Twitter paper

In retrospect I think Julia Gillen and I managed to capture something of the essence of microblogging in studying how Twitter was used in what you might now call 'the early days'. But it was still great to see that the paper 'Contact Calls: Twitter as dialogic social and linguistic practice' was the top downloaded article in Language Sciences, and as a special deal it's now available free till 31st October! The paper has a natural partner with one I wrote with Julia Davies on blogging. Both are insider accounts of how we as academics have taken up social media and used it for our own purposes. Trying to describe the approach we used is quite hard - insider account is probably the best, but we've also tried 'dual autoethnography' to try to capture the idea of a parallel and reflexive endeavour. Neither study really has the depth and nuance of autoethnography, but the idea of a two-handed approach in looking at adoption/ early adoption has its advantages. See what you think!

Looking forwards, looking backwards

For most of the work I've been involved in over the last ten years, the words 'technology' or 'internet' have seemed far too general. That's what prompted me to settle on the digital, particularly as it seemed to combine as a useful descriptor in such ideas as 'digital practice', 'digital communication', 'digital writing', 'digital media' and yes, of course 'digital literacy', in which familiar ideas - practice, communication and so on - were changed or re-interpreted with digital and connective technologies. Some terminology has a limited shelf-life for me; I notice I have pretty much dispensed with CMC and online communication because they don't seem to me to tell the whole story. Then of course there are terms like 'new media' (which I still like), 'Web 2.0' (which now seems rather old school) and 'social media' (which I use, but don't like - after all media is always social, isn't it?). Along with all this shifting is my own engagement or experimentation with digital spaces - chatrooms, blogs, virtual worlds and, yes, social media! I've written about all of them, and most recently with Julia Gillen on Twitter (here). What drives all this activity? Well I suppose I'm genuinely interested on how we shape and are shaped by our communicative environment - how we mean, and how we might negotiate new meanings about our lives, in the world, in the current context - which after all is a context that is infused with what Latour would call the non-human agents of digital technology. Since this is turning confessional I'd have to concede that this is my overarching interest. And since I happen to have spent most of my working life in educational institutions, I've always had a keen eye for what this might mean for children and young people. Drilling down further into curriculum stuff and the whole tangle of learning, well that regularly slips through my fingers. I feel there is so much in that whole arena that I either don't know or simply can't believe. At each turn, though, I've had an implicit tactic. First I try to understand what's going on in popular practices, and that always seems to work best by immersing myself in them, and then I start asking what that means/or might mean for education. Is that a method? I don't know, but it's what I do. Working on blogging with Julia Davies, the only way we could explain this reflexive insider approach was to call it a 'dual autoethnography', and that rather awkward term crops up again in the Twitter paper. But that's only half the journey; the second half is asking the questions. I suppose that's the buzz in the DefT project: asking those questions with a varied group of colleagues. In a way (and this might sound to them like heresy) I hope there isn't an answer, because that always seems to force premature closure. For me it's the question: what's going on and what does this mean for children and young people that propels us forward.

Digital Bloomsday

I'm drawn to looking at the cross-cutting layers of our literacy practices and what these look like in an era of digital communication. Thursday provided some rich material for this, so I'll give a chronological account. First, though, I must explain that I'm working with Julia Gillen from Lancaster on a number of joint projects including a paper on Twitter, an edited book on virtual literacies and a development project funded by JISC. So, back to Thursday. Soon after getting up, I checked my email to see if I'd received an invoice from Julia. I couldn't find anything, but I did note a couple of other messages from her on other matters. About an hour later she was scheduled to take part in a meeting via Skype. In the few minutes before the meeting started, I was able to check up on some details with her in an informal way. The meeting began. Julia was passed round the room in tablet form, on my iPad. Five of us were sat round the table, Julia was a couple of hundred miles away in her office. We looked at the same project wiki. In the room the wiki was projected onto the whiteboard; Julia watched it on her office PC. Throughout the meeting those in the room talked in fuller, more explicit utterances than normal, and at a slightly higher volume, conscious perhaps of performing to the absent presence of Julia. When she spoke we all leaned in and nodded attentively. Anyway, later in the afternoon, I was back on email, and began to attend to other business. This included checking some documents that Julia had left on Dropbox. When I was eventually done, I emailed her with comments, and then wrote a cheque for her (associated with a completely different matter). I put the cheque in an envelope with her work address on it, ready to take to the postbox. Before doing this, I emailed her, listing all these varied strands of communication as a bit of a joke.......end of story. So what interests me here is the way in which all these strands overlap, whilst at the same time each having quite distinct trajectories defined by processes and projects that take place in different communicative spaces along quite varied timescales. Perhaps there is nothing new here, apart from an amplification of complexity, a density, and a pace that would have been impossible to achieve in a previous era.

Twitter-lect

You wouldn't really be that surprised to find social identity encoded in microblogging, but then to find regional dialect and particularly from a corpus of US tweets is impressive. That's the work of Jacob Eisenstein and colleagues at Carnegie Melon which is carefully reported by Rupert Cornwell here. And the fact that they could accurately predict the regional origin of tweets to within 300 miles adds to the wow factor. I suppose that all underscores the fact that from a sociolinguistic perspective there's nothing radically new about digital literacies except for the very fact that old themes persist in what seem like radically new media.

New media news

I missed my blog’s anniversary. It’s not that I’m sentimental or anything, but I’ve been writing here for 7 years and that seems quite a long time for a blog that deals with new media. In a week in which the news has been dominated by the Wikileaks affair, in which Twitter was reported as being worth $3.7BN, and in which Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was named Time magazine’s person of the year it seems that small niche interests have quickly become important features of the social, cultural and political landscape. Wikileaks was founded 4 years ago, Twitter 4 years ago and Facebook 6 years ago. So what’s new? Maybe it’s the level of over-exaggeration and misunderstanding. Time commended Zuckerberg on connecting the world. ‘In less than 7 years’ they said he has ‘wired together a twelfth of humanity into a single network, thereby creating a social entity almost twice as large as the US.’ Facebook’s success should not be under-played, but to claim that it has created a ‘single network’ or, for that matter, ‘a social entity’ is simply wrong. Perhaps underneath it all is the simple fact that old media types, in their attempt to understand what’s going on and play it to their advantage, have fallen under the spell of new media.

Network mapping

I've just started writing a piece on social networking. The provisional title is 'Unravelling the social network' and I reserve the right to use that! Having a title I like helps me get started even if I drop it later on. Visualizing social networks needs to have some sort of focus so I had a look around at what's out there. There are reasonable free tools for visualizing web sites (not quite the same thing) and some work on Flickr. But the Neuroproductions Twitter Friends visualizer wins the day for me. I'll probably use it as an illustration. I suppose all it does really is to feed off your Twitter stream and the Twitter streams of your friends, and the downside is that it doesn't show linkages. But it's playful and attractive and works well and hey that's me right in the middle!

On Twitter

I suppose as time goes on and the novelty wears off we can start to differentiate between different sorts of social networking , what they do best and how that suits our purpose at any given time. As will be fairly clear the blogging format works well for me, because it allows me to capture what interests before it evaporates, but in a reflective (but fairly rapid) form. But because I’ve never really got successful at photography, Flickr attracted me initially as a place to keep images and then as a place to study how we might network around images. Now I have mobile Flickr, new possibilities present themselves, but I’ve been rather slow on the uptake. Microblogging suggests something that’s different again. I like the always on idea, I like the economy of words that is imposed and sometimes I appreciate the chaos and randomness of intersecting conversations. Twitter works best for me when I’m bored. And that’s not very often. I like it, too when there’s a bunch of people I’m familiar with who are trading ideas around a theme. And finally I like Twitter as a backchannel at conferences and so on. But I’ve also noticed that how Twitter is presented makes a difference to me. The standard Twitter interface is a bit boring, somehow a little too flat for my liking. So I swapped to Tweetdeck, but I nearly chucked that in the summer because it’s too busy, too demanding, too intrusive. So my favourite quickly became Twitterberry, simply because it’s mobile and that seems to me to capture the lightweight feel of tweeting. But then Twitterberry got so very slow and so limited in functionality. I went back to a more self-disciplined use of Tweetdeck. Then Ruth introduced be to the Uber Twitter beta for Blackberry. That’s what I call an app! I really like the location function. If I want to, I can show you more or less exactly where I am. That’s fun; but it’s also pretty useful. Who needs a map with a good mobile? Who needs to know where you are with GPRS?

After Heath

The other day I tweeted this quote, which captures an idea which has become very popular. But does written representation actually enjoy that privilege? In many ways literacy is a rather limiting description, all too often associated with schooled practices, skills and drills, and quite basic competences. Yet for many of us the idea of events and practices frees us from that trap. Heath was instrumental in showing that a strict distinction between the oral and the literate doesn't really capture our relationship to texts. Understanding the social is 'integral to participants' interactions and interpretive processes' (1982:50). In other words meaning-making doesn't happen in isolation. So any text could work in that way, whether in writing or any other modality. The only privileges that writing enjoys are those that are directly related to power structures in the job market, in business and the legal system (to name but a few). We need to give learners access to those privileges, whilst building a curriculum that takes an informed view of everday communication.

Virtually starting

It's great to be at the beginning of a new semniar series - and on my birthday, too! Thank you ESRC , for the present. The series is called 'Children and young people's digital literacies in virtual online spaces'. Today Julia Gillen will be giving a history of the virtual, Jackie Marsh will explore the nature of virtuality and Sheila Webber will talk about her life in Second Life. And, just before Sheila, I get to talk with Michele Knobel via Skype. Wow! I've also set up hash tag for tweets and that's #virt09. You can check out the web-site here, which we hope to develop as the series progresses.

All a Twitter

Reading today’s Guardian you might be forgiven for thinking that the nation is obsessed with Twitter. The front page reports the Ofcom story of young people’s declining use of Facebook and Twitter, the Sports section has a piece on a footballer who’s using tweets to slag off his manager in a transfer deal, and the IT section has two pieces. The first of these is perhaps the most interesting because it looks at this guidance on governmental tweets. The second reports on Guardian journalists at play with the techies. The best of the latter is the Guardian Twat Race (their name not mine) which captures government feeds and uses them to animate a robot! When I was out with friends last week the T-word quickly became a topic of conversation. Somebody 'didn’t get' social networking...common enough...and then this was followed by '... and as for Twitter!' But you don’t need a very long memory to remember the same about blogging or about texting. The trajectory is interesting. At first these things bumble along quite nicely, then you get some high profile users, the application gets popular and it’s quickly followed by plenty of coverage which polarises public opinion. And after that? After that it all settles down, gets integrated in people’s everyday literacy practices, end of story.

Heidegger's hammer

I’m back, but slowly, slowly. First Second Life, then the emails, next a bit of Twitter and now the blog! The video is from my daughter’s blessing in Marrakech and that’s where I was last month (there’s another video here). Whilst I was away the Special Issue of Literacy that I guest edited with Vic came out. It’s a great issue and explores some interesting themes on identity and literacy. Check it out! Although I’ve not been working I have been reading. One of the things that’s made the most impact has been Heidegger on technology, and particularly the idea that users become absorbed in their interactions with technology until the tool itself ‘withdraws’ from experience. This phenomenological approach offers an alternative way of looking at the experience of being in the zone as described by gamers. Vic also writes about this, using the example of the way the mobile phone only really comes into view as an object when you can’t get a signal (as with Heidegger’s hammer). And so, back to the blog as a fairly fluid way of expressing myself. Yes, I said fluid; not fluent!

Virtually planning

Planning the future, again! This is a snap of our first virtual planning meeting for the ESRC Seminar Series "Children’s and Young People’s Digital Literacies in Virtual Online Spaces". The hardest thing was arranging the dates. And isn’t that always the hardest thing in RL, too? There’s no getting away from it. As Willis says "Surprisingly, though, the place where anything is possible bears a striking resemblance to the physical world where what is possible is determined by cultural, legal, temporal and physical constraints "(2007). Maybe I’m not so surprised, after all. Anyway it was good to make some progress. We now need to find a good tag for the series, so we can do the Twitter, Flick mash-up thing; and I need to get back to writing about virtual worlds.

Techno logic

I think I’m generally optimistic about the potential of Web 2.0. The book Web 2.0 for Schools : Learning and Social Participation, written with partner in crime Dr Joolz must communicate that optimism. It’s the sort of optimism I respond to in Leadbetter’s book We Think. But then his is a romantic view of Web 2.0, a view that seems to ignore issues of power, social division, and ownership. It’s all very communitarian, which is no bad thing of course, except for the fact that it’s a naive position to adopt. Bolter and Grusin (Remediation) is a more thought-provoking piece. They argue that "many cyberenthusiasts assert that the web and computer applications are creating a digital culture that will revolutionize commerce, education, and social relationships. Thus, broadcast television is associated with the older order of hierarchical control, while interactive media move the locus of control to the individual. That digital media can reform and even save society reminds us of the promise that has been made for technologies throughout much of the twentieth century..." (2000:60) and in so doing they provide a counterpoint to Leadbetter. I’m also rather taken with their description of networks of remediation and how new media must enter into relationships of respect and rivalry with other media. It is interesting then to trace how texts cross between media. Tweeting Blip.fm DJ onthetop playing Daft Punk’s Technologic could illustrate this. The link from Twitter connects to a YouTube video, one of several recontextualisations of the orginal sound track. This sort of hypertextual recombination has the capacity to make new meanings whilst at the same time challenging the haeccity of the text.

More immediate

I’ve been thinking more about the immediacy effect after blogging about it here. In that post I was thinking about the illusion of the synchronous evoked by microblogging (Twitter) and that sense of the nearly now. But I’m now realizing that immediacy is a far more subtle concept than I first thought. For something to be immediate it has to be instantly available at this point in time and in this particular place. On demand and just in time are fashionable ways of saying the same thing. But looking at Bolter and Grusin’s book "Remediation" you also get the sense that the immediate is similar to the un-mediated, or at least the tendency towards it - a sort of invisible or immersive media or what you might call the nearly real. Virtual reality, live broadcasts, reality TV, and YouTube all move in this direction in their attempt to produce, or reproduce the authentic.

Tweeting at conferences

I’m getting interested in what happens when you tweet at a conference. It's clear that the back-channel can work well as an outlet for frustration, or those useful off-task exchanges, but also I do feel that the fluidity of ideas can be exposed in productive ways. However, I am at the same time completely unsure what the effect on remote followers might be. Twitter might help them participate or then again it might annoy or mislead them! Of course that's before you take into consideration the feelings of those co-present in RL who may not be favourably disposed to back-channeling. Do our new modes of communicative interaction cause us to challenge or re-make social divisions as well as social conventions? Are there new protocols of politeness (the public display of shame when your phone rings in a meeting) and are these necessarily more fluid at this moment in time? Well, the picture shows me in action via twitpic and was available at the end of my presentation here at Kronlund. And here’s something I’ve been reading about Twitter at conferences (the pdf is here). And this is a link to a book recommended by one of the conference participants.

Twittering on

I’ve been posting all week about ways of thinking about microblogging and, at the same time, mentioning these thoughts on Twitter. What’s interesting about that is that I get a quick test of the ideas as they form, and can reconfigure them on the basis of feedback. It’s not quite like putting your ideas to the vote, but that casual conversation can help you refine your thinking. Is there a method here? I’m not sure; but one thing that comes up is the unexpected. So for instance, I hadn’t thought that distraction, or the attraction of distraction, played an important part. Quite a few people have referred to Twitter in terms of filling the interstitial spaces or providing an escape for what has become routine, boring or frustrating. So I’m adding that in, too. Then there’s another thing that came from a face-to-face exchange, phrased as I hate it when people tweet too much! Well I’m really interested in that, because maintaining a presence seems to be important, whereas overdoing it is almost viewed as a transgression. Is there an implied rhythm like conversational turn-taking? So here we have the challenge of negotiating an appropriate kind of presence within the obligation to be there in the Twitterverse. Here’s John Tomlinson in The Culture of Speed discussing that sense of obligation. 'There is an increasing tacit assumption - structured into both the work process and wider social etiquette - that we have a social obligation to be both skilled users of the technology and, more importantly, to be almost constantly available to and for communication. That it is a mark of neglect, of irresponsibility, to be off-line, off-message, incommunicado. The denial of instant access to ourselves - not owning a mobile phone, or not keeping it switched on - has rather curiously become a breach of communicational duty, almost a token of cultural marginality. It is something to be owned up to, or defended as a rather defiant, eccentric circumscription of one’s personal time and space.' Well, get back to me on that one (but don’t feel under any pressure).

The immediacy effect

The third of the three characteristics of microblogging is the immediacy effect. What you're doing, thinking or linking to now is what is important in the Twittersphere; not what you did, said or thought yesterday. The archive is largely irrelevant as the regular feeds from your friends becomes liquid modern communication. Distance and separation appear to be conquered by technology, driven along by the impatience to accelerate, to live in the nearly now. This is what can make microblogging compulsive as well as what appears to keep social networks live.

Materiality and microblogging

So this is number two in a list of three. It's the materiality of devices. I’m drawing a bit on Daniel Miller here, who underlines the significance of material objects in cultural life. When we start thinking of web-based communication we very often get seduced by the virtual spaces that are created and forget the very basic nature of the material objects we use. As these become woven into everyday life they become normalised to the extent that they are almost rendered invisible. So today at the British Academy, the audience was connected in a variety of ways. Most notable of these ways seemed to be the presence of i-phones and Blackberrys, used to enter the Twitter backchannel and do other sorts of work, too. Handheld and discreet we are left to our own devices, but yet the devices we have (own) and their affordances are central to mobile microblogging.

Ambient sociability

Well, this is a revision in the light of Twitter feedback on the idea of ambient intimacy (see yesterday). Although one or two liked the idea, others felt that intimacy over-stated the case or over-emphasised the phatic. So, instead I'm going for ambient sociability instead. Ambience seems to catch the sense of lightweight contact that typifies microblogging, and sociability leaves it open to both the level of friendship and the sort of exchanges that are transacted. Ambient sociability can now become the first of the three. On its own its not enough though, because you can achieve this through mobile messaging and even through regular text exchanges. OK, this is theory-building in action and many thanks for the feedback (tweetback?)

Thoughts on microblogging

First reflections nearly always seem to come in threes for me. I wonder what this means? Anyway, these three continue a thread that’s been running through recent posts on microblogging. So I’m suggesting that the key features of microblogging are: ambient intimacy; the materiality of devices and the immediacy effect. First, ambient intimacy, a term borrowed from Leisa Reichelt, who uses it, at least in part, to describe an ongoing lightweight communication between networked friends. Second, the materiality of devices seems important because it is the way in which we carry our connections with us or access them from static interfaces. Basically microblogging has to be dependent on a mediating object, and as these become more available and more portable this kind of social networking gets easier. Finally the immediacy effect is the other ingredient in that equation of remote presence. In microblogging, what seems most important is what is going on now (or nearly now), not what is archived from yesterday. Of course tweeting between timezones or from locations with dodgy signals tends to disrupt this, but the immediacy effect is my attempt to try to grapple with the perceived focus being on the most recent comments.