Are Social Media, Social? (Part Nine)

The ties that bind connect people, families and communities but those ties remain limited and small in number however richly endowed they may appear to be within the context of discussions about social media. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is a fragile ecology that assumes among other things, that people will stay on top of their connections to each other and maintain the strength and frequency of their conversations over time.

It also means that the participatory qualities of social media can be sustained amidst the ever expanding information noise coming at individuals from many different sources. Remember, sharing information or even contributing to the production of information doesn’t mean that users will become more or less social. The assumption that social media users make is that they are being social because they are participating within various networks, but there is no way of knowing other than through some really hard edged research whether that is really the case.

One of the most fascinating aspects of social media is what I would describe as statistical overload or inflation. “There are now more Facebook users in the Arab world than newspaper readers, a survey suggests. The research by Spot On Public Relations, a Dubai-based agency, says there are more than 15 million subscribers to the social network. The total number of newspaper copies in Arabic, English and French is just under 14 million.” (viewed on May 25, 2010). I am not sure how these figures were arrived at since no methodology was listed on their website. The company is essentially marketing itself by making these statistics available. There are hundreds of sites which make similar claims. Some of the more empirical studies that actually explain their methodologies still only sample a small number of users. Large scale studies will take years to complete.

The best way to think of this is to actually count the number of blogs that you visit on a regular basis or to look at the count of your tweets. Inevitably, there will be a narrowing not only of your range of interests but of the actual number of visits or tweets that you make in any given day. The point is that statistics of use tell us very little about reading, depth of concern or even effects.

The counter to this argument goes something like this. What about all those YouTube videos that have gone viral and have been seen by millions of viewers? Or, all the Blogs that so many people have developed? Or, the seemingly endless flow of tweets?

Jakob Nielsen at useit.com who has been writing about usability for many years makes the following claim. “In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action. All large-scale, multi-user communities and online social networks that rely on users to contribute content or build services share one property: most users don't participate very much. Often, they simply lurk in the background. In contrast, a tiny minority of users usually accounts for a disproportionately large amount of the content and other system activity.” (viewed on May 25, 2010) Neilsen’s insights have to be taken seriously.

The question is why are we engaging in this inflated talk about the effects and impact of social media? Part of the answer is the sheer excitement that comes from the mental images of all these people creating, participating, and speaking to each other even if the number is smaller than we think. I see these mental images as projections, ways of looking at the world that more often than not link with our preconceptions rather than against them.

So, here is another worrying trend. When Facebook announces 500 million people using its site(s), this suggests a significant explosion of desire to create and participate in some form of communications exchange. It says nothing about the content (except that Facebook has the algorithms to mine what we write) other than through the categories Facebook has, which do tend to define the nature of what we exchange. For example, many users list hundreds of friends which becomes a telling sign of popularity and relevance. It is pretty clear that very few members of that group actually constitute the community of that individual. Yet, there is an effect in having that many friends and that effect is defined by status, activities and pictures as well as likes and dislikes.

None of this is necessarily negative. The problem with the figure 500 million is that it projects a gigantic network from which we as individuals can only draw small pieces of content. And, most of this network is of necessity virtual and detached from real encounters. This detachment is both what encourages communication and can also discourage social connections. This is why privacy is so important. It is also why the anti-Facebook movement is gathering strength. The honest desire to communicate has been supplanted by the systematic use of personal information for profit.

Part Ten Follow on me Twitter @ronburnett

Are social media, social? (Part Three)

Some non-profits are using Social Media for real results. They are raising the profiles of their charities as well as increasing the brand awareness of their work. They are connecting with a variety of communities inside and outside of their home environments. In the process, Twitter is enabling a variety of exchanges many of which would not happen without the easy access that Twitter provides. These are examples of growth and change through the movement of ideas and projects. Twitter posts remind me short telegrams and as it turns out that may well be the reason the 140 character limit works so well. Social networks facilitate new forms of interaction and often unanticipated contacts. It is in the nature of networks to create nodes, to generate relationships, and to encourage intercommunication. That is after all, one of the key definitions of networks.

Alexandra Samuel suggests: “But here’s what’s different: you, as an audience member, can decide how social you want your social media to be. If you’re reading a newspaper or watching TV, you can talk back — shake your fist in the air! send a letter the editor! — or you can talk about (inviting friends to watch the game with you, chatting about the latest story over your morning coffee). But the opportunities for conversation and engagement don’t vary much from story to story, or content provider to content provider. On the social web, there are still lots of people who are using Twitter to have conversations, who are asking for your comments on that YouTube video, who are enabling — and participating in — wide-ranging conversations via blog and Facebook. You can engage with the people, organization and brands who want to hear from you…or you can go back to being a passive broadcastee.”

These are crucial points, a synopsis of sorts of the foundational assumptions in the Twitterverse and the Blogosphere. At their root is an inference or even assertion about traditional media that needs to be thought about. Traditional media are always portrayed as producing passive experiences or at least not as intensely interactive as social media.

Let’s reel back a bit. Take an iconic event like the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That was a broadcast event that everyone alive at the time experienced in a deeply personal fashion. The tears, the pain, people walking the streets of Washington and elsewhere in a daze, all of this part and parcel of a series of complex reactions as much social as private. Or 9/11, which was watched in real time within a broadcast context. People were on the phone with each other all over the world. Families watched and cried. I could go on and on. It is not the medium which induces passivity, but what we do with the experiences.

So, Twitter and most social media are simply *extensions* of existing forms of communication. This is not in anyway to downplay their importance. It is simply to suggest that each generation seems to take ownership of their media as if history and continuity are not part of the process. Or, to put it another way, telegrams, the telegraph was as important to 19th century society as the telephone was to the middle of the 20th century.

In part one of this essay, I linked Twitter and gossip. Gossip was fundamental to the 17th century and could lead to the building or destruction of careers. Gossip was a crucial aspect of the Dreyfus affair. Gossip has brought down movie stars and politicians. The reality is that all media are interactive and the notion of the passive viewer was an invention of marketers to simplify the complexity of communications between images and people, between people and what they watch and between advertisers and their market.

For some reason, the marketing model of communications has won the day making it seem as if we need more and more complex forms of interaction to achieve or arrive at rich yet simple experiences. All forms of communications to varying degrees are about interaction at different levels. Every form of communication begins with conversations and radiates outwards to media and then loops back. There is an exquisite beauty to this endless loop of information, talk, discussion, blogging, twittering and talking some more. The continuity between all of the parts is what makes communications processes so rich and engaging.

Part Four

Are social media, social?

Warning: This is a long article and not necessarily suitable to a glance. (See below on glances.)

I have been thinking a great deal about social media these days not only because of their importance, but also because of their ubiquity. There are some fundamental contradictions at work here that need more discussion. Let's take Twitter. Some people have thousands of followers. What exactly are they following? And more crucially, what does the word follow mean in this context?

Twitter is an endless flow of news and links between friends and strangers. It allows and sometimes encourages exchanges that have varying degrees of value. Twitter is also a tool for people who don't know each other to learn about shared interests. These are valuable aspects of this tightly wrought medium that tend towards the interactivity of human conversation.

On the other hand, Twitter like many Blogs is really a broadcast medium. Sure, followers can respond. And sometimes, comments on blog entries suggest that a "reading" has taken place. But, individual exchanges in both mediums tend to be short, anecdotal and piecemeal.

The general argument around the value of social media is that at least people can respond to the circulation of conversations and that larger and larger circles of people can form to generate varied and often complex interactions. But, responses of the nature and shortness that characterize Twitter are more like fragments — reactions that in their totality may say important things about what we are thinking, but within the immediate context of their publication are at best, broken sentences that are declarative without the consequences that often arise during interpersonal discussions. So, on Twitter we can make claims or state what we feel with few of the direct results that might occur if we had to face our ‘followers’ in person.

Blogs and web sites live and die because they can trace and often declare the number of ‘hits’ they receive. What exactly is a hit? Hit is actually an interesting word since its original meaning was to come upon something and to meet with…. In the 21st century, hits are about visits and the more visits you have the more likely you have an important web presence. Dig into Google Analytics and you will notice that they actually count the amount of time ‘hitters” spend on sites. The average across many sites is no more than a few seconds. Does this mean that a hit is really a glance? And what are the implications of glancing at this and that over the period of a day or a month? A glance is by definition short (like Twitter) and quickly forgotten. You don’t spend a long time glancing at someone.

Let’s look at the term Twitter a bit more closely. It is a noun that means “tremulous excitement.” But, its real origins are related to gossiping. And, gossiping is very much about voyeurism. There is also a pejorative sense to Twitter, chattering, chattering on and on about the same thing. So, we are atwitter with excitement about social media because they seem to extend our capacity to gossip about nearly everything which may explain why Justin Bieber has been at the top of discussions within the twitterverse. I am Canadian and so is he. Enough said.

Back to follow for a moment. To follow also means to pursue. I will for example twitter about this blog entry in an effort to increase the readership for this article. In a sense, I want you the reader, to pursue your interest in social media with enough energy to actually read this piece! To follow also means to align oneself, to be a follower. You may as a result wish to pursue me @ronburnett.

But the real intent of the word follow is to create a following. And the real intent of talking about hits is to increase the number of followers. All in all, this is about convincing people that you have something important and valuable to say which means that social media is also about advertising and marketing. This explains why businesses are justifiably interested in using social media and why governments are entering the blogosphere and the twitterverse in such great numbers.

Here is the irony. After a while, the sheer quantity of Twitters means that the circle of glances has to narrow. Trends become more important than the actual content. Quantity rules just like Google, where the greater the number of hits, the more likely you will have a site that advertisers want to use. Remember, advertisers assume that a glance will have the impact they need to make you notice that their products exist. It is worth noting that glancing is also derived from the word slippery.

As the circle of glances narrows, the interactions take on a fairly predictable tone with content that is for the most part, newsy and narcissistic. I am not trying to be negative here. Twitter me and find out.

Part Two

Blog

The challenge of creating a Blog is more complex than just putting words on a page. The idea is not to simply reproduce existing information through links or to just bring information into this realm for the sake of it. The purpose as I see it is to make sure that there is interesting and relevant information available for comment and disucssion. The photograph on this page was taken on the Island of Jersey in 1949. There are an endless series of narratives that could be constructed around it. Most importantly, the photograph is a provocation. It is a way of entering memory and thinking about the past, even though it is really impossible to recover much of what happened on that day. In a sense, it is the pivot for a fictional rebuilding of my childhood. A fews years later my Uncle painted this painting. I believe that the photograph and painting are related.