Why western society will never change

I’m supposed to be writing up my thesis, but this ad I came across via Spotify just makes me too angry to continue writing. For those who do not read Norwegian, it is an ad for a Norwegian building materials company, where they have stolen Obama’s “Yes we can” slogan in order to convince Norwegians to spend even more money on redecorating their houses (like we need to. There’s hardly a single bathroom left i Norway that doesn’t have Italian marble style tiles).

Naomi Klein wrote about this phenomenon in her book No Logo, where business in stead of fearing counterculture and rebellion in stead puts it into a marketable package and start selling it, in essence making what could have been a real political statement into just another commodity. Maxbo are basically doing the same thing by spoofing Obamas slogan, telling us that changing the political system just became a matter of buying some new stuff for your house… How can social media and politics compete with that?

 

The future of newspapers?

VG Nett reports that Amazon is about to launch an e-book reader for newspapers, in an attempt to salvage what is left of the paper based news media.  Without the costs of distribution and printing, a paper such as the NY Times could be sold for as little as 90 NOK a month, far less than the cost of subscribing to the paper edition.

I’ve worked a few years in various newspapers, and thought about this since I first heard about e-book readers. An interactive e-book edition would provide most of the benefits of paper im terms of typography and the feel of reading a finished product (as opposed to the Internet, where there’s always more stuff to browse), and also have the benefits of the Internet, with multimedia content embedded in the news stories, advertising that is customised to the reader’s needs, and the possibility to update stories as they evolve.

Of course you get all of this online already, but for those of us who would miss the morning paper, e-books might become a good replacement. And there’s also the business part of things. Paying for content online is something most people won’t consider, but they happily pay 50 NOK for a ringtone on their mobile. So why not pay to get up to date news on a specialised reader? I’m looking forward to see what happens with this, and hopefully we’ll see e-papers in Norway in a few years.

 

Deadline approaching fast

The deadline for my thesis is fast approaching, and my brain 1.0 isn’t capable of writing up the thesis and blogging at the same time, so there haven’t been as much activity as I would like. But writing the blog has been interesting in its own way, I am more able to sympathize with those politicians who are not all that active with their social media efforts. Serious social media use takes up a lot of time. Time that I sometimes feel could (and should) be put to better use.

I will try to post a few more updates with findings before shutting down the blog.

 

NY Times discuss online comments

The media has been discussing the value of online comments for some time now. The New york Times has an interesting analysis of what types of comments are posted during various times of the day, and conclude by saying (as we’ve heard many times before) that the few interesting comments are drowned out by vast amounts of clutter.

I’m not disagreeing that we could do without a lot of the harassing and poorly formulated comments that frequently appear online. But I don’t think we should apply the same rules to online comments as we do for newspaper editorials and debate either. After all , one of the major criticisms of the public debate is that “the public” is limited to a handful of people who get their comments printed, making the debate elitist and of little concern to the average citizen.

Perhaps the critics need to stop thinking so much about language, form and argument in individual comments, stop applying their own standards and listen to what si beign said? If a hundred out of a hundred and fifty comments says something along the lines of  “we don’t like this proposed something in our city, but we are not used to the debating style of the academic community and the media, so we can’t be bothered to explain why we feel that way”, maybe the comments as a whole has some value in revealing public opinion?

 

Politicians, this is how it is done

the Youtube symphony orchestra really shows off the potential of social media at its best. Youtbe invited musicians from all over the world to audition for the orchestra by sending in a video of themselves playing a piece made by composer Tan dun.  Winners were invited to play in Carnegie Hall.

Most interesting is the mashup video made by Youtube, playing Tan Dun’s piece by compiling all of the submissions. Political parties could learn a lot from this, and to be fair, some of them are trying. Arbeiderpartiet has launched a video contest via their web site and also on the social media platforms they are part of. Their Youtube video announcing the contest has been watched almost 4.000 times, so it will be intersting to see the results. I doubt, however, that they will dare present all of the submissions.

 

Finished with interviews and exam

Finished my interviews two weeks ago, but haven’t had time to look at them until now, because of an exam in e-collaboration (which I think went fairly well BTW). I still haven’t done a thorough analysis, but I have transcribed all the interviews (a good candidate for most boring job ever), and have some initial findings. Compared to the last election, it seems as if the political parties have a better grasp of what they need to do in order to suceed with social media use. This year, politicians are actually eager to participate and debate, something which definitely was not the case in the local election two years ago. Everyone I talked to had high hopes for social media, and some of them mentioned successful Facebook campaigns that have been picked up by the media (without anyone knowing the party was behind the campaign).

What strikes me as most interesting is that they all seem to agree on just about everything. Everyone wants dialogue, everyone are using the same social media applications (more or less), and everyone mentions content quality and communication adapted to the particular medium as important. it seems that both participants and technologies have matured since the last election. If fine words translates to effective use of social media still remains to be seen though.

 

20 years with the www. How has it affected us?

Norwegian weekly Morgenbladet asks how 20 years of web use as affected the way we approach knowledge. Some fear that the web gives us too much information, and that it is stealing our ability to be critical. Others think it is a good thing that we no longer have to memorise things, and that this frees the mind to think about process and connections in stead. the vice-principal at the university of Bergen says that the Internet gives us new competencies, but that it also does something to our ability to concentrate and reflect on things.

being just young enough to remember how things were before the web became popular (at my first job, checking e-mail was a daunting task, left to the one guy who knew how the modem worked), I am sort of a sceptic myself. I can still reflect and focus on a single thought, but with my mobile always on, and internett access everywhere I go, it gets increasingly difficult to do so. It is just so much easier and more fun to get lost in Wikipedia than to sit down and really think about something. Not that Wikipedia is a bad thing, but does skipping from topic to topic really give us anything in terms of knowledge and insight? I doubt it…

I don’t want to go back to a pre-web society, but I wish there were more places where I could just disconnect. Black spots around the city, where the mobile didn’t work, and the computer had to be left outside the door. places you could go and just think about all the stuff you just read on wikipedia. Then I might be able to make some sense out of the 50-something articles and hundreds of web sites I have examined for my thesis. Maybe…

 

Change of direction

Looks like my thesis is heading in a different direction than I initially planned. Some of my planned activities fell through, so in stead of focusing on youth and e-participation in general, I will be examining how web 2.0 and social networking is used in the upcoming Norwegian election. The central theme is still web 2.0 for e-participation.

If anyone reading this has connections with party members or staff I could interview, please let me know.

 

Stuck already

It’s been three weeks since I started the semester, and I’ve already reached a dead end. Had to work on another course last week, so I didn’t have time for thesis work. And now I find it extremely hard to get back on track…

 

Proposal writing

I’m struggling with my proposal. Every time I think I a have a good research question, I think of ten reasons why I should change it… Will have to decide in a couple of days, though, as the proposal has to be approved before christmas. I’ll post a summary of the proposal as soon as it gets approved.

Wonder when I’ll find the time for christmas shopping this year…