the social web

What is Social Media ?

Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. These sites typically use technologies such as blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs to allow users to interact”

“Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives and media itself.

“Social Media is disruptive: The-people-formerly-known-as-the-audience…are rapidly migrating away from the old-school mainstream media, away from the centrally controlled and managed model of broadcast media”

Stowe Boyde, Feb 2007

Social BookmarkingCollective IntelligenceFolksonomyNarrowcastingMash upsProdusersPeer-to-peerPodcastsRSS

BlogsSocial networkingSocial TaggingTaggingUser Generated ContentVirtual WorldsWikiWeb 2.0

The Social Web – some terms used

Blogs

Wikis

Podcasts

RSS

Mashups

Social Networks

Del.icio.us – social bookmarking

Tag Clouds

Wikis

• Wikipedia

• Wikimapia

• Fairtrade Wiki

A collaborative website which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it.

Mash ups

• mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into an integrated experience

• Twittervision

• Mashable

Life Digital

“Life is becoming more digital and the digital is becoming more alive”.

– rise of Second Life and other virtual worlds. – Digital mesh over our own lives, via

technologies like Google Earth.

Could social networks prove to be anti-social?

digital life - virtual social worlds

• Second Life is very different from most online video games - because it is not a quest. You are not chasing anything and nothing is chasing you. The core of Second Life is social.

Virtual Futures

• Second Life, the 3D online world, experienced its first bank run.

• Avatars (electronic alter egos) lined up in front of virtual cash machines, trying to withdraw so much money that it forced the bank, Ginko Financial, to cease operations

Next? photo-realistic, speaking, interactive avatars

“by 2016, half of us will have interactive avatars, with those aged between 13 and 30 spending around 10 hours a week socializing in 3-D visual environments”

Amazon.uk’s warehouse

Group collaboration & campaigning

• Nexo

• Keep Chorlton Interesting

• Youtube

• E-generations – ‘An Online Community for Experienced Adults’

• Over 30 million users worldwide, 8.5 million photos uploaded each day and 15 billion page views a month

• Facebook examples:– Student HSBC campaign – MMU community group – Fresher’s Week (312 members)

• By 2020, virtual worlds may have surpassed social networking sites as the place to spend time online.

Alex’s Facebook profile on Doonesbury

Manchester’s community reporters

What are Web Connect’s aims?

• To become the ‘Reuters of the community’ by providing local content and independent reporting, by and for local communities

• To use the latest online technologies to make the shift from a broadcast news model of ‘one-to-many’ to a community based model of ‘many-to-many’ communications

• To become a campaigning, “Peoples’ Voice” Media outlet

community reporters training programme• we aim is to train over 200 local people as

community reporters• accredited training programme (supported

by MANCAT and the BBC) • local Media Clubs and Cafes – see Ordsall

community café• unique social network of 14 locally-

controlled, web-skilled communities in Greater Manchester, all of which act as content providers and distributors

• ‘Reuters of the community’

Ordsall Community Reporters

with Gordon Burns at the BBC,behind the scenes at NW Tonight

reporting and journalism course using film and story

Sensecam Trial

• Recording memories/ narrative reconstruction

• Small scale evaluative study of a ‘life logging’ device- Sensecam

• 8 respondents, given devices for one week

• A trial involving the BBC, Microsoft Research & Dave Randall (MMU)

Some results• ‘‘It’s a bit ‘doctor-like’ … you could use it to show people how to do

things … like helping kids repair bikes …’• ‘yeah, it would be really interesting to get several people wearing them

to the same event …’ • ‘I’d like to record the seasons …and stages of my life to look back on

simple things like my back garden …and the birdsong that goes with it’

• ‘I put it on a kite. We were in the park ... I wanted to know what it looks like when you fly . I’d love to know what that’s like so I put it on a kite with some gaffer tape.It didn’t work though!’

• ‘Yeah, I wanted to put it on my dog. the world from his level …’• ‘I hung it from a tree in the allotment …’• ‘I put it on for my marriage rehearsal … I liked its informality …• It’s nice to add music … I wanted to slow it down … the movie is a bit

‘keystone cops’ so I added some nice slow music …

Some themes• A trivial technology has surprising impacts:

• The world made strange:

• M. Oh yeah, the bowling ones [images of a group of friends ten pin bowling] … especially the arty ones , this one . I captioned this, ‘great bowls of fire’ … I love those kind of abstract images

The Measure of a Life …

What Sarah said

• S: … cos, I’d had like the worst day ever … I just found it …, she’d been driving me absolutely mad … and we were in the playground and there was no-one there … and she was … she won’t eat properly .. she’s so small …

• Q: And what you’ve written, is that documenting it? …• S: Yeah, yeah, it was like the conversation we had … it

was like, ‘but Mum, when … when am I going to be bigger? …’

Thanks for the memory

• No disciplinary approach encompasses the sheer creativity of our respondents

• Social ‘significance’ is better thought of as a production than a construction- these people are orchestrating the sense of their lives

it was a bit like being in a silent movie … you could see over the handlebars … it made me look at things that I’d

taken for granted in a different way …