Connected

Network characteristics  A social network is an organized set of people that consists of two kinds of elements: human beings and the connections between them.  Networks have shapes. Where you are in the network affects your experiences.

Rule 1: We shape our networks  We chose friends, many of them similar to us  We chose how many friends  We chose how much to connect our friends with each other  We chose how central we are in our networks

Rule 2: Our network shapes us  Are our friends connected?  How many friends do our friends have?

Rule 3: Our friends affect us  Rule 4: Our friends’ friends’ friends’ affect us.  Rule 5: The network has a life of its own  Six Degrees of Separation and Three Degrees of Influence

Stephen Mitchell Reading: History of News  Mitchell wrote about how surprised Europeans were at the speed at which news traveled in the African bush  The news traveled through social networks – it spread from village to village very efficiently, and given the tight connections in each village, could spread nearly instantly within villages.

As large cities developed  The “three degrees of influence” described in the Christakis readings meant that people no longer had access to all the news they might want or need to know, simply through their social networks  Another delivery mechanism for news developed to meet the demand: journalists and newspapers

Over time…  The development of more efficient means of transmitting information grew into the “mass media.”  Journalistic connections with “the public” grew less personal, less connected. Audiences became anonymous, indistinguishable masses.

Journalists  Still operated within social networks but the networks included mostly sources and other journalists  The ties that connected journalists to ‘the public’ were one-way ties, designed for information flows that were uni-directional

Cognitive Surplus, Clay Shirky  Describes the development of an economy that included more free time than individuals and society had ever had before  This ‘surplus of free time’ was spent in watching TV. Millions of people around the world spend millions of hours watching TV

The move from mass to networks  Technology and culture empower people to form diverse networks that operate alongside the mass media  These networks are destroying the economic model that allowed mass media to be stunningly successful businesses

The growth of networked journalism  Practiced by a much wider variety of people  To much more defined communities  With broader definitions of what counts as journalism  Using more distributed methods

We will still value professional journalists  But their role will change, from that of serving as an authority, an actor on behalf of the public  To a role as bridges, connectors, facilitators between and of networks

And we will have many more amateur journalists  People who commit acts of journalism  People who do journalism part-time  People who become experts in niche subjects  People who consume, share and produce news

Editors to Curators  Editors select what they think you should know and publish it.  “Curate suggests the functions of editing, aggregating, organizing, culling, directing or conducting.” (N. Elizabeth Schlatter)N. Elizabeth Schlatter

I have no interest in the news. I don’t go out and get news; the news comes to me. I’m always on a computer or on my phone getting news, on FB, watching Hulu I’d rather make something than watch something

Your curation and production  You are curating news for yourself and publishing it on your iGoogle site  With our Ning site, you are creating content and participating with others in making meaning  On the Wiki site you are creating collective knowledge (see Wikimania, 2006)Wikimania, 2006

Challenges  To create a collective study guide for the midterm  To pick a theme or a direction for our Rally for Sanity