Over the past few months I’ve been listening to many colleagues, peers, and researchers debate the value of social technologies in work, learning and play … and in this discuss what they “mean” by social media or social technologies and what is or isn’t a social technology. This exercise has a danger of getting caught up with trying to put things into boxes and missing the richness of what is happening in real-time around us – with, through and about the social web. The dynamic interactions, the practices and discourse in our culture that is so important to reflect on.

However, I do agree with many that it is important to have some insight and shared meaning as to what we mean by X or Y. But imagine if we sat down and debated what is knowledge? or What it is not? or What is communication? and What is not communication? I am sure there were once debates as to “What is the printing press and what is not the printing press!” or perhaps not given the differential in both functional and network complexity we are faced with in technological contexts emerging today (I’m hoping my good friend and mentor Dave Harrison has some thoughts on this historical context). As an academic I am always interested in these debates, but I also see that they can also constrain our collaborative practices.

We are all doing our best to learn from each other across organisations, industries and countries, the wonderful things people are doing, to help us all improve in how we communicate, engage and collaborate … be that face to face or through digital social technologies. We all have a shared interest in the role and impact digital social technologies are having on us and around us (professionally-personally), so I thought I’d offer something to the discussions to see if this offers some food for thought as to the debate about … defining social media, social technologies or an approach I’m increasingly adopting in my work with organisations … “Communicating with, through and about The Social Web”.

In 2012 I was asked to provide a number of entries for the Wiley Encyclopedia of Management forthcoming edition about digital and social technologies in business, communications and marketing. One of these was an entry about social media and marketing. I called this article Social Web Marketing. To discuss this, I had to define it and in this I reflected on what is the social web, how does it fit with social technologies and the mass use of the term social media in business and wider society … In its crafting I considered it from a number of ways – how does a user see it, how does a business see it,  and how do technology providers see it. Often, there is much divergence in our thinking and the language we use, posing both challenges and opportunities for cross-fertilisation.

A few notes …

• In this encyclopaedia article, I don’t talk about “internal” and “external” … as for those that read my blog post on “Social Ways of Working in Higher Education” … I strongly believe this dominant discourse around organisational communications is fundamentally changing.
• You may also note one consistency across all these terms is the use of the word “social” … something perhaps more suited for another blog post, but something perhaps more important to reflect on … What do we mean by “being social?”

With permissions from Wiley, please see a brief extract of the definitions from the article below, I welcome comments and thoughts.

I share it not as a way forward … but for discussion about how difficult defining something so complex, complicated and fluid can be … and in this perhaps there is a need for us to accept that The Social Web is about much more than “media” or “technology.”  It is  grounded in the emotional, behavioural and philosophical contexts through which we see, experience and co-create it.

Best, 

Kelly

*************

Article shared with permissions. To cite, refer to: Page, K. L. (Forthcoming, 2013). Article: Social Web Marketing, in Volume 9, Marketing, Nick Lee and Andrew Farrell (Ed.). In the Wiley Encyclopedia of Management (3e), Cary Cooper (Editor-in-Chief), Wiley.

Social Web Marketing

Kelly Page
Cardiff University, UK

Abstract

This article provides a definition of social web marketing and an approach to the use of social technologies such as social media and social applications to build social brand capital.

Keywords: social web, social technologies, social media, social media marketing, social brand capital

The Social Web is a term used to refer to the interplay of social behavior with and through social technology and the philosophy of socialising through social technology with members of a social graph. It is about people and our use social technologies to share opinions, stories and experiences with others irrespective of geography and outside the control of an organisation or individual (Kaplan and Haelein, 2010; Page and Pitt, 2011)). Central to the social web are social technologies, sometimes called social media, a group of Internet-based social technologies that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0[1] that enable the creation and exchange of user-generated or co-created content (Kietzmann et al, 2011). Examples include social networking sites, blogging platforms, or specific platforms for co-creation such as Wiki’s. In addition are social applications, also called apps &/or widgets, are specific pieces of code or script technologies that increase the social functionality of social media platforms like Facebook or a website.

Social web marketing is the use of social media and social applications for developing stakeholder relationships, community engagement, consumer generated marketing and a brands’ social capital (Page and Pitt, 2011). Whereas human capital can be defined as embodied in the skills and knowledge acquired by an individual, social capital is in the relations among individuals, the social structures and networks within which we live (Coleman, 1988). Social brand capital emerges from the relationship and engagement between of curators of a brand within stakeholder communities through conversation and interactivity (Kane, et al., 2009) and consumer generated marketing activities.

References

Coleman, J. S., (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital, The American Journal of Sociology, 94, 95–120.

Kane, G. C., Fichman, R. G., Gallaugher, J., and Glaser, J. (2009). Community relations 2.0, Harvard Business Review, 87 (11), Nov 1, 132–42.

Kaplan, A.M. and Haelein, M. (2010). Users of the world unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media, Business Horizons, 53, 59-68.

Kietzmann, J.H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I.P. and Silvestre, B.S. (2011) Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media, Business Horizons, 54, 3, (May-June), 241-251

Page, K. L. (2010). Chapter 17: Digital Marketing, in Baines, P. Fill, C. and Page, K. L. (2010) Marketing, Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Page, K. L. and Pitt, L. (2011). Untangling the Web: Social media, Web 2.0 and the creative consumer, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 10 (6). 313.

Share and Enjoy

The advertisement provides an example of how open journalism with and through digital social technologies could cocreate a news story about The Three Little Pigs, a fairytale first printed in the 1880′s. This is a story many of us maybe familiar with, where the three little pigs act to defend their home from a big bad wolf intruding into their personal social space.

The advertisement acts to imagine how a news story may be covered by open journalism. From the story breaking, to open source news reports of arrest activity, to crowd sourcing public opinion on justice for defending ones home. The advert is coupled with good theatrical effects from actors, an emerging narrative, and content that traverses social media contexts entwined with a crescendo of music sources.

The advertisement provides an example of the viral escalation a news story with and through social technologies. How the narrative fluid and evolving is socially constructed through a plethora of digital viral interactions. Those involved in sharing – sharing the story, sharing an opinion, sharing a digital artefact – traverse from ‘what was’ to ‘what could be’ to ‘what should have been’ to ‘why it was so.’

Very cleverly done to represent perhaps not what is so much the future, but in some instanced current open journalist practices.The digital social ways within which everyone – as open journalists, citizen bloggers, opinion givers and social sharers –  how we coexist with and through social technologies, crafting the story from multiple sources – official, informal, social, reactive, and in this … socially constructing it.

From one perspective, open journalism can serve to unlock what is the real story of the people, as evident in stories that have emerged worldwide. However, from this video I also came to consider Who is the big bad wolf? Who is intruding on the three little pigs personal social space? Is it the police? The journalist? Or is it us. Tweeters, bloggers, FB friends, curating our own version of events and sharing it with others.

The video left me revisiting my thoughts on OUR role as SHARERS with and through digital social technologies. A thought I fear we rarely reflect on let along talk about. Reciprocity is key feature of social interaction (be it unmediated – face to face, or digitally mediated). In this reciprocity is the in-kind positively or negatively connotated responses of individuals towards the actions of others. However, when we share with and through digital social technologies, sometimes we may not consider in the moment the effects or responses towards our actions. So I wonder:

What is our role in what we share, how we share it and whom we share it with. And as a consequence, what is our responsibility in the effect our sharing has on others.

“When you share about yourself, is your choice. When you share about others, it is your responsibility!”

Those that know me know I am an advocate for social ways of working, learning and living with and through social technologies. But I am also an advocate on how we learn as individuals and learn collaboratively to participate responsibly, with care and good intention with and through social technologies.

Kelly

Share and Enjoy

If you think what life was like for you 15 years ago – before the Internet – imagine what it might be like in 15 years time. It is impossible. You can’t. All we can do is be open to change, invest in capabilities that foster adaptability and champion ideas that inspire.

It doesn’t matter how busy you are, this is a 20 minutes you won’t regret spending to watch and share this video.

Share and Enjoy

What I love about how Sir Ken Robinson discusses Changing Education is he shows clear insight of how through the evolution in innovations and technology of the last few hundred years (if not longer), our behaviour and responses to the world around us has changed in our every day life  - in what we do, what we pay attention to, and the internal and collaborative processes we use to learn, adapt and survive in a rapidly changing technological environment. He then contrasts this very eloquently with the view that for what ever reason, the pace of change in how we think about education, learning and formal learning contexts has not changed at the same pace or in the same way. He uses school education to exemplify his point. For me this video also spoke of higher education.

In higher or further education in some spaces (though not all) we have become more protective over what we know, learn and research (because its an asset to sell); more static in how we share it or educate others (because change is hard and requires resource); less welcoming of creativity and innovation – diversity in others (because it scares us); and more reliant on the standardisation and marketization of education driven by external measures of quality (because it has become the industry norm). But what do I remember about being a student of learning …

My best experiences of my own learning do no fit the picture above, my memories are about meaningful episodes of creativity and autonomy. They include: high school days when my art teacher encouraged me to ‘create’ and share ‘my voice’ on how I was seeing the world through drawing (without guidelines); or my history teacher who encouraged us to read fiction novels on historical topics as well as our textbooks (though not on the reading list); or my 2nd year university professor who taught statistics in the context of music, shopping and magazines (to make the equations meaningful); to my doctoral supervisor who encouraged my ideas on knowledge, learning and web technology (though unverifiable for a journal – they were ideas to still discuss).

I think in many ways, I was fortunate in these instance in my learning to have inspired others who encouraged me through how they saw the world. However, like many Sr. Ken Robinson describes in his video, I too traversed a conveyor belt of education, in age cohorts, expected to perform higher and better on standardised measures to enter the halls of academe to continue the process. So I became conditioned. Certainly we all are – all in society, not just the educators. But the politicians, the policy makers, the teachers, the lawyers, the parents, and grandparents … and increasingly the children. Conditioning us in what formal education is and in this losing sight of the aspiration what could education be … perhaps built instead on a model of what ‘inspires learning’ … not just how to measure, sell and protect it.

For me Social Web technology in the classes I design and deliver has been a way to start to unpick my own preconceptions and practices around how I educate and see learning in business management education – especially in marketing and organisational communications. Social web technology has helped me to start to think differently and let go of control in what education is. Letting go of control is I believe our first step to changing how we think in this embracing fear. It doesn’t matter how much I use social web technology, there is still the fear when standing in front of a class of 100 new students introducing them to the world of blogging, wikis, Twitter and Google docs, wondering “what challenges will I face this semester?” coupled with the excitement of wondering “what will they create and learn this semester?” And these challenges come from all places, to my own preconceptions. I live, work and traverse a complex system of people, practices and social norms.

Sir Ken Robinson, raises an excellent point in his video. To change what we do in education we need to change how we think about education, learning, learners and creativity. Over the past three years, I’ve been doing my best to unpack my thinking about the role of ‘lecturer as distant expert’ and ‘controller’ of the space, and instead create a learning space wherein, ‘we are learners, sharing, contributing and helping each other’ and ‘move the focus away from the grade to a focus on learning’ (I’ve certainly not cracked it yet, but I’m trying). I’m only a few years into the journey, and it is hard because it is not just I but also my students, my colleagues, my discipline, the sector, and those associated with it who see the world in different ways. Shame our learning systems don’t yet embrace divergent thinking in education design and practice. To heed the words of Sir Ken Robinson in the above video, to change what we do in education, we need to change how we think about education.

In this … “We are all learning!”

Smiles

Kelly

Share and Enjoy

In my opinion, this is a good thing. Social technologies enable an open way of working and living grounded on the emerging tenants of cocreation, collaboration and sharing throughout our social graph. With this comes individual and institutional responsibility in developing our understanding and raising awareness of both the opportunities and implications of social technologies in the way we work and the technical and social skills necessary to participate. But how are we developing digital literacies in our institutions? Not just in our students, but also in our staff – be it faculty, administrative, support or ancillary. How can we when our Universities are such large complex organizations?

One consideration. Change how we think about organisational communications.

The traditional approach to organizational communications in most organisations, especially large ones such as universities, is grounded in a mindset of the private face of an organisation (i.e., internal communications and activities) controlled by the few (i.e., external and public relations) in the conduct and delivery of external facing activities (i.e., press releases, events, spoke people, corporate web communications). The aim: To build a corporate professional brand image of the organisation. This approach assumes we have an inside [internal] and an outside [external] face of an organization. However the fact of the matter is, we live and work in invisible social networks, not just the buildings used to house us and our belongings. I often wonder if the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ perspectives of organisational communications is more a factor of the space we reside in than the social networks we live in.

The lived experience of an organisation is experienced and shared by many. And today it is being experienced, recorded, mashed-up and shared on a public stage by anyone and potentially everyone throughout our digital social graph. Developments in social technologies are enabling our lived working and learning experiences to be co-created and shared by those who experience it, not just by those who use to control the media or technology channels (“the few”). Those who have experience of an organisation, be it the people, the activities that define the workplace or the artefacts these activities produce, these people are its member communities. The community who work and live associated with it or have some vested interest in it. The activity: To cocreate and share the lived experience of working within the organisation and the social networks through which we become connected.

This social way of working (and living) is often distanced and independent of the traditional personnel roles that traditionally have managed the organizations brand image and corporate message [external communications and public relations]. Today, what is increasingly important is not just the organisations brand image, but an organizations digital social capital. Digital social capital is the lived identities of its people, their practices, connections and their ways of working, captured and shared through and with social technologies. It is this digital social capital that shows not only the heart of the organisation (it’s people), but also it’s ways of working, be they open or closed, innovative or conservative, traditional or contemporary.

So how do we manage and control all this? How does one charged with the role of communications director, marketing manager or senior executive on the board, especially of a large organization, take charge and manage all of this digital social activity. The simple answer is, we don’t! We can’t! So why try?

A second consideration. Inform and inspire social ways of working across the organisation!

We need to support and grow it by being part of it not master of it. To inform the digital social activities in our organizations through learning and communication initiatives outlined by a social way of working strategy that is championed by individuals and groups in our departments, schools, and across our universities. Championed bottom-up by change agents or innovators who get it and top-down by budget holders and connectors who value it. We don’t all have to do it, but we do all have to value it.

To achieve this there are three core needs I believe for any organisation – small, medium or large to consider:

1. A need to focus on people and practices: What many organizations lack is an understanding of the social ways we/they work. We focus instead on on the technology, and the output, but technologies come and go. With a technology focus we miss the bigger picture of the cultural and learning changes these technologies have and how people using them inspire how we work, learn and live differently. Social technologies (supported not constrained by our governance and technological infrastructure) can support productive and positive social ways of working and learning at both an individual and collective level.
2. A need to learn through example and lead by discussion: It is imperative for especially large organizations to inspire a learning culture in departments, schools and groups that empower individual responsibility in the social ways we work. This is a preferred approach instead of focusing resources mainly on corporate IT governance, technologies and written communications policy and educating the few (i.e., a social media manager). Large organizations are unfortunately conditioned to ‘lead by policy’ not by ‘discussion’ nor to ‘learn through examples’. We attempt to build walled gardens in the form of policies, procedures and technological infrastructure, in fear of ‘what someone might do, say or share’ or ‘to protect our intellectual assets.’ Sometimes in some learning situations a walled garden is good, but not if it stops learning taking place. We learn more through example and discussion, and gain more through sharing what we learn, than we do by writing policy.
3. A need to change our mindset about who is in control: Any organization IS an open organisation. For example, in Higher Education, the members of our communities (i.e., staff, students, funders, collaborators, partners) flow between and through differing identities (personal, private, professional, public) and differing social networks (digital and human) using many and varied social technologies by which to communicate, share and co-create their lived experience of the organization. In this, our community members build not only their personal/professional digital identities, but also the digital social capital that is the organization. Control rests with the individual (“when they press upload, send or enter”) and the organic collective these entries compile. The organisation is therefore a social construction of the digital artefacts the community co-create, over time, place and through differing experiences.

In summary, most organisations including those in Higher Education are inspiring, creative and intellectual communities to work and be part of. The problem lies not in the technologies we commission, the structures we build or the policies we write. The difficulty lies in how we consider, support and inspire learning around the social ways we work. Be it higher education, the arts or the car dealer down the road, social technologies have changed the way we work. Now we need to change the way we think and the way we learn.

Smiles

Kelly

Share and Enjoy

“With the new ‘FB timeline’ on its way this week for EVERYONE…please do both of us a favour. Hover over my name above. In a few seconds you’ll see a box that says “Subscribed”. Hover over that, go to “Comments and Likes” and unclick it. That will stop my posts and yours to me from showing up on the side bar for everyone to see, but MOST IMPORTANTLY IT LIMITS HACKERS from invading our profiles. If you repost this I will do the same for you. You’ll know I’ve acknowledged you because if you tell me that you’ve done it I”ll ‘like’ it. Thanks”

My friend commented that her friends have shared an article about how the above status update that is circulating is a hoax. She gave me this link to the article on a website called thatsnonsense.com reporting it is a unfounded rumour. Upon read this article, I became aware how myself and the author differ in our understanding of the term hacker. To clarify for my friend I started to write this response in a comment on my status update. Given the length of my response, I’m sharing it here. I responded with the following.

1. Source of web information

Always consider who is the source of the information before sharing it. I know why I shared the status update (see 2-4 below) and which friend I first saw it circulating, but I was curious on the source of this article also. Perhaps it is all about interpretation.

I wondered who is thatsnonsense.com? The author of this article, whose name is not published (red flag) on a website whose owner is not transparent (red flag) gives some good advice about privacy settings, but then directs readers to their Facebook page and blog for more information about online hoaxes and a website surrounded by pay per click advertising. Many websites use these forms of marketing to generate revenue to fund their content, but credible sources of website content especially about technology and privacy (e.g., Mashable) are very clear about the authors of their posts and what is the company status – if it is a company. Thatsnonsense.com is a website is run by craigspace.co.uk, which is not a company but a 22 year old IT graduate from Plymouth University. He goes by craigy_lad on Myspace. From the site it appears to money is made out off the traffic to thatsnonsense.com and a Facebook Fan page is used to generate traffic to to the articles. Great if they are accurate and credible content. Not a problem. But why do none of the posts indicate the post authors name, the authors bio or where he/she is located, perhaps I missed it. The whois server indicates Canada (where the webpage is probably hosted). Even the ‘contact us’ page is questionable, no contact details, just a web form.

So would I trust what this site tells me given I don’t know the author of the posts and how revenue is being generated through it. No, not really! I am sure the author is very knowledgeable, but given how anyone can build a website today and offer advice, to me, the source is always very important and should be transparent, especially in this context to help readers evaluate credibility and accuracy of the information being reported.

The author (and others) are correct that your privacy settings are most important on Facebook, but so too is understanding what we mean by ‘hacking your Facebook’ profile and the purpose of the Facebook Ticker.

2. Who is the hacker?

Mainstream media would have you believe a hacker is someone who breaches security to access systems illegally and unethically. A computer villian. However this is a cracker, not a hacker. There is much controversy around how popular culture – driven by media journalists and film have used the term hacker. Some of us still hold true to use of the term as a positive creative computer geek who is different in intent and authorisation to a cracker, i.e., someone who cracks into secure systems with negative intentions. You can read much about the controversial history of these terms on Wikipedia and the sources this article provides for a good historical read.

In sharing this status update, the geek that I am, I looked upon “a hacker” NOT as someone who will violate my Facebook privacy and security settings from the outside, but as someone who will hack the code and content of the Facebook system and my profile – with authorisation – to what they believe is for a positive reason. For Facebook that would be sharing more information. In this, a hacker is someone who likes to mashup content, code and systems to create things and they often work in paid respectable professions, coming up with solutions and ideas to IT and business problems. For example, Hackers created the Internet at APARNET (big applause  for that one!). But hackers are also increasingly are working in Digital Marketing – mashing up code and content to create ways and means to acquire, share and profit from through advertising with the information I share through social media.

In this, Facebook could be seen as a hacker of their system to find new and differing ways to access, mash together and share our personal information and that of our friends.

3. The Facebook Ticker

The Facebook Ticker is about sharing ‘everything.’ This appear to be the ethos of Facebook. Sharing everything as a ‘good thing’. What is unclear about the ticker is ‘with whom’ is this information – updates, uploads, comments and likes shared with. Friends = yes! Friends of friends = depends on your and your friends privacy settings. Third party app developers = yes. Marketers or advertisers = of course! Inside Facebook has an interesting article on this.  The main way to protect your information is to not post anything on Facebook and to stop using the service. If though this is too big a step, ensure ALL you’re your settings are at ‘Friends only!” and that all the social apps you have downloaded to your Facebook profile (e.g., Spotify, Netflix) are not integrated with your Facebook or the settings on these apps . Sharing content between accounts and with friends on Facebook is a personal choice. But know what you are agreeing to when you sign-up to a service, click “login through my Facebook account” or ‘Share with X App”.

The Facebook Ticker includes Facebook sponsored stories. Mashable.com, a respected source on all things social media, provides some insight to Facebook sponsored stories. In this, and some may disagree with me, Facebook is hacking my newsfeed and personal information mixing personal updates from Friends with advertising (Yuk!) to relay in the Facebook Ticker. A feature I can’t easily remove from my profile. Given how we are not used to seeing advertising in our wall feeds the Facebook Ticker, immersing updates, likes, comments with advertising – that is sponsored stories, is the next best thing.

So who is the ‘hacker?’ Facebook perhaps! Not some IT geek hiding away in a basement in the dark somewhere.

4. Why unsubscribe from Friends Comments & Likes (and ask friends to unsubscribe to yours)?

Facebook is hacking a lot of their system to find ways and means for us to share more with others, more often and more personal information. Sharing is their business and the Facebook Ticker an interesting addition.

Sharing comments and likes with my friends is a personal choice, not Facebooks choice. If a friend asks you to unsubscribe, unsubscribe. Unsubscribing means friends won’t see the conversations you have with other friends (if privacy permits) and pages or comments your like. Coupled with privacy settings, unsubscribing enables some control (albeit a little) control of what ‘conversations’ (comments) and ‘social interactions’ (‘like’) are shared with friends, friends of friends, and become mashed up with advertising through the feature: Facebook Ticker. For both you and your friends. It limits some of the social viral effect of Facebook.

For example, I’m interested in updates from Debra, I’ll see them in my wall and comment on them. Debra as my friend will get a notification that I’ve commented. We have a public conversation. But all our ‘mutual friends’ or ‘friends of friends (if privacy settings are such) will not get an update in their Facebook Ticker on their profile page that this conversations is going on. Let’s call it Facebook eavesdropping or friend spamming. In the past I could tick a box in my privacy settings that indicated ‘not sharing pages I liked and comments’ with friends. Interesting how Facebook has hacked this privacy option in the new Timeline and I find myself spending time to reinstate this option by asking friends to unsubscribe.

I agree, that asking friends to unsubscribe won’t limit Facebook hacking their system, but it places choice back in the users hands, to have a little more control over what you share with whom. For example:

1. To share updates, photo uploads on you wall and timeline etc just with friends: Ensure privacy settings are set to ‘friends only’ on every thing (updates, photos etc) so only friends will see them when they are updated or uploaded. Friends can comment and like on said content.
2. To share comments and likes (social interaction through Facebook) with only the friends you are having those interactions with: Ask friends to unsubscribe from your comments and likes – (so your conversations don’t appear in their  Facebook Ticker feed) and do the same to for them, so you don’t see their social interactions.

5. In summary …

The moral of this long blog post that started as a comment on a status update on Facebook …

1. Consider the source of information. Dig deeper to the source of information that is not transparent about who they are and the information they provide, especially websites offering advice. That includes the ‘copy and paste’ viral status updates’s and articles by authors who make money through web traffic to articles (true or not) about what is or is not an online hoax or breech of privacy. Find a credible and transparent source you trust, especially when it is about online privacy.
2. Consider who the hacker is. It might actually be someone who you have granted permission to use your information how they see fit. Don’t trust a company whose business model is built on ‘hacking’ their systems to find new and different ways to share your personal information, mashing it up with paid content like advertising in order to make money. Not everyone believes sharing ‘everything’ is a good thing. If you participate, become informed or in the least, tick “Friends Only” for everything while you are learning. I’m still learning and work in this business.
3. Consider who you are sharing with. Chances are all your Facebook friends won’t have their privacy settings set to ‘friends only’ or will have the same friend network on their profiles as you do. Your friends are possibly connected to people who you ‘wouldn’t want’ to see your updates, uploads, comments and likes. So although there is no negative intention in this, be aware that the definition of sharing is: “a part or portion of a larger amount which is divided among a number of people, or to which a number of people contribute” (Oxford English Dictionary).
4. Consider the sharing choices of your friends. Respect your friends on Facebook, the choices they make in what they share, and what they ask of you – as their friend – to share or not share about them. If they ask you to unsubscribe – unsubscribe. This goes for photos and tagging too. Facebook is meant to be a friendship network, wherein we keep up to date with friends, keep in contact and share. But like most social gatherings and social groups, the meaning of word friend and our expectations on how a friend behaves is fluid. We all see the world differently. Here is a talk I gave on Rediscovering Friendship for TEDxCardiff  last year. In it I talk about how friendship is a behaviour – something we do, enact and share. It is not a word or connection on Facebook.

I hope this blog post is of value to others, both connected and not connected through my Facebook profile. In the very least I hope it helps to raise awareness of both the personal and commercial implications (and our individual responsibilities) of communications through the digital social network that is Facebook.

Smiles

Share and Enjoy

Tanya tells her experience of being an aspiring actress in 1998 in Chicago Illinois, a young women who because of the forces around her, helped shape an idea to start a Theatre Company. Her world of work was then controlled by the perceptions of others and their expectations of what she should be and what role she should play as a Latina Actress. Expectations that often judged her culture, her gender, her race and ethnicity. Expectations that didn’t showcase and champion her artistic talents or the life stories she felt were not being told. Instead they judged her – casting call after casting call. These experiences led Tanya to the idea of creating a theatre company.

Through a collaboration that started between Coya Paz and Tanya Saracho that grew into an ensemble of 10 women from diverse Latina/Hispana backgrounds, Teatro Luna in 2000 was born. A theatre company formed through on group of women each sharing stories and experiences, an ecological system of collaboration and cocreation based on sharing. The sharing of stories, from which the group learnt. Creating meaning in who they were, what they were doing and in this, created a voice and the power to share with hundreds of people who came to see their productions, the stories of Latina/Hispana women and their communities.

Why was this collaborative group so important to each of these women and the formation of the organisation that is known as Teatro Luna? Tanya states it very eloquently: “In the group there were no outside forces telling us women could not be funny.” It became a supportive and dynamic collaboration that evolved from the interactions of a group of artistic women, cocreating a creative process, a process formed from discussion, sharing and learning about the stories of others, stories of Latina/Hispana women with the central idea of telling these stories through the medium of Theatre.

Teatro Luna is Chicago’s first and only all-Latina theatre, organized for the purpose of exploring the varied experiences and cultures of Latina/Hispana women, showcasing their creative talents and telling the often political, social and emotional stories of their communities. This is a wonderful and insightful story on how collaboration through the power of stories when shared both within and outside our organisational communities, shared through communication, shapes us. And as I spoke about in my last blog post everything communicates not just the words we use.

Please share this video and the story of Teatro Luna.

Tanya Saracho from Arts Alliance Illinois on Vimeo.

Smiles

Kelly

Share and Enjoy

The first, the difference between brand and branding. He eloquently alludes to a brand as emergent from conversation, as organic through interactions over time, an image, and it is over time that these interactions shape our image of something – in this case a brand. That brand management is the process by which an emergent brand image is influenced – not controlled, and the role of public, private enterprises in this.

The second, the emergence of brand image. Brands have always been emergent, emergent over time in our minds in how we think, interact with and talk with others about them. However now with growing user-generated social technologies from Facebook to YouTube, Twitter and blogging platforms, a brand is not just emergent in our minds/perceptions or between other of our immediate social circles, but increasingly emergent from a partnership between public-private enterprises and the wider community on a mass scale. A brand is emergent from community conversations, community interactions, a social web of people bought together by their interest and/or action about a brand.

The third, the importance of brand community. This view of a brand emergent from community lends itself much to the the thinking of Albert Muniz and Thomas O’Guinn in their (2001) paper on Brand Community. Wherein a community sharing similar rituals and traditions, history and moral responsibility form a community around a brand, what they term a brand community. A community that regulates and inspires the brands meaning and in this can also harm the brand image.

And lastly, how everything communicates. Everything we do, say, share and cocreate communicates – be it the image of a person, place, organisation, movement, idea or product. These interactions cocreate meaning over time, something not new to social anthropologists interested in media and social research. However, today social and search technologies play an increasing role in their aggregation for search, retrieval and mass sharing.

As everything communicates, and social/search technologies give greater emphasis to the communities of conversations, with this comes new mindsets and digital social literacies. Literacies not just for professionals in organisational communication who attempt to ‘manage’ brand image (and more often than not think they own the brand and thus try to control it), but also the digital social literacies of personal-professional communication across most industries and professions – teachers, artists, politicians, nurses, doctors to name but a few.

In summary, this an interesting example and philosophy of emergent branding through/from community, using the example of Rebranding Greece. Here is the video. Please share.

Smiles

Kelly

Share and Enjoy

My coauthor, Professor Mark Uncles (UNSW), and I have for a long time been interested in how we consider and regard usage of digital media, wherein penetration, access, usage and engagement strongly differ and also have parallels. We have also been interested in how those with and without website design experience differ in their perceptions of what is and isn’t digital media participation and what is of value in its consideration. We developed a paper exploring these issues. In this we consider how the professional context within which we work, shapes and guides our understanding of digital media participation and our own participation. This lends insight to the importance of decision making teams drawing from differing backgrounds in digital decision making – that is, creatives, digital designers, marketers/communications personnel, community members/audiences and other stakeholders. We have written a paper on the subject, that is currently in-review. The abstract is provided below.

The Complexities of Digital Participation: Abstract

Digital media participation is central to the process of marketing communications planning and digital media management. In this paper we discuss the characteristics and dimensions of digital media participation, differentiate it from digital media penetration and as an example, specifically examine the influence of two user characteristics on digital web participation. In this example, we examine the effect that user web site design experience and perceptions of web usability has on digital web participation. Hypotheses are tested on two web user segments: web users with (n=1177) and without (n=900) web site design experience. Findings show that perceptions of web usability has a significant impact on digital web participation, but these effects vary depending on: 1) how digital web participation is defined and measured; and 2) if a user has or has not got past web site design experience. The findings help in our understanding of the complexity of digital media participation and the usage-context within which it is socially constructed. The characteristics and dimensions discussed in this paper are important bases for understanding users across differing categories of digital media participation and differing digital media contexts.

Source: Page, K. L. and Uncles, M. D. (Under Review). The Complexities of Digital Media Participation.

Share and Enjoy

I however was more drawn to another topic, Digital Identity Management. A topic I am consistently observing that is a consequence of our growing use of digital and social technologies, technologies that not only function because of our use of them but because of the sophisticated functions they have that aid the vendors who own them in the collection, storage and analysis of our usage data. The topic I decided to cover was about Digital Identity Management, especially as it pertained to digital social technologies. For me it is not the illegal black market identity thief that worries me, but the legal businesses to whom we give all our data – freely, easily and increasingly.

Data is the Currency of Now!

“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch!” (TANSTAAFL) is something we should always keep in mind as we sign up to the next new FREE social networking site or share our family or friend photos on the latest and coolest visual platform for photo blogging. Don’t get me wrong, I love what social technologies are doing for business, education, arts, politics and the very essence of the values that the advocate users of them find dear – like community, sharing, engagement. Being part of something that is bigger than ourselves, and in this we can have a voice. no matter how young, old, small, big, talented, poor, rich or controlled.

However in all this ‘opportunity’ let’s us not forget, that many of these social technologies are a business. A business built on large data sets or user data and expert analysts who provide the insight for business decision making in their use. Yes, they offer free access to users share information with friends, colleagues and the wider market. But somewhere we do pay. We pay by giving away gigabyes and terabytes of data, about ourselves, our family, our friends, our organizations and our communities. All for FREE!

A smart company is a data driven company. From this data, Google, Facebook, YouTube, WordPress, Blogger, MySpace, Ning … the list goes on … collate, analyse, segment, and share the data. Often it is shared with shareholders or internal stakeholders for corporate decision making – to improve the services you are using. But it is also shared with external stakeholders (like advertisers, market researchers) to improve the supply and demand for other fee-paying services and/or information that actually finance these social technologies. However it is also shared with other parties, paying clients or businesses interested not in you, or your values or the service you are using to improve the service, but the money they can make from your data. Our social behaviour is just as much a part of our identity as our name, address and post code is. When you add differing types of data together, you get a much richer and commercially attractive product – a data asset. This is very much reminisce of the Tesco Clubcard business model in the UK. However what is different is a) we don’t get a coupon for it; and b) the data is richer because of the addition of digital social network data. A type of data much richer than any grocery shopping panel data Tesco has ever collected. 

[ Profile + Demographic + Behavioural + Transactional + Network Data ] / Over time = a very rich (££) data set

Take Facebook as an example. Facebook search is Bing indexed, so our data and information is shared with Microsoft. Every Application (App) we’ve given permission to interact with our Facebook profile has also been given access to our data. We rarely get the choice on ‘what’ data we authorise to share, more often it is just a yes/no decision. If we use an App on our mobile phone to sync with our Facebook profile, it is not just the data we enter that is shared between our phone and our profile on the Facebook servers, it is also our location information through GPS and the telephone numbers of our friends that suddenly appear on the Friends list of our profile. This information (and much more) Facebook and advertisers use to cleverly target users with contextualised advertising matched to the keywords in the status update you just posted and to sell in various formats to finance the very service we have applauded for being FREE!

Awareness : Education : Responsibility

So what did I recommend in my talk? I didn’t recommend not using these services. Quite the contrary I love the use of them, but advocate an informed use, especially in organizations where use of them is increasingly being mandated. I recommended three key things critical for effective and responsible use of digital social technologies in both our personal and professional lives. Three things we should take account of during our use of them and are ongoing. As the technologies develops so too should our:

1. Awareness. As users be aware of our own activities with/through social technologies, and the data we are potentially freely sharing with anyone and everyone. Googling yourself is an example of how you can remain aware of what information is publicly available about you, your family or your organization.
2. Education. As users, be active in our education (and that of our staff/employees) in how social technologies function so we can use them both effectively and responsibly, especially in the privacy settings each may have; and our rights as users.
3. Responsibility. As users take full responsibility for the data and information we share through/with social technologies. In this I mean not just the data/information we are sharing about ourselves, but increasingly the data and information we are sharing about our friends, family, colleagues, workplace and wider social network. Policies and guidelines are well and good, but it is a feeling of personal/professional responsibility that truly regulates behaviour.

Continuing the Conversation

For the many years now I have observed and interacted with people in both professional and personal contexts as they have used and learnt about digital and social technologies. And like many people, I too am still learning the implications of this era of social technologies on both our personal and professional selves. But one thing we should not stop doing is talking about it. No one is an expert in this space, and the only way to share learnings about the management of a our digital identities (and especially that of our children) is to talk about it more and in more detail.

At the end of the evening we were asked a number of questions. Below I have provided my responses.

1. What can an individual do if someone is being slanderous about them in a digital social space?

Peter Gwyn Williams from e-Crime Wales gave a really good response to this question. “Take a screen capture of it, contact them to inform them you have evidence of their behaviour and then report them to the authorities”. Obviously this has a lot to do with jurisdiction and given the geographic fluidity of activity in digital channels, it is often difficult to bring to account people who are not contactable, unknown or reside in a different jurisdiction to your own. However  libel, a false, malicious statement published in mainstream media (i.e. on the internet, in a magazine, etc.) is a very serious offence, and should be brought to the attention of the host/service providers of any social community or network for breach of the networks terms and conditions.

2. What is going on in the education/sector and schools to help educate children?

A lot is and isn’t going on. In my opinion it is not so much the children we need to focus in terms of digital literacy and awareness, but the teachers and the educational system so that it is more open to learning about, with and through social technologies. Banning Facebook, Myspace and mobiles is not the answer. Have a dialogue about it with children, in front of children and between members of the educational community (be that parents, teachers, regulators) is. Here is a link to a World Summit on Media for Children and Youth that was held in Sweden this year or the annual Digital Media Learning conference in the US. Having more ‘educators and teachers’ attend forums like these is critical to educating the educators about social technologies and their role on the world of youth.

3. What would I advise as an example of corporate policy for the use of social technologies?

I prefer the word guidelines to policies. Policies are very static, where as guidelines are fluid and can adapt as the technological context changes. I always advocate an organic approach, where guidelines for social technology use come from within the company, informed by the staff and personnel who are contracted to adhere to them. So they come out of discussion and debate as to what is and isn’t responsible behaviour. But often this is difficult in very large corporate multinationals. In this I’d turn to example of practice in other organizations for learning and a point of debate for their suitability or adaptation within your own organization. One large complex organization whom I think many organizations can learn from in terms of stakeholder guidance over the use of social technologies is the US Army. In early 2011 they released their Social Media Handbook on Slideshare for all to read. With over 90,000 views it is probably one of the most read social media guides available and is very detailed. MediaSnackers have also conducted a podcast interview with SSG Dale Sweetnam, the non-comissioned officer in charge of the US Army’s online and social media division.

Digital and social technologies are affording us and our organizations many new freedoms in communications and information sharing. But with freedom also comes responsibility, not just for the service providers or owners of the social technologies. But our own responsibility in our own behaviour in what we share, to whom, about whom, how and and where.

Smiles

Kelly

Share and Enjoy