Both Clay Shirky and Michel Bauwens emphasize the importance of the “coordinating resource” of the concept of the social web. While in chapter 5 of Shirky’s Here Comes Everyone he focuses on the impact of Wikipedia and its reasons for success, Bauwens piece on “the social web and its social contracts” aim to convey the same message – we exist in a world where participants of the internet appreciate the process of sharing and implement it as a very important social tool. Through Shirky’s chapter one can use the example of Wikipedia to understand the complex argument presented by Bauwens regarding the concepts of the sharing economy, benefit sharing, social platform owners, and the overall notion of the social web. Wikipedia itself is a social commons founded upon the basis of “collaborative production” – there would simply be no Wikipedia if those participants in the community did not make the edits to continuously improve the plethora of information available on the site.

In Bauwens article, “The Social Web and its Social Contracts”, he explains the social web in terms of social sharing. He claims that “we appreciate the facilitation of the sharing processes and we understand that operating such platforms comes with a cost, and with an expectation of profitability.” In other words, as internet users we have come to understand that in order for these sites to operate and permit the culture of sharing, there must be some sort of business model or monetary system that supports the platform. Though there are many commons-based sites like Wikipedia and Craigslist that do not accept advertising, places like Google and YouTube employ “benefit sharing” as a way for their users to “create social wealth” while the platforms “monetize” the content shared. Bauwens’ entire explanation seems to be a bit complicated for the ending point that he eventually arrives at in the end where he states it is likely that “peer to peer will be the dominant logic of value creation, and that this value creation of immaterial value, will take the form of an abundant and reproducible commons of open knowledge.” Basically, the social web is leading us down a path where most communities on the Internet will be mostly “open-source” and adhering to the same logic of the previously discussed GPL. The social communities and relationships that we form in reality will soon transcend into the virtual realm where the collaborations and participation by users all over the world will create “a commons of open knowledge.” This prediction is highly evident in the instance of the incredible power behind the shared logic of a site like Wikipedia.

Shirky’s discussion of Wikipedia was truly quite intriguing in that I never really realized how our previous discussions from the past few weeks of class on the power law distribution (i.e. on social network sites and the hierarchy of the internet) would come into play in a setting like that of the Wiki. As explained on page 124, “the power law distribution occurs in social settings where some set of items – users, pictures, tags – is ranked by frequency of occurrence.” This ecosystem of sharing therefore relies on those who contribute the most edits per article in terms of the 80/20 rule. The user that adds the most to the article, (let’s use good ol’ SCEhardt the asphalt expert as an example), will be far more active than the average contributor. This “predictable imbalance” should not be looked at as a negative thing however; instead, we should use this imbalance to understand its necessity in understanding the “behavior of the collective” users of Wikipedia (Shirky 128). The site is a commons of individual actions that make up an ongoing systematic process of improvement. The Wiki-ecosystem does not need to rely on a division of labor, the “necessary laziness” of the contributors appreciate the amount of freedom they have to improve the site and therefore are driven to the eventual individual action of even adding a single edit to a topic of their desire. People simply just want to make a mark on the world and be part of something and Wikipedia allows this to occur. The non-financial motivation to do a good thing and contribute just makes you feel good inside! Someone out there is definitely going to appreciate your extremely random fact about three-toed sloths in Peru.

The ideas of Shirky and Bauwens meet when Wikipedia and its community of Wikipedians in terms of the potential vandalism that has occurred (and currently occurs on a regular basis) on the site. The fact that Wikipedia has yet to be “destroyed” signals that the community of Wikipedians that work so hard on a 24/7 basis to maintain the site and its accuracy adheres to a particular social contract that dictates that when people care enough about something, “they come together and accomplish things of a scope and longevity that were previously impossible” (Shirky 142). People care about Wikipedia and the information on there – they do not want false information about celebrities and they do not want fake facts about the population of puppies in U.S. homes. People rely on Wikipedia as a reference site, for better or for worse, and they will continue to rely on the communal “love” of Wikipedia as a “building material” that will serve to impart information for many more years to come. I mean, come on, there’s even an app for that.

(*** Any iPhone/iPod Touch users interested in the Wikipedia app – go and download it from the app store – it’s free and actually pretty cool with a neat article of the day!)

It seems no matter how much traffic we drive to our blogs, or how many comments we receive, much of social media still seems to crave legitimacy and recognition by making the crossover to the more traditional print and broadcast media.  ‘Heresy’ I hear the citizen journalists amongst us cry…!

OK, so maybe I’m generalising a bit but the reason I make this observation is a recent article on the Channel 4 website entitled ‘Blogpaper launches its first free newspaper’.  Here, a print publication is to be freely available and consists entirely of articles submitted by bloggers.  However, all the content of the freesheet is not chosen by an editor but rather by website users who have read and voted on submitted articles… an X-factor of the blogosphere if you will!  This process is known as crowd sourcing.

Although this publication will cross the invisible barrier between social and print media, it can be argued that it is still Clay Shirky’s theory of ‘Publish, then Filter’ in is simplest and perhaps most pure form.   Where else can content that has already been read ‘reappear’ in print having been voted for by the masses?

Naviknula sam da ujutro kad se probudim i pijem prvu kavu lagano surfam internetom. Najprije pregledam domaće news portale, a onda i strane. Valjda sam profesionalno deformirana pa mi odmah čim otvorim oči treba određena doza informacija kako bih uopće mogla funkcionirati. Moram znati što se događa i onda tako dobro informirana krećem u nove radne pobjede.

Upravo zbog tih mojih rituala koje sasvim sigurno njeguju i mnogobrojni ljudi diljem svijeta, prilično me pogodila informacija da bi se sadržaj na internetu mogao naplaćivati. Molim?! Kako to mislite?! Zašto?! Ništa se još točno ne zna, ali moje dosadašnje iskustvo mi govori da gdje ima dima, ima i vatre.

Cijela priča krenula je od Ruperta Murdocha, osnivača News Corpa, koji je najavio da će njegova kompanija najvjerojatnije ukloniti svoje sadržaje s Googlea i uvesti tzv. paywallse. Ljute ga što mu svi kradu sadržaj, a on na tome ne zarađuje.

Murdochove izjave izazvale su burne reakcije javnosti. I dok mu neki pružaju podršku jer i sami muku muče sa zaradom od sadržaja koji stvaraju i plasiraju na interent, drugi su šokirani i ne žele ni čuti za to. Ja definitivno ulazim u ovu drugu skupinu jer smatram da ne možeš ljudima toliko dugo vremena davati besplatni sadržaj, a onda im to doslovno oteti.

Ipak, kad se stavim u drugu poziciju shvaćam Murdochovu logiku. To je biznis od kojega, naravno, želiš zaraditi. Oglasi nisu dovoljni za pokrivanje troškova pa moraš naći drugi izvor prihoda. Logično se nameće zaključak da ćeš početi naplaćivati sadržaj koji proizvodiš. Ako želiš čitati i gledati – plati!

No, je li to rješenje?  Malo sam zadnjih dana surfala i čitala blogove američkih medijskih stručnjaka. Oni se ne slažu s Murdochovim najavama, a Clay Shirky apelira na medijske mogule da ne grade zidove oko javnog dobra. Da, sadržaj na internetu je definitivno postao javno dobro i njegova vrijednost krije se upravo u dostupnosti toga sadržaja i njegovu dijeljenju putem social media poput Facebooka i Twittera.

Opće je poznato da još uvijek nisu pronađeni održivi poslovni modeli za digitalne medije. Ipak, mislim da uvođenje pretplate nije rješenje. Nekako se nadam da će pametne glave velikih medijskih korporacija još malo razmisliti i doći do rješenja koje će zadovoljiti njihove poslovne apetite, a da nam pritom neće oteti javno dobro. Nikako si ne mogu zamisliti da mi netko naplati moj jutarnji ritual…

This week I read chapter 5 in Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirkey and Michael Bauwens’ article “The Social Web and its Social Contracts”.  The chapter in Shirkey’s book is about Wikipedia and how users are motivated to help make Wikipedia a success. Michael Bauwen’s article is about how the social web is based on an underlying but stable social contract. User participation is vital in both articles.

Chapter 5 in Here Comes Everybody is titled “Personal Motivation Meets Collaborative Production” and in it Shirkey talks about Wikipedia. Wikipedia was founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger “as an experimental offshoot of their original idea, a free online encyclopedia of high quality called Nupedia” (Shirkey 109). Nupedia was to be written, managed, and reviewed by experts in their spare time. Nupedia ultimately failed. One reason it failed was because a submission had to go through a lengthy process of review and revision through an advisory board.

The first wiki was created by Ward Cunningham in 1995. Wikis are user-editable websites. Proofreaders weren’t necessary because Cunningham assumed that “groups of people who want to collaborate also tend to trust one another” (Shirkey 111). Every wiki page is a total sum of all accumulated changes.

Sanger and Wales put up a test wiki on Nupedia as a way to create rough drafts. This made it a lot easier to create initial versions of articles, but also angered the advisory board because they felt their jobs to oversee the process of creating articles was being insulted. A few days after this Sanger and Wales moved the wiki off of Nupedia and gave it its own URL www.Wikipedia.com .  After just a few weeks Wikipedia past Nupedia in total number of articles and by the end of the year Wikipedia had 15,000 articles and was continuing to grow. This showed that Wikipedia was viable and Nupedia wasn’t. Wikipedia wasn’t around to make revenue so to cement this the URL was changed to Wikipedia.org.

Wikipedia works with a spontaneous division of labor. Here it means that Wikipedia is able to “aggregate individual and often tiny contributions, hundreds of millions of them annually, made by millions of contributors, all performing different functions” (Shirkey 118). A person will decide to make an article about something and then slowly other people will add different things to the article whether it’s new information or correcting typos. Each edit can be as big or as small as the user wants. Each Wikipedia article is a process and because of this they are never finished.

Wikipedia thrives because the users care. Wikis reward people who invest in improving them. If no one cared about Wikipedia it would die. Since a group of people care they work together and keep their collective work alive and prospering. Wikis “provide ways for groups to work together and to defend the output of that work, but these capabilities are available only when most of the participants are committed to those outcomes” (Shirkey 137). Seeing how popular Wikipedia is I think it’s safe to say that people are committed on the work done on Wikipedia articles. What makes Wikipedia a success can be seen in this post. People who edit articles don’t have to be experts in what they’re editing. This was one of the downfalls of Nupedia.

Michael Bauwens in his article “The Social Web and its Social Contracts” discusses how the social web is based on an underlying, but stable social contract. This social has the users saying “we appreciate the facilitation of the sharing processes, and we understand that operating such platforms comes with a cost, and with an expectation of profitability. We therefore allow our attention to be monetized through advertising, as long as it does not interfere with our sharing. If the interference crosses a certain line of acceptability, we will either revolt, or go elsewhere” (Bauwens). I think Wikipedia would fit in the 2^nd part of the article where Bauwens talks about how attention economy benefits the platform owners. The fact that Wikipedia is a success had to have benefit the owners somehow. They don’t make a profit or have ads on the site and the people contributing to the articles don’t make any money either, but I’m sure the attention the site gets has benefitted the platform owners in other ways.

The new media and new digital age that we are entering will require media professionals and citizens alike to rethink the way that news gets created and disseminated. I submit that the new technologies that have been created have made individuals creating news in a closed, static format obsolete. Instead news and therefore, information will be dynamic, open, cheap and widespread.

Clay Shirky’s book touches on some of the most important aspects of the new revolution. The book focuses on the social and cultural effects of the new media. It looks at how collective groups of people can influence and change the world. From his writing and ideas on groups, we can infer some things about how news is changing.

The dynamic nature of news is already here. In the past the paper was printed once or twice a day and that was the extent of the content. The live web is here and live news and information are with it. News is updated not only continually, but from mobile locations. Any person with a smart phone can produce information from wherever they are.

The dynamic nature of information is talked about in Shirky’s chapter on Wikipedia. He said that originally Jimmy Wales considered an expert only moderated article creation system, but that took too long and was cumbersome. Then, he let in the masses and the news and information was created with speed and increased quality. The collective action of many trumps the action of the few.

This dynamic and constantly updated change is also addressed in Shirky’s chapter detailing the publish then filter phenomena. This aspect could be a double edged sword for journalism. Content will be created, but quality and accuracy could be sacrificed. The free market of information would hopefully correct errors content, but that is yet to be seen on a mass scale. In looking at Wikipedia, the majority of content is accurate, but vandalism and questionable content still are published. That kind of vandalism and questionable content would be far less likely in the professional world of journalism.

Openness and new methods of sharing were talked about in Shirky’s chapter on collective action. The sharing of massive amounts of information is as easy as clicking the forward button on your e-mail. The ramifications for news will hopefully be higher quality content and verification. Having more eyes on a story would ideally lead to more corrections of inaccuracies by those who have information.

In the past, being a journalist was like a being given a special gift. A journalist was set apart from the average citizen and supposedly endowed with a special gift to inform the masses. Now, there is no distinction between news creators and consumers. Information and news creation is universal and cheap. In the future, being open with processes and news will not simply be an option, it will be the only way for trust to exist.

The cheap methods of content creation have made journalists no longer a set apart elite. This fact has and will continue to revolutionize media.  In chapter three, Shirky talked about how everyone is a media outlet. Today, people update their twitter statuses, facebook profile, flickr accounts, youtube accounts and more daily. This creates a lot of content. Of course, the vast majority of this content is low quality and meant for a tiny audience. Still, the mass individualized media outlets will require journalists to sift through them to find meaning and quality content, relevant to the masses.

Looking to developing parts of the world, this new media revolution is all the more important. In Shirk’s chapter on Flash Mobs, he talked about how instant protests have been seen in oppressive regimes. The same technology and ideas that form these instant protests can form to disseminate information and news about regimes, where technology or journalistic infrastructure is limited.

The access to news by the masses around the world and the amount of information available is revolutionary. There are trillions of websites on the internet. Wikipedia has more than 15 times the information than the Library of Congress. Broadband penetration and online access is spreading. This hyper information age that we are in has changed things. As Clay Shirky said, there has always been an information overload, but we just need better filtering methods. News needs to be synthesized and connections made by humans. Journalists can do that.

If I was to start up a new news organization, I would look to synthesize the points I have made into a practical standard operating procedure. This organization would share some resemblances to the past newsrooms. Of course, revenue would be needed and codes of ethics would be established,

The new model would be digital and lightweight, because as Jeff Jarvis so eloquently put, “atoms are a drag.” Investing millions in printing presses and the surrounding infrastructure would be unwise since innovation is to be expected and you cannot capitalize on innovation if you are tied to atoms and office buildings.

The organization would be humble. It would look to all sources for news and not put premiums on things like degrees or titles. News could come from sources that might not be expected. Looking at the people who are affected by news leads to truer content. Respecting what the masses of people say is a necessity.

The organization would iterate and flexible. Since I would not invest millions in hard infrastructure, new methods of content creation would be possible. Like David Cohn said, being able to fail is important to truly have innovative success.

The revenue that the organization would generate would be from several sources. It is no longer logical to expect people to pay more than a nominal fee for news. The generation that came to maturity with the internet is not going to pay a premium for information, just because it says the New York Times on the front.

Revenue could be generated by targeted ad sales. Using Google’s ad sense, ads could appear that are relevant to the individual consumer. It would be important that these ads are non-obtrusive. Having users pay a small monthly or yearly access fee would eliminate the ads.

If the site reaches a level that larger companies would want to advertise, it might be possible to do advertorials if the topic is deemed interesting enough and it is clear that it is sponsored. Digg, College Humor and other websites frequently have this type of content and it generates significant amounts of revenue.

The most important facet of any new news organization would be trust. Shirky talked about how trusting that our news and links are valid will make people willing to come back and willing to take a vested interest in the site. The trust and community have been and will continue to be the base for any type of news or journalistic adventure.

If a startup news companies followed those ideas, it would be profitable and high quality. New sites are emerging every day, so I am confident that new models of news will pop up. These new models will be unexpected but quality journalism will survive. There is no doubt that they will all be dynamic, open, cheap and widespread.

We can say this: traffic flows along links that we click. For a few years—before google—we could even say this: a link is not a link until we click it.

But now that is wrong because google made links really something else—meaningful signals, not just infrastructure. Links have a deeply important role in pagerank, the backbone of google’s mighty search engine.

Thus the giver of a link tells google that the recipient of a link is notable or significant or worth your time and attention and consideration or engagement. This is authority—on average, at the very least.

Links are signals for authority. That authority is distributed throughout the network, and given Igon values, google built a magnificent business detecting, computing, and centralizing that authority.

* * *

We are not entitled to our own understanding of facts, which take root in the universe. Thus we call facts objective. But we are entitled to our own appreciations of authority. Indeed, appreciation for authority can only take root in ourselves as individuals and groups of individuals. Thus we call authority subjective.

There are very many facts that I will never need to learn or remember. I will rely on google to detect those answers. Like just-in-time inventory, I will have answers only when I need them, when I borrow them, avoiding the mental costs of carrying them in my jammed-up memory.

Likewise, there are very many authorities that I will never need to appreciate. I will rely on google to detect those signals. But unlike facts as stored in someone else’s inventory, something changes about authority when I don’t carry it with me. Something’s lost when I borrow authority—just in time.

Google delivers facts. And facts are facts. But google doesn’t really deliver authorities. It co-opts them.

Maybe this is why Clay Shirky calls it “algorithmic authority.”

So if I were settling a bar bet, I might well say, “Yes, you can trust me. I found that claim by clicking on the top google search return.” The page on which I found the claim doesn’t enter my justification. “Dude, I googled it” might not work for very many justifications today, but Shirky’s quite right that there’s “spectrum” and that “current forces seem set to push [algorithmic authority] further up the spectrum to an increasing number and variety of groups that regard these kinds of sources as authoritative.”

The authority belongs to the algorithm that found the source, not the source itself. Traffic flows along links out to the edges of the network, but authority pulls inward to the center.

* * *

And this is why it seems unfair for folks like Jeff Jarvis to make claims like, “The recipient of links is the party responsible for monetizing the audience they bring.”

News sites should certainly be trying to establish engagement and trust and authority with users who come from google. But insisting that this task is an imperative of the link economy seems to under-appreciate that algorithmic authority centralizes authority. Google pushes the traffic but keeps the trust—or much of it, anyhow.

Maybe the best answer to “What Would Google Do?” goes something like this: build an algorithm that detects and hordes an elusive and highly diffuse resource distributed across a network.

* * *

So Danny Sullivan can jump up and down and yell about WSJ and google and bing: “Do something. Anything. Please. Survive. But there’s one thing you shouldn’t do. Blame others for sending you visitors and not figuring out how to make money off of them.”

Sullivan can exhort newspapers to see google referrals as an opportunity. And they are. Moreover, I have little doubt that many newspapers should be optimizing their pages depending on the referrer, whether that’s google or facebook or twitter or stumbleupon or whatever. But let’s also remember that google changed links. A different kind of traffic now flows along them. And that traffic is fickler—and, yes, less valuable—than we might first imagine.

Christopher Elliot’s Everything Wired Must Converge is a decade old article predicting most of what has already happened regarding networks and technology. “Convergence…will change the ways in which business is conducted.” By convergence he means the marrying of multiple business systems with the Internet. Imagine a world where your human resources, point of sale, inventory control and financial systems all spoke to each other…oh wait they do now.

A decade ago it was obvious to think that the Internet would play a big role in how we do business in the future. In Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody he talks as if the Internet is second nature and how the power of organizations help us run large businesses as well as maintain complex unmonitored systems like Wikipedia. Today the Internet is second nature, which makes reading Elliot’s account so amusing. Shirky states that “when we change the way we communicate, we change society,” (p 17). The changes Elliot predicts helped streamline communication and bring us close to the point of instantaneous communication. This change increased customer support and brought greater security and flexibility to businesses. No longer would customers would have to call the store to get shipping information, then call UPS to check when it would be delivered. Also, businesses became more condensed and transparent across departments.

The convergence Elliot speaks of is, in essence, the outcome of society evolving to make technology work for us. In doing this we are building organizations and groups of people through connections over a network. Creating a set of branded networks is something that Elliot predicts, although he predicts that we will pay for them. We see the emergence of branded networks in social applications like Facebook and Twitter. Organizations that run on complex connections show that to be social is to be human. Elliot and Shirky both agree that the possibilities of the Internet are worth investing in.

Slideshare Deck here.

This week’s readings, “Failure is Free” by Clay Shirky and “Code is Speech” by Gabriella Coleman, discuss the importance and the success of the open source system in current society. First I will review the logic behind an open source system and why/how it has become such an integral part of how we manage and structure our organizations. I will then go over the issues that surround this rising system.

In chapter 10 of Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky discusses the logic of publish-then-filter than has emerged from the evolution of the open source system. This new method has been enabled by the idea of “failure for free”. Shirky explains this using the success of Stay At Home Moms (in chapter 8 of his book). Like any group formed on the Web, every Meetup group faces the problem of balancing specificity and size. In other words, each group wants to create a sense of local community and shared interest without being too general or too specific. An ideal group would exist right in between the generic and the specific—something achieved by the Stay At Home Moms (which can be demonstrated by the success of the group). How was this achieved? Did Meetup know that this would be such a big hit? The process of such group formation is actually quite ironic. Meetup uses an untraditional methodology in which they “do best not by trying to do things on behalf of its users, but by providing a platform for them to do things for one another (Shirky, 235). This seems to be reversed customer service—doing the least possible to serve the users, and instead leaving it up to the users/consumers to communicated and serve themselves. This leaves much room for failure as one may predict. Most groups fail due to a lack of interest by users (too generic, too specific, too boring). The user’s judgement is highly valued because the rise of groups is not a business decision, but a by-product of user behavior. As Shirky writes, “Meetup is succeeding not in spite of the failed groups, but because of the failed groups” (236). This is simply because failure is free. Through trial-and-error systems such as Meetup, successful groups such as Stay At Home Mom are born.
This form of experimentation began with software programmers. Linux was developed by Linus Torvalds, who wanted a free operating system that would utilize voluntary contributions and user participation. This initial proposal by Torvalds launched the idea of collaborative “open source” software. This open source software (OSS) has been one of the most influential developments of the digital age. Open source programs are “freely available and more importantly freely improvable” (244).

A key point that Shirky makes is that open social systems work because open systems lower the cost of failure and they do not create biases in favor of predictable but substandard outcomes, and they make it simpler to integrate the contributions of people who contribute only a single idea. Most traditional organizations try to reduce the likelihood of failure to avoid repercussion costs by choosing the “steady performer” over “brilliant but erratic” (250). On the other hand, the open source movement is an “ecosystem” in which failure is free. Cheap failure allows exploration of many more possibilities or “fitness landscapes” (for any problem there is a vast area of possibilities to explore but few valuable spots within to discover). Therefore, the cost of filtering versus publishing have reversed. Now, trying something new is often times less costly than deciding whether it is worth to try a certain thing.
Competitors such as Microsoft point out that the kernel of Linux is done by only a handful of people and discredits the idea of the open source system that there are hundreds of people contributing to the system. But Shirky expalins why this is not problematic to the open source society. Whereas an additional contributer at a traditional organization will use up resources, there is no such overhead management in an open source system who needs to worry about the scarcity of resources. Microsoft’s attack is pretty easy to negate if we look at the success of Wikipedia versus the flop of Microsoft’s Encarta. Encarta did not utilize user contributions that Wikipedia bases its success on.

Shirky makes the final point that open source systems work because there is genuine support from the community and not just commercial support (for a specific example read pages 256-259 about AT&T vs. Perl). The secret of the open source ecosystem is the shared interest—the idea that “communal can be at least as durable as the commercial” (259).
The philosophical commitment to freedom through OSS in Shirky’s article is directly tied to the argument of source code as speech formed by Gabriella Coleman. Coleman discusses the strong commitment of the Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) society to “redefine the meaning of liberal freedom, property, and software by asserting in new ways that code is speech” (1). Richard Stallman, who founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) created Free Software, which unlike proprietary software, could be copied, shared, and modified without cost. In these systems, no one is really paid and voluntarily contributes to the developments of the organization. Growing copyright laws and patent laws seem to limit the distribution and sharing of F/OSS projects, show in the arrests of Jon Johansen and Dmitry Sklyarov. The former was arrested for unlocking a DVD’s DRM to play movies on Linux computers and the latter was arrested for unlocking Adobe’s e-book access controls. To programmers, these arrests violated the First Amendment and only showed the continual monopolization of big businesses. Coleman writes, “ Hackers, programmers, and computer scientists continue to be motivated to transform what is now their cultural reality—a rival liberal morality—into a broader legal one by arguing that source code should be protectable speech under the U.S. Constitution and the constitutions of other nations” (29).

These ideas can be linked to last week’s reading on Facebook. There is a lack of privacy, but this lack of privacy is the most vital form of the open source society that allows the success Facebook. The MIP works on a basis of persuasive experience and the success of Facebook can be attributed to the success of the six components of the Facebook Platform in determining which approaches and options create the most popular feedback. Facebook is able to apply method of trial-and-error because of the open source system by which failure is free.

Does this mean I won't need a good novel when I am surfing in Kampala?

I’m really excited about all the African new media sites I keep stumbling upon, from projects to blogs to new tools, or combos of all three.  Everything from open street maps that map Kenyan slums to Google Earth workshops in Kampala.  As I get ready to launch my own site (it’s not up yet) on November 30th (12 days and counting) with Emmanuel, I can’t help but be inspired by the exciting things I keep finding on the web.  I thought I would share with you things that are related to Africa and new media that I enjoy on the web…

1) I really like White African, a site that has introduced me to a lot of exciting new stuff on the web.  It’s run by Erik Hersman, who grew up in Kenya and the Sudan, and lives in the U.S. now with three daughters.  He has a personal blog, White African, and AfriGadget, which is about micro-entrepreneurs and tech ingenuity on the continent.  He consults for Ushaidi, which crowdsources crisis information, and his site is full of interesting links and info, to everything from African iphone games to Appfrica and remitting money through cell phones.  He tweets here (I’m addicted to Twitter these days– trying to say interesting things out, without being a twit! but I still like facebook status updates better).  Whenever I need inspiration, I check out his blog, or see what Clay Shirky and Jeff Jarvis are writing about.

2) Stop Stock-outs.  This is a project from Ushaidi that I think is pretty neat, using online maps.  The maps show stock-outs of essential medicines in Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia collected via SMS during the pill check week. Use the zoom scroller on the left side of the map to have a closer look and move the map around by clicking and dragging. Selecting a red “hotspot” will show you more detail. Larger dots represent a greater number of stock-outs.

3) Appfrica.net. Whoa, now this site blows my mind! I love apps (applications for google, facebook, iphones, blackberries, etc.), so this site was a must-visit for me.  So yum- Appfrica Labs! (This is coming from a girl who salivates over whatever Google comes out with next, especially if it’s related to Gmail.)  Also, yay– the CEO of Appfrica Labs live in Kampala! Check out Appfrica’s state of infotech, which has some really great graphics.

Underseas cables around the continent

Appfrica is how I learned about OpenStreetMaps mapping slum neighborhoods in Kenya.  I am working on a story right now that has about 3-4 graphs on Kibera, so this is pretty exciting.

Twelve young residents of Kibera will first be trained on current mapping techniques during a two-day workshop. Individuals from the growing Nairobi technology scene will help train and network with the larger community. The group will then map all of Kibera over a two-week period in mid-November and share the results through OpenStreetMap, joining a growing global community of tech-savvy grassroots mapmakers. “The project will provide open-source data that will help illustrate the living conditions in Kibera. Without basic knowledge of the geography of Kibera it is impossible to have an informed discussion on how to improve the lives of residents of Kibera,” said Mikel Maron.

Check out:

-Google Earth workshops that happened in Kampala and Nairobi

-Pricing web development services in an African market

-Google Trader

This morning, Rex Petrasko, my savvy, smart, sincere executive vice president, closed our daily meeting with the announcement that the New Oxford American Dictionary had proclaimed the Word of the Year for 2009 to be “unfriend.” I smiled at him knowingly from across the room, because I had heard the confounding announcement hours earlier on NPR as I brushed my teeth.

When I heard the brief news byte, I paused for a moment, swallowed hard and considered the irony. First of all, how interesting that the Word of the Year would be a social media—even Facebook word. And “unfriend,” no less. How perplexing that the Oxford folk embraced the negative version of the verb-ized noun “friend.”

Unfriend: (verb) To remove someone as a “friend” on a social networking site such as Facebook. As in, “I decided to unfriend my boyfriend on Facebook after we had a fight.”

“It has both currency and potential longevity,” notes Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford ’s US dictionary program. “In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year. Most “un-” prefixed words are adjectives (unacceptable, unpleasant), and there are certainly some familiar “un-” verbs (uncap, unpack), but “unfriend” is different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of “friend” that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!). Unfriend has real lex-appeal.”

Christine, I think I beg to differ. “Unfriend” has a limited appeal, if at all, and it is particularly disconcerting in this age when people are desperate to connect on some level—electronic or otherwise. Friend, blog, text, comment, post, and tweet are all new inhabitants of the morphed communication lexicon. They are all terms for a new mode of behaving—a new way of being—not so much communicating.

I commented on my Facebook page status today that the Word of the Year might be indicative of the dark underbelly of social media. Merridith Branscombe, a Facebook pal and spirited, sassy woman from my Northwestern sorority days, commented, “It is fairly strange that friend somehow transformed to a verb; and that ‘unfriend’ is Word of the Year? I guess it’s not on the underbelly anymore, but in plain sight.

She is absolutely correct. It is in plain sight. We are connecting and disconnecting in plain sight—in front of God and everyone, and “there’s the rub,” as Hamlet said. Social media is less about communicating and more about behaving. At one point, my ex-boyfriend seemed more disturbed about my “unfriending” him on Facebook than about the actual breakup of the relationship. It gives me pause. Are we all more concerned about the virtual ramifications of relationships than the realities? Something to ponder—especially when we are all so hungry for valuable, real, authentic connection, and online experiences that are truly worth our time and attention in this choatic, often superficial world.

More and more, we are defining ourselves by how we interact, as opposed to what we say. The way we describe ourselves is really irrelevant. We are—how we are, as opposed to who we are. Same goes for businesses. Our customers are defining our brands—not vice versa.

“Unfriend” means that we no longer wish the “offending” person to be part of our online inner circles—our intimate online world, our defined universe. Our walls and tweet streams are sacred ground in many ways. They document our inner most thoughts and our profoundest dreams—our vulnerability and our humanity. As I have mentioned in other posts, “ambient intimacy” has come to describe the visceral nature of social media. Considering that an old boyfriend still might be lurking around as a so-called friend feels invasive, almost voyeuristic. But, how incongruent this seems in a word of open-source and “shareware.” It’s a paradox, indeed.

As the social web continues to explode with opportunities for connection and synergy, conversely, the need to maintain personal autonomy and control somehow intensifies. What do you think?

                Danah Boyd examines the phenomenon of mediated public life, what kind of characteristics it has and how it is different from traditional public life. Today’s youth engaging in public life through social networks sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo. In his article Boyd examines “social dynamics of mediated public life” in order to understand the role of technology in shaping public life.

                The emergence of technology has changed the relationship between ‘public’ and ‘private’ these terms should not be considered in “binary oppositions” to one another, but rather as overlapping notions.   According to Boyd social interaction and information distribution practices has changed dramatically, which is directly correlated to new social technologies. However, the majority of adults do not see the significance of these shifts.

                Boyd discuses the structure and functionality of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. He is saying that people (he mostly speaks about teenagers) all over the world are joining these sites. Users generate profiles which represent themselves using “text, images, video, audio, links, quizzes and surveys.” Boyd highlights three key features of social networking sites such as profiles, friends lists and commenting feature (“Testimonials, Comments, The Wall”). According Fogg Facebook became even more powerful when it launched Facebook platform that allowed 3^rd party developers to build in their features into Facebook, new features allowed users to share music and photos, voice interaction online, less than in a year 3^rd party developers have created over 6000 apps and attracted millions of users. Facebook platform made for the first time MIP (Mass Interpersonal Persuasion) possible (Fogg 2).       

                Let’s go back friends feature. It is crucial to see the difference between friends in real life vs. friends in social networking sites, Boyd is saying that this group does not have close ties but rather this feature (friends) “allows participants to articulate their imagined audience- or why they see being a part of their world within the site”.

                Social networking sites can be seen as “mediated publics”- it can be characterized as the type of environment where “people can gather publicly through mediating technology” (Boyd). Mediated publics have similar functions to unmediated publics, however social networking websites should be examined as another form of public sphere which has its unique characteristics:

1. Persistence- the conversations are not erased, but stay on the web for a long time and can be accessed at any moment by users.    
2. Searchability- the conversations and activity can be searched and tracked which is more difficult in unmediated publics.
3. Replicability- the conversation can be copied into different places which makes a very difficult to determine if the content was slightly altered.    
4. Invisible audiences – the audience is might not be present at the moment a person was expressing him or herself it became possible with the other three characteristics.     

The imagined audience of friends is a key concept of rules and structure changes in the alternative public sphere. In mediated publics physical environment cannot determine what is appropriate and what is not. It is impossible “to speak to all people across all space and all time” (Boyd). That is why we often have to imagine our audience and direct the speech to them; however the actual audience is different. In other words mediated public life have several complications in its architecture: lack of context and the other one is the phenomenon of scale. Potentially internet has the ability to reach millions of people; however in reality the most people remain invisible unless something happens such as embarrassing videos which were directed to a small audience, get enormous popularity and spread with incredible speed.

                The functions of Replicability and Searchability has lead to a situation where “conversations spread and context collapse” (Boyd) In other words we can easily search and find conversations, however they will be lacking the context because it could be only a part of conversation moreover it could be doctored.  The function of searchability makes people easily trackable, but the common logic is why anybody would need to do this. The question is should we create the surveillance for the mediated publics which is based on traditional form public unmediated life? Boyd is saying that the invisible audience has a lot of access to personal profiles, for example employers will try to uncover ‘true personality’ of their future employees. The users often assume that they are invisible because nobody cares about them; however this assumption is wrong, we do not know who our imagined audience is. The function of persistence of mediated publics can reveal a lot of personal information and conversations, journalists will often use the internet for their sources and it is even possible to destroy somebody’s public persona. The architecture of social networking sites can be seen as database where the personal information, profiles, images are separate pieces of data. Mediated publics have all characteristics of database and that is why such function as searchability and replicability became possible.     

                The next part of Boyd’s essay addressed to educators who should acknowledge how mediated public life is shifting the lives of youth. Educator should take into consideration next aspects:

1. Youth want to hang out with their friends in youth space
2. The internet mirrors and magnifies all aspects of social life
3. There are no truth, only conversations             

Then Boyd discusses an educator’s role and that they should guide their students through conversations but not through the assertion of power. In order to participate in conversations with the students educators should prepare themselves: create a profile, use text, images and songs to build their online identity, not to serf for their students, but if they invite them (educators) as a friend to accept it (it is a sign of respect) and etc.  Boyd sees very important to acknowledge this new phenomenon of mediated public life which became possible with the emergence of social networking technologies. It is still unclear how it should be regulated, but it is very important for the users to understand the characteristics of new public sphere (Persistence, Searchability, Replicability, Invisible audiences) which make online persona visible and traceable.

Do Lent

This is another post from our guest Max Borders. You can find his earlier posts here.–Editor

“It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” – The Red Queen, from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass.

Remember Ronald Coase’s The Nature of the Firm? It’s pretty hard reading. But if I understand it right, Coase poses a really important question: why do folks organize into firms? Why isn’t there a totally “free” market in labor? Why do organizations take on scales that result in relatively costly forms of order? Coase’s answer is “transaction costs.” It actually costs more to coordinate actions among scattered people with disparate skill sets—all of whom would have to contract with one another and hammer out details of said contracts. And then they have to get themselves all together somehow to divide labor and accomplish something profitable. So, up to a certain point, organizations arranged like hierarchies have just been less costly to organize. Simply said: it’s cheaper for some people to give orders and some to take them (the former pay the latter for the privilege of being the boss). But that’s changing—and fast.

Enter technology. Lest this starts to sound like one of those Fast Company “new media are revolutionizing everything” columns, suffice it to say technology is lowering the costs of organizing without the need for firms (transaction costs). Clay Shirky does a great job describing the phenomenon in his book Here Comes Everybody. He offers a solid overview of this transformation in progress. So what does all this mean for slowing Leviathan and growing voluntary community?

The Special Interest State

Turn now to Public Choice 101. Mancur Olson nailed it. The idea is pretty simple: our Republic – most any republic – will turn into a corporate state due to the problem of special interests. If you can pass a regulation or subsidy, some small group is going to win. The small group that stands to benefit most from a reg or subsidy also has the greatest incentive to organize and has the lowest organizing costs. The benefits are concentrated (on the interest group), but the costs are diffuse (we all pay marginally higher taxes and marginally higher prices.) We the People have neither the incentive nor can we afford to organize against every group behind this little legislative tweak or that. But the tweaks add up. The costs mount, but go largely unseen. Special interest groups almost always win. The result is tremendous deadweight loss. Democracy ends up serving them, not “the public interest” (whatever the hell that means). Rational apathy, rational ignorance and/or rational irrationality rule.

Glass Half Full

But here’s the optimism: If people like Shirky are right, it’s getting cheaper both to monitor and to organize against special interest groups—at least select ones. I’m not saying we’re anywhere near being able to fight them at parity. Perhaps we’ll never be. Nor are we likely to see the immediate effects of our new distributed, organization tools. But we may soon be equipped at least to slow the process of “demosclerosis.” We may already be. And as long as our collective productivity gains outpace the growth of the deadweight state, we’ll be okay—at least in some less-than-savory utilitarian sense. We’re also going to be better equipped to drive creative destruction and out-compete the government in some of its historic monopoly areas, such as education. (We might even unleash the forces of social entrepreneurship if you believe folks like Michael Strong.)

The Red Queen Effect

Optimism over. Offer a glimmer of hope and just as quickly dampen it at its source? What can I say? You see, the enemies of voluntary association and advocates of expanded state power have all the nifty tools at their disposal, too. So the costs of organization are going down for them. And I’m not just talking about organizing for those titanic tug-o-wars we call elections. I’m talking about organizing more rapidly to form Bootleggers and Baptists coalitions, which obscure all the corporatism that’s really in the works. I’m talking about new instruments that make controlling and pilfering from us lower-cost propositions. Hence the Red Queen Effect. My guess is that until we find THE disruptive innovation to dismantle the state, we will be engaged in this strange, destructive form tit for tat for quite some time.

This weeks readings were Anna Notaro’s “The Lo(n)g Revolution: the Blogosphere as an alternative Public Sphere?” and Cory Doctorow’s Google fiction “Scroogled.”

In “The Lo(n)g Revolution: the Blogosphere as an alternative Public Sphere?” Anna Notaro suggests during this period of never-ending technological advances and the expansiveness of Internet, that we are entering a time where the blogosphere is not just an alternative but, instead, is the new public sphere. Notaro reminds us, however, that we are often clouded by a naïve excitement in the hope that the internet will be an ideal agent for social change and “true” democracy, but we must wait to see if it will live up to its potential.

So how do blogs play a key role in this idea of public discourse, professionalism, and political communication?

In “The Long Revolution”, Raymond Williams explains that new social cultures exist at the intersection of the democratic revolution, the industrial revolution, and the cultural revolution. For Williams, these obvious examples of change prove the benefit in fighting for a “human order.” In other words, we must not take our current situations for granted but rather, must act on our convictions.

Similarly, Habermas introduces the idea of the “public sphere” and its influence on ideas in  “Structural Transformations of the Public Sphere.” He argues that “the greatest contribution to the development of the public sphere was the emergence of its institutional base, the organizational structures that allowed these ‘webs of social development’ to exist. It links the growth of an urban culture, as the new arena of public life, to a new infrastructure for social communication.”

At the base of the public sphere are the webs of social development where we can exchange information and opinions. With the invention of the Internet, blogs, and chat rooms, the public sphere has become accessible to all people. The difference, according to Notaro, is that the Internet has introduced many publics so people have the ability to choose their communities, their peers, and their public.

However, with this new individual power that the Web provides, we must question to role of traditional democracy in relation to our new media environments. Many scholars claim that the blogosphere and the net promote “democratic progress,” and citizens can interact with each other as equals. Habermas cites this as an ideal society or, agora, where “the discussion among citizens issues were made topical and took shape.”

Benjamin Barber further explores the relationship between mediated communication and the democratic system. He presents three potential scenarios: The Pangloss scenario where technology merely caters to a corporate agenda, the Pandora scenario in which the government uses new technology for power and repression, and the ideal Jeffersonian scenario where governments and citizens adjust technology to promote participation and democracy.

Notaro uses Rebecca Blood’s history of blogs to highlight the core of her discussion. Blood explains that blogs evolved from forums where people commented on particular subjects or scholarly articles into “personal diaries” where anyone can express his or her feelings and opinions to the Internet public. Blogs have created a public sphere that transforms the consumers of information into the creators of information.

One problem with these Web bases public spheres is, rather than exposing ourselves to new ideas, we simply “tailor our electronic environment to hear our own views reinforced over and over again. Blogs could thus become some sort of ‘echo chambers’ where people end up listening only to their own opinions.

Notaro goes on to discuss the political implications of the blogosphere. She introduces the Hansard Society, “an independent non-partisan organization working to promote effective parliamentary democracy” that set out to study  “how democratic institutions can adapt to the information age.” Their report was released in July 2004 and some of the key findings were:

• Blogging has the potential to significantly impact on political engagement and political processes as they provide an opportunity for alternative informal voices to enter into the political debate without a great deal of cost or effort.
• Blogging breaks down the barriers between public and privates spaces and allows elected representatives to put across their individuality and personality.
• The availability of low-cost, low maintenance authoring software means blogs are far easier to construct and update than conventional websites.
• The most appealing blogs are those which provide genuine debate between bloggers and visitors to the blog. Blogs that do not offer this facility give visitors little reason to return.
• At the moment, political blogging is still regarded as the pursuit of internet connoisseurs rather than ordinary members of the public. While our jury found blogs easy to navigate, they found the tone of content unappealing.
• Blogging has the potential to be of enormous benefit to MPs and other elected representatives who use it as a listening post rather than another tool to broadcast their ideas, achievements or party dogma

Looking at these results, Notaro concludes that because the blogosphere removes the barriers between private and public spaces, it acts as a “vehicle for self-presentation. [B]logs diminish people’s need to be spoken for by others.” In theory, this increased accessibility paves the way for a more democratic society in which the citizens take a significant and active role.”

In that same vein, in an essay that appeared in Wired, Jon Katz notes:

• Where freedom is rarely mentioned in mainstream media anymore, it is ferociously defended – and exercised daily – on the Net.
• Where our existing information systems seek to choke the flow of information through taboos, costs, and restrictions, the new digital world celebrates the right of the individual to speak and be heard – one of the cornerstone ideas behind American media and democracy.
• Where our existing political institutions are viewed as remote and unresponsive, this online culture offers the means for individuals to have a genuine say in the decisions that affect their lives.
• Where conventional politics is suffused with ideology, the digital world is obsessed with facts.
• Where our current political system is irrational, awash in hypocritical god-and-values talk, the Digital Nation points the way toward a more rational, less dogmatic approach to politics.
• The world’s information is being liberated, and so, as a consequence, are we.

Ultimately, the Internet allows people to do things they couldn’t do before from allowing them to experiment with their sexual identities without being humiliated, allow researchers the ability to get the newest data in hours, give people the opportunity to express themselves without having their views filtered through journalists, and push agendas they see important. This brings to mind Clay Shirky’s points on collective action. The blogosphere gives collective action a home.

In some of her closing words, Notaro says, these days, we lead two lives: “On one side we exist as individuals, made up of flesh and bones, on the other we are ‘digital persons’, whose lives enfold on the Net.” This idea of ‘digital people’ speaks to Cory Doctorow’s fiction story “Scroogled.”

Doctorow’s story addresses the threat of loss of privacy on the Web–an all too real topic in today’s society.  Doctorow illuminates the severity of this threat by telling the story of a former Google employees US customs experience. In the story, Google plays an instrumental role in Immigration security as, “we are now Googled at the border.” By using Google ads, the government determines whether or not a person going through customs might be a threat to national security.

“Every time you visited a page with Google ads on it, or used Google maps or Google mail–even if you sent mail to a Gmail account–the company diligently collected your info. Recently, the site’s search-optimization software had begun using the data to tailor Web searches to individual users. It proved to be a revolutionary tool for advertisers. An authoritarian government would have other purposes in mind.”

We spend so much time online that Google probably knows us better than our best friend. The main character, Greg, thought to himself what he put into that search bar “was likely more revealing than what he told his shrink.” Many of us Google things and participate in searches under the assumption that we are doing it in the privacy of our own homes, but each click is tracked and clicks add up and can reveal a lot about you. More and more, we are becoming ‘digital persons’ and each digital person has a file. Greg hadn’t quite realized how much of him had migrated onto the Web and worked its way into Google’s server farms. They had his entire online identity.

This story brings to mind many questions about power, access, and privacy. Is it ethical for Google to be handing over our personal information to benefit advertisers? Is it ethical for Google to give our information to governments in the interest of national security? What kind of access do Google employees have to our information since Maya (Greg’s Google friend) said she would look at users profiles?

There is a quote towards the end of the story that may seem a little exaggeratory to some:

“My parents left east Germany in 65′. The used to tell me about the Stasi. The secret police would put everything about you in your file, if you told an unpatriotc joke, whatever. Whether they meant it or not, what Google has created is no different.”

Does Google know too much? What can we do about it? Do we care enough to do anything about it?

E ci rimangono (nella nostra libreria, ovviamente!).

O cara é foda!

    In the continuation of Here Comes Everybody, Shirky expands on the effects of society no longer being constrained by transaction costs.  In chapter 3 he focuses on how society has come to a period of mass amateurization and its implications; chapter 6 is on new the forms of collective action, chapter 7 is on how powerful collective action can be versus individual action, and his TED talk reiterates these points emphasizing effective use of society’s new tools.

         Shirky’s main argument is that “revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technology, it happens when society adopts new behaviors (book cover);” society is currently amidst a revolution and Shirky explains how.  The fact that with the internet our communication tools are cheaper and better facilitating innovative uses (77), first and foremost, deprofessionalizes publishing—it is now easy and free to generate and spread information.  Information through traditional media is expense; each word on a newspaper page includes at least the costs for paper, ink, and the salary of the staff.  Due to this, selection is an unavoidable.  Mass amateurization undoes this limitation.  The unlimited perfect copyability of internet technology, which Shirky uses anecdotes of weblogs and email to illustrate, redefines newsworthiness changing the question from “why publish this?” to “why not?” (60). Now that everyone can publish, it is no longer a skill rare enough to pay for.  Mass amateurization has broken professional categories; weblogs gives everyone the ability to commit journalistic acts.  The dilemma then arises who receives professional benefits.  Society must now adopt to the changes in publishing.

    Mass amateurization has also changed non-professional means of information sharing.  Email, instant messaging, private messages are all acts of publishing although the message is addressed to a limited amount of people.  Since the receiver of the message has the same tools to become a sender, the original sender has no control over the path of their message.  An email can appear on a blog becoming a news story.

    This leads to why communication technologies improve collective action.  Shirky compares the 2002 exposé on a sexually-abusive Priest to a 1992 exposé in order to show how “social tools don’t create collective action—they merely remove the obstacles to it (159)”.  In 2002 information is now easy to share and, in turn, allowed for easy, effective coordination of a national reaction.  Global didn’t have to spread their story; due to the internet, individuals did that effortlessly.  New communication tools allowed for the outrage, which was present but short-lived in 1992, to spread eliminating the church’s ability to wait out the scandal.  Debates on blogs involved the collection of information which maintained and spread awareness resulting in damaging collective action.  This internet model of group formation allows strong collective action for, as Shirky states in the video, the internet (being of the many-to-many structure) is the first medium to facilitate group conversation—it is the first medium to fit social networks.   

Consumers are now producers

    With his discussion of flash mobs, Shirky then expands on this explanation of the force groups can now exert due to this technological change.  Technology allows for social awareness of information on the level that everybody knows that everybody knows that everybody knows, allowing for real public action (163).  Group formation can now be invisible while their actions immediately become visible improving society’s ability of political action: “uncoordinated actors can create a public protest that the government can neither interdict…nor suppress without triggering public documentation (171)”.  This is the point in the video Shirky uses the story on China to demonstrate; Chinese officials had to remove complete access to internet site in order to prevent further documentation from leaking.

    The last example in the TED video of group formation on Obama’s website emphasizes Shirky’s last point that society needs new behaviors due to new media.  By Obama not shutting down the “Get FISA Right” group which protested his policy decision, his campaign showed how this media is to be used.  The purpose of media now is to give people a voice, not to control or suppress them.   

    The revolution that followed the printing press, proving the inefficiency of scribes, showed how changes that threaten professionalism can benefit society.  New communication technologies are benefiting society by facilitating existing social network structures–consumers are allowed to be producers.  However, for the most efficient use, society must adopt a range of new behaviors.

In Clay Shirky’s book, Here Comes Everybody, he examines the dynamics of group organization in social, cultural, and political fields, as described in the previous post “Cooperative Frameworks.” Shirky goes beyond this notion in the proceeding chapters and explores the capabilities that new media have given to the user and the ways in which individuals have appropriated new media tools and applied it to collective action.  ”Cooperative Frameworks” provides a contextual platform on which Shirky builds his next points regarding self-publishing and collective action via the Web.

As it has become glaringly clear, the effect that the Internet has had upon modern media cannot be quantized.  It has transformed society’s ability to produce, distribute, exhibit, and store information.  It has expanded vehicles of communication and has revolutionized to the point of replacing traditional institutions, such as newspapers, magazines, and even telephones.  Shirky reminds us, however, that these cannot all be categorized as triumphs—there are indeed consequences.  Take for example the publishing industry.  The detrimental affects of the Internet have quite literally led to the collapse of journalism and the print industry.  Shirky writes, “The principal threat to all newspapers small and large was not competition from other newspapers but radical changes in the overall ecosystem of information.”[1] As the use of scribes became obsolete with the onset of the printing press, the Internet has led to the decay and irrelevance of the printed word.  Traditionally, publishing was limited to an elite group of professionals—men and women who were educated in their particular field of expertise.  Journalists would seek out publishers in order to print and distribute their work.  Customarily, this breakdown of labor according to one’s specialized skill set was how the industry functioned.  The nature of professionalism depends on its scarcity and specialization in a specific field; otherwise it would be a hobby or an activity of interest.  The Internet, however, has turned this entire idea on its head.  What was once limited to a set of professionals has now been opened up to anyone who has an interest.  Shirky refers to this idea as the “mass amateurization of publishing.”[2] This suggests that anyone can produce and distribute their ideas as long as they have a computer (and sometimes this is even unnecessary— i.e., iPhone, Blackberry, etc.) and a connection to the Internet.  This technological innovation has empowered the voice of the average user, however, it has diminished the primacy of the professional.  It also begs the question of where do journalist privileges begin and end when professional specialization is eradicated?

Shirky is not simply a pessimist, however.  He does indeed highlight the advantages that this information-age has provided modern communication.  With the accessibility and flexibility of the Internet, the formulaic approach that traditional media outlets follow can be avoided.  In other words, a news station will only pick up a story if it finds that it is relevant, urgent, and/or being covered by other stations.  This greatly reduces the type and the amount of information that would attract the attention of the mainstream media.  In contrast, the Internet and weblogs cover a wider range of stories—stories that would not otherwise be covered by those traditional outlets.  Shirky calls upon the example of a comment by Trent Lott, a senator from Mississippi and figure who attracted a lot of controversy regarding a racist comment he made in reference to Strom Thurmond’s presidential campaign.  Because the mainstream media did not find Lott’s comment to be particularly pertinent, they did not cover the story, however, Lott was torn apart in Internet forums.  Because of the huge amount of attention this attracted from the weblogs, Lott ultimately apologized for his words, an apology which finally did attract the attention of mainstream outlets.  This progression of non-interest to interest is due to various factors brought about due to the Internet age and the ways in which the Internet facilitates group discussion and action:

• The Internet made this story accessible to millions of people
• Anyone who felt compelled to comment on the situation is able to on the site, thus becoming a producer of content (becoming both the journalist and publisher)
• Anyone can copy and forward the story to anyone else
• You do not have to be especially skilled in order to produce and distribute the information– “the cost of finding like-minded people has been lowered and, more important, deprofessionalized.”[3]

This example highlights the notion that it is not necessary for traditional media institutions to become involved for the story to gain notoriety or for the information to reach the population.  This would not have been possible ten years ago—today, the Internet empowers the user.  It also provides the impetus for group communication to evolve as in the case with the Lott example.  The pressure that was put on mainstream culture due to the huge volume of comments on the Internet eventually led to the traditional outlets covering the story.

Shirky shifts his attention once again to the dynamics of collaborative and collective action.  The ease of sharing of information due to technological innovations has allowed for group organization to develop much easier.  Shirky writes, “Easier and wider dissemination of information changes group awareness.”[4] Because the transaction costs of exhibiting and distributing information are near zero with the Internet and its forums, and because of the permanence of information on the Internet, groups are able to form communication on a group level much easier.  Websites and online forums are social tools that enable development of organizations—an idea that was not possible years ago.  Technology also breaks down barriers that once impeded groups being able to expand into all areas they wanted to (i.e., it breaks geographical boundaries that once limited group access).  Ultimately, Shirky suggests that these technological innovations are not the cause of groups organizing, but rather they break down the obstacles that used to hinder their development.  People can either utilize these social tools of the Internet to organize socially or politically, but whatever their goal, they are able to extend their message due to the ease of communication and group organization due to the Web.

Shirky’s video lecture, “How Social Media Can Make History,” brings all of these ideas home.  He discusses how the Internet has changed the landscape of media institutions.  Social sites such as Twitter and Facebook have provided a forum for people to display and distribute their ideas.  Specifically, he looks to parts of the world with repressive regimes—places that highly censor the information that is projected to the rest of the world—and how the Internet has provided forums in which those citizens can freely express themselves while also providing the freedom to form groups with a level of anonymity.  He calls upon the example of the earthquake in the Sichuan province of China.  Through the use of camera phones, texting and emailing, information about the quake was broadcast around the world before any official journalists had the chance to either photograph or report on the disaster.  The ease with which Chinese citizens were able to post the information along with the near nothing costs allowed for the people to move from being mere consumers to being producers of the news.  The situation between the government and the people became rather tense due to the mass amount of information that was being publicized about the mistakes of the government as well as the collective action of the people against the government who gathered in protests, however, my point in highlighting this example emphasizes the ability of the average technology consumer to take the wheel on producing, thus reversing and even replacing the roles of traditional institutions.  It also stresses the Internet’s effortless ability to provide a forum for group communication and a basis for group action.  Ultimately, technological innovations have had a tremendous impact on the media landscape.  Not only has it revolutionized traditional institutions, it has empowered the user to become both producer of content and organizer of movements, all of which would not have been possible just ten years ago.

[2] Shirky, 60.

[3] Shirky, 63.

[4] Shirky, 151.

In Here Comes Everybody and the lecture “How Social Media Can Make History,” Clay Shirky elaborates on the impact of social technologies and the shift that occurred in the media environment.  Ever since the popularization of the Internet, media has become more social.  Shirky declares on the cover of his book, “revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies—it happens when society adopts new behaviors” (160).  In his book and lecture, Shirky reveals how new technologies—such as the Internet and its features like e-mail and websites—allow for society to adopt new behaviors.  These technologies did not cause the changes in society’s behaviors; these technologies empowered society to adopt the changes.

Today, our media landscape has technologies that are global, social, ubiquitous and cheap.  Along with these four traits develops another phenomenon: mass amateurization.  This concept removes privileges that used to be reserved for the media profession.  This change threatens those who consider themselves as professionals.  For the past few decades before the advent of the Internet, they prided themselves in being gatekeepers.  They do not want to lose the prestige of being professionals and are very “concerned with threats to the profession” (69).  While with some professions, as Shirky suggests, should always have high standards (like that for surgeons and pilots), there are times where a change “threatens the profession [but] benefits society,” like that of the changing information ecosystem (69).

Not only did it change the media landscape, but the advent of mass amateurization and new communication tools change many previously established social norms and definitions.  This changes the idea of what constitutes as a real journalist.  Before Internet, the definition was based upon “ownership of communications machinery” (72).  It was about who was rich enough to own publishing machines and media outlets and the journalists that were associated with them.  With Internet, are bloggers considered journalists?  Does posting a 140 characters Tweet make someone a journalist?  The blurring of what constitutes as a professional journalist also makes unclear if just anyone deserve the privilege of being protected by the law.  Furthermore, the shift is also “changing social definitions that are not tied to professions” (75-6).  In the book, Shirky uses the example of Sherron Watkins, who was an accountant for Enron before its tragic end.  For Watkins, sending one e-mail to her co-workers containing her worries for an accounting scandal can deem her as a whistle blower.  Due to the nature of e-mail, it is virtually impossible to destroy all traces of information that they contain; therefore, even though Watkins only sent this e-mail to a few, her alarm can potentially be leaked to many others.

The shift from traditional media, like print and television, to Internet and its social tools makes a change in communication.  Unlike previous media, the Internet allows conversation to generate: the audience can now respond to news and information.  Not only that, audience is now the producers, writing blogs or tweets.  Media outlets, from print to television, no longer have the monopoly on information.  These new technologies are “many-to-many tools,” allowing amateurs to ignite conversations in online communities (158).  To illustrate the power of the amateurs and their reach, Shirky, in his lecture, draws from the events that occurred after the 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit the Sichuan province of China in May 2009.  The Chinese government first found out about the earthquake not from news agencies or officials, but rather, from its own citizens and through Twitter.  Even more surprising is that the Tweets about the earthquake came several minutes before the geological survey announced the natural disaster.  The advent of cell phones made it possible to capture photos and videos of the earthquake, allowing multi-media of the catastrophe to circulate the web before established networks even got to Sichuan to film footage.  For a while after the earthquake occurred, the top 9 of Twitter’s “top 10” Tweets were about the event.  As Shriky reveals in his lecture, the amount of amateur generated media surged the Internet and “rippled like wildfire.”

Amateurs on the web are not bounded by the structure and guidelines of traditional media and what is deemed as newsworthy.  They broke free from the idea of self-suppression, where “old stories are never revisited without a new angle,” and news cycles, the concept of “old news” (62).  Furthermore, as cost of publishing is driven down (to nearly nothing) and space is no longer an issue, the mentality of what to publish switched from “why publish this?” to “why not?” (60).  No longer does the public have to deal with the professional bias in traditional media.  This changes the definition of news, “from news as an institutional prerogative to news as part of a communications ecosystem” (66).

This is apparent in the ever-changing field of social communication that allows for the formation of groups and collective action, empowering society to challenge existing institutions.  In his lecture, Shirky declares that one of the big changes in this media revolution is that old media get digitized, creating an environment where every medium is right next door to all other media.  This makes “reader redistribution,” whether an online new story or an online video clip, quite easy to send through e-mail, disseminating information to an individual or a group at the speed of light (149).  Again, drawing from Shirky’s example of the Sichuan earthquake, within half a day of the disaster, donation sites were up and donations were pouring in globally.  Social communications allow for the respond to occur so quickly “by removing two obstacles—locality of information, and barriers to group reaction” (153).  There are many Chinese around the world and many people with businesses or families in China.  Social tools, such as Twitter, allowed for those around the world with vested interest in the disaster to feel the shared emotions of shock and sadness to the news.

The Chinese government, perhaps unwisely, decided to let the citizens’ reporting go.  After some investigation, the citizens found out the reason why many school buildings collapsed, killing many school children, was because corrupt officials had taken bribes to allow the structures to be built less than code.  Some citizens, radicalized by the lost of their next generation (due to China’s one child law), protested against the Chinese government.  As Shirky asserts: “don’t let even small protests get started, as they can grow, and don’t let any documentation get out” (164).  The Chinese government, which has always excelled in the censorship of the Internet, has failed to control this controversy and the spreading of documentation.  There was no way to filter through unwanted information other than to shut down entire services.  This was because information was disseminated locally, quickly, by amateurs and at such abundance: everything that China, at that point, was not used to dealing with.  Social tools, as exemplified, can spread the knowledge of corruptions, but it can also be used to expose corruption.  Flash mobs are centered around collective actions where a group of people meet spontaneously for a synchronized act. The example that Shirky gives is the protest against Belarus’ oppressive government where LiveJournal was used to declare the meeting times and the choice of actions.  These mobs needed social tools where the “organization of group effort can be invisible, but the results can be immediately visible” and “allow events to be arranged without much advance planning” (169).  Social tools, here, empower the protesters to challenge the undemocratic government.

In the short time since the prominent use of the Internet and its social tools, the media landscape has changed drastically.  However, as Shirky asserts at the end of his lecture, the current situation is not whether this media environment is the one that we want to use, but rather, what is the most effective way to use this environment.

Media is changing. In the social environments that now exist; once a problem is solved once for one person, it’s solved for everyone, everywhere. People with seemingly nothing in common can band together, become organised and cause change. Media has moved from information to co-ordination.

Old fashioned media revolved around a few central publishers. As the number of citizen journalists is exponentially increasing, traditional media is losing the monopoly on publicly available information. They are required to adapt their businesses during this new era.

People with similar interests are finding those that are like-minded. By being where the people are the sharing makes the making better. Sites like MOCpages are harnessing intrinsic motivations.

Autonomy – A desire to be the author, to make a mark
Competence – A desire to be good at something
Behaviour is motivation filtered through opportunity.

New media is making us think through problems differently. We are still not used to media existing in the public, that’s not for the public.

Messages from an organisation are no longer disparate or controlled. This is what Mark Pesce would probably refer to as mob behaviour.

Volvemos a Clay Shirky y sus interesantes ideas expuestas en el TED de este año.  A propósito, el miedo a escribir en este blog ha ido desapareciendo.

En su charla “How Social Media can make history” lo primero que me llama la atención es el título. En primer lugar, porque es un cuestionamiento que en la charla no tiene una respuesta concreta ni sola forma de construirse. Sin embargo, en ejemplos como el terremoto ocurrido en China vemos que el alcance de los medios digitales es tal que ni el superfirewall chino alcanzó a filtrar la información que se produjo sobre el hecho. Aparecen entonces dos problemas: el exceso de información sobre un hecho y la necesidad de vigilar o censurar la información.
En eventos de esta magnitud la sociedad entera se convierte en un ente productor de información que puede resultar incluso más efectivo que un medio oficial (vimos que por Twitter se informo primero del terremoto). En esos casos no hay tiempo para cuestionarse por la legitimidad de la información o de la persona que la publica, lo interesante es como la masa se organiza y colaborativamente empieza a construir espacios (como los portales de donaciones) en pro de una causa. Eso me recuerda algo que mencionaba Shirky en el video anterior, y era como la red permitía coordinar a un grupo de personas sin necesidad de tener una institución que medie el proceso. Como vemos entonces, sí es posible coordinarse.

Ciudadanos que observan, ciudadanos que informan
Son los ciudadanos los primeros productores de la informacion, son los ciudadanos quienes inician las campañas, son los ciudadanos quienes comienzan a dinamizar un hecho y a aportar al mismo voluntariamente. Puede que el exceso de información produzca un caos y se pierda la claridad del hecho, pero si tenemos un mundo donde en cada esquina hay un ciudadano productor de información, ésta va a verse beneficiada en cuanto a la inmediatez y a la intención, porque serán muchos puntos de vista, muchas ideologías, muchos contextos los que la produzcan y serán los mismos usuarios quienes definan sus fuentes y la filtren como deseen.

…De repente, empiezo a sentirme en el papel de ciudadano productor de información. ¿Tendré algo interesante que decir? ya lo creo.