Monday, February 27, 2017

The USA Should treat Internet Connectivity Like the Rural Electrification Projects of the Past - Largely To Help Our Children

My perspective on children and the internet is colored by the fact that I have three of them, and they grew up as the internet and cell phones became popular. They were all born in the 80’s and grew up in the 90s. They became adults in the 2000s. As we know, technology was changing and growing as fast as my children were.

Children today are growing up in a time of hyper communication/information. No other generation in history has had so much information at such young ages. I was struck by the work of young artist Shilo Shiv Suleman (check out her video at the following link):

http://www.ted.com/talks/shilo_shiv_suleman_using_tech_to_enable_dreaming?quote=1330

In her Tedtalk she focused on how young people can now use technology to be creative as they read a storybook on their IPad. Young people can interact with other young people around the world through technology. No longer,using Suleman's technology, do they simply read a story. They can now interact with the story, and contribute to the story.

They can do this in real time in conjunction with other young people. This unprecedented capacity to learn, create, communicate, and inform at young ages makes the world a different place for our youth. Because many of them know no other world, it is a consuming reality for them.

The pace of change in technology is relentless, and our children must also cope with rapid change on an unprecedented scale. While the pace of change is daunting for adults, children are more flexible and adaptable to change ,and so they may be coping better than adults with the hyper fast reality of today’s world. Yet children must be shielded from the evil on the internet.

I learned more about how smart children are this week. For example Sugata Mitra’s story of reaching remote, poor areas first struck me. In his story he focused on how children are self taught and can teach other children. Here is the link to his story:

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves

Mitra focused on how children can learn without assistance. That is not a new concept. Frederick Douglass, the 19^th century abolitionist and former slave taught himself to read while still a child after a kind slave owner’s wife was caught teaching him to read, and was forbade to continue.

Mitra also talked about the need for good teachers. I agree that we need good teachers, and that children can learn without teachers. Paraphrasing Mitra, if a particular teacher can be replaced by a machine then that teacher should be replaced. Yet good teachers are still needed, because, especially for younger children, the human element is critical. Children need nurturing while learning. Learning is not purely academic. It is social, and spiritual.

Machines cannot take the place of people when it comes to educating our children, and I oppose efforts to get rid of teachers, unless the individual teacher is incompetent. Yet, in the classroom, I see the reality that children can teach each other, and can learn without a teacher. A teacher in some instances may be a facilitator rather than directing learning directly. Children can and should be allowed to learn on their own. Adults (teachers) should have a vision and plan for the learning. Teachers therefore are in an evolving role.

Education Technology (ET) spoken of in Mitra’s Tedtalk can augment teachers and free them to take a different focus on learning. Allowing children to think critically has been heralded as the goal of many education programs. I agree. Critical thinking skills are critical. Without them, children are merely sponges soaking up what they are exposed to. Children must be taught to think for themselves, and to think critically.

Critically means, for a good sponge, knowing where to soak. Using critical thinking, our children can direct the sponge (their minds) to absorb knowledge and information, direct the sponge to release some of its knowledge and information to peers who may lack that information, and they can combine the absorbed knowledge and information to form super sponges that can synergize and produce combined communication/collaboration.

Children are already doing this, as some teachers have learned how to turn students loose and monitor, facilitate, and help, while not interfering too much. Schools of education are tasked to incorporate ET into the classroom teacher training modules. This is were the proverbial rubber meets the road. Professional development, then, becomes extremely important. Seasoned teachers must be brought up to speed regarding new innovative teaching methods.

There is a downside of the internet and children. We are definitely empowering our children to reach unprecedented heights of achievement. Yet we must always remember that we are dealing with children. Their development at different stages must be understood and taken into account when planning how to teach. It is not about controlling the students. Rather, it is about careful monitoring of what they are exposed to. Age appropriate exposure is the key to ensuring that we do not abdicate our responsibility as adults to maintain control over exposure.

When we look at the world we see that there is no full equity when it comes to education. Different nations have deep disparities between them, and even within a particular nation, there are often deep disparities between the urban/rural, and the rich/poor. Addressing these concerns are applicable even in relatively prosperous nations like the USA.

I live in the USA, in an area with limited internet service in the rural parts of the county. The cost of the rural limited internet is much higher than the cost of internet in urban areas and the largely satellite internet is slower. Addressing the disparities in internet access for the poorer rural class should be a policy discussion at the state and national level. Just as everyone in the country has basic access to similarly priced electricity, water, gas, and phone, there should be a level field for internet access.

One solution would be to have a grand program of laying internet cable lines, just as we had a program of complete electrification of our country. Such a program would be costly, but could be borne by an equalization of prices for rural and urban, so that the urban areas pay more to subsidize the rural areas.

Such a program would create jobs in the short term, and the added intellectual capacity created would transform America by creating a residual effect of more innovation and more businesses locating in rural areas.

The time for such a grand program of national cable internet access is long overdue. Our children deserve it.

Saturday, February 25, 2017

I Love New York

Hi and welcome:

Please read the article at the link below to understand better my blog post this week:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/pb.2013.11

We normally thinking of branding with regards to products and services. However, places can be branded too. Robert Govers, makes this point in his article “Why place branding is not about logos and slogans.” Govers believes that place branding is about making “something identifiable as distinctive.” It is true that products and service are also usually distinct in some way. But products and services can also be very much alike. In some cases the only distinction between two products or two services is the slogan or logo used to advertise them

Places are different. They are inherent distinct from other places because no two places are exactly alike.

Some products are extremely like each other, even when manufactured by different companies. In those instances, the products can come to be seen as commodities, like copper, or iron. Manufacturing is about mass production. The technology of modern manufacturing makes it possible to reproduce nearly identical products millions of times. Consumers have come to expect that Tide detergent will be the same product every time, and so will McDonald’s hamburgers. Expectancy of commonality makes the products distinctive from other products that may be similar. For example, McDonald’s Big Mac, is distinctive from the Burger King Whopper. Both are burgers, but have distinctive taste, form, and ingredients. In fact, the Whopper has been promoted, distinctively, as a burger that you can “have your own way” by adding or deleting toppings. Most other burgers at fast food restaurants do not have this “distinctive” option.

However, places are not products or services. Places cannot be mass produced. Each place is unique and distinct from all other places. Places do not carry the burden of replication, except in one aspect. Places must maintain a constant image for all visitors. Places must insure that visitors can experience the same thing every time. For example, Niagara Falls is world famous for the beauty of the waterfalls. The falls are a constant that people expect. Some may not know it, but Niagara Falls can be turned on and off and the flow of water is regulated. So the administrators of the Falls have a responsibility to make sure that the Falls are flowing at peak tourist times to insure that visitors get the experience they expect.

As Robert Govers said, for place branding there has to be something that can be identified as distinctive, to set the place apart, making it special. Every place has some distinct feature. It could be history, landscape, culture, or a combination of these and other things. Marketing a place, then, has to focus on the distinct features of the place. The place could be a small town, a big city, a state in the USA or a country, like the USA or Canada.

As communicators, we take messages and use them to communicate ideas, beliefs, thoughts, actions and yes, products and services. We also communicate places.

The image of a place can be used in combination with a logo and a slogan, to create a promotional campaign to attract visitors to a place, and guide them about the things they can do when they arrive. The internet, including mobile apps, can be used in these campaigns. In this respect, a place becomes more like a product or service. Combining a place with a logo was done successfully with the "I love New York" promotion. The heart shape in place of the word “heart in “I Love NY” has captivated tourists for many years. The “I Love NY” logo (and slogan) combines place, logo, and slogan to promote tourism. Using the logo/slogan can be used on almost all visual media, including newspapers, the internet, television and promotional materials. Many places have found that combining a logo/slogan with the place works to promote tourism. In this respect places act like products or services and take on a logo/slogan to promote the place, often using the same advertising methods that products and services use.

Therefore, it can be safely said that place branding is not irrespective of logo/slogan usage. In fact, a place can benefit from a logo/slogan as much or in some cases more than a product or service. Govers argues that places must rely on distinction at the expense of logo and/or slogan. I have come to a different conclusion. Places can and should explore logo and slogan use in their effort to take advantage of the distinct place they claim.

Govers asserts that “as places already have (more often than not meaningful) names and landmarks, the amount of time and investment generally spent on designing logos and slogans as opposed to actual reputation management for places, seems to be a waste.” I agree with Govers that the time and investment “generally spent on designing logos and slogans” could be put to better use in some cases. However, as the “I Love NY” logo/slogan makes clear, a good logo/slogan can be useful and help to build reputation for a place. I contend that it is not an either or situation. One does not need to choose either logos/slogan versus reputation management. Both should be pursued, with resources allocated in a wise way. In some cases Govers may be right, and the correct path to take would be to ignore logos/slogan development to focus on reputation management. But one size rarely fits all (except in hats) and it would be wise to consider a combined campaign, rather than focusing on one or the other.

People like catchy phrases, and good graphics. Linking a good logo with a good slogan, while practicing reputation management can be a win-win-win for a place, looking to brand the distinctions of the place that make it stand out from all other places.

The internet is full of logos and slogans. And, there is no shortage of distinctive places on the internet. The right combination of logo, slogan, and place can be lucrative to a place. Using strategic communication tools to research and build an effective promotional campaign that combines internet and traditional media can result in a very successful campaign for a place.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

A Brave New World

This is a Brave New World. The ability to talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime, is unprecedented. Albeit, there are some countries where censorship limits communication. The truth is that, due to community standards, there will always be those things that cannot be “greenlighted” in the global community. Around the world different cultures and communities have varying standards for what is acceptable. China, the most populous nation on Earth, routinely censors the internet for its people. Virtually the entire world is resolute that child pornography is wrong.

Into this complex situation crowdsourcing comes. Crowdsourcing permits disparate groups to find commonality. Commonality is the key aspect of crowdsourcing. People who share common ideas, beliefs, concerns, aspiration, knowledge, fears, loves, desires, interests, demographics, intellect, education, gender, race, age, geography, language, or any other commonality can use crowdsourcing to collaborate.

The Brave New World aspect of crowdsourcing refers to how it is a worldwide phenomenon. There are, in theory, no geographical limitations. Everyone on Earth can participate. The uses for crowdsourcing have shown themselves to be nearly unlimited.

Reading Brave New World opened my eyes to possibilities that are staggering. I read it as a high school student in 1971. I learned about how people can be programmed by controlling governments with seemingly benevolent aims. Crowdsourcing is also a seemingly benevolent way to achieve goals. However, not all share the same goals. We are seeing that terrorist, like Isis, are able to use the crowdsourcing capabilities of the internet to recruit, and train. My point is that it seems that discussions of crowdsourcing only focus on the good that can be done while ignoring the evil that can also be unleashed.

There is also the potential for time to be wasted by crowdsourcing. While time wasting is not necessarily good or evil, it is a reality for most of us that our time can and will be wasted if we are not vigilant to prevent it. Crowds by their nature create conditions conducive to time wasting. The larger the crowd, the greater possibility that there will be time wasted In our readings for this week we encountered some of this reasoning in regards to the number of people that can reasonably work together without the problem of time wasting. This is why small groups are often preferred over large groups. Less time is wasted on communication.

However, research has shown that the most important feature of a collaborative group is the group’s attitude:

Collaborator Comments: Mitch Ditkoff:

“The main finding of the survey that resonates with my own experience is that attitude is one of the keys to successful collaborations. Indeed, the “right” kind of attitude (to be determined, of course, by each individual collaborator) is the glue. Since collaborations are often like marriages and go through various ups and downs, it is essential that the collaborators enter into the relationship with the kind of attitude that can weather the roller coaster ride of the sometimes chaotic and challenging creative process.”

Collaborator Comments: Carolyn Allen:

“The results of this survey showed that Attitude and Personality cornered the top 5 spots in what works well in a collaborative experience. These attributes ranked higher than Behaviours and Experience. That tells us that “soft” people skills that build community are vital to creativity and productivity.”

http://www.ideachampions.com/downloads/collaborationresults.pdf

Title of the research survey:

A New Survey Suggests that Attitude is More Important than Experience in Collaborative Work

The Ideal Collaborative Team Mitch Ditkoff and Tim Moore of Idea Champions, Carolyn Allen of Innovation Solution Center and Dave Pollard of Meeting of Minds

What the above comments from a research survey indicate is that attitude matters.

While not all crowdsourcing situations lend themselves to a focus on attitude when assembling a collaborative group, in some situations attitude is vitally important.

For those situations when it does matter, a method of analyzing attitudes can make or break the success of a collaborative team.

For those putting together collaborative teams then the focus may best be a focus on the attitude of the group that makes the decisions.

For example, the Arab Spring was made possible by the internet’s crowdsourcing technology. Today, protests are routinely arranged using social media, making use of social media’s crowdsourcing capabilities. However, it is nearly impossible to ascertain the attitudes of the people who come out for a protest. Some will be hot heads, some will be violent extremists, others may be pacifists. Filtering the people who come to a public meeting is almost impossible.

Collaboration is not new. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s a high level of collaboration was necessary to pull together protestors. However, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had a philosophy of non-violence. Those who participated in their marches were instructed in the philosophy of non-violence and how to practice it when marching. Today, groups of marchers are pulled together often without any such training. This can lead to situations where there is unexpected violence. We have all heard reports of violence at what were otherwise peaceful protests. Without some way of screening attitudes toward violence during protests, it is difficult if not impossible to filter out those who might resort to violence to make their point.

Those who plan protests today, using the internet’s crowdsourcing capabilities to recruit nearly instantaneous crowds, might do well to go back and examine the procedures used during the Civil Rights Movement to learn how best to control the crowd that they are creating. If a peaceful non-violent protest is desired, it must be sought after in a deliberate fashion, using strategic communication skills and methods to make sure the message of non-violence is disseminated and understood, if indeed that is the goal.

Attitudes are important. The research shows that those who take attitude into account when assembling collaborative groups will achieve better results than those who fail to take attitude into account.

Democracy is based on the idea that people have different views and those views reflect their choice of leadership, and consequently, the person or party that is voted for in an election. Crowdsourcing in elections using the internet has become routine. Huge crowds can be assembled in a short time using the power of collaboration enabled by the internet. As the crowd forms, it becomes the responsibility of the person or group that called for the crowd to form to make sure that the crowd understands and has the right attitude toward law enforcement and counter protesters. Those who call for the crowd, in other words, bear responsibility for the actions of the crowd.

In this Brave New World of virtual collaboration, attitudes count. Strategic communicators must be sure that they take attitudes into account when formulating plans for crowdsourcing.

The individual versus the Crowd

I posted the following to the discussion post of Muriel Bailey in response to a post by Autumn Lombardi:

Any one who has read Ayn Rand's books understands how vital the individual is. I agree with you, Autumn, concerning the "sanctity of the individual". While the crowd does have advantages, we must never forget that the crowd is composed of individuals. It is common for individuals to get "lost in the crowd". Yet we see over and over again, that often it is one single singular idea, person, or event, that produces great progressive change. What crowd informed and guided Martin Luther to write his 95 Theses? Who was with Moses when he received the Ten Commandments? My point is that often one person gets it just right or nearly so, and the "crowd" might only mess it up.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

MILLENNIALS ARE LAZY, BUT WHY?

Eulas Kirtdoll

Hi Friends,

This post is not a class assignment. It is a discussion post that I posted to Holland Turner's week six discussion post for our Second Discussion Leadership Assignment:

In my opinion millennials are reaping the benefits of the unprecedented technological advances that have taken place in the last 100 years. No other generation has had the proverbial silver spoon placed in their mouth from birth like this generation. Life has never been easier for those in the Western world. Millennials live lives that kings could not have imagined, and they are doing this while enjoying their youth. As a baby boomer, I think my perspective on life mirrors the reality that today's world of technology is new. It is almost as young as the millennials themselves. Millennials lack that perspective,

I say the above as a foreword to my belief that millennial laziness is a real thing. We are talking about a generation that seriously considers having robots clean for them. My point is that the millennial generation has options no other generation before them has had. These options put information and services at their fingertips in an unprecedented way. In my opinion this makes laziness easy. I am not saying laziness is bad.

I am saying that it is easier to enjoy for those in the millennial generation who cognitively don't understand a world where you have to do things without question. Our fore-parents were too busy to have to explain a lot of detail. They simply expected their underlings to get it done. The laziness of millennials represents the increased leisure time afforded by technological advances that permit them to have more free time. Because they value their free time, they don't want to lose any of it. Therefore, they won't give up their free time without detailed explanations of anything that takes the free time away. This presents itself as laziness, when in fact it is simply the desire to protect the lifestyle millennials feel they are entitled too. This lifestyle, by the way, has been presented to them on a silver platter with a silver spoon (and embroidered linen). They did little to earn it.

I enjoyed your post, Holland. I agree that the advent of cross platform technology bridges a gap. In my post for this assignment, the technology I focused on was also cross platform technology. I think that innovators have realized (partly through listening to the research data coming from Strategic Communications researchers) that the impediment to progress today is the many barriers that inhibit communication across technologies. Eventually the barriers will be eliminated. The tower of Babel will be dust. Uninhibited communication will be the global reality.

Saturday, February 11, 2017

THE FUTURE OF BLOGS - CURATED BLOGS IN A READER'S DIGEST FORMAT - MY POST ON THE DISCUSSION WEEK FIVE COM 6630 OF MY CLASSMATE ROBERT ROBERTS

HI FRIENDS:

BELOW IS THE TEXT OF MY POST TO MY CLASSMATE ROBERT ROBERT IN OUR DISCUSSION WEEK FIVE COM 6630 FOR OUR CLASS STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS AND EMERGING MEDIA:

I like what you said about blogs being in their infancy. The pace of change has become so fast that it has overtaken time itself. So much is happening simultaneously that the "click whirr" of Cialdini is going on constantly in most of our lives. To keep up with the dizzying pace of life, we all have made adaptations, but these cannot fully help us navigate the speedy rapids of life today. In fact, the rapids of a river are the perfect analogy to today's sped up world. We all know that rapids mean a cliff is ahead. The only question is, how steep? If any on you have visited Niagara Falls, or seen good pictures, you know the falls are steep. Not all falls are steep. But steep falls kill.

Check this out:

"Niagara Falls is a site to behold. Consisting of the American Falls, the Bridal Veil Falls & the Canadian Falls, the majesty and the power is overwhelming. Niagara Falls has the highest flow rate of any waterfall in the world and the water that falls over the vertical drop of 165 feet plunges onto jagged rocks below. Awe inspiring, Niagara Falls has drawn tourists for centuries. Starting in the 1820s, as tourism picked up at Niagara Falls, a new breed of individual would begin to arrive at Niagara along with the site-seers, artists, environmentalists and honeymooners: the daredevil.

Several people hoped for instant fame performing daredevil stunts while at the Falls. In 1829, Sam Patch would dive into the Niagara River first at 85ft above the water and later that year at a height of 130ft. The Great Farini, Maria Spelterini and Jean Francois Gravelot, aka “The Great Blondin” would cross the Niagara River Gorge on a tightrope in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Frank M. Brown would swim across the Niagara River and Walter Campbell and his dog Jumbo would navigate the category 6 whirlpool rapids in the 80s. Also in the 1880s, Carlisle Graham, a barrel maker, successfully navigated the rapids and started the famous connection between Niagara Falls and barrels. They all wouldn’t survive. Niagara would claim almost as many lives as it did create overnight sensations. Even the survivors didn’t all become famous or wealthy. In fact, it is now a crime to “stunting without a license” and the fine is currently $10,000. This hasn’t prevented people from trying, however. The Niagara Falls daredevils were the original thrill-seekers and adrenaline junkies.

While the first person wouldn’t go over the Horseshoe Falls (the American Falls are too rocky for anyone to survive) until 1901, it wouldn’t the first stunt to involve a trip over edge. In 1827, a boat full of animals were the first to go over the Falls and of the dozen animals aboard (some tied and caged to the boat) only a goose survived the fall. And not every survivor was a daredevil. Seven-year-old Roger Woodward survived a boating accident and was rescued by a Maid of the Mist boat. Two men survived going over the Falls in 2009 and 2012. This list focuses on the daredevils; those who deliberately went over the Falls with hopes of conquering the mighty Niagara. Perhaps it was lure of the ultimate challenge; surviving a trip over the Falls. There was no greater challenge; the ultimate man versus nature spectacular. Here is a rare list, a handful of people who attempted to conquer Niagara; some who succeed and others who died trying."

Here is the link to the above:

http://listverse.com/2012/06/02/10-daredevils-of-niagara-falls/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Falls#/media/File:3Falls_Niagara.jpg

MY POINT?

We are living in perilous times when the speed of nearly everything has reached a crescendo . The speed at which we can access information makes it easier for us to access false information and go with it. I find myself rarely looking beyond the first or second page OF a Google search. The information is coming to me fast, and I am trying to understand fast, and I therefore select the first thing that appeals to me.

BRINGING IT BACK TO BLOGS

BECAUSE everyone can access information, including blogs, and potentially everyone can make a blog, the fact that blogs are still in their infancy struck me as an important point to elaborate upon. Perhaps the future of blogs is a CURATED "Readers Digest" of blogs. A digest of blogs will allow us to condense the important points in blogs and succinctly tell us what they are saying. We simply do not have time to read it all, and not all is worth reading anyway.

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CITIZEN JOURNALISM

EARNINGS and INFLUENCE

From our readings for our Strategic Communication and Emerging Media class this week one of the topics was “Social News, Citizen Journalism and Democracy.” The reading can be found at the following site:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.871.5728&rep=rep1&type=pdf

The article describes research into “the democratic implications of citizen journalism and social news. The article calls for a broad conception of ‘citizen journalism’ which is (1) not an exclusively online phenomenon, (2) not confined to explicitly ‘alternative’ news sources, and (3) includes ‘metajournalism’ as well as the practices of journalism itself.”

The article makes a strong case for citizen journalism’s democratization of news. No longer can gatekeepers control the agenda or the process of newsmaking. However, the creation of a whole class of citizen journalists raises the question of “what kinds of status differentials emerge within citizen journalism and metajournalism networks”, and, more importantly, how do these “status differentials…impact on (the) processes of newsmaking and agenda-setting?”

The article was written in 2009.

First a definition is in order. Just what is a “status differential?” A quick google search led me to a research paper that sought to answer that very question, albeit, instead of ‘status differential’ the term described is ‘status differentiation’. Here is the website for the research paper, which was published in 2007:

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0022022107302311

JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 38 No. 4, July 2007 413-431 DOI: 10.1177/0022022107302311

Written in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, researcher David Matsumoto of San Francisco State University begins by explaining that status is another term for hierarchy:

Humans are social animals, and people of all cultures live, work, and play in groups. Groups are dependent on key characteristics for their efficiency, productivity, and survival, including in-group loyalty, cooperation, identification, sanctions for noncooperation, and the like. Because individuals are members of multiple social groups, and because human social networks can be large and complex, these characteristics are especially important to human social life. One characteristic of most groups is the existence of hierarchies. Hierarchies are important because the stratification of leaders and followers is essential for group efficiency. Groups with too many leaders and too few followers, or vice versa, are not as efficient as groups with identified leaders and followers and clear lines of authority. All groups, human and nonhuman, in fact, spend much time and energy on establishing these lines of authority—dominance in a hierarchy—to clarify these social roles. The existence of a hierarchy and differential behaviors of members in the group according to the hierarchy are universal aspects of human life and of all social animals.

Equating status with hierarchy, we can reword and somewhat simplify the question of status differentials. The question then becomes what manifestations of hierarchy do we see “emerging within citizen journalism networks.” We know the status quo (pun intended) of traditional journalists hierarchical structure.

That structure follows many of the same structures of other business organizations. Top down leadership structure is the status quo in business. Citizen journalist, however, often operate outside of the normal business structure. Some work independently. For some it is the independence that gives their voice authority, because they are their own gatekeeper, their own filter. After all, in traditional journalism, status is determined by economics, that is, advertising revenue, circulation, and the demographics of an area usually based on geographic boundaries and the socio economics of the geographic area. Citizen journalists often operate both in the traditional journalist’s realm of limiting geography, and in the digital cyber world that spans the globe.

Since citizen journalists usually operate as independent contractors/newspersons, they do not operate within the status stratification setup usually assigned to those in traditional journalism. It still comes down to economics, however. Hierarchy among citizen journalist is determined by advertising revenue, and circulation. How much money are they making (usually from advertising revenue on the internet) and how many people are reading, commenting on, sharing, and otherwise interacting with what they post on the internet. Those who are making a lot of money and are widely read often become celebrities. Those who make little or no money remain in virtual (no pun intended) obscurity. Those who make big money, because they have huge followings, also are in the position to affect the agenda and help to set it, and/or redirect it. Such citizen journalism stars also impact what news is made, through their contributions, and the conversation that is created around their contributions. Therefore, citizen journalism is not restricted to the internet.

However, increasingly, citizen journalists are working on multiple platforms, broadcasting, print, and the internet.

CITIZEN JOURNALISM DEFINED

Citizen Journalism – “Within this mode, independent news content is generated, and produced by a non-professional individual or organization that is not paid staff. Examples of citizen journalism include blogs, independent news websites, community radio stations, or newspapers.”

Amani Channel, Gatekeeping and Citizen Journalism A Qualitative Examination of Participatory Newsgathering, (2010) Retrieved from

http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2597&context=etd

New York University professor and citizen journalism expert Jay Rosen provides a very open definition of citizen journalism: “When the people, formerly known as the audience, employ the press tools in their possession to inform one another…that’s citizen journalism.” (2009, thinkpress.com) Rosen’s reference to “press tools” highlights the important role that technology has played in the cause of this phenomenon.

http://cjms.fims.uwo.ca/issues/06-01/jack.pdf

Canadian Journal of Media Studies, Vol. 6(1)

The “press tools” certainly are enabling the citizen journalist to achieve status, and the most influential citizen journalists, those who achieve state, tend to be those who know how to use the press tools to their advantage.

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Check out the following website for a listing of the top ten bloggers (2014) based on earnings.

http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/world/worlds-10-top-earning-bloggers/

You can see that the earnings and influence go together. These bloggers represent the top in the status hierarchy of citizen journalists.

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Check out the following website for a listing of the top ten Youtube Stars (2016) based on earnings:

http://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-stars-who-make-the-most-money-in-2016-2016-12/#no-9-tie-colleen-ballinger-5-million-1

A citizen journalist is often a blogger, a tweeter, or someone who posts videos to Youtube. Since the first blogs in 1999, and the start of Youtube Feb. 14, 2005, citizen journalism has taken off. At first little money could be made through tweeting, blogging, or Youtube videos. The first blogs were diaries and journals, mostly of a personal nature.

As the internet expanded, mobile applications became available, and smart phones got smarter. Citizen journalism became a profitable venture. But who is making the money in citizen journalism? My opinion is that the money, most of it, goes to only to a few citizen journalists, while the vast majority makes nothing. Check out the stats below from lifehacker.com:

http://lifehacker.com/can-i-really-make-a-living-by-blogging-1537783554

EARNINGS and INFLUENCE

I think that:

The status of a citizen journalist is based on earnings. The earnings come because of the influence and the influence brings the earnings. Therefore the earnings are directly proportional to the influence and vice versa. Earnings are quantifiable, while influence is a matter of opinion, and as is therefore qualitative information or data. My view is that the higher the earnings, the higher the influence. A research study could be done to measure the influence, based on surveys of the readers of blogs, and viewers of Youtube videos, and then by comparing the rated influence with the earnings reports that rank blogs and Youtube videos by income. After the influence research is done a correlation could be established between the earnings and the rated influence to substantiate my view that the earnings from citizen journalists correlate directly to the influence of citizen journalists. The math formula for what I just said reads as follows where earnings is X and influence is Y:

EARNINGS Corr(X,Y) INFLUENCE

The math formula for the above is

Corr(X,Y) correlation of random variables X and Y

I think that:

Citizen journalists enter into a symbiotic relationship with their publics. this relationship involves earnings, determining the status of the citizen journalist, and impact, determining the influence on the process of newsmaking and agenda-setting.

FYI:

About YouTube

Launched in May 2005, YouTube allows billions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small.

https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/

Check out the following research study and the quote from it below:

In the five years since blogging software opened this form of journaling to nontechnical writers, blogs have exploded on the Web’s landscape. In the process, bloggers are influencing the world outside of the blogosphere, as measured by audience reach, media adoption and political necessity. Attempts to mathematically determine which blogs are the most influential are currently characterized by the shortcoming of just counting blogs and links. This methodology is not unlike asking “who is the most influential scientist in the world” and then counting citations to determine the answer: neither process measures influence within genres, such as politics, cooking or technology.

http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/everything/gill2004a.pdf

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

My Comments Made on the Blog of Sydney Covington: This is his blog address: https://talkstrategiccommunication.wordpress.com/

Here is a special post. It is my comments made on the blog of Sydney Covington today: This is his blog address: https://talkstrategiccommunication.wordpress.com/

Hi Sydney,

You astutely point out that we live in a world where young Americans and Westerners are increasingly going mobile, with sales of mobile phones and tablets outpacing the sales of desktops. Yet you also make it clear that you understand that many people are still using desktops. It seems that the pressure to upgrade smart phones and tablets is not as intense for desktops, which must be upgraded from time to time also. I don't own a tablet. I bought a laptop. It is possible that I will get a tablet, but I don't want to be face with having to supply data to the tablet. I see much of the proliferation of mobile as the result of savvy marketing. Many of us have desktops, laptops, smart phones and tablets. The cost of these devices (the hardware) and the cost of services to connect the devices to the internet (data) combine to make a lot of money for the technology companies marketing these products and services. While the laws of supply and demand determine just how many of the devices and services are sold, marketers work hard to increase demand.

The digital divide is being bridged more by mobile applications, because they are cheaper and require less electricity and broadband access.

You also point out how demographics, especially age, is influencing how people access information, with younger people using more mobile than desktop access. It may be a matter of economics for young people who often can't afford the luxury of having multiple data accounts and multiple hardware configurations. For example, a desktop computer, unless it is an all in one, must have a monitor, and speakers. Many young people go mobile only because of their budget, while some older people, who already have desktops, simply add on the mobile and so have both.

The home telephone is also more likely to have a land line for older people, plus a cell phone line. Younger people often have only the cell phone line. Again, economics often plays an important role in this. Yet, another cause is often the fact that older more established people have always had land lines, so for them it was a matter of adding on the cell phone. Some young people, as they sought to get established were faced with deciding whether or not to get a landline, and chose not to. Telephone company marketing also plays a role. It seems that television marketer are not marketing landlines. In fact, they seem to be discouraging the use of landlines.

Saturday, February 4, 2017

Social Media, Murmurations and Polarization

MURMURATIONS

This post was inspired, in part, by the following TEDTALK video on the week four reading list for our Strategic Communications Class:

FOUR PRINCIPLES FOR THE OPEN WORLD

By Don Tapscott

http://www.ted.com/talks/don_tapscott_four_principles_for_the_open_world_1?quote=1719#t-955958

Click on and watch the VIDEO BELOW , or part of it before you read my blog:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY

Physicists studying starlings (birds) and schools of fish look at how group behavior "can spontaneously arise from many individuals at once." Communicators studying social media look at similar phenomenon in humans. Viral videos are an example of how huge numbers of people can spontaneously do the same thing - watch and be influenced by the same video. The internet has enabled groups of people to behave in similar fashion as never before. The internet does this by enabling nearly instant communication across space. As recently as this past week we saw seemingly spontaneous airport demonstrations across the

USA

in response to the immigration actions taken by the Trump Administration.

One corollary between the starlings and humans is that the starlings, are "never led by a single individual....the movement of the flock is actually governed collectively by all of the flock members. If this observation holds true in human communication, it means that the decentralization of power and control in communication brought on by the advent of social media is a natural phenomenon, and possibly could have been anticipated. It also means that the spontaneous action of a group of humans mimics the starlings with the observation that the movement or action of the group is "actually governed collectively by all of the...members" of the group. Once platforms emerged that allowed groups of people to communicate with each other without a bottleneck filter acting as a gatekeeper, the natural inclination of people to act as a group found its wings. Once in low level flight, social media took off to higher heights with the advent of mobile social media. As the song says, there truly "Aint No Mountain High Enough" to keep groups from forming and flying across the globe in murmurations of men and women kept in formation by the lift of social media's enabling air.

In a sense this is what the starlings are doing in murmuration. They are all responding to the same message - move quickly because a predator is out to get us. The us-them dichotomy echoes loudly producing the rapid magical movement of murmuration. Birds of a feather, as the saying goes, flock together. Thus, such flocks tend to have an enemy that all of the flock recognizes.

"These aerial spectacles are caused by a falcon near the edge of the flock. It turns out that the beauty of a murmuration’s movements often arises purely out of defense, as the starlings strive to put distance between themselves and the predator."

"So how do these masses of birds move so synchronously, swiftly, and gracefully?

This isn’t an idle question—it has attracted the attention of physicists interested in how group behavior can spontaneously arise from many individuals at once. In 2010, Andrea Cavagna and colleagues at the National Council of Research and the University of Rome used advanced computational modeling and video analysis to study this question. They found that starling flocks model a complex physical phenomenon, seldom observed in physical and biological systems, known as scale-free correlation."

"Surprising as it may be, flocks of birds are never led by a single individual. Even in the case of flocks of geese, which appear to have a leader, the movement of the flock is actually governed collectively by all of the flock members. But the remarkable thing about starling flocks is their fluidity of motion. As the researchers put it, “the group responds as one” and “cannot be divided into independent subparts.”

When one starling changes direction or speed, each of the other birds in the flock responds to the change, and they do so nearly simultaneously regardless of the size of the flock. In essence, information moves across the flock very quickly and with nearly no degradation."

"Last week, a new study on starling flocks appeared in the journal PLOS Computational Biology. The researchers, led by George Young at Princeton, did their own analysis of murmuration images to see how the birds adjust to their flock mates. They determined that starlings in large flocks consistently coordinate their movements with their seven nearest neighbors. They also found that the shape of the flock, rather than the size, has the largest effect on this number; seven seems optimal for the tightly connected flocks that starlings are known for."

Can these findings be extrapolated to the human population? Do humans "coordinate their communication movements with their seven (or some other set number of) nearest neighbors? Might the term "nearest" translate to "closest" implying the human proclivity to communicate deeply with a small group of people? Does the artificial, yet real world of the internet create multitudes of flocks of starling like humans bound by some common denominators, such as beliefs and common enemies? Research would provide scientifically based evidence of such a phenomenon if it in fact exists.

POLITICS AND POLARIZATION

The excessive extreme polarization of American society today may owe much of its reality to the social media reality we are living with today.

Today we see extremism manifest around the world. Could it be that extremism is exacerbated by the polarization of factions in the world today caused by social media’s influence?

Check out the following link to learn more about the influence of social media on politics and polarization

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/21/5-key-takeaways-on-politics-media-and-polarization/

It is like each side is a group of starlings responding to a predator and engaging in the almost hypnotic murmuration movement starlings are known for.

In our readings this week, we encountered the following:

"A longer-term question that arises from this data is what younger Americans’ reliance on social media for news might mean for the political system. "

The research is pointing to a world of social media where "people primarily seek out points of view to which they already subscribe" (Sunstein, 2001). This points to the formation of flocks of common minded individuals, with common enemies.

How did the millennials focus on social media for news affect their engagement with the issues during the recent 2016 presidential election? I personally did not use social media for news, but I am a baby boomer (and proud of it). My choice of news purveyor was the PBS Newshour.. Still, that is a silo of its own. To hear both sides one has to tune in Fox News along with the PBS Newshour. The slant on the news is dramatically different on the two networks.

The issue comes down to group polarization, spoken of at the following link:

http://www.danah.org/papers/2010/BSTS-TwitterPolarization.pdf

In a sense this is what the starlings are doing in murmuration. They are all responding to the same message - move quickly because a predator is out to get us. The us-them dichotomy echoes loudly producing the rapid magical movement of murmuration. So, while murmuration may be useful for starlings, it may be dangerous for humans in some circumstances. Birds of a feather, as the saying goes, flock together. Thus, such flocks tend to have an enemy that all of the flock recognizes. As wise owls (not starlings) we need to proceed carefully. As communicators we have those who influence us and those we ourselves influence. We cannot operate on a "click whirr" cue driven basis (Cialdini 2009), as the starlings seem to do when important issues are at hand.. We must not be driven by easy peripherals but rather by harder to come by central route sound arguments. Polarization is the result of following peripheral routes of persuasion. Such routes rely on cues based on the credibility of the cuer. Herein is the danger of being mislead when groups follow cues from those who deliberately and deceitfully get a message to go viral within an already polarized social media group leading to a "murmuration" that can lead the group in the wrong direction.

WEEK FOUR READINGS FOR OUR CLASS:

Seems stupid until you try it

http://mc7290.bgsu.wikispaces.net/file/view/Arceneaux_Noah.pdf

Changing Deliberative Norms on News Organizations' Facebook Sites

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12104/pdf

What is your social media strategy?
https://hbr.org/2011/07/whats-your-social-media-strategy

Can social media replace email?http://www.businessinsider.com/can-social-media-replace-email-2013-2

Can social network sites enable political action?

http://www.danah.org/papers/Rebooting_America.pdf

Millennials and Political News - Social Media the Local TV for the Next Generation?
http://www.journalism.org/2015/06/01/millennials-political-news/

Dynamic debates: An analysis of group polarization over time on Twitter

http://www.danah.org/papers/2010/BSTS-TwitterPolarization.pdf