Week 5 Responses...

The Evolving Role of News on Twitter and Facebook

"Although both social networks have the same portion of users getting news on these sites, there are significant differences in their potential news distribution strengths. The proportion of users who say they follow breaking news on Twitter, for example, is nearly twice as high as those who say they do so on Facebook (59% vs. 31%) – lending support, perhaps, to the view that Twitter’s great strength is providing as-it-happens coverage and commentary on live events."

I definitely think this is true - prolific Tweeters (I am not one), often describe to me that they've sort of used Twitter as their own personally hacked AP news wire. I can asbolutely see the appeal in that, but for many reasons (and some I've read compelling arguments about that make sense), I'm by far more a Facebooker.

I think the last Presidential election is where I started to see politics get really...nasty on Facebook, and that's partially because 1) we'd reached a point where it was no longer just early adopters using it, we were seeing a good chunk of average-user on the sites, and 2) because it became a platform where one could share "news" and have a soundboard on which to discuss it, at far more depth than 140 characters allows.

While this could be seen as absolutely liberating to the American people...the downside is the trust-factor of where you're gathering your news, how it's framed, and how *emotional* some of that news is to the person aggregating it.

While Twitter's famous for #hashtag revolutions of sorts, FB's equivalent is the viral post that may or may not be true.

And you know, sometimes I don't even think truth matters so much as whether or not the person aggregating it WANTS it to be true or not.

I could go on at length about this because the PP debaucle is still fresh in my mind but I think I've done enough of that in class LOL. I still contend that my FB is broken, because I ain't seen a damn viral campaign of ANY sort about PP being cleared OR about the filmmakers being indicted. Nowhere. At all.

This might be a part of the friends paradox another article talked about, but I swear I saw the "harvesting baby parts" post with an emotional plea from a friend about twice a day - different friends - asking to please stop these heinous acts from occuring, etc. etc. without really checking into the story, much less the source. Politicians ate it up too really not CARING whether or not it was true — and I think a lot of that has to do with getting people on a political bandwagon that might not care to at another point in time.

And as for Carly Fiorina's absolute statement of conviction in seeing footage that didn't exist, well, I'd LIKE to give her the benefit of the doubt on this but it's really REALLY hard to. I think politicians for whom PP being seen in a more-horrific-than-usual light didn't care all too much about the truth or facts in this story, but banked on the very predictable emotional nature of the viral FB post.

And at the end of the day, people really just remember what they want to. And it's usually the juice. It's something juicy and gritty that they just couldn't put into words quite as eloquently as the viral post did.

If you use Facebook to get your news, please — for the love of democracy — read this first


I feel like this can all go back to my first post — I think people know in some small facet that what they're seeing in their feeds isn't the end-all be-all of truth, but I DON'T think they know exactly how the algorithm works, and might think that everything they're seeing is, well, everything they're seeing.

In my case, perhaps somehow the algorithm has picked up that I'm into political news based on what I read, what I click on, what I post, and what I hashtag, but, uh...there was a WHOLE lotta PP up in my face last month. Perhaps this wasn't the experience of other users, but I have to say that even I, as a social media professional who keeps up with the algorithm and its changes for purposes of businesses, can easily be tricked by the social illusion if I'm not thinking critically enough that day.

This becomes so particularly tricky in something as vital to democracy as election years, and I quite honestly don't really know if there's an exciting way to entertain or educate users about how the algorithm and their feed works. You are NOT seeing everything you think you're seeing, hell, in my case you might be seeing a bunch of junk you'd rather NOT be seeing — but even if this educational resource were to exist and be readily available to the masses, I think I know exactly what would happen. I'd see this the next morning:

"FB has released an educational guide to how to read your newsfeed, and this is TAKING AWAY OUR RIGHTS. PLZ FORWARD THIS IF YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR FREEDOM."

And, I'd see it in spades.

I don't think people want to be educated about their social networking. They want to have their cake and eat it too, and have FB be the fun place for cat photos but also the place where they get their relevant news information from because they trust their friends, who are other users, and whatever they decide to aggregate. It's almost a safety in numbers thing.

Week 4: Social media and speed-driven journalism: Expectations and practices

"You can f*** up 150 years'
worth of credibility in ONE Tweet."

So, I know it wasn't necessary but I felt compelled to go out and source for this in addition to adding my own opinion simply because I was curious about what people doing the work feel about it, I hope that's ok. I was intrigued with the first quote of the story:

"Research finds that most news organizations favor speed-driven journalism because they believe that faster updates translate into more eyeballs, which equate more profit”

My initial reaction to the title was to LOL, because journalism has ALWAYS been speed-driven. But, I understand the context now and depending on what the eyeballs are doing, I'm not sure if I agree with the news organizations or not.

More eyeballs doesn't necessarily equal more profit — the business of monetizing news and content has been baffling news organizations for several years now, and especially since the "crumble" began and we really started to feel the pinch when I jumped ship in 2007.

MY opinion — coming from a background that went from journalism STRAIGHT into advertising and marketing, journalists' bane of existence and against all that is good and holy — is that this is a marketing and advertising problem, it's not necessarily a content problem to me. And in theory, more eyeballs DOES make sense. So why isn't it working? Well, it depends on what the eyeballs are DOING.

Icess Fernandez Rojas, a former digital packager /social media person and internationally-published journalist, actually disagrees with me about a couple of things. She believes the content DOES need to change to a degree. Journalism needs to start thinking digital — you don't need a 20 inch story these days for a lot of things — you need a 2 minute video.

 She also argues that we're trying to apply an old business model to a new medium. In the olden days, we sold advertising to make money, and yes, the bigger your readership, the more you can charge for advertising and the more advertising you can get. Obviously, a full-page color ad costs significantly more than a black and white quarter page ad.

"We’re putting the old structure into the new digital space, when we really should take this opportunity to think digital. if we based our advertising on space before, then we shouldn’t be basing our advertising on size and location for the digital world -- the digital space is about TIME," Rojas says.

And yes, the early bird gets to scoop. But in order for it to translate into actual dollars, people need to engage, and spend a significant amount of time in order to turn page views into money.

(Sidenote: I AM talking about two different kinds of time - one is about the speed-based journalism, another is about the time readers spend engaging. I'll get back on topic with the next question.)

Does Twitter affect journalists’ speed-driven news work in terms of professional norms, routines, and output?

Yes.

Because again, this digital world is not about space, not about position — it’s about time. Whoever gets it first gets the prize, shares, retweets at the expense of accuracy more often than is comfortable to newsies. But being first, and getting that prize, shares and retweets has sort of become a type of "currency."

If Obama decides he’s going to war with Russia tomorrow, whoever has the news first gets the CURRENCY, even if it’s WRONG. Of course, it being wrong has consequences. I'll get to those later.

If we take a look at the El Chapo story recently, ROLLING STONE got it first. From Sean Penn. An actor. He talked to the most searched felon in the world.

And of course Rolling Stone getting the accolades for getting it first isn't a new concept, back in the olden days of yore we can look at Watergate for example. The Washington Post got it. They're always going to be the newspaper that got it first.

And is normalization observed among national, metropolitan, and local newspapers?

Well, yes and no.

Each organization has its own standards — Gannett has its own, McClatchy has its own, Trib has its own, and so on and so on. But a standard across those channels? No. It does not exist, because all of these news organizations are competitors. There hasn't been an effort to unite and create a set of standards.

Remember the old red AP style manual? I feel like the news organizations need one for social media. And this becomes even more complicated when you factor in "citizen journalists." Poynter's database is the closest thing journalism has, but even that needs to become more comprehensive and even better — more widely actually PRACTICED.

How do journalists see Twitter influencing audience reception in terms of news credibility?

I think this is a true chicken and the egg question — myself, and Rojas, would argue that credibility kind of precedes the actual Tweeting. People follow the New York Times, The Guardian, etc. because these might be outlets that they already trusted. BUT there is an enormous consequence to not treating your Tweeting with the same amount of respect as your story itself that Rojas articulated better than I could:

"You can f*** up 150 years' worth of credibility in ONE Tweet."

Something as innocuous as Tweeting — even under a different account — something about your drink order for the night on a weekend or holiday, starts to make people wonder if you were drunk when you covered that town hall meeting last week. That probably isn't the case, but it's the perception that matters. (Perception of truth and trust being monetized is a whole different topic I could get into with the subject of Content Based Marketing, but I digress.)

And if you're still reading...

This wasn't asked but when it comes to credibility and the truth, I wonder sometimes if making a public, open declaration of an "agenda" factors into trust.

According to the LA Times Jorge Ramos is the #1 most trusted figure — not just NEWS figure, but FIGURE — within the Latino community. He, and Univision, have absolutely no qualms about admitting that they DO have an agenda of sorts . Ramos, outside people who actually practice law, is probably the most knowledgable person about our immigration system in the U.S. , and he will readily admit that he and Univision are very pro-immigrant and would like to see a system in which more people win.. And it just is what it is. It's out there. They've admitted it. They've declared it.

That seems to smack everything that the ethics of journalism stood for in the face, BUT, I wonder if putting it out there gives you more "street cred" with readers. Like, if Fox News went ahead and ditched the "fair and balanced" thing, would more people trust them?

–30–

(Sorry, I had to. :^)

==================

Ease of Alteration Creates Woes for Picture Editors 

A former collegue of mine (a photojournalist) did his thesis about this very story and these photos about 2 years ago.

This is a perfect example of why I believe there should be more education for "citizen journalists." I get that people are going to do it, but if they are then I think that they should have access to and maybe be required to (how? i have no idea) information or a curriculum that teaches the very basics: what editing is and is not allowed, how to write a cutline, how to cite a source, etc.

I think without that training, much like the writing/blogging of citizen journalists has the possibility to be VERY dangerous. Given what I do for a living, I can clearly see that smoke in the photo has been cloned. It's a pretty sloppy clone job. But that could look very very real to most readers, and seeing unfortunately is still for a lot of people believing.

Not photos, not journalism, but on a parallel — I kind of feel like this manipulation can be used also for just slandering someone or something. Take the Planned Parenthood case recently for example — when everyone thought the footage was truth (even politicians!), there was all kinds of viral stuff about it and all kinds of anger across social media channels. But then they get cleared by court in Houston, and the people who created and doctored footage were indicted. None of that is floating around social media. People saw stuff and they believed it.

But the indictments are another thing that citizen journalists need to be careful about, because photography has a whole bunch of other rules that can get you in hot water if you don't know any better.

I met a very young photographer at a convention once who actually was in college and shot footage of a car being broken into. The photo ran in the school paper and he got in trouble with the law for being associated with the crime (I don't remember the exact legal term he was slapped with). I remember SPJ and a couple of other organizations getting involved because yes, he WAS still in college but he was acting as a photojournalist, which is different from someone simply watching it happen.

And, because journalism requires you to be a fly on the wall, it would have breeched ethics for him to try and stop it or call the cops, which is what I think a citizen journalist would be inclined to do because it just seems like the right thing to do. But then is that still journalism? It's a fuzzy line and slippery slope.

Week 3 Readings

Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill

You know, my first thought when they got to the ethical dilllema was that honestly, if I were involved in a car accident and I killed 10 people, I'd have a pretty hard time living with that, unless the situation was extreme like I'd had a heart attack or seizure or something while driving. I honest to God think it'd just rather be me. And if it were an accident caused by something like texting and driving or if I were drunk or under an influence or some such and I'd be facing an enormous legal ramification on top of that...seriously I'd rather it be me than the 10 people. I'd have a real hard time living with that.

Another spin though — F it, I’ll self-disclose: I live with treatment-resistant Major Depressive Disorder, which means that traditional antidepressants offer no relief, and I really don’t live a “normal" life. It started to affect my ability to work and live with something relative to normalcy about 8 years ago.

There’s something that’s not FDA approved yet that *might* help, but I haven’t been able to get into a trial. One of the few doctors in the US that does it anyway is in Mid-Cities, it’s about $15k at starting price that insurance won’t help with, and the risk is that it simply won’t work. So for now I medicate and do a bunch of other stuff to help it but have a strange mix of chemicals in my body that of course cause a strage mix of side effects I could live without. (I'll probably wind up spending the $15k though because I mean, I've spent more on a car in my past so I figure my mental health is worth at least trying.)

Now, wiithin the mental health community is a divide amongst people who suffer who believe that those with a debilitating mental illness should be able to qualify for physician-assisted suicide. 

The side against it argues that if you’re mentally ill that you aren’t mentally fit to make such a decision. These people are themselves ill, but have been able to medicate to a more successful degree in general.

On the pro side — which has had arguably more problems finding relief in their overall treatment — is trouble with the thought that their lives are simply an existence, and are just sort of waiting out a clock. They don’t feel a normal range of human emotions, they’re aware that they exist and may have at one point felt them, but as the body ages so does the brain, and the brain is not an infallible organ. Your symptoms can worsen with age. They could be looking at 40-50 more years of existing in this state.

That’s sort of my situation, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the self-driving car that kills the driver sorta gives me an “out” potentially. I don’t have suicidal ideation but that’s primarily logistical — I’m not interested in doing it myself, mostly because I’m fairly certain I’d do it WRONG and wind up with even more problems that way. LOL. And also because there MAY be something in the horizon with my specific illness that *could* be FDA approved and mainstream in the next 10 years or so. For me there is still some sort of semblance of hope, others aren’t quite as lucky.

So I don’t know…this kind of feels like something that could potentially be used by a community of people as that “out” of sorts, and an altruistic one that they may even feel good about. 

Even if they didn’t turn into rolling suicide machines for the mentally ill, it might give someone — even regular John Doe — comfort in knowing that maybe their life expectancy would be shortened 20 or 30 of those 50 years ahead, and save other people in the process. It might not even be someone with an illness of any sort, it might just be someone who, like, hates their life or whatever it is that makes healthy people want to die.

I’m trying to figure out if I’m viewing it through that lens here with all that considered, and if I were healthy if I’d have the same viewpoint. I think I probably would, but that’s almost impossible to tell. I can usually see both sides of a coin to an issue but this might be one too near and dear to me to know if I’d feel the same way if my life’s circumstances weren’t different.

(Please now, nobody call the cops or anything LOL. I’m nowhere near desiring to harm myself.)

Buzzfeed: 9 Moral Dilemmas that will Break your Brain

Interestingly, I got through about half of these thinking that I wanted to answer with a third answer that included the logistics of insurance that banks hold, what I know from watching Law & Order about the law and accidentally killing a pedestrian in that crash, what I know about currents and being a lifeguard, and what I know about the Hippocratic Oath from House. But by the end I went ahead and suspended that logic and went back and chose answers based on the dilemma as presented.

The ones that I felt I still needed a third choice for were the ones about the cheating spouse and the cheating groom. You know, I don't think there's any way to win that dilemma that doesn't involve simply keeping it to yourself. Aside from shooting the messenger, as our social mores change, I've learned that there's a bizarre number of relationships in which the cheating either might not be a deal-breaker, OR in which the other party knows about the cheating but either

1) has some other reasons for wanting to get married anyway, which might just include the act of getting married (I'm single and 35, I'll probably be dying alone with several cats so I don't understand this one, but it seems to exist.)

or

2) The couple, in the case of the married one and whether or not I'd risk my job, might even have an agreement and awareness such is happening. Nevermind being dumb enough to use company email for such things, the "unsuspecting" spouse may indeed suspect, but have other reasons that they value more to help keep the marriage intact, and those frankly are none of my business or up for my own personal moral judgement. Let's say the other spouse knows about the cheating but it's more important morally for them to say, keep a family with small children in tact until their adults, then my telling them would not only put my job at risk, but it would likely embarrass them, put our friendship at risk, and put their plans at risk. That's too much risk for me.

I knew a girl who married her high school sweetheart, and the entire neighborhood knew he was constantly cheating on her. He acted single and even rented a bachelor pad with a roommate, in order to have a place to take women. The couple had a child she had just after graduation.

I wondered for years why she chose to stay, because she is extremely intelligent and is actually now a doctor, working in internal medicine at a very reputible hospital in another city. I've never bothered to ask her, because besides it not being my business, she obviously knew so I figure they must have had a reason to be married as long as they were. It could have been a million reasons. Perhaps he feared custody ramifications, and his parents were very attached to the child. Perhaps he payed the bills while she was in school. Perhaps they were just waiting it out until the child was old enough to understand what divorce meant. I'll never know, but I do know that these situations happen and whether or not they line up with what I think would be ethically sound doesn't, well, in my opinion apply in an ethical sense to what lines up with what THEY believe is ethically sound.

Was surprised there were no questions about vaccincations, and my first thought about the car accident was that they wouldn't be in this dilemma if they'd simply had self-driving cars. Haha.

Week One
Pewresearch.com: What's morally acceptable?

"Pakistan is consistent in its views of premarital sex and alcohol usage – 94% say both are morally unacceptable."

Was anyone else surprised by this? That number seems unusually high. I obviously don't know the entire population of Pakistan but I have a fair number of Muslim friends from Karachi that I'm pretty positive don't feel this way, considering especially they keep it Halal so no alcohol. Will smoke them some weed, but, like, no alcohol. Huh. Perhaps they are the 6%.

But perhaps more surprising to me was that #5 warranted its own number AND bolding of the typeface. LOL.


Finally, this sorta surprised me, too.
"...Meanwhile, less than four-in-ten Americans are strongly opposed to homosexuality (37% unacceptable)..."

I thought we were closer to 50/50 on that number, with unacceptability being slightly on the lower side of 50. 

I think we saw in the last election year that we were pretty cool with gay marriage and weed, and we seemed to become even MORE cool with it in the years between then and now. I think we saw this in a lot of different ways, like Dallas - even DALLAS - lighting up downtown in rainbow lights for solidarity, we saw it in people changing their Facebook profile pics to indicate they supported equality, etc. -- ways you can't blame the stupid liberal media for -- so it surprises me that Marco Rubio's threats to "fix SCOTUS's ruling on gay marriage" hasn't ruffled more feathers if the numbers are really THAT distant from each other. 

Rubio's still threatening to fill SCOTUS with Justices that will overturn the ruling, and I believe in this election year he DOES have the power to do that, so I think that's a legitimate threat. And Rubio's the candidate I think that a lot of people are looking to as the one most likely to win the ticket if The Donald doesn't win for comedic value alone first (Cruz is slightly ahead of Rubio, I believe, but I just don't think that's going to last long. People seem to really like Rubio.).

I guess I'm just surprised that that hasn't gotten more attention or bothered more people with that being the statistic. 

(Oh and next week I'll be using one post for all my reading responses - did NOT think through that clearly, sorry guys.)

Re: Moral Minds, Chapter 1

"Sofia sees a puppy in the middle of the street, scared and not moving.

Will Sofia save the puppy or keep her promise? Children under the age of

six typically go with saving the puppy; when asked how the father will

feel, they say “happy,” justifying their response by stating that fathers

like puppies, too. If these children learn that Sofia’s father will punish

her for running out into the street—breaking a promise—they explain

that saving the puppy isn’t an option. When asked how Sofia will feel

about leaving the puppy, they answer “happy”; they think that because

adherence to authority is good, that they, too, will feel good having listened

to their father."

For me this really strikes a parallel to a whole lot of politics that exist within the art of leadership in corporate America.

Don't get me wrong — I've been EXTREMELY fortunate and have had absolutely amazing experiences with my career and took with me so much valuable information from people I consider mentors at each stop along the way, but as a designer I can't count the number of times when I saw the helpless puppy, knew a good safe way to get him off the busy street that would make everyone happy, but instead had to leave the puppy where it is. And then only one person maybe got to be happy, instead of several, including the people actually buying our products or services.

I studied Leadership and People Management for Young Managers as a fellow at the American Press Institute in 2004, and what I learned in training I think is just absolutely crucial information about the art of dealing with human beings as a leader, and I really wish that every manager in America had access to that information. It dispelled so many things that I think people find "true" about managing people.

While say, in this example, the father's intentions were good and he simply wanted his daughter to be safe, it could also be argued that maybe a different father simply wanted his instructions to be followed, thus proving that he was the parent, the leader, that he doesn't NEED reasoning — his daughter should simply not do it because he's her father, and he "said so."

The concept of "because I said so" I think might be the cause of the biggest vat of resources and talent that the US at large loses annually.

It puts employees at times in positions where they know the "right" thing to do — which really in most cases is to make the person paying for goods or services "happy" — but they choose not to because they fear then angering the powerful father that also needs to be "happy."

There's an instance I can recall in my history where someone described a well-liked leader as "everyone's favorite dad" amongst employees. She went on to explain though, that the problem with "fun dad" is that you have still have to please him when he's "angry dad."

And it's amazing what makes some leaders angry. An oppositional thought, no matter how tactfully phrased, could be a solution that saves the puppy, but in the end, some leaders will only hear an oppositional thought.

I've struggled with this on a moral level that I think ALL designers have at some point or other. A different solution might be more cost effective, a different solution might solve a client's problem more effectively while still bringing in the same or more profit, or a different solution could prevent a larger problem in the future, etc.

But, there's times we don't offer that solution simply because it's 11am, and we don't want to deal with everyone upset before it's even lunchtime. Or, it's 4:30, and we don't want to leave everyone upset and take the upset home with us. We know it isn't "right," but, well, "you said so." So at least someone's happy and we can move on to the next disaster. lol.

RE: The Meaning of “Culture”

This story made me think of a guy I'd met my first year of college who'd visited San Antonio, my hometown, and said he could never live there because the people just had such a lack of culture. He most definitely meant it in the "arts & culture" sense - he was horrified by the lack of live theatre and museums in the city, and saw it only as a tourist attraction.

It was a terrible date. Ugh.

I mean — no, San Antonio's no Washington D.C. (his hometown), with Smithsonians everywhere, but San Antonio does have a strong vein of folk art influence that we kind of overlook as natives because, well, it's just everywhere. 

A few years ago I went to a Day of the Dead art show after having not been home for a few years, and it really was amazing to me to revisit as an adult and see so clearly not only the artistry of that particular folk art genre, but also the political and social commentary that the pieces have. And you factor in the concept of the mockery of death, etc. of the actual holiday, and it's pretty "cultured" on at least two levels to me. Of course I'll waste your time with the second level in a bit.

But it reminds me of the argument that in the 19th century, art coming out of Europe was more "refined" than the art coming out of Africa, because the art represented what were clearly people doing things and, like, surrounded by bowls of fruit or whatever. Therefore, using art as the rubric then the people were far more "culture" there. Africa's art in relation at the time to onlookers seemed "primative," as though it'd been done by cavemen who'd just learned to use fire. 

It wasn't the case that one region was more refined or "cultured" than the other - they were simply different. And it's probably a slippery slope to argue that the Europeans were so much more refined based JUST on their ability to paint people and realism because by the time you get to the 20th century and the Bauhaus movement, nothing looks real whatsoever. Then you have the cubists, etc. — I mean, Toro by Picasso is simply a bicycle seat and handlebars, and it's absolutely genius. 

So, culture in the "arts & culture" sort of definition to me has always felt like a loaded term indeed.

Now that second level I mentioned is probably more literal — and the definition I learned in my undergrad work that resonated with me — which has more to do with a group of people that share a language, maybe a values system, customs, etc. 

Having been someone who's been a very active member of several online communities since I was 19, I know that even online communities each have a different culture. We have our own language, customs, etc. and we've even taken online into IRL with things like meetups, snail mail, etc.

And having gone from the journalism industry to the creative communication/ad/marketing industry then to the publishing industry, and now being back in an academic environment - each DEFINITELY has a culture of its own.