[Insert Witty Blog Post Title Here]

Whew...Is anyone else exhausted after this past week? Perhaps it’s the pressure from trying to wrap up the produsage assignment amidst technical difficulties (why would I expect anything technology related to be 100% hiccup free?) or the fact that we just wrapped up the 5th week of social media tools (seriously, how many can there be?). Either way, my brain is effectively drained, hence my super clever title for this post.

So for part of my produsage assignment I thought it would be great to incorporate a Twitter feed from a hashtag search, pretty much like the one in the sidebar on the EME6414 Web 2.0 blog page that displays a running feed of #eme6414. Sounds easy enough right? At least that’s what I thought when I embarked on the task only to discover many hours later that it would be impossible...at least to accomplish natively through Twitter.

I learned the technical term for what I was after was a search timeline widget - a fancy snippet of HTML code that is able to pull all the results of a hashtag search and display them in a chronological timeline. I also learned that Twitter deprecated (fancy word meaning to declare some technological feature or function to be obsolescent) the search timeline widget on July 27, 2018. Coincidentally, the very same day that I was trying to figure out how to create one! For anyone curious, you can check out the original announcement from June 2016 on the developer's forum here. Since then, Twitter has introduced a new way to generate code for embedding tweets, but sadly, not for search timelines.

I then proceeded to spend a good chunk of the next day determined to find an alternative solution to my problem. I had decided early in the week to take a break from the participation aspect this week (thank you Token #2!) but I still found myself elbow deep in trying new tools. My inbox was overflowing with activation emails for dozens of promising tools I had signed up for, and if it wasn’t for Google chrome dutifully remembering my login credentials, there is no way I would have survived. Although it wasn’t perfect and it took way longer than I expected it to, I did eventually achieved success in creating a search timeline widget. My solution was not pretty and I’m still trying to understand why it worked, but nevertheless I’m proud of the fact that I got it to work.

When I started writing this blog post I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going to end up. I had jotted down some notes to talk about how after 5 weeks of social media indoctrination my initial reaction to my problem was to seek out help through social media and how it seemed to share some similarities with the community of practice of teachers described in the Goodyear, Casey & Kirk (2014) article. Or how even though I told myself to take a break from participation I had to really fight the urge to connect as the number of unread posts on my feed reader climbed higher and higher. But I think the moral of this story is to not take all of these Web 2.0 tools and the technology that went into creating them for granted. We are fortunate to have so many options at our disposal for fostering community and engagement in the classroom or the workplace that we don't even really stop and think about the marvel of technical engineering that goes into creating them; but I think that we should.  So the next time you come across a particularly awesome piece of computing genius take a moment to stop and thank a developer.  

Our Social History

If you are familiar with the late-night talk and news satire show Last Week Tonight hosted by comedian John Oliver you may have seen a bit titled “How is this still a thing” where he questions whether certain practices or ideas have outlived their usefulness, like Daylight Saving Time or celebrating Columbus Day. A similar query came to mind when I explored the social media emulator tool Fakebook: How did this become a thing?

Fakebook is exactly what it sounds like, a tool that lets you set up a fake Facebook profile, complete with personal information, posts and even friends. The intent of the site is made clear in that it allows teachers and students to create imaginary profile pages for study purposes, but why? Obviously, the existence of fakebook is predicated on the actual Facebook but it still begs the question as to why a study aid would be built on the basis of a social media platform. That we would have a tool to retell historical or even fictional events through a social media platforms says a lot about how we as a culture chronicle our history.

Ryan Taylor recently blogged about Allwyn Collinson’s six-year history project to recreate the events of World War II in real-time through Twitter. It’s a fascinating concept and one that has undoubtedly made knowledge of these events more widely known. A check of @RealTimeWWII’s Twitter profile boasts an impressive following with 515,000 followers.

Both of these examples seem to validate the concept that Marshall McLuhan put forth back in 1964 with his famous quote, “The medium is the message.”  The below video from the BBC Radio 4 gives a quick primer on the subject in under 2 minutes.  In his book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McLuhan makes the argument that throughout history, what has been communicated is less important than how it has been communicated and that the technology used to transmit the message has had a transformative effect on society.

I think this idea that the medium is not something neutral, that it does something to people, is much more profound in the age of social media. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. have made an undeniable impression on us and how we define our history. These are no longer individual histories but social ones. Through these social media lenses, my history is equal parts my own experience and your collective reaction to my experience. The instinct to record our history has always been there. Cavemen painted their stories on the walls. Today, our stories are written in the photos and status updates posted to our Facebook walls, and we invite others to participate in writing those stories.


McLuhan, M., & Lapham, L. H. (1994). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Reprint edition). Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.

"Z" is for Zotero

Back in Fall 2017 I took an Inquiry & Measurement for practitioners course. After a 14 year hiatus from the academic world, my research skills were admittedly a little rusty and I was naturally a bit anxious about the prospect of having to format proper citations and keep track of dozens of articles. I couldn’t remember the last time that I had set foot in a library for the purpose of finding journal articles for research and any technique or strategy that I once used had long since been forgotten. Fortunately, the instructor of the course provided some tips for using the library including some recommended tools. One of those tools was Zotero.

[zoh-TAIR-oh] 

I admit, I was initially intrigued by the name but later came to appreciate the features it offered. In plain terms, Zotero is a reference manager and it can store and manage bibliographic references like books and articles. But more than that, Zotero is a powerful research companion for organizing all types of information and sources.

Zotero’s power comes from its ability to manage metadata - essentially, information about the information being stored and organized. Every type of item contains different metadata, this includes things like titles, creators, publishers, dates, page numbers, tags, notes and any other data needed to cite the item or to make it more useful when searching for it in the future. Speaking of citations, one of the tedious time consuming tasks of any research project is ensuring citations are properly formatted. Thankfully, Zotero instantly creates references and bibliographies with over 8,000 citation styles. It even has plugins for direct integration in word processing software making it easy to create citations directly from within Word or LibreOffice.

One of the tasks that can quickly get out of hand with any research project is keeping track of all the references and knowing why you saved them. Zotero lets you easily organize your items into collections. The main program window is split into three panes. The left pane is your library. Here you can organize all of your items and put them into different collections - much like a music playlist. Items that are stored in collections are links to a single copy of the item in your library. This way, the same item can belong to multiple collections at once.

Screenshot of Zotero client application

The middle pane shows you the contents of a collection, with all of the items and any attachments they have. Notes, files and links that are attached to an item will appear beneath the parent item. The right pane shows the metadata associated with each item. The type of metadata displayed will vary depending on the type of item that was saved. All of these fields can be edited and it may be necessary to correct an entry or fill in missing information to have a complete citation generated, but most of the time they are complete and accurate.

Items can be manually added to your library, but one of the best features about Zotero is that it can automatically capture and save items you find with the click of a button. With the Zotero Connector for Chrome, Firefox and Safari, Zotero can automatically create an item using the embedded metadata from the site and, when available, Zotero will even download a full-text PDF and save it with the item. Zotero also lets you assign tags to help identify items and make them easier to find later on.

Finally, Zotero allows you to create shared group libraries that make it possible to collaboratively manage research sources and materials. What’s cool is that you can sync these shared group libraries to your account, so that they show up in your client application. You can also access them online, which is great for times when you need to look something up that you saved from a different computer. Group members can attach notes with the items they save which can really help with identifying how an item relates to the purpose of the project, such as specifying a page range or even listing a perfect quote.

At the time, I didn’t know Zotero had this function and it would have been a great way to collaborate on our group research project. Instead we relied on storing files in a shared Google drive, which, I found myself having to open multiple files to find the one I wanted because all I had to go on was the filename, which wasn’t always the most descriptive.

Out of curiosity, I created a public group for EME6414 and added a few interesting articles. Feel free to register for Zotero and join the group if you’re interested. Once you join, you’ll be able to see the items that have been saved as well as add your own. Leave a comment and let me know if you’ve tried Zotero (or other reference management tool) and what you thought of it.

Student Engagement on the Grid

I remember growing up as the quiet kid in school. I moved around a lot when I was younger so I was always the new kid in the class. And not just the new kid who moved from the next town over but one that came from a state that no one had ever been to before; that kind of new kid. This, coupled with a healthy dose of shyness meant that I didn’t speak much in class. It’s not that I didn’t have anything to say - it’s just that the fear of being embarrassed by saying the wrong thing was much greater. At times it was almost palpable, like when the teacher would scan the room for someone to call on to answer a question and I avoided making eye contact like my life depended on it.

My story is not terribly unique and there are many stories just like mine. Perhaps this even sounds a bit like your story. With classroom numbers on the rise it is becoming easier for students to avoid classroom participation. This is an obvious problem for students as participation is a key aspect of learning. In addition to adding interest, speaking up in class provides practice in expressing ideas so that others can understand them. Students that participate are more motivated to make connections with the content and are more likely to retain the information. This is also a problem for teachers, as class participation yields valuable feedback on what students don’t understand and insight into how to adjust instruction accordingly.

Flipgrid is one possible solution to these problems. Flipgrid is a video response platform that can be used to host online video discussions between students and teachers. Not only can students respond to prompts from the teacher, but they can also provide feedback to other students. Fostering robust student-to-student interaction is probably the biggest advantage of this tool, not to mention it’s just really cool to make and share your own videos!

Why Flipgrid is great for education:  From a technical standpoint, Flipgrid is easy to integrate into a classroom because it works on any device or browser. The platform itself is lightweight and clean, so it doesn’t get in the way of what really matters - the voice of the student. Flipgrid empowers students to find and share their voice. Remember that shy student who wanted to avoid participation out of fear of embarrassment? With Flipgrid, students can flip the camera if they are feeling self-conscious and pause while recording with an unlimited number of retakes, so they don’t have to worry about getting it exactly right the first time.

It’s easy to get up and running with Flipgrid, all it takes is 3 simple steps:

1. Create your Grid: Your Grid is where you will host your video discussions. Think of it like a virtual classroom or community of learners. Once you name your grid and save it, you will get an auto-generated Flip Code. This code is what students will use to access the Grid.

2. Add Topics: This is what students will respond to. A question, a photo, the latest headline, just about anything can be the source of inspiration for discussion. You can even add additional resources like videos, documents and web links.

3. Share: Students don’t have to create their own Flipgrid account to participate, they simply enter the Flip Code to access the Grid and start responding to topics.

Flipgrid used to have an education specific edition called Flipgrid Classroom that cost $65 per year and gave you unlimited grids, topics, responses and replies to responses. Certainly a lot of engagement for the buck. But now, thanks to a recent partnership with Microsoft, Flipgrid is being offered to educators for free! What’s even better is that Flipgrid is offering a prorated refund to all educators who purchased a subscription after June 18, 2017. in the last year. Check out all the refund details here.

If you’ve ever been curious about incorporating video discussions into your classroom, there’s never been a better time to jump in and check it out. See you on the Grid!

The Myth of the Digital Native

The terms digital native and digital immigrant were coined by Marc Prensky in a 2001 article of the same name, and although he did not explicitly define it, the term was later applied to children born after 1980. I had heard specifically of digital natives before and believed it to refer to those born during the Internet’s golden age, but what I didn’t realize was that I was included among their ranks.

I don’t immediately consider myself to be a digital native and this fact was made abundantly clear during this week’s tool exploration. I think I only recognized two maybe three of the tools that were recommend to try out, but please don’t tell anyone, lest my membership in this cohort be revoked. This is of course an exaggeration, but it illustrates the problem with these terms and believing that that everyone born after a certain date has an innate understanding of technology. I came across this video from PBS Digital Studios which explores the question of whether digital natives actually exist.

But more serious than the question of existence is whether there is a danger in thinking that digital natives don’t need to be taught how to use technology? I think the answer is a resounding yes. The video argues that no one is born a fluent speaker of any language, whether it’s computers or Swahili; it must be learned, through immersion and practice. I also enjoyed that the video touched on the theme of access that I blogged about in my last post. It states:

“[computers] are a huge part of our everyday life but they are a privilege that not everyone has total access to, and if they do, access doesn't come prepackaged with understanding.”

It can be tempting to want to ascribe these intuitive skills and penchant for all things technology to a generation born in the age of the Internet based on broad assumptions about their seemingly constant use of these tools; however, it is a risky practice, especially when it comes to education. Just because members of younger generations may be surrounded by technology that didn’t exist for previous generations, we shouldn’t assume that proximity is synonymous with proficiency nor even preference. In this week’s reading, Crook (2012) notes that despite the push to embrace Web 2.0 opportunities for engaging this digital generation, the evidence suggests that students are not as inclined to take advantage of them and that their “engagement is biased towards consumption rather than production” (pg. 65). While these tools can provide new opportunities, as educators, we should not assume that students will take them up automatically and without guidance.

Finally, I came across this article which argues that the digital native rhetoric has been perpetuated by proprietors of educational technology who seek to profit by selling solutions to this problem of connecting with a new generation. If we are to believe that digital natives exist, then we accept the idea that members of the digital-savvy generation think and learn differently than students that have come before them, and that is perhaps the biggest myth of all.


References:

Crook, C. (2012). The 'digital native' in context: tensions associated with importing Web 2.0 practices into the school setting. Oxford Review of Education, 38(1), 63-80. doi:10.1080/03054985.2011.577946

Prensky, Marc (October 2001). "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants". On the Horizon. 9 (5): 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1108/10748120110424816

Sadowski, J. (2014, July 9). The “Digital Native,” a profitable myth. Retrieved from https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-digital-native-a-profitable-myth

On The Question of Access

Week 4 is here almost gone and the buzzword of the week has been application and the instructional design for social media. As I’ve mentioned before in previous posts, the social media landscape is vast and the arrival of each new tool can seem a bit like a drop in the ocean. So how can we actually make use of these vast tools to promote and support learning?

There is an ever increasing body of research devoted to studying the use of social media to support learning such as this one that looked at what motivates students to use Facebook groups and the benefits they receive from doing so and this one that looked at Twitter as a means to increase student engagement. Both studies found evidence that supported the use of these tools in the classroom and they are hardly an exception. Many more studies are coming to similar conclusions about the benefit of these tools and it’s easy to see why.

It’s called social media and when applied to education it can make learning a more social experience. Rather than a one-way flow of information from the teacher to each student, social media tools can disrupt this flow and give students the opportunity to be creators and collaborators in the learning content. And because these technologies operate in real-time, they are excellent for reading and discussing about real world current events as they are happening.

But with all the hype that can accompany new technology tools, one of the things that gave me pause is the issue of accessibility. It turns out I wasn’t the only one that had this thought as Leah also blogged on the topic and I recommend you check it out if you can. But while her focus was on assistive technologies for people with disabilities, I was thinking even more basic to just access.

I came across this video a while ago about the “homework gap” and while the message is specifically aimed at the broader topic of internet access, the point it makes is very much applicable to this discussion about use of social media in education. According to the video:

"70% of teachers assign homework that requires access to the internet. Yet, 5 million families with school aged children do not have access to high speed internet service at home”

While the numbers keep getting better with each year, we have yet to arrive at universal high speed internet access for all students. And as the world becomes more technology-centric, digital literacy and fluency will becoming increasingly important for long-term success. When incorporating social media tools in the classroom to capitalize on any of the positive benefits they provide, we should remember to stop and consider the important issue of access as it relates to all of our students.

ThinkLink...ThingLing...ThingLink!

Anyone who uses the Windows Spotlight feature for their lock screen on a Windows 10 computer will instantly recognize ThingLink. It may not be the easiest name to pronounce, but what it lacks in pronunciation it makes up for in potential.

According to their website, ThingLink is a product identification tool that makes it easy to add clickable tags to any image on the web and share the tagged images on social networks. ThingLink also claims to be the leading provider of image and video interaction tools in the classroom.

My very first Thinglink creation on the topic of copyright

My actual first ThingLink image

I am just now discovering ThingLink; however, it’s been around for a decade, which is an eternity when it comes to online software applications. And it seems to have carved out a niche in the image tagging market as I could not find much in the way of competitor tools. Genially seems to be the closest competitor without digging too deep into it. (If you’ve used this application, let me know about your experience in the comments)

Anyway, back to ThingLink. Behind the scenes, ThingLink runs on JavaScript to serve up rich media content (images, video, etc.) on top of an online image. This additional content appears when viewers move their mouse over tagged areas of the image. This seems like such a simple concept, but it has huge potential, because an infinite amount of additional resources could be connected to that single image. This technology increases engagement through interactivity.  It’s no longer just t a static one-dimensional image, but a portal to an endless world of content.

Last week I wrote about digital content curation and how this practice distills the world wide web down into its best parts. ThinkLink has a similar value proposition and allows you to easily cull materials from all over and present them in an engaging fashion. I can see this as a very useful tool in the classroom and could really apply to any subject matter. Students could find a picture, or be assigned a picture for inspiration and from that create an interactive presentation into whatever theme it is. They could curate using existing media found online, or it could be used to showcase their own original content that has been uploaded or created digitally. ThingLink also provides the ability for teachers to organize their students into groups to make managing and sharing easier. It even allows students to add comments to images created by classmates. With the advent of rich media tagging technology of applications like ThingLink, glue sticks, scissors and construction paper may soon be a thing of the past!

The Deep Waters of Content Curation Tools

Last week I dove into the deep end of digital content curation.

I feel like this is an apt metaphor that works on multiple levels. As a kid growing up I was not a strong swimmer. When I had the chance to go to a pool I would stick to the shallow end where I knew I could touch the bottom without completely submerging my head. When I was feeling particularly brave, I would venture out to the part of the pool where the bottom started to pitch down, inching further and further until the very tips of my toes couldn’t touch without my head dunking below the surface of the water. I avoided going past this point. The deep end was intimidating and even a little scary. I knew there was a bottom, but I couldn’t see it and I certainly didn’t think I could touch it. There was just water and below that more water.

The last time I checked there were approximately a gazillion tools available to organize and curate digital content. No lie, that’s a lot, and it can kind of feel like the deep end of a swimming pool, a bit overwhelming and capable of inducing doubt in your abilities. With no visible end in sight, where does one begin? Here’s where the second part of that metaphor comes in. Sometimes the best way to overcome a challenge is to immerse yourself in it. I was never going to make it into the deep end of the pool with my current strategy. My slow, calculated approach allowed the fear of the unknown to win every time. I eventually built up enough courage to face this challenge head on and took a leap off the diving board and plunged into the deep end. When I resurfaced I came to the realization that the deep end wasn’t as bad as I thought.

So, what does any of this have to do with content curation? If you’ve been hanging out in the shallow end wondering if the curation gig is right for you, my advice would be to jump in and test the waters. There’s no wrong answer to the question of where to start. Pick one, or several tools and try them out. Many applications are completely free to use and those that do operate on a paid subscription typically offer free trial periods. Sign up for a free e-mail account (Gmail, AOL, Outlook, etc.) to use while registering for all these new applications.  This way, you can avoid cluttering up your actual inbox until you find the right tool.

I also recommend that you come up with a system for keeping track of all the usernames and passwords you will be generating while trying out these tools, even if it’s just simple paper and pencil. Today, most web browser have the ability to manage your website credentials for you, making it a breeze to log in to the tools you’ve found. If you are like me, coming up with a strong password can be a challenge. You can try a couple password generators here and here.

The most important thing to remember is that not every tool will be perfect. Focus on finding the tool that works best for you and meets your needs. With the amount of applications out there, you don’t have to settle for something that falls short. Finally, don’t be afraid to seek out help. While I certainly felt all alone as my feet left the safety of the diving board, in reality, there were lifeguards strategically positioned all around the pool, ready to jump in if I got in trouble. The same is true about these online tools. If you get stuck using a tool, try the help section of the application’s website. They typically have how-to guides on navigating their tool to get the most out of it.  They usually come with easy to follow pictures and now, many of them include video tutorials that you can follow along with. A quick web search will reveal a number of user generated guides and videos to help you out as well.

Digital curation is all about serving up the best content for your audience, whether they are friends, students, colleagues or customers.  New tools are regularly coming out to make this process easier and more fun for both the producer and the consumer.  Take them for a spin and try out their features.  Doesn't have what you're looking for?  No problem; move on to the next one until you find what will work for your needs.  So, what are you waiting for?  Jump in, the water’s fine!

Curation & Copyright

Another week in the books, another tool added to the Web 2.0 toolbox. I signed up to try several tools this week: Pearltrees, Diigo, Wakelet, Pinterest (okay, I was already signed up for Pinterest) but as in previous weeks, this was just barely scratching the surface of what is out there. I did not immediately take to Diigo or Wakelet; perhaps I didn’t give them enough time to win me over. Waklet’s interface seemed rigid to me and the process for adding items to a collection was clunky and limited. Diigo I think has potential with the ability to search tags and the suite of tools available to add content through the Google Chrome browser extension was impressive, but the interface was cluttered making it difficult to use. I’m sure given more than a few days of playing with these tools their better features would shine and their limitations would feel, well, less limiting.

As I mentioned in my last post, there are tons of tools out there that are trying to solve the problem of information glut. I think two quotes from Wakelet’s about page sum up the current predicament rather well:

"The web is filled with disconnected pieces of information and it’s growing all the time."

"Perfectly good content gets buried in no time at all."

It is impossible to keep pace with the amount of information generated online every day; heck, even every minute presents an insurmountable mountain of stuff that we may never even see. Social bookmarking and digital content curation tools are two ways that we can harness the power of social networking to tackle this problem. Even with these tools, there is no way to see everything, but we have a better chance of seeing the right things, the things that are important to us.

What I found interesting from the article on Diigo use in an online graduate-level class was the sort of trickle-down effect of the curated content (Im & Dennen, 2013). The knowledge didn’t just stay within that group of students but rather spread to others that were connected to those students and presumably to others connected beyond that. The act of collecting, aggregating and cultivating the disconnected pieces of information on the Internet greatly extends the reach of this information as it piggybacks on the network of connections between users.

The other issue we dealt with this week was intellectual property and copyright. Kirby Ferguson had a very convincing argument for why he believes everything is a remix and there is no doubt that both the volume of content available on the Internet and the ease of appropriating it has significantly complicated these ideas. Social media is built on a foundation of sharing, so I was curious about the fate of this continuous stream of content. Do we still own it or are we giving up our rights to it when we click post? Turns out, buried in those terms of service agreements that 99.9% of people blindly accept without so much as a second thought, you still own the content you post on social media; but...by using the service you are granting Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or whoever pretty much carte blanche to use your content without compensation.

In her article titled "User Data on the Social Web: Authorship, Agency, and Appropriation," Jessica Reyman (2013) draws an important distinction between content and data and while you may own your content, social media companies make a fierce claim over ownership of your data. Some may ask what’s the difference? Data includes a wide range of information like status updates, friends and groups you belong to, the things you like, your browsing history and information (metadata) embedded in the material you upload. Most of this stuff is invisible to the end user and that’s the point Reyman is making. People may not be fully cognizant of what data they are implicitly agreeing to give up and more importantly, how that data will be used. This data appropriation by social media companies is viewed as an acceptable cost for the privilege of using the platform.

Reyman cites examples of how Facebook mis-appropriated this data in ways that were unexpected and certainly not welcomed by users and resulted in considerable outrage. The problem I see as social media continues to grow is that users are unable to give their informed consent to these data use practices. Technical settings in many of these applications give the appearance that users are in control of their data, but are they really? Do they know and understand the implications of turning a setting on or off? I would say that most people don’t and the majority of people trust that the default settings will be adequate and provide them with an appropriate level of security and protection. But whose interests are those default settings designed for? The user or the company?

In many ways, the Internet is still the Wild West, with new technologies emerging every day that require us to renegotiate how we interact with this evolving medium. Social media is the current trend in this evolution and with it comes valid concerns over the ownership and use of our content and data. As digital citizens, we need to be aware of these issues and be active voices in the discussion to ensure a fair and balanced distribution of rights.


References:

Im, T. & Dennen, V. P. (2013). Building a collaborative knowledge base in Diigo: How links, tags, and comments support learning. In T. Bastiens, & G. Marks (Eds.), Proceedings of the World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (ELEARN) (pp. 794-797). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

Reyman, J. (2013). User data on the social web: Authorship, agency, and appropriation. College English, 75(5), 513-533.

Pearltrees: One answer to the question: What to do with all this content?

The tools we are exploring this week are all about digital curation. This got me thinking about what it means to curate and what purpose it serves. What popped into my head was the good old top 10 list. Top 10 lists have been a staple of late night comedy shows and is one of the bits that David Letterman is most well known for from his days as the host of the Late Show. But they show up lots of places covering all manner of subjects from the mundane to the bizarre. Everyone loves a good top 10 list. Why? Because top 10 lists allow us to avoid weeding through all the mediocre and sub-par contenders and skip right to the best of the best, the creme de la creme.

Curation represents value added. The investment of time and effort to cultivate not just a random assortment of things but a carefully filtered collection of relevant material.

One of the obvious benefits of curation is organization. I admit I am not very organized when it comes to the things I find online. My Google Chrome bookmarks bar is overrun with things I’ve come across and thought, “Hmm, this is interesting, I should probably save this so I can get back to it again in the future.” And so it gets added to the long list of other finds. I tried to clean things up a bit by adding folders, but that just seems to add and additional layer to dig through to find what I’m looking for. The crux of the problem is that my current system relies on my ability to 1. remember that I saved something and 2. recall what I named the bookmark. These are big assumptions. Some websites incorporate an icon, which can makes it easier to identify what it is at a glance. But other bookmarks leave me scratching my head wondering, “Why did I need to hang on to this?”

There are many, many tools out there that aim to solve this problem of content management. Shirley Williams used Listly to curate a collection of 55 tools used to curate social web content (ironically, Listly is listed as #2, though I don’t think there is any ranking implied in the order). I decided to go with #15 on Shirley’s list and set out to see what Pearltrees had to offer.

When I first went to check out this digital curation tool, I thought it was named peartrees, so I was expecting to see a lot of pear icons. Only when I was signing up for an account did I notice the letter “L” in the name. After this discovery it made a lot more sense to me. Pearls of wisdom + Tree of knowledge = Pearltrees. I don’t know if this is what the creators had in mind, but I think it works.

Pearltrees lets you create collections of web pages, files, photos, videos, notes, etc. on any topic you’re interested in. Rather than try and explain it in words, I recommend you check out the quick introduction video here. The free version gives you 1GB of storage space, which seems adequate, since you are not really storing the content on your account but rather storing the link to the content hosted somewhere else on the Internet. Kind of like how the IT department always tells you that you shouldn’t save all of your files to you computer desktop, but shortcuts are perfectly fine!

The Good

An essential part of any good curated collection is presentation. Why go through the time and trouble of gathering all of these pearls from the four corners of the web if in the end it looks like crap. Pearltrees has a sleek user interface that is reminiscent of the album cover view in Apple’s iTunes with file tree navigation in the left panel and a tile grid of all the items in the main window. Customizable backgrounds to match the theme of each collection is a nice touch. In the free version, the program automatically assigns an image to each tile based on the content it holds; you can customize these images with a premium (paid subscription) account. You can drag and drop items making it easy to rearrange them in the desired order. And in an apparent nod to the early days of Apple’s graphical user interface, you can get rid of a pearl by dragging it to the trash can. Another nice feature of Pearltrees is that you are able to nest collections, that is you can have collections within collections. This allows you drill down into specific aspects of a larger topic while still keeping everything neatly organized.

But beyond the shiny interface, where Pearltrees really shines is in its sharing and collaboration capabilities. There are three icons at the top of a collection for “team-up” “share” and “related collections.”

Screenshot of sharing and collaboration features

Using an e-mail address or your Gmail or Yahoo contacts, you can invite members to collaborate on your collection. There are nine different ways to share a collection with others to view including Facebook, Twitter and my personal favorite, an auto-generated QR code. Here is the code for the collection I created on copyright. Apple devices running iOS 11 can read QR codes with the camera if enabled, otherwise a dedicated QR reader is necessary.

Copyright collection QR code

Finally, related collections allows you view the public collections of others that are similar to your own. There is much more content out there than any one person can cull through and this feature lets you take advantage of those value added efforts of others by either copying pearls to your collection, or adding entire collections that appeal to you and subscribing to receive real-time updates.

The Bad

One of the ways Pearltrees allows you to add items to your collection is by sending an email to add@pearltrees.com from the email account you signed up with. This has the potential to be a real time-saver as you can automatically file a pearl by designating the appropriate collection in the subject line using a hashtag. If you plan to use this feature you'll want to keep your collection titles short and intuitive. Unfortunately, the reality of this feature left something to be desired. In my test it took nearly 10 minutes from sending a simple text e-mail before receiving the reply that it had been added to my dropzone and was available to add to a collection. If you like to batch curate this may not be a problem, but if you prefer to organize in real-time the wait could be a problem.

The other issue that I ran into was the lack of annotation. In the free version you can comment on a pearl but these are stored external to the actual content. Only in the premium version can you actually edit the content of the pearl and add in annotations. This is where you can add extra value by highlighting what’s important and articulating why it’s being saved or perhaps only a piece of it is relevant to the collection topic. Unfortunately this feature (among others) will cost you $4.99/month ($4.49/month for teachers). This is perhaps the biggest downside of this tool; however, with a premium subscription you get the ability to create private collections as well as remove ads. With so many tools available these days for digital content curation, chances are you can find one that will let you annotate for free.

Overall, I liked what Pearltrees had to offer with its collaboration and related collections search features. The interface was intuitive and adding pearls was relatively painless. The lack of annotations in the free version were a strike against it as well as the recurring subscription costs for premium features. Have you tried Pearltrees? If so, feel free to share your experience by leaving a comment.

Copy, Transform and Combine...a Recipe for the Digital Age

Is there any originality left in the world? Is it naive to think that it ever existed in the first place? These are the questions I’m pondering after viewing Kirby Ferguson’s four-part video series Everything is a Remix. I highly recommend that you check it out as it is well worth the 37 minute runtime. Or, if you’re running short on time, you can check out his related TED talk on creativity.

In these videos, Ferguson cites example after example of supposed original works that can trace their roots back to previous creations, some of which were themselves built on even earlier works. From songs and films to the lightbulb and the personal computer, there is no shortage of examples it seems.

Part four of the series explores how our legal system is at odds with a creative process that builds upon the works of others as it views these creative works through the awkward lens of property. Ferguson points to the rise of the market economy as a source of the problem, wherein a distinct competitive advantage is enjoyed by those who copy as they are able to avoid the costly price of development associated with the original. This dilemma gave rise to the introduction of copyright and patent laws whose intent was to secure a limited period of exclusivity for the originator where copying would not be allowed. Afterwards, that work would enter into the public domain where it could be built upon in order to spawn new ideas and new inventions.

This was the original intent of these cornerstones of creative protection and was directly reflected in their subtitles. The Copyright Act of 1790 was an act for the encouragement of learning and the Patent Act of 1790 was an act to promote the progress of useful arts. I was a little surprised to learn that these pieces of legislation were so focused on growth and provided protection for the individual but at the same time recognized the importance of the common good. Interestingly enough, I found another TED talk by Lettie Ransley that discusses the Statue of Anne, also known as the Copyright Act of 1710, as it relates to written works in the digital age. Passed 80 years prior to the US copyright act, this British legislation is coincidentally also described as an act for the encouragement of learning.

Today, copyright and patent laws are discussed almost exclusively in terms of protecting the owner’s rights from infringement. The video introduces two new species in the opportunistic litigation ecosystem: sample trolls and patent trolls, companies who make their living off of suing over intellectual property rights infringement, no matter how small. What benefit do these companies provide to the public? How do these self-serving practices live up to the original intent of these legal protections? There is virtually no discussion about the common good or the proliferation of new ideas built on the work of others. Perhaps now is the right time to remix the current distorted notions of copyright and intellectual property in this digital age and get back to our roots.

What Are The Risks of Social Media?

Week 3 is underway and I’m having a hard time coming up with a good idea to blog about. Perhaps it’s the heat resulting from the broken air conditioner or perhaps it’s because this week’s topic is about intellectual property rights in the age of the Internet which can be a particularly tough subject to wrap one’s head around. So, while I let my brain chew on the challenges faced by bit workers in the copy+paste digital age, I figured I would briefly revisit a notion from last week that I have still been thinking about.

In my post The Dark Side of Web 2.0, I talked about how social media companies are actively working to keep us plugged in to their products for as long as possible. I focused on how the odds are not in our favor, but does that mean we don’t have any responsibility for our actions online? Are we at least partly to blame for allowing our emotions to be manipulated and elements of our human nature exploited in this online environment?

It’s no secret that we like getting likes or rather the feeling that we get when we receive them. Dopamine, a chemical produced in the brain, was believed to be responsible for the sensation of pleasure; however, scientist now believe that dopamine instead regulates desire and motivation for attaining pleasure. In other words, each like keeps us wanting more.

The results of a New Statesmen survey reveal that happiness online is fleeting. 518 social media users were surveyed and one finding showed that:

“After getting lots of Likes, 12.5 per cent of people will feel happy for around an hour, 10.2 per cent will feel it for the entire day, and for 3.1 per cent of people, it will last a week.”

On Saturday as I was preparing to wrap up my thoughts for the week I looked back at my posts and saw that not a single comment had been left. More surprising was the fact that I noticed myself becoming frustrated with this lack of engagement. I pondered why no one had commented and then I pondered why did I care? This blog is more or less a 6-week experiment into the realm of online content creation. I am not selling anything and my livelihood is not dependent on a steady stream of traffic to my site, so why was I bothered by the fact that I had no comments? Dopamine is strong stuff.

Fortunately, I was able to recognize what was happening and I did end up getting a couple comments; thank you to those two readers (you know who you are!) But what about someone who is not looking at social media as an experiment but instead as an increasingly important part of their daily life? How do they react?

According to a recent study by Joseph Grenny and David Maxfield, 58 percent of respondents indicated that posting that perfect picture has prevented them from enjoying life experiences—and has sometimes even caused them to behave in bizarre or immoral ways.  More and more you hear about these challenges being issued on social media, daring others to engage in risky behaviors. Remember the Tide pod challenge not too long ago? 

More insight from the survey can be seen in this infographic.

And at the very extreme end of the spectrum I came across this news video about three social media stars, members of the Canadian group High on Life, who tragically fell to their death at Shannon Falls in British Columbia last week. In the clip, a social media expert confirms Grenny and Maxfield’s findings stating that the bigger the risk the bigger the payoff in earning likes. The Internet is an amazing place and has opened up the world for anyone to connect to. But in doing so it has also created some danger in how we present ourselves in that space and for what purposes. So I encourage you to take a moment and ask yourself, how far are you willing to go to get a like?

References:

Tait, A. (2017, January 26). “Both hugely uplifting and depressing”: How do social media Likes affect you? [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2017/01/both-hugely-uplifting-and-depressing-how-do-social-media-likes

VitalSmarts. (2015, March 17). Society’s New Addiction: Getting a “Like” over Having a Life [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.vitalsmarts.com/crucialskills/2015/03/societys-new-addiction-getting-a-like-over-having-a-life/

Weiss, G. (2015, March 13). How Wanting “Likes” on Social Media Is Killing Our Capacity for Actual Joy (Infographic) [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243924

Week 2 Reflection or...Where Does the Time Go?

To sum up this week in a single word it would have to be overwhelming. The week started off full of potential opportunity to explore a variety of social media tools: Instagram, Snapchat, SlideShare, etc. I ended up dabbling in all of them except nuzzel, which interestingly enough sounds a lot like my last name. Perhaps this could be the answer to my years of frustration trying to help people pronounce my name correctly! Hi, I’m Erick Neussl, that’s Neussl, kind of like that Web 2.0 tool that provides personalized news discovery for busy professionals…Perhaps I’ll get a chance to check it out in the coming weeks.

Of the remaining tools I was drawn to LinkedIn the strongest, mostly because it was the tool I had the most familiarity with and by that, I mean that I had signed up for an account a couple weeks prior. This week I sought to expand my professional network by adding several classmate connections and I also joined a couple groups, which lead to a few more connections. What really intrigued me about the concept of LinkedIn is not only that it allows you to establish connections with others, but that it makes the presence of those connections widely known. With a click of the mouse you can see all of the connections a person has - and even better, the application tells you when you share a mutual connection with someone.

In today’s highly connected society, the old adage, “It’s not what you know but who you know” couldn’t be more true. LinkedIn takes that a step further by making it perfectly transparent who it is that you know.

As I began to explore the site in earnest, I started to draw a connection with the learner trajectories Dennen (2014) applied to individuals entering the online blogging community. I found myself on an inbound trajectory, with the goal of eventually becoming a full participant in the LinkedIn community, but I lacked the specific technical knowledge to do so. Fortunately a fellow classmate shared some of her knowledge about the inner workings of LinkedIn, who is herself on an insider trajectory.

I still have some work to do to complete my profile and LinkedIn keeps wanting my picture, which I suppose I’ll eventually post, but I got a good jump start on establishing my presence on this increasingly important platform. I still recognize that I have a lot to learn about this community and how to leverage it to my advantage. I will be relying on the help of the insiders that I connect with to help me on my journey.

At the beginning of this post I mentioned that this week was overwhelming. There were definitely times throughout the week where I fell victim to the infinite scroll and didn’t realize that 20 or 30 minutes had passed by when all I had done was check for updates on Instagram or Snapchat. It can be easy to get lost among these tools, but it’s important to remember that they are just tools, pieces of technology that are designed to help us share our content and connect with others.  If you get the chance, connect with me on LinkedIn.


References:

Dennen, V. P. (2014). Becoming a blogger: Trajectories, norms, and activities in a community of practice. Computers in Human Behavior, 36(0), 350-358. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.03.028

How to Post an Active Link in a Comment

Hi everyone! I thought I would share this with you since it was something that took me a little while of searching to figure out.  Sometimes when you comment on a blog post you might want to include a link to another site (or to shamelessly plug your own blog post 😉)

One option is to just paste the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) also known as the web address for the destination site.  A lot of information is contained in the URL and sometimes these web address can get long.  Not only can they be long but they can also be ugly and not very helpful to inform your readers of what it is they are clicking on.  And sometimes, depending on the forum, the long URL you paste is not automatically converted into an active link for readers to click on and instead they have to copy and paste the text into a web browser to go there.  This is not ideal.

A better solution is to insert a snippet of Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) code to hide that web address behind some appropriate text that you define.  If you are trying to drive traffic to your site you want to make it as easy as possible for people to get there.  An active link gives readers a better description of where the link is taking them and it keeps your comment post nice and neat.

Below is the little bit of coding magic to make it all happen.  To use this code, copy and paste it into your comment field.  Replace the BLUE text with the full URL of the destination page.  Replace the GREEN text with what you want the active link to say.

<a href="http://emn8675.blogspot.com/2018/07/how-to-post-an-active-link-in-a-comment.html">Check out my blog post on active links in comment posts!</a> 

And that's it! When your comment is posted, the HTML code will be rendered as an active link that readers can click on, like this: Check out my blog post on active links in comment posts!

Give it a try and comment on this post with a link to your blog!

The Dark Side of The Web 2.0

The BBC published a rather timely article yesterday focusing on one of the darker sides of networked individualism: addiction. Everyone knows that person who is habitually checking their phone for the latest updates or always planning out their next tweet or photo to share or who’s mood is dictated by the number of “likes” received on their latest post. Do you know who I’m talking about? Is it you?

Well, it turns out we are not entirely to blame for these addictive behaviors as social media companies are hard at work figuring out how to keep us connected as long as possible. Enter the infinite scroll, an interface design feature that loads content continuously as the user scrolls down the page. This feature is very popular with social media sites like Twitter and Pinterest and provides viewers with a never-ending stream of data. The consequence of this display technique is you just keep scrolling with no real end in sight. This of course is ideal for the company as a former Facebook employee quoted in the article states:

"You have a business model designed to engage you and get you to basically suck as much time out of your life as possible and then selling that attention to advertisers."

But time and attention is not the only thing that social media can rob us of, it can also negatively affect how we measure our self-worth. The Like button, popularized by Facebook and incorporated into nearly all social media tools, is a convenient way to share our personal tastes but it can also leave us feeling lonely, insecure and can promote an unhealthy need for constant validation.

Our real life relationships have also come under attack. Have you ever been phubbed? Are you phubbing someone right now as you are reading this? Coined in 2012, phone snubbing or phubbing refers to the act of ignoring your partner in order to pay attention to your phone. This is just one of the consequences of our increasingly connected society and having the Internet constantly available at our fingertips through web-enabled smartphones.

So how can you tell if you are at risk of being addicted to social media? In his blog post on Psychology Today, Mark Griffiths provides the following six questions to self-assess your level of social media use.

1. Do you spend a lot of time thinking about social media or planning to use social media?
2. Do you feel urges to use social media more and more?
3. Do you use social media to forget about personal problems?
4. Do you often try to reduce your use of social media without success?
5. Do you become restless or troubled if you are unable to use social media?
6. Do you use social media so much that it has had a negative impact on your job or studies?

If you answered "yes" to only a few of the questions, you are probably among the many habitual users that would do well to take conscious steps to reduce their time spent on social media. If you answered "yes" to all six questions then you may be at risk of developing a social media addiction.

The question I asked myself as I read this article, and the question you may be wondering too, is what sort of responsibility do these social media companies have in all of this? Should they be liable for the consequences of addicting users to their products for financial gain?

A fellow blogger recently wrote about the use of artificial intelligence to analyze social media behavior and intervene when necessary. The context of the post was suicide prevention, but it could easily be applied to identifying the thin line between habitual and addictive use of social media. With the right analytical tools, companies like Facebook and Twitter could alert users when their usage shows signs of addictive behavior patterns and provide strategies to limit their time using their product. Of course, this would be in direct opposition to their business model and undoubtedly curtail their revenue, but shouldn’t a company like Facebook, that is built on the idea of bringing people closer together have a moral obligation to look out for the safety of the users in their social network? Let me know what you think in the comments.


References:

Andersson, H. (2018, July 4). Social media apps are “deliberately” addictive to users. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44640959

Griffiths, M. (2018, May 7). Addicted to social media? What can we do about it problematic, excessive use? [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-excess/201805/addicted-social-media

Taylor, R. (2018, July 5). Could social media and artificial intelligence join forces and save lives? [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://eme6414ryantaylor.wordpress.com/2018/07/05/could-social-media-and-artificial-intelligence-join-forces-and-save-lives/

The Language of Social Media

Apple news delivered a rather humorous story this morning involving the president and a tweet in which he was boasting about his writing ability. The only problem was, his tweet contained a spelling error. The folks at Merriam-Webster, those purveyors of fine lexicons, took the opportunity to point out the subtle difference between pour over and pore over as well as poke fun at the Commander in Chief’s hair stylings.

There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of social media related stories in the news these days, which is fortunate for the sake of providing ample fodder for keeping up this blog over the next several weeks. This story got me thinking about how our language has changed as a result of social media tools like Twitter.

I don’t know about anyone else, but when I first started to explore the vast ecosystem of Web 2.0 and social media, I found myself at a disadvantage both technically and linguistically. Not only was I confounded by the mechanics of joining in the conversation, unable to decipher the variety of icons representing various actions, but I couldn’t always understand what was being said. A lot of posts I was reading contained acronyms and abbreviations that I’d never encountered before.

Application imposed restrictions, like Twitter’s original 140 character limitation, have prompted language shortcuts out of necessity but the instantaneous nature of social media communications has perpetuated them. Our conversations take place on a global stage with thousands of potential participants so the pace of the conversation can be staggering. Using acronyms and abbreviations are a practical way to keep up and not get left behind.

I came across several resources to help decode this new language. This blog post had a decent collection of terms to describe both social media marketing as well as chat terminology with helpful examples in context. A few of my favorites:

ELI5 – Explain like I’m 5 (years old)
IANAD – I am not a doctor
ICYMI – In case you missed it
YMMV – Your mileage may vary

All Acronyms claims to have 590 acronyms and abbreviations related to social media.  Interestingly, the website was developed and privately used by a group of acronym enthusiasts and university students until 2005, when the database was opened to the public. The site has more than 3,000,000 published entries and receives around 50 suggestions for new entries from visitors every day.

Finally, NetLingo serves as a digital reference guide for the terminology surrounding technology and the Internet and claims to have the largest list of text and chat acronyms. I didn’t try and count them all, but the list is quite extensive.

But this new language doesn’t stop with acronyms and abbreviations, it also includes things like smileys and emojis and short moving images called GIFs. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I wonder how many a GIF is worth? These clips are able to instantly convey a wide range of emotions and are often taken from pop culture references, which can make them a bit confusing if you are unfamiliar with the source.

So what are your thoughts on this new language? If you have a favorite acronym or GIF feel free to share it in the comments. And BTW, Happy 4th of July! =):-)

Social Media as Discourse

I was swiping through the top news stories this morning when I came across this article on USA Today about a woman who had posted pictures of herself posing with a black giraffe she had killed during a hunt in South Africa. I bring this up, not to debate the ethics of hunting animals for sport, but rather to discuss the reactions that played out over social media in response to the pictures.

The post that started it all was made two years ago on June 22, 2017 by a woman named Tess Thompson Talley. I don’t know what kind of media buzz the post generated back then, but it sparked a firestorm when it was shared by the news media outlet AfricaDigest (@africlandpost) on June 16, 2018. Since then, the post has been retweeted 38,581 times, has 22,467 likes and generated 5.8K comments. It’s even spawned its own hashtag (#TessThompsonTalley) which, according to Hashtags.org analytics, in the past 24 hours was up to an estimated 155 tweets per hour.

Suffice it to say, all the attention is not good. Keyhole, another social media analytics tool shows that the sentiment in 63% of  the posts using this hashtag are negative while only 15% are positive with another 22% neutral.

Word cloud made up of keywords being used with #TessThompsonTalley

One prominent tweet that has since been removed, encouraged viewers to share the link to her Facebook profile and “give her as much abuse as possible!” Another Twitter user called for followers to “name and shame this grotesque excuse for a human being.”

The article then goes on to quote a tweet from actor Ricky Gervais and an Instagram post from actress Debra Messing criticizing Talley’s actions which has so far earned 129,644 and 31,150 likes, respectively. This is a very controversial topic that has elicited some very strong emotions on both sides of the argument, but what is it that prompts individuals to join in the conversation in the first place? What is it that motivates someone to throw in their 2 cents?

Bruns (2007) states in his article Beyond Difference: Reconfiguring Education for the User-Led Age that, “the social capital stemming from recognition for one’s contributions to the produsage process (at least amongst peers, if not on a wider stage) can be a significant motivation for participation in produsage, and must be identified as such.” Does this sufficiently explain the viral status of #TessThompsonTalley? Are we all still just after our 15 minutes of fame, 140 characters at a time?

I posed a similar question recently in a comment to another blog post but does a platform like Twitter actually encourage genuine discourse or does it simply give those with an already loud voice an even bigger audience? Does Twitter and other social media outlets promote a diversity of opinion or does it perpetuate a herd mentality? If you have any thoughts on the issue please feel free to leave a comment.

A Look Back on Week 1

As week 1 comes to a close, I wanted to take a minute and reflect on all that has transpired. Unfortunately I fear that this week’s introduction into Web 2.0 has left me with more questions than answers. But, I’m okay with that, because something I learned is nobody enters as an expert and as I mentioned in a previous blog post, we’re all in this together. It’s okay if I don’t know everything, because you might know something and I can benefit from sharing in your knowledge.

Social media is bigger than I thought; way bigger. When I first started this course, I thought that I was somewhat familiar with the tools available. I was by no means an expert, but I could rattle off the big named players: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. What I didn’t realize was that I was just scratching the surface of what is out there.

In the article Social Media? Get Serious! Understanding the Functional Building Blocks of Social Media, the authors describe the honeycomb of social media functionality, consisting of seven components: identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups. They refer to these components as building blocks, which is quite appropriate considering that these are the very foundations on which the vast array of social media tools are built.

As I mentioned before, there are a lot of them. In researching this week, I came across an incredible infographic that takes the concept of functional building blocks and expands it. Instead of just seven components, the Conversation Prism divides the “statusphere” into 28 categories to better understand the various usages of social media.

The social media landscape is extremely diverse and continues to evolve as new tools, facilitated by advances in Web 2.0 technology, are developed and introduced. From there, these tools can be used to create new and unique social experiences. What is important to remember through all of this however is that you (and I) are at the center of the conversation. As Kietzmann (2011) et al state:

“The power has been taken from those in marketing and public relations by the individuals and communities that create, share, and consume blogs, tweets, Facebook entries, movies, pictures, and so forth (pg. 242).”

These tools not only represent technological breakthroughs but also a paradigm shift. We have been given a platform to make our voices heard and corporations have certainly taken notice. Large organizations have entire divisions dedicated to managing social media activity, not just promoting their own agenda but responding to the public as well. With all the attention given to what is posted to social media these days, it begs the question of our responsibility for the truth and accuracy of what is said; but perhaps that is a topic for another post.

Kietzmann, J. H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I. P., & Silvestre, B. S. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business Horizons, 54(3), 241-251.