Ballin' and Lolin' (Kyle Barron)

One topic relating to new media in which I have taken a special interest is net neutrality (NN). I started at the Wikipedia article for that and saw that “Series of Tubes” <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes> was a related article. Score. I figured I could kill the proverbial two birds (net neutrality and internet memes) with one stone for this blog post. Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens argued that

“the Internet is not something you  just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes.”

This quote was in turn adapted by those in favor of net neutrality.

Think about the people who edit Wikipedia. If I had to bet on which side of the net neutrality argument they would support, I wouldn’t think twice about putting my money on them being in favor of NN. As difficult it is to read this article from a non-biased point of view, I tried doing it. It appears that most of the article, if not all of it, is mocking Ted Stevens for making this comment. In the introduction to the article is written,

This metaphor was widely ridiculed as demonstrating Stevens’ poor understanding of the Internet, despite the fact that he was in charge of regulating it.

That doesn’t sound particularly unbiased to me. Just by looking at the sections of the article, one could easily tell that this article is incredibly biased. The first section outlines the media’s reaction to Senator Stevens’ remark. The second is just an extended quote of Senator Stevens’ comments. This is followed by a few paragraphs explaining in a technical and detailed fashion why Senator Stevens’ comment on net neutrality was egregiously inaccurate. The article is finally capped off with a list of the quote “Series of Tubes” in popular culture (where Senator Stevens was also ridiculed).

To make this article less biased would create at least some controversy among those who are in favor of net neutrality. Instead of arguing that Ted Stevens was far from the truth in the “Technical Analysis” section, editors could instead show how “A series of tubes” is not too different from “packet switching.” However, there were several parts of his argument that were false, such as email being delayed due to essentially a bandwidth overload.

There is only one comment in the discussion section, and it is pretty harsh. An editor took out a part of the article explaining that what Stevens had said was defended by experts in the field, claiming that they themselves are an expert in the field and disagree with Stevens’ statement completely.

I would argue that this is a perfect example of why Wikipedia, wikis in general, and the Internet is one biased community. In social psychology, the term for this is polarization. When a whole bunch of people congregate with similar, but moderate, views, their views tend to get more and more extreme. This also creates an outgroup, where those who disagree with the majority of people on the Internet are ridiculed and shunned. This is not necessarily a bad thing. However, I would not call the Internet an unbiased channel of communication.

Also, did anyone else see this on the New Media Wikipedia Page?

Rated: from 6 votes

category: Uncategorized     tags: net neutrality, Ted Stevens, Wikipedia

Staging is the process where news corporations decide what should be made public and how. This process is not unique to how news was delivered 50 years ago or how news is delivered today. However, what is different is how people are accessing this information.

I talk a lot about Digg on this blog. It just seems like a great example for new media in several respects. This time, I will actually be talking about the content of Digg: the news stories themselves. Even though most of the stories are something to the effect of, “lawlz @ this [PIC],” there are some stories that would also make headlines on an evening news show. For example, the top dugg story in the last year is the death of Michael Jackson, a story that received plenty of coverage from network news, cable news, newspapers, etc. When a user clicks on the story, they are directed to a story by TMZ.

What separates Digg as a new medium is the ability to thread comments and “digg” stories up and down. Upon hearing this news, people certainly react differently. To have the privilege to voice opinions (to a certain extent) is a great addition to old media. However, think about what the user is seeing aside from the comments. The user is directed to a TMZ story. Therefore, a writer, hired by TMZ wrote this article, which was then edited by an editor also hired by TMZ. The user is merely reading a message that was produced by a company, rather than an anonymous contributor. In this respect, news hasn’t changed at all. The consumer is being a fed a message that was specifically design to be consumed. On top of that, TMZ, along with many other news corporations, decide which stories to publish and which to ignore. I believe that this has led to the compartmentalization of news in new media.

The news as consumed in new media has become more segregated. I believe that my peers and I consume more information. This however does not imply an increase in intake of information. We are subject to hundreds, sometimes thousands of advertisements per day. We eventually become numb to these advertisements and ignore them. A similar situation occurs with news. Our generation gets pommeled with news headlines on iGoogle, GMail Web Links, MSN’s Homepage, Yahoo’s Homepage. Hardly anyone reads stories after seeing headlines anymore. What intrigues me is how college undergrads are reading stories. From my experience, I see a lot of people using a RSS feed aggregator like Google Reader to read stories. This format allows users to subscribe to news feeds in which they are expressly interested. I believe that college undergrads are taking in about the same amount of information. However, this information has been sorted, organized, and displayed in a more customizable way to fit the consumer’s interests.

Rated: from 4 votes

category: Uncategorized     tags: Digg, GMail, Google, MSN, news, RSS, TMZ, Yahoo

Urban Dictionary is a perfect spawning ground for “family UNfriendly” content. I would estimate that about half the definitions on the site are strange sexual maneuvers while the other half tries to stir up as much controversy as possible. I don’t think I have ever seen, nor can imagine, Urban Dictionary removing a dictionary because of its vulgarity. I figured that UD has to have some limits on what definitions people can uploaded, so I headed over to the Terms of Service (TOS).

The first part of the TOS warns users that this site may contain content that is “coarse and direct.” This is quite the understatement, but I’m still glad to see that there’s some disclaimer, even if it’s not very visible to the user. Under the “User Content” section, UD outlines what users are and aren’t allowed to upload. The item on this list that caught my attention was

2. Examples of unacceptable Content or behavior on the Website include: providing information that is false, misleading or inaccurate;

If UD actually enforced this policy, this site would hardly exist. This site contains a lot of content are more opinion-oriented as opposed to fact. For example, this is one definition for Google:

A company that is trying to take over the world

Search engine was not enough

they made mobile phones
they made a web browser
they made a free email service
there making a Operating System
they will soon make a MP4 player
they will soon move into financial institutions(banks, credit loans)

when will it stop?

Clearly this is someone’s opinion of Google’s goals as a company. I would absolutely qualify this entry as something that is both misleading and inaccurate (at least the first statement is). It would be interesting how UD decides what crosses the boundary of being “inaccurate.” If they do not explicitly follow their Terms of Service, it would be difficult to gauge what a user who is in the process of posting a new definition can or cannot post.

One feature that this site lacks is a comment feature. Users can vote definitions with either a thumbs up or down, but the user does not have the option to leave a text comment. I think this feature is definitely beneficial. If there were a comment feature, I could easily users violating another part of the TOS:

Examples of unacceptable Content or behavior on the Website include: abuse, harassment, threats of violence, flaming, intimidation of any person or organization, or any other threatening behavior;

Comments such as these clutter YouTube, Digg, and other comment-based systems. Imagine if this kind of system were implemented on a site where users generate definitions for the most vulgar words/series of words in the English language.

P.S. Here’s a cool video about flaming

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1907543

Rated: from 0 votes

category: Uncategorized     tags: comment, Digg, Google, Urban Dictionary, YouTube

Even though I supported Ron Paul throughout his Presidential campaign in 2008, I had never visited his website. The website looks very primitive.  The home site essentially has two columns, one in a blog format and the other with miscellaneous unorganized information about Ron Paul and his congressional work and political views. The most recent posts are regarding the new health care bill and federal economics, two topics that Ron Paul has emphasized in the past, even before the recession and President Obama’s health care proposal. The tone is consistent from what Paul presented in his Presidential campaign. He is unhappy with the direction in which the government is going with regards to spending money and what he claims is ‘taking away American freedoms.’ He uses a lot of negative words. This is most likely because of the majority of congresspeople being Democrats along with President Obama being from the Democratic Party. By pointing out all the bad aspects of this country, it is easy to blame the majority and the White House.

As I mentioned before, the home site is in the style of a blog, almost identical to this WordPress powered blog. The most important feature of this design is that anyone who visits the site can comment on anything. This includes every ‘news’ story, event, video, and even Ron Paul’s biography page. Every piece of information that is posted on the site allows users to comment on it. This serves two purposes. The first is so that the message that may be associated with a particular news story has the potential to be countered. Ron Paul stands for freedom; it would be hypocritical of him to deny users, even those who disagree with his message, the ability to comment on stories. The second I believe is for Paul’s staff to receive feedback. Perhaps a user will ask a question or bring up a point that members of the staff had not previously considered. Then, when campaigning, the staff can be more prepared to field questions and make proposals because of this feedback.

This caused a very interesting chain of thoughts for me. With all these comments (most posts with hundreds of comments), won’t Ron Paul’s messages become diluted? I then realized that the comments are very much buried in blogs. On the home site, no comments appear for any story. However, the user can click on a particular story, and the comments are displayed there. However, users are most likely to click on a particular story because they want to finish reading it, as some stories are snippetted on the home page. I clicked on a few stories, scrolled down to the comments, and scanned the first one or two, but that’s it. I believe that comments are intended to bring balance and foster discussion. However, I think that the comments are more used – or at least better used – as a feedback mechanism more than anything else.

Rated: from 4 votes

category: Uncategorized     tags: blog, Democrat, freedom, health care, Obama, Republican, Ron Paul

Bruns would argue that a successful example of produsage would have a low, if any, entry fee. This aspect of user-generated content introduces one of the biggest tradeoffs in new media, especially the internet. Since there is a low barrier to entry, all people are encouraged to create and submit UGC. This process yields two products: high quality UGC and mush. Bruns argues that the mush that this process generates is insignificant due to the structure of UGC sites. These sites are an analog of a free market. Theoretically, anyone can start a business in selling pomegranates, for example. The people who sell the best pomegranates will be better off than those who sell pomegranates of lesser quality. Eventually, the businesses selling the bad pomegranates will be forced to close business because they cannot compete with the businesses selling the best pomegranates.

Now, consider the same example, only instead of pomegranates, people are producing YouTube videos. Many videos are uploaded to YouTube. Most of these videos would be considered to have little to no value. However, some of these videos are high quality. These are the videos that will be featured on the home page, linked in various locations (email, instant messaging, blogs, etc.), and have the highest views. All of these factors, along with the rating system, determine the value of any given video on YouTube.

There are two main factors that make this system work. The first is the large user base. Although Bruns does not explicitly mention this factor, the fact that free markets, more generally the United States, and the YouTube community have a massive number of users allows for an accurate judgment of what is high quality and what is low quality. If YouTube had fewer users, all the factors that are taken into account when considering what videos are “popular” would be misrepresented because of a small sample size. If this were the case, more mush would be falsely categorized as “good.”

The other factor that determines the success of this system is the competition. The low barrier to entry encourages competition, rewarding those who produce content of value. This motivates those in a group, for example, farmers selling pomegranates, to try to produce the best product. Eventually, those who produce the best content will be recognized by the rest of the group for achieving this status.

Rated: from 1 votes

category: Uncategorized    

All the cool kids did Model United Nations in High School, and I was no exception. The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) created a Declaration of Principles in Geneva in 2003 and again in Tunis in 2005. These principles made me reminisce about the times spent drafting fake resolutions using highfalutin words to say the simplest things. If I learned one thing from MUN, it’s that United Nations resolutions don’t accomplish anything. However, there are a few principles that bring forward some good concerns.

Clause 24 of the Declaration of Principles states:

The first thing this clause made me think of was Wikipedia. Wikipedia would not survive if it weren’t for the contributing members of the site. This seemed to have been the trend of the Internet around the time these principles were drafted: an ideal Information Society would be constructed entirely from User-Generated Content (UGC). If everyone in the world contributed to Wikipedia (minus trolls, spammers, and Internet vandals), Wikipedia would literally have all the information in the world. For every piece of knowledge, at least one person knows it. Otherwise, it would not have been known/discovered. New discoveries can be contributed as they happen. Something else to consider is that most people in third-world countries do not access the Internet through a PC, but rather through mobile technology. If it were an easily accessible bank of organized information, then the WSIS’s concept of an inclusive Information Society would become a reality.

The main issue I have with a majority of this document is the lack of specificity. The members of the WSIS have constructed some great ideas that I would love to see addressed and acted upon in the coming years. However, the WSIS and the Declaration of Principles fail to outline any kind of plan to use Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to their full potential, to use ICTs to benefit all people, to bring ICTs to the poor, etc. Several times the WSIS mentions a “Plan of Action” where I figured the WSIS would outline that, a plan of action. Instead, the Plan of Action describes goals that the WSIS wants to achieve, such as, “to ensure that more than half the world’s inhabitants have access to ICTs within their reach.” However, no steps are outlined to even begin this daunting task. I don’t mean to say the the WSIS has done a poor job. This procedure is the nature of the United Nations. I agree with pretty much everything outlined in the Declaration of Principles and the Plan of Action. However, actual action is missing. This is the biggest obstacle that is preventing the world from entering an Information Society. No one is really sure how to go about doing it. While having 50 of the world’s population online is a great goal, how is the UN, or anyone, going to bring about this change? Can local governments raise taxes and supply the population with these ICTs? How will the government decide who gets ICTs and who does not? The best course of action would be to see how the market for ICTs develops over the next decade. Perhaps there may be an emerging technology that is introduced within the next couple years that shifts people away from personal mobile phones to more public interfaces. The technological field is changing so rapidly that most people cannot accurately predict. Although I admire the WSIS’s confidence and aspirations, they do not have any control over the future of ICTs and therefore cannot influence people’s access to them.

Rated: from 9 votes

category: Uncategorized     tags: ICT, MUN, UGC, United Nations, Wikipedia

In Joseph Turow’s article “Audience Construction and Culture Production: Marketing Surveillance in the Digital Age,” Turow spends some time discussing targeted advertising in new media, such as the Internet. The first thing that I thought of was the blog post we did a few weeks ago concerning user-generated content. Recommendation machines have existed in realms other than advertising. However, some have negative reactions to advertisements that are targeted specifically towards them because of some information that they may or may not have consciously agreed to divulge. For example, YouTube’s home page has an entire section dedicated to recommending videos that the user may want to watch. YouTube specifically includes the video the user had watched that caused the recommended video to be displayed. This is advantageous to most people because chances are that they would probably like the recommended video. Another example was proposed by Professor Dan Cosley, et al from the Cornell University Information Science department. Suggestbot provides Wikipedia users with articles that they are likely to want to edit. This reduces the gulf of execution for those who want to edit articles. Without Suggestbot, users would have to find articles that they would want to edit unassisted.

Why don’t people feel the same way about when advertisements perform the same operations that YouTube is with recommending videos? My hypothesis is that people – at least in this culture – are very sensitive when it comes to their money. When they have bots tracking their buying habits and suggesting users to act a certain way – more specifically, spend their money on a certain product – they would rather make these decisions independently. Motivation can be a tricky topic when thinking about UGC. In the context of targeted advertising, whether it be on Facebook or through a Google search, can we not interpret money as privately consumed user-generated content? I would like to do further research as to why people are so willing to click on recommended items in a “free” setting, but when advertisements try to suggest items that you would probably like to purchase, people will have a negative reaction. It could possibly be that advertisers have acquired a bad reputation over the years for trying to trick customers into buying a product. If you know of any research pertaining to free online content versus purchases as far as recommendation systems go, please comment.

Rated: from 5 votes

category: Uncategorized     tags: Cornell University, Facebook, Google, information science, recommendation systems, UGC, Wikipedia, YouTube

I like how all my information is built into one thing that I can check anywhere. I only read the headlines on Google News anyway.

Rated: from 2 votes

category: Uncategorized    

I don’t usually use the Twitter web-client for my personal tweeting activity. I either use a Twitter client for BlackBerry called UberTwitter or TweetDeck for my laptop. I haven’t seen any of the Trending Topics since I first used Twitter in 2008. From what I remembered, the Trending Topics would be current news stories. AT&T, Michael Jackson, and the Iran Election were all news stories that would make it to national news. Twitter users, myself included, would input their own comments on these stories. I thought that Twitter was a great outlet to have people’s voices heard on a national level. Some tweets would be read and even answered on news programs on TV. However, looking at the current Trending Topics, Twitter is not the same outlet that it was even one year ago.

Looking at the Trending Topics now, I see that people are using Twitter to group similar thoughts as opposed to grouping similar reactions to headline events. For example, one of my favorite current Trending Topics/hashtags is #its2010whyyoustill. In this topic, users describe situations where they see people behaving as if it were in the past. These tweets have ranged in time scale from maybe 3-4 years ago (#its2010whyyoustill using a flip phone, etc.) to 10-12 years ago (playing with Pokemon cards) to aimed statements (http://twitter.com/lovedrunkkk/statuses/9564671948). I think the biggest change to Trending Topics on Twitter has been spamming. Spammers will use the Trending Topics in their tweets because they know about the high volume of people who search these topics. It’s essentially a cheaper way of Google Bombing.

I didn’t really see any topics relating to politics, so I headed over to TweetStats to see various trend stats. Sarah Palin is one of the top Trending Topics since September 2008, so I decided to see what people on Twitter are saying about her recent activity with the Tea Party and a possible 2012 Presidential Candidate campaign. The tweets had mixed views. Some were informational, saying that Sarah Palin will arrive in Tulsa soon. Others are already threatening to move to Canada if Sarah Palin gets elected president. My main criticism for Twitter as a channel for political discourse is its lack of organization. If someone wants to see tweets pertaining to a particular topic, they will have to search for it. If someone then wants to reply to a tweet, the protocol is to use the @username paradigm. However, other people would have a hard time following this discourse clicking back and forth on participants profiles. Once a user speaks/tweets out of turn, then someone following this discussions would be completely lost. Political discourse is best organized using forums. Forums are threaded to organize the discussions into replies which can then be replied to, etc. They can also be organized by topic, making it easier for people who just want to read the discussions.

I don’t believe that the character limit is hampering nor promoting creativity on Twitter. The character limit was originally implemented due to the character limit of SMS messaging. The point of Twitter is to have information ready on one’s mobile phone. Most mobile phone users still do not have smart phones, but can still send and receive SMS messages, making the character limit on Twitter almost a necessity. If I had to pick one though, I would say that the character limit is less limiting creativity as opposed to promoting it. I have rarely had problems with the 140 character limit. If people want to put more characters in their thoughts, perhaps a personal blog is the next best step. Since the introduction of URL shortening (tinyurl, bit.ly, etc.), people on Twitter have been able to post longer thoughts concerning a certain site. I think the limit is perfect for those who just want to read 1-2 sentences of what someone has to say. These concise thoughts work well, especially when coupled with relevant links.

Rated: from 4 votes

category: Uncategorized     tags: BlackBerry, SMS, TweetStats, Twitter

This will be the third class this semester I will talk about people’s motivation to create user-generated content UGC and publish it on the Internet. I currently have more UGC related accounts than I can list right now. The ones I use the most are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, WordPress, Digg, and (unashamedly) Sporcle.  Before these accounts I had a MySpace, and before that I had Xanga (wow that was a long time ago). I hadn’t asked myself the question of why I am posting all this information about me for the public to consume until recently.

When considering UGC, especially social UGC like YouTube videos or even photos on Flickr, motivation can be broken down into two main factors: individual and social benefits. Jaron Lanier would argue that the only reason people would publish UGC would be for individual reasons, such as money incentives. I really like how Caterina Fake phrases it, saying Lanier believes it is a zero-sum game. Lanier says that people should not be motivated to publish UGC unless there is some individual payoff or incentive. There are some online systems that will give the user something in return for their participation or publication(s). Many games online will have leaderboards. Seeing one’s name on this leaderboard has the potential to boost one’s morale. Some people, especially rising musicians, will try to use YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook to get their band recognized, at least at a local level. In these cases, people are uploading content for their personal gain.

Incentives are not just limited to the user receiving something in return for giving something. Think about this: how many people would use Facebook if charged you to use it? In this case, the incentive is a very low cost “entry fee.” All the user has to have is an email address, internet access, and a computer. Since most people already have these things, the user will be likely to at least create a Facebook account. People personal preferences still affect their online activity.

What Lanier does not acknowledge – and what Fake kind of touched upon while she was busy grilling Lanier – is that users also upload UGC for social incentives. Should tweets on Twitter or even status updates on Facebook be counted as UGC? I would argue yes. These are examples of microblogging: publishing thoughts and/or links in a short statement. Usually, people will use Twitter and Facebook status updates to share a story on another site, let their friends know how they’re feeling/where they are/what they are doing. These people, or at least from what I can see from my experience with various social networking sites, do not expect any kind of payoff from posting these thoughts. Another example of people posting UGC for social incentives is Wikipedia. Users who edit many articles do not necessarily receive any sort of compensation for their work. They edit pages so that society has access to this information.

Users are not necessarily publishing UGC for their own sake, as Lanier argues, and are not posting UGC for no particular reason. Instead, I believe that the reasons that UGC exists are comprised of a hybrid between personal gain and social benefits.

Rated: from 9 votes

category: Uncategorized     tags: Digg, Facebook, Flickr, microblogging, MySpace, Sporcle, Twitter, UGC, Wikipedia, WordPress, Xanga, YouTube