Friday, January 01, 2010
What to leave in 2009?
It’s the first day of the New Year. I woke up, ate some of the almond cake I baked for last night, put my daughter down for her first nap, and looked again at world to see what has changed. My resolutions are to ditch certain trappings I’ve been locked into for the last few years. This break is a necessary one, part of the shift I must go through to re-focus my energies on topics of importance and interest.
1. “Social media” research that focuses on adoption and interface questions on advertising-driven websites. Generally, social media have been adopted by various players – advertising, media, and entertainment – as a tool. It is part of the picture in online media use, but by no means the entire one. Much of my repulsion derives from my moving away from business-related topics - been there, done that, tired of the same old Los Angeles rhetoric. On its own, social media just doesn’t raise very interesting questions in 2010. This year there was an abundance of conference papers on SNSs, which I believe mostly stems from young researchers arriving who have a familiarity in the area. My inclination is that researchers in industry and academia will thoroughly cover questions surrounding social media.
2. Denying the intensely conflicting (and highly moralistic) effects transparency has. Online shaming is seen as a solution to various problems, such as social inequality and government accountability. I’ve come to believe that this is intensely problematic, but most, including some very sharp thinkers, aren’t yet considering the ways that general transparency will serve to level power. Much of this is because examples are case studies. Still, there’s at least as much evidence to suggest that transparency is, at best, limited in benefits and problematic - see: publicizing information on women seeking abortions in Texas, and the intensely ironic lack of transparency exhibited by online companies that are part of this latest wave.
3. Being a “technology guy”... enough said. I’ll likely always integrate technologies with my thinking, but the context will be richer and quite different.
4. A focus on individual characteristics. From my work with media system dependency, demographics and individual psychology have limited effects on the relationships individuals develop with media. Much of the action in media research is at the meso level, in communities and organizations. Here there are also rich connections with political science and cultural studies, the import of which is lost if we isolate our focus to, say, individual psychology.
5. Demanding immediate reactions. We really can’t keep this up, people. The media do not need to cover news contemporaneously, and I don’t need to email you back within 5 minutes. It takes much effort to keep up, and there are so few items that are truly important.
1. “Social media” research that focuses on adoption and interface questions on advertising-driven websites. Generally, social media have been adopted by various players – advertising, media, and entertainment – as a tool. It is part of the picture in online media use, but by no means the entire one. Much of my repulsion derives from my moving away from business-related topics - been there, done that, tired of the same old Los Angeles rhetoric. On its own, social media just doesn’t raise very interesting questions in 2010. This year there was an abundance of conference papers on SNSs, which I believe mostly stems from young researchers arriving who have a familiarity in the area. My inclination is that researchers in industry and academia will thoroughly cover questions surrounding social media.
2. Denying the intensely conflicting (and highly moralistic) effects transparency has. Online shaming is seen as a solution to various problems, such as social inequality and government accountability. I’ve come to believe that this is intensely problematic, but most, including some very sharp thinkers, aren’t yet considering the ways that general transparency will serve to level power. Much of this is because examples are case studies. Still, there’s at least as much evidence to suggest that transparency is, at best, limited in benefits and problematic - see: publicizing information on women seeking abortions in Texas, and the intensely ironic lack of transparency exhibited by online companies that are part of this latest wave.
3. Being a “technology guy”... enough said. I’ll likely always integrate technologies with my thinking, but the context will be richer and quite different.
4. A focus on individual characteristics. From my work with media system dependency, demographics and individual psychology have limited effects on the relationships individuals develop with media. Much of the action in media research is at the meso level, in communities and organizations. Here there are also rich connections with political science and cultural studies, the import of which is lost if we isolate our focus to, say, individual psychology.
5. Demanding immediate reactions. We really can’t keep this up, people. The media do not need to cover news contemporaneously, and I don’t need to email you back within 5 minutes. It takes much effort to keep up, and there are so few items that are truly important.
