etc@bmc
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Emergence and Blogs
Tomorrow I'm giving a talk for the Emergence Research Group on Emergence and Blogs. Here are my notes and links.
First, let me announce that I am an avid blogger (twice-nominated for a blog award) but not a scientist or mathematician or sociologist. I am fascinated by blogging and its emergent properties. So, I may not be able to fully explain all the math, but together we can tease out the implications of emergence in blogging and media and education and anything else we can think of.
Blogs make up a complex network, a scale-free network, in fact, as described by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi in Linked. He and his team were actually looking at the web more generally, but since blogs are part of the web, they follow the same structure. Scale-free networks contain hubs that are more highly connected that other nodes. Think in terms of airport hubs. The power law phenomena can be observed in blog networks.
One thing I want to think about is the connected between the blog network and the people behind the blogs. What effect does a person's personality have on the likelihood that he/she will be linked to? Or are the connections simply following the laws of the network?
Here are some examples of emergent blog activity that may get us thinking about these questions (and more!)
First, a study of blogs during the 2004 election cycle. A picture is worth 1000 words.
The colors reflect political orientation,red for conservative, and blue for liberal. Orange links go from liberal to conservative, and purple ones from conservative to liberal. The size of each blog reflects the number of other blogs that link to it.
What Adamic and Glance found was that, in general, blogs of a color stuck together. Not only do blogs of a particular leaning tend to link to similar blogs, but blogs in one category tend to link to similar msm sources. For example, liberal blogs are more likely to link to the NY Times than conservative ones.
Is the clustering around political ideology a negative outcome? How representative of the blogosphere as a whole is this? In other words, do people whose blogs aren't political in nature tend to cluster this way? Can we break free? We'll see more about this in a minute.
Let's shift to something more positive. One of the functions of the blogosphere, seemingly, has been to call attention to underreported news stories. An example of this happened in Philadelphia this summer when Latoyia Figueroa, a 24-year-old pregnant woman disappeared. While CNN and other major news outlets were focused on Natalee Holloway, an upper middle-class Alabama girl who'd disappeared earlier in the summer, local bloggers tried to get them to pay attention to Figueroa's story.
Here's the chronicle of that effort, including links to bloggers who joined in the "swarm" effort to gain the attention of the media. The Inquirer and CNN finally took up the story, 10 days after she'd disappeared and 6 days after blogger Richard Blair began reporting it.
Bloggers also raised money for tsunami relief, hurricaine katrina relief, and continually work to raise money for various causes. They also had the first pictures of these events, and others, such as the London Underground bombing.
Let's talk about Google Bombing. Because of the way Google works and because of the structure of the network, sites that are linked to using certain words rise up the ranks in Google. So, for example, if lots and lots of people use the words miserable failure to link to George Bush's biography, when someone searches for "miserable failure" in Google, it's more likely that the first link on the page will be to George Bush's biography. Most people usually click on the first link they see in the search results, again increasing that site's rank in that particular search. The "miserable failure" Google bomb is mostly for fun and games, but some are of real significance. For example, one might think that doing a Google search for Roe v. Wade would take you to the case itself. For a while, that wasn't true. The first link when doing a search for Roe v. Wade was actually to a right to life site. Thanks in part to a Google Bomb campaign by bloggers, the first link is to the case itself. In fact, as a result of the Alito confirmation hearings, most of the first results are to the case or to other pro-choice related resources.
Okay, so what does all this mean?
A personal look. Here's a sampling of my own network.
And another section:
First, let me announce that I am an avid blogger (twice-nominated for a blog award) but not a scientist or mathematician or sociologist. I am fascinated by blogging and its emergent properties. So, I may not be able to fully explain all the math, but together we can tease out the implications of emergence in blogging and media and education and anything else we can think of.
Blogs make up a complex network, a scale-free network, in fact, as described by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi in Linked. He and his team were actually looking at the web more generally, but since blogs are part of the web, they follow the same structure. Scale-free networks contain hubs that are more highly connected that other nodes. Think in terms of airport hubs. The power law phenomena can be observed in blog networks.
One thing I want to think about is the connected between the blog network and the people behind the blogs. What effect does a person's personality have on the likelihood that he/she will be linked to? Or are the connections simply following the laws of the network?
Here are some examples of emergent blog activity that may get us thinking about these questions (and more!)
First, a study of blogs during the 2004 election cycle. A picture is worth 1000 words.
The colors reflect political orientation,red for conservative, and blue for liberal. Orange links go from liberal to conservative, and purple ones from conservative to liberal. The size of each blog reflects the number of other blogs that link to it.
What Adamic and Glance found was that, in general, blogs of a color stuck together. Not only do blogs of a particular leaning tend to link to similar blogs, but blogs in one category tend to link to similar msm sources. For example, liberal blogs are more likely to link to the NY Times than conservative ones.
Is the clustering around political ideology a negative outcome? How representative of the blogosphere as a whole is this? In other words, do people whose blogs aren't political in nature tend to cluster this way? Can we break free? We'll see more about this in a minute.
Let's shift to something more positive. One of the functions of the blogosphere, seemingly, has been to call attention to underreported news stories. An example of this happened in Philadelphia this summer when Latoyia Figueroa, a 24-year-old pregnant woman disappeared. While CNN and other major news outlets were focused on Natalee Holloway, an upper middle-class Alabama girl who'd disappeared earlier in the summer, local bloggers tried to get them to pay attention to Figueroa's story.
Here's the chronicle of that effort, including links to bloggers who joined in the "swarm" effort to gain the attention of the media. The Inquirer and CNN finally took up the story, 10 days after she'd disappeared and 6 days after blogger Richard Blair began reporting it.
Bloggers also raised money for tsunami relief, hurricaine katrina relief, and continually work to raise money for various causes. They also had the first pictures of these events, and others, such as the London Underground bombing.
Let's talk about Google Bombing. Because of the way Google works and because of the structure of the network, sites that are linked to using certain words rise up the ranks in Google. So, for example, if lots and lots of people use the words miserable failure to link to George Bush's biography, when someone searches for "miserable failure" in Google, it's more likely that the first link on the page will be to George Bush's biography. Most people usually click on the first link they see in the search results, again increasing that site's rank in that particular search. The "miserable failure" Google bomb is mostly for fun and games, but some are of real significance. For example, one might think that doing a Google search for Roe v. Wade would take you to the case itself. For a while, that wasn't true. The first link when doing a search for Roe v. Wade was actually to a right to life site. Thanks in part to a Google Bomb campaign by bloggers, the first link is to the case itself. In fact, as a result of the Alito confirmation hearings, most of the first results are to the case or to other pro-choice related resources.
Okay, so what does all this mean?
A personal look. Here's a sampling of my own network.
And another section:
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
The Wikipedia
During the month of December, the controversy over a Wikipedia entry about John Siegenthaler, Sr. came to a head, bubbling its way up from the Internet to the mainstream media. The controversy, chronicled quite well in the Wikipedia itself (with links to further information), arose after someone, an anti-Wikipedia activist it turns out, posted erroneous information about Siegenthaler. He tried to find out who the writer was by contacting his ISP and even contacted the founder of Wikipedia himself. What many have said in response to Siegenthaler's ire is "Why didn't you change the entry yourself?" Because, unlike a print resource, you can.
I've been in arguments with many people about the Wikipedia. They think it's the worst thing ever made and that its facts are incorrect and they won't let their students use it. It's not bound, so therefore, it's not authoritative. Nature magazine studied the accuracy of both Encyclopedia Britannica and the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia fared pretty well. It's not significantly less accurate than a bound encyclopedia, nor is it significantly better. These resources are jumping off points, not in depth research sources.
What I think gets people riled up about the Wikipedia is that it changes our notions about authority. We academics place a lot of weight on fairly conservative concepts of authority. Authority must be granted, conferred via degrees or by someone who has already been granted authority. It doesn't just arise out of the blue. Every discipline has a hierarchy of authority which is sometimes based solely on merit and sometimes simply based on certain associations. Think about the way schools are ranked, the way certain publishers "count" more than others. Someone who has a degree from school "x" is "better than" school "y" or journal article "f" is "better than" journal article "k" because that journal comes out of university press "z." Just navigating this hierarchy should be a graduate-level course.
The Wikipedia is decentralized, "edited" by the masses. And this idea that the "masses" have any authority scares the heck out of some people. Sure, they get it wrong sometimes, but so does the Encyclopedia Britannica with its host of editors. And how many times have you seen spelling or factual errors in a book? Plenty, I'm sure. If you see something incorrect in a book, there's not a lot of recourse. You can write the publishing company and if they publish another edition, they might fix it. If you see something incorrect in the Wikipedia, you can fix it yourself and it appears immediately corrected.
It's not that I think academic publishing doesn't have its place. Certainly, it does. But one can expand one's idea of authority to include things like the Wikipedia, web sites, blogs, etc. And one has to recognize the Wikipedia for what it is: an encyclopedia, which has never been a the only source one turns to for important research.
wikipedia
I've been in arguments with many people about the Wikipedia. They think it's the worst thing ever made and that its facts are incorrect and they won't let their students use it. It's not bound, so therefore, it's not authoritative. Nature magazine studied the accuracy of both Encyclopedia Britannica and the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia fared pretty well. It's not significantly less accurate than a bound encyclopedia, nor is it significantly better. These resources are jumping off points, not in depth research sources.
What I think gets people riled up about the Wikipedia is that it changes our notions about authority. We academics place a lot of weight on fairly conservative concepts of authority. Authority must be granted, conferred via degrees or by someone who has already been granted authority. It doesn't just arise out of the blue. Every discipline has a hierarchy of authority which is sometimes based solely on merit and sometimes simply based on certain associations. Think about the way schools are ranked, the way certain publishers "count" more than others. Someone who has a degree from school "x" is "better than" school "y" or journal article "f" is "better than" journal article "k" because that journal comes out of university press "z." Just navigating this hierarchy should be a graduate-level course.
The Wikipedia is decentralized, "edited" by the masses. And this idea that the "masses" have any authority scares the heck out of some people. Sure, they get it wrong sometimes, but so does the Encyclopedia Britannica with its host of editors. And how many times have you seen spelling or factual errors in a book? Plenty, I'm sure. If you see something incorrect in a book, there's not a lot of recourse. You can write the publishing company and if they publish another edition, they might fix it. If you see something incorrect in the Wikipedia, you can fix it yourself and it appears immediately corrected.
It's not that I think academic publishing doesn't have its place. Certainly, it does. But one can expand one's idea of authority to include things like the Wikipedia, web sites, blogs, etc. And one has to recognize the Wikipedia for what it is: an encyclopedia, which has never been a the only source one turns to for important research.
wikipedia
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Who's afraid of the internet?
As at all ed tech conferences, there was lots of talk about leveraging the internet for education the Mid-Atlantic Regional Educause Conference. My own talk was a discussion of the use by Michelle Francl and others of podcasting and screencasting technology. The conference is made up of people across all sections of a typical IT deparment--educators, technologists, administrators, network engineers and more. Everyone has their own particular concerns. Mine is thinking about the best, easiest and most effective ways to use technology to make learning better. And, for me, the internet is one of the best tools to achieve many learning goals. However, there are others who are clearly concerned, worried, even afraid of the internet.
This fear came across in questions such as
Putting your work online is risky, but as Steve Lawrence thoroughly explains, freely available articles get cited more often. Part of the problem in putting work online lies in copyright law where people aren't always sure how to protect their work and what recourse they might have if they find they've been plagiarized (see Creative Commons for some options). But a bigger part of the problem might be the requirements for promotion and tenure. This year, the MLA made a resolution that English departments should should stop considering the monograph to be the main requirement for tenure. There are good economic reasons for this and it's good to see the organization moving in what I think is the right direction. A scenario that connects their resolution to online publication might go as follows. A young tenure-track faculty member decides to keep a research blog for work on her monograph that will, hopefully, get her tenure. Someone stumbles upon the blog, co-opts her ideas and publishes a book before the young professor gets a chance to. Sure, the professor might have a court case, but she has lost her tenure run.
Then there's the student side of the equation. People are afraid to put them out into the world. Instead, they want to keep them in course management systems or other protected sites where the only people they're interacting with are their classmates and their professor. All this does is replicate the physical classroom. Putting their work online--publicly--takes them beyond that protective environment. And they can learn from that in ways they can't learn from just their classmates. They can see how real people react to their ideas. They can be forced to contend with those reactions. And yes, there are risks in doing that. But there are ways of still protecting the students. You can use pseudonyms. And you, as the professor, should always be there as a guide to help them learn from the experience.
Why put any work out there in the first place, whether yours or your students'? Fundamentally, it's to connect to real human beings. It's not about the technology, though the technology enables the connections to be made. We all want to hear from people, whether it's to argue with us or to agree with us. Part of the academic endeavor is to investigate, question, throw some ideas out there to see what people think. If you're an academic who attends conferences, publishes papers and books, you get that opportunity all the time. The internet enables your students and regular folk, like me, to have that opportunity as well. And it's well worth the risks.
My message to those asking the questions that express a certain fear: what are you really afraid of? An inability to control learning? The unwashed masses who might sneer at your work, or worse, steal it? Instead of blaming the internet for your fear, figure out how to prevent what you fear from happening. The answer isn't to stay away from the internet, but to figure out how to use it to your benefit.
This fear came across in questions such as
- "What if someone steals your materials?" in response to my presentation
- "Why would anyone want to make their work public?" in response to a discussion of eportfolios
- "How do you handle students who may write things they're not proud of?" in a hallway discussion about class blogging
Putting your work online is risky, but as Steve Lawrence thoroughly explains, freely available articles get cited more often. Part of the problem in putting work online lies in copyright law where people aren't always sure how to protect their work and what recourse they might have if they find they've been plagiarized (see Creative Commons for some options). But a bigger part of the problem might be the requirements for promotion and tenure. This year, the MLA made a resolution that English departments should should stop considering the monograph to be the main requirement for tenure. There are good economic reasons for this and it's good to see the organization moving in what I think is the right direction. A scenario that connects their resolution to online publication might go as follows. A young tenure-track faculty member decides to keep a research blog for work on her monograph that will, hopefully, get her tenure. Someone stumbles upon the blog, co-opts her ideas and publishes a book before the young professor gets a chance to. Sure, the professor might have a court case, but she has lost her tenure run.
Then there's the student side of the equation. People are afraid to put them out into the world. Instead, they want to keep them in course management systems or other protected sites where the only people they're interacting with are their classmates and their professor. All this does is replicate the physical classroom. Putting their work online--publicly--takes them beyond that protective environment. And they can learn from that in ways they can't learn from just their classmates. They can see how real people react to their ideas. They can be forced to contend with those reactions. And yes, there are risks in doing that. But there are ways of still protecting the students. You can use pseudonyms. And you, as the professor, should always be there as a guide to help them learn from the experience.
Why put any work out there in the first place, whether yours or your students'? Fundamentally, it's to connect to real human beings. It's not about the technology, though the technology enables the connections to be made. We all want to hear from people, whether it's to argue with us or to agree with us. Part of the academic endeavor is to investigate, question, throw some ideas out there to see what people think. If you're an academic who attends conferences, publishes papers and books, you get that opportunity all the time. The internet enables your students and regular folk, like me, to have that opportunity as well. And it's well worth the risks.
My message to those asking the questions that express a certain fear: what are you really afraid of? An inability to control learning? The unwashed masses who might sneer at your work, or worse, steal it? Instead of blaming the internet for your fear, figure out how to prevent what you fear from happening. The answer isn't to stay away from the internet, but to figure out how to use it to your benefit.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
History Blog Awards
Cliopatria, a group history blog (wonderful in and of itself), has announced awards for the best history blogs out there. I'd like to single out Swarthmore's Timothy Burke and his Easily Distracted blog. He won for best writer. I concur. I think it's all his fault I started blogging in the first place.
Friday, January 13, 2006
Click and Double-Click: Episode something
We've lost count already, but here's a new episode of click and double-click. We talk about the Regional Educause Conference, open source software and other stuff. Check us out.
click and double-click
click and double-click
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Try something new in the new year
My 6 year old daughter, a notoriously picky eater, resolved to try new foods in the new year. So far, she's tried lasagna and pierogies.
The new year is generally a good time to try something new, so I offer some new technology-related things to try.
1. Firefox--I've been using Firefox forever. It's based on Mozilla. It's more secure than IE* and has more features like tabbed browsing. Firefox also has free extensions, little add-on programs for your browser. You can see the weather in your status bar and other cool things. Try em; you'll like em.
2. Social Bookmarking--As someone who uses 3 different computers on any given day, social bookmarking has been a godsend. I can save articles I want to read or have read but want to refer back to. Most social bookmarking tools also offer categorizing and a "people who've read this site have also read . . ." feature (what I call the Amazon feature). I personally use both Furl and CiteULike, but there are plenty of other good ones out there.
3. Flickr--Flickr is a photo sharing site. It's very easy to upload photos, tag them and then share them as you see fit. It's been used in some educational applications. Even if you don't use it to store your own photos, it's a wonderful resource for finding photos.
4. Blogging--Blogging has become quite the phenomenon. There are now about 23 million blogs out there and many of them are quite good. You can create your own blog by using one of the freely available blogging software applications, such as Blogger or, for a small fee, Typepad. Or you can use the Bryn Mawr blog site. Not ready to create your own? Reading blogs is a great way to keep up with news or a specific topic. Search for blogs using Technorati or Google's new blog search. I have a few academically oriented blogs listed here, or check the sidebar for good educational technology blogs. Keep up with your blogs using an RSS reader such as Bloglines.
5. Podcasting--Podcasting is like audio blogging or like amateur radio, however you want to think about it. We have our own podcast. And I know a couple of top ten podcasters. Like blogging, you don't have to create your own to participate (though it's really easy). You also don't have to have a shiny new mp3 player to listen to them. Find podcasts via iTunes or via a directory like Odeo. You can download them to your mp3 player or listen to them online. Since I got some speakers for my iPod, I've been listening to podcasts all around the house. It's a great way to keep up when you don't have the time to sit down and read something. You can also subscribe to podcasts so that you get new episodes automatically. Podcasts are generally both informative and fun and a lot of media outlets have podcasts: CNN, NPR, PBS to name a few.
6. Open Source Software--Even if you're not ready for a full-blown open source operating system like Linux, there are plenty of open source applications for the mac and windows. I'm using Open Office for Windows and AbiWord for the Mac. Both are quite excellent applications. Open Office is a great substitute for Microsoft Office.
7. Tablet PC--I have a few around in the ETC if you want to try one out. I'm presenting on the use of tablets next week. There's a lot of potential for tablets and they've come down in price enough that it makes them well within reach.
8. Video editing--Want to create some clips for a presentation or class? Try out some simple video editing applications. The New Media Lab comes equipped with tools for both the mac and the pc. Create your clips, burn them to CD/DVD or stream them. It's really not that hard.
That's all I can think of for now. Do you have suggestions for me or others? Feel free to leave a comment and I'll update this post.
The new year is generally a good time to try something new, so I offer some new technology-related things to try.
1. Firefox--I've been using Firefox forever. It's based on Mozilla. It's more secure than IE* and has more features like tabbed browsing. Firefox also has free extensions, little add-on programs for your browser. You can see the weather in your status bar and other cool things. Try em; you'll like em.
2. Social Bookmarking--As someone who uses 3 different computers on any given day, social bookmarking has been a godsend. I can save articles I want to read or have read but want to refer back to. Most social bookmarking tools also offer categorizing and a "people who've read this site have also read . . ." feature (what I call the Amazon feature). I personally use both Furl and CiteULike, but there are plenty of other good ones out there.
3. Flickr--Flickr is a photo sharing site. It's very easy to upload photos, tag them and then share them as you see fit. It's been used in some educational applications. Even if you don't use it to store your own photos, it's a wonderful resource for finding photos.
4. Blogging--Blogging has become quite the phenomenon. There are now about 23 million blogs out there and many of them are quite good. You can create your own blog by using one of the freely available blogging software applications, such as Blogger or, for a small fee, Typepad. Or you can use the Bryn Mawr blog site. Not ready to create your own? Reading blogs is a great way to keep up with news or a specific topic. Search for blogs using Technorati or Google's new blog search. I have a few academically oriented blogs listed here, or check the sidebar for good educational technology blogs. Keep up with your blogs using an RSS reader such as Bloglines.
5. Podcasting--Podcasting is like audio blogging or like amateur radio, however you want to think about it. We have our own podcast. And I know a couple of top ten podcasters. Like blogging, you don't have to create your own to participate (though it's really easy). You also don't have to have a shiny new mp3 player to listen to them. Find podcasts via iTunes or via a directory like Odeo. You can download them to your mp3 player or listen to them online. Since I got some speakers for my iPod, I've been listening to podcasts all around the house. It's a great way to keep up when you don't have the time to sit down and read something. You can also subscribe to podcasts so that you get new episodes automatically. Podcasts are generally both informative and fun and a lot of media outlets have podcasts: CNN, NPR, PBS to name a few.
6. Open Source Software--Even if you're not ready for a full-blown open source operating system like Linux, there are plenty of open source applications for the mac and windows. I'm using Open Office for Windows and AbiWord for the Mac. Both are quite excellent applications. Open Office is a great substitute for Microsoft Office.
7. Tablet PC--I have a few around in the ETC if you want to try one out. I'm presenting on the use of tablets next week. There's a lot of potential for tablets and they've come down in price enough that it makes them well within reach.
8. Video editing--Want to create some clips for a presentation or class? Try out some simple video editing applications. The New Media Lab comes equipped with tools for both the mac and the pc. Create your clips, burn them to CD/DVD or stream them. It's really not that hard.
That's all I can think of for now. Do you have suggestions for me or others? Feel free to leave a comment and I'll update this post.
