A Twitter Story

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In the class forum and here on the blog, I’ve been critical of social media all term.  I’ve expressed a wariness of adopting each new shiny thing, and a hesitance to stray from my tried-and-true paths.  I’d just like to say clearly that I am not a Luddite.  I do not fear new technology.  I think my issue is more that it seems like I could spend all my time learning new systems and never really using them.

Anyways, today I’d like to tell a happy story about social media.  I promise it’ll get to LIS work eventually, so bear with me.

Last summer, I noticed a tweet from a choir I follow.  Chanticleer is considered one of the world’s leading male choruses, and they happen to be based in San Francisco, only an hour’s drive from where I grew up.  My parents and I go to their annual Christmas concert at Stanford every year.

The tweet said that the next twenty people to email the Chanticleer organization would win a pair of tickets to one of the “Mission Road” performances (music from the Mexican Baroque period and the California Missions).  I emailed, and I won a pair of tickets to the performance at Santa Clara Mission.

Because the tickets were held at will call, I had to arrive half an hour early, and so I went into the mission to look around. Santa Clara Mission is lovely – it’s attached to a university, so it’s one of the better-preserved missions in California.  As I was looking around, a woman came up and introduced herself as Liv, the new Director of Development for Chanticleer.  She didn’t know I’d won a pair of tickets, she just noticed that I was a good 20 years younger than anyone else in the room!

In the course of conversation, I asked (as a joke) if Chanticleer needed a music archivist.

About two weeks later, I got an email from Chanticleer asking if I was the “student archivist Liv met at Santa Clara” and if so, would I be interested in working on a project for the choir.

Though the networking was in person, I credit Twitter with getting the ball rolling on what is a remarkable opportunity for me.  Next week I’m flying back to California for the culmination of this project: Chanticleer’s 35th anniversary gala.  I did archival research, outreach to alumni, and created designs for the Memory Lane exhibit about the group’s history. It’s been challenging to work on this from 1000 miles away, but the chance to be both project archivist and exhibit designer for a Grammy-winning choir to which I listen at least once a week…

Well, how could I say no?

The moral of the story is that networking via social media can take atypical forms.  While sometimes it looks relatively normal, like my recent exchange with the Getty museum on Twitter that resulted in my applying for a job, it can also be the first domino in a long chain.

Opportunities are everywhere, and social media is a rich place to find them.

Chanticleer – Mission Road (youtube video. totally worth watching/listening. TRUST ME.)

Twitter, Facebook, and FOMO

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In a recent course forum discussion, we shared favorite social media streams from libraries, archives, and museums.  It was an interesting exercise – it’s kind of mind-boggling to realize just how varied the Twitterverse can be.

One of the feeds I brought up was that of Stanford Libraries (@StanfordLibs).  I follow Stanford Libraries on both Twitter and Facebook, mainly because I made heavy use of those libraries as a student and as an employee at Stanford since 2004.  I enjoy the variety of posts, from photographs of the library to overheard comments from students and other patrons to more serious announcements of events, acquisitions, and news.  They do a wonderful job of interacting with other social media users, too.  It’s not too hard to get a RT on Twitter, and they frequently interact with other Stanford-related Twitter accounts.  They even follow me.

The one flaw I might point out is that the Twitter feed and the Facebook feed are virtually identical.  This is fine for someone who follows just one, but for someone like me, it’s a little annoying. Granted, the two formats allow different presentation.  What might be found via a hyperlink on Twitter (like a photo) can be included directly in the post on Facebook.  I don’t think it’s reasonable of me to expect that the social media account managers at Stanford take the time to provide widely different streams – that’s not really the point of social media usage that’s more promotional in intent than anything else.  But it means that I either have to deal with constant redundancy or choose to un-follow one feed.  And there’s the “Fear Of Missing Out” that comes up so much these days.

It’s not an overwhelming source of anxiety for me, but it niggles.  I look forward to Stanford’s new posts, because I’m interested in what’s going on there and I’m proud of the library institution itself.  I love seeing what they’ve acquired, and what they’re promoting.  According to a recent Twitter post, they’ve updated the scrolling announcements on the library homepage.  Now they include, among other things, virtual access to digital images of Big Game* programs from the founding of the university onwards.

Fear of Missing Out, or “FOMO,” seems to be a big issue with social media.  It’s why we check Facebook compulsively and why we use social media to hang on to friends who maybe aren’t really friends anymore.  I did try to find an academic article or two that addressed this, but had more luck with more popular media sources (a great NYTimes article can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/business/10ping.html?_r=5& and blogger Sophia Dembling’s analysis is here). FOMO isn’t really a new thing, but it’s been vastly magnified by social media and the Internet in general.  The constant updates from friends about their glamorous, exciting lives make us feel inadequate.  It reminds me of something I once heard from storyteller and children’s musician Bill Harley about being in sixth grade.  He said it’s like one day, the teachers handed out a memo to all the kids present on how to be cool – what to wear, what to do, what to say… but a lot of kids must have been absent that day, because only a few got that memo.

FOMO is kind of like that.  It seems like somehow everyone else is more successful, more popular, and just plain cooler.

Or maybe I’m just avoiding deciding whether to drop Stanford Libraries’ Facebook or Twitter feeds. It’s a possibility.  But what if the one I drop starts providing different, better information?

I’d better think again.

*Big Game is the annual football match between Stanford and its primary rival, UC Berkeley.  The winner gets the Axe for the year, which is kind of a stupid prize, but it’s tradition and the weeklong festivities are amusing, like putting red dye in the fountains or spiking a stuffed bear (Berkeley’s mascot) on top of the Claw fountain by the bookstore to dirge-like musical accompaniment from the Band.

The New Groupthink; Or, Why I Don’t Like Group Assignments

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Group projects are not on my list of favorite things.  I understand their purpose, and sometimes they even go well.  But I don’t like them.  More time is spent in explaining each individual thought process and in negotiating how to approach the assignment than in doing the actual assignment.  Quite simply, I get frustrated.

I’m not aiming this complaint at LIBR559 in particular.  I’m in my 21st year of formal schooling and concluding four years of graduate school (one MA, one MLIS).  Think about how many group assignments I’ve done in those 21 years.  There are the assignments when someone flakes on due dates, meetings, or their assigned portion. There are the assignments when it becomes an ego death-match.

Like I said.  I understand the value of collaboration and group work – I really do.  I recognize that humans are social creatures, and that there is great potential value in sharing ideas and working together.  I know they will be a part of my professional and personal life, and I am perfectly well able to pull my weight, and even take pride in the final product. That doesn’t mean I have to like the process!

I’m posting about this here, rather than my personal blog, for good reason.  The subject of the current module in class is collaboration, and we’re finishing up a group assignment to create wiki entries.  Within a page or two of the 2013 article by Forte & Lampe, my mind went scampering back to a TED Talk I watched last year for another class.

Susan Cain TED

Last year, Susan Cain published a book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Won’t Stop Talking.  In her TED Talk and the book, she puts her finger directly on what I think is the source of my frustration with what seems like a continuous bombardment of group assignments.  She describes “the new groupthink,” a rapidly-increasing trend that privileges group work over individual.  When we were children, our desks at school were probably in rows, and much of our work was done autonomously.  Now, go into any classroom, and the desks are in “pods” with groups of four or five children all facing each other.  Cain acknowledges it is important for children to learn to collaborate, and that casual interaction at work can be very beneficial.

However, “the new groupthink” privileges the extrovert mind.  Introvert and Extrovert are terms that indicate how a person reacts to stimulation.  It has nothing to do with shyness, social anxiety, or antisocial behavior.  Everyone falls somewhere in the introvert/extrovert spectrum – some are ambiverts, right in the middle.  Others, like me, identify strongly with one side or the other.  I am an introvert.  I am easily overwhelmed by large social situations, I spend a lot of time inside my own head, and I prefer a quiet dinner at home with a friend or two to going to a large party or a club.

Cain doesn’t argue that all group thinking is bad, or that group work should be abolished entirely.  Instead, she says, there needs to be a greater balance between collaboration and individual work.  Some of the greatest innovators and thinkers in history were introverts, preferring long solo walks to dinner parties.  Indeed, Cain remarks, introverts make some of the best group leaders because their natural ability to listen well and not micro-manage lets their colleagues develop ideas and run with them, thus encouraging innovation.

Introverts make up 1/3 to 1/2 of the population, yet those of us who identify as introverts are taught by society to feel guilty for our preference for solo thought or quiet pursuits.  How many of us were told by teachers, camp counselors, parents, or siblings that we needed to be “more outgoing,” get our noses out of that book, and go play outside?

Extroverts and introverts have different skill sets – neither is better than the other, and we need both.  Collaboration is by nature an extrovert’s milieu, but couldn’t there be ways to encourage the introvert to make use of their skills?  It would only be to the group’s benefit.

Maybe education is the answer.  While most people I know are in the middle of the introvert/extrovert spectrum, I do know a handful of people who identify strongly at one end or the other, just like I do.  As a strong introvert, it’s interesting to talk to a strong extrovert – we compare notes, and explain the how and the why of how we react to different situations.  One extrovert friend, with whom I have discussed this at length, says it’s very enlightening to hear my explanations.  The natural extrovert response to someone who isn’t speaking is to interpret them either as unhappy or unenthusiastic, while the introvert might read the silence as thinking about the subject at hand.

Social media plays into this in a lot of different ways.  At times it may seem to contradict itself.  Collaboration is no longer tied to geography – one need not be in the same room with one’s collaborators in order to work.  Options like GoogleDocs or videochatting via Skype or Facetime are useful, allowing the collaborators to decrease what might otherwise be an endless stream of inane “yes, that looks good” type emails clogging the group’s inboxes.  Depending on the situation, this could either help the introvert by allowing them to be in their own space and work without the distraction of other people around, or hinder them by leaving them feeling harried by never really having a quiet time to work through their own thought process.

Every few months, articles show up in magazines and newspapers exclaiming over how isolating the online world can be, in spite of the now global social pressure to be actively social.  We’re supposed to post to Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. We’re supposed to comment on other peoples’ posts, and keep up with the newest technological developments.  We’re supposed to have a handle on programs, software, and applications that will enhance the group work that is so popular right now, whether it’s videochatting, cloud storage, or group access to documents.  I’m not saying group work is a bad idea.  The whole “greater than the sum of its parts” thing is real.  I take issue with the unspoken social censure that occurs whenever someone protests group work and indicates a preference for working alone.

We need both extroverts and introverts doing what they do best.  We need them thinking and creating and working, together and apart.  Education and communication – it always seems to come back to that, doesn’t it?

Mommyblogging: Empowered Exhibitionism

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Alright, I realize it’s a tad meta to be blogging about blogging (again), but hey, it’s a social media course!

This week’s module included Anders Albrechtslund’s 2008 article entitled “Online social networking as participatory surveillance.”  It’s an interesting article, if a little behind the ridiculously fast pace of the tech world (pretty sure MySpace stopped being popular before 2008, but that might just be Silicon Valley).  One paragraph towards the end particularly jumped out at me, and it also ties in with something I mentioned in my previous post.  Albrechtslund writes, referencing Hille Koskela (2004):

She introduces the concept empowering exhibitionism to describe the practice of revealing your (very) personal life. By exhibiting their lives, people claim “copyright” to their own lives, as they engage in the self–construction of identity. This reverts the vertical power relation, as visibility becomes a tool of power that can be used to rebel against the shame associated with not being private about certain things. Thus, exhibitionism is liberating, because it represents a refusal to be humble.

Koskela discussed this in the context of webcams and similar sorts of surveillance, but it applies to blogs, and one category of blog in particular.

A remarkable trend in blogging is known as the mommyblog.  There is a network of women, some stay-at-home mothers, others who work, who write and communicate with each other virtually during what can be a glorious but incredibly isolating and emotionally turbulent time: early motherhood. One of the few blogs I follow religiously is http://dooce.com/, authored by Heather Armstrong.

Armstrong has the dubious distinction of having her blog/internet identity be an entry in urban dictionary.  “dooce” has several meanings, all inspired by her blog, but the original meaning is to be fired because of one’s blog.  In the early 2000s, she made the mistake of writing about her workplace, and of course, her supervisors eventually found out.

But she’s also a perfect example of this “empowering exhibitionism.”  She writes honestly and bluntly about her struggles with depression, with the wildly different personalities of her children, and her careful but loving relationship with a family who disagree with her choices in politics and religion.  Her blog was popular long before 2004, when it suddenly rocketed into mainstream awareness due to her decision to challenge the public shame and social stigma associated with postpartum depression.  And let me say, her writings are heartbreaking and hilarious by turns. Sidebar: one of my very favorite posts is a play-by-play breakdown of the birth of her first child.  Trust me.  It had me laughing so hard that I couldn’t see straight to keep reading.

Heather Armstrong is someone I admire for her willingness to be publicly vulnerable and talk so openly about a subject that is a subject of great personal shame for many women.  Her struggle was serious – because she wanted to breastfeed, she had to change or completely go off her standard medications for depression and anxiety, and after several months of spiraling into an incredibly dark place, she voluntarily checked herself into the psych ward of her local hospital for observation and help.  Not sleeping, unable to regulate her emotions… the story is incredible, and it’s a serious issue.

In the case of Heather Armstrong, empowered exhibitionism isn’t about humility, and I think it’s a little unfair of Koskela and Albrechtslund to pigeonhole the phenomenon.  Armstrong used the pulpit of the internet to reach out to her fanbase (admittedly, mostly women, many of whom have children) and address a common and socially stigmatized issue.  Many women who suffer from postpartum depression, or even those who don’t but get frustrated and upset from spending months on 24/7 infant watch duty are afraid to discuss the emotions because they’re afraid that it makes them bad mothers.  Everyone else can manage, they think – so why can’t I?  Mommybloggers like Heather Armstrong have created an internet safe space and communications network that make it easier to discuss such issues, because the participants know they’re talking to people who understand.  Whether a reader comments or not, it can help to know someone else out there has gone through something similar.  And it helps the blogger, too.  Writing about the experience seemed to help Armstrong reclaim some of the sense of control over her life that she had felt like she’d lost.

A few years ago, Armstrong took her blog one step further.  Dooce.com now has a community section, a forum for discussions and questions.  I’m a member, and I love the feeling of being in a safe space.  It seems to be mostly women, though there are some men, and discussions range from investing advice and home improvement to struggling with divorce, student loans, and health issues.  I’ve reached out a couple times and there’s always a flood of support and helpful advice or commiseration.

Empowered exhibitionism is risky, and those who really make it work, like Heather Armstrong, are few and far between.  But when it works… boy, does it work.

 

Why I Blog

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I just finished reading Andrew Sullivan’s “Why I Blog” article from The Atlantic, and I thought that might be a good place for me to start.

I have had a blog presence since I was sixteen.  Back in 2003, when I joined Livejournal, new users still needed an access code from a current member.  I joined because it seemed fun, because my new college-age friends from a Stanford theater production were on it and I admired them, and because I was curious.  I’d never really heard of blogging, and hadn’t spent much time exploring the possibilities of the Internet Age.  In retrospect, this seems strange to me.

I’m from Silicon Valley.  My father is an engineer who loves to join startups.  In 1994, he and my uncle started one of the earliest Internet retail sites (http://www.inc.com/magazine/19960615/1966.html).  The first two employees (my dad and my uncle) had desks squeezed into our tiny basement.  The third sat at a folding table in the garage.  So the internet boom was my childhood.  This is why it surprises me to look back and realize how little technological exploration I did.  On the other hand, I got my first email address in fourth grade, which I’m starting to understand is unusual for people my age!

Sullivan’s article is fascinating, and I suspect it will benefit from multiple readings.  In the four pages, he discusses his own introduction to blogging and compares it to other forms of writing and publication, from personal diaries to famous essayists like Montaigne.  He describes the tone as “conversational” and says it’s more like a broadcast than a publication.  I’d never thought of comparing blogging to radio, but I can see his point.  The immediacy of the medium and the pressure to post regularly for fear of losing the audience does bring blogging closer to the “live” media of radio and television.

I always considered blogs as falling into two categories: the online journalist column and the public diary.  Two blogs I follow fit these.  The Marquee Blog, found via CNN.com, posts regular updates for my guilty pleasure – the world of screen entertainment.  On the other hand, I have followed dooce.com for years and have laughed and cried with blogger Heather Armstrong as she’s struggled with children, life, and emotional health problems.

Taking LIBR500 at the start of my SLAIS career brought a new way of thinking about blogging, as well as re-starting me on blogging.  From what I recall of the discussions, a blog is the ideal incarnation of Web 2.0.  It is designed to be immediate and interactive, from the inclusion of hyperlinks to the ability of readers to comment and get direct replies from the author.  Blogs are designed to start conversations.

Unfortunately, there are now so many blogs out there that the conversational part of blogging doesn’t really happen the way we might hope.  I held onto the WordPress blog I started for LIBR500, though I now write about whatever I want there. It’s a continual disappointment that most of my posts get no comments.  I used to journal, pouring my teenage soul into scrawled handwritten pages.  For the most part, I now prefer blogging.  I want the conversation. I want to know that people are reading.  Yes, WordPress has a statistics function to show how many people looked at which pages, but it’s not the same as a comment.

Last summer, I started working on a long-term project to organize and properly house my grandmother’s papers.  She seems to have written letters almost daily, and she saved carbon copies of what she sent – so we have the whole conversation.  It’s a remarkable personal archive, but unfortunately her filing style is along the lines of “hey look, there’s still room in that folder.”  (If you’re interested, I’ve written a bit more about this project here and here.)  I’ve found some of her journals in the boxes of papers, and in reading them, I was struck by the tone.  Sullivan describes blogs as “conversational” and designed for public consumption, while a diary is “almost always a private matter. Its raw honesty, its dedication to marking life as it happens and remembering life as it was, makes it a terrestrial log.”

My grandmother’s journals are raw and painfully emotional at times, while also chronicling the everyday matters of life.  But these diaries are infused with what I can only describe as a consciousness of future readers.  I think maybe she had a romanticized dream of herself as a great undiscovered diarist, whose works would be discovered posthumously and published to wild acclaim.  It’s something she’d have liked, I’m sure.  So yes, diaries are designed for private venting.  But I’m not sure Sullivan’s right to say that only a “few” diaries are intended for publication.  I think blogging was an inevitable development.  The cynical side of my brain says that’s because humans are inherently self-absorbed and like nothing better than to talk about themselves and their own opinions.  A less cynical take might be to say that humans are social animals.  We need private places to express our most personal thoughts, yes, but blogs allow us to discuss and learn with a wider population.  I have to wonder how many people throughout history wrote diaries with one eye to an imagined future audience.

The question is, does the idea or knowledge of a wider audience lead you to self-censor or to greater honesty?