JOMC 191.3 Blogging, We the Media and Virtual Communities

The cover story on Forbes is fed by blog fear, a sort of the dark side of the Internet focusing only on blogs and bloggers. In “Attack of the Blogs,” the author, Daniel Lyons offers advice on how to counterattack bloggers that are causing your company troubles.
Should businesses fear blogs and bloggers? Are Lyons’ examples convincing and applicable to various companies and to journalism? Would you make the same recommendations?
Dan Gillmor, on his blog, and his readers, in comments to Gillmor’s posting, have their ideas.
Doc Searls talks about the Forbes story on his blog. He is friendlier than Gillmor. Well, somewhat.
BoingBoing’s Xeni and her readers comment.
UPDATE: Ed Cone who must watch every opinion show on TV notices that Forbes on Fox commentators don’t share the same viewpoint as blog-fearing (or blog-fear-mongering) author Daniel Lyons.
Let’s hear yours.

On Tuesday November 1, we won’t have class. I’m helping put on the UNC Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity and the Innovation Process at the Carolina Inn. If you are interested in dropping in on any of the Symposium, let me know and I’ll make sure you are blessed and admitted.
Don’t let Halloween stop you from coming. We have an impressive group of attendees, if I do say so myself.

The new discussion about the ban on blogs at the Catholic school reminded me of articles I saw this summer about a high school student in Memphis whose blog entries about being sent to a Christian rehabilitation center to “cure” his homosexuality drew national attention to his situation. His parents thought they could send him away and he would come back straight. Gay rights advocates nationwide took to his cause and offered their support. He ended up blogging about his appreciation for everyone’s support but asked them to leave him alone. He never meant to become anyone’s poster child.

I think we often forget that the virtual communities are comprised of real-life people. While what is said and done in the vitual world can be left there, one also runs the risk of having his comments brought into the real world. Maybe the concerns of the administrators at the Catholic school are more valid than some give them credit for.

I found an old article about this from NYT on LexisNexis.

The News and Observer discovers Facebook and describes it to readers in this article which appeared with lots of graphics in the center front of the State section today. UNC Researcher and Grad student Fred Stutzman gets to describe a bit of his own discoveries in about 3 sentences, but you’ve read more on this blog.

A speculation: Based on our reading would women have more active social networks than men? Any other Facebook gender differences that you might predict?

There IS a Dunkin Donuts blog!!!! Check it out! On DunkinDonutsTalk.com there’s even a poem about DD. Here’s an excerpt: “Dear Dunkin’ Donuts, you are my star
You keep me wide awake in class wherever you are, near or far.
I lovingly sip your luscious coffee
And sleep is exorcised like a demon from each deep dark corner of me….”

Steve Outing writes a how-to on how to elicit quality content from the public in his column Stop the Presses. The most interesting suggestion, I think, is to integrate community contributed content with staff content. He argues that when newspaper sites segregate reader generated content from staff content, would-be citizen journalists resent it. He writes, “This approach of treating community contributors as “second-class citizens” perhaps breeds inferior content by discouraging those who would produce some of the best citizen content from participating.” He also questions whether newspapers should offer training to citizen journalists. Is this condescending? He says some people don’t WANT to be journalists. (He also states his discomfort with the term “citizen journalists.”)

- Robin

The chapter talks a lot about who men and women are talking to, but doesn’t thoroughly discuss why they’re talking to these people. It addresses the different kinds of communication typical of each gender, but only touches on the relationships associated with men and women. On page 383-384 they say that woman started communicating with their cousins, then parents while men did it the other way around. It also talks about their communication with children and inlaws. But it seems to me that women were more likely to have better relationships with different members from the beginning, so they wouldn’t need to develop relationships with the same people as their male counterparts. I know, that in my family anyway, my mom got in touch with all kinds of long-lost relatives because she talked to her sisters and closer family members all the time as it was. but my dad has to initiate these relationships, so started with those he should have been close with from the begining. Has anyone else noticed a similar trend?

Rev. Kieran McHugh of Pope John XIII Regional High School in Sparta, NJ told an assembly of 900 students that anyone caught blogging would be suspended The Asbury Park Press reported today. McHugh said the primary motive was to protect the students from Internet predators as he told students to dismantle their sites on MySpace and Xanga or face the consequences.
The student handbook for Pope John XIII did not until this announcement prohibit posting personal information on the Internet. It did prohibit posting anything about the school without the school’s permission.

Marshall McLuhan coined the term “global village” a catchy term which immediately changed from McLuhan’s intent to be used in a friendly “It’s a small world afterall” sense.
Hampton and Wellman are aware of the McLuhan meaning (at least Wellman should be), but choose to use the now more popular “we are all neighbors” sense.

Did the results of the study of Netville enhance your understanding of your own net usage?
Did you expect more interaction and bonding with those other than weak ties?
Has having network access expanded your local network of friends (or does school do more of that)? (page 367)
Were you surprised that “Being connected to the local network has the same effect on boosting social contact as four more years of education or nearly 13 years of increased age.”? (page 368)
How have you used the net for support and over what distance? Has your network become denser?
Would you say agree that Chapel Hill or your hometown is like suburban Netville in that “the institutions that promote local interactions are in decline and often are rare.” (page 368)

We have discussed the way newspapers and other forms of mass media are using bloggers as sources in stories. As a class, we acknowleged the potential lack of credibility when citing blogs. I recently encountered more potential problems with blogs and the media. While covering an event last week I met a blogger. I mentioned this in class, but I thought I would elaborate on the class blog.

A man came up to me and introduced himself as a John Edwards blogger. He told me he has been following Edwards around for a few years now. The other journalists were very cold to him. He tried to get information from the other reporters and from me about how we have been treated when dealing with Edwards, how we felt about events, etc. He followed us up to the press conference which I found odd, but it wasn’t a formal event, so I disregarded it. While Edwards was friendly to him, he was not very inviting to his comments.

I think, before bloggers and blogs become common place in the media, they need to become accepted and respected by those in the media and the sources they are dealing with. This is one isolated incident, so it might not have been representative of all blogging situations, but it certainly is something to consider. I’m interested to know what anyone else thinks about this situation.