During my Masters degree, I began looking into a PhD. I needed a wider range of opportunity and consideration. I wanted to look at media that is more than broadcast, and that doesn’t pretend to be objective. So I ventured forth to the ATLAS building on campus and annoyed/asked people there for guidance and advice. First I joined the Doctoral Seminar group at ATLAS. A 1-hour, 1-credit required... 

If you are unfamiliar with the Nestle Family incident on social media last year, there are myriad blog posts about it, as well as a single piece of mainstream traditional media coverage. In a snapshot, Nestle brought a number of bloggers to the company’s headquarters in California from September 30-October 1, 2009, showing them the full range of its products, and using them as a focus group... 

The Islam and the Media conference, held by the Center for Media, Religion and Culture at the University of Colorado at Boulder (January 7-10) was a huge success in bringing together leaders in thought and practise on religion and media. But you wouldn’t know it if you’d been watching mainstream media. At a time in our history that international front pages and lead stories are obsessively... 

“Twitter’s a fad.” “The young kids use Twitter because they don’t want to have a real conversation.” “Twitter is destroying society.” “How do you know they’re real?” “I really don’t care that much about what you’re doing all day.” I’ve heard it all. From all types of people. The only people who truly understand... 

Time for a brain dump. I have just completed reading work coming from Mor Naaman, Jeffrey Boase and Chih-Hui Lai at Rutgers, slated for CSCW 2010, on the content of messages in what they’ve decided to call “social awareness streams.” And right there I have an issue. I’m lumping it together with the term “weak ties” which found prominence in the 1940s (well before... 

Usually, I don’t consciously pay for content. I say ‘consciously’ because if I click on a link and there’s a paywall, I won’t do it. I also don’t subscribe to any newspapers or magazines (online or in ‘dead tree’ format). Basically, the quality of the content I’m seeing doesn’t make me want to pay for more of it. Mr Murdoch does have the... 

I have a great amount of data from the recent NestleFamily twitterstorm. Luckily, I was able to see the storm coming. As a few of the attendees began tweeting about meeting up a few days prior to the start of #NestleFamily, I could see that there was going to be some fallout. My interest had been piqued a few months earlier with the Nestle “What’s for Dinner” junket that received... 

This pre-internet installation was and remains a vital consideration in the future of media. It has been supposed for a long time that communication and media technologies allowed people who already knew each other to improve existing relationships. Alternatively, broadcast media were used to send corporate-owned messages to the ‘masses’. There has been very little in the understanding of communities... 

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... 

The new buzzword in social media appears to be Influence. According to conferences, some marketers it’s what people want. To influence others. This is a mistake. It demonstrates a very shallow, one-sided view. (cartoon from xkcd.com) Talk to most people in social media for example, and they’ll tell you the truth. What they’re doing is looking for, and responding to resonance,... 

Let’s confirm who professional journalists are: People (trained or not), paid to produce content under the mastheads of traditional news outlets. Let’s confirm what they’re supposed to do: This is a tricky one. No matter how many times I have asked, and how many people, across Australia, the USA and the UK, nobody can give me a core definition of journalism. Maybe it’s a secret. A magician’s... 

There are some very interesting psychological theories used in Marketing and Business which explain why people behave the way they do. Put simply, people buy different brands and products to fulfill external and internal needs. These needs reflect their sense of self. And people can generally be placed in one of three categories: 1. Affiliation needs – people who primarily want to ‘belong’.... 

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... 

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... 

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... 

I am swimming in the B pool and I’m not happy. (Don’t try telling me getting a B is okay. It’s not.) I have some kick-ass papers to write. I have a great brain and a wealth of experience. But I’m not getting the grades I want. Graduate school is difficult. This week I had what I’d describe as a ‘crash and burn 24 hours’. There were lots of reasons to just...