Session 1

A complete bibliography of references in blog posts can be found here: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~gazan/ICS691-S11-syllabus.html

I first heard of this tragedy through an entry from Roger Ebert’s Twitter, which I subscribe to: http://twitter.com/ebertchicago/status/23832983249092608. Ebert tweets “How long will Palin leave these comments on her facebook?” and links to her Facebook status update: “My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today's tragic shooting in Arizona. On behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice.” Comments flew back and forth between posters, guessing who the shooter was, and what his/her political affiliations were (from the left or the right?). That is all I initially knew of it through these two social media outlets. I quickly consulted Google News for more information.  Who was Gabrielle Giffords? What had happened in Tucson? Was Palin in any way linked to/somehow responsible for this incident? 

I think the more vitriolic comments have since been taken down, but I surmise that they were there initially, from one commenter Lori’s recent post: “Many didn't blame her for the Tucson shooting, but asked her to join the call for civility in the country and take responsibility for whatever part she has personally played in it. She chose, instead, to remove anything that even looks like less than fan adoration instead.”

Palin’s connection to this incident has been linked to the now-infamous “crosshairs map,” targeting on-the-fence Democrats, which she posted on Facebook first, then tweeted about later. http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20110113/FREE/110119917. This article, “Sarah Palin learns Web has no Undo Feature” states: “Sometimes you make a mistake in the digital realm and you need to fix it. But once something is out on the Web and in social networks, you cannot erase it. Instead, you must apologize and move on.”

The crosshairs map has been cached and could remain in Google’s servers for eternity. The participant in Nardi’s (2004) study who blogged a famous quote to her followers “In a 100 years it will all be over,” may not have had such an incident in mind. Anything placed on the Internet then, (unfortunately?) becomes fair game. 

To elaborate more on Nardi’s study, it does bring up something that has already been discussed many times over in the zine community. Zines to me are basically the forerunner to the blog. Anyone with access to paper, ink, and a copy machine could self-publish and distribute what could be described as “magazines.” The topics ranged anywhere from the political to the personal (referred to sometimes as “perzines”). With perzines in particular, what should you publish… and what should instead be left in your diary? I recall an interview a popular perzine author who said almost the exact same thing in response to a question on how she decided what to publish about her personal life.

As a side note, I notice once in awhile that people who are lively, entertaining, energetic, witty in person... don't always translate this into their blogs. It can be a little disappointing. I wonder if it stems from not wanting to reveal too much about themselves in an online environment, or if the online environment just makes them uncomfortable. Conversely, sometimes a quiet person can suddenly becomes “alive” in online forums.

Something addressed in both Beer (2007) and Herring’s (2004) articles is the concept of Web 2.0’s more open, democratic, and participatory nature.  As in Herring’s study, Roger Ebert’s Twitter (though not exactly a blog) became my personal news filter, initially informing me of the incident. And as his followers know quite well (raise your hand!), his frequent daily updates, supplemented with his regular blog, more than make up for the 140-character tweet limit. So if he’s unable to make a point in one tweet within the 140-character limit, in the next few minutes he will roll out a series of tweets to clarify the last, or link to a detailed blog entry.

However open and participatory we may like the Web to be, there is a dark side, according to Tenopir (2007), who says, “When anyone can add unfiltered, unvetted, and unattributed information to a growing array of social networking sites—sites some people rely on for their news or research—we have a dangerous dumbing-down of culture.” I can only speak for myself, that I do know the difference between a credible source, and a deceptive one, but I can see where her concerns might arise from.

I didn’t talk about boyd (2007) or Dibbell (1998) yet in this entry, but I do have a brief comment for both. The concept of “copy-and-paste literacy” cited by boyd was novel and interesting for me. And reading Dibbell’s article brought me back to the novel Snow Crash. Was that the same for anyone else?

To me, social computing shifts away from pure computing, and places more of an emphasis on the user, especially communities of users. It's a useful framework to analyze and study communities that have grown from Internet applications.