March 30

INF506 – ALIA versus ALA

Both @ALIANational and @ALALibrary are Twitter accounts run by and representative of Australia and America’s Library Association bodies, respectively. As such, they have a lot in common, from the content they produce to the audience they attempt to appeal to.

A brief perusal of the contents of their tweets reveals that the content they ‘tweet’ or ‘retweet’ is related, and can be generally organised into three broad categories:

    1. Content relating to the continued running and public actions of the Association, including announcements about upcoming conferences and professional development opportunities; official recommendations or statements to other national and/or state bodies; and business deals/agreements.

    2. Content for and relevant to the work of information professionals, particularly those employed in libraries. These are often retweets, rather than original content produced by the Association.

    3. Content for members of the public who are interested in the broad related ‘fields’ of the Association, i.e. libraries, books, authors, and increasingly — technology.

 

In tweeting (and retweeting) such content, ALIA and ALA  are first and foremost attempting to reach their primary target audience, who consist of individuals employed in the information industry and other related fields, i.e. public/academic librarians, archivists, museum curators, publishers, etc. These individuals may be paying members of the Association, or conversely, have a vested interest in the work of the respective Association. To a lesser extent, these tweets are meant to appeal to members of the general public. These individuals may be regular patrons of libraries or have a broad interest in the work of the Association.

The appeal of these accounts — and the clear discrepancy between the success of each Association — is evidenced in the amount of ‘followers’ for each account, as well the engagement expressed through ‘hearts’, retweets and discussion/comment on each tweet.

A brief analysis of the engagement on ALIA’s last 10 tweets reveals that they received, on average, only 0.5 comments, 3.8 retweets, and 6.6 likes, per tweet. In these 10 tweets, the most popular one was a retweet from Yarra Plenty Library, which offered to print and post essential documents free of charge (2020, March 30). The people who liked this tweet were mostly librarians employed in the Melbourne area, as evidenced by bios.

Meanwhile, data from ALA’s previous 10 tweets revealed that they received, on average, 0.9 comments, 19.2 retweets, and 43.5 likes, per tweet. Their most popular tweet was a link to a NY Times article about how artists were responding to school closures, which received more than 130 likes and 62 retweets (2020, March 28).

The discrepancy in this engagement could be explained by any number of things. It could be simply because ALA reaches a much wider audience (205.8K followers) compared to ALIA’s (10.9K). I also observed that ALA used #hashtags more frequently than ALIA, meaning that interested people following particular hashtags were more likely to find ALA’s tweets than ALIA’s. What is interesting to note is that ALIA has tweeted a lot more frequently than ALA, with 29.1K tweets compared to 24.2K respectively.

Overall though, ALA far outperforms ALIA, reaching a wider audience and demonstrating more user engagement. It also proves that sometimes it’s quality (i.e. hashtags) over quantity.

 

Reference List

American Library Association [@ALALibrary]. (2020, March 28). School closings are a drastic change for kids at this challenging time, so authors are stepping up on social media to keep them engaged [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/ALALibrary/status/1243692027897880577.

Yarra Plenty Library [YarraPlentyLib]. (2020, March 30). Printing and posting services [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/YarraPlentyLib/status/1244451232283906048?s=20.

 

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March 20

INF506 – The Influence of Technology on Society

Although many people have attempted to outline the ways in which society is changing because of technology, few summarise it as succinctly as David Wiley (2008), who outlines five significant shifts in our society because of Web 2.0, namely a movement from:

  1. Analog to digital forms
  2. Tethered to mobile technologies
  3. Isolated to connected experiences
  4. Generic to personal user networks
  5. Closed systems to open systems of information

All of these shifts have presented unprecedented challenges — as well as unique opportunities — for organisations wishing to remain relevant and fulfil their purposes in an increasingly online world.

First, analog to digital forms. In the most obvious example of this, paper as a physical format is quickly giving way to digital documents which are easier to search, copy, share and organise. For organisations, this may mean adapting not how they offer their services, but also potentially what they offer. For instance, many libraries have begun cultivating digital collections of e-books and audiobooks, offering these to patrons as an alternative to physical books.

Second, society is no longer tethered to desks and landlines to work, but can now enjoy the benefits of mobile technologies from anywhere. In fact, 5.19 billion people globally use mobile phones, with mobile phones accounting for 53.3% of all web traffic (We Are Social, 2020). EDUCAUSE argued in their 2020 report that although mobile learning had existed for over 10 years, the ‘future’ of this trend was to focus on connectivity and convenience (p. 21). This is of particular relevance to organisations, as they must consider how people are consuming content, and therefore make their content mobile-friendly.

Third, isolated to connected experiences. Using social media and Web 2.0 technologies, organisations are no longer isolated but instead, belong to connected and global networks. For organisations, this is an opportunity to exploit their potential connectivity and market themselves to a much wider audience, as well as using their audience (through social media, reviews etc.) to market them.

(Visualising the Networked World, n.d.)

Fourth, generic to personal networks. The world of social media and social networks has opened the possibilities for finding individuals and organisations who share the same interests and goals. For organisations, there is also the potential of communicating with individuals on a person-by-person basis through Web 2.0 technologies, thus cultivating relationships with users to create a more personal user experience.

Fifth, closed systems to open systems. Technology has quite literally opened the world in which we live in, becoming an indispensable part of our lives. If organisations fail to acknowledge this and tap into the potential that this new world offers, they risk becoming irrelevant and failing at their purpose. 

 

 

Reference List

EDUCAUSE (2019). Horizon Report: 2019 Higher Education Edition. Retrieved March 16, 2020 from https://library.educause.edu/resources/2019/4/2019-horizon-report.

Visualising the Networked World [Graphic]. (n.d.). Connected World. Retrieved from https://connectedworld.com/visualizing-the-networked-world/.

We Are Social (2020). Digital 2020 – Global Digital Overview. Retrieved March 23, 2020 from https://wearesocial.com/au/blog/2020/01/digital-2020-3-8-billion-people-use-social-media.

Wiley, D., & Hilton III, J. (2009). Openness, Dynamic Specialization, and the Disaggregated Future of Higher Education. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 10(5). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v10i5.768

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March 11

INF506 – Assessment 1

‘Web 2.0′ is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of websites and applications that allow users to create and share information/content they have created (Thompson, 2008). Colloquially, these applications and websites are referred to as ‘social network sites’, and what you do when engaging is called ‘social networking’.

In a professional sense, however, I believe that ‘social networking’ is perhaps too simple a phrase to comprise the entirety of my actions with and on social media. Although social in nature, my actions are not simply social. Thus, I am more comfortable with defining professional ‘social networks’ as ‘social learning networks‘, as this indicates a clear difference in the purpose of engagement. As a professional employed in the library and education industries, I use social learning networks to connect with and learn alongside people who share my passions or are employed in similar fields.

As such, I like to keep these spaces — one for learning, one for social communication — separate. For instance, I use Facebook as a means of communicating with family and friends, while I use Twitter to engage in learning with and from colleagues and other professionals. I do blur the lines, however, by using Instagram for both professional and personal purposes because the visual nature makes it easy to consume and mentally categorise the content.

It is abundantly clear that Web 2.0 technologies have transformed the manner in which we consume, share, and create information — not only with local or national scale but also on a global one. In INF506, I expect that I will gain a better understanding of this transformation, particularly in the context of libraries. I also sincerely hope that by engaging in this social learning network, I am able to apply the developed theoretical knowledge in my own context.

 

Stock image showing stick-figure people who are all inter-linked by dotted lines.

(EdTechTeam, 2020)

 

Word Count: 299

 

Reference List

EdTechTeam (2020). Personal learning networks [Image]. Retrieved 11 March, 2020 from https://www.edtechteam.com/blog/2012/02/personal-learning-networks-for/.

Thompson, H. (2008). Wikis, Blogs & Web 2.0 technology. Retrieved 11 March, 2020 from https://copyright.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/1773830/wikisblogsweb2blue.pdf

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March 5

INF506 – Social Media and Protest

In their article, Anatomy of a Protest, Karduni and Sauda (2020) set out to study and gain an understanding of the relationship between social media, urban space and the community members of said urban space. Due to the potential scale of this topic, they limit the focus of their research to one instance of a Black Lives Matter protest that occurred in Charlotte, North Carolina, in September 2016. The protests, which went on for 3 days, were a response to the fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott by police.

Using a mixed-method approach, and collecting both quantitative and qualitative data (i.e. spatial statistics and interviews), Karduni and Sauda discuss how social media was used by both pro- and anti-movement protesters to motivate, communicate, organise and participate in the protests. They reflect extensively upon the fact that protesters used particular urban spaces deliberately, being mindful of the impact that they would have on police response and the physical flow of the city.

They conclude by succinctly summarising that social media, public space and community are an integrated system. Social media provides the practical means by which community members are motivated and protests organised, while urban spaces provide public stages for the expression of pressing injustices that connect people and can create networks that are extended through social media.

Karduni and Sauda’s paper is strengthened by the fact that they themselves acknowledge a possible limitation to the study: namely, that it is focussed on a single series of related events in a single city. See below a video (TODAY, 2016) that explains the incident and corresponding protests.

There are, however, other limitations that Karduni and Sauda (2020) fail to address and these weaken their argument.

Firstly, by limiting their focus to a case study, they accept the potential restrictions associated with selecting the Lamont Scott shooting. Unlike other Black Lives Matter protests that were occurring at the time because typically unarmed African-Americans were being harmed by police, Lamont Scott was 43-years-old (i.e. not a vulnerable child and/or teenager) and was allegedly armed at the time of the incident. Karduni and Sauda do not address whether his age or his supposed possession of a firearm impacted community response, and therefore the public support protests.

Secondly, they do not ever note that Lamont was shot by an African-American officer, rather than one of another ethnicity. In failing to acknowledge this, they also fail to note whether this impacted the response given by the community, and whether this impacted their study of this one protest.

In conclusion, Karduni and Sauda’s study is an interesting discussion on the power of social media in protests, and the role that it plays both in virtual and physical spaces. There is no doubt that social media can be used as a tool to communicate information and ideologies surrounding protests. There are however obvious limitations to Karduni and Sauda’s study, and if a more dynamic understanding of the intersection between social media, physical space and protests is to be had, comparison of protests are needed.

 

Reference List

Karduni, A. & Sauda, E. (2020). Anatomy of a Protest: Spatial Information, Social Media, and Urban Space. Social Media and Society, 6(1). DOI: 10.1177/2056305119897320

TODAY. (2016, September 22). Protests Erupt in Charlotte After Police Fatally Shoot Keith Lamont Scott [YouTube Clip]. Retrieved March 5, 2020 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb5jvZcqiv0

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