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Spring Break '08
Online or bust!
Here's what we're doing over break:
Andrew:
Booker - analysis/observations of Digg
Digg structures-
Digg describes itself as “democratizing digital media.” (see, 'How Digg Works' page on website).
-Becoming popular- if you submit an article (including news articles, podcasts, and videos) to digg and it achieves a “critical mass” of diggs, then it has become popular and is moved from the “upcoming” section to it's genre-category homepage on the digg website. If it does not receive enough diggs in a specific time period, the submission is removed from the upcoming section. If a submission receives a particularly large number of diggs, it is moved to the digg Top 10.
-Not only can you digg submissions but you can also “bury” them. Ideally, this allows users to collectively eliminate spam and other negative content.
-friends that you have added can view what you digg/bury and you can view their diggs/burys likewise.
Some consequences
-The ability of friends to see exactly what you have dugg and buried obviously acts as a form of social control in determining what is and what isn't dugg. For example, I might really enjoy an article about Britney Spears but wouldn't want my friends to know I was reading that sort of stuff.
-There is a lot of concern in regards to how “democratic” digg really is. Some believe that a large number of the submissions are actually made by a very small group of individuals.
-Some also feel that the operators of the site censor it, making it bias against comments that the sponsors/operators might find damaging to their own interests. There is reason to believe this may occur, as it certainly has occurred in the past (see AACS encryption key controversy).
-Others fear that digg is too democratic- they believe that digg fosters a sort of “mob mentality” approach to news that allows sensationalism and misinformation to thrive. People are simply digging the stories they like and/or find entertaining, which is often not the most important or pertinent news story.
Digg content-
-Something about Digg seems to foster a liberal-friendly environment. Many of the most popular articles on deal with Barak Obama, environmental legislation, and other topics traditionally thought of as being liberal, or are at least presented from a liberal perspective. This could obviously make digg less appealing to conservative audience, which may or may not be the intention of the operators.
-Perhaps even more popular are technology-oriented articles. Maybe this is just due to Digg's historical roots as a site discussing technological developments, but it's interesting nevertheless.
-There is an interesting communal conscience at work here. One of the most popular articles during the last week (and the most popular article during the last 24 hours by nearly 600 diggs, this despite the fact that it was only popularized 12 hours ago) is a blog about a man who is currently tracking down a criminal that stole his xbox360, tv and powerbook. The story is fairly exciting in of itself, but it is hardly a newsworthy event. Yet, something about it appeals to the community at large-- as is also evidenced by the overwhelmingly positive feedback that this person has received. The person (Jesse Mcpherson, aka McFearsome) in this story-
-is tracking down a criminal without the help of the city police, despite the fact that he has informed them of his situation and provided them with a great deal of evidence in order to help convict the criminal.
-succeeded in tracking his powerbook to a nearby pawnshop (using googlemaps) where the criminal was attempting to sell it.
-When the pawnshop cashier could not figure out how to transfer images from a security camera to a CD for McPherson to give to the police, McPherson used his digital camera to capture images from the security camera. He also posted these pictures on his blog.
-Used the internet to discover the criminal's xbox gamer profile, which he then posted on his blog. This has (apparently) opened the criminal up to a great deal of online harassment
-Overall, the protagonist largely relied upon his technological know-how to track down the criminal. This might have a lot of appeal to the digg community in general.
****The power of digg**** - Interestingly, roughly 12 hours after this story achieved the status of being the most dugg story in a 24 hour period, Jesse twittered that his laptop had been returned. Apparently the criminal had seen his picture from the pawnshop on Jesse's blog and had become frightened. This story made it to seventh most-dugg article on digg within 8 hours of first being submitted-- and it was simply a twitter.
-The second-most popular article was about Hillary Clinton killing her campaign by lying about being under sniper fire. However, the article (or blog rather) was written by a supporter of Obama so still represents liberal presence on Digg. Overall, there seems to be a very pro-Obama presence on digg. It would be interesting to see if this is simply a demographical correlation (that is, from a demographics perspective, those who are most likely to use digg are also most likely to vote for Obama) or whether there is something about digg that encourages the popularity these articles. Then again, maybe Obama is simply popular with people and so articles about him naturally tend to be dugg more.
-Eye-grabbing article titles are essential on Digg. These, combined with popularity, genre and time, are the only things that determine how visible an article is. Since the title is basically the only thing that the submitter has control over, the creation of a catchy title is perhaps the most important thing that the submitter can do.
-Developers of Digg have devised a variety ways to view the site at digglabs. We looked at these in class but here's a review. They're pretty interesting and all of them can be used as a screensaver on a computer. It would be good to find statistics showing how popular each of these are.
-Arc - a circle around which the stories arrange themselves. The circle is color-coded according to topic and “arcs” trailing between stories shows users who are linking across stories. It can be used as a screensaver on computers that have adobe flash player.
-Bigspy- A scrolling list of upcoming stories that have been submitted to Digg. Those that have been dugg appear (and reappear) at the top of this list, while the rest float around the bottom. Those that have received the most digg also appear in the largest size.
-Swarm- shows upcoming stories with diggers (represented by yellow dots) “swarming” around these stories as they digg them. It also shows a link between stories that are dugg by the same people.
-Stack- almost like a continual bar graph in which each bar represents an article on digg. As the articles are dugg more, small dots “fall” from the top of the screen and land on top of the article, thereby increasing it's height. This makes it easier to see which stories are most popular on digg.
-All of these methods of viewing digg appear to be designed to promote those stories which are most popular already- so in order to get diggs, it certainly helps to have diggs. Since some people have expressed concern that Digg already fosters “too much democracy,' it will be interesting to see if new ways of looking at digg are created in the “digglabs” and whether these will emphasize something besides popularity.
Frankie -
1. Created a digg account, poked around on the features.
2. Specifically looked at the video portion of digg website.
3. Tracked new vids with 1 digg and see how they faired over the course of the week.
4. Looked at user profiles and tried to compare common groups/interests.
Jessie -
1. vlogging extravaganza!! (i.e. vlog some more)
2. research on language relating to gender in first vlogs
3. standardization of English in first vlogs (?)
Field Journal:
3/17 5:30pm: organize all (first vlog) Diigo bookmarks into a "Language and Gender" list
5:50pm: start researching the literature on standardized English
3/19 3:00pm: compile/re-analyze first vlogs into short video for Sapiens Symposium
3/20 10:30am: read articles:
- Participation in Electronic Discourse in a "Feminist" Field by Susan C. Herring, Deborah A. Johnson and Tamra DiBenedetto
- Women's Talk: The Question of Sociolinguistic Universals by Janet Holmes
- Performing Gender Identity: Young Men's Talk and the Construction of Heterosexual Masculinity by Deborah Cameron
3/21 1:00pm: research the background/history of vlogs
- add info to the Digital Ethnography diigo group
3/22 1:40pm: post vlog "Youtubers: What have you seen on the tube?"
3/23 3:30pm: read more about language and gender/watch more vlogs
Looking into 7 specific things:
1.) Topic of conversation
2.) Slang, cursing and formal/informal speech
3.) Posture and closeness to camera
4.) Hand gestures
5.) Eye contact
6.) Location and identity defining objects in background
7.) video edits
Preliminary insights: (related to gender, will be noted in my language and gender paper as well)
I was surprised to document each gender’s topic of conversation. In every female vlog studied, the vlogger mentioned something covering the gamut of gender stereotypes. Examples are: being a mom, outfit [skirt] colors, ring, not married, hair, pink toothbrush, blonde hair and likes flowers. Two in particular, being a tomboy/girlie girl and having no common sense were particularly interesting because they seem to notice the potential audience’s criticism. Realizing that I may be “looking” for these characteristics and that these stereotypes may not be pervasive to all, it still seems worth mentioning. Also in the sample males tended to edit their videos more often. Because this is such a small sample size, the editing numbers may be insignificant; in a larger sample, though, I would predict that males edit their videos more often. The topic of conversations for men seem to have a common thread of mentioning how they use different forms of media such as YouTube, TV, CD’s and the internet (i.e. gaming, watching videos, DVD collection).
The transgendered community gave me the most insight into the world of vlogging. There was a distinct pattern within the vlogs of transgendered people:
1.) (after mentioning name and first time vlogging) the first thing they discuss is that they are transgendered
2.) they mention the community they have found on YouTube (and the support that goes with it)
3.) some talk about wanting to document their transformation through vlogging
While this may not seem shocking, I believe it shows our cultural bias in seeing transgendered people as markedly different. None of the females talked directly about being a woman, and none of the males talked directly about being a man. It is something entirely unique to talk about being in between.
In terms of slang, cursing and formal versus informal speech, I cannot see a discernable pattern. If anything, the only two people that cursed in any way were males. Further, the closeness of the person to the camera did not vary widely among genders; I would like to investigate further and take measurements (as Wesch mentioned in class a few weeks back). As a general observation of hand gestures, woman tended to use more “sweeping” hand movements and touch their hair and face more often than men. Although there was no discernable difference in eye contact in this sample, I would like to look more closely at this in a larger sample. I feel as though there are differences in types of eye movements, and it could be beneficial to look into this.
Melissa -
Nick -
1. Forms of expression and communication techniques via YouTube (basic notes, to be organized/developments in progress)
- Posted first vlog, 3/23
3. Dethrone Michael Wesch from "#1 in page edits!" status
Rachel -
Project brainstorm: I want to pursue the vein of why people you tube and who is vlogging, and how peoples lives change in meatspace when those thatdo make such a tremendousimpact online with vlogs etc.
Here's what we're doing over break:
Andrew:
- analyzing paralinguistic traits and patterns found among a sampling of the vlogging community
- begin vlogging mid-week in order to establish a greater sense of participant observation
- possibly examine the phenomenon of fake (allolinguistic) languages used on YouTube (e.g. fake English, Spanish, Mandarin)
- develop algorithm(s) that predict(s) at least some of the patternings found in these 'immitative' forms
- *inconsistency regarding examples of 'fake'/immitative language forms may make alorithmic analysis no longer feasible in the time frame of the semester... possibly.
Booker - analysis/observations of Digg
Digg structures-
- Encourages you to invite friends to join after you register
- Favorites- highlights top stories that you have dug
- Recent Activity- stores information about your recent diggs, comments, and shouts
- Incoming shouts- shouts sent to you or posted to yourself-- does not allow for html tags
- About- can give a brief description of yourself, including birthday, name, etc. Can also post links to other websites. Digg recommends blogs, social networking websites, and IM websites.
Digg describes itself as “democratizing digital media.” (see, 'How Digg Works' page on website).
-Becoming popular- if you submit an article (including news articles, podcasts, and videos) to digg and it achieves a “critical mass” of diggs, then it has become popular and is moved from the “upcoming” section to it's genre-category homepage on the digg website. If it does not receive enough diggs in a specific time period, the submission is removed from the upcoming section. If a submission receives a particularly large number of diggs, it is moved to the digg Top 10.
-Not only can you digg submissions but you can also “bury” them. Ideally, this allows users to collectively eliminate spam and other negative content.
-friends that you have added can view what you digg/bury and you can view their diggs/burys likewise.
Some consequences
-The ability of friends to see exactly what you have dugg and buried obviously acts as a form of social control in determining what is and what isn't dugg. For example, I might really enjoy an article about Britney Spears but wouldn't want my friends to know I was reading that sort of stuff.
-There is a lot of concern in regards to how “democratic” digg really is. Some believe that a large number of the submissions are actually made by a very small group of individuals.
-Some also feel that the operators of the site censor it, making it bias against comments that the sponsors/operators might find damaging to their own interests. There is reason to believe this may occur, as it certainly has occurred in the past (see AACS encryption key controversy).
-Others fear that digg is too democratic- they believe that digg fosters a sort of “mob mentality” approach to news that allows sensationalism and misinformation to thrive. People are simply digging the stories they like and/or find entertaining, which is often not the most important or pertinent news story.
- digg plans to change it's algorithm in response to this latter accusation. In the near future, articles that are dugg by a diverse group will carry more weight than an article dugg by an equally populous, but less diverse group. It is somewhat unclear as to how diversity will be determined, but it seems likely that it will be through a users history of diggs and burys (i.e. If a person diggs predominantly one type of article, lets say... Bill O'Reily news articles, then their digg will carry less weight that that of a user who diggs a wide variety of articles).
Digg content-
-Something about Digg seems to foster a liberal-friendly environment. Many of the most popular articles on deal with Barak Obama, environmental legislation, and other topics traditionally thought of as being liberal, or are at least presented from a liberal perspective. This could obviously make digg less appealing to conservative audience, which may or may not be the intention of the operators.
-Perhaps even more popular are technology-oriented articles. Maybe this is just due to Digg's historical roots as a site discussing technological developments, but it's interesting nevertheless.
-There is an interesting communal conscience at work here. One of the most popular articles during the last week (and the most popular article during the last 24 hours by nearly 600 diggs, this despite the fact that it was only popularized 12 hours ago) is a blog about a man who is currently tracking down a criminal that stole his xbox360, tv and powerbook. The story is fairly exciting in of itself, but it is hardly a newsworthy event. Yet, something about it appeals to the community at large-- as is also evidenced by the overwhelmingly positive feedback that this person has received. The person (Jesse Mcpherson, aka McFearsome) in this story-
-is tracking down a criminal without the help of the city police, despite the fact that he has informed them of his situation and provided them with a great deal of evidence in order to help convict the criminal.
-succeeded in tracking his powerbook to a nearby pawnshop (using googlemaps) where the criminal was attempting to sell it.
-When the pawnshop cashier could not figure out how to transfer images from a security camera to a CD for McPherson to give to the police, McPherson used his digital camera to capture images from the security camera. He also posted these pictures on his blog.
-Used the internet to discover the criminal's xbox gamer profile, which he then posted on his blog. This has (apparently) opened the criminal up to a great deal of online harassment
-Overall, the protagonist largely relied upon his technological know-how to track down the criminal. This might have a lot of appeal to the digg community in general.
****The power of digg**** - Interestingly, roughly 12 hours after this story achieved the status of being the most dugg story in a 24 hour period, Jesse twittered that his laptop had been returned. Apparently the criminal had seen his picture from the pawnshop on Jesse's blog and had become frightened. This story made it to seventh most-dugg article on digg within 8 hours of first being submitted-- and it was simply a twitter.
-The second-most popular article was about Hillary Clinton killing her campaign by lying about being under sniper fire. However, the article (or blog rather) was written by a supporter of Obama so still represents liberal presence on Digg. Overall, there seems to be a very pro-Obama presence on digg. It would be interesting to see if this is simply a demographical correlation (that is, from a demographics perspective, those who are most likely to use digg are also most likely to vote for Obama) or whether there is something about digg that encourages the popularity these articles. Then again, maybe Obama is simply popular with people and so articles about him naturally tend to be dugg more.
-Eye-grabbing article titles are essential on Digg. These, combined with popularity, genre and time, are the only things that determine how visible an article is. Since the title is basically the only thing that the submitter has control over, the creation of a catchy title is perhaps the most important thing that the submitter can do.
-Developers of Digg have devised a variety ways to view the site at digglabs. We looked at these in class but here's a review. They're pretty interesting and all of them can be used as a screensaver on a computer. It would be good to find statistics showing how popular each of these are.
-Arc - a circle around which the stories arrange themselves. The circle is color-coded according to topic and “arcs” trailing between stories shows users who are linking across stories. It can be used as a screensaver on computers that have adobe flash player.
-Bigspy- A scrolling list of upcoming stories that have been submitted to Digg. Those that have been dugg appear (and reappear) at the top of this list, while the rest float around the bottom. Those that have received the most digg also appear in the largest size.
-Swarm- shows upcoming stories with diggers (represented by yellow dots) “swarming” around these stories as they digg them. It also shows a link between stories that are dugg by the same people.
-Stack- almost like a continual bar graph in which each bar represents an article on digg. As the articles are dugg more, small dots “fall” from the top of the screen and land on top of the article, thereby increasing it's height. This makes it easier to see which stories are most popular on digg.
-All of these methods of viewing digg appear to be designed to promote those stories which are most popular already- so in order to get diggs, it certainly helps to have diggs. Since some people have expressed concern that Digg already fosters “too much democracy,' it will be interesting to see if new ways of looking at digg are created in the “digglabs” and whether these will emphasize something besides popularity.
Frankie -
1. Created a digg account, poked around on the features.
2. Specifically looked at the video portion of digg website.
3. Tracked new vids with 1 digg and see how they faired over the course of the week.
4. Looked at user profiles and tried to compare common groups/interests.
Jessie -
1. vlogging extravaganza!! (i.e. vlog some more)
2. research on language relating to gender in first vlogs
3. standardization of English in first vlogs (?)
Field Journal:
3/17 5:30pm: organize all (first vlog) Diigo bookmarks into a "Language and Gender" list
5:50pm: start researching the literature on standardized English
3/19 3:00pm: compile/re-analyze first vlogs into short video for Sapiens Symposium
3/20 10:30am: read articles:
- Participation in Electronic Discourse in a "Feminist" Field by Susan C. Herring, Deborah A. Johnson and Tamra DiBenedetto
- Women's Talk: The Question of Sociolinguistic Universals by Janet Holmes
- Performing Gender Identity: Young Men's Talk and the Construction of Heterosexual Masculinity by Deborah Cameron
3/21 1:00pm: research the background/history of vlogs
- add info to the Digital Ethnography diigo group
3/22 1:40pm: post vlog "Youtubers: What have you seen on the tube?"
3/23 3:30pm: read more about language and gender/watch more vlogs
Looking into 7 specific things:
1.) Topic of conversation
2.) Slang, cursing and formal/informal speech
3.) Posture and closeness to camera
4.) Hand gestures
5.) Eye contact
6.) Location and identity defining objects in background
7.) video edits
Preliminary insights: (related to gender, will be noted in my language and gender paper as well)
I was surprised to document each gender’s topic of conversation. In every female vlog studied, the vlogger mentioned something covering the gamut of gender stereotypes. Examples are: being a mom, outfit [skirt] colors, ring, not married, hair, pink toothbrush, blonde hair and likes flowers. Two in particular, being a tomboy/girlie girl and having no common sense were particularly interesting because they seem to notice the potential audience’s criticism. Realizing that I may be “looking” for these characteristics and that these stereotypes may not be pervasive to all, it still seems worth mentioning. Also in the sample males tended to edit their videos more often. Because this is such a small sample size, the editing numbers may be insignificant; in a larger sample, though, I would predict that males edit their videos more often. The topic of conversations for men seem to have a common thread of mentioning how they use different forms of media such as YouTube, TV, CD’s and the internet (i.e. gaming, watching videos, DVD collection).
The transgendered community gave me the most insight into the world of vlogging. There was a distinct pattern within the vlogs of transgendered people:
1.) (after mentioning name and first time vlogging) the first thing they discuss is that they are transgendered
2.) they mention the community they have found on YouTube (and the support that goes with it)
3.) some talk about wanting to document their transformation through vlogging
While this may not seem shocking, I believe it shows our cultural bias in seeing transgendered people as markedly different. None of the females talked directly about being a woman, and none of the males talked directly about being a man. It is something entirely unique to talk about being in between.
In terms of slang, cursing and formal versus informal speech, I cannot see a discernable pattern. If anything, the only two people that cursed in any way were males. Further, the closeness of the person to the camera did not vary widely among genders; I would like to investigate further and take measurements (as Wesch mentioned in class a few weeks back). As a general observation of hand gestures, woman tended to use more “sweeping” hand movements and touch their hair and face more often than men. Although there was no discernable difference in eye contact in this sample, I would like to look more closely at this in a larger sample. I feel as though there are differences in types of eye movements, and it could be beneficial to look into this.
Melissa -
Nick -
1. Forms of expression and communication techniques via YouTube (basic notes, to be organized/developments in progress)
- Posted first vlog, 3/23
- Personality has more outlets to be conveyed to familiars, strangers alike
- Better demonstration of voice, paralanguage communication subtleties
- Various communication techniques
- potential for new community hubs within YouTube
- distinct cultures within communities
3. Dethrone Michael Wesch from "#1 in page edits!" status
Rachel -
- Going to start vlogging for the whole participate observation side of youtube.
- And will be doing all this while roadtripping
- I filmed my first vlog but can't upload to youtube at the moment because they are doing site maintenance or something.
- flickr connection to youtube: It is there, people are linking urls in the descriptions that made with photos, and I have seen other interconnections.
- Example :http://www.flickr.com/photos/snoot/2293892834/in/set-72157602456022470/
Project brainstorm: I want to pursue the vein of why people you tube and who is vlogging, and how peoples lives change in meatspace when those thatdo make such a tremendousimpact online with vlogs etc.
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