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Presentation on “Social Networking and Screencasts”

22 Apr

This will be another education-related post this week; it’s that point in the semester when I can pretty much only think about teaching. It’s all-encompassing until convocation on May 22!

I’m presenting on Saturday at the 13th CSU Symposium on University Teaching at CSU San Bernardino. My talk title is “Social Networking and Screencasts: A Powerful Combination.”

Some things have changed since I submitted my session proposal; I’m now using WordPress blogs to manage my classes, with help from Blackboard’s gradebook, and we’ve also learned that Ning – the site I planned to present about – will be eliminating free accounts. Ning may decide to offer some discounts or special programs for educators, but its path isn’t yet clear. So, my presentation will be a bit less definitive on the social networking angle than it might have been a month ago, but I hope I’ll still be able to offer my fellow CSU faculty some useful tools to consider for their own classrooms.

With regard to screencasts, I’m arguing that including them in a social networking-enabled course site, as I did on Ning, gives students not only the chance to benefit from multiple reviews of class content or demonstrations, but also the ability to discuss them with each other and the instructor at their leisure. The screencasts also save time for instructors and students on topics where multiple explanations are often necessary, as with some class procedures and content questions.

There are a number of other alternatives to Ning (a long crowdsourced list is here; the short list of possibilities I’d personally try is in this PDF handout). I’m sure some of these will offer a similar experience, and I’m also excited that many of them have mobile apps and texting capabilities so students can access their class materials and communicate with their classmates wherever they are.

Below are my slides and notes for the presentation. I welcome your feedback either before or after the talk!

Magazines, Advertising and Social Media

18 Mar

My new post on “How Magazines Use Social Media to Boost Pass-Along, Build Voice” was published at MediaShift this week. In it, I discuss the many ways magazines are starting to employ Twitter, Facebook, and other social media to connect with their audiences and build their brands:

The lines distinguishing magazines’ print and online content, their social media projects and their advertising will probably continue to blur.

“It might take 10 years until we figure out how to master this,” said [Matt] Milner [vice president of social media and community for Hearst Magazines Digital Media]. “Social media transcends departments — it’s beyond edit, beyond sales. It will inform more and more content decisions in a good way, but it’s going to take a little while.”

In my introductory media class today, I showed a video created by Wired magazine displaying their iPad/tablet edition prototype, and discussing their process of developing it.

Screenshot by Flickr user myuibe.

The big question that arose both in developing my MediaShift post and in my class this morning was: how will editorial and advertising content work together and yet also still remain distinct in this new form?

This seems like an ethical issue that hasn’t been explored fully just yet, as we ogle the iPad and consider its possibilities for shiny new content. (I include myself in that ogling.)

I’d like to know more about how magazines plan to deal with monetizing editorial content by increasingly integrating revenue-generating opportunities – like product purchase options – into editorial content, and how interactive advertising will co-exist with more traditional forms of editorial content. Advertisers will definitely want to take advantage of these opportunities, and magazines need to begin transitioning to this paradigm, as do other print media.

Though the editorial and advertising wall has always been more porous than it appeared, will the iPad bring it crashing down? I don’t think that’s too likely, but there are certainly some significant ethical and editorial concerns involved in its integration into the magazine world.

How far are readers willing to endure the integration of ads into content? What about e-books with built-in ads and links to the Web sites of products that are mentioned? This will be an interesting journey.

Social Media Policies and Journalists’ Personal Brands

11 Mar

Photo by Dean Meyers on Flickr.

I recently read Reuters’ new guidelines for their journalists’ use of social media.

Here’s a paragraph that stood out for me:

The advent of social media does not change your relationship with the company that employs you — do not use social media to embarrass or disparage Thomson Reuters. Our company’s brands are important; so, too, is your personal brand. Think carefully about how what you do reflects upon you as a professional and upon us as an employer of professionals.

I find it highly interesting that Reuters acknowledges their journalists’ desire to have a personal brand here. I don’t think I’ve seen an explicit reference to that emerging reality in any other media company’s social media policies/guidelines so far. (Correct me if I’m wrong about that, please.)

I recently wrote in an academic paper about the increasingly real dilemma that both journalists and their employers will face in balancing individual brands with corporate brands, particularly with regard to the use of social media to establish both. I think that as today’s young journalists come into the profession – especially those who graduate from journalism programs where personal branding and entrepreneurship are emphasized – it may be challenging to find a happy medium between using social media for self-promotion and for corporate promotion.

Can corporate policies like this one help journalists strike that balance by reminding everyone of the significance of both brands? Or does having a social media policy restrict individuals’ ability to establish their own personal brands, to the degree that they begin to resent their employers?

Overall, Reuters’ policy emphasizes the individual journalist’s role in using social media responsibly, and doesn’t set out many strict rules, suggesting instead a string of things to “think about” when using social media. It’s good to see their trust in their employees’ critical faculties, rather than some of the more draconian approaches to social media that other media organizations have employed, though Reuters does still warn that “your manager and/or senior editors will retrospectively review your professional output” and that “We reserve the right to change your beat or responsibilities if there are problems in this area. In the case of serious breaches, we may use our established disciplinary procedures.”

This question isn’t really a problem just for journalism, of course; other professions will also face the challenge of managing employees’ commitment to “take care of No. 1″ – their own personal brands – as well as their employers’, especially when long-term stable employment seems more and more a thing of the past.

Though social media policies, other than Reuters’ version, don’t yet seem to address this dilemma in quite these terms, it appears likely that this will be a more relevant issue as our workforce becomes increasingly reliant on short-term, freelance and contract projects. After all, if one’s employer isn’t going to take care of you in the long run, then you might be prepared to do it yourself, no matter what you have to tweet.

Making a Subscription a Source of Pride

30 Oct

“Engagement” is a buzzword in discussions of the survival of print media. In a world of shiny digital objects that distract readers from traditional print media, readers have to be more engrossed and invested in their uses of print, both within the print product and when they visit affiliated Web sites. (I wrote about this concept a bit in a recent MediaShift post with regard to the late Gourmet.)

natl geo

National Geographic maps. Photo by Flickr user retro_traveler.

One of my favorite books to pick up on occasion is a heavy, glossy volume called Magazines that Make History by Norberto Angeletti and Alberto Oliva. Browsing through it today, an interesting paragraph on National Geographic jumped out at me:

To [Alexander Graham Bell, who became president of the National Geographic Society in 1897], the National Geographic Magazine was a way to build a larger organization that would welcome into Society membership everyone interested in the world, exploration, and discovery. Until then, the privilege of contributing to the grand private expeditions that fascinated the nineteenth-century public or to accounts of unknown peoples, inaccessible places, and stern trials to overcome had been reserved to men of science and men of wealth. Bell understood that, even for the simplest of men, supporting these investigations was a source of pride. So he set out to open the Society’s rosters to all who were willing to contribute $2 a year for a magazine subscription, whether they were scientists or schoolmasters, aristocrats or artisans. Some members of the board of trustees opposed the proposal vigorously, but in the end it carried.

After starting this new program and hiring a new editor in 1899, the society and the magazine’s readership grew nearly tenfold by late 1905, to almost 11,500 members, say Angeletti and Oliva.

By opening the opportunity to contribute to previously inaccessible projects, National Geographic increased its readers’ investment – literal and figurative – in the magazine. Both magazines and newspapers today could experiment with similar models, by having readers contribute financial resources or time to larger projects as well as adding content to digital or print editions.

Newspapers may have a hard time creating projects like this out of fear of losing their purported objectivity. However, one possible reason for declining news readership could be the sense among the audience that their subscriptions provide them with little information that actually can be used to make a difference in their communities.

Civic journalism was (is?) an effort to include the public in the development of news content so it would better suit their communities’ needs. Citizen journalism, the actual production of news by citizens, is a more direct way to incorporate readers’ interests, as is crowdsourcing journalistic projects.

One magazine that has adopted a model similar to that of National Geographic is Good, which donates all subscription proceeds to a charity selected by the subscriber. The subscriber also chooses the price: $10, $20 or $50.

Good‘s rationale [PDF] is that magazines make so little on their subscriptions anyway that it’s worthwhile to make the subscription fee a donation, then sell advertising to pay the bills. Good has now donated over a million dollars to various charities using this method, while also drawing a spendy, attractive audience with a $100,000 household income.

Clearly, something about this model is working, and while Good‘s content is strong and interesting, the magazine is also likely pulling in readers through a sense of shared investment in social justice.

good party

Good Magazine also has events where readers and Web users can gather. Photo by Flickr user chuck_heaton.

So what else can print media do to create a shared participation in a mission, one that makes reading and continued subscription worthwhile? This task goes beyond just making a Web site interactive or encouraging reader submission of content. It’s a feeling of community and purpose that is intangible, but may be crucial to sustaining an active readership.

Technology is not the answer (everywhere)

2 Oct

The Online News Association conference is happening this weekend in San Francisco. As I sit at home in Fresno – just a three-hour drive away – I’m thinking about the role of media here and there, and the different approaches to online news and communication that are possible in the two cities.

While the innovations being discussed at ONA are amazing and important to the future of the journalism profession, I am concerned that communities like mine will struggle to benefit from them in the near future.

Welcome to the information...road. By Flickr user Christian Terboven.

Welcome to the information...road. Photo by Flickr user Christian Terboven.

Some recent examples of innovative tech projects aimed at increasing the public’s engagement with news have included The Rapidian, a citizen journalism site in Grand Rapids, Mich., which received Knight Foundation funding and sleekly serves up hyperlocal news. I also downloaded the Fwix citizen journalism iPhone app, which is pretty cool, and have been on the lookout for other developments in citizen journalism and community information access.

However, it seems like the underlying assumption in many of these projects so far has been that if you build it, the participants will come. As long as the project uses the most up-to-date technology, provides near-immediate coverage of events and integrates numerous interactive opportunities, then it is assumed that it will gain community involvement and support (even as everyone acknowledges the financial details remain TBD).

What’s even better? If the project incorporates Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth and an iPhone app, of course.

But what if you build all that, and no one comes? It all sounds great, but without community access to (and enthusiasm for, and knowledge about) the use of this technology, these projects won’t go very far – and could even inadvertently damage communities by reinforcing class differences in political participation, giving people who already have a strong voice an even bigger microphone.

I’m thinking of the challenges faced in my city: Fresno, Calif. My campus was visited Wednesday by columnist Mike Osegueda of the Fresno Bee, who discussed the paper’s efforts to use social media, including citizen journalism, blogs and so forth. It’s been difficult to build those efforts, he said, partly because of the relatively small proportion of people in this region who regularly use computers and the Internet. Participation is low. It appears that the hard copy of the newspaper (though shrinking) – along with broadcast media – is still a primary way that people here engage with community issues.

Curious about his statements, I looked for some statistical data on Internet use in California’s Central Valley. As a new resident of this area, I didn’t know that there’s actually about a decade of research that documents a significant digital divide between this region of California and the rest of the state.

A June 2009 report (PDF) by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank, shows that – remarkably – both Internet use and home broadband access actually declined from 2008 to 2009 in the Central Valley.

The Valley is the only region of California that showed decreases in these areas in the last year. It is also the lowest-ranked region of the state in both categories. The Bay Area leads the state in broadband access, found in 73 percent of those survey respondents’ homes; only 51 percent of those surveyed in the Valley have broadband at home, lagging well behind the national adoption rate of 63 percent. In the Bay Area, 86 percent of survey respondents “ever” use the Internet; only 67 percent in the Valley ever do. Ever. For anything, at any interval.

I’m not trying to disparage the Valley by pointing out these data. In reality, these findings are pretty much consistent with the urban/rural digital divide observed nationwide; much of the Valley is rural. Broadband access is notoriously difficult to come by in rural areas, especially at an affordable price. The decline in Internet use and home broadband access, moreover, could be attributed to the housing crisis and general economic decline, both of which have hit the Valley hard.

I think these data demonstrate, though, that the latest and greatest digital communication technologies simply aren’t going to be the best option for the struggles of every community. It’s easy for those of us in this field – inundated by tweets, aspiring to Google Wave invitations – to start to think: “If only we could get everyone a laptop, wifi and an iPhone, this town would be a better place! They’d tweet news about their neighborhoods! They’d send graffiti reports to City Hall!” I feel sometimes that I run the risk of isolating myself in a happy little bubble of early adopters who just aren’t representative of the public at large.

For many communities, communication solutions other than those at the pinnacle of innovation still need to be identified and implemented. The lack of funding for technological innovations is often a problem, but the lack of a well-equipped audience to participate in them is an even tougher issue. Existing or reconfigured newspapers and broadcast media can’t be left out of the mix entirely, though many of the leaders in communication innovations seem to have already left them for dead and moved on to more technologically sophisticated options. Consider: actual paper may still need to be involved in solutions for these communities – at least in the near future.

When we do build high-tech communication tools in communities, the means of accessing them have to be there – which include low-cost broadband access and mobile technology, education of the public in their use (inside and outside schools), and governance that is open and responsive to citizen participation.* Otherwise, these technologies are likely simply to perpetuate the class distinctions that already characterize public participation in local politics. A recent Pew report describes the demographics of online and offline political activities among Americans; you can probably guess who participates most in local politics.

I love the newest iPhone apps as much as the next tech-savvy soul, and we certainly shouldn’t stop thinking about tools for a future where everyone can carry a smartphone and be skilled in digital technology. But for many communities today, it’s going to take something other than, or in addition to, great tech to enable communication that can resolve local issues.

* Coincidentally, the Knight Foundation released a report today (link to PDF brochure of conclusions/recommendations) that reinforces some of the statements I’m making here. Its emphasis on the need to make digital and media literacy training available to both youth and adults, along with widespread broadband access, is intended to prevent the formation of a “second class” of citizens without this information and the capacity for engagement. I haven’t read the full report yet, but am anxious to see if it offers practical solutions for different types of communities with diverse technology and communication capabilities.

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