Here is the link to my semester blog analysis presenation.

If anyone has trouble with this link, please let me know in the comments section to this post.

http://youtu.be/TJIJTvWKCcM

In another course I’m taking this semester, we read an article by Marshall McLuhan called “The Medium is the Message”. He argued the media affects our stream of consciousness without us realizing it. I think what he means by this is that we subconsciously accept certain things in our culture without question. One of the things this class has encouraged us to do is take a step back to recognize changes in technology and the impact it’s having on our lives. This is not to say that technology controls us or vice versa. Rather, it’s to understand how we use new media. Computer-mediated communication doom and gloom rhetoric is hyperbole that distracts us from the truth of the matter. CMC won’t be the downfall of the world anymore than the television, the landline phone or the written word was.  New technology is part of the inevitable course of the advancement of our society. This is not intrinsically good or bad.

CMC can make our lives easier and more stressful at the same time. We have access to more information than ever before. Solving a problem can be as easy as pulling up a browser on your phone, laptop or PC and typing in a topic of interest in a search engine. Thanks to wireless and satellite technology, we are constantly connected to our networks, which have become more individualized. It’s easier to stay in touch with remote friends and relatives. It’s also easier to stay plugged in to work and school from home. Conversely, more is expected of us because of these constant connections. The stakes have been raised in our personal and professional relationships. The demands on our time are growing, and we have to oblige if we want to keep up the pace. Otherwise, we risk losing friends or falling behind at school and work.

It’s important to remember that all good things come in moderation. Computers and mobile phones are wonderful devices. Studies show that a large percentage of people have access to and use new technology in some capacity. As with anything else, however, you have to be careful not to let it run your life. It’s good to unplug sometimes. It’s good to experience the moment the old fashion way. As CMC continues to trend toward the ordinary, I hope the next generations will not be as infatuated with it as we were. It will become a part of their lives, but I hope it doesn’t consume their lives. With a daughter on the way, I’ll be interested to see how her generation uses the technology. Of course, it’s inevitable that a radically new technology will emerge at some point, and the cycle will begin anew.

As I was reading the Smith study, I recalled Vince Vaughn’s opening monologue on Saturday Night Live just a few weeks ago. At one point during his spiel, he took away an audience member’s cell phone and told them it was so they could experience the moment of the show. It’s ironic that though we use cell phones to capture moments (e.g. on Facebook, Twitter, and Instragram), we have a propensity to miss the real-time experiences of those moments because we are too consumed in recording them. I’m guilty of this. Two weeks ago I was so concerned with taking pictures at the top of Diamond Head in Oahu, I almost forgot to put the iPhone away and absorb the view. It is a challenge, as evidenced by the 29% of respondents in the Pew Research study that said they turn their cell phones off for a period of time just to get a break from using it. At FedEx, we use the “Be Here Now” motto to remind ourselves to be present in the moment. All too many times people look down at their Blackberries instead of paying attention to what’s being said in a meeting or during a seminar.

In the boyd BBC interview, boyd mentioned that the interaction between youth that used to happen at the mall and the movies is now happening online. At the heart of her argument, she made the case that computer-mediated communication is not in and of itself good or bad. It’s just different. This is what we’ve talked about all semester long. Rather than focusing on whether CMC is good or bad, our efforts should be aimed at understanding how the technology is being used. In her conclusion, Baym that “there will be new communication technologies which today’s children will find extraordinary and theirs will find mundane.”

boyd also addressed privacy concerns. She explained that young people are concerned with social vulnerability, or self-presentation as I would call it. They don’t want to look bad in front of their peers or be made fun of. A 12 year olds primary goal is to look cool. Adults, meanwhile, consider their physical and psychological vulnerability. We are careful not to post things that could get us fired or information that could open us up to identity theft or other cyber attacks.

I mentioned in some of my previous blog entries and comments to other’s blogs that I’ve become numb to the egocentric posting habits of what seems to be the vast majority of social media users these days. To borrow a quote from the movie Easy A, “Your generation loves to share their thoughts, and I have to tell you, they’re not all gems.” I gravitated away from Facebook and towards Twitter because I feel that I have access to more valuable content.

All that said, the Pew research studies this week demonstrated that social media and online groups do have an upside. Generally, people who use the internet are more likely to be involved in community and organizational groups than people who don’t use the internet. The Rainie, Purcell and Smith paper also found that Twitter users are more civically engaged than just about anyone else. This doesn’t surprise me. The internet gives us more effective and efficient ways to communicate with each other when we aren’t face-to-face. It also provides us with more access to information. We have an opportunity like never before to inform and involve ourselves, and many people are taking advantage. Jansen’s research found similar results of community involvement among religiously active internet users and non-religiously active users. Members of religious groups generally had greater feelings of efficacy when it came to making a difference in their communities.

The Wojcieszak  and Mutz study looked at exposure to political discussion and contrasting views via online channels like social network sites. If you use social media, even a little bit, I’m sure you’ve witnessed some political diatribe at one point or another. The authors of this study found examples of reinforcement of like-minded views but also positive political discussion in non-political channels. I personally feel that political and religious discussions are too emotional for mass discussion online. I can’t think of a time when people with polar opposite opinions ever altered their stances or even came to an understanding. It’s always an argument (particularly online) if you don’t fundamentally agree. If you do agree, then you simply reinforce each other.  However, it’s hard to avoid these arguments. The authors pointed out that “just as politics often comes up in face-to-face contexts when discussing other issues such as movie listings, personal gossip, or children’s problems at school, the same is true of online exchanges.”

Taken as a whole, these readings continue to dispel the myth that computer-mediated communication is the doom of our society. Rosen, Lafontaine and Hendrickson said that “rather than changing society, the internet has simply provided us a new way of doing old things” (p. 984).

Going back to the over-arching theories we discussed earlier this semester, I think there is a middle ground to all of this, and there are good and bad byproducts that have resulted from the evolution of new media. I would argue that an increasing lack of attention span is a negative consequence of the inundation of the web, cell phones, etc in our lives. Conversely, lots of good things have emerged. Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe referenced Granovetter’s research, which found that users are more likely to get the information they need if they have wider networks of weak ties. Many times critics will argue against the need for having hundreds of pseudo friends on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. But these connections can pay off if you need information. For instance, if you’re taking a trip, you can ask a question on Facebook and chances are that a weak tie from your network (or multiple weak ties) will have relevant feedback that you might not have received from your close group of friends.

The Rosen, Lafontaine and Hendrickson study highlighted the CouchSurfing network, which is essentially a channel for strangers to connect with each other while travelling. Not only does this site support the case I made above about weak ties, but it also illustrates how strangers or weak ties can potentially become strong connections because of connections afforded by SNS and other forms of CMC. In addition to soliciting information, users of social network sites can also look up information on their own about other people. I’m sure most of us are familiar with the term Facebook stalking. Stalking, in this sense, is a bit of a hyperbole. When we say Facebook stalk, it usually means leveraging social media to look up a person’s profile (a stranger or a weak tie). Sometimes this leads to offline connections, sometimes it doesn’t. But the potential is there.

The point to be taken away from these readings as well as the other papers we’ve looked at during the course of the semester is that computer-mediated communication isn’t in and of itself good or bad. It’s a part of the never-ending cycle of technological innovation and change. Rather than focusing on all things negative, we should instead understand how it is being used to communicate.

boyd & Ellison (2007) defined social network sites “as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.” Most notably, these authors explained a difference in semantics between the terms social network and social networking. Users of social networks, according to boyd & Ellison, primarily communicate with people in their offline or extended network as a means of keeping in toch. Social networking sites, on the other hand, are aimed at people looking to initiate new relationships.

Beer’s issue with boyd & Ellison’s use of the term social network site is that it’s much too broad. boyd & Ellison are very specific with the way they identify social networking sites, but very open with their definition of social network sites. Thus, it seems that social network sites become broad buckets that anything which isn’t a social networking site is tossed into. Beer notes this is problematic because, for example, both YouTube and Facebook could be considered a social network site, even though they are very different applications.

Beer was also concerned the direction of future research on social network(ing) sites. He felt that boyd & Ellison focused too much on the user instead of looking at a broader picture that includes cultural and capitalism impacts on evolving media. At the end of his article, he stated that “So, when we ask about who are using SNS and for what purposes, we should not just think about those with profiles, we should also be thinking about…how SNS can be understood as archives of the everyday that represent vast and rich source of transactional data about a vast population of users.” Hargittai and Hsieh also have concerns with boyd & Ellison’s research on the grounds that it does not account for differences among individual users or groups of users.

Social network(ing) sites seem different than online communities because of the sense of individual over the group. Social networks are all about individuals building their networks or managing networks they already have. Communities, on the other hand, are about engaging in deeper relationships, often times with people you don’t know offline, to discuss shared interest topics and information.

Baym mentioned in Chapter 4 that there are many different definitions of the term “community”, and that there is not a consensus universal description. After listening to the interview with Rheingold and watching the IRL documentary about the Bronze, it certainly seems that group members know when they are a part of a community. Baym said on pg. 72 that “many online groups develop a strong sense of group membership.” In my opinion, this seems to be a good starting point for defining community.

Baym noted five qualities group members share that typically arise in an online community. These five qualities included a sense of space, shared practice, shared resources and support, shared identities and interpersonal relationships. As a member of MemphisTigers.org, an online forum devoted primarily to University of Memphis athletics (namely basketball and football), I can easily identify all of these qualities.

Just as we saw with the Bronze message board, MemphisTigers.org is metaphorically based on space. When posting in the forum, members use the word “place” all the time to refer to the domain. Another salient part of a community is shared practices. Although there are tons on MemphisTigers.org, one of interest is using the term “pope” to respond to an original post that has duplicated information from another thread. This practice started a few years ago when a former pope had died, and multiple threads appeared to discuss it.

Another quality that showed up on the IRL documentary and in Chapter 2 of the Rheignold study was the emotional support that happens online. As dysfunctional as MemphisTigers.org can be, there are a core group of users who, from time to time, will post on the board asking for prayers during difficult situations. There requests are always answered by other members with encouraging words.

I noticed in our readings that interpersonal relationships often transcended the online community. Members would gather offline and meet up to get to know one another. I’ve never met up with anyone from MemphisTigers.org (that I didn’t’ already know), but a core group of members (usually the ones who post the most), have arranged meetings at games and other events. They usually post online about their experiences, thus making it known to everyone else that they did actually meet.

Rheingold said it best when answering a question about critiques of online communities when he noted that the relationships that developed were just as real as any offline relationships. These relationships define the community.

 The readings this week differed from Turkle’s study of MUD’s and virtual worlds primarily in that the channels of focus (including blogs and social media sites) tend to invite increased levels of self identification. Turkle’s research highlighted instances when people participated in anonymous virtual worlds to manifest sides of themselves that they couldn’t necessarily exhibit offline. Conversely, Huffaker and Calvert, as well as Grasmuck, Martin and Zhao, found that other channels, like blogs and Facebook, are often used to enhance offline identities. Grasmuck, Martin and Zhao noted that the “nonymity (similar to” identifiability”) of online environments seems to make people more “realistic and honest” in their self-presentation.” Of course, this particular quote was referring to research of internet dating sites, which like Facebook and Twitter, are much less anonymous than MUDs and virtual worlds.

In looking at teenage authored weblogs, Huffaker and Calvert found that a high percentage of teens disclose personal information about themselves, including names, age, demographic, location etc. Although this research doesn’t necessarily apply to adult bloggers, I think a similar correlation could be made. The person I’m following for my semester blog analysis is an adult male with two kids. In his blog, he gives his full name, the names of his wife and kids, his occupation, his home state, etc. He’s clearly not trying to be someone completely different in his blog than who he his offline.

The Grasmuck, Martin and Zhao reading focused on ethnic-racial displays of self identity on social networking sites. They found that Facebook is a venue in which minorities often express their heritage in a way that enhances their self-conception. Although my blogger is not a minority, I think he’s essentially doing the same thing. He focuses completely on his role as a father and a comedian, enhancing his self-conception of himself as those two roles. While it’s true he’s a father and a comedian offline, he’s also many other things: a son, employee, American, etc. Yet he chooses not to talk about these parts of himself in his blog.

For the non-grad students, the Kapidzic and Herring article explored the role of gender in online language, specifically in teen chat rooms. This article ties back into the Huffaker and Calvert reading. Kapidzic and Herring found that gender communication roles are actually more similar to traditional findings than new beliefs of gender neutrality. The authors pointed out that many teens readily identify themselves as male or female through their profile information and profile pictures. From a visual standpoint, teens are consciously making the decision to incorporate gender as a salient part of their identity. Based on my experiences, this seems to hold true in most online channels, like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. I’m not so sure if this would be the case in virtual worlds, where it’s much easier to remain anonymous.

In Chapter 5, Baym mentioned that “people often expect others to be less honest online.” Although she noted that existing research does not support the hypothesis that anonymity contributes to dishonesty, most of us have heard of incidences of deception that happen online. Perhaps it could be that these are high-profile cases, ala Manti T’eo, which distort our perception of the amount of this behavior. Yet, on the other hand, the show Catfish supposedly highlights cases of online relationship deception between ordinary people.

Turkle’s article brought up the Freudian concept that our identity is multi-faceted, and that we have latent desires to exhibit different sides of ourselves. Her study found that, for a number of reasons, some people feel like they can’t be their complete selves in the real world. Instead, they manifest different parts of themselves online. It could be that some people feel the need to lie online about their physical identities in order to live out parts of themselves they feel they cannot show in real life.

Baym pointed out that “…self-representations are grounded in explicit connections…” which makes it difficult to create elaborate falsities online. For my semester blog analysis, I’m following Jason Good, a self-proclaimed writer, comedian and family man. I wouldn’t call him a public figure, but he has been on Comedy Central, which by most people’s standards would make him a comedian. Obviously he’s a writer because he has a blog. His blogs are almost entirely about his family, thus making him a family man. It would be very difficult for Good to lie in detail since his offline identity is well known.

Baym touched on the idea that most people go online to satisfy communicative desires, much as we do face-to-face. CMC does not necessarily enhance our desire to lie. In the case of Jason Good’s blog, it’s quite the opposite. His motivation appears to create authentic connections with his audience, primarily those with kids who can relate to his life. CMC allows him to expand his network.

The Walther article emphasized that self-presentation is not unique to online communication. Referring to Goffman, he noted that “people are concerned with the way others perceive them, motivating actors to manage their behavior in order to present favorable and appropriate images to others.” Whether we purposely speak formally to a professor or slang with a friend or whether we write longer emails and spend more time editing them when a professor is our intended recipient compared to a classmate, we are creating an impression.

According to Rainie, Wellman, Baym and other communication researchers, the notion that CMC users spend the majority of their time alone in dark rooms with their computers is a myth. Baym claims that most people use texting, email, social networking sites, etc. to enhance their face-to-face relationships, not to replace them. Rainie and Wellman make the case that people are not hooked on communication devices, but rather communication with each other. This is not a new trend, but the desire is now magnified more than ever before because of the fact that CMC and new technology afford us the opportunity to communicate faster, more often and with a wider of network of people.

Rainie and Wellman also introduce the idea of “networked individualism”. This concept suggests that the groups with which we identify with have become more personalized to each individual. Take, for instance, the example of mobile phones. According to the Lenhart study, approximately 75% of teens have cell phones. Regardless of our age, when we receive calls to our mobile phones, the calls come directly to us. Before the rise of cell phones, calls would come to our homes through a landline telephone. Our connection point then was part of a cohesive unit – the family. Now, we are each individual units and can customize our networks accordingly. Wellman had a funny example during his commentary on Wisconsin public radio: If Romeo and Juliet had mobile phones, they’d probably still be alive.

One of the issues that Baym and others discussed on WBUR Boston public radio was the fear that CMC is ruining our abilities to communicate with each other in real life, face-to-face situations. One of the callers remarked it’s sad to see five individuals seated around a conference table at work, all looking at their cell phones and not talking. Baym challenged this caller and said she couldn’t imagine this would ever happen unless there was a break of some sort. She also argued against the idea that we are drastically different people online vs. offline. Although our methods of communication might be slightly different, we’re still speaking English and still relating to one another in similar ways.

Wellman, Baym, and others remarked that many of the common fears about new technology are fears as old as time. People are always afraid something new is going to destroy our current way of life, whether it’s writing letters, watching television or communicating via the internet. Yet, here we are today, still functioning and still communicating. It’s up to individuals to find balance in the time they spend communicating online and face-to-face. But this is no different than finding balance in our study and television watching habits or something else of the like. One day, these days will be the good old days.