Twitter has announced a call for research submissions that helps them “identify indicators of conversational health that are even more specific to Twitter and its impact.” I expressed my skepticism about this on Facebook and so I am writing up some notes here. ‘Conversations’ are one way to examine interactions on social media. We looked […]
Category Archives: Research
Critical News Literacy and Young People
There is a study released today about news consumption habits by young people 8-12 and 13-16 years old: News and Australian Children: How Young People Access, Perceive and are Affected by the News. The first point made in the key findings of the report is about how young people receive news from family and friends, including […]
Myth of the Digital Native, Technologies of Convenience, and Scholarship
Do technologies of convenience shape activity? I work with students to rethink the concept of the ‘filter bubble’ and locate it in a much broader context of how the subject position of user is created through affordances of technologies and services. At stake is whether or not there is a new kind of audience passivity, […]
Facebook Research Critiques
Engineers at Facebook have worked to continually refine the ‘Edgerank‘ algorithm over the last five or six years or so. They are addressing the problem of how to manage the 1500+ pieces of content available at any moment from “friends, people they follow and Pages” into a more manageable 300 or so pieces of content. Questions […]
The Australian Newspaper Outrage Cycle
Media editor of The Australian, Sharri Markson, has produced an article titled ‘Activism a threat to journalism‘. In it she draws on sources to argue that ‘activist journalism academics’ on ‘social media’ are a threat to journalism. She paraphrases her boss and Australian newspaper editor, Chris Mitchell: Editor-in-chief of The Australian, Chris Mitchell, said the greatest […]