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?

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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 class for ATLAS PhD students that is as much about giving them a sense of community as it is about content delivery. My idea behind it was to ‘suck it and see’ – I wanted to see what the students were like, what ATLAS was like, what their idea of ‘multidisciplinary’ really was, and how they all worked together to find out if it was a fit for me. In that class I met the amazing students who became good friends, and were interested in the same broad things as I was.

Me in pre-school. Amazing. So much, yet so little has changed.

Big kudos to Jill Van Matre, Associate Director at ATLAS who put up with me not knowing who I was; and the instructor for seminar that semester, Mark Winokur – both of whom cleared my acceptance even though I was not part of the PhD program and I was the first to ask them to take me. They took a risk. The type of risk that sees the future rather than the present. A good risk.

Through the rest of the Masters, I unliaterally took classes that would assist in my application for the ATLAS PhD program. I stressed over my GPA when many were past that phase. I was told repeatedly variations of ‘nobody’s ever gotten in from the SJMC before’, ‘funding is a real issue’, and even ‘ATLAS might not be taking any new PhD students at all, you know’.

I opened metaphorical doors and windows for funding opportunities and alternatives in case it didn’t work out. I stopped talking about my plans with people without vision, and I wrote a thesis on online communities. I ignored the fact we have no money.

I applied

ATLAS accepted four new PhD students this year. All four are women. I’m one.

I’m working in the ConnectivIT lab with my advisor, Leysia Palen. The lab looks at human centred computing (HCC). In particular, Project EPIC (Empowering People in Crisis) seeks to understand how people use technology when there are heightened areas of fear and personal loss at stake – in disasters such as Haiti, bushfires and floods. Far from just using social media to organise a Happy Hour meetup, I’ll be helping produce work that aids emergency personnel and individuals save lives.

However, there is math. But I have lots of friends who will help me understand it, or at least pour the wine when it all gets a little much. Statistics for Dummies is online. I found it

Lessons learned

This is just the beginning of this part of the journey, but I learned a lot in getting to this point. I thought you’d like to hear some things:

* Don’t look for reasons ‘why you should not do it’ – there is no need to look for those – everyone will throw them at you. There are plenty. Look inside for your own reasons ‘why you should do it’. There are fewer of them, and they might not make sense to some people, but they’re way more important.

* Listen to the warnings/negatives of everyone, and use them to prepare and plan for ways around issues. Be conscious of things like you have no money. Work out ways around the money thing. Clip coupons. Get used to free things. Don’t be too proud.

* Make strong connections. From the admin person through to the Dean. Everyone is important. It’s not strategic. It’s just being a nice human being. It will pay you back. Just don’t expect it to, and it will. (Does that make sense?)

* Don’t get angry. Many times people say you can’t. That’s because they’re not willing to. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean it’s the same for you.

* Finally, don’t worry about how you’ll manage next year (time, kids, money etc). Just eat that elephant a bite at a time, and worry about it as it happens. Every journey is different, and for women who wear so many hats, we are the essence of innovation. Keep stumbling forward.

* Smile, laugh and love every step. Lots. See the funny side. Sure, it shows you are a little bit crazy. Crazy’s good.

Related posts:

1. Do online communities pretend to care?
2. Disrupting the barriers of media in the 21st Century
3. What kind of Twitter identity do you seek?

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

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Jed: How old are you this year?

Me: I’m 27.

Jed: Oh thank goodness. You’ve been 24 for 15 years now. Glad to see you’ve decided to move on.

Me: I have not. I’ve been 27 for a while. I embrace my age.

Jed: Yes. Yes you do. Especially when your daughter is catching up with you.

Me: I could totally have given birth at 9. That happened in China or something. It’s because I went to an all-girls high school. I married very young. Anyway, don’t give me grief, it’s my birthday. I’m 27. Where’s my cake?

It’s easy to think that after a certain age, your life should be something to look back on each birthday and reflect with a self-satisfied grin. It should be about chocolate, wine, good friends and a drunken refrain of “My Way.”

I love Halloween!

I’m not doing that.

This is the second birthday I’ve had in the US. Each birthday I’m reminded of the people, animals and things I miss. While their love surrounds me still, I wish I had Max and Bec here with me. My mum and dad. My dogs. And yes, even my stuff that’s in storage in Sydney. (Because I’m that shallow. Back off.)

But this year is better than last. I am being literally flooded with birthday wishes through social media of all forms, including people who are very special to me, and whom I’ve met while living here. While I’m on the US leg of my life. My mum sent me a spectacular handmade card and my brother and his family will skype with me from Sydney. My daughter chats with me from Armidale, country NSW. My cousins and friends wish me cheeky happy birthdays from London. And I am thrilled that I have friends doing the same, from all across the USA.

Social media means I don’t feel as displaced as I could be.

I’m still rather teary, but I’m still doing it my way. I’m not ready to reflect yet. The journey is still happening. I’m looking forward.

The fact I have no idea where I’ll be living this time next year, but that I have so many things bouncing around, shows that I’m at a high point. And I’m very lucky to have good friends and family all around the world who care.

I can’t wait to see my family and friends in Sydney in 78 days – I miss holding them and seeing them face to face. I’m looking forward to the opportunities that are coming up everywhere. I’m busier than ever.

Some things are different. I have found I love winter most of all in Colorado, and I love summer most of all in Sydney. (Extreme much?) However, some things haven’t changed. I still want to lose 10 kg (20 pds). But I still want cake.

And so it goes. Wherever you are in the world, whatever your time zone, we are connected. A click away.

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An American woman named Angie Jackson has decided it was a good idea to share her experience of aborting her pregnancy with the world, via YouTube and Twitter.

A mother of a four-year-old who goes to the trouble of outlining the reasons why she decided on an abortion with RU486, Angie says her social media posts are her attempt to “demistify” the process, and let everyone know that for her, the whole abortion thing “isn’t such a big deal.”

Here’s the video of her saying she is “having an abortion  (insert dramatic pause) right now.” (Don’t worry, there are no gunky parts, which is not what the Sydney Morning Herald would have you believe in its reporting of the story, with the warning the paper placed at the beginning of the video.)

She also twittered the entire process. You can see the community response by searching the hashtag #livetweetingabortion. And there is even a twibbon. Yes, just when you thought all the really terrible twibbon ideas were had, this one leaves nothing to the imagination.

This is a story with so many news hooks in it, a news editor would begin planning a long lunch. Front page … done. Abortion, methods of abortion, social media, social media plus abortion. Oh, and atheism. Check the mainstream media stories on this, and you’ll see it all – surface level crapola about all the obvious news angles, lots of sensationalist eye rolling and no depth.

Look at the blogosphere reactions and you see some insightful commentary. Feministe, for example, reminds us how many women go to get abortions all the time, and how veiled our usual discussions of the subject are.

Deep breath.

Now, I personally switch between being pro-life and pro-choice (knowing that my choice will always be pro-life, no matter what, for me, but recognizing others may not feel that way. I actually have trouble with this whole stance – if I feel so strongly about it, then why am I not ready to instill my thoughts on others? I do it with breastfeeding, don’t I? And for some this means I can’t be a feminist. Feminists are not Sarah Palin. Feminists are not pro-life. People look at me and don’t think feminist. Oh really raised eyebrow? But I digress.) This is not something I throw around a lot, because as Feministe correctly states, it’s a heated debate that I don’t choose to enter. However, I have my views and I respect other people their rights to theirs. I am kind of okay with that, but I don’t know if I always will be. But for now, it’ll do. Until you judge me and be really nasty and call me names, and say horrible things about the size of my arse. Then you’ll push me over the edge and I won’t share my Aussie accent with you any more. And we all know who loses in that equation.

While I disagree with Angie’s views on the subject, I think her decision to speak about it in a very open conversation is a great one. (It’s okay. I’ll wait while you pick yourself up off the floor from shock.) I believe everyone should endeavour to hear every side of a conversation, especially views that don’t mesh with their own. Especially when you have a passionate belief on one side.

In fact, to take it even further – I wanted to hear what she had to say, even though I knew her decision would not have been mine. And I think other people should be brave enough to do that without a knee-jerk reaction (‘jerk’ being the operative word).

So instead of looking at the mainstream media stories reporting the incredulity of using social media to talk about such a politically incorrect subject, I think we can all learn more from reading and seeing personal stories about the subject, from all sides. Only then can we be truly educated and tolerant – if not understanding – of each other. Each to their own.

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Company A says, “Let’s create an event, sponsor some bloggers, and they’ll create a hashtag around it and we’ll give out some prizes. It will be great, Twitter will be buzzing with our company’s name.”

Or a group of bloggers might come up with:

“Every week we’ll be ‘meeting’ on twitter, using this hashtag.”

Sound like good ideas? Sure. And for many it’s been working. But what works right now, or yesterday, won’t always work. And that’s something you need to be aware of, whether you are a direct representative of a brand – or one of the moms who decides to use a hashtag, even as part of a simple discussion.

Just because you begin a hashtag, doesn’t mean you control the hashtag and what happens within the conversation it starts. It’s out there for everyone to engage in. The etiquette is still evolving. What is seen by some as polite is to allow people to push products or messages using hashtags. What is seen as others as polite, is to not fill their twitter streams with obviously sponsored messages with little real value. We’re all still working out the middle ground.

No company or individual is too big in social media... to fail. Pic credit: Flickr C.C. goldberg.

If your followers allow you to bleat positive company messages without interfering, it’s because they’re respecting your space and you’re not stepping on their toes enough to aggravate them. If, however, you flood their streams with inane garbage that really doesn’t invite balanced conversation, then you will most likely get what you deserve.

Everything you’re connected to in social media, both messages and people, says something about who you are.

The use of hashtags have some calling back to traditional methods of advertising messages. Social media is not controlled media. This is not your space. It doesn’t matter if you’re a company or an individual, you can’t control the use of a hashtag. You can pretend to control the conversation by making a hashtag a metaphor for a flag of membership to a particular perspective or even a particular conversation point – but if the general population decides to discuss something else, or bring other things into the equation under that hashtag, then that’s what social media is all about.

Ironically, the things you can control are the words you use, the images you use, and the connections you make. These three-dimensional aspects of your brand are far more telling about you than simple two-dimensional things like a single targeted message in a broadcast campaign. People expect you to have a variety of connections. I’m proud of mine – from .. ahem adult entertainers, through to famous musicians and academics. I’m known for my mulitplicity (do not call me Sybil). But inauthenticity is not.

If you want a fully controlled message, use traditional advertising in a mass media you’re familiar with – where you have the opportunity to blast one-way, two-dimensional controlled messages to the public. It gives you all the control, and if done really well, can create a semblance of a personality for your brand.

If you are ready to really engage with your target audience, then social media provides you with an opportunity to demonstrate a complete, three-dimensional personality for your brand that consumers can really connect and find resonance with. When done well, it will result in brand loyalty and brand ambassadors that you don’t have to buy off.

On Twitter the use of a hashtag organizes conversation around particular things. But it doesn’t organize the thoughts of those in the conversation, unless they’re willing to have it that way.

Don’t forget you’re dealing with conversations in an even playing field now. The old rules do not apply.

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While many people align technology adoption and use with age, the facts show it’s not all that easy to stereotype the creators of content in the online media.

Today’s Pew Report on Teens and Social Media amplifies a very real issue in the US. Our teens and young adults are engaging in “new” media, but on a very limited level.

The majority of them are not creating new content.

In fact, the number of them who blog themselves (just 14%) or even who comment on blogs, is dropping.

Many of us celebrate the new democracy offered by the Web. However, when so few of our young people are engaging beyond watching viral YouTube videos or speaking within a small realm of personal IRL friends (or believing that’s who they’re talking to) on the small stage of their individual Facebook accounts, we have a problem. Democracy isn’t served unless people use their voices.

Picture Credit: Creative Commons cartoon by @gapingvoid.

Access is one thing. Content creation intended for a public audience is entirely another.

I’m around a lot of students every day. When they’re asked who has a blog, from a room of 150-200 students, only a handful of hands go up. In a Journalism class.

What are they waiting for?

We need courses that teach young people (and everyone else) that they don’t need a university degree to have a voice. And that every voice deserves to be heard. We need to show young people how to use the simplest of tools – the mobile phones and cameras they all hold – as citizen journalists, not just for sexting (they figured that one out all on their own). We need to show them how easy it is to set up a blog, and just as importantly, how to get people to read it.

Our young people need to be encouraged to be brave, honest, and opinionated – in a public forum. We need to respect their right to speak, and engage with them when they are used.

Until then, democracy is not being served.

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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 for the Nestle Family initiative. The bloggers began tweeting pro-Nestle messages that were not received well by some in the Twitter community. They tweeted back. Then ensued what has been called a “twitstorm”, as well as a plethora of blog posts that led to further debate and discussion.

An introduction to the research

Attendee bloggers were made aware of the complete range of Nestle-owned products, as were those at home.

I’ve begun reviewing the results of the survey I undertook during the twitstorm. Please Note: The purpose of this survey and my thesis is to investigate why people were so passionately reacting to each other, rather than to reignite debate. While I hold my own views, my thesis is focusing on the mommyblogger community, authority and political economy. I endeavour to treat all parties with respect at all times. To date, I believe this has been achieved.

Learning about our Twitter community

Importantly, most people completed the survey through the height of the twitstorm and I believe this led to their true feelings being expressed, rather than the more ‘politically correct’ responses you’d expect if they were reflecting on the storm. When asked what you learned about your Twitter community, this was the response:

As you can see, most people affirmed their positive beliefs about their stream, but almost half of the respondents decided they did not actually like some of the people they followed. (We can probably assume they did like them before this.)

Additionally, when asked if they believed the Nestle event was a good thing for the attending bloggers to be a part of, this was the response:

These statistics indicate that 71%, or nearly three quarters, of respondents were either unsure or negative in their opinion of the value of the event for the bloggers who attended. When only one quarter of respondents thought attending the Nestle event was a good idea, red flags are raised for the community as well as Nestle.

Some commentary in the long form response boxes

On the #NestleFamily hashtag:

“I was disgusted to see the activists invading (use of the hashtag)”

“It was interesting to watch (the hashtag) be used by and for two completely opposing groups/ideas.”

And about the attendees:

“The event underscored the problem bloggers have in accepting corporate junkets that come with a PR hashtag, in that their ethics in attending and their PR activities on Twitter were publically challenged.”

“When blogger credibility is based on authenticity and voice, what happens to both when negative information about a corporation or brand is just a few links away and yet that information isn’t included in a blogger’s report?”

And finally, for this very short piece of introduction, I believe this respondent captured the essence of the questions that arise out of this event, and they are ones I will be seeking some indications of answers to as I progress in this research:

“There are the issues about what, exactly, are bloggers? Are they journalists or brand enthusiasts or community leaders or experts or what? Can you attend an event like this without having been said to represent the brand? And then there are the issues surrounding social media…is it rude to challenge someone’s public statements? Is it against etiquette to “crash” a hashtag? Why is a multi-billion dollar brand hosting a microsite with a twitter feed for an event without a single employee versed in Twitter?”

Thank you to everyone who responded to the survey. I am looking forward to outlining more of the responses in some further posts. If you would like to undergo a depth interview with me over the next month or so, please let me know. Also feel free to leave comments below. For the purposes of this research, anonymity is respected.

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In The Sydney Morning Herald’s role as gatekeeper/the fourth estate, those paying for its content deserve a standard of professionalism that is better than those it does not pay for.

Is a t-shirt necessary to tell the difference between professional journalists and citizens? You can buy this one at www.zazzle.com.

That’s the idea, anyway.

The Sydney Morning Herald, however, doesn’t understand how to work online. One key aspect of journalism is the newsgathering process. Professional journalists are supposed to be well versed in newsgathering. They are fully trained and have a wealth of resources and contacts in their reporting toolkits. They gather and filter information to create news pieces that hold reliable information for society.

That’s why today’s decision by the Herald’s Jessica Mahar to write a story denigrating “bloggers” for posting pictures online that were not actually of Haiti’s current quake aftermath, but of other incidents is a dumb move. The subs have titled the story, ‘Bloggers jump gun with wrong photos.’

I’ll start lightly. The fact that the Herald has run one of the “fake” images again is a poor editorial decision. Unprofessional, however, is the decision to not identify the source of the image at all. (The caption reads Photo: -) Additionally, the lack of any links at all from the Herald’s story when many would have been appropriate is a red flag to me.

Extended quotes from a random computer science guy named Miguel Rios? No identification of who he is other than his name, or where his affiliation is. Why not link to his Linkedin profile or something? (Like I just did.)

Mahar chose to use inflammatory quotes from Rios calling for some checks and measures to be put in place by a respected entity to ensure this kind of mistake doesn’t happen. Mahar is kind of saying “look, social media can hoodwink you – this is why you need us professionals.”

The embarrassment, dear, comes from the fact that I believe the only reason this story was created was because the Sydney Morning Herald stole the “fake” images in question without any transparency of where they were sourced from. They didn’t check it out and the plagiarism was only discovered when the images turned out to be false. This makes the headline here incorrect. It wasn’t the bloggers who jumped the gun. It was the professionals at the Herald.

And of course, the fact that the readership of the Sydney Morning Herald pointed out the inauthenticity of the images “almost immediately,” according to the Herald’s own online editor-in-chief is something that makes even more of a mockery of the situation – and of the professionals who can’t or won’t see and accept responsibility for their own errors.

Here’s a tip: American news organization CNN is doing a far better job in newsgathering using online sources. While CNN could do better by linking more, its coverage of Haiti using the personal stories and images collected across the Web offer a better level of transparency than that offered by the Herald.

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“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 Twitter are those who are using it regularly, and have overcome the barriers to acceptance that it inherently presents as a tool of technology.

Academics don’t get Twitter. Including many of those doing research into social media.

Twitter represents a new way of communication. After lifestreaming on Twitter for over two years and researching it for over 12 months,  I understand the nuances of the communities on it, and have watched it morph as it has moved from being a geek tool to a plaything of the mainstream.

I’ve seen people pretend to be people they’re not. Consciously and unconsciously. Romances, flirtations and breakups. Proposals, business endeavours, connections – and their destruction. Lonely and socially inept people have connected with high flyers and leaders. I’ve watched as people going through the most intense pain of their lives have dared to share emotion and feeling that they’d never divulge to their closest friends in a physical sense. I’ve seen Twitterers decide, recently, that “in real life” friends and online friends really are the same thing. For many, normal people, physical presence does not matter any more.

In 2010 I’ll be completing my thesis in the communities of mombloggers on Twitter. I’m particularly looking at some individuals who have had things happen to them that we just don’t talk about in society. People who are judged through horrid newspaper reporting that does nothing more than enable the middle class and other everyone who doesn’t fit their beige lives. People in pain. Who perhaps with Twitter have found reason to keep going, found some sense of support they didn’t have available “in real life” – and through whose journey the rest of the community is learning more about things that often get swept under the carpet. Death. Abuse. Homelessness. Why some women hate others, and appropriate responses to companies and those we don’t understand.

It’s hard.

My big wish for my work in 2010 is that I can somehow do some justice to the women in the communities of Twitter, and give them the opportunity to be heard and appreciated. I can see the opportunities and topics for my PhD dissertation being unveiled, without my pushing them.

I know it won’t be easy when some decide to be contemptuous.

But I’m ready.

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2. What Twitter means to me
3. What kind of Twitter identity do you seek?

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 the internet was considered in social theory) and the found a new audience a few years back with its adaptation to online networks.

Today, referring to the activity on microblogging sites as either of these is probably very limited, based on myriad case studies of individuals and their very real connections and friendship strength, found through CMC. They are neither “weak” (as in traditional notions of acquaintances who can be called upon when needed), nor simply an “awareness” of others in a network. They are also not built in a heirarchical organization – they are horizontal. In fact, Castells’ emphatic assertions that when we talk about communication we are actually discussing realms of power and influence, means that “communication” isn’t a term to be thrown about lightly.

He’s right.

My theory of the strength of these relationships is discovered through a realm of CMC that is primarily representated in phatic communion. The relationships exist as communities within what I call the latent sphere of the networked society. (In this sense, I use the networked society as defined by Manuel Castells.)

You can buy Ghostbusters-type slime like this at www.midnightwarriorsentertainment.com

If Vincent Miller is correct, and Twitter is nothing more than a celebrated phatic technology-a technology which exists purely to support phatic communion, then the very real relationships being discovered today through its use are far more tangible than those discovered through discussing the weather in real life. And the fact that Twitter has existed and morphed in so many ways over these short years I respectfully suggest dispels any notion that it fulfills the “social awareness streams” suggested by the researchers at Rutgers. It, in fact, provides people with real connections, in the most concrete form – in fact (hold on to your hat) in a way that potentially surpasses that experienced in real life.

These people will regularly never have met in real life, until at least having met online first. Homophily still exists – we still form communities on this phatic network. (Just look at the hashtags to find the communities and topic areas that draw people together. And that’s before Twitter added the List function. And then also, what about all the third party tools that operate solely on allowing you to classify your ‘groups’ of people in that space, such as Tweetdeck…) But these communities are not just asking simple stuff like what the weather is like, or just passing the time of day. The depth of feeling is not just as acquaintances. This depth of connection to people we never before would have connected with, and in fact to many we would never approach in real life (such as the homeless), has never before been realised by any other form of media. It’s new. It’s potentially both scary and exciting.

Even though Twitter is accepted by the mainstream middle class to such an extent it no longer receives explanations in newspapers (and in fact is used as the basis for reporting by lazy journalists), it still has not reached critical mass. But it will happen.

I believe the mommyblogger community is leading the way in demonstrating the case study proof of my assertions. We have seen real connections, and real support – people reaching out in very real ways to support each other, typically in times of great need – within this community. This latent sphere bubbles up and is electrically tangible. Like Flubber (it’s highly viscuous, highly volatile, and has a great sense of rhythm) or the slime in Ghostbusters. (Sorry, but you’ll understand my meaning ) It’s not just “aware”.

So imagine the future – where more communities realise that potential. And then take it that step further, where the brands you love most are able to be part of that space. You know the old saying that if mums ruled the world, there’d be no more war? Here we are in a global networked society, with mums leading the way. Who can tell what comes next?

Related posts:

1. Why my research is in Twitter
2. The IKEA effect and online community
3. NestleFamily, breastfeeding and social media

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 right idea. Getting people to pay for content is definitely a way forward. But News Corp. is missing the biggest opportunity they have. It’s a global organization, and while about 1% of their content producers are the best in the world, they are still.. the best. Why doesn’t News identify that globally based 1%, and put it in a paid-for format? At a really, really high price?

If Mr Murdoch thinks that I, or anyone else, will pay for the other 99% of his writers who are complete crap, then he’s mistaken. I’d rather read the far more professional blogs, with the diversity of opinions and transparency News cannot offer.

After freelancing, creating content for a few different publishers it also appears that organizations don’t like to pay their contributors. Waiting six months for a payment on any work done is not a viable business model. I don’t know why some people think it’s all hunky dory. And it’s been this way for many years.

So I don’t pay for content, and I’m wary of accepting any freelance job at all these days. Because I simply don’t like waiting to be paid when my time is better spent on more pressing things.

But my kids? That’s another thing entirely. I currently pay for three social network memberships. And while I’m a member of about 15 social networks, none of these payments are for me. They’re for my kids. My kids totally expect to pay to get access to information, community and technology. They’re growing up with a pay-for-it frame of mind. At the moment it’s a mum-pay-for-it model, and I’m fine with that because the quality of content accessed by my kids on networks like Club Penguin is really worth $5.95 a month. It’s a vibrant community, with great quality stuff. If organizations continue to treat them this way, by the time they’re my age they’ll be paying for content, and believing they should.

But a key part will be getting rid of the 99% of crap for adults and creating something worth subscribing to. We need a Club Penguin for grown ups.

Sidebar: For the “something shiny” HCI people: Twitter with penguins. Now we’re talking.

Related posts:

1. More than deputies: A definition of journalism for the 21st Century
2. Don't think influence, think resonance
3. Disrupting the barriers of media in the 21st Century

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 some backlash (which I was a part of, albeit briefly).

Even though I was prepared for it, I doubt anyone saw the enormity and longevity of the community’s outrage. The tail of it is still going. This was a key happening on Twitter, and it had far more impact than the Motrin Moms speedbump. I would argue that Twitter’s community has morphed again as a result. Focus on the types of junkets mommy/daddybloggers who call themselves “PR friendly” accept, and what it says about who they are doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There were real responses from the community. Many negative. This great post by cynematic discusses this responsibility further.

My research

I manually copied thousands of tweets using the #NestleFamily hashtag. I also created an online survey that people were invited to complete during the twitterstorm. I’m very excited to have that data. The 66 completed responses are authentic, grabbed at the time it was all happening, and the qualitative survey responses are about as true to real emotion as you can get – people were telling me what they were doing at the same time as doing it. That’s not easy to get when questioning people about their about online activity. When I write it up it will be a chapter in my thesis, and probably a paper/conference presentation as well. I’m going to write up a short version of the results and post it here on my blog soon.

The most positive outcome has been the amazing work done by Annie, aka @PhDinParenting, who took the opportunity to ask some very pointed questions of Nestle. Nestle has been responding to her questions, so good on them. And Annie has posted their responses in the best, most transparent means possible. She then adds her own analysis and research, with links that are exhaustive, informed and inspiring. It is her work that represents the future of real journalism. It’s why I say that the future of journalism is social.

My question to Nestle

I kept largely out of the limelight on this twitterstorm so as not to taint the data I was collecting. I did, however, want to find out Nestle’s views on the dismal rate of breastfeeding in the USA. Nestle promotes its substitute milk in the USA, and with the USA’s very low rate of exclusive infant breastfeeding at 6 months of age, I wanted to find out what they thought about it all. I submitted the question as follows:

As a premier substitute baby milk manufacturer and marketer in the USA, I’d like to know what your opinion is about the fact that the rate of exclusive breastfeeding in the USA lies at just 12%, when the WHO says it recommends 100% exclusivity for the first six months.

Your Nestle site states that WHO is the “gold standard” so I’m assuming you would agree this statistic is troubling.

Why do you believe this statistic exists? Do you think it can change? And if so, how?

It took a few weeks (I think Nestle lost my question, and then located it when I enquired again about their response), but their response is here:

Thank you for contacting us. We apologize for the delay in our response and we appreciate your patience.

At Nestlé Nutrition we support the positions of the American Academy of Pediatrics and WHO that exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of age is best. The most recent statistics from the 2008 CDC Breastfeeding Report Card (2006 data) show that the national average from exclusive breastfeeding is around 13.6%, which is below the Health (sic) People 2010 goal of 17%.

According to the CDC Infant Feeding Practices Study (IFPS) II (http://www.cdc.gov/ifps/ , there are many reasons why mothers might stop breastfeeding, ranging from difficulty with sucking and latching to worries about producing enough milk. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/122/Supplement_2/S69#T2

We believe that optimal infant health is truly the goal and we advocate for more infant feeding support and education for mothers, regardless of whether they breastfeed, formula feed or both.

We are encouraged by the improvements reported in breastfeeding initiation and duration and will continue our efforts to educate and encourage mothers to give their babies a healthy start. That includes providing education and resources for her, and if she cannot or chooses not to breastfeed, or chooses to supplement her breastmilk, we provide high quality, iron-fortified infant formula-the only safe and healthy alternative to breastmilk.

Robyn Wimberly RD,LD.
Nestle Nutrition Contact Center

So there you go. I have my own thoughts on this response. The final paragraph, to me, is just disgraceful – it’s written very poorly. It seems to be saying that Nestle’s substitute formula is the only “safe and healthy alternative to breastmilk.” I know that those words “safe and healthy” are definitely not something I agree with. But I’m a breastfeeding advocate, ex-journalist and PR queen, and am used to spin. I have done the research. I know what I know and have made up my own mind. The US Government has initiated the Healthy People plan, but where breastfeeding rates are concerned it is failing – and it doesn’t reflect the WHO “gold standard” referred to on Nestle’s own site. There are holes all over this response. The last paragraph made me wince. I think Annie does a brilliant job of dissecting these responses and calling out the holes. I’m not going to do that here. I recommend you read all of Annie’s work, and if interested in more, you can read my short research blog piece on Breastfeeding in America, see the Ignite presentation, or email me for the full papers to see how the numbers stack up. And then make up your own mind.

So what does all this mean?

Now, I know that this storm has ended up being thrown in the “too hard” basket by many people on both sides of the fence, as well as those who sit on top of that same fence. Statistics are being used pragmatically. Manipulation of data is rife. There’s aggravation, and it becomes personal for many who feel attacked by even discussing it. For many, it sucked the ‘fun’ out of Twitter.

But the fact is, this milestone proved the resilience of the microblogging community. It’s opened a conversation that will bind the community even more solidly. It’s given us a view of people that we didn’t know before. People to both connect with, disconnect from, and understand better, even if they disagree with us. If Twitter were really nothing more than messages about eating candy and frozen dinners, then this storm wouldn’t exist. People have taken it upon themselves to get better educated about something they might not have known about before. They were provided links and questions. They had the opportunity to follow up, and go deeper into the issues than they have ever been led by mainstream media, and Nestle ended up without the buffer of media to spin their messages to.

Key Learnings

For the community: Mainstream media is no longer an excuse for not knowing about stuff. The depth of information you have is up to you and your attention span. That’s a hard responsibility to own. In Nestle’s case, I congratulate anyone (including some attendees) who tried to find out more information or followed it up, no matter where you ultimately sit on the ‘issues’. I challenge those who simply sought an easy path and blindly continued tweeting Nestle-friendly inane statements on Twitter, without addressing any of the twitterstorm. It won’t, in the longer term, help your credibility in the community. The really influential people in this equation can be easily identified. And that’s awesome.

For companies: You don’t get to own your messages any more. Social media represents a revolution, not an evolution. It’s another tool in your promotional strategy, but you have to be ready for the real conversation. The one where your comments get called on. The one you don’t direct. And you will never have the last word unless the community deems it to be okay.

Related posts:

1. The three steps to being influential in social media
2. Should some brands stay out of social media?
3. Breastfeeding in America

To be influential in social media takes effort. It doesn’t just happen. You can’t buy it. It’s not advertising.

So if that’s what it’s not, how can organizations and people get to be really influential? Here are the steps to influence. When you and your brand get it right, that’s when you get to influence others.

Find Relevance

Your first mission is to produce content that is relevant to the people you’re seeking to influence. That sounds pretty obvious, but so many people and companies don’t really have a great snapshot of their target market. They’ve spent so long with basic demographics that are ballpark indications of who their market is that they’ve lost touch with the real personalities of these people. In social media we’re no longer talking about eyeballs, or about mass market publications that look after great big segments of a market. Instead, you’re looking at individuals. Yes, those individuals tend to move in packs – they’re communities of similar people. And those communities have some people with bigger voices. But that can change in an instant, and one bigger voice doesn’t mean they influence everyone in that community. They are individuals first and they are all powerful. Some will love your brand, others won’t care much, and others might detest your brand. Spend some time working out who they are, what their interests are, and what they really think before even trying to produce content for them. Be relevant.

Find Resonance

Readers of my blog know I love to talk about resonance. You can create all the good quality content in the world but if it’s not hitting the mark and connecting with people in a solid way, you’re not getting social media right. It’s a massive error to think that simply creating good content leads directly to influence. You need more than that. You need to produce content that makes people talk about you. Retweet you. Post the article to their Facebook account or write about it on their blog. When they do that, they’re demonstrating their personal involvement with your content, and that’s what you want. Not just for the eyeballs to hit your page, but for the message to be meaningful to them. To the extent that they’ll tie their name to it and go talk about it elsewhere.

You need to create resonance.

One caveat here, particularly for brands and companies running them, is to be aware that to achieve resonance you need to really understand your audience, and remember everything you say reflects on your brand. I wasn’t kidding before with step one. These people have opinions, are smart, engaged and want to work with others in this space – but don’t think you can control the conversation or give half-assed engagement or try to pretend you’re not the person representing the brand, even if that’s not your intention. A great example is the furore surrounding Nestle right now on Twitter. The good news is that while you’ll get called out for crappy behavior of any kind, the social media community wants you to get better. They will celebrate with you when you do, and they’ll be your loudest proponent. If you really listen, and really work with the community instead of trying to manipulate it you’ll get there and find resonance (I’m kinda hoping Nestle eventually realises that.)

Nirvana – Influence

When you’ve achieved the first two steps, that’s when you can seek to be influential. And you’ll see results. You can invite people to play with your new stuff and be confident that because you have resonance with them, the brand will be welcomed enough for people to want to try it out.You can be a thought leader. You can gain a few minutes of peoples’ time to talk about stuff, and they’ll really listen to you.

It doesn’t matter if you have a personal brand or the biggest brand on the planet. Everyone wants to be influential. Using social media is a great way to discover influence through resonance with a target audience you may have forgotten. Rediscover people. Don’t treat social media like other forms of promotion. It still sits in your toolkit, along with other areas like advertising and sales promotion, but it works differently. Get it right and you’ll find the opportunities you are looking for, with the people who matter most.

Related posts:

1. NestleFamily, breastfeeding and social media
2. Should some brands stay out of social media?
3. Glade's sweet smell of good social media PR with Edelman

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 and how they are built and morph through media. To date, due to the expense of entry to creating content for media communication technology, most middle class people have been limited to the telephone – and that form is one-to-one rather than the one-to-many formats offered by social media. This installation’s first day shows how people who did not know each other were able to create conversations and relationships – even for a short time.

People in the video respond a certain way because they realize people in the other location can actually see them. This created an ‘event’. In the 21^st Century, when everything that happens in public locations could readily and easily be posted to the web, are we seeing a change in everyday public behaviors due to the fact that we are aware, more than ever before, that someone might be posting our actions? From music concerts to classrooms, from traffic accidents to natural environments, people are creating ‘events’. The greater questions are how have we as a community become the public entity we are creating, and what impact does this have on how we relate to each other. What has made people immediately reach for their cell phone to take a picture when something happens? This is a stage of history we’ve never faced before.

While we have come through an era where “the medium is the message,” we have moved on from this. The medium is still the technology. The message today is found in the resonance of community. One is not the other. In fact, the irony as stated by Steve Harrison in his essay on this particular video (found in HCI Remixed), is key. Separation does in fact, invite a connection. If we believe that human beings seek resonance with each other, eliminating some of the barriers to finding that resonance through disrupting the accepted norms of relationships and community will in fact deliver us to new ways of ‘seeing’ each other. Through these new ways of discovering resonance we will be able to grow an international array of communities. The international would relate not just to geographical space, but also class space. We have a media which will offer everyone an opportunity to find resonance of community with the homeless, the traditional-media famous, and their neighbor.

Related posts:

1. More than deputies: A definition of journalism for the 21st Century
2. Don't think influence, think resonance
3. Why I Stopped Following Guy Kawasaki

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.

Related posts:

1. Disrupting the barriers of media in the 21st Century
2. The IKEA effect and online community
3. Mummy’s back in graduate school

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, not influence.

What all of us seek in social media is Resonance.

The influence part happens afterwards.

In social media, you can’t influence someone unless they want to be influenced.

Guess what… if traditional media had understood the need to find real resonance with its market, it wouldn’t be in the situation it is today.

Resonance. It’s what creates meaning. Just like the rice here.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO0bSSXmr1A&feature=related#watch-main-area]

Related posts:

1. Disrupting the barriers of media in the 21st Century
2. The three steps to being influential in social media
3. I'll pay for content when there's Twitter with penguins

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 code. Part of the smoke and mirrors used to convince everyone they’re worth being paid for over anyone without a mogul. Professional journalists promote their work as a noble art, one that demands a rigor most can not attain. With prompting, a professional journalist will usually agree you need training, you need balance, fairness, fact collection and analysis.
In a conversation I had on Twitter with people in Australia following the Twitter’s Impact on Media and Journalism mini-conference (actually a 2-hour seminar of sorts), Brad Howarth, a professional journalist who was attending says journalism will not be “harmed or replaced by Twitter.” Another Australian, Renai Lemay, followed his presentation at the same conference with a post for ZDNet where he likens his role as a professional journalist to a knight, protecting the honour of a “great lady of noble birth” and describes Twitter as a “playground for pleasure of journalists.” Somewhere to reconnect with the audience. While Renai seeks to support Twitter’s role, he demonstrates a very Lipmann-esque view – it’s still them and us, and being able to play amongst the great unwashed is a novel way of “cutting the fat out of journalism.”

Bringing it to the US, last night, on Lou Dobbs’ show on CNN, the Face Off segment featured a rather strange topical area of ‘Social Networks & Journalism: Is traditional media obsolete?’, Professor Robert Thompson of Syracuse University held the same line as Renai. He described citizen journalists as “acting like deputies … it’s just like we used to use eyewitnesses.” In what was supposedly a debate (which Dobbs pointedly remarked at the start he hoped would be won by Professor Thompson), Micah Sifryn, co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum began well by saying “anyone can commit and act of journalism.” However he followed that up by agreeing with Lou Dobbs that it “takes more than just holding up your mobile phone and filming stuff and then putting it online to be a journalist.”

Oh really?

My issue is that all of this is either a. focused on the media used for journalism rather than what journalism actually is, or  b. garbled propaganda nonsense.

Let me be clear. For those who don’t know me, I was a traditional, paid journalist for 15 years. I then moved to Public Relations, and then into teaching journalism, marketing, PR, event management and advertising at college. Happily, I’m back in traditional professional journalism myself, as the Boulder Startup Examiner for Examiner.com. (I make enough for a cup of coffee a week). I’m even currently undertaking graduate research in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at CU in Boulder (on social media communities), and I TA on the Intro to Journalism and Intro to Advertising classes. I’m a co-founder of a startup which will enable people to create more content and make better connections online. I’m pretty well engaged on all fronts.

And my question is thus: If traditional, professional journalists (those I’ve identified above) want to say what they do is different to what is able to be done by anyone else, I believe they have to say what makes it so, in order to be understood. So let me help you professionals out. The book, Elements of Journalism, authored by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel, provides 10 elements of journalism. They are:

1. Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.
2. Its first loyalty is to the citizens.
3. Its essence is discipline of verification.
4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
7. It must strive to make the significant interesting, and relevant.
8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.
9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.
10. The rights and responsibilities of citizens to be media literate.

But I’m questioning these traditional elements. While the 10th Element only appeared in this text in 2007 as a direct response to the power of Web 1.0, I believe it’s time to entirely redefine the concept of journalism. To strip it back and challenge the notion of what it is – a notion that has root in the medium, not the craft. All of the above elements of journalism reflect a somewhat Lipmann-esque attitude. But at last in the 21st Century, John Dewey really gets a turn. At journalism’s very core is one thing – communication. So I’ve developed a new definition of what journalism is:

Journalism is communication through any means that enables two things – a. the transmission of factual information about all factors that make up society, and b. validation, authentication and discussion of opinions, beliefs and commentary.

In the past, given the limited and expensive range of tools open to people, journalists were defined as a separate group of people. Training in the media they worked in, and how best to ‘do’ journalism to communicate messages were the focus. But those constraints have left us. The best journalism does not rely on the old elements – nor the old media. It doesn’t rely on training, or a paypacket.

Will journalism still exist when the moguls move onto more profitable ventures? Yes. Is it noble and necessary for democracy? Yes. Does it need defending? No (from what?). Is it the realm of the few? No, not any more. It’s not Twitter that is changing it. It’s Web 2.0. All social media. It’s going to be even greater when even more people are creating the content. That’s democracy.

Related posts:

1. Disrupting the barriers of media in the 21st Century
2. MSM journalism and Twitter
3. Unmoderated reader comments are a news fail

I’m writing for the online news site, Examiner.com as the Boulder Startup Examiner.

Why? Am I insane? Don’t I have enough to do?

I felt compelled to do it. Boulder is a wonderful town, with a fantastic tech community of people. It’s a really big community, for a small town. It’s exciting, vibrant and smart. It’s full of incredible people. And they’re all doing their own thing.

We’re all working with a similar environment. We see lots of familiar people every week, and there are lots of tech events focused on the community. But we have different lives, experiences and industries. There are lots of people here I’ve never met – and when many of those people are ones I’ve heard of and I know have heard of me in our ‘small’ community, that’s disappointing. We have a wealth of things to draw on that don’t get any focus, simply because there’s no professional journalism covering it.

So that’s what I’m trying to do with my Examiner role. I’m treating it as I would a professional journalistic venture. It’s not personal (that’s what my blog’s for). It’s actual journalism. The way I used to do it. It’s amazing how you never forget. And I’m really enjoying it.

I’m putting together a plan of writing one article a week on five different topic areas. (Let’s see how my time management works with that!) Today’s topic area was Women in Tech. I’ll be writing on that once a week. And today’s story relates to how women who work in Boulder startups simply don’t seem to have the same networking opportunities the men of Boulder do. A pretty self-evident post, I thought. I got to interview some wonderful women (another bonus of working on Examiner is chatting with local startups I’ve never run across, or have only met briefly!). I said to Tara and Grace I wanted to focus on women in Boulder startups. It wasn’t their idea, it was mine. And they came to the party. We had a lovely chat over coffee last week. I recorded the chat, and I wrote the piece.

It seems to have hit a bit of a nerve with some people in various elements of social media, and I couldn’t be happier. I believe the article is respectful of Boulder, the community and both men and women. If you read beyond the headline (as any journalism school will explain, the headline is just the foothold into the story) you get a balanced view of women in startups here in Boulder.

I invite you to read the article yourself, and leave a comment. I now know I’ll definitely be covering women in startups in Boulder every week. Because it’s a great topic, obviously close to my heart. And nobody else covers it.

Related posts:

1. More than deputies: A definition of journalism for the 21st Century
2. Disrupting the barriers of media in the 21st Century
3. I'll pay for content when there's Twitter with penguins

By now even your grandma knows about the race to a million. Ashton Kutcher, old-media celebrity turned digital insider with various multimedia projects and Twitter groover challenged CNN to a race to a million followers on Twitter.

And after a nice little campaign, last night he won.

It was really fun to see the video of him crossing the victory line. He was really, truly excited. That’s impressive.

What’s more impressive is that Ashton (I can call him by his first name, ‘cos you know… we’re both Twitter sluts ) decided to use the opportunity to do two things:

First, promote the charitable cause (Malaria No More). He got a bank cheque made out in readiness for the win, and showed it up close on U-stream. He is knowledgeable and focused on his charitable work. (Granted, in his excitement over his win the splashing of champagne on a bank cheque for that amount of money is a little… well… off).

Secondly, and more importantly, he made the race into a statement about the democratization of media. About the power of the people. About ‘big media’ no longer determining who gets attention. Ashton repeatedly says that the revolution is happening. That we can change the world. We own the tools to create the content, consume the content and connect with each other. Anyone who can get to a computer with the internet is playing in the same playground as CNN – and they no longer have a guaranteed audience. And old media can just *suck it*.

Some naysayers and skeptics doubt that Ashton truly represents the ‘little guy’ in this equation (after all he’s a movie star right?). For example, Mark Glaser, otherwise known as @Mediatwit said: “This was NOT about the little guy at all. It was about a celeb getting little guys to follow him. If a real nobody got 1m that would be big.”

What Mark’s missed is that a key part of Ashton’s victory rant was his comment that ‘Hey, you can unfollow me. And that’s cool.’ Ashton gets that’s what happens. That’s what this is about. Six hours after he logged off last night, he was recording a segment on Oprah and said these things again … and again. Let’s not forget he’s also always talking directly to the Twitterers sending him messages. He’s authentic, transparent, on the ball and insightful. (So’s his dearly devoted wife, but that’s another post.)

So while the focus on playing tag for Followers on Twitter gives a bad impression and certainly doesn’t reflect the overall scheme of things in social media, the goal and opportunity for further influence created by Ashton and the point he’s made are undoubtedly positive in ways no other old media celebrity could achieve. He’s gained my respect, and the respect of other commentators. And I’ve never actually been a fan of his at all.

Now if only he’d teach all those other celebrities. You know the ones who need to get rid of their clueless PR hoons and tweet real conversations with other real people …. Are you listening Hugh Jackman? Oh that’s right… no you’re not.

Related posts:

1. Why I Stopped Following Guy Kawasaki
2. Who's talking about whom?
3. More than deputies: A definition of journalism for the 21st Century

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’. For example, think of teenagers and their need to buy the latest fad.

2. Leadership needs – people who want to be seen as innovators and want to be seen as cutting edge. A good example is all those people looking for the latest and greatest new phone!

3. Achievement needs – people who buy things to demonstrate they’ve ‘made it’. Often, buying that sportscar or a First Class plane ticket fulfills that need.

My current research on discourse analysis on Twitter suggests you can identify people working to fulfill these same needs on Twitter! With just text to convey how we want to be seen by everyone, the things we decide to Tweet and whom we tweet with demonstrates us ‘working’ to fulfill one of these needs.

Someone with an affiliation need on Twitter will use lots of hashtags. Ways of belonging. They will identify themselves as part of popular movements on Twitter. They want to be part of a particular crowd. Mommy bloggers. Lots of RTs and @ conversations with people they want to be associated with.

Someone with a leadership need will probably not ‘life stream’. Instead they’ll stay on one topic and tweet links to specific cutting edge stuff in their field. They will talk with just about anyone as long as it’s on the topic they want to be seen as a leader in. They don’t stray from that path. It’s like they’re almost the Twitter expert on a particular subject.

Finally, someone with an achievement need will want to be recognised as having ‘made it’. These, I claim, are the type of people who un-follow bulk numbers of people so they can appear accomplished. They’re more likely to be focused on follower numbers than anything else. They might life stream about their accomplished lives, and even lead calls to donate to ’people less fortunate’, to further identify their separateness from them.

The way we behave on Twitter reflect identity work where we want to be seen by the community as one of these types of people.

What Twitterers can you think of that fits one of these categories? Where do you fit?

Related posts:

1. I'll pay for content when there's Twitter with penguins
2. Why my research is in Twitter
3. Research on Twitter and friendships

Twitter is a curious beast. It has morphed as it grows, due to the community of people who use it. And in researching the online social sphere for my graduate thesis, there are some key aspects of how people use Twitter that are indicators to how this is going to go.

Twitter is a tool used by a community. The tool of Twitter is no different to any other tool. The tool of Twitter exists as an infrastructure, and becomes what it is because of how the community uses it. Just as a knife can be defined as a weapon because people sometimes kill very effectively with it, so Twitter is a community because people interact on it.

Over time we’ve seen Twitter move on from being a post-modern, Web 1.0 Facebook-style status update of ‘what are you doing’. That whole status update thing had the whole broadcasting ethos of me! me! me! It was about telling the world about me and not really caring that much about what everyone else thought of it.

But Web 2.0, and beyond has seen Twitter’s ‘what are you doing’ develop to people actually asking each other ‘what are *you* doing’? And ‘doing’ for the Twitter community now really means ‘thinking’ and ‘wanting’ and ‘needing’ and ‘hoping for’, etc.

The community online uses social media to really connect with each other. To connect with people who you feel an affiliation with, or can learn from, or just feel close to. Not to broadcast.

And this is why I’ve stopped following Guy Kawasaki.

I’m sure Guy is a nice guy (sorry). He’s done a lot of good stuff, written some books that people rave about and stuff. He also gives a good party by all accounts. He certainly believes he’s extremely influential, and some other people do too.

so where’s the problem? A while back on Twitter @Guykawasaki was really him. He’d tweet stuff and interact with people. But as time has gone on, Guy’s Twitter account has morphed – much like most of Twitter. However, I’d argue the morphing that Guy has sought has been detrimental to his personal brand, and non-reflective of where the community of Twitter is heading. He’s introduced ghost twitterers, for which has received a lot of criticism – and he doesn’t seem to get what the issue with that is. He spends a lot of time on Twitter defending himself over this (it gets tiring). He’s also focused on the numbers and believes that putting out what he terms “good content” (ie: links to stories and ‘interesting things’ on the web that he has located and simply aggregates, not that he’s created) is all Twitter needs to be.

All of this means the stream of “Guy Kawasaki” really is about as authentically Guy Kawasaki as the fake accounts of myriad celebrities. When I started following Guy, that wasn’t the case.

And Guy, the fact is we use Twitter differently. I’m into conversation. Looking at my stats, I tweet an average of 13 times a day, and 70% of those are @ tweets. Connections and personal resonance is my focus. I’m not as into the numbers as you and all those traditional marketers and journalists and old-school bloggers with ‘number of eyeballs’ perceptions are. I have a relatively large number of followers and am extremely happy about that because it gives me the opportunity to talk with lots of different people, find out what they’re doing, how I can assist them, and vice versa. (To clarify: I gain followers in the old-fashioned way. No 3rd party tools, or requests for follows being broadcast. You won’t see me tweeting about my following as being a big thing for me.)

I’m interested in people individually. And I sincerely believe that’s where the future of online communication lies. Not in trying to elevate your own name by broadcasting what you think is ‘good content’ (no matter who created it), but by having conversations with people, everywhere. We’re not living in a Web 1.0 environment any more.

So time will go on and Twitter will continue to morph. I feel old school. The general real life community has heard of Twitter. People talk about “getting a Twitter” (which is strange phrasing to me). Mainstream traditional media is not only covering Twitter but is getting stories from its community.

The thing that’s driving everyday people to Twitter though, is not to just receive traditional mass media. The thing the people want is connections with other people, and real life celebrities such as Ashton, Demi and Kevin are using Twitter to connect with their fans. They have conversations with them. Really. That’s why they’re coming. That’s why Twitter’s growth is 30% a month. Connecting individually with resonance is everything.

Related posts:

1. A win for the little guy? Ashton Kutcher plays tag with CNN.
2. I'll pay for content when there's Twitter with penguins
3. More than deputies: A definition of journalism for the 21st Century

In discussions with people who view the media climate as being a binary between big media and bloggers, many times the exclamation rises, “Well, if MSM didn’t exist what would bloggers talk about? All they do is talk about ‘real media’ stories.”

But how the tables have turned.

The last couple of weeks across the US and Australia has seen a great rise in MSM’s coverage of ‘normal’ citizens production of content on new media channels. Blogs, yes. But beyond that, social media is rising to take over. There seems to be stories in MSM covering content produced on Twitter, Ustream, 12seconds every single day.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s front page online today features a home invasion with details simply drawn from Twitter and UStream. Yes, when you open it you end up in the tech section – but it is firstly listed on the front page.

The New York Times had a great piece recently on how traditional media ‘personalities’ were taking up Twitter.

But all MSM reports have been very much along the lines of “we don’t know how this inane stuff involves so many people, but hey, it does.” MSM reporters are challenged by social media. They know it’s a space they need to be in, and report about, but they’re not really confident with doing either of those things.

Real life celebrities such as Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry and (ex-model) Kathy Ireland are getting into Web 2.0 and actually talking directly to real, ordinary people. MSM is suddenly no longer needed to give a broadcast audience celebrity gossip. Why bother when I can watch Demi’s recent photo shoot for Helena Rubenstein courtesy of her husband’s Qik stream? It’s authentic. It’s credible. It’s straight from them!

So tell me again. Who’s talking about whom?

Related posts:

1. Why I Stopped Following Guy Kawasaki
2. A win for the little guy? Ashton Kutcher plays tag with CNN.
3. More than deputies: A definition of journalism for the 21st Century

I joined Twitter on my first trip to the US, in 2007 at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. And I remember thinking it sucked. I had no connections other than the conference channel – which was tweeting  basically nothing. That sucked.

Segway (does it have a ue?): I’m a tertiary level teacher of marketing and journalism in Oz, and every Christmas break (5 weeks long) I commit myself to a private research project. That year I committed myself to social media – particularly, Twitter. And I got back on board.

With a vengeance.

I joined @STUB and met other Sydney based Twitterers in real life. I extended those relationships online and people all over the world are now part of a network I’m happily claiming to be my friends. Not even in air quotes.

So my summer research has now, 2 yrs later, become a network of over 1650 people. Many of whom I know care about me just as they do other friends in their life. And if you are, at this point, thinking “is she going to talk about me”, then you’re one of the people I feel most close to.

Far from making me a desperate online loser, I sincerely believe online communities are the families and friends of the future. Durkheim – I love looking at your crap, but you’re a bit wrong. We are distanced, but we are strong.

To all my friends who started with Twitter, I am so grateful to have you. You have changed my life for the better. What a great summer project you were. What an amazing present and future you offer.

Thanks.

Related posts:

1. Why my research is in Twitter
2. Research on Twitter and friendships
3. MSM journalism and Twitter

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)!

Related posts:

1. Why my research is in Twitter
2. What kind of Twitter identity do you seek?
3. What Twitter means to me

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

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.

Related posts:

1. Why breastfeeding is like abortion for feminism
2. NestleFamily, breastfeeding and social media
3. Ignite Boulder fun with breastfeeding and media