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

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

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

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

In June this year I was asked to write a commentary about the use of Twitter in organizational communications for

@drkellypage the power of #personality on #twitter

With the growth of the digital technologies such as Twitter, organizations are increasingly adopting corporate and employee Twitter accounts. Seen as an alternative channel to the corporate website or customer call line Twitter is often mistakenly used to only push press releases, company news and customer service information into the ether in a wild attempt to build a twitter network. However, the social web is not about a traditional one-way mode corporate communications, it is about conversation, participation and social brand equity. It is about engaging with the communities within which your organization coexists.

Twitter accounts are managed and used by people (or persons) and it is these individuals that give a Twitter handle (e.g., @drkellypage) their personal conversational tone and personality. People follow, friend and connect to people, not press releases or automated twitter services. It is this personality and digital social skill that make for the best twitter accounts to follow. It is how an individual uses tone and their own voice to converse, that is to Tweet, Reply, Retweet (RT) and direct message (DM) that grows followers and friends and gets your Twitter handle listed. Importantly, it is also the mindset an individual managing a Twitter account and their organization have in how they approach the notion of conversation and sharing with and about others not just themselves, that helps build sustainable and sticky social networks.

Individual personality is important, so to in corporate contexts is the need to be professional and responsible with regard to what, whom and in what way we Tweet. Twitter is a public space indexed by Google, searchable and retrievable by Twitter. In this anything you Tweet can be RT by others and cited in other channel contexts. For those considering or currently managing either their own individual or a corporate Twitter account, I’ve listed a number of elements important to consider for the development of healthy, social and sustainable Twitter networks

Communication style

Twitter is about listening, sharing and conversing with others, not shouting or promoting. Think – listen & share with others don’t think talk & tell to others. Listening is important. You don’t have to tweet all the time, a RT is a good way to ease yourself into the conversation and slowly build your Twitter network.

Approach

You can either adopt a mind cast, life cast or combination approach to Twitter (and the social web). Life casting is more personal about what ‘you’ are doing (e.g., getting the train, having a coffee). Mind casting is a more professional tone associated with what you are doing, thinking and believing associated with your professional activities (e.g., Launching our new brand design today). As people follow people often a combination is more often better to develop social bonds within a social network (e.g., had a great meeting with Simon about the new branding design today).

Communication Tone

Develop your own tone and voice in synergy with the organizations values. But be your professional self. Be approachable and friendly. Consider ‘would I say or share this to one or a room full of people’ on behalf or in association with the organization.

Private Twitter

Use direct messages (DM) for private, sensitive information such as phone numbers, email address and time/location for meet ups. Remember Twitter is Google indexed.

Twitter Reach

Remember not everyone is on Twitter or even knows what it is, let alone how to use it. So although corporate partners might use it, individuals in the wider community might not. So don’t default to Twitter as your main point of contact. Twitter, email and office number are the best contact options to be accessible to all.

Internal Communications

Twitter is not just about external communications, it is also a useful channel to find out what else is going on in other parts of your organization. Follow other employees and departments in your organization.

Followers

Think about whom you would like to follow in terms of what conversations you want to be part of, learn about or think you should be involved with. Start by looking at your email address book and the professional association or organization partners in your industry.

Creating Lists

Lists a useful ways to organize who you are following into meaningful categories. It makes sifting through the large volume of tweets you receive. Developing lists of key people, organizations or association in your industry of interest to you, your organization and to share with your followers.

#hashtags

#hashtags are a useful way to categorise a stream of tweets about a specific topic. The more often a specific #hashtag is used the more popular or ‘trendy’ the topic. #hastags are also used around events to organize tweets from the event into one search stream.

Sustainability

Twitter is a not about short-term gain through campaign-led communications approach. It is about ongoing development and growth through dialogue. Take your time to developing a few Twitter habits, these are important for sustained activity. For example, when, where and for how long you use it a day? Which platform you most like to use to manage your account (e.g., Tweetdeck)?

Most importantly, be real and use your best judgment in what, how and to whom you converse.

Smiles
Kelly

* Cardiff News is the newsletter for staff and friends of Cardiff University. It features news and events, latest research, staff and student achievements. You can download

Source: Page, K. L. (2011) The power of #personality on #twitter, Cardiff News, Vol. 17 (7), p. 6.

Share and Enjoy

Collaborative learning has a diverse meaning, from group or team-based working, to peer-to-peer interaction on shared tasks. With the rise in dynamic ubiquitous digital technologies has provided another rich layer to collaborative learning as the need to learn how to collaborate now coexists with the need to learn how to use digital technologies.

Digital Mediated Collaborative Learning

Given the growth in digital media and its functionality to support and mediate team-based activities, we are seeing a rise in the interest in the use of digital tools to support and mediate collaborative learning, called digital mediated collaborative learning (hereafter DMCL). This study explores the use of Wiki technology for DMCL.

Commonly termed a Wiki, like Blogs and RSS, Wiki’s have been dubbed ‘social software’ because they facilitate social connections allowing users to develop digital content, collaboratively and open to a public. The term became synonymous with collaborative website design after programmer Ward Cunningham pioneered it in 1995 to discuss software design that enabled community content co-creation. However, wiki use for/in collaborative learning is no easy task. It requires the unlearning of old models socialized in a mindset of ‘I learn’ to the learning of new norms, processes and mindsets of ‘we learn’. Couple this with complex digital tools and the landscape for learning becomes quite complicated for the even the most digitally literate.

Limited past research exists on the use of Wiki’s in the contexts of management higher education or management learning and professional development. In this study we therefore reviewed the literature of two relevant situated contexts for the use of Wiki’s to our research study, the use of Wiki’s in management practice and the use of Wiki’s education.

The dominant discourse in management practice is the use of Wiki technology for productivity gains in the achievement of organizational goals (e.g., reduce cost, time, increase security, access) in project management and information sharing. In contrast in education, the focus is on the people and group learning. In this, the evolving paradigm around Wiki’s in education is focused on ‘learning to write and/or collaborate’, on text and interaction and the promotion of deep learning experiences, both in and outside the classroom, not just on technology and/or productivity’.

Drawing from these studies, we devised A Wiki Way of Learning to curricular design and trialed it’s use in two cohorts of postgraduate management education students.

A Wiki Way of Learning Trial

In the academic year 2008/2009 I introduced Wiki’s into my 8-week MBA Marketing Research class of 52 students to trial their use as the students worked on research projects in groups of 8-10. I designed the entire learning experience to work with the Wiki’s, from the class room activities, the group project, my involvement as module coordinator and the Wiki’s functional design in coexistence. I didn’t just tack on Wiki’s to a group project and tell the students to go off and use it, I designed the learning objectives and the project around weekly Wiki tasks, monitored student progress each week, provided weekly feedback and offered incentives. The Wiki was not just part of the group project, it was part of every class lecture and discussion.

The feedback from the students was very positive receiving the highest student ratings across all modules on the MBA (i.e., 4.7/5), and qualitative student insights into how it contributed to their learning experience. However, what I couldn’t report was insight to two very important questions:

1. Did the use of Wiki’s have a positive or negative impact on their learning of the module content?
2. What role did student levels of digital literacy play in their learning and Wiki experience?

With this first years learning of how to design and integrate Wiki’s into a management class environment, in the 2nd year I empirically explored these questions.

A Wiki Way of Learning Study

In the academic year 2009/2010 I continued the use of Wiki’s in my 8-week MBA Marketing Research class of 62 students, but this year I explored the interplay of student digital literacy, knowledge and Wiki use on domain learning and the quality of the student learning experience.

Findings from this study indicate a significant positive relationship between Wiki use and student domain learning as evidence by student performance in a multiple choice revision quiz (in class) and essay examination. The more pages and lines students edited, the higher their overall performance during revision and examination.

Consistent with the literature on digital literacy and knowledge, the study also revealled significant differences in student digital literacy, knowledge and Wiki use between male and female students. Female MBA students self-reported lower levels of digital literacy and knowledge than their male peers, however from log-file data female report significantly higher levels of Wiki use during the project. So even though the female students might under report or have less confidence in their perception of their skills and knowledge with digital technology, doesn’t necessarily mean they will use them any less than their male peers. This poses an interesting question for how we measure and evaluate digital literacy.

My Final Thoughts …

This was a great study to conduct with my students, one of great learning for them about using Wiki’s to collaborate to cocreate a project, and for me on how we integrate technology into learning contexts. I think this is important to inspire not just the learning of a domain or module content, but the learning of and about digital technology through the situated practice of ‘doing’, as opposed to telling.

Digital literacy, knowledge and learning is increasingly critical for management students and professionals of today and tomorrow. As management educators in higher education, it is imperative that we explore, study and adopt new and differing methods for digital mediated learning in our curricular, designing the learning experience with digital media as part of it, not separate to it or an add on, to ensure our students have the neccessary knowledge and skills to participate effectively in a world of dynamic ubiquitous digital mediation.

Thanks

Many thanks to Shashank Garg and Jennifer Smith, postgraduate students at Cardiff University for their research assistance in data collection; and the MBA Marketing Research Classes of 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 at Cardiff Business School for their participation. We’d also like to thank Professor Emmanuel Ogbonna, Lisa L’Homme and Neil Wellard who direct and manage the Cardiff MBA for their ongoing support and assistance during these studies.

Smiles

Kelly

p.s. for a copy of the draft manuscript currently under review, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Share and Enjoy

The special issue is entitled: “Consumer-generated, Co-created & Shared Content Through Social Media: Challenges for Consumer Researchers.”

This issue will explore a wide range of topics related to consumer behaviour through a social media enabled environment. Papers examining consumer participation and engagement in social media, consumer action and interaction through social media, and consumer creation and co-creation of content will be particularly appropriate.

Submission Deadline: 31st January 2011

For more information:

• Visit JCB Website
• Download the CFP (Pdf)

Smiles,

Kelly

Share and Enjoy

In this post, we reflect on something that perhaps we should all reflect on: What do the terms ‘friends’, ‘friendship’ and the action ‘being friendly’ means to us, others and in our social worlds! An important reflection, especially before we add people to our FB profile; share or tag photos with/of them; email, text, call or hang out with them or better yet … invite them to be part of our world! It’s funny, because these terms are not new, they are not words we are unfamiliar with. However their meaning is so ever fluid today, more than ever before … as our digital space evolves, as it merges more with our non-digital world as we transverse spaces, so does the language and narrative we use to think and discuss ‘friends’!

If someone ‘adds’ you on Facebook, are they really your friend? What are the elements that we association with being a friend and why add someone, especially someone we might not really know? Is this changing what we mean by the term ‘friend’ or just changing how we interact with people who ‘could’ be our friends! So let’s espouse …

Having Friends – Being Friendly – Developing Friendships!

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term ‘friend’ as:

1. A person whom one knows, likes, and trusts.
2. A person whom one knows; an acquaintance.
3. A person with whom one is allied in a struggle or cause; a comrade.
4. One who supports, sympathizes with, or patronizes a group, cause, or movement

In history … A friend is a lover, literally. The relationship between Latin amcus “friend” and am “I love” is clear, as is the relationship between Greek philos “friend” and phile “I love.” In English, though, we have to go back a millennium before we see the verb related to friend. At that time, frond, the Old English word for “friend,” was simply the present participle of the verb fron, “to love.” The Germanic root behind this verb is *fr-, which meant “to like, love, be friendly to.” Closely linked to these concepts is that of “peace,” and in fact Germanic made a noun from this root, *frithu-, meaning exactly that. Ultimately descended from this noun are the personal names Frederick, “peaceful ruler,” and Siegfried, “victory peace.” The root also shows up in the name of the Germanic deity Frigg, the goddess of love, who lives on today in the word Friday, “day of Frigg,” from an ancient translation of Latin Veneris dis, “day of Venus.”

So, from the above we can see characteristics and terms such as: “to know, knowledge of, to like, trust, love, is allied to, supportive of, sympathize with, peaceful, friendly to, lover of, someone I love” … a number for wonderful, deep and emotive words that create a psychological boundary around what is a ‘friend’ is, ‘how friends behave’ and ‘our relationship with them’…

But what about in digital social networks, such as on Facebook, where the term ‘friend’ is used alot? Blurring the lines between connectivity and deep emotive social bonds. Are we connecting to ‘have friends’; ‘develop friendships‘ or are we just ‘being friendly‘ by adding people we have just met, chatted to, shared an experience and thought/hope they might become part of intimate circle of people who are our currently our friends. People who we might work with, grew up with or have known forever – such as family … in this the term ‘friends‘ and the activity of ‘being friendly‘ is about developing social bonds. In this we evolve from weak ties to deeper stronger ties with people … developed based on our level and type of emotive connectedness with them – similar values, loves, hates, opinions … but at it’s core development of mutual trust, respect and … love!

Connectivity – Connections – Connectedness

So from this it is important to distinguish between a number of other terms cognisiant with and used to describe the digital media space … ‘having connectivity’, ‘adding connections’ and ‘developing connectedness’. The differential between these terms is about the extent or evolution from the technical bonds to the emotive social bonds between users of a system (i.e., nodes in a network) and the technical infrastructure that can and does connect them. In this sense,

• ‘having connectivity’ = is the ability and functionality of a digital system to ‘connect’ nodes in a networks – be it people, computers or data points … i.e., being connected to the Internet gives you connectivity!
• ‘add connections’ = is the number and quality of nodes that exist in a complex system – be it people, computers or data points’… i.e., being on Facebook and adding friends gives you connections!
• ‘developing connectedness’ = is the emotive social bonds between nodes in a network – and in this essence is more about human social bonds and social capital that you develop… i.e., engaging in dialogue and conversation with friends through Facebook gives you connectedness!

So in essence, ‘adding a friend’, ‘having friends‘, and ‘developing friendships’ are not one in the same – be it in an offline space such as at work or university or an online digital space such as Facebook. Connectivity through social networks most certainly might provide the digital opportunity for the latter to occur, however it is the deep rich social bonds and thus ‘connectedness’ between ‘friends’ in a network, that makes true, deep and lasting ‘friendships’ develop, grow and sustain … no matter if you are in an online or offline space …

So next time someone asks you to ‘Add’ them as a Facebook Friend, and thus you are giving them permission to see into the privacy of your world … ask yourself three questions:

1. ‘Are they really a friend?” [See the definition above!]
2. “Do you want to potentially build a friendship with them?”
3. OR “Are you just being friendly?”

Smiles

Kelly

P.s. “Family are the friends you grow up with; Friends the family your choose; and Strangers the friends you haven’t met yet” (Dr. Kelly Page, 2010).

Share and Enjoy