A quick guide to work and study without Internet access
I was on a business trip in Europe for 9 days. 9 days that I’ve spent without regular Internet access and networking, checking my email and social media accounts only accidentally (yay to Starbucks and Ville de Narbonne for free daily 1-hour Internet access).
I had a couple of work-related issues that have happened during my absence and had to be managed quickly in social media channels to prevent potential negative impact on company brand. In addition to that, I had to read different articles (for COMM 506 and COMM 597 courses), as well as prepare written responses to courses topics. It was excruciating, but I’ve managed to resolve the majority of the issues. How?
Here’s the quick guide on resolving the work and study-related issues without regular Internet access.
- Finding the Internet (ofc!)
Ask the locals to show you the places with free Internet access (alternatively – look for the Free WiFi sign). Usually the time you can be online in such places is limited to 1 or 2 hours. However, when you’re there, you can check emails, download all the information you need to read and check phone numbers of the people you might need to connect with. Read the rest of this entry
Social Capital and You
I bet you’ve heard the term “social capital” a zillion times. Over the last decade it became another corporate buzzword that is mindlessly used everywhere. “Build your social capital”, “reap social capital benefits”, “invest in social capital” and even “social capital and you” – how often did you see articles or pages with titles like that? For instance, Google finds 124 million results for the query “how to build social capital”.
However, a lot of people do not know what “social capital” is in reality. In popular culture social capital is usually defined in economic terms and implies getting some advantages or benefits via communication. According to Kadushin, the theory of social capital has two underlying assumptions: Read the rest of this entry
Hashtag Freedom
This week in COMM 506, we learned about cyber-surveillance and control. It made me angry. I quite possibly messed up my weekly assignment by ranting about the UK’s pornography (and violence and file-sharing and political) blocking laws, which you can read about here. The government is applying these changes for the good of the people, especially the children. “I want to talk about the internet, the impact it is having on the innocence of our children, how online pornography is corroding childhood,” said Cameron in 2013. But is it for the government to decide what a person views online?
It seems that censorship develops in countries in small steps. It’s all…
View original post 859 more words
Netwar and battle of the story
Looking back at the events in Georgia, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, you might have noticed that the conflicts there have a new component. They are characterized not only by traditional military warfare, but also by involvement of other different structures in conflict. These structures are decentralized and rely heavily on usage of modern information and communication technologies to reach their goals. The confrontation between these structures happens mostly in cyberspace and is more social by nature. In other words, it goes beyond cyberwar. Scholars call such conflicts netwars.
For instance, Arquilla and Ronfeldt define netwar as “an emerging mode of conflict at societal levels, in which the protagonists use network forms of organization and related doctrines, strategies and technologies attuned to the information age”. The netwar actors are very different, often stateless and geographically dispersed. They are organized in various structures, with little hierarchy, and there may be multiple leaders among them.
The emergence of netwars is a result of the digital information revolution and recent development of information and communication technologies in particular (mobile phones, emails, web sites, etc.). In order to operate efficiently, netwars’ actors need to be constantly connected to different data and communication networks, as well as have possibility to exchange the information quickly.
One of the most important aspects of netwars is a “battle of the story” – a confrontation in information space. Different versions of events are propagated in order to change public opinion and, as a result, make adjustments to government policy. Experts say that one of the greatest “battles of the story” took place during the Russia-Georgia war of 2008. All sides of the conflict manipulated the information, launched cyber attacks and blocked communication channels. This summer I created a prezi about this case:
Click the image to open Prezi
Aren’t you impressed by the magnitude of this netwar? For instance, I am. The other thing that I’ve learned is that we shouldn’t believe blindly anything we hear or see both in traditional communication channels and online. In order to understand real state of affairs in modern conflicts, we should get information from different sources first and then analyze it ourselves. Otherwise, we risk becoming pawns in political games and acting as transmitters of faulty and biased information. If you ask me, I do not want to become a netwar actor. What about you?
Network theory and situation in Ukraine
First of all, I think that what is happening at the moment in Ukraine is horrible; in fact, it’s a tragedy not only for Ukrainian and Russian people, but also for the whole world. I still hope that the conflict can and will be solved without violence, in a peaceful manner.
Nevertheless, when I was following the story in the news, I understood that we could actually use the network theory principles to understand the conflict dynamics in southeastern regions of Ukraine.
So, in this post I would like to avoid politics, discussions about who’s right and who’s wrong, as well as calling names, and look at the situation from the positions of social networks scholars instead. My small research is based on the information available on different Ukrainian and Russian web sites, discussions with friends in Ukraine, as well as on some reports in Western press.
As we know, the whole population of Earth can be described in terms of social networks. This enormous network consists of myriads of different more or less dense clusters connected with each other by strong or weak ties, as well as of structural holes.
The dense clusters are usually formed on the basis of homophily principle (i.e. some common attributes, such as connection, friendship and even language). Propinquity (often geographical) is another characteristic of network clusters. These properties of social networks help to develop a sense of “trust” among their members, as well as generate social support, cohesion and embeddedness, in other words, make people feel themselves as a part of one group and support group decisions. Read the rest of this entry
Is a small world getting even smaller?
In 1967 Stanley Milgram, an American social psychologist, conducted a series of experiments to study the nature of “small world” – a phenomenon produced by the overlap of personal social networks. For instance, he tried to find out the average path length for social networks of people in the US. He sent out 160 packages to randomly selected individuals in Kansas and asked them to deliver the package to a person living in Boston, Massachusetts. Since the senders didn’t know the package recipient personally, they were allowed to forward the package to somebody they knew on a first-name basis and who were likely to know the final recipient. The first package reached the recipient in Boston via only two people. However, on average the delivery chain consisted of 5 people. That’s how the theory of “6 degrees of separation” appeared. It suggests that anyone is 6 or fewer steps away from any other person in the world.
One possible path of a message in the “Small World” experiment by Stanley Milgram in 1967. Image credits: Ageev Andrew
Social networks in organizations: from informal to internal
Academics all over the world speak about the role of informal social networks in organizations. They argue that such networks can empower generation of new ideas, increase collaboration between different organizational units, simplify processes, as well as improve motivation and retention of employees if supported by management. However, such networks lack accountability. So despite all the benefits of using informal networks to get job done, management is skeptical about their implementation into existing organizational processes.
The technological development brought us social media. It rose to popularity quickly; according to latest Pew Research report 73% of online adults used at least one social networking site in 2013. Social networking sites can be described as special platforms that embrace social interaction and exchange. At the same time, they allow tracking participants’ activity and see their contribution to different topics. Taking into consideration these particular features of online social networks, a question arises: why don’t we use social media platforms to foster collaboration and creativity inside the organization?
Lost in translation
This week I would like to share with you some thoughts about the behavior of people in online social networks inspired by the discussion in our COMM506 wiki. As we know, language serves as one of the factors that make people feel that they belong to one group. It is an important factor that fosters the development of social networks based on the homophily principle, networks that can be characterized by dense ties between its members.
When we register on any social networking site, as a first step we usually connect with our friends and relatives, i.e. members of our small network with dense ties. Eventually, our online network grows and we connect with people we work with, as well as meet in different situations (professional conference participants, suppliers, etc.). Taking into consideration the effects of globalization, we can suppose that these people can speak different languages and belong to different cultures. Sometimes we also start to follow well-known people that are of interest to us (scholars, celebrities, political figures, etc.), but in general we do not have a reciprocal relationship with them.
Tanya's blog about everything 