Category: Carolyn Frazier

1) Will professional journalists be able to embrace the new models discussed by sociologist Michael Schudson? This model follows the assumption that people enjoy citizen journalism, as well as opinions in their news consumption.  But can traditional journalists accept this phenomenon as a credible part of the new news industry?

2) Could newspaper websites and advertisers create a model that ensured advertisements are being watched? A simple solution would be to load an advertisement before a selected story is loaded. The viewer will not be able to access the selected story until the advertisement as played.  A second part to this question: does this kind of advertising diminish the credible nature of a news corporation, especially in regards to the type of content used in certain advertisements? (This could easily turn into political campaign commercials being used to go along with certain stories)

3) Does cookie tracking allow advertisers to feel that their online advertisements are more affectively targeted than print ads?

4) The economic report suggested that consumers graze across multiple news sites and few have loyalty to one source over another. Should news sites work on branding themselves? Could this increase loyalty to specific sources?

1) Anderson brings up a good point when he says that prices for individual components are often determined by psychology and not just cost. Are there any online companies that already use this tactic? What are some ways that more online services could harness this technique to create a more sustainable economic future?

This isn’t a question, just a note: the chapter on the psychology of free is freaking fascinating. His example with $10 magazine subscriptions makes so much sense, yet I’ve never heard it broken down that way before. Great points.

2) I’m not sure how the psychological model of free relates to the vast majority of websites. Can we view an advertisement that you must watch before you view content as the penny that he discusses on page 59? Also because advertising is the most prominent way that web sites make money, do we judge the types of brands advertised as equal to the value of the web site that we are using?

3) Anderson brings up an interesting point about the value that we place on the things that we pay for. We tend not to care as much about the items that we get for free. Is this true of information as well? I can’t say that I value information that I get online any less than information that I get from the books that I buy so I wonder if there is any correlation here.

1) Lanier discusses the fad of anonymity at several different points in the first section of his book. He views the trend as essentially undoing the collective connective power of the early Internet in which people worked cooperatively together. Is this view still relevant and is this trend still current? I’m researching the disappearance of privacy through the willingness of Internet users to disclose personal information about themselves online. I see almost the opposite trend taking place in today’s Internet culture.

2) Lanier discusses the economics of a social network site and uses Facebook to illustrate his points. He states that the only viable formula for profiting from social networking is to violate the privacy rights of users. The question now becomes whether or not current users can gradually be cajoled into accepting intrusions into their privacy. This is the question of my research paper. Hopefully I’ll be able to answer this by Thursday!

3) When arguing for better interface design that would discourage online “trolling” through anonymity, Lanier seemingly contradicts his plea for a less constricting interface template – the kind of templates that rob us of our personalities and translate into fragmented bits of our former selves. Is there a viable solution to this dilemma? Are we already so spell-bound by current templates of self expression that we are unable to think outside of its boxes to other possibilities?

4) Lanier also discusses the centrality of advertising to the digital economy. Do we tolerate an enormous amount of digital advertising because we realize that it is the key to maintaining a free information flow from producer to consumer online?

1 ) Benkler asks a really great question in Chapter 1 when he asks how fifty thousand volunteers can successfully coauthor Wikipedia and then give it away for free? Does this generation (Gen Y) still view information as a commodity as operators of more traditional media have always seen it?

2 )  Benkler offers a view that seems almost utopian, where people from all walks of life commune through technology to achieve something larger than one person alone could create, and all with a cooperative attitude. Is this the real digital landscape or merely one aspect to the way that we interact online?

3 )  Are the notions of copy right and patent obsolete in online communities where it is perfectly acceptable to plagiarize computer coding?

5 ) Are Peer Produced sites like Wikipedia changing the way that we judge online content as being valid and credible?

* I think I’ll need to find an existing /create my own scale to measure attitude (apathy) in relation to privacy rights. I want to find out if a preference towards interfaces that require information sharing and customization has any correlation to this privacy apathy scale.

Information security and user privacy are not new issues in our evolving digital society. The Internet has grown to touch almost every aspect of our lives, even our definitions of words such as community and network. Previous studies have focused on the legal aspects involved in user rights and information ownership on the net. Other studies have outlined the ramifications of sharing personal information online, most specifically and relevantly pertaining to incriminating content that the user is powerless to remove. Newer conflicts have emerged from the way that social networks and advertising companies utilize and share user’s information. To examine whether advertising companies have been encroaching into our personal lives or if we have essentially invited them in by sharing information about ourselves online becomes a very circular argument and perhaps it is a two way street.

My purpose is not to consider the legal quandaries and pitfalls of limited privacy on the net, but instead to investigate user perceptions of privacy and attitude toward consent.  I theorize that younger Internet users have little concern for privacy and actually welcome intrusion through the constant need to share and update. I do not believe that most users read their privacy rights or are completely aware of how their personal information is being used. Part of my hypothesis is that even after awareness occurs, there will be no difference in online behaviors.

My studies will be aimed at a specific demographic of Internet users; I will examine the attitudes of adolescents and young adults. My aim is to determine the following: the level of awareness concerning a user’s rights to privacy specifically concerning social media sites like Facebook, the level of awareness of how social media sites treat and share personal information and how this affects privacy, and finally the level of concern for personal privacy regarding future posts, tweets, status updates, photo uploads and messaging.

I plan to conduct a thorough literary investigation on previous studies involving both the legal and social aspects of digital privacy. I also plan to prove that my demographic assumptions are accurate by finding research that supports my conjecture. I am basing these plans on my perceived knowledge that most people in older generations do not share information as readily online as members of younger generations. I will also gather the most up to date statistical data relating to Facebook member usage and behaviors in order to make generalizations and direct possible survey questions. Ideally I would like to conduct a short survey on Elon’s campus using a convenience sample. I hope to answer the question of whether behaviors will change post-awareness although I realize that questions may run the risk of producing less than honest answers from newly enlightened participants.

I arrived at the assumption that users have ultimately given up caring about privacy in a few ways. Privacy controversies have not halted the growth of Facebook in the slightest. I have also observed the growth of other platforms like Foursquare and GPS equipped smartphones, which seemingly invite “Big Brother” into our lives. I’m witnessing a growing trend of people eagerly forgoing their rights to privacy, but for what end? I expect to find literature relating to the Uses and Gratification theory while completing research, and possibly Normative studies as well. I would like to investigate if one possible motivation is the new option of customization and personalization. When we consensually give away personal information and indicate preferences we often gain a richer personal experience with digital interfaces that can better cater to our needs and wants.

Mark Zuckerberg was recently quoted as saying “the age of privacy is over.” I would like to find out of this statement is true, or if we are merely in the process of redefining what privacy means to us.

1) Many of the theories that were discussed in the readings seemed to fall under the chicken and the egg paradox. On page 112 Vicker explains Klapper’s theory that the media reinforces existing opinions instead of changing them. If this is the case, then where and how are our opinions formed and what theoretical paradigms does opinion forming fall under?

2) Something mentioned under the Agenda Setting theory also seemed paradoxical to me. This theory stated that the media focuses their attention on particular stories thereby determining what the audience will find important. Could it also be argued that news organizations cater to the audience by running stories they know we are drawn to – if it bleeds it leads?

3) I found the ideas developed by Berger and Luckmann really interesting (page 185). They theorized that interactions between individuals built up over time to create society and eventually institutions that  encapsulated our feelings and beliefs about the world. Although individuals were the original creators of these norms, the institutions now control and reinforce them – effectively ending our ability to change them. This made me question how interactivity and the ability of the audience to give direct feedback may have changed this model.

4) The concept of transience was also interesting (on page 96). It says that mass messages tend to be consumed and disappear within in a short period of time. I question where our constant need for new messages stems from. It’s a need and an expectation. I wonder if we have shaped the media to produce messages in this fashion, if the media has shaped our expectations or if there is some sort of two way causal relationship at play.

5) I am curious what methods you can use to ensure that participants in a self-monitoring survey are reporting their behaviors accurately and honestly. Certainly there will always be a large margin of error with this kind of sampling, but are there things you can do when selecting participants that can help reduce this margin?

1. Chapter 13 discusses the importance of research towards audience analysis and stresses the importance of knowing your audience through proven methods of both quantitative and qualitative data. I am curious as to how methods for gathering information on a particular audience base have changed within the context of online companies and their ability to track a user’s web activity even after leaving the site’s web page. This question is also relevant to sites with obvious interactivity methods in which the user is much more aware that their preferences are being monitored (on sites like Netflix).
2. I had a hard time imagining how one would go about proving with near certainty that changes in a dependent variable could not be attributed to anything other than changes in the independent variable. I would like to better understand the best practices to measure this particular evaluation tool.
3. What are some ways to insure that experiments conducted on Elon’s campus could potentially be seen as representative of college students nation-wide in terms of stratified random sampling, quota and other random sampling methods. (I ask since Elon is a smaller and private University)
4. How has agenda setting theory been changed, challenged or upheld with the increase in citizen journalism?
5. How has diffusion theory been modified through the growth of large online networks of people blogging, forwarding and tweeting?

These questions might be way too specific for what we will be covering in class this week, but I didn’t have many questions about the basic theories or methods in which theories are researched.