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.