Social media and the life cycle of rumors

A TED-London talk from Farida Vis is: Social media and the life cycle of rumors. She talks about her research into the way misinformation is spread and quashed (as mentioned in an earlier post)
Farida will also be speaking at the OKFestival in Helsinki 17-22 September 2012. This festival looks interesting, of relevance to Media and Information Literacy, and I think some sessions will be streaming to the web.

Project mapping Twitter rumours, in graphics

A project which shows, graphically, how rumours spread via Twitter about events in the 2011 UK riots won a Data Journalism award: First Prize for ‘Data Visualisation and Storytelling". These visualisations could be useful if you are working with learners on topics to do with information, misinformation and social media. You can move the timeline along and see key tweets, and see how the tweets are connected (see the screenshot, which is taken from the site which I linked to below).

The project was led by Dr Farida Vis, who will be joining us here at Sheffield University in September. She has a research fellowship and is attached to my department, the Information School, so it will be exciting to work with her. The Twitter project was "carried out in collaboration with Dr Rob Procter from the University of Manchester, the project lead and Dr Alex Voss from St. Andrews University. The team analysed 2.6 million tweets to show how rumours ebbed and flowed across Twitter as claims were bolstered or debunked. Topics covered ranged from the absurd – animals on the loose after damage to London Zoo – to the true, such as the arson attack on Miss Selfridge in Manchester."

The website is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/interactive/2011/dec/07/london-riots-twitter

Reference Services Review: twittering

There's a Twitter focus in the latest issue (vol 40 no 2) of Reference Services Review:
- Libraries atwitter: trends in academic library tweeting: by Darcy Del Bosque, Sam A. Leif, Susie Skarl (pp. 199 - 213)
- To tweet, or not to tweet? by Susan Jennings (pp. 214 - 216)
- Students tweet the darndest things about your library – and why you need to listen. by Steven Bell (pp. 217 - 220)
- Just the right tweet at just the right time. by Ameet Doshi (pp. 221 - 223)
- Beyond broadcasting: Customer service, community and information experience in the Twittersphere. by Lyndelle Gunton, Kate Davis (pp. 224 - 227)
Other articles include:
- Reference Services Review: content analysis, 2006-2011: by Katy Mahraj (pp. 182 - 198) This analysis confirms that the vast majority of authors are from the academic sector, with 83% from the United States, and "information literacy and instruction" is the topic with the biggest share of articles.
- Information literacy on Facebook: an analysis. by Donna Witek, Teresa Grettano (pp. 242 - 257)
- Student preference for tutorial design: a usability study. by Lori S. Mestre (pp. 258 - 276)
- Engaging undergraduates in discipline-based research. by Heidi Gauder, Fred Jenkins (pp. 277 - 294)
This is a priced publication: here is the home page: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=0090-7324
Photo by Sheila Webber: York castle with bluebells, 2012

Social Media Use By Students With Disabilities

This looks an interesting article: Asuncion, J. et al (2012) "Social Media Use By Students With Disabilities." Academic Exchange Quarterly, 16 (1). http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/cho4973.htm They surveyed a convenience sample of 723 students/recent graduates with disabilities, in 2009, in Canada. They asked which social media they used, which were most difficult/easiest, what improvements could be made etc. The most used service was Youtube (91%). The top 5 recommendations were: Having a simpler or better layout; Improving privacy/ security; Fixing accessibility issues (e.g., CAPTCHA); Enlarging features on website; Having captions/ subtitles.
Photo by Sheila Webber: My daffodils, April 2012

Pew Internet reports: use of smartphones; hyperconnected millennials; privacy management

I have a backlog of reports that I meant to read before I blogged, but I think I had better just blog them, starting with some Pew Internet and American Life project reports. On March 19th they published a report about Teens, Smartphones & Texting. They did "telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 799 teens ages 12 to 17 years old and their parents living in the continental United States". "Teens are fervent communicators ... they communicate frequently with a variety of important people in their lives: friends and peers, parents, teachers, coaches, bosses, and a myriad of other adults and institutions. This report examines the tools teens use to communicate, with a particular focus on mobile devices, and then places the use of those tools in the broader context of how teens choose to communicate with people in their lives."
Just dipping in (since we have been discussing use of email in my department), texting dominates: "8% of teens say they email daily with friends, down from 14% in 2006. More than half (54%) of all teens now say they never use email to talk with friends, and one third of teens say they never use instant messaging or send messages via social media sites."

Another fairly recent report, released on March 1st, revealed that Nearly half of American adults are smartphone owners. "46% of American adults now have a smartphone of some kind, and for the first time smartphone owners outnumber users of more basic phones." "The results in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from January 20 to February 19, 2012, among a sample of 2,253 adults, age 18 and older."

Then on 29 February, they revealed that Millennials will benefit and suffer due to their hyperconnected lives "A Pew Internet/Elon University survey reveals experts’ hopes and fears about the hyperconnected generation, from their ability to juggle many tasks to their thirst for instant gratification and lack of patience." "Teens and young adults brought up from childhood with a continuous connection to each other and to information will be nimble, quick-acting multitaskers who count on the Internet as their external brain and who approach problems in a different way from their elders, according to a new survey of technology experts."
I must say my immediate reaction is to trouble the expert opinions, as I don't think those things all necessarily follow on from one another. Still it does say that "Since the data are based on a non-random sample, a margin of error cannot be computed, and the results [i.e. the opinions in the report] are not projectable to any population other than the experts in this sample."

Finally, on 24th February a report was released on Privacy management on social media sites "Social network users are becoming more active in pruning and managing their accounts. Women and younger users tend to unfriend more than others" "The results in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from April 26 to May 22, 2011, among a sample of 2,277 adults, age 18 and older."
Photo by Sheila Webber: more forsythia, March 2012

Phil Bradley on Social Media

Phil says by his slideshare presentation Why librarians must use social media that it "Won’t make too much sense without me talking through it, but it does point to various resources": it is 86 slides of useful stuff.

Why librarians must use social media

View more PowerPoint from Phil Bradley

Latest issue of Reference Services Review

Reference Services Review, Volume 40 issue 1, 2012. Articles include:
Demystifying the data interview: Developing a foundation for reference librarians to talk with researchers about their data: Jake Carlson
Training Millennials: a practical and theoretical approach: Kathleen Langan Video lectures help enhance online information literacy course: Ed Hahn
Research skills development through collaborative virtual learning environments: Adrian Stagg, Lindy Kimmins
Digital games in academic libraries: a review of games and suggested best practices: Mary J. Snyder Broussard
Empowered library eLearning: Capturing assessment and reporting with ease, efficiency, and effectiveness: George Germek
Still a mixed bag: A study of first-year composition students' internet citations at the University of Mississippi:Alex P. Watson
Incorporation and visibility of reference and social networking tools on ARL member libraries' websites: Leila June Rod-Welch
This is a priced publication: home page at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=0090-7324
Image created from words on the issue home page, using http://www.tagxedo.com/