Twitter: A Live Megaphone for Lobbying Groups, Companies

Kang, Cecilia. "Twitter: A Live Megaphone for Lobbying Groups, Companies." The Washington Post, February 13, 2013. 

From the article: "On television, President Obama spent a commercial-free hour delivering his State of the Union speech. But on Twitter, the nation’s biggest lobbying groups and corporations found a megaphone to place ad money and promote their views." Read more

The Public Domain: Surveillance in Everyday Life

Marwick, Alice. "The Public Domain: Surveillance in Everyday Life." Surveillance & Society 9 (2012): 378-393.

From the report: "People create profiles on social network sites and Twitter accounts against the background of an audience. This paper argues that closely examining content created by others and looking at one’s own content through other people’s eyes, a common part of social media use, should be framed as social surveillance. While social surveillance is distinguished from traditional surveillance along three axes (power, hierarchy, and reciprocity), its effects and behavior modification is common to traditional surveillance. Drawing on ethnographic studies of United States populations, I look at social surveillance, how it is practiced, and its impact on people who engage in it. I use Foucault’s concept of capillaries of power to demonstrate that social surveillance assumes the power differentials evident in everyday interactions rather than the hierarchical power relationships assumed in much of the surveillance literature. Social media involves a collapse of social contexts and social roles, complicating boundary work but facilitating social surveillance. Individuals strategically reveal, disclose and conceal personal information to create connections with others and tend social boundaries. These processes are normal parts of day-to-day life in communities that are highly connected through social media." Read more

Coming and Going on Facebook

Rainie, Lee, Smith, Aaron, and Maeve Duggan. "Coming and Going on Facebook." Pew Internet and American Life Project, February 5, 2013. 

From the article: "Two-thirds of online American adults (67%) are Facebook users, making Facebook the dominant social networking site in this country. And new findings from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project indicate there is considerable fluidity in the Facebook user population:

• 61% of current Facebook users say that at one time or another in the past they have voluntarily taken a break from using Facebook for a period of several weeks or more.
• 20% of the online adults who do not currently use Facebook say they once used the site but no longer do so.
• 8% of online adults who do not currently use Facebook are interested in becoming Facebook users in the future." Read more

Tags, Blogs, Tweets: Social Media as Science Tool?

Ogden, Lesley Evans. "Tags, Blogs, Tweets: Social Media as Science Tool?" BioScience 63 (2013): 148. 

From the article: "Is social media changing the way we do science—even speeding it up? Preliminary data, and a growing number of cases, suggest that the answer is yes.

One now-famous example of its growing ubiquity is the social media storm that followed the publication of a NASA-funded paper in the journal Science, on 2 December 2010 (doi:10.1126/science.1197258). The authors of the paper claimed to have discovered a bacterium that could substitute arsenic in place of phosphate as a key nutrient necessary to support life.

Rosie Redfield, zoology professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC), wasn’t buying it, and said so on her blog. Ironically, this was a communication platform that UBC graduate students chose to parody, along with Redfield, at their Christmas party. Asking the fake Redfield, “What’s a blog?” the reply was, “it’s a publication that nobody reads, not even reviewers.” Their mockery was to be quickly proved wrong." Read more

Generational Differences in Content Generation in Social Media: The Roles of the Gratifications Sought and of Narcissism

Leung, Louis. "Generational Differences in Content Generation in Social Media: The Roles of the Gratifications Sought and of Narcissism." Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013): 997-1006. 

From the report: "This study examines the roles of the gratifications sought and of narcissism in content generation in social media and explores the generational differences in motivations and in narcissistic personalities when predicting the usage of Facebook, blogs, and forums. Data were gathered from a probability sample of 596 social media users through a telephone survey in 2010. Factor analysis results showed that content generation using social media was satisfying five socio-psychological needs: showing affection, venting negative feelings, gaining recognition, getting entertainment, and fulfilling cognitive needs. In particular, people who used social media to meet their social needs and their need for affection tended to use Facebook and blogs. In contrast, when users wanted to air out discontent, they often turned to forums. Results also showed that exhibitionists seemed to use social media to show affection, express their negative feelings, and achieve recognition. The study found no generational differences in using Facebook and blogs as a means to satisfy social needs or the need for affection. However, differences in patterns of social media usage were found among Baby Boomers with different narcissistic personalities. The paper includes a discussion of the study’s limitations and suggestions for future research." Read more

Who Owns, Controls Social Media Activity?

Marszalek, Diana. "Who Owns, Controls Social Media Activity?" TV News Check, January 29, 2013. 

From the article: "Now that the use of social media is part of the TV newsroom norm, the industry is wrestling with the next wave of issues associated with the medium — hashing out matters ranging from who owns on-air personalities’ Facebook accounts to delineating between professional and personal tweets.

Individuals on all sides of the equation, from station group owners to newsroom staffers, are pushing to add more structure to the use of social media both on and off the job, primarily so the practice doesn’t come back to bite them, industry watchers say. 

The lack of industry wide standards regulating social media practices also is starting to create unexpected problems, particularly for anchors and reporters who, to some degree, are winging it." Read more

Gartner: Social Business Efforts Largely Unsuccessful So Far

Kanaracus, Chris. "Gartner: Social Business Efforts Largely Unsuccessful So Far." Computer World, January 29, 2013. 

From the article: "Many large companies are embracing internal social networks, but for the most part, they're not getting much from them, according to analyst firm Gartner.

By 2016, some 50% of enterprises "will have internal Facebook-like social networks," and 30% of these will be considered to be as crucial as email and telephones, a Gartner study announced on Tuesday states.

However, through 2015, 80% "of social business efforts will not achieve the intended benefits due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology," according to the report." Read more

Twitter Gives Up User Data to Feds 69% of the Time

Miners, Zach. "Twitter Gives Up User Data to Feds 69% of the Time." Computer World, January 28, 2013. 

From the article: "Twitter has released new numbers showing that the social network complied with government data requests 69% of the time in the U.S., as government requests for user information worldwide continue to rise.

The total number of information requests increased to 1,009 during the second half of 2012, up from 849 during the first half of the year, according to Twitter's transparency report. Government requests for content removal also increased to 42 from just six." Read more

Using Twitter to Track the Flu: Researchers Find a Better Way to Screen the Tweets

"Using Twitter to Track the Flu: Researchers Find a Better Way to Screen the Tweets." Johns Hopkins University, January 24, 2013. 

From the article: "Sifting through social media messages has become a popular way to track when and where flu cases occur, but a key hurdle hampers the process: how to identify flu-infection tweets. Some tweets are posted by people who have been sick with the virus, while others come from folks who are merely talking about the illness. If you are tracking actual flu cases, such conversations about the flu in general can skew the results.

To address this problem, Johns Hopkins computer scientists and researchers in the School of Medicine have developed a new tweet-screening method that not only delivers real-time data on flu cases, but also filters out online chatter that is not linked to actual flu infections. Comparing their method, which is based on analysis of 5,000 publicly available tweets per minute, to other Twitter-based tracking tools, the Johns Hopkins researchers say their real-time results track more closely with government disease data that takes much longer to compile." Read more

Even if It Enrages Your Boss, Social Net Speech Is Protected

Greenhouse, Steven. "Even if It Enrages Your Boss, Social Net Speech Is Protected." The Nee York Times, January 21, 2013.

From the article: "As Facebook and Twitter become as central to workplace conversation as the company cafeteria, federal regulators are ordering employers to scale back policies that limit what workers can say online.

Employers often seek to discourage comments that paint them in a negative light. Don’t discuss company matters publicly, a typical social media policy will say, and don’t disparage managers, co-workers or the company itself. Violations can be a firing offense.

But in a series of recent rulings and advisories, labor regulators have declared many such blanket restrictions illegal. The National Labor Relations Board says workers have a right to discuss work conditions freely and without fear of retribution, whether the discussion takes place at the office or on Facebook." Read more

The Dunbar Number, From the Guru of Social Networks

Bennett, Drake. "The Dunbar Number, From the Guru of Social Networks." Bloomberg Business Week, January 10, 2013. 

From the article: "A little more than 10 years ago, the evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar began a study of the Christmas-card-sending habits of the English. This was in the days before online social networks made friends and “likes” as countable as miles on an odometer, and Dunbar wanted a proxy for meaningful social connection. He was curious to see not only how many people a person knew, but also how many people he or she cared about. The best way to find those connections, he decided, was to follow holiday cards. After all, sending them is an investment: You either have to know the address or get it; you have to buy the card or have it made from exactly the right collage of adorable family photos; you have to write something, buy a stamp, and put the envelope in the mail. These are not huge costs, but most people won’t incur them for just anybody." Read more

The Web’s New Monopolists

Fox, Justin. "The Web’s New Monopolists." The Atlantic, January/February 2013. 

From the article: "Ask Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of the social network Twitter and the mobile-payment start-up Square, what his two companies have in common, and he has a quick answer: “They’re both utilities.” Mark Zuckerberg might agree: he spent years trying to convince people that Facebook is not a social network but a “social utility.”

It’s an intriguing choice of words for such of-the-moment entrepreneurs. Utilities tend to be boring, slow-growing beasts. They also—and this is the more important point—tend to be monopolies that are either regulated heavily by governments or owned outright by them.

Indeed, once they get beyond a certain size, technology companies do become wary of the word. Google has been called a utility by lots of people, but you won’t hear the company’s executives using the term (at least, I couldn’t find any examples). And Zuckerberg, when asked in 2010 whether, as a utility, Facebook ought to be regulated, said he hadn’t meant the word that way at all: “Something that’s cool can fade. But something that’s useful won’t. That’s what I meant by utility.” Read more

Architecting the Future of Social Media

Wood, Lindsay Taylor. "Architecting the Future of Social Media." Social Media Week, January 2, 2013.

From the article: "An information war has erupted around the world. The battle lines are drawn between those governments that regard the free flow of information, and the ability to access it, as a matter of fundamental human rights, and those that regard official control of information as a fundamental sovereign prerogative. The contest is being waged institutionally in organizations like the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and daily in countries like Syria." Read more

Slactivists or Activists?

Breuer, Anita and Bilal Farooq. "Slactivists or Activists? The Impact of Social Media Use on Individual Level Political Participation: Evidence from the Brazilian Ficha Limpa Campaign." Academia.edu, 2012.

From the report: "Social media have come to form an inherent part of most activist campaigns today. Yet, their potential to foster political participation and mobilization remains debated. While cyber-utopians insist on the positive contribution of social online-activism to participatory democracy, supporters of the "slactivism” argument dismiss it as a hedonist activity that carries little societal benefit. Our analysis of the Brazilian anti-corruption campaign Ficha Limpa picks up on this debate. We present original survey data concerning citizens’ use of social media and their offline participation in the context of this campaign. Using a binary logit model that estimates the relation between the use of different communication features supported by social media and contacting elected officials, we show that online activities involving relatively high transaction costs in terms of time and effort contribute more positively toward offline participation than simple single-click activities. Our findings indicate that the choice of appropriate social media formats may be a decisive element for the success of campaigners who seek to mobilize citizens via the Internet." Read more

Social Networking Popular Across Globe

"Social Networking Popular Across Globe: Arab Publics Most Likely to Express Political Views Online." Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Project, December 12, 2012.

From the report: "Social networking has spread around the world with remarkable speed. In countries such as Britain, the United States, Russia, the Czech Republic and Spain, about half of all adults now use Facebook and similar websites. These sites are also popular in many lower-income nations, where, once people have access to the internet, they tend to use it for social networking. Meanwhile, cell phones have become nearly ubiquitous throughout much of the world, and people are using them in a variety of ways, including texting and taking pictures. Smart phones are also increasingly common – roughly half in Britain, the U.S., and Japan have one. Globally, most smart phone users say they visit social networking sites on their phone, while many get job, consumer, and political information." Read more

Social Media a Healthcare Data Gold Mine

Dembosky, April. "Social Media a Healthcare Data Gold Mine." The Financial Times, December 11, 2012.  

From the article: "Healthcare companies are loathe to tread into such sensitive territory, but they are keenly aware of the goldmine of health data stored in people’s social media accounts…

Pharmaceutical companies already analyse social media sites to track reports of side-effects of their drugs. That data can help correct formulas more quickly than waiting for the results of years-long clinical trials; it can also be used to set prices and test marketing slogans.

Public health officials are also interested in social media data as a source of information on disease outbreaks." Read more 

Social Media Use Exploded in 2012, Led by Pinterest

Mlot, Stephanie. "Social Media Use Exploded in 2012, Led by Pinterest." PC Magazine, December 3, 2012. 

From the article: "Consumers spend more time on social networks than any other site — about 20 percent via a PC, and 30 percent using a mobile device, Nielsen's Social Media Report revealed.

Still not impressed? The report also tips a 37 percent increase in the total time spent on social media in the U.S., reaching 121 billion minutes in July, compared to 88 billion in summer 2011.

The ultimate social network, Facebook, remains the most-visited in the U.S., and earned the title of most popular Web brand in the U.S. this year. It reached 152.2 million PC visitors, 78.4 million app users, and 74.3 million mobile Web surfers. That dwarfs social sites in all categories (see graphic below), beating No. 2 Blogger by more than 93.7 million PC users. In the mobile app race, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google+, and Pinterest carry the top five spots." Read more

See also
"The State of the Media: The Social Media Report 2012." Nielsen, 2012.

Privacy and Security Aspects of Social Media: Institutional and Technological Environment

Kshetri, Nir. "Privacy and Security Aspects of Social Media: Institutional and Technological Environment." The Pacific Asia Journal of the Association for Information Systems 3 (2012):  1-20.

From the report: "Legitimate as well as illegitimate organizations and entities are gaining access to information about social media (SM) users through illegal, extralegal, and quasi-legal means. Worse still, many organizations and individuals using SM have become targets and victims of cybercrimes. SM have also led to an exposure of unethical and illegal conducts within some organizations. One estimate suggested that 36% of social networking users have reported experiencing malware attacks through their profiles. Another study suggested that one in four companies have become cybercrime victims via social networking sites. Likewise, about a quarter of employers surveyed by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics in 2009 had disciplined an employee for improper activities on social networking sites. Organizations that fail to take appropriate technological and behavioral measures related to SM are likely to suffer reputation damages, loss of customers' confidence, and other types of economic losses. The goal of this paper is to develop a framework that provides a simple, explicit mechanism for understanding privacy and security issues associated with SM." Read more

Teens and Venture Investors Demand Online Safety and Privacy

Kolodny, Lora. "Teens and Venture Investors Demand Online Safety and Privacy." Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2012.

From the article: A new study from the Family Online Safety Institute, a nonprofit on a mission to “make the online world safe for kids and families,” found that teens are not only more connected than ever, increasingly using mobile devices and social networks, but they understand privacy and safety issues in a way that previous generations didn’t.

In addition, FOSI and venture investors say they are focused on ensuring that entrepreneurs consider safety and privacy issues and plan for them from the start when developing a business.  Read more

See also

Hart Research Associates. The Online Generation Gap: Contrasting Attitudes and Behaviors of Parents and Teens, prepared for The Family Online Safety Institute, November 14, 2012.

Established Democracies, Internet Censorship and the Social Media Test

Dick, Archie L. "Established Democracies, Internet Censorship and the Social Media Test." Information Development 28 (2012): 459-260.

From the report: "Social media can test how firmly entrenched Internet freedom is in established democracies through a comparison with countries with an authoritarian track record. The method is to evaluate the use of social media in recent protests in a sample of established democracies and authoritarian regimes, and to compare differences and similarities in government responses." Read more