Enter World: exploring mediated cultures

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

I’ve briefly touched on how cell phones can be used by news services to reach communities that don’t have access to computers and the Internet, but lately I’m becoming more and more convinced that we are migrating away from computers in general. And I haven’t even played with an iPhone yet—actually, I would suggest that the iPhone is in an entirely different category because of its computer-style interface and connection to the Internet. What I’ve been looking into is text message access.

Social Networks

Online social networks are offering ways to connect with contacts outside of their websites. Google’s Gmail and Yahoo! Messenger both have features allowing chat messages to be sent to cell phones. There are also a number of free Facebook applications allowing users within Facebook to send messages out to cell phones. There is also an application aptly named Chat To Text that offers a paid service connecting a range of social networks with cell phone text messaging.

The technology isn’t new, there have been free web services sending text messages to cell phones for years. What is different is the ability to connect a larger group that may not have otherwise shared personal contact information such as a phone number, allowing social networking connections to move beyond the computer.

Information Access

Another area that is expanding through text messaging is access to information. Google is a prime example here. By sending a text to 466453 (Google) you can ask for information found in their features including directions, definitions, and even conversions offered in the calculator. I’ve been taken to the wrong location by my GPS (I just love when it tells me to turn into someone’s driveway as if it’s a street) and turned to text message directions to get back on the road, headed in the right direction.

Photo Sharing

Along with text messaging and calling, cell phones have all sorts of bells and whistles. Photos are one, with many phones now able to take decent digital photos. Unfortunately some phones don’t offer easy access to the stored files. Services like Pikchur.com come in here, offering a personalized email address to send photos to through MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) as opposed to SMS (Short Message Service). Not only does this enable moving the photos off of the phone, but these sites also form networks of people sharing content and provide the option to simultaneously post to multiple networks.

Overall, we’re moving away from the need for a computer and Internet access to connect to networks that were originally formed online. Other countries may be far ahead of the States in cell phone features, but we’re getting there.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

I’ve been fascinated with Twitter because of the user control it offers, but the amount of micro blog entries can be overwhelming. There is so much potential ... but how to weed through all of the information?

Today I discovered Breaking Tweets. I like the format: an introduction at the top of the pieces summarizing the topic followed by a list of related tweets. The tweets link to the posters’ twitter pages, allowing you to follow up in more detail, but also provide an easy to follow overview of personal perspectives.

It won’t replace TweetDeck‘s ability to follow specific topics of interest nor will it replace local news tweets ... but it does provide a new angle to international news that you might not otherwise stumble across in Twitter. 

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Whose fault is it that the economy is in despair?

According to Recession Psychology 101* in today’s Dallas News, psychology blames the media: bad news = feeling bad = spending less.

The media defends itself ("Thing is, Friday’s job report number really was awful. We’re not trying to ruin your weekend") and blames the Internet ("It’s the Internet – not necessarily journalists – that’s allowed bad economic news to ricochet around the world faster than ever before, Steele said.")

This seems pretty standard to me. Back in December the Pew Research Center released the Psychology Of Bad Times survey report suggesting just this psychological cycle of worry leading to cutbacks leading to further economic troubles. The effects tradition in the social sciences has concentrated on what media does to people, and new media is afraid of old media. Nothing new here.

The article concludes with a psychologist who suggests turning off the evening news so we don’t need to worry about what doesn’t affect our daily lives. But in this cycle of economic woes (I’m going with the flow here) won’t that lead advertisers to stop buying spots on the evening news to cut costs because no one is watching any more, thus leading to less funding for news shows and causing the collapse of news media?

As oddly amusing as all of this circling is, we can’t blame (only) the media for the culture of fear we all participate in and create. Our society looks at faults and problems. The media looks at faults and problems. It goes far deeper than than the media, but then how could things change if something that was “really awful” was not the most important fact to tell the world?

*The headline has been edited to: Barrage of bad news can get in your head, affect judgment