Semester Recap – New Communication Technologies

I really enjoyed my New Communication Technologies class at UW-Whitewater this semester. It was a truly unique learning experience in this day and age, and Dr. Wachanga’s teaching style really allowed me to soak in the material we looked at over the course of 16 weeks.

The most helpful part was all the discussions we had that really had me involved and thinking about the topic. My favorite topic was probably crowd-sourcing and Ushahidi. I thought it was fascinating how people that weren’t even getting paid managed to map such great disasters with surprising efficiency. These kind of disaster relief real-time information systems are exactly what we need more of if we want to combat the ever-increasing crisis’s and conflicts that keep occurring.

The ten flatteners of the world that we learned about provided an excellent overview of how we are all becoming globally interconnected. We can communicate at such blazing speeds that its almost as if we are visiting every place in the world at any given time.

Overall this was one of my better college learning experiences and I’m glad to have taken part in this class!

Themes from ISOJ

Themes from International Symposium on Online Journalism

1. Twitter should be seen as a social platform where you can network and communicate with others, not just somewhere to throw news and publications.

2. Social Media Journalism should try to find ways to allow meaningful audience response rather then half-baked discussions.

3. Pay attention to what your using, since more and more applications are becoming shovelware, rushed out the door.

4. At the end of the day, its all about who owns the audience and who has captured and kept their attention.

Social Media – Japan Earthquake

The latest crisis in Japan had sent millions worldwide to social media networks to spread information, videos, and create donation and relief funds to help quake victims. In the initial moments after the earthquake, cell phones in Japan were hit with such a large number of people that they had to be shut down. This meant that the best link to the outside world was facebook and twitter. For an American traveler who was driving his car at the time, the internet became his main outlet.

He was almost instantly swamped with messages in his email concerning his health and condition, and he used facebook to spread the news about the disaster and how he was doing. Another American, having just landed in Japan, found the phone infrastructure to be in disarray. This meant the internet was the main means of communication, especially social networking technologies.

Videos started to spring up on YouTube sharing what exactly had happened, connecting everyone with Japan almost as if they had been there. This awareness and connection between everyone using social media has had an extremely positive impact on the speed and efficiency in which we are dealing with this situation. Aid organizations and disaster relief have been leveraging social media to its fullest during this event, and it just goes to show just how important many-to-many communication has become when trying to coordinate in these times of crisis.

Japan Earthquake and Tsunami: Social Media Spreads News, Raises Relief Funds

Covering Disaster Summary

There have always been natural disasters and human crises that we’ve had to deal with, but it wasn’t until the dramatic advances in communication technologies that we’ve had the ability to respond to these disasters efficiently and quickly. The spread, mobility, and range of all these new technologies, such as mobile phones, twitter, and facebook, allow us to recover and provide aid in a timely manner. All this many-to-many communication doesn’t come without its fair share of problems though. Information credibility, accuracy, and flow (two-way communication) can create issues when trying to filter out proper information from false information.

The “Twitter in Tehran” situation, where a photograph about a women killed in the Tehran demonstrations was spread using social media, is an excellent example of what we have to be careful of with all these new technologies. Our ability to access information faster has also taken a toll on the reliability of the facts. In general, critical emergencies have started gaining more prevalence, and that in turn is making our communication technologies the lifelines for dealing all these human and civil conflicts. Mobile phones have had the greatest reach and penetration over the last decade, with internet and social networks springing up in more recent years. This creates a disparity between the communication types (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many) which have different effects on the audiences and information.

Improvements in our early warning systems to detect these disasters has been ongoing since the 1940’s, but the impact of the December 2004 tsunami was the stepping stone that lead to better progress in our warning systems. In the region the tsunami hit, there was no warning system and no disaster prevention, which pointed out that we all needed a better warning system no matter where you were, and the need for an international framework of regulations regarding disaster prevention and warning. Since then, great efforts have gone into increasing warning standardization, greater connection between public and emergency networks, and allowing priority access to emergency services during a crisis. The newest emerging issues are controlling the flow of information, causing slower reactions but reliable facts, versus real-time information, creating faster information but worse fact filtering. It can never be a perfect system, but with all the improvements I think there could be some common ground for coordinating both methods efficiently.

Although this has profoundly affected our early warning systems, we need to focus more now on long-term benefits to our early warnings, such as general community preparedness using communication methods and different technologies. With the spread of mobile and online networks, we have increased the amount of lifelines we can access during times of crisis. It’s all about creating options and alternatives instead of relying on one single method of information and networking. The UN has started devising GIVAS (Global Impact and Vulnerability Alert System) to provide real-time information and analysis of global crises so that they can target people that are most vulnerable and in need of assistance. This has also lead to crowdsourcing technology, which maps the location from which information is posted to gain a better understanding of the crisis and its most greatly affected zones. Technology and communication really has become our crises lifelines, and we have to do everything we can to create options for ourselves during a major event.

In-Class Presentation – Original Research

We had a presentation in our class about how to go about conducting original research on a paper and what to look out for to get good information. The most important part of finding proper research is making sure you formulate the proper question in the first place, because once you have your question you can easily narrow down what you need to ask or look for in order to get great information.

I thought the presentation was a bit unprofessional and sloppy, but he got the point across and his example’s from his own paper on comparing two likely employees based on facebook profiles was an excellent choice. It was relevant and showed the concerns when trying to get the research you need. I agree with him when he says that the question is the most important part of the equation. It can’t be too general and has to be something within your grasp.

Summary of Two Articles

The Political Power of Social Media

This article focuses on the effects of social media (Text messaging, Twitter, etc) on politics and what issues crop up when dealing with the public. Social media has become the prime coordinating tool for most political movements, and most authoritarian governments are trying to limit the public’s access to these tools. In response to this, the U.S Government has committed itself to preserving Internet Freedom to strengthen society rather then cripple it. Freedom of Expression is such a powerful belief that Internet Freedom is necessary to keep the public in order.

This Internet Freedom can run into issues though since its such a complicated situation. When the U.S Government tried to establish anti-censorship programs aboard, the software they choose lead to dire consequences regarding security and trying to keep information from governments. The U.S Government needs to stop focusing so much on using broad strokes to help those aboard with anti-censorship, and try to increase localized public speech and assembly to avoid backlash from specific regimes.

From Innovation to Revolution

This article is a response to the article above in regards to how the internet and e-Commerce have effected retail business. It states that the internet hasn’t actually solved any existing problems, and that means it doesn’t drastically effect the current retail market. Sure it might help to have a website for your business, but it can function entirely without one.

Clay Shirky, who wrote the original article above, responds to this by saying that the response is looking at things in the wrong perspective. The internet hasn’t changed how businesses function, but has changed the entire competitive landscape. Competition is now derived from more then one location (Online, Retail, Etc), which he then concludes by stating how the Internet really doesn’t change functions, but rather the dynamics within an area that uses it.

Research Topic Relevant Blog Comments

I’ve recently been working on a  research paper for new communication technologies, and have found many interesting blogs and articles relevant to the topic I am researching, which is the public relations aspect of social media regarding companies and business.
Check out my comments and links below:

#1
I have to agree that they might be OVER-simplifying some of their features. Like and Share are completely different states of mind, I couldn’t even imagine them being joined. Just because I like something doesn’t necessarily mean I want to share it, and vice-versa. We aren’t that stupid and can spend the extra effort to use two different features. UGH
http://mashable.com/2011/02/27/facebook-like-button-takes-over-share-button-functionality/

#2
This is some great advice for marketing event organizers, but also applies to those that don’t know much about twitter and hashtags/chats. I actually learned how they work now because of these tips and am grateful for this post.
Its nice that the chats can have different formats, I particularly like the one where the chat has a moderator and a few important guest speakers, that way you can also promote audience members at certain times to ask questions and so forth (At least I assume).
I also love the fact that you can archive chats. I haven’t used any of these features so its garnered my interest into using twitter for livechats.
http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/07/5-tips-twitter-chats/

#3
Thanks for outlining some of the methods and ways for monitoring social media, especially how there are many freeware approaches to monitoring services for small startups and personal use, Awesome!
http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-monitoring/social-media-monitoring-made-simple/

Facebook and Twitter Articles Summary

An Explosion Prompts Rethinking of Twitter and Facebook

When a building had exploded in Bozeman, Montana last spring, no one from any local news organizations or from NewWest.Net had been on-scene to report the news. This didn’t matter one bit, because twitter allowed everyone that was on the scene to become their own kind of “reporter”. Those “tweeps” from all the people that had witnessed the event had photos and important emergency information which helped spread the news instantly throughout the web. They had become a bigger reporting team then any news organizations could have come up with. “Twitter had earned its stripes”, said Michael Becker, confirming that twitter could indeed be an extremely useful news source.

NewWest.Net learned from these events and had their “aha” moment for their social media usage. They made many mistakes in their use of social media since they adopted fairly early, such as automation of twitter posts and linking facebook with their twitter. Slowly they began to figure out how to properly use their social media, and it has greatly increased their traffic and meaningful conversations with the audience. They figured out that unlinking facebook and twitter, and removing automation helped gain better user interaction. Once they started adding personality and catering to human feelings on their twitter, it really allowed them to flourish.

Don’t Fear Twitter

Many have feared the shrinking and diminishing of journalism because of the internet. Blogs, Facebook, and twitter all use very small input spaces to convey information and rely thoughts. The problem is that people are thinking the wrong way about twitter. It doesn’t and shouldn’t replace journalism, but rather adds to stories and what reporters can express. It can generate an audience and garner actual interest from users.

Twitter can offer snapshots of places people can’t reach, and allows for expression of ideas or thoughts about stories while traveling. Little side notions and tangents from the main story can aid journalists and are perfect for the twitter environment. Twitter isn’t an advancement or breakthrough for journalism, but it can allow for enticing snacks that spur interest in actual news stories and current events.

“It takes a village to find a phone” – Five Important Ideas

Clay Shirkey’s “It takes a village to find a phone” is a very interesting tale about how a simple lost phone in a taxi cab became a much bigger phenomenon than what it first seems. Ivanna, a normal woman riding any old New York taxi cab, had left her phone in the backseat of that very cab one late may afternoon. That phone contained lots of information that she needed to retrieve, and she soon asked her good friend Evan to help her offer a reward for its return to her.

Well what ensued was quite amazing. Eventually they found out who had taken the old phone, and back-and-forth emails went on for quite some time. Their were some nasty conversations from the person with the old phone, threatening violence and basically telling Ivanna and Evan to go screw themselves. Evan then created a simple website named StolenSidekick, and from then on the entire endeavor changed as it soon spread through the internet.

Evan was getting tons of response emails and had to set up a board where everyone who had an opinion could voice themselves. Some members of the NYPD got involved and soon after Sasha, the woman who possessed the old phone, was arrested. “I never in my life thought a phone was gonna cause me so many problems”, said Sasha’s mother as they took her away. The internet changed the entire outcome of the simple lost phone, into some sort of crazy justice that Ivanna and Evan had been seeking.

Here are some things that struck me the most:

1. The fact that Sasha and her family thought they would be far away and immune from such crazy events doesn’t really surprise me. The reason they were making such bold statements is because they thought they were safe, but they were extremely wrong. I can’t believe the website could have sprung such a dire consequence, but there was just too many people talking about it for it not to overflow.

2. The costs for voicing yourself globally is now next to nothing, and the fact that so many people did respond and ACT on the events that had transpired is quite incredible. You would think people would try and stay anonymous or just watch the events unfold, but many people actually got involved and affected the outcome (especially NYPD contributors).

3. The scary part is that once something like this has been unleashed, it could be almost impossible to control when this many people are involved. It might be justice, but do we really want something like this to have been so widespread and possibly cause shame and public disgust for either party involved?

4. In the end, neither side can either be placed as good or bad, because in my opinion both parties had no idea what would happen and how it would affect others. Their are many complex thoughts and emotions that could be related to everything that happened, and the decisions made have lots of room for interpretation. Did they go too far?

5. The internet as a tool makes it incredibly easy for us to gather and converse without any real structure or limits, and that is an amazing and scary thing.

Summary of Clay Shirky’s Social Media Speech

Summary

Clay Shirky’s speech revolves around all the latest communication technologies that have greatly affected how we gather and receive information. He goes on to say that it used to be a separate climate, where everyone was disconnected from each other. It was either one-to-one communications, or one-to-many communications. The actual consumers or audience could not talk with each other, and could only receive messages or information from a small number of sources.

This all changed when the internet came around, because it allowed for many-to-many communication, which forever changed how we communicate to each other. The internet allowed all other mediums to be close at hand, and allowed for people to communicate with each other almost instantaneously.

What I found most interesting about his speech is the element of control on the internet. Censorship and strict control is something that should definitely be frowned upon on the online world. Its just like you are suppressing someones speech and opinion, and what kinds of news and information they can gather. It becomes a fine line though when considering the types of content that are filtered. All in all it’s incredible that the internet could change the way people respond to content and the world, especially in times of crisis. The fact that we can hear about a disaster and form a relief fund for it within moments of it occurring is a testament to how we are all connected on a global scale.