This has been a great summer session…intense, but productive, thought provoking and a great personal and professional development opportunity. This was just the immersion I needed in these important topics. As mentioned in my very first blog, the reading list alone was worth the price of admission. I especially appreciated the in-depth reading on Twitter, and as a former journalist, I also very much enjoyed and appreciated all the journalism connections. I really appreciated hearing the perspective of Joe Ruiz and look forward to hearing from Aron Pilhofer tonight. What a great opportunity to talk to professionals in the field!

As for attitudes…I guess I would say that this course has underscored for me that I need to continue to immerse myself in more online content. I have  old media habits that die hard – for example, I still enjoy and prefer reading the NYTimes and the Statesman the old fashioned way! I need to spend more time each day online and continue to hone those skills. You learn by doing, and I am not doing enough on that front.

I guess I was most surprised by the caliber of students in the room. Not sure what I was expecting, but I learned a lot from the other students and enjoyed hearing about their many and varied experiences.

I can’t think of any additional topics…we covered a heck of a lot of ground in a few short weeks!

I would offer one observation. I wish we had devoted a little class time to discussion of research topics/papers. I talked to a couple of students off-line…and especially for those who are very new grad students or those who have not taken research methods, writing a paper like this can be a bit overwhelming. In previous grad courses, I always found it very helpful when there was a good class discussion of topics because that always lead to some peer discussion and assistance. That’s the one thing I might have added to the course outline.

Thanks again for a great summer session!

The future of journalism lies in the ability to interpret vast amounts of data.  The key will be the interpretation. The amount of data now available to the average citizen is mind-boggling. The role of journalists  is making connections and interpreting it in ways that make sense for the public. That’s where properly trained journalists come in….and where old school trained journalists (like me) feel totally outgunned and nearly obsolete.

In the “old days” those of us in J school used to joke about our aversion to anything resembling math….that’s why we were in journalism school, for heaven’s sake! But that kind of attitude now is as old-fashioned as a TK-76 broadcast news camera. For the up and coming journalist, understanding data, utilizing data tools and having the ability to make connections with reams of data will make a huge career difference.

Students interested in pursing a career in journalism need to take a broader view of their education than what can be found in the mass communication or journalism schools. Although Texas State appears to be ahead of the curve somewhat, I’ll bet that there are not undergraduate courses offered in database interpretation or the use of basic data tools. This may seem off-base to the “traditional” journalist, but these skills are becoming crucial.

As an aside, my daughter is 19 and graduated from Dripping Springs High in 2009. I was very impressed that part of the curriculum for her was learning how to use basic software tools like excel, word and powerpoint. When I went to grad school and had homework and papers to write, data to gather in excel and powerpoint presentations to put together for class, she taught me enough to get by. Because of my professional position, I have never had to learn these skills myself - there have always been extremely competent staff around to do the actual ”work.”  (That’s kind of embarassing to admit, but there it is!)

As for what needs to be done in the future, I would suggest a separate track of courses be developed related to data interpretation. The real geeky journalism students could focus their degree on that discipline and be close to “expert” by the time they graduate. For those more run-of-the-mill types, they should at least be exposed to a few basic courses before they graduate with a journalism degree.

As anyone in class knows, I am very interested in the role that social media plays in the communications strategy for Texas Parks and Wildlife. We launched several TPWD social media sites last summer and our facebook page now has more than 31,000 fans. It appears this is a very effective tool for us, and I am interested in learning more about how are fans are responding to our posts, how much they interact with our facebook page and what they like (and don’t like) about it. This information will assist us in utilizing this new tool as effectively as possible.

I am also interested in knowing whether our facebook page is having an impact on outdoor recreation behaviors. This is an important question for us, because that is one major goal for all of our comunication efforts – encouraging outdoor recreation, which we believe ultimately has a direct link to the development of a conservation ethic. Many people don’t realize this, but it’s outdoor recreation opportunities such as hunting, fishing and state park visitation which fund natural resource conservation and management which benefits us all, whether we hunt, fish or camp, or not.  So there’s a very important role these social media sites can play in encouraging outdoor recreation and supporting conservation efforts.

I will be looking at this question through the theoretical framework of social cognitive theory (SCT). SCT basically is a social learning theory that posits at it’s simplest level that we learn from each other. In the era of mass media, this social learning is now taking place on TV, in newspapers, magazines and other modern communication channels. Now, or course, there are social media channels at play and I believe these social media channels might play an even bigger role than traditional mass media because these outdoor recreation behaviors will be modelled and shared by a powerful social network.

The way I will operationalize these questions is through a survey which we fielded last week. (The link is below).  We are posting links to the survey periodically on our Fbook page.  I will have two weeks worth of responses to sort though…I will pull the report this Friday so I have time to complile results, analyze them and write the paper.  As of this morning we had about 750 responses, I am hoping we’ll top 1,000 by Friday morning when the report is pulled.

I am really looking forward to having a snapshot of what our fans think of our site and whether it is impacting outdoor recreation behaviors. There are some significant weaknessed in this methodology which I will explain in the paper, but this approach will  at least provide some indicator data which will be good.

http://204.64.0.121/TakeSurvey.aspx?SurveyID=96LHmo9

The new economics of the web are turning traditional business models upside down. In a 2004 article for Wired, Chris Anderson explained that the Long Tail concept completely overturns the old model of music marketing and distribution. The idea in a nutshell, is that instead of making all the money on a few megahits, and since digital distribution costs virtually nothing, the need to limit cash flow to just those megahits is precluded. Yes, you can make money on the megahits….but there’s also a huge market for niche music. Instead of one album selling a million, you can sell a million people one album each. And/or both. Anderson also provided a great example of a long out of print book that got a new publishing life after it was recommended on Amazon.com. The “Long Tail” model was at work. The beauty of this model is that it has the potential of getting us out of the lowest common denominator choices for music and books.

Anderson explored the concept of a digital economy where most things are free in a later (2008) article in Wired. He explained that the rapidly decreasing cost of providing information and products in the digital age is the major factor in this phenomenon. He used an interesting turn of phrase and explained that in this new economy, things may not necessarily be “too cheap to meter,” but they are definitely “too cheap to matter.” He also explains that the new economy is based attention and reputation. The botton line is that someone pays…a third party makes money off the free interaction of two other parties.  Anderson also coins a new economic vocabulary.

These new concepts are changing the way we define economics. The concept of scale is likewise changing. While there will continue to be mega- companies such as Google and Facebook, increasingly what we will see will be niche oriented businesses focussed on extremely narrow consumer segments. And while there will continue to be mass marketing approaches to advertising, I believe that what we will see in the coming years is a re-calibration of ad budgets away from huge mass market brand campaigns to resources being re-directed to increasingly narrow target market campaigns.

The video above is part of a  Fishing 101  series of videos produced by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department last year. There were 11 videos in the series and they were produced in response to research studies that indicated that one reason not as many people fish as in the past is that the tradition and skills of fishing are simply not being passed down from one generation to the next. As our society has become more urbanized, people are increasingly disconnected to nature and simply don’t know what to do to take up the sport. So what is the right bait to get folks involved in a pasttime they know nothing about? We’re finding that this video series has become an important hook in our tackle box. Many of the videos are very detail oriented and include info on what equipment is needed and how to use it as well as a variety of other topics important to a new angler. (I posted this one because it has lots of cute kids in in. This is our version of a kitten video!)

The videos were posted in June 2009 and we publicized them through several venues, including on-line, in press releases, video news reports, magazine ads, etc. Since 2009, the videos have been viewed more than 80,000 times on You Tube. We’ve inserted them into our PBS television series as well, which reaches another 250,000 Texas households. We’ve also distributed them to our volunteer angler education instructors and use them as prizes at various “learn to fish” events at Texas State Parks throughout the state.

We’ve received very good feedback from beginners and instructors. We’ve also received good feedback on-line as you can see on You Tube.

There is an expression that “content is king”…and others have recognized this video series as content they’d like to share. A cursory google search this morning revealed that the following websites have added links to the videos on their websites, creating yet another path for would-be anglers to find out about how to fish: Guide to S Padre Island, Get Reeled, Fishing Tackle Boxes, Hobby Fishing Tips, My Outdoor TVand even Japan Fishing Line!

I think you probably know my response to today’s question. Do I believe that this is an effective way to teach people how to learn a new skill? Absolutely! I think the track record of this particular series of videos is a testament to that and these videos are the “right bait” to reel in some new anglers. As social networking continues to permeate our society, the peer to peer recommendation of these videos will be yet another avenue to spread the word about how easy it is to get involved in fishing and how rewarding it can be.

Did I mention that fishing, specifically, the sale of fishing licenses and excise taxes on fishin equipment is key to funding conservation efforts in Texas and the rest of the country? This is more than fun and games. The future of conservation of our natural resources is at stake.

The bottom line is always about money.

I think the next big thing in social media will be cracking the code of figuring out how to monetize Twitter and Facebook in ways we can barely imagine. Today’s readings underscored once again that it’s all about data…the “Great Wall of Facebook” Wired article did an excellent job of explaining what’s at stake, and what the huge differences are between Facebook and Google and why Facebook just may figure out how to directly market to each individual facebook member in heretofore unimagined ways.  During lunch today I read the article about Catarina Fake (yes- it’s nice to see that there are really smart gals in this field too!) The article underscored once again the value of all the information on the social graph and it’s potential power if it can be fully tapped. Obviously the smart kids at FB and Twitter are on it….and the Googleans are trying not to lose their market position. Something’s gonna give…and I predict it will be sooner rather than later.

Let me channel Vannevar Bush for a moment, and instead of “As We May Think,” let’s ponder “As We May Buy”…because, that, really, is what it all boils down to.

Imagine a day in the not too distant future, when facebook will figure out how to market one- to one – literally. I think that day is closing in on us and I anticipate the day when individual marketing messages that I actually want to read and want to seek out will be presented to me in a way that is compelling and which I will view as a service, not an intrusion. Marketers are already trying this, however clumsily. What if on a weekly basis the information I posted on Fbook and Twitter was amlgamated with every other piece of data about me to serve up a unique helping of products that I would be interested in RIGHT NOW? I get emails from various places that I have purchased products for in the past…one example is Express Jeans. I bought my daughter a pair of jeans a few months ago and now I am the one getting emails for jeans, not my daughter. That’s the kind of anonymous marketing that causes consumers to delete maketing messages without reading them!

What if they cracked the code and figured out how to do “Just in Time” Marketing for the products I need RIGHT NOW? This month’s WIRED article discussed other ways of getting information out of folks and create more of a psychographic profile based on questionaires. That’s another tactic that will become more in vogue, I feel certain.

The challenge, of course, is to get past the “creepy” factor…but I predictt that will be a diffusion issue like many of these other technological advances we’ve dealt with in the past. Who would have imagined years ago that we would all be chattering online about our personal lives? I would guess that in a few years other barriers will fall as well and we will view this one-to-one incredibly personalized  marketing as normal rather than creepy.

Most of my classmates probably have no clue as to the origins of the title of this blog….but it’s the first thing that popped into my mind when I started to write today’s assignment.  I believe Cindy is probably old enough to remember Marlo Thomas’  hippy dippy show that carried the message that anyone,  girl, or boy, could reach their potential and be anything they wanted to be. It was absolute dreck, but the message was a good one. The context back in the 70s when the term was coined is much different from what I mean today…but for some reason it just seemed appropriate to answer today’s question(s): How does Google make money? Is this a business model that other media organizations could successfully adopt? Why or why not? What are issues/challenges? 

The bottom line is that google makes money from each and every one of us….and it doesn’t cost us a cent. We are free to google to our hearts content, (like I just did to find out what would come up when I entered the phrase “free to be you and me”) and each time we do, additional data is gathered about us. Google continues to finetune their business of organizing the world’s information and has become the world’s biggest business juggernaut in the process. According to Jeff Jarvis, in 2008 Google had 71% of the internet search traffic in the U.S. and 87% in the U.K. They’ve turned those billions of consumer eyeballs into cash with the invention of adwords and the 2008 acquisition of the ad-serving company  Doubleclick resulted in Google controlling nearly 70% of online ad traffic. The numbers are mind boggling. In mid-2008 Google said it tracked one trillion (with a T!) web addresses.

Could other media companies follow the same business model? That’s hard to say. It’s hard to imagine that the model could be duplicated….I don’t believe there is any other company poised to take them on. It is a much different world than 94 when Microsoft obliterated Netscape, but it’s also hard to imagine what might be next. Just ten years ago the concept of Google would have seemed fanciful and unbelievably impossibe to achieve.

It does make you wonder what’s next. And there will be a “next thing” that will defy our conception and blow our minds….and make a few lucky people multi-billionaires in the process.

Speaking of wondering….and circling back to the opening of this blog post, why is it that virtually everyone involved in this business at the highest levels are white guys? One of the things that “free to be you and me” emphasized back in the 70s was that gender  and ethnicity was not a barrier to achieving our dreams. It is gratifying to look around the table in our class and note the diversity around the table. More women and minorities than are evident in the few videos we’ve seen, that’s for sure!

Perhaps one of my classmates will be free to be….rich and famous someday!

 

Question: Discuss the different ways the concept of interactivity is defined. What is your definition of interactivity?

A couple of semesters ago, I worked on a literature review for a proposed thesis and that was my first exposure to the academic literature related  to interactivity. I was overwhelmed by the different approaches to the topic and had a very difficult time in trying to explain what the heck interactivity was. It makes me feel a little better now to know that I’m not the only one! As Kiousis noted in the abstract of  his 2002 article in the New Media & Society Journal, “theoretical and operational definitions are exceedingly scattered and incoherent.”

Rafaeli was one of the first to attempt to examine the nature of interactivity in computer mediated environments and in 1988 he came up with a definition that had to do with how communication exchanges related to earlier transmissions.  In 1997 he revised that definition to include the extent messages relate to each other and especially to previous messages.

In 2000 Downes and McMillan attempted to identify key dimensions of interactivity by using concepts found in the literature on the topic as well as interviewing 10 thought leaders in the field. The authors playfully noted that those interviewed defined interactivity as “something old, something new, something borrowed from other disciplines and something both people and computers do.” Aside from the modern take on an old adage, Downes and McMillan concluded that computer mediated interactivity is both message and participant based. From the message perspective, two way communication enables all participants to communicate, the timing of interaction is flexible and the communication environment creates a sense of place. From the participant point of view, participants perceive they have some control, they feel like it is responsive and they believe they are exchanging information as opposed to being persuaded.

Kiousis pulled all the available literature together in 2002 to come up with a new definition and suggested that “interactivity is both a media and psychological factor that varies across communication technologies, communication contexts and people’s perceptions.”  Kiousis utilized Chaffee’s 1991 framework for concept explication to arrive at his conclusions.

Kiousis’ conceptual definition includes three primary elements: the structure of technology, the communication context and user perception.  Kiouis says that operational definistion includes three factors: 1) the technological structure of media,  2) characteristics of communication settings and 3) individual’s perceptions.

So what do I think interactivity is? As noted in the blog title and with all due respect to Justice Potter Stewart: “I know it when I see it!”

From a practical application to my own work at Texas Parks and Wildlife, I view interactivity as the use of technology to facilitate communication with our constituents, the ability of constituents to comunicate with us (and with each other) through this medium, and the perception of our customers that we are  transparent in what we do and that we are responsive to their comments and concerns.

I believe that ties in nicely with Kiousis’ conceptual and operational definitions.

On a more practical note, the more I delve into this arena, the more I realize that our primary communication tool, the TPWD website, is woefully inadequate. The next “big thing” we will be working on in my shop is a complete overhaul of our site.

Hmm, I wonder if there is any role Dr. Cindy Royal’s students at Texas State University could play as we undertake this huge project?

Hmm, indeed. Could this be an opportunity for students studying new media to take what they are learning and actually apply it in a real world setting?

I am open to discussion if you are interested….

July 14 – Compare and contrast the articles by Bush, Engelbart and McLuhan. What is the central theme of the three pieces?

The central theme of the three articles by Bush Engelbart and McLuhan is that the wealth of human knowledge, coupled with the technology now available to us can help shape our world now and in the future. As Vannevar Bush put it in his landmark article: “The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.” Those words were published in 1945 and how right he was! His work laid the foundation for many other scholars. His predictions about what was to come in the future were amazingly spot on, in theory if not in actual practice. He wrote about the compression of information and his vision for a desk-like machine that would allow people in the future to readily pull information together from disparate sources. He mused that “selection (of this info) by association rather than indexing may yet be mechanized.” His description of the “memex” eerily described a computer that had not yet been invented. He also wrote about the importance of connecting ideas: “The process of tying the two together is the important thing.  He also described an encyclopedia that would constantly be amended and would offer trails to other related material. He could have been describing wikipedia!

Doug Englebart was inspired by Bush’s article and it helped define his life’s work. Bush had spent much of his early career utilizing science for warfare, and the landmark 1945 article was his attempt to move beyond this war mindset and harness science for a better good. Englebart had an even more idealized vision of how human knowledge could be harnessed and was a vocal proponent of using computers and networks to solve the world’s problems.  This attempt to harness the collective intellect facilitated by computers became his life’s work. Both Engelbart and Bush focussed on the associations and connections between information and believed that it was in those connections that problems would be solved.

Marshall McLuhan is most famous for his “the medium is the message” mantra. His work centered on how we lived in a global village made possible by technology and he believed that the message itself was not really important, but rather the vehicle for transporting it was. In this manner his approach and philosophy is much different than Bush and Engelbart because they believed that information and connections to be made from that information were the key. The technological mechanisms for making that happen were just tools. McLuhan sees the tools, whether it’s radio or TV or computers being the primary concern. “The personal and social consequences of any medium…result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by any new technologies.”

65 years after “As we may think” was published, Bush’s vision continues to be realized. The networks and hypertext technology pioneered in Engelbart’s lab are still relevant and continue to evolve. McLuhan’s believes we are rapidly approaching what he calls the extension of man – “the technological simulation of consciousness when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society.”

I always feel like I talk to much when asked to introduce myself (as I did yesterday)…so I will keep this short. I am the Communications Director at Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD)and celebrated 20 years with the agency back in March. I am a student at Texas State because I have always been a “planner”…and a few years ago I began thinking about “what’s next” after retirement from TPWD. I also asked myself what I wanted to accomplish by the time I am 50, and earning a master’s degree came immediately to mind. I will be 50 next August and hope to graduate in May, so I will meet that deadline! I will likely retire in 2016 and at that point I want to do something different….possibly teaching at the community college or university level. After I graduate next year I plan on doing what I can to begin teaching as an adjunct professor or similar role (maybe here at Texas State?)…to get a feel for what that might be like. I do a lot of communications training here at TPWD and I think it will be a natural fit….but we’ll see.

I really enjoyed class last night. The reading list alone will make this experience well worth the price of admission! This is all stuff I should be seeking out and reading myself….I don’t do nearly enough of that as I should. With a more than fulltime job and school the last 5 years with other homework and reading and research papers it’s hard to keep up. To have all these wonderful articles dished up in an outline to be read over the next 5 weeks is a wonderful prospect. And I will get a semester’s credit to boot! Way cool.

What is my definition of new media? Well, as I reflected on the readings I realize that there is no static definition. To categorize any one “thing” as new media makes it immediately obsolete! I think my favorite article was the pencils to pixels one. Each one of those examples was a new tool of media whether it was a pencil or a computer. And by the  way, I had no idea that Thoreau’s livelihood was pencils! Who knew? The article about the history of Apple and the cool online graphic that had all the shots of apple products was a graphic representation of how quickly the technology is moving. The Ipad will be tomorrow news sooner than we think….

It’s an exciting time to be in the communications business and I am a bit of a johnny-come-lately to all the communication changes on the landscape and especially new media. But I have snapped to and my educational experience here at Texas State has played an important role in my professional development.

Today has been a stressfull day as I have had to deal with fallout from some ill-advised posts that apeared on  one of my employee’s facebook page yesterday. As a result, the time I should have spent at noon crafting a more thoughtful blog was spent with the Human Resources Department.

Future posts will be more thoughtful. In the meantime I have a 2:30 meetings with some folks regarding some ideas I have for a research paper. One of the ideas is rather ambitious and I will need to get started on it if I have any hope of finishing it by the deadline! I hope to discuss with Cindy tonight….