Saturday, 24 November 2007
Thursday, 22 November 2007
The social role of 'In Memoriam' notices
Today I attended a talk by Stephanie O'Donohoe (Edinburgh) at the MCCi study group entitled:
Consuming, communing and coming to terms with loss:
the social role of In Memoriam notices
This is obviously very different to the information and communication stuff that I usually report on, but I have a background in Psychology and a deep interest in Philosophy as a whole. Stephanie had gathered some really great interviews with people who report anniversaries of family deaths in an Irish newspaper. This work really showed how the memory of the individuals involved were kept alive by revisiting their past in a particular form and manner. The notices paralleled a kind of singles ads column, in the sense that, the author had a limited number of words in which to express a wide array of sentiment. In Stephanie's findings, this typically meant that people used powerful phrases from the bible to express the loss of a loved one. Until later in the talk, there were many references that I was used to hearing in CMC (e.g. public/private, Anderson's Imagined Community and even the fact that In Memoriam notices had been simplified to 'IM'). This made me raise the similarities of another SNS that I commented on in the form of Mydeath space. A neat comparison here is that Stephanie has a very tight-knit community of people who were writing notices for loved ones that many of the newspaper recipients would have known. Mydeath space, however, is a much more global enterprise. I think this is a neat example of how our technological ability to do things like memory is evolving. More and more our everyday lives our becoming intrinsically in twinned with the connections growing SNSs have to offer. I wonder how the small community that typically reports deaths in a certain way would react to someone posting a death to somewhere like Myspace?
I understand memory in constant flux. For me (and many others) memory is not something that is stored in the brain. Instead, it is mediated through our close social environment by way of objects, people and experiences and this allows us to draw upon a vast myriad of experiences to invoke action in a particular setting. In this way technology allows us to constantly store up the past in emails and SNS and as technology develops so does our ability to commemorate past experiences. I am keen to think about old notions of a person or being and how that relates to the current technological environment.
Consuming, communing and coming to terms with loss:
the social role of In Memoriam notices
This is obviously very different to the information and communication stuff that I usually report on, but I have a background in Psychology and a deep interest in Philosophy as a whole. Stephanie had gathered some really great interviews with people who report anniversaries of family deaths in an Irish newspaper. This work really showed how the memory of the individuals involved were kept alive by revisiting their past in a particular form and manner. The notices paralleled a kind of singles ads column, in the sense that, the author had a limited number of words in which to express a wide array of sentiment. In Stephanie's findings, this typically meant that people used powerful phrases from the bible to express the loss of a loved one. Until later in the talk, there were many references that I was used to hearing in CMC (e.g. public/private, Anderson's Imagined Community and even the fact that In Memoriam notices had been simplified to 'IM'). This made me raise the similarities of another SNS that I commented on in the form of Mydeath space. A neat comparison here is that Stephanie has a very tight-knit community of people who were writing notices for loved ones that many of the newspaper recipients would have known. Mydeath space, however, is a much more global enterprise. I think this is a neat example of how our technological ability to do things like memory is evolving. More and more our everyday lives our becoming intrinsically in twinned with the connections growing SNSs have to offer. I wonder how the small community that typically reports deaths in a certain way would react to someone posting a death to somewhere like Myspace?
I understand memory in constant flux. For me (and many others) memory is not something that is stored in the brain. Instead, it is mediated through our close social environment by way of objects, people and experiences and this allows us to draw upon a vast myriad of experiences to invoke action in a particular setting. In this way technology allows us to constantly store up the past in emails and SNS and as technology develops so does our ability to commemorate past experiences. I am keen to think about old notions of a person or being and how that relates to the current technological environment.
Monday, 19 November 2007
Poke 1.0
On Thursday last week I attended the Poke 1.0 symposium organised by the London Knowledge lab. This has been credited as the first real attempt to focus on one SNS in particular and explore a range of methodological and epistemological claims. The first two presentations where in complete contrast - but actually this worked really well for the nature of the symposium. The first presentation from the Human Capital group used Neilson net ratings to dispel a number of myths about the basic demographics of FB users. This was then followed by Sonia Livingstone's work that used a qualitative analysis of interviews of young FB users. I really enjoyed Sonia's presentation, particularly the notion of 'identity in transition', which she uses to describe the older teenagers adapting their identity into more sophisticated norms to construct their identity as mature in comparison to the Myspace equivalent. These ideas were broadly informed by the work of Mead and Giddens.
In the afternoon session, a team from Cambridge University explored the student and staff perspectives of FB. I was really impressed by a new technology they have developed that incorporates their version of blackboard into a facebook application. Although, I can already see the criticism that blurring work and play in this way will only cause negative responses from many academics. The final session of the day was dedicated to an open discussion around the ethical constraints of studying FB. The question that was raised in this debate that has most relevance to my work was:
Technical and perceived privacy: If a site is public, but the people use it as if it is private - should we study it as private?
This is a very complicated question - but my initial reaction would be that most people are well aware of privacy controls now. If they are 'treating' (which in itself would be a very difficult thing to define) they are probably doing it for some reason outside the lack of recognising privacy issues. For example, this could be to appear secretive or shy to a fellow user.
I was also intrigued to hear alternative attempts to gather IRB (a.k.a ethical committee) consent. I had assumed that everyone had to go through this procedure now. I was shocked to here that there are still some research students that are not checking their ethical stance against any official board before conducting their research.
Really productive day, looking forward to poke 2.0.
In the afternoon session, a team from Cambridge University explored the student and staff perspectives of FB. I was really impressed by a new technology they have developed that incorporates their version of blackboard into a facebook application. Although, I can already see the criticism that blurring work and play in this way will only cause negative responses from many academics. The final session of the day was dedicated to an open discussion around the ethical constraints of studying FB. The question that was raised in this debate that has most relevance to my work was:
Technical and perceived privacy: If a site is public, but the people use it as if it is private - should we study it as private?
This is a very complicated question - but my initial reaction would be that most people are well aware of privacy controls now. If they are 'treating' (which in itself would be a very difficult thing to define) they are probably doing it for some reason outside the lack of recognising privacy issues. For example, this could be to appear secretive or shy to a fellow user.
I was also intrigued to hear alternative attempts to gather IRB (a.k.a ethical committee) consent. I had assumed that everyone had to go through this procedure now. I was shocked to here that there are still some research students that are not checking their ethical stance against any official board before conducting their research.
Really productive day, looking forward to poke 2.0.
Monday, 12 November 2007
Great Video - Is Facebook a Fad?
For all you people out there who are still a little unsure about what I actually study. Nancy Baym (Kansas) has recently been part of a discussion on 'The Agenda' that discusses some of the key research areas surrounding the use of Facebook. I recently met Nancy at a conference and was really impressed by her work. Make sure you watch the video in the next ten days as the stream is due to run out then. Here is the link to the show.
Monday, 5 November 2007
MyDeathSpace
One of my colleagues has just pointed out 'Mydeathspace' to me (here). Unbelievably, it is a place where Myspace users go when they die. It allows you to 'submit a death' and has an ariel view style map of the geographical locations of the most recent deaths. From just a quick scan of the website it is quite shocking how young all the deaths are. I know that Myspace is used by a lot of younger people, but in my research I have found that many 20+ year olds are using Myspace. I will try and factor Mydeathspace into my research.
What a great example of an embodied experience due to the fact our online profiles need to be accounted for in some way after we die in RL. Is there an avenue here for people to 'play' with the notion of death? As users in Myspace have a number of online profiles that may be fake in some cases how is this represented in the mydeathspace pages. All of this stuff brings some interesting questions into view.
'Mydeathspace' is not endorsed or affiliated with Myspace in any way. It will be interesting to see how they react.
What a great example of an embodied experience due to the fact our online profiles need to be accounted for in some way after we die in RL. Is there an avenue here for people to 'play' with the notion of death? As users in Myspace have a number of online profiles that may be fake in some cases how is this represented in the mydeathspace pages. All of this stuff brings some interesting questions into view.
'Mydeathspace' is not endorsed or affiliated with Myspace in any way. It will be interesting to see how they react.
Myspace and Advertising
Myspace is branching out in forms of advertising with the introduction of 'SelfServe'. This enables companies to analyse the performance of ads directly through Myspace. I think this is intended to keep up with Google's 'adwords' program. The most interesting thing about this development is that Myspace is also launching 'HyperTargeting' platform that will allow advertisers to select specific groups of the Myspace audience. This will allow advertisers to directly access their market, e.g. the movie lovers category has over 300 subcategories that would mean promoting a movie would target the areas of an individuals profile that supported the style of the movie. If ever teanagers were worried about making themselves more less searchable to strangers this is one way they will not be able to avoid being 'found' by a marketing company. Tech crunch has got a great example of what the program will look like (here).
Friday, 2 November 2007
Myspace moves to OpenSocial
Everything is moving very quickly at Myspace HQ this week. It has just been confirmed that Myspace will now be joining Google's OpenSocial movement. This means that developers can write programs that can be used over any platform (Bebo and Six Apart are also confirmed at this point). This should save time in the programming department as they do not have to launch entirely new platforms every time there is a new application. It has also been a growing idea that users have separate profiles on a number of different SNSs where they do different things. Perhaps this is an attempt to make writing new programs across-the-board easier. It seems in making this decision Myspace have backed Facebook into a corner. The big question now is will they also join this OpenSocial movement...
Thursday, 1 November 2007
Rise of the silver surfer
I should be a millionaire.
The reason for this being the new social networking technology aimed at the over 50's was one of those 'wouldn't it be really great if we had...' ideas I had about a year ago. The new social network is called Saga Zone and it is riding the back of the 'silver surfer' wave (sorry for the pun). Saga Zone (link) is apparently arranged in a way that caters for the needs of an older generation. It is well worth watching the video (here) from the BBC's news website to see how one user understands the differences between Saga zone and other SNS's like Myspace and Facebook. Apparently older people 'use a different language' which is really interesting to see in online interaction. This offers a great opportunity to compare if older generations use social networking technology in the same way i.e. 'do they have real vs fake friends? Do profiles represent an authentic self? Also, from a social construction of technology perspective, do the users of Saga Zone use any of the features in a way that was not originally intended by the developers?
The gateway page has this comment:
SAGA Zone is a new online community where you create a whole new social network of friends and easily stay in touch from the comfort of your home.You can create your own personal profile page and share your interests in our online forums. You can even write your own web diary, or blog. Soon, you will be able to set up your own photo gallery and enjoy live instant chats.
The reason for this being the new social networking technology aimed at the over 50's was one of those 'wouldn't it be really great if we had...' ideas I had about a year ago. The new social network is called Saga Zone and it is riding the back of the 'silver surfer' wave (sorry for the pun). Saga Zone (link) is apparently arranged in a way that caters for the needs of an older generation. It is well worth watching the video (here) from the BBC's news website to see how one user understands the differences between Saga zone and other SNS's like Myspace and Facebook. Apparently older people 'use a different language' which is really interesting to see in online interaction. This offers a great opportunity to compare if older generations use social networking technology in the same way i.e. 'do they have real vs fake friends? Do profiles represent an authentic self? Also, from a social construction of technology perspective, do the users of Saga Zone use any of the features in a way that was not originally intended by the developers?
The gateway page has this comment:
SAGA Zone is a new online community where you create a whole new social network of friends and easily stay in touch from the comfort of your home.You can create your own personal profile page and share your interests in our online forums. You can even write your own web diary, or blog. Soon, you will be able to set up your own photo gallery and enjoy live instant chats.
What is immediately clear at this point is that it does start by saying - 'over 50's only' although the website will only let you create a profile if you enter a date of birth over 50. So something is happening here- do marketing companies believe that user will be deterred by openly joining something that is for over 50's? Why has it instead opted to use the term 'easily stay in touch from the comfort of your home' - I fail to see how this is a new and novel concept. The new bit seems to come at the end with one line -
Anyone over 50 can join SAGA Zone in three easy steps.
This shows that the Saga have come very close to missing the point. It is for people over 50. This is the main selling point. That fact that it is from the comfort of your own home is not a new idea. I would be really interested to incorporate this new avenue of social networking into my PhD (although I already feel that this could be a PhD on it's own) and would be interested to talk with anyone who has ideas on this topic.
One thing that is already clear is that networking of this kind offers a stark comparison to the idea that social networking is all about young people. Saga zone represents a unique opportunity to study online communication that is dependant on being from an older age group. I think this is merely the beginning of my talks around this point...
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