I Can Haz Cheezburger? And Internets? Internet Culture and Crowd Sourcing

I started this blog off with the cat picture for two reasons. The first reason is that I find it extremely funny and just wanted to share it with you. The second reason is that I believe this picture puts into perspective the idea of crowd sourcing on the internet.  The idea behind crowd sourcing is that the internet could be used for political, journalistic, or democratic reasons. The idea is that, if offered the chance, people would use crowd sourcing to increase the effectiveness or quality of journalism or that the political and democratic processes could allow for more input from the general public in order to make the process a better one. The problem with this idea is that, as an article from UC Berkley’s News Center stated, the internet is still dominated by those from a higher socio-economic status. Basically, those who have college degrees are the ones who are producing on-line content. The digital divide between those who have a college degree and those who do not as it pertains to the production of internet content.

So, you may be asking yourself how that ties in with the picture and the ideal of the internet versus the reality. The idea behind crowd sourcing is really a nice idea but it is predicated on the idea that people actually want to produce content when the reality is that more people are happy just being consumers of content.  If we look at the website Reddit.com we get a good example of how this works. On the website people post content. This would represent that smaller group of people who actually produce their own content. However, the interaction does not stop there. Then people who consume the content decide whether they like it or not. They do this by voting the content up or down.

This brings me to my next point. It is that, through the participation of “liking” something or voting it up or down on websites like Youtube and Reddit the people that some consider to be left out are actually letting their opinions be heard. This goes against the idea of crowd sourcing because those who say that crowd sourcing is the best way would be looking for the answers in the comment sections of the blogs and videos that the people voted up or down without realizing that the answers they seek are actually in the votes themselves.

As I said before, not everyone is going to want to produce content but that does not mean that everyone does not want their voice heard. The way that they accomplish this is by supporting the ideas and content that they like. This is also a good way to measure what the general public thinks is important. In one of my earlier blogs I mentioned the story of how Reddit helped an environmental group save some whales by helping increase awareness about the plight that the whales were going through. This happened but not in the way that the group wanted because they wanted a, to them, meaningful name given to the whale. Instead, in large part because of Reddit, the name of the whale became Mr. Splashypants. This is an excellent illustration of what the general public considers important.  The people who frequent Reddit considered the saving of the whale to be important but they still wanted it on their terms. They wanted a much less “meaningful” name than what the people of the environmental group wanted.

So, in that instance, you have a good example of crowd sourcing working but not in the way that so many intend for it to.  It is funny that we have this tool and so many experts expect the general public to use it in the manner that they have designated as appropriate but internet users have said otherwise. This is sort of like if someone had given a person a hammer in a room full of nails, told them that the purpose of the hammer was only to pry things loose and then got mad when that person started hammering the nails into some wood.

That is not to say that crowd sourcing will never work. For instance, there is a website http://www.lolcatbible.com/ . The Lol Cat Bible is an example of crowd sourcing. If a Christian started the project, the project was not the ultimate goal. The first picture that I posted was an example of lolcats. With these memes come a particular style of communication and this has become very popular. So someone took this style of speech and started a project of transposing the Bible into lolcat speech. In order for this to happen, people who might have never read the Bible will end up reading the Bible. Not only that but the people who help with this project had to think about what the Bible was saying in order to help transpose the words into lolcat speak. The ultimate goal here would be for people to read the Bible and it would have been accomplished through as act of crowd sourcing.

The internet has a rich culture and I think it would be a mistake to try and change the culture to fit the tool. Rather, we should make the tool work for the culture. There are a lot of personalities that have sway over people online. Not because they stand for any political affiliation or because they are an awesome journalist but because they understand and pander to the internet culture. Wil Wheaton, star of Star Trek the Next Generation and the movie Stand by Me is one of those people. He has a show on a Youtube channel and because people like his show they will also listen to what he has to say about other issues. He knows how to make the internet work for him. Another example of this is a game caster called Husky Starcraft. Husky and several of his roommates have thousands of followers online and is an activist for online freedoms. Because he knows the culture he is able to affect change. This is something that we, as communicators should understand. We approach audiences differently depending in who they are. It would make sense to do the same when it came to the internet.

Journalism vs. Blogging

I belong to a United Methodist Church. I share this to give an idea of part of my make-up as it pertains to communication. I am also a certified lay speaker for the United Methodist Church. When Methodism started as a denomination, John and Charles Wesley made great use of lay preachers. A circuit preacher would ride his circuit and visit a particular church or city once a month so that he could serve communion. This is important to note because that meant that for the rest of the time the church was run by lay people. People, who had no formal training but who cared enough about their faith and about their churches, were put in charge of the churches and were responsible for the preaching. This is just one example of an organization allowing “common” people to communicate with a larger audience. This is something that blogs now do. They help to give voice to common people.  This can be considered a good thing because of the natural characteristics of independent online journalist, otherwise known as bloggers. I must make a distinction here and that is the fact that I am not referring to those who use blogs for personal reasons.  There is a large number of people who share personal stories and use blogs as sort of a cathartic exercise and this is not a bad thing but, from a journalistic standpoint, not particularly useful or newsworthy. I believe that blogs can be a good thing but there needs to be some work done before it can be considered a viable option for news.

It is natural to consider that if it is a good thing to get more bloggers involved in the news process then there must be something wrong with the traditional process of journalism. To be sure, John Stewart in his satirical news show, The Daily Show with John Stewart, spends a large amount of time criticizing news organizations. In an article in the journal, Journalism, Mark Deuze from Indiana University writes about a commonality found in most journalists from all around the world. Deuze wrote that “comparing 21 countries, Weaver found support for claims that the characteristics of journalists are largely similar worldwide.” This, by itself, would not necessarily be a bad thing. It could be considered good that journalists are very similar because at least that guarantees a certain level of professionalism from journalists. However, there is more to consider. Deuze also wrote that some critics have stated that it is this view that is to blame for “the news media’s inability to engage citizens.” Journalists seem to have a problem connecting with their audiences and this has resulted in a loss of revenue for newspapers. In an article from stateofthemedia.org they discussed the loss of advertisement revenue that newspapers are feeling.

Here is one of the graphs:

But the graph also shows that the advertisement revenues are not being picked up by online sources. This is a curious phenomenon unless you take the culture of the internet into account. In his TED talk James Surowieki made the point that most bloggers and people sharing information online are doing so for free. If this is the case, then it would be natural that companies do not have to spend as much money on advertisement. But, if revenue is the measuring stick for the outreach of a particular medium, then blogs would seem to be less pertinent than traditional journalism.

In several TED talks and a couple of articles, there is a focus on the collaborative nature of blogging. This is not to say that blogs are written by multiple people but through multiple contributors to a particular blog website we get a more complete view of a particular story. Again, Surowieki during his talk told of a phenomenon that occurs when a group gets together to make a decision. With multiple inputs comes the likelihood of a better quality of content. There was a danger that Surowieki warned of though. That is the fact that this only works if people stay independent in their thought. Serena Carpenter, an associate professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University did some research and found that citizen journalism (bloggers) largely wrote about controversial articles all from one viewpoint. So, it would seem that bloggers are more likely to share a viewpoint than traditional journalist. Carpenter also found that online newspaper articles were more likely to quote an official source (75%) than bloggers were (30.3%).

I give this information to make the determination that both newspapers and bloggers can stand to do their job a little bit better. Newspapers seem to have a more professional approach to the dissemination of information. However, it does not matter how professional a group is if the information that is be disseminated by them is not being read by the public. It would behoove the newspapers to incorporate a way to meet the cultural needs of their readers. By this, I mean they should find a way to put out good information in a personable way that their readers can relate to. In her TED talk, Mena Trott, talked about how the stories told in blogs were what interested people. It is this narrative form that many newspapers are missing. They take a cold approach to stories that should perhaps have a little more of a “human touch” to them.

Blogs, on the other hand, need some professionalism added to give them some credibility. They do not use as many credible sources as newspapers do. Whether this is due to laziness or if they just do not have access to good sources is irrelevant. People need to have good information if the internet is to be a viable medium for news. It is refreshing that blogging is still more of a labor of love rather than revenue based (for the bloggers not the companies providing the service to the bloggers) because this helps to ensure that whatever news is given from the blogs, it is not funded by special interest. Or, even if it is, it is fairly apparent who the special interest is rather than having to dig through some news company’s funding. Blogs have a lot of potential for being a viable news source. It is really up to the bloggers and to the online community to ensure that this happens so that, like in the Methodist and so many other communication traditions, even the “common” person has a voice.

Carpenter, S. (2008) Source Diversity in U.S. Online Citizen Journalism and Online Newspaper Articles. Retrieved from https://online.journalism.utexas.edu/2008/papers/OnlineCitizenJournalism_Carpenter.pdf

Deuze, M. (2005) What is journalism?: Professional identity and ideology of journalists reconsidered. Journalism. Retrieved from   http://jou.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/4/442

http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/newspapers-building-digital-revenues-proves-painfully-slow/newspapers-by-the-numbers/

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_surowiecki_on_the_turning_point_for_social_media.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/mena_trott_tours_her_blog_world.html

Yeah, I use Social Media, big whoop, you wanna fight about it?!

Throughout history, most large social changes where met with resistance. If we look at the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, there was social unrest. People wanted to be treated like people and those who had the power where afraid to give it up. The same can be said for the advent of cultures. In the early history of the Christian church, Christians were just another Jewish sect but, as it became apparent they were not going anywhere, they were met with resistance from the Sanhedrin, the established Jewish leadership of the day. It is fair to say that a similar change is occurring within the communications society. Communications has come a long way since drawings on cave walls were used to tell stories. When Gutenberg combined technology with communications, it opened up a whole new level to communications. Communication began to have mass and, with this mass, came a new culture. Like any culture, though, certain people, the early adapters of the day, grabbed power within this new culture and became established powers. Eventually, communication became even more widespread with the radio and television and a few more people or organizations were allowed into the culture that mass media and mass communications had constructed. Finally, the Internet was invented.

After a few years, some companies realized the potential for social media networking. This did something to the communications culture that had never been done before. It opened it up to everybody. It completely changed the culture. This is important because, like those early Christians and those who were fighting for civil rights, this movement has been met with resistance. There are several reports that discuss the lack of adoption of social network sites by organizations and businesses. Even when these sites are adopted by organizations and businesses it appears that they adopt an older model of communication while using social media. By that I mean that they use these social networks to simply promote a particular object or idea. This may have worked with traditional forms of mass media but as the Internet has been made available to almost everyone the interesting effect of that is that the Internet and social media has broken into homogeneous groups. The reason that this is important and the reason that businesses and organizations should perhaps not look down on social media as an outlet is that, if they allow the different sites work in the manner in which they were intended, they may find it easier to accomplish their goals. It is true that the goals would not be accomplished in the manner to which they are accustomed and therein lies the problem.

It is difficult to convince those who are uncomfortable with something that they can and should use that very thing to accomplish their goals. Communicators are no different. In his TED talk, Alexis Ohanian makes the point that a group named Greenpeace was trying to save humpback whales. They wanted to name a whale that they planned on tracking and had come up with all sorts of meaningful names to give the whale. The Internet, however, decided on the less meaningful (to Greenpeace anyways) name of Mr. Splashy Pants. With the immense popularity of Mr. Splashy Pants came the needed pressure to help guard humpback whales. This is an important lesson in that a group that truly wants to use the Internet and social sites to affect change in the world should let those sites and the people that frequent them be themselves. Even if those people who use social media do not act the way that the organization thinks they should act or think the way they think they should think, things will still get done and  goals can still be met.

An example of this happened fairly recently on YouTube. YouTube, like most social media sites, are specialized to allow for people to join those homogeneous groups that they seek. One of the channels on YouTube is called Geek and Sundry. On this channel is a show called Table Top that is hosted by Wil Wheaton (any Trekkie nerds reading this can give a squeal of delight). Table Top creators Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day are big into “nerd” culture and so many of the followers of this channel or those who may be labeled nerd or geek. They decided to create what they called International Table Top Day. The point of this day was to get as many people in as many places as they could to play board games throughout the day. This became a huge event. They had board game days all over the world. There were events in all 50 states and on all 7 continents (yes, even in Antarctica). The hash-tag #tabletop trended on Twitter all day and by the end of the day there had been a large number of people reached.

I bring this up because Wil Wheaton shares on YouTube the reason that board games are so important to him. The reason that board games are important to him is because that is how he gets close to his friends and family. The most notable of his family are his two adopted sons. Now, if a group whose sole purpose was to build family unity had gotten on board with this such as the group Focus on the Family, which is a faith based, conservative group that focus on the health of the nuclear family, their message could have been spread world-wide. This is not to say that Focus on the Family is not effective but their website, http://www.focusonthefamily.com/, shows that they use a traditional form of communication. Yes, they have a Facebook group and a Twitter account but these accounts are just an extension of their traditional communication.  If they had partnered with the Geek and Sundry and Table Top they could have extended their influence or at least their message to a group of people who otherwise would not have known about them. Also, if Wil Wheaton’s experience with board games is shared by those played on that day and families were brought closer together, then Focus on the Family’s ultimate goal would have been accomplished.

I do not say this to degrade Focus on the Family but to point out that it is time that organizations allow the Internet to work the way it was intended. It has its own way of communicating and this makes traditional communicators nervous. But if these organizations are smart they will allow these social sites to work with them; not for them or against them. That is an important distinction and one that most traditional communicators are not necessarily comfortable with.

Let them eat…er…have internet!

          In this day and age, we are very concerned with connectivity. People are connected to each other through social media. Consumers are connected to the companies they patronize through mobile marketing and current technology. Ideas are being passed around at an incredible rate that the world has never seen before. Therefore, it is important to take stock in who today’s technology is meant to serve. Since the beginning of time, people have been making advancements in technology. With each advancement there were people who used the technology came up with innovative ways to use the technology that was presented to them. Thomas Edison once said, “I readily absorb ideas from every source, frequently starting from where the last person left off.” Jan Chipchase, in his TED talk, echoed those sentiments. Not for himself but for the general public. He studied how people used the technology they were given and came up with four ideas that take what Edison was saying and expands it to the general public. The idea that we should not only allow access to technology but expand it is because of these four ideas: if you want a big idea, you need to embrace everyone on the planet; the speed of adoption of things is going to be fast; the street will innovate things as long as it meets base needs in ways we cannot anticipate; learn how to listen to the public. This was what he thought the expansion of technology would bring.

If Chipchase is correct, then we are facing an extremely important problem: the Digital Divide. “The “Digital Divide” is defined as the gap between those with regular, effective access and ability to use digital technologies and those without (BOYERA).” If the “street” is where most innovation happens then it is important to get these technologies to those who will benefit most from them. In a previous blog I noted how Clay Shirkey believed that the best way to a good democracy was through open source coding. The idea is that the general public (or “the street” according to Chipchase) is better suited to lead in innovation and provide better ideas than those who come up with the technology.

Mobile marketing seems to work because they allow the users of the social media to generate their own content. By this, they allow the users to use the social media in order to personalize their own discounts. The companies hope to develop long term relationships with their consumers through their participation of the discounts they offer. This idea ties in with the idea from Jan Chipchase’s TED talk in which he said that “the street (consumers in this case) will innovate things as long as it meets base needs.”  This idea is mirrored in the article about mobile marketing by Kaplan in which the four “I’s” of mobile marketing are discussed. Those I’s represent the terms: individualize, initiate, integrate, and involve. All of these pertain to the company’s consumers and their use of the technology they have available to them. The companies have decided to connect with the consumers through social media and technology and allow them to decide how to best use the goods based upon the individuals’ needs.

So the real question becomes though, who is this individualized form of advertising or this individualized consumer based marketing really helping. There are groups who are working hard to get advertising completely out of newspapers. This is because they want to individualize marketing for each person (Mutter, 2013). The idea of mass media is changing rapidly. I think it should no longer be called mass. A better term for it is individual media consumption.  In the Mutter blog (2013), the president of one of the companies that was interviewed said that customer loyalty due to cellular interactions was higher than expected. However, if the main idea of the company is to sell stuff and the consumers do not get any more input other than how and when they buy, then it would seem that the company is still in charge. We associate power with the ability to buy but real power would be able to influence what is sold, how it is sold, and the price at which it is sold.

I know that those who are fans of a free market because of the natural regulation of price cost that competition creates would argue that this is just a business taking advantage of a technology that is available and there is nothing wrong with this. I agree with this in principle but if you take a closer look at the situation it becomes apparent that, in reality, this sort of marketing tends to limit the number of options shown in a particular market. Usually it is the businesses that already have a foothold in technological marketing that benefits the most. This is one of the benefits of paper over the internet. A newspaper or a magazine will usually have several companies advertising similar products throughout. A website or media marketing on the other hand only does one advertisement per page. Yes, in a newspaper or magazine, those who had more money got the premium advertisement spots but people still got multiple sources to choose from. If you wanted groceries there was Wal Mart, Winn Dixie, Publix, and even the Mom and Pop shops downtown that could advertise in the local paper. But if you get media marketing, you normally get whatever company is most well-known for whatever the consumer is looking for.

In 2007, when the British Band Radiohead released its new album, they allowed their fans to download it online for whatever price they (the fans) wanted. This shows true innovation from a group who realized what was really important. Radiohead realized that their real income came, not from the sales of an album, but from the fans who would then buy concert tickets, band merchandise, and even from an expanded album they would release later that year. This shows the evolution of technology and what can happen when “the street” is allowed to take part in technology.  The evolution started with Apple who gave us the Ipod. This piece of technology allowed for the transportation of not just a little bit of music (a la Walkman or portable CD players) but the entirety of a person’s musical consumption. They individualized their marketing but it was for a price. Usually, you could buy music for 99 cents a song. Radiohead took the evolution one step further because they realized that their fans were looking for something even more personalized. They wanted the experience for their fans to be less business, less technical, and more human. This is something that some Fabian Hemmert is working on for cellular devices. He gave a TED talk that showed an understanding of what people are intrinsically looking for but technology has yet to deliver. He is working on making a cell phone that is functional but satisfies the human experience as well.

                People are seeking a human experience from technology. They want to innovate. They want to integrate. They want to input their ideas. But the question remains as to whether consumers of media are actually given these things or are they given the illusion of having these things when it comes to actually important influence. Perhaps if there was an increase in the ideas through the expansion of availability of technology to those who normally do not have it, then we might see what real innovation and real influence are.

All the opportunities for communication...

Actually, this is not half of what we can now use.

TED Talk Videos

Fabian Hemmert

Jan Chipchase

References

Kaplan, A. (2012) If you love something, let it go mobile: Mobile marketing and mobile social media 4x4. Business Horizons. http://www.slideshare.net/mobmarguru/mobile-marketing-and-mobile-social-media

BOYERA, S. The mobile web to bridge the digital divide?. http://www.w3.org/2006/12/digital_divide/IST-africa-final.pdf

Mutter, A. (2013) We're working hard to get out of paper ads. http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2013/03/were-working-hard-to-get-out-of-paper.html