Dr. Abigail Leigh Phillips

Category: social media

  • How Social Media Responds…..

    I found out about the Zimmerman trial verdict through Twitter. I’ve learned a good chunk of my news from social media recently. There was an explosion of emotional tweets last night after the announcement of the not guilty verdict. The majority of the tweets were of outrage, expressing intense disappointment with the verdict. I don’t really want to comment on the trial (that’s been done quite a bit already). Personally, I’ve always been reluctant to post my political/religious/emotional thoughts on social media. What I am fascinated by is the way people have taken to social media to express so many intense emotions like anger, happiness, or sadness. Recently, tragedies like the Boston Marathon bombing, the Newtown shooting, and the disaster of Hurricane Sandy have inspired tweets and Facebook posts that have raised money, served as first-hand accounts, pushed forward legislation, and offered comfort to survivors. Yet, with the Zimmerman trial the response is very angry and sometimes hostile. Two popular hashtags about the trial demonstrates the strength of these responses: #justicefortrayvon and #ifieverseezimmerman.

    The outrage or joy people feel and express after highly publicized trials is nothing new.Recall the trials of O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson. However, what is new is the speed of the news, the quickness that emotional responses can be shared, and the collective passion that social media seems to propel. How much of this is the citizen journalism described by Bruns (2007)? Looking at the Zimmerman trial, Twitter and Facebook users are serving as commenters, recalling (for me) the op-ed sections of newspapers. As Bruns notes, citizen journalism “better resembles a conversation rather than a lecture.” (p. 2). This is particularly true in cases like the Zimmerman Trial. Major news organization have less control over how information is shared and interpreted, less ability to lecture. Social media users are sometimes play the journalist role first hand, One example is the minute by minute social updates during the Boston Marathon bombing. Users of social media have the technology capabilities to report events and experiences in an intensely powerful, emotional, and moving manner. These reports are not always accurate, but for the most part they are heartfelt. I’m not sure how traditional media can compete with the honesty and purity of the social media response.

    Some readings of interest:

    Bruns, A. (2007). Prousage: Towards a broader framework for user-led content creation. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity & cognition, 99-106.

    Social Media Played Critical Role in Boston Marathon Response

    Twitter Reactions to Zimmerman Run Hot and Cold

    Zimmerman Not Guilt VerdictFuels #JusticeforTrayvon on Twitter

     

    *originally posted in my blog for EME 6414 Web 2.0 Learning

  • tumblr + librarians = tumblarians *

    Somehow, despite my attempts to maintain a professional restraint on social media, I’ve become addicted to Tumblr.Over the past couple of months I’ve transitioned from lurker to a full blow devotee. It combines the freedom of blogging with the ease of Twitter. Basically it’s fun and a bit less intense than Facebook. Maybe what really drew me to Tumblr is the tumblrarian phenomenon. And I’m a part of it. A newbie tumblarian looking at with non-practitioner-at-the-moment eye. It’s been going on since 2011. Where have I been?

    For me (and many other librarians) Tumblr has become a way to support one another, talk about the profession, advocate for libraries to non-librarians, and exchange ideas for library programming/collection development/other resources. As a social media researcher I would be curious to look into why some librarians are turning to Tumbr as opposed to other social networking sites? How has these librarians’ Tumblr use impacted how they perceive and present their profession? How has this impacted their professional duties? Has librarians use of social media improved library services?

    As I writing this I’m attending ALA’s annual conference in Chicago where librarians are facebooking, tweeting, and tumblring (?) meetings, workshops, and social events. I’m curious what others think about social media and its uses as an information source for professional librarians. Are some sites more “education friendly” than others? How much of this use is social? How much is knowledge exchange or informal learning? How can LIS educators successfully use these tools to inform and educate future librarians? How can librarians successfully use these tools to inform and educate patrons?

    *a kind tumblarian laura-in-libraryland let me know that the tag has shifted to drop the extra ‘r’ –tumblarian!

    Tumblarian Reading:

    Library Journal: The Library is Open: A Look at Librarians and Tumblr

    The Digital Shift: Tumblarian 101: Tumblr for Libraries and Librarians

  • So much drama!!

    Not long after I started researching cyberbullying I came across the concept of ‘drama’ in a conference paper by Alice Marwick and danah boyd. Unfortunately, I can’t find much more on drama in scholarly literature. Nuts. I’m familiar with drama from my own teen and undergrad years (and even as an adult. Sigh.). But that was before social media really exploded. Drama seems so closely tied to cyberbullying to adults, but also something else altogether to teens.

    Marwick and boyd (2011) describe drama as “the language that teens—most notably girls—use to describe a host of activities and practices ranging from gossip, flirting, arguing, and joking to more serious issues of jealousy, ostracization, and name-calling.” (p. 2).

    In a recent report from Pew Teens, Social Media, and Privacy, drama was cited as one of the main reasons teens are less enthusiastic users of Facebook than they once were. Reading this report and a New York Times op-ed by boyd and Marwick (2011) interested me even more in how teens define ‘drama’ and ‘cyberbullying’. What terminology should be used as a researcher? I feel that I’m missing something important by not using the words that teens use to define their experiences.

    Now I have some questions to think about:

    • How can I incorporate theory into cyberbullying research? There is a definite lack of it in cyberbullying literature.
    • How can public  librarians empower teens through digital citizenship and encourage empathy in teens? We don’t have access to teens the same way that school media specialist, teachers, administrators, or parents do.
    • How much of cyberbullying is really anonymous? the perceived  anonymity/non-anonymity of cyberbullying is fascinating to me. On one hand, most of the cyberbullying takes place within a social circle. These teens know one another. On the other hand, its hard to know how far the bullying or drama has spread. How many people? How far outside that circle?

    What to Read:

    ~Obviously I’m really into danah boyd’s work at the moment.~

    boyd, d., & Marwick, A. (2011, September 22). Bullying as true drama. New York Times, pp. A35. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/opinion/why-cyberbullying-rhetoric-misses-the-mark.html/?_r=0.

    Marwick, A., & boyd, d. (2011). The drama! Teen conflict, gossip, and bullying in networked places. Presented at A Decade in Internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society. Retrieved from http://ssrn.com/abstract=1926349.

    I'm starting my lit review. Old school.
    I’m starting my lit review. Old school.

  • Lurking as a Social Media Researcher

    I feel I must make a confession as someone who is just beginning to do research on social media. I am a bit of a reluctant social media contributor. I’m more of a hardcore lurker. I post infrequently to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr (although I’m trying to do better). I believe my reluctance to update/post/tweet comes more from a personal hesitancy than a professional/research hesitancy  Being a naturally private, shy, and quiet person, I’ve never felt the need to publicly announce what I’m doing/thinking/eating/feeling. I hope there are others out there like me who cringe a bit after posting on a social network site. Will it be liked or retweeted?? Part of these may come from working in a public library in a conservative community, part of it is just my introverted self. But I realize that there are many people who do not share this tendency and who feel quite comfortable updating their status with anything and everything. I’d like to find a happy medium between these two extremes: rarely posting and posting every five minutes.

    I am currently working on a literature review of cyberbullying, focusing on how public librarians can be a source of support for victims.As a beginning social media researcher I need to make myself known with the community of social media researchers. From what I’ve been told the best way to do this is to put myself out there through blog posts, Tweets, Tumblr posts, etc. This is part of my attempt with this blog. By posting about once a week to this blog, I becoming more comfortable as a producer of online content. I’ll get there. Baby steps.You may ask yourself: Why is does she want to research social media if she doesn’t seem to be actively engaged with it? Since I started using social network sites back in the early days of MySpace and LiveJournal, I’ve been fascinated with how people use these sites. My interest in the effect social media has had on the way we all, especially young adults, communicate and interact on a daily basis has led to my summer research collaboration with Dr. Mardis. I am currently working on a literature review of cyberbullying, focusing on how public librarians can be a source of support for victims. Social media appears to be a research area that is wide open for investigation.

    As a beginning social media researcher I need to make myself known with the community of social media researchers. From what I’ve been told the best way to do this is to put myself out there through blog posts, Tweets, Tumblr posts, etc. This is part of my attempt with this blog. By posting about once a week to this blog, I becoming more comfortable as a producer of online content. I’ll get there. Baby steps.