass strategic plan for any type of business – or show you how to do it so it makes sense. I am also a mummyblogging media ninja. I believe the future of media lies in the hands of all of us. And I’m using that ninja-esque power to energise, shake up and invigorate the potential content producer in everyone. And really annoy a few old-school media people too. (That’s actually a bonus.)

I’m so excited to have met so many other mommybloggin’ ninjas at the Mom 2.0 Summit, as well as the representatives of some great PR companies (many of whom are also mom ninjas – booyah!). It was simply empowering in all the best ways. If you can, you should totally come and join me at Mom 2.0 next year in New Orleans.

If you’re a ninja mumblogger, with an Active Voice blog, then you can change the world. That’s a definition of a movement I’m proud to be a part of. Thanks to all the wonderful bloggers I met – you are all ninjas. The world is a better place because you blog. (I was tempted to write something like “the blog is mightier than the ninja sword” but that would have made you groan, so I didn’t.)

Join me at the 2010 Mom 2.0 Summit

mediamum — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 05:07:57 +0000

I’m very excited to be attending the Mom 2.0 Summit in Houston, Texas from February 18-20. The schedule of events is chock full of sessions that I want to learn from.

I think this conference is one which really does enlighten all parties – marketers and ‘moms’ – on how the other operates. I regularly hear complaints from both sides – it seems there are as many different expectations as there are companies and bloggers. I’m looking forward to seeing both sides have an opportunity to describe their experiences, and make recommendations that lead to even better relationships.

I’m even more excited to have been invited to share my insights as part of the panel for the f first professional session of the conference. In the session we’ll be discussing setting a strategic path for your blog through creating a marketing plan and SMART objectives that are both trackable and achievable. I’ve been thinking for about a month now on exactly the best way for me to support the session with additional materials – and I’m considering doing an e-workbook for attendees to use in creating their own marketing plans.

I’m about to plan all my travel arrangements and start thinking about what I’d like to achieve from this conference. I have had a number of women tell me that Mom 2.0 was the best conference they’d attended last year. I firmly believe that with the schedule and talented women I’m lucky to be surrounded by leading these sessions, and the amazing array of women and companies who will be attending, 2010 will be just as successful.

I’m looking forward to getting along and meeting all the exciting, inspiring women who will be there. Will I get to meet you?

Do online communities pretend to care?

mediamum — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 01:06:54 +0000

I am fortunate enough to have been invited to attend IMSI, the Invitational Masters Student Invitational, to be held at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, the weekend of October 16-18. Given Rutgers received over 100 applications, to be one of the 25 students invited to discuss their current research and proposed dissertation topic with Rutgers faculty, existing doctoral candidates, and other invitees is a privelege and real highlight of my academic career.

In my application I had to submit an existing paper to demonstrate my research. The paper I chose to submit was on identity work performed on twitter through the use of language and sentence structure. This paper looked at how people create and present an identity of themselves on Twitter, primarily through the use of @ replies, hashtags and retweets. While it’s a decent paper, for Rutgers I’d like to extend it to look at this identity work, and how the Twitter community sees its need to create an identity of concern in crisis and tragedy. This is where I’m headed.

Online communities and crisis

We’ve all seen media stories of tragic events, and how people are affected by them – and how they’ve gathered together online as a result. While sites exist to create online memorials, sometimes it crosses over and a personal fun page is morphed into a place for others to gather when they’ve passed on. On Twitter, I have personally witnessed multiple occasions where someone has ended up tweeting their own tragic events. The death of a wife. The death of a child. I wonder what would have happened if Twitter had been so commonplace during larger tragedies such as the Virginia Tech shootings.

I have watched the online community gather to provide concern and support to individuals directly affected by tragedy. It is this kind of resonance that led me to undertake a small content analysis on the tweets associated with the Australian bushfires last year. I wanted to find out who was tweeting about it? How were they involved? What were they saying and why?

The paper was a very small, very specific analysis in which I was surprised to discover that two thirds of people who twittered during the high point of the bushfire-related tweets were located nowhere near the tragedy. In fact, they were overseas. None of them knew people directly affected. And what were they saying?

Apart from retweeting basic information, the majority of people wanted to know how could they help?

Seeking triangulation? I’m not quite there yet…

Last week I attended the presentation of Leysia Palen’s to-date work in crisis informatics at CU. And the data appears to be reflected in her unit’s research (in particular, on the American-located Red River floods) as well. Exactly the same percentage – two thirds of people tweeting during a disaster are not directly involved.

So, is this real?

I hear a lot of people who doubt the friendships experienced in online communities. They say “how do you know they’re real?”

Now, of course they’re not doubting that the person tweeting is human (sometimes now, however, that presents an entirely different issue), but they are definitely doubting their authenticity. How do you know someone is really concerned about you if you’ve never met them face to face before? And it’s a really good question.

The Karen Walker factor

Karen Walker was a special character who found life, and resonance with many in the hit sitcom, Will and Grace. While the show has had its day, there are many Walker moments that still hit the nail on the head.It is what is swimming in my head as I plan my paper for the Rutgers Invitational.

One of these is in an episode when Will and Grace are not talking (after a massive argument in which Will tells Grace to move out, which I swear was one of the strongest bits of acting on television I’ve seen). In chatting with Jack about how to get Will and Grace to talk again, she firstly says, “pretend to think, pretend to think.” She then follows it with “Pretend to care, pretend to care.” Of course Karen does care. She’s just conscious of the need to appear to care as well. Plus it’s funny.

So here I am:

* Are people who offer support in online communities ‘pretending to care’?

* Is the expressed concern a demonstration of identity work that gains them favour and positions them as caring individuals you’d want to have as a friend?

* How does the caring from the community affect the person experiencing tragedy?

Do you have any experience of this? Would you be willing to undergo an interview for my research? What do you believe is true?

My sincere thanks goes to the SJMC at CU, without the support of which I wouldn’t be able to conduct any of my research and also in particular to Dean Paul Voakes who saw fit to support my application with a letter of recommendation that I never saw, but am convinced was highly influential in my acceptance.

Research on Twitter and friendships

mediamum — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:07:56 +0000

I’m a grad research student focusing on social media for my final thesis. So it’s time for me to move on from boobs to my next adventure. (I know, I know… we loved the boobs.)

Anyway, my next project will be on relationship/friendship/connection strength on Twitter. My impression is that the strength of the ‘relationships’ (for want of a better word) forged on Twitter is as strong (if not more so) as those which are begun in real life.

These Twitter relationships, built over time in 140 characters or less, lead people to expressing genuine concern for other members of the community, both on Twitter as well as leading to IRL. This genuine concern leads to things such as offers of employment; support during times of grief, stress and celebration; connections for people who find it more difficult to connect in real life due to shyness or geography; and probably heaps more.

I’d love to gain a pile of Twitterers who would be willing to help me with this research paper. I would imagine it would just involve an in-depth survey where I ask you some questions. This could definitely be done online and before you answered it I’d like you to think about the connections you have made on Twitter, how important to you they are, and what sort of level of concern you have for the others. Consider things like do you think of yourself as part of a community? A family? How many strong connections you have? etc. Your responses would be completely anonymous.

If you’re willing to be involved, just comment below with your Twitter name and I’ll let you know when it’s ready to go – probably in about 2 or 3 weeks time. Alternatively, DM me on Twitter (@mediamum)!

Ignite Boulder fun with breastfeeding and media

mediamum — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:40:02 +0000

What a great night we all had at Ignite Boulder! The presenters were all wonderful, well prepared and community vibe was enormous. The ATLAS theatre was packed – you can definitely see why these were some of the hottest tickets in town leading up to the event. This community is incredible. I’m so grateful to have been welcomed into it.

It’s so kind of Glenn Letham to have filmed it all from the audience, and posted presentations on YouTube for everyone to see. (The official ones are going to be available on www.igniteboulder.com in the near future.) Here’s mine, courtesy of Glenn. By the way a sincere thanks to everyone who make it happen, and to the massive support and great feedback I’ve gotten. It was spectacular.

Ignite Boulder 3 – Obsession with breasts and breast feeding

Ignite Boulder 3!

mediamum — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:39:41 +0000

I’m really excited to be presenting this coming Wednesday evening at the third Ignite Boulder, being held at the ATLAS building at CU. Tickets to the event sold out in just 7 hours. (When I say ‘sold out’ I mean they were taken… the tickets are actually free.) That’s scary fast.

Ignite is a fantastic event in which speakers have just 5 minutes and 20 slides to present their topic. There’s no restrictions on topic and in fact this time around much of the topic selection was crowd-voted prior to selection. There are no sales pitches allowed and the presenters’ slides are on auto pilot, so you have to keep up because once the ignition is pressed, there are no delays or going back!

In a town like Boulder which is so focused on tech and business, it’s great to have an event which allows the community to present on stuff just for fun. Ignite lets you meet lots of other people, possibly learn something and laugh a heap.

If you’re not in Boulder or missed out on a ticket, you can see the videos of all the presentations a day or so after the event. It’s also going to be live through KBFR Pirate Radio here in Boulder.

List of presentations:

The History of the Mustache – Tim Poindexter
How to properly prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse. -Ace Harmon
10 Design Predictions for 1909… or so I reckon. – Brandon White
How to Sing Your Way out of Danger -Ef Rodriguez
In the face of a bad economy, we techie folk are resourceful – Ingrid Alongi
Breasts and media’s obsession with them. – Joanne White
Everything I Learned About Marine Mammals I Learned While Cutting Them Up. – Bruce Wyman
The world is burning but I still have my yogurt – Jen Mayer
New Music Biz Model: What Would a Crack Dealer Do? – Grant Blakeman and Reid Phillips
How to use Twitter for marketing and PR – Brian Shaler
How to Make A Rap Song -Brandon Whalen
How to piss off people and lose friends in Boulder – Tara Anderson
Awkward Rules – rules for awkward situations – Vikas Reddy
A needle in a stack of needles or getting people to notice you – Matt Galligan

Breastfeeding in America

mediamum — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:41:25 +0000

Recently many Twitterers (and their associates) contributed to my survey on American women’s attitudes to breastfeeding and its representation in the media. I promised to share the outcomes of my research and the survey, which this post seeks to do. For those interested, the entire paper (30 pages plus 15 page complete survey result appendix) is available by emailing me or asking on Twitter and I’ll get it to you straight away. If you’d like to see the summary of survey responses, this link takes you to the final Survey Monkey summary.

American Breastfeeding Rates

America has a dismal breastfeeding rate. The World Health Organization and the US’s own CDC recommend babies be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of their lives, and then breastfed with additional food until they are two years old and beyond. The American Government then worked with the CDC in 2000 to develop the Healthy People 2010 initiative. It includes breastfeeding goals which fall short of the WHO and CDC’s own recommendations – that rates of breastfeeding be targeted to 75% initiating breastfeeding at birth, with 50% at six months and just 25% at one year.

Each year since 2000, American media has been fed press release diatribe on how successfully this plan is being implemented. And mainstream media have unquestioningly spurted it back at the general public. Headlines like “Breastfeeding rate soars” (USA Today 2002) and Reuters 2007 story headlined “US breastfeeding rates rise to record high” disguise the real issue – that even after 8 years of a government promotion to increase breastfeeding in America, 25% of women never even try. In 2005 only 11% of American women exclusively breastfed for 6 months (as opposed to the WHO recommendation of 100%) and in 2007 a quarter of women who initiate breastfeeding at birth have introduced formula within the first week of their child’s life.

So what’s the problem?

Media loves boobs – as long as they’re shown in a sexual way. We’re all familiar with advertising and other images of breasts. For example, this 1993 cover image of Janet Jackson on Rolling Stone won critical acclaim. The story focuses on Jackson and her embracing of her sexuality. The focal point is her breasts.

But a full 13 years later, BabyTalk magazine’s cover created outrage. No less than 700 complaints were sent to the editor over a cover promoting breastfeeding. So getting it straight, a magazine committed to mothering and babies, getting flak over a cover which promoted – mothering and babies.

In my paper I explain how I believe this has occurred. The movement of women into the public sphere has seen them embrace their femininity in a new way. There’s a whole “look, I’m in the boardroom and I have breasts” ferocity which has been associated with feminism. Women don’t like being confronted with images which remind them of the roles their mothers had. Feminism’s abject failure through the 1980s and 1990s was its devaluation and disempowerment of the importance of nursing.

Yes, I argue that the feminist movement has contributed to a sociey where even women more readily accept images of breasts that celebrate them on a sexual rather than a mothering level. This is reflected in media too. TV programs such as Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives and Ally McBeal feature women who embrace their sexuality and power as successful. Women who hold traditional mothering roles are less successful, frustrated, angry or just plain stupid.

And then to have the audacity to bring those breasts, feeding infants, into the general public? No wonder women in general lead the call for ‘discretion’ and ‘hooter hiders’.

The survey

I hoped to get about 30 responses. The survey went viral and in three days I received 128 responses. More than a third of respondents added extra information to each of the basic four questions asked. Women have strong views. In my paper I relate this passion to religiosity. The religion of breastfeeding meets all the academic standards of definition. No longer is breastfeeding normal, usual practice. And I find that distressing.

While 95% of respondents did not believe media has any influence over their own ideas about breastfeeding, more than half believe media should show it more often. Clearly, women believe media has an influence over someone (if not themselves). One key response was along the lines of “media doesn’t influence my ideas about breastfeeding because it’s not shown in media.” My assertion is that this absence has just as much influence as if it were shown.

Moving forward

So what does this mean for feminists who embraced the bottle as their key to freedom from the ugliness and backward past? It means that the general public can look at American women and say “hey, are you women so stupid that you need to be told to breastfeed? And after eight years, you still aren’t getting the message?” It means that heck, if you’re an educated woman you need to recognise everything about you that’s powerful, not just breaking through the glass ceiling.

If media showed breastfeeding as part of normal life on television and other media. If it made it present and normal – not a focus of a storyline, but just part of the everyday life of families with babies on tv, then could we begin to see this overtly sexual obsession with breasts change? Could we begin to see women being more accepting of their breasts as being a special part of a relationship with their child, not just as part of the relationship with their sexuality? If, in a similar way to Hollywood reducing smoking in movies, we began to insert breastfeeding into them… what would happen? And what about the international impact this could have? Hollywood movies are seen worldwide.

Certainly our only hope can be to improve on dismal American breastfeeding rates – and who knows where it could end.

A visit to the A pool

mediamum — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:32:45 +0000

Following my previous post about unhappily swimming in the B Pool, I’m pleased to have been able to scramble my way through to a bit of a splash in the A pool. You know, that place where the cool kids are?

My final paper for Media Ethics, Twittering a Funeral: Social media’s challenge to professional journalism received a final A grade. I think my professor was just as relieved and pleased about it as I am.

I’ll be working on the paper further to prepare it for possible conference/journal submission, under the intuitive guidance of Professor Mike McDevitt. Without his assistance in structuring my paper all the stuff in my head would still be struggling for a voice.

Anyway, I’ll happily send it along to anyone who’d like the long, academic version. Just email me or DM me on Twitter. But for those of you with lives not academically focused, here are the key points:

Statement of Purpose
This paper examines the impact on the professionalism of journalism as it integrates the social networking tool Twitter in traditional news reporting. The paper considers the use of Twitter by the Rocky Mountain News in which a child’s funeral was “live blogged,” as well as the ensuing outcry and response from the editor, John Temple. It identifies the particular characteristics of Twitter as a communication tool, and proposes an ethical model which supports the use of Twitter in professional journalism.

The paper then outlines the case study of the Rocky Mountain News’ reporting of a child’s funeral using Twitter, and identifies why this use was not only unethical but a case of unprofessional journalism. This is journalism which doesn’t address the recommendations of the Hutchins Commission, and puts the autonomy of American journalists, as well as their credibility, in the firing line. There is a desperate need for reporters to be trained in the functionality of Twitter and fully understand it as well as the community (not audience) which supports it.

I recommend a model which outlines three ways Twitter should not be used, as well as three ways in which it supports professional journalism.
NO:

1. When the use of Twitter (either through implementing the tool or the result) is perceived as a possible invasion of privacy.

2. When another journalistic tool would better serve the reporting need or the ability of the journalist.

3. When a journalist or media entity is unfamiliar with social media in its complete form, not just as a broadcast medium.

YES:

1. As a resource for newsgathering purposes, in preparing information for stories, getting leads, etc.

2. As a public journalism tool – where the journalist can attend an event and act as the mediator between the community and the event. Eg: a red carpet event, where the community can ask the journalist questions and she can filter them and respond accordingly (of course, this takes a different sort of journalistic training.)

3. For Amber Alerts (abducted children), especially when the child is suspected to have been abducted overseas; and for issues of imminent need or notice such as natural disasters, etc. The input would come from reliable sources, and media would then be able to aid in important efforts to communicate with the respectability of their professional branding adding weight to the message going out through the Twitter stream.

I hope the A pool welcomes me back a few more times. It’s really nice.