Day 2: Darwin Awareness is nice, but Rotten Tomatoes is great!
After examining the stalking tools – ahem, I mean, social analytics tools – out there, it is interesting that this seems to represent another level of disconnection. By this I mean, we are obviously so busy that we’ve gone from watching/reading the news, to reading blogs, to getting RSS feeds, to having the feeds focused and summarized for us. We want something to make it even more concise so we can get a quick idea at any time about what’s going on. I would assume that we would then follow in depth the issues that we deem important for our purposes. This has value for sure. No one wants to be out of the loop. Interesting, though, to think about what is gained from reading a blog or news article, and reading how it is being interpreted in comments and discussion. There is variability between the topic and the reaction to the topic. I wonder if this is captured as well in the ‘trending now’ types of information. For me, the ultimate useful tool of this type for the common man/woman is Rotten Tomatoes. By rounding up all the reviews out there, and providing an overall response to the movie, I see that its being discussed, I see why, and I see the overall outcome of the discussion.
Emily
Posted in: Week 12: Social Analytics
bcourey 4:29 pm on November 22, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Emily, I like your comment about stalking…ever since I read the readings for this week, I have felt a creepy sense of someone looking over my shoulder…not a good feeling. It also agree that we have come to a surface reading level through the RSS feeds, Scoop-it etc. instead of in-depth reading – and the fact that analytics is determining what I am going to read next is quiet disconcerting to me…Trending worries me
Brenda
Kristopher 9:25 am on November 23, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Emily and Brenda,
Agreed– it is worrisome. I found even more worrisome was the fact that we don’t get to control how google is filtering what we use. I have always enjoyed using google for its simplicity, but I think that that simplicity is in fact found in hiding from the user the ‘background’ of what’s going on.
What am I missing? It makes me doubt when I make statements like ‘everything I have seen lately’, or ‘I get a sense that…’, because those senses of things I have seen have been carefully censored and guided.
Kristopher
Allie 10:18 am on November 23, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
From all of your comments, it really strikes me that gaining this understanding of how social analytics works can really form a good base for teaching students how to conduct really good internet research, which as we know is such an essential skill. Perhaps we might even think of it as a key part of digital literacy.