Have you ever heard of a "listening post"? During World War I, a listening post was a shallow, narrow trench or hole in advance of the front trench line of battle, placing the "listeners" dangerously close to the enemy so they could gather intelligence.
Today in our mass media class, we watched two outstanding magazine-style news programs from Listening Post, the weekly news roundup from Al Jazeera's English service. Hosted by Canadian Richard Gizbert, the show examines how news events are covered by news media throughout the world. The episodes for January 22nd and 29th covering the Revolution in Tunisia and the subsequent events in Egypt were penetrating and insightful coverage, and refreshing in that they provided a different view than what we have seen on American news programs.
These episodes (each about 25 minutes) are definitely worth watching by anyone who wants to gain insights into the role of media (and especially new media) in various parts of the world and in the Middle East in particular. As reported in Wikipedia, "Aaron Barnhart, TV writer for the Kansas City Star, wrote that The Listening Post 'might be the best media-critique program in English anywhere.' Stewart Purvis, former editor-in-chief and CEO of the Britain's ITN, said 'The Listening Post has delivered," and that its real value "is the breadth of its monitoring beyond the mainstream'."
Over the weekend, in the midst of the unprecedented internet communication blackout imposed by the Egyptian government, a new social media platform was born: speak2tweet, a voice messaging service that converts telephone messages to Twitter posts and allows Egyptians who still have phone service to get their messages out to the wider world.
The new service is a partnering between Google, SayNow (a voice-based social media platform that is owned by Google), and Twitter, and works by providing three telephone numbers that Egyptian callers can dial and where they can record voice messages to be converted to Twitter posts. For more details, here's the New York Times article.
The term "social media" gets tossed around a lot in today's discourse. Moreover, the concept is often dismissed as a passing fad and associated with a particular application, such as Myspace, Facebook or Twitter.
However, social media (and the roles of social media in contemporary society) go far deeper than any one trendy internet site or application. And all signs show that social media are here to stay and that they are on their way to becoming the primary mode of media communication in the near future. Social media are fundamentally different from most traditional media (like newspaper, magazines, books, movies and television programs, which are produced or published, and then distributed to consumers in a one-way communication).
Social media are inherently interactive and participatory, allowing for dialogic communication rather than one author or artist issuing a statement, report or artistic vision to an audience. In fact, the concept of audience is truly problematized in social media, because we are all both senders and receivers, producers and consumers. And with the increasing emphasis on collaborative production that is enabled by many social media platforms, we are learning to be co-producers and not just individual artists or authors. The notion of authorship and authority is undergoing a major paradigm shift.
This new form of interactive media is called by many names: social media, Web 2.0, new new media (Paul Levinson), spreadable media (Henry Jenkins), and so on. And these forms of media are multiple and varied, especially as to their purpose. Contrary to the narrow view of them as just being sites for insignificant chatting or making friends, social media are doing some serious work in our own culture, and in global society, today.
What are some of the goals of social media?
• Knowledge sharing (wikis, opensourcing, crowdsourcing) and collaborative knowledge building. My favorite (and the one in which I am most deeply involved) is Geni.com, a collaborative family history site.
• Community building: in person (e.g., Meetup) and online communities
• Corporate profit, marketing, advertising (social media marketing is the latest business and career trend)
• Consumer need fulfillment (i.e., finding and getting what we want to attain, be it through online commercial sites such as Amazon, personal auction sites such as eBay, nonprofit exchanges such as Freecycle, and all of the consumer-oriented ratings and evaluation sites that allow us to recommend or rate our experiences
• Artistic creativity and expression that allows and encourages interactive sharing and feedback, such as Deviant Art for art and photography, Scribd for writing, and Vimeo for film and video artists.
• Political and public activism and social change, ranging from the use of social media in political campaigns to the use of internet activism to mobilize a following and raise funds (examples include MoveOn and Greenpeace) as well as the use of social media and mobile technology to mobilize and organize real political movements and even revolutions, as recent events in Tunisia and Egypt are demonstrating
• Expressing our opinions and sharing information: Vlogs, blogs, feedback blogs on news stories, customer reviews and feedback -- social media are quickly becoming a mechanism for citizen journalism, self-publishing and distribution, and reputation-building for both individuals and corporate brands
• Knowledge and information management and organizing (tools such as Diigo are among my favorites for personal information management; new technological tagging and ranking tools such as Digg and De.licio.us are behind the movement that is turning the Enlightenment-based paradigm of classification on its head, with the shift from taxonomies to "folksonomies"
What many of these social media tools, however different they may be, have in common is that they allow and encourage a bottom-up and collaborative development of structures and systems that is dynamic and flexible rather than an inflexible, imposed, top-down structure. This too reflects the flux surrounding the relative roles of experts/authorities and ordinary people--who become amateur or lay experts, in many cases.
Many developments in social media are here now, with many more on the horizon.
Blog writing is a relatively new technological style of writing, but it has become an increasingly important style that you need to master to be a successful communicator in the digital age.
Many different forms of blogs exist, but those that you should be modeling after are blogs that are smart, well-informed, well-written, and personal as well as analytical. While your blog may feel like a diary at times, it is a diary for the world to read — so always keep your audience in mind (even if they haven’t found you yet).
Blogging allows for a great deal of creativity both in writing style and in visual/graphic design, and therefore it is a wonderful channel for self-expression. Blogging allows you to combine and customize your many skills, talents and interests into a format and style that should reflect your distinctive perspective and voice.
Blogs can be witty and serious, personal and political. Bloggers can be both storytellers and news reporters, both cultural commentators about world events and writers of deeply personal memoirs.
How I will grade your blogs
Blogs will be graded on frequency of entries (at least two per week or as assigned) as well as timeliness.
Have you blogged on each of the assigned topics?
Have your blog entries been posted in a timely manner, as assigned? Are you ready to share them in class, if called upon?
Individual blog entries will be graded on
• The length and complexity of the blog — reflecting the amount of time and energy you seem to have put into it.
• The degree to which the topic of your blog entry relates to the course issues (relevance).
• The level of critical thinking represented in your blog entry: not just superficial observations, but deeper analytical thought, making new kinds of connections (don’t just state the obvious) and integrating ideas in new ways. Interrogate the sources of ideas (even — especially — readings assigned for class) and don’t just accept them as truth. Asking questions is far more important than finding definitive answers.
• The degree to which your blog incorporates ideas and concepts from the class readings (this is extremely important): linking to them (as applicable), discussing them, mulling them over, finding examples useful to support or argue with them, and so on.
• The degree to which your blog cross-links to and references other relevant websites and shows that your ideas are interconnected with current thinking about your topic. A few extra minutes doing a web search and reading a few related news articles or web sites can make a big difference in your grade. Be sure to document them.
• The degree to which your blogs are audience oriented: Are you speaking just to the teacher to fulfill a grade requirement? (Wrong answer.) Are you speaking to your classmates? Are you speaking to anyone out there on the web who may happen to read your blog? Be sure, then, to always write in a way that fully explains what you are referring to so that anyone can understand your blog.
• The degree to which you demonstrate an increasing command (as the course goes on) of blog layout, design principles, and technical skills to include links, embed photos and videos, and so on. Break your long paragraphs down into readable “chunks”; use bulleting for lists. Insert photos or images to break up long text sections…
• And of course, clear writing that is relatively error-free and that is appropriate for self-expression on an academic blog: good grammar, spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure. Blogs may be a bit less formal than academic essays, but they should not be written in text-speak or extreme slang. You are encouraged to write in the first person voice (using “I”) and you may use contractions to make your style more conversational and personal.
And don't forget that blogs are living, breathing, interactive conversation sites--so be sure to participate in comments and discussion on the blogs of others and also on your own.
