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Social Media for Social Good
1. Social Media week8
Social Media for Social Good
last update: March 29, 2009
Trebor Scholz | LCST 2031 A | Spring 2009
2. What You Need To Know About This Course
week 1 Histories of the Internet
week 2 Histories of the Internet and World Wide Web
week 3
Social Media, Cyber Clustering, and Social Isolation
week 4 Participation: Benefits, Numbers, and Quality
week 5 Quality. The Wisdom or Ineptitude of the Crowd
The Web 2.0 Ideology
week 7
week 6 Art and Social Media
Spring Break
week 8
Political Net Activism
week 9
What Does It Take To Participate?
Why Participate?
week 10
Got Ethics? Labor, Work, What?
week 11 week 14
The Power of Users
week 13 Net Neutrality
week 12 Near Future Scenarios
week 15
Presentations
Trebor Scholz | The New School University | Eugene Lang | LCST 2031 A | Spring 2009
3.
4.
5. Social Media for Social Good
week 8
March 23, 25
Required Reading:
Mark Andrejevic, quot;iPolitics,quot; Mark Andrejevic, iSpy Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era (Lawrence: University Press
of Kansas, 2007) 187-210.
Michael Y. Dartnell, quot;Insurgency Online as Global Witnessing The Web Activism of RAWA,quot; Michael Y. Dartnell,
Insurgency Online Web Activism and Global Conflict (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006) 46-72.
Case Studies:
Video Your Vote, Citizen Media (IndyMedia, OhMyNews), Hello Garci, social media components of Barack Obama’s
campaign, Wikileaks, The Daily Show, Tunisian Prison Map, Myspace LA protest, Games for Change, Activist bloggers
Trebor Scholz | LCST 2031 A | Spring 2009
6.
7. Mark Andrejevic, quot;iPolitics,quot; Mark Andrejevic, iSpy Surveillance
and Power in the Interactive Era (Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 2007) 187-210.
Specificity matters:
To talk about technology abstractly is misleading
as it is the actual technical capability that
determines not just the promise but the real effect
of a given technology/medium.
http://www.officemuseum.com/IMagesWWW/1877_Phelps_Electro-Motor_Printing_Telegraph_Sci_Amer_OM.jpg
telegraph: utopian predictions: end isolation, link people everywhere, ‘universal brotherhood’ (p190)
9. Mark Andrejevic, quot;iPolitics,quot; Mark Andrejevic, iSpy Surveillance and Power in
the Interactive Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007) 187-210.
http://www.blinddatetv.com/index.php
http://www.flickr.com/photos/caelenmedia/3373737445/
http://community.fxuk.com/blogs/fox_insider/Fear%20Factor.jpg
TV: access to information, assist self-identity, democratic processes, education, community cohesion (p190)
10. “Imagine the power of the Rodney King video multiplied by the power of Napster...” (p204)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROn_9302UHg
11. Mark Andrejevic, quot;iPolitics,quot; Mark Andrejevic, iSpy Surveillance and Power in
the Interactive Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007) 187-210.
mass customized politics
participatory democracy
“Technology is shifting power away from the editors,
the publishers, the establishment, the media elite.
Now it’s the people who are taking control. We’re
looking at the ultimate opportunity...The internet is
media’s golden age.” Rupert Murdoch (p191)
http://datamining.typepad.com/images/blogosphere-map-core-min2.gif
12. Mark Andrejevic, quot;iPolitics,quot; Mark Andrejevic, iSpy Surveillance and Power in
the Interactive Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007) 187-210.
Politics as a form of marketing
Data-based targeting in political campaigns, the attempt to manage masses of
voters:
marketers know lots about citizens and can therefore push specific proposals.
Alternative solutions are often left out from these messages.
Polling networks such as knowledge networks
Nielsen TV polling vs TiVo polling
TV and phone as monitoring technologies and PeopleMeter
13. Mark Andrejevic, quot;iPolitics,quot; Mark Andrejevic, iSpy Surveillance and Power in
the Interactive Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007) 187-210.
Zizek: quot;interpassivityquot; passive form of interactivity
quot;The machine does the interacting for us. Viewers are
active in the sense that they are always providing
information about themselves- but not critically active
in the sense of making us aware that monitoring is
taking place and how the information is being
used.quot; (p195)
Netflix: what do people watch in your zip code
Student
Last.fm: listening behavior
Responses:
gmail: browsing history
When are location determined through Metrocard usage
you monitored? what did you look at and buy on Amazon
Facebook Beacon
XBox blogs your game score on 360voice.com
Nike shoe records running behavior
computer’s OS interacts with manufacturer
data streams
Google street view: people’s faces
looking at videos, photos (hits/views are recorded)
http://www.desmoinesbroadcasting.com/xtras/nielsenaudimeterpage.html
14. Mark Andrejevic, quot;iPolitics,quot; Mark Andrejevic, iSpy Surveillance and Power in
the Interactive Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007) 187-210.
Joe Trippi:
“The digital age introduces a new form of
international socialism, a new kind of
democracy that Marx never even
imagined.” (p189)
Is that so?
15. Mark Andrejevic, quot;iPolitics,quot; Mark Andrejevic, iSpy Surveillance and Power in
the Interactive Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007) 187-210.
Joe Trippi: (Howard Dean’s presidential campaign manager) “people standing up and making themselves heard...
engaging Americans in real dialogue, how to reach them where they live, how to stop selling to them and start
listening to them...” (p189)
Andrejevic: sellers are able to sell more effectively
“One of the goals of market research within the context of the digital enclosure is to tame the anarchy of available
information: to gather data about Web-surfing behavior, MP3 listening pattern, and self-disclosure sites like
MySpace and impose order on it by aggregating it, sorting it and extracting usable patterns.” (p197)
People are empowered in their role as consumers
16.
17. Emerging Sources of Labor on the Internet:
The Case of America Online Volunteers
Hector Postigo
Quantum Computer Services, as AOL was known prior to 1989,
was founded to provide Internet service to early personal computer users.
Many AOL volunteers were still romantic about the early days of
the AOL community.
first lawsuit filed by Bob Trobee in 1995
volunteers were consistently promised paying jobs
18. Emerging Sources of Labor on the Internet:
The Case of America Online Volunteers
Hector Postigo
“In 1999, a group of ex-volunteers filed a class-action lawsuit
against AOL under the Fair Labor Standards Act.”
“Observers.net, a website dedicated to critiquing AOLʼs business practices.
contends that AOL volunteers are employees of the company, and that
classify its 15,000 volunteers as employees and pay them a federal
restructure the way AOL, and any other portal that uses volunteers to
community leaders who are suing AOL readily recognize their role in the
production process for community, and make direct links between their
work and the profits garnered by AOL.”
“In a sense, the case of AOL community leaders is a classic study
of the process by which an occupation is born from unpaid work. At an
early level of development, an occupation lacks the institutional and social
recognition that helps the early ʻʻoccupational pioneersʼʼ convince society
that they are worthy of compensation. The problem is compounded when
the services they provide are tasks that are generally perceived to be the
work of families and communities, or hobbies and leisure.“ p220
“American society continues to see volunteer work of the kind
that generates and maintains communities (both on and offline) as market
inalienable, as a noble and altruistic pursuit, even as companies like AOL
commodify community.” p221
19. Emerging Sources of Labor on the Internet:
The Case of America Online Volunteers
Hector Postigo
“One community leader put this way: ʻʻWe were creating community,
community which is what they [AOL] sell themselves as.ʼʼ p221
“In addition, by renaming the volunteers from remote staff to community leaders, AOL
moved out of reach much of the institutional rhetoric that would have
helped volunteers shape themselves as being involved in the occupation of
community making.” p221
“Even as the class action lawsuit against AOL goes to court, many content
producers and volunteers in other venues continue their work. Certainly
they have chosen this path, and one does not wish to patronize them with
claims of false consciousness. Their reasons for contributing are their own.
Some truly find it rewarding, and that is payment enough. But for those
who feel cheated by the experience, perhaps the course that the AOL
volunteers have taken is appropriate. Such a course does not seem easy,
however, and it comes about through painful realizations about prior
conceptions of contributions to an idealized Internet. For the AOL
community leaders who eventually filed a lawsuit, it was a process marked
with a sense of loss of the promises that the Internet seemed to hold.
Community turned out to be for sale and the AOL ʻʻfamilyʼʼ turned out to
be alienating as the membership grew.” p222
20. Emerging Sources of Labor on the Internet:
The Case of America Online Volunteers
Hector Postigo
“The course that the AOL volunteers have chosen seeks to grasp the
ʻephemeralityʼ of cultural production, a project made all the more difficult
by the historical baggage that work such as community making seems to
carry. It is further complicated by the ironic trends within Internet history
that situated production within a gift economy. Staking out an occupational
claim is tricky business, because it opens AOL up to a new host of
exploitative practices, such as outsourcing, a process made all the easier by
the nature of ICTs and globalization. Ultimately, however, the AOL
volunteers represent an example, small as it may be, of the possibility of
breaking out of the ʻsocial factoryʼ and making visible the new sources of
value in an emerging media world.” p223
23. http://my.barackobama.com
Use of Social Media by the Obama Campaign
“The Obama campaign leveraged all the tools of social media to give ordinary Americans access to resources usually reserved for
professional campaign operatives. Compared with both his Democratic primary challengers and the McCain campaign, his
operation was cycles ahead.”
Case Study: The Barack Obama Strategy
http://www.slideshare.net/socialmedia8/case-study-the-barack-obama-strategy
https://digitalcommons.georgetown.edu/blogs/msfs-556-spring2009/author/jc466/
25. See what Obama is up to on a given day.
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/2009/obamatracker
26. Submit and vote on questions for President Obama and we
will present the top ones at the next press conference.
http://www.communitycounts.com/forum/?
id=obama&view=1&embedon=&embed=&datefilter=&display=&hide=3
28. Enhanced User Autonomy
1) Improves capacity to do more for and by themselves
2) Enhances capacity to do more in loose commonality with others
(without the hierarchies of traditional organizations)
3) Improves capacity of individuals to do more in organizations
that are outside the market sphere
Yochai Benkler
WoN p 8
30. Kryptonite Lock
“As you guys might remember, I recently had the nicest set of wheels I’ve ever had stolen
from me. Today I was hanging out with a friend and we got to talking about that - he said
his friend showed him just recently how to open a U-Lock with a ball point pen.
Of course I didn’t believe it. That is until just thirty seconds ago when I opened my own
Kryptonite Evolution 2000 with a bic ball point pen!
This has to be the most absurd thing I’ve ever seen. Try it. Take the end off the pen, jam it
in the lock, wiggle around and twist.
Please tell everyone you know and make sure they do something about it right away.”
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=66128
31. Negotiating the Power of Users
(in their role as consumers)
Facebook (741.000 join group)
individuals making money
(ebay, Amazon.com)
32.
33. http://tinyurl.com/etj7m
741.000 members of FB group in September 2006
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2208288769
34. Digg: “Digital Boston Tea Party”
Some feel that users have too much control over content, allowing sensationalism and misinformation to
thrive, blowing unsupported claims out of proportion while quickly exposing very many people to these
opinion pieces.
It has been reported that the top 100 Digg users control 56% of Digg's front page content and that a niche group
of just twenty individuals had submitted 25% of the front page content.
http://tinyurl.com/ynla34
http://tinyurl.com/2v9ppz
Digg.com co-founder Kevin Rose http://tinyurl.com/2v9ppz
http://tinyurl.com/2v9ppz
http://tinyurl.com/37vx5w
http://tinyurl.com/39g279
http://tinyurl.com/2u3zts
35. “Digital Boston Tea Party”
On May 1, 2007 an article appeared on Digg’s
homepage that contained the encryption key
for the AACS digital rights management
protection of HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc.
Digg, removed the submissions and banned contributors. The removals were seen by many users as a capitulation
to corporate interests and an assault on free speech. The Digg community staged a wide-spread revolt. One of the
Digg users referred to it as a quot;Digital Boston Tea Party.quot; Digg’s response:
“[A]fter seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see
Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we
won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.”
—Kevin Rose
http://tinyurl.com/37vx5w
http://tinyurl.com/2cg9hm
http://tinyurl.com/39g279
http://tinyurl.com/2v9ppz
http://tinyurl.com/2u3zts
http://tinyurl.com/2v9ppz
http://tinyurl.com/2v9ppz http://tinyurl.com/2rszvk
36. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tySJTPJJc1Y http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFBZ_uAbxS0
The Barbara Streisand Effect
and
The People versus Scientology
Removal of the Tom Cruise Scientology video from YouTube prompted
allegations that Scientology is censoring information about itself.
“The Church of Scientology asserted that the video material that had been leaked to YouTube and other websites was
quot;pirated and editedquot; and taken from a three-hour video produced for members of Scientology.[10][13] YouTube removed the
Cruise video from their site under threat of litigation.[14] The web site Gawker.com did not take down their copy of the
Tom Cruise video, and other sites have posted the entire video.[1][14] Lawyers for the Church of Scientology sent a letter
to Gawker.com demanding that they remove the video, but Nick Denton of Gawker.com stated: quot;It's newsworthy, and we will
not be removing it.quot;[15]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology
37.
38. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e6/Delayingmydinnerpostcard.jpg
Images portraying cats in human-like situations with captions
date as far back as the 1860s, when a Brighton photographer
named Henry Pointer began publishing a carte-de-visite series
A lolcat is an image combining a photograph, most frequently of a cat, with a humorous and
idiosyncratic caption in (often) broken English—a dialect which is known as “lolspeak,” ”kitteh,” or
“kitty pidgin” and which parodies the poor grammar typically attributed to Internet slang.
Lolcats are designed for photo sharing image boards and other internet forums.
47. kiva.org
Awareness is a huge asset from social media. Word of mouth successes have been well discussed. Beyond altruism, individuals that
affiliate themselves with social cause, either because of its intrinsic value to their lives or because they believe in the mission’s good
nature, are enhancing their own profile. Further, younger demographics want to be seen making a real impact.
More importantly, beyond feel good, social media gives organizations the tools to foster social investment from people, allowing
them to become part of the cause on an extended basis.
48.
49. Facebook as a tool of democratization?
-discussion of issues that citizens are suppressed in public life
(in Iran: sex, dating, music, politics; in Kenya: HIV, sexuality)
- organization of large street protests (Egypt, Columbia, ...)
-Public display of association (Burma)
- Awareness
- Information
52. The April 6 group participated in demonstrations about Gaza, some of which were coordinated on Facebook
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25bloggers-t.html
Egypt
53. http://apps.facebook.com/qassamcount/
more than 70,000 Facebook users donated their status
QassamCount: Users donate their FB status update - each time Israel is hit by a rocket the status alerts to that.
54. “When you subscribe to this application, you will be donating to a counter media campaign on Facebook. This application will update
your status periodically with the numbers of Palestinians got killed and wounded in the Israeli ruthless genocide in Gaza. These numbers
have already exceeded hundreds and thousands versus only few tens of Israelis.”
http://apps.facebook.com/supportgaza.
55.
56. Alex Chan, 2005, The French Democracy (machinima)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stu31sz5ivk
