Mordenkainen's Biblical Disfunction

Evaluative Statement Post for INF 506 (aka Assignment 4)

2011-06-02T23:52:00.000-07:00

The Online Learning Journal (OLJ) entries that I address in this evaluative statement post are (in order in which they are referred to):

http://stephengriffiths.blogspot.com/2011/06/module-2-web-20-technologies-and-social.html

http://stephengriffiths.blogspot.com/2011/05/reflections-on-political-use-of-social.html

http://stephengriffiths.blogspot.com/2011/05/identity-privacy-security-and-trust.html

Reading the article by Jenkins and Clinton (2006), (as I summarised on my OLJ)
made me realise the scope of the change that has already taken place in my profession. In this new era of information service provision, librarians are no longer mere reactive teachers of research techniques and sorters and retrievers of information - they are leading digital producers and members of the new participatory culture, whose skills within the new platforms can empower members of their communities to further heights of collaborative participation.

Each of the technologies studied in Module 2 have great application within library services which can be enhanced by accompanying their adoption with an ongoing commitment to robust (and constantly reviewed) information usage policies grounded within an institutional framework committed to advancing the understanding, knowledge and skills of its community.

I found from my experiences analysing political social network presences that there are people using social networks who really don’t “get” the platform, and that evidently lots of people are being paid big bucks generating content which doesn’t reflect the strengths and advantages of the medium.

How best to summarise my findings from that excursion?

Well…would you expect mass audiences to regularly view a TV news broadcast that showed only still images with no sound? How about a regularly listening to radio broadcast where the only sound was a series of monotone voices directing you to tune to a different frequency to hear details or substantial reportage that you could receive directly by simply sticking to the destination frequency?

Both the above absurdities are analogous to actual examples I of content I encountered during my research into how some groups use Twitter, Facebook, and/or other social networking technologies, not as information platforms with their own conventions and features, but as online versions of pre-existing publishing technologies. From my researches during Assignment 3 I found that there was a strong gap between the theory of use of social networking technologies and what appears to have been adopted as convention by many users of those technologies.

Part of this knowledge/skill gap must come down to a failure to educate the public as to how to adapt to the rapidly changing online platforms and learn skills which will allow an appropriate response to the various policy challenges within the emerging online spaces. As discussed in my post on identity, privacy, security and trust - despite a rapid rate of adoption of the new technology - many institutions and organisations developed (and continue to develop) their policies for online participation within a context of a world where the three major mainstream mediums of print, radio and television rule the world of content dissemination.

In the new world of online participation through individual production, curation and consumption the large social networks of the internet are analogous to the network channels of television in that they are consumed by a large proportion of the people connected to the internet and are accessed often enough to be a daily feature in many users lives. But televisions never stared back at the viewer, collated their viewing habits on other channels and activities outside the lounge room, and tracked where viewers were watching content from (at least, not without extensive Nielsen-household-style opt-in procedures), and certainly viewers of one television weren’t empowered by the technology to be able to do the aforementioned activities.

Upon reflection, I believe that the biggest factor preventing skill refinement in the use of social network platforms is the sheer quantity of content across the massive variety of platforms that users encounter on a daily basis - which is increasingly sourced from the informal social cohort rather than an aloof yet professional publisher/broadcaster – and the Betamax moment that I’ve heard many information professionals have experienced, wherein the fear of committing resources to library services catering to potentially redundant or overtaken technology can result in inaction (which is compounded by the sheer variety of available platforms to chose from) and cynicism regarding platforms that are touted as the “next big thing”.

So where to from here?

I feel that information service organisations need to established principles of service provision governed by codes of client conduct and judge appropriate access and use to be anything that encourages or improves the community, be it: a status update on Facebook; a tweet indicating the presence of a new resource via Twitter and a follow-up tweet in reply indicating its updated availability to interested parties; providing a three-dimensional map of the layout and virtual representation of the digital products of your library in a virtual environment (be it something stable like a customised CounterStrike server or as part of a wider online virtual world like Second Life); or contributing to a wiki regarding research solutions to commonly asked reference questions.

To be unnecessarily prescriptive, I’d say that a true library professional participant in the new information age needs to have enthusiasm, curiosity, and a willingness to experiment with and acquire non-traditional skills. While I may not have engaged with all the suggested activities in all of the modules (my lengthy tours of duty in EVE Online and World of Warcraft makes me inclined to beg off from getting a Second Life) I believe I sample a reasonable cross-section of the social media platforms out there in my daily life and look forward to adopting and adapting to new platforms in both my personal and professional life as they emerge during the course of my career in the library profession (and beyond).

References

Jenkins, H, Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A. J., & Weigel, M. (2006). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. Retrieved from http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF

Module 2: Web 2.0 technologies and social software

2011-06-02T20:14:00.001-07:00

Module 2 had us looking at stuff mentioned in the title of this post, and essentially felt like an updated version of the classic (2007) Learning 2.0 23 Things program. I’ll just take the time for a quick run through the elements of the module:

Blogs
Wikis
Tagging
Mashups
Social Networking
RSS
Gaming and virtual worlds
Photo and video hosting
Communications: VoIP and Web conferencing
Podcasting (and webstreaming)

Blogs

We looked at the various blogging platforms (eg: Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, etc) with a glance at microblogging (eg: Twitter, Yammer, Jaiku, etc).
I used to enjoy blogging more regularly but found it to be a bit of a time-sink - mostly due to my tendency to spend about 25:1 of my time reading other people’s blogs rather than writing my own. I currently love and practice microblogging via Twitter, which is my baseline current information awareness supplier - if I haven’t checked it every 2 hours I’m probably asleep, watching a 3 hour media block, or my phone is dead!
The workplace opportunities offered by Yammer and similar micro-blogging services are quite enticing. Back at my last workplace we had a communal document called the Works In Progress (but referred to as the WiP - pronounced like the productivity spurring implement), where each worker recorded the current status of in-progress, planned and completed works (including who was working on it, what it involves and when it’s due for completion). The WiP, when updated regularly and accurately, was a powerful management tool - I see Yammer as an opportunity to evolve that level of oversight towards an even more effective model.

In my current job where I spend lots of time on reference desk, an application like Yammer could prove useful for linking staff in the backroom or on standby with staff who are at the customer service front - it could enable faster delegation and research followup than the current model of phoning one individual and giving them a list of tasks, as an entire group would be able to monitor the feed and react to tasks with specialist efficiency.

Wikis

We looked at various free wiki platforms: wikispaces, wikidot, wetpaint (a personal favourite) and zoho. I actually arrived relatively late to the game re: wiki editing - jumping aboard a doomed project to try to establish a WA Government Library Information Network Wiki within GovDex in 2008 and more recently, generating a few entries within Wikipedia (resisting the urge to astroturf with only limited success). There’s a whole research project out there waiting to happen about how Wikis (and really, almost every other Web 2.0 platform) has effectively displaced the extrinsic motivation associated with the labour activity with its primary contributor groups who must be doing what they do for some other reason than than traditional rewards (eg: money). Leaving Wikipedia’s much discussed gender balance issue aside, what will really be of interest for the maturing Social Networking platform developers will be how Wikipedia manages to attract and sustain its volunteer workforce with such success.

Tagging

Pretty much the premier social bookmarking service - in that they did it best and were adopted widely- was del.icio.us (now known simply as Delicious). Enabling individuals to share links via a common interface and/or subscription service is an idea that has since been widely adopted either as intended design feature a la Facebook’s “Like” function or as a user-generated feature as with Twitter users’ inserting URL shortened links into their tweets. The approach of Delicious has remained relatively stable, with a users combining their efforts to generate a folksonomy which is more targeted (and may be more powerful) than the clumsy “Like” of Facebook.

The site is pretty easy to get around, and relatively simple to get to grips with (although a screencast with a voice-over or similar intro video would be slightly better than the comic book-style about screen). The existence of web browser plug-ins increases the affordance of the service – although I note that the Firefox plug-in hasn’t been updated for version 4 of Firefox yet (which means the service has disappeared from my home browser for the moment).
By harnessing the massive cumulative browsing activities of its users and employees, an information organisation could very effectively maintain its own in-house web-based news and research archive using this service. As a librarian who used to maintain industrial relations-specific current information awareness services for over forty researchers and professionals, a group which generated ongoing monitoring briefs covering over 160 subjects and external organisations – the ability to instantly recall all news items associated with industrial action published in Western Australia via the tags “Western Australia” and “Industrial action” is a killer application (and one that I would have adopted if not for the issue of uncertainty about the future of the service and IT issues with installing plug-ins on 86 user terminals without admin rights).

Mashups

As mentioned in the module notes, a mashup is a combination of more than one online data source to create a new digital object or service. Mashups have become easier to find online since the creative commons/open source movement has driven much of the code needed to share data out into the light of day, and the degree to which social networks seem to be successful (both in terms of market penetration and accessibility) seems to be correlated with the degree to which said networks are willing to share data or provide a space within which other platforms can propagate.

The dynamic sharing of data across multiple platforms - and the generation of unique applications using APIs - could almost be a course in itself.

Social networking

Social networking is defined in the module notes as “an extension of personal relationships and community into the online environment”. As covered in my comments re: professional social networks and privacy, there are some concerns regarding privacy, security and trust online, these are raised in the article by Steckerl (2007) which aimed at promoting best practice for people using social networks for both personal and professional reasons. Some of the information in the article is somewhat old or outdated - Facebook notifications and requests are far more manageable now, and the question of free versus paid social networks has mostly been resolved by advertising-financed platforms, but it’s otherwise quite a useful read.

Chapman (2009) is pretty-much a blow-by-blow account of what best practice social networking design looks, feels and intergrates like with a slight bias towards Google’s OpenSocial application platform, a legacy of the context of when the article was written (during an era when it looked like Google “got” social networking). It’s a good little introduction to how to generate a social network even though it feels like a checklist for Facebook’s design features.

Steckerl, S. (2007). Survival guide: Online social networking. FUMSI, (September). Retrieved from http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/use/2346
Chapman, C. (2009). Social network design: Examples and best practices. Smashing Magazine, (13 July). Retrieved from http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/13/social-network-design-examples-and-best-practices/

I remember trying to explain what Twitter is to a group of fifty-something executives a couple of years ago as they were trying to establish whether there was a business case for their Department’s online team to take the plunge with a presence on the Twitter and Facebook networks. I vaguely recall trying to explain Twitter as a form of “socialized” RSS feed which allows individuals to subscribe to a steady stream of information relevant to a topic (as per RSS’s primary use) but which also integrates signal boosting capability (via “retweets”) and interaction with the source (via reply tweets).

Given the Division had a stake in being able to push users relevant information while at the same time being able to react to questions about that information, there was some keen interest in expanding its meager RSS feeds as well. At the time the Division’s feeds were restricted to a feed for the Division’s externally-focused newsletter, a feed for updates to work conditions in various industries, and a generic “what’s new” feed which existed to draw attention to new content on the website.

The State Library of Western Australia’s RSS feed is mostly about advertising events at the State Library. Given many customers probably don’t visit the front page of the website and see news of the latest exhibitions or events for that institution, I’m not surprised that there is a feed of this kind to draw attention to potentially overlooked yet rewarding information. I couldn’t find a feed to the library’s recent acquisitions of note – which is something that South Australia’s Library does (and does well) with links to the catalogue record of notable additions to its collection.

The Supreme Court of Western Australia maintains an extensive list of RSS feeds which assists the legal profession within Australia maintain awareness of the latest judgments, sentences and practice directions. The content is spread across six separate feeds, with some of the feeds generating multiple articles daily.

Gaming and virtual worlds

See my posts about Second Life for a bit of a rant about this.

Photo and video hosting

Meh. I’m not all that big on either of these activities in my personal life, and haven’t had much cause to pursue them professionally. I find the legality of most photo and video hosting sites to be intriguing though (sort of like how society continues to tolerate political corruption intrigues me) - and I think how these sites meet the logistical challenge of organising their metadata and responses to legal issues would make an excellent case study in the future for other social networks, who (if they aren’t already hosting such content, eg: Facebook) will eventually need to confront the implications of similar activities on their networks.

Communications: VoIP and Web conferencing

Instead of audio-only phones running through telephone cables we now have platforms which enable internet audio and video conferencing services. Not much for me to say about this one.

Podcasting (and web streaming)

The radio and audio book’s unregulated, rebel stepchild. What the aforementioned mediums do well, web streaming (such as liveblogs, live chats and other communal online audio collaborations) and podcasts can do better and for posterity!

Web 2.0 Tech and social software module (part 2)

2011-06-02T06:44:00.000-07:00

Connecting to Second Life - comments stream recorded as stuff happened
OK. Client installed (aka, dragged and dropped into the apps folder).
Highly Tasteful* Placeholder Avatar chosen:


*It's been a long day, and I hated the other options.		(My partner will mock me about this later).

I note that there was no option for a monochrome, pixel-happy bland-suited avatar. So much for emulating Snow Crash.

Terms of service time. I'll give it the religious read.

Having problems connecting. Apparently teleporting home is the option to go for...
No effect.
Ok, Second Life Help Portal... they have a status blog! Just like that site that Australian's like in droves...
Ah. Just like EVE Online, they appear to have semi-regularly scheduled downtime, which naturally occurs when Northern Hemisphere USAmericans are least likely to be affected but falls square in sucks-to-be-nowsville.
Oh, there's a basic mode.
Nope. Still not connecting.
Speedtest indicates I'm getting 2.49Mbps, with 0.65 upload speed, which is within tolerances for the system...
Now I'm getting advice that I was unable to connect to a simulator.

I guess I'll get back to this tomorrow morning.

Web 2.0 Tech and social software module (part 1)

2011-06-02T05:58:00.000-07:00

Looking at Second Life
There’s been a lot of chatter on the Facebook group for this subject about the use of Second Life (SL) as a social networking platform for investigation. And I've seen that I'll need to be using it as an example immersive experience for the Gaming and Virtual Worlds part of the module....

Oh. Dear.

From what I've seen, experienced and heard over the years since its release, SL has had a problem with server overload and has had massive scalability problems from its inception on incredibly overworked servers and never seemed to cotton onto a more de-centralised approach to generating the worlds eg: through servers running instances of the world designed for a couple of thousand people like in World of Warcraft (WoW) or in the ~~more ambitious~~ utterly insane (yet oddly scalable) one-server-per-quadrant-of-the-one-galaxy-where-64,000-players-~~roam-~~maraud approach of the niche space MMORPG EVE Online (that abbreviation probably expands to Everyone Versus Everyone Online).

Which is why many people organising virtual world meetups use more robust (if more restrictive) MMORPGs like World of Warcraft for their meetup* infrastructure.
*IIRC, ALIA /used WoW 4 #meetup l@ 2009.

Last I saw it while casually mucking about in it from 2006-2008 Second Life was more interesting as an academic proof-of-concept piece than an ongoing real-world application. It’s just wasn’t stable enough to rely on for anything.
But I’m seeing a general push within this subject to get in on it, so I guess I’d better install the damn client!

A Second Life experience-centred blog post will be coming up in twenty minutes (or whenever I can get the damn client to work on my 4 year old Macbook)!

Identity, privacy, security and trust (part 2 of Module 5 - the postening)

2011-05-31T00:35:00.000-07:00

Identity, privacy, security and trust

If I was trying to be intentionally opaque, I’d claim that an individual’s online presence is an evolving product of externalities shaping and shaped by perceptions of social standing and political affiliation, economic pressures, professional imperatives and a bubbling stew of intersecting gender/sexual/racial/caste/class/ability identities.

Hopefully your eyes skipped the rest of that sentence.

Thinking about what is important, or of concern for an individual’s online presence isn’t going to be a one-size-fits all proposition for every stage of an individual’s life or for every career. A public figure isn’t necessarily going to care too much about their profile’s accuracy to their date of birth, pet’s name or high school details (unless they are stupid enough to use it as their password reset) as such matters are traditionally made matters of public record. Likewise for retirees or employees transitioning to retirement - they are unlikely to need to worry too much about their personal lives being a liability to future employment (although given their senior status as potentially vulnerable citizens it may be wiser to not advertise everything).

For current participants in the curret generation of social networks (eg: almost anyone who’s given Facebook their full name, actual birthdate, home town and filled in that “what’s your porn actor/actress name” quiz which asks for the street you lived in and your pet’s name while growing up) most of the damage has already been done. Their most frequently referenced personal identifiers have become known to certain corporations which may not all be particularly nice/play well with others, and they may need to start seeding inaccurate information into those networks in an attempt to improve their privacy levels. But new digital citizens (eg: mostly teenagers) are uniquely placed to determine the extent to which their identities online are a reflection of their private lives and, hopefully, they will be taught tools which will enable them to limit their exposure to potential privacy breeches based upon the mistakes of previous generations .

Ideally, an individual’s online presence should be catered to three different (and not mutually exclusive) levels of privacy (ordered from most controlled to least):

Tier 1. Personal information that people share with their close friends, eg: full name, precise DOB, phone numbers, those photos of what you did last summer, what you thought of last night’s episode of Q and A, your location last Friday night between 9pm and 10pm).

This type of information would normally be kept online on a blog with high privacy settings, and/or Facebook/MySpace/other-recreational-social-network behind some hefty privacy settings on said recreational-social-network. That is, if you feel you can trust such social networks. [Note: would-be political candidates of mainstream parties in democratic societies should probably have almost nothing of interest in this area if they want to be viable candidates in the future].

Possibly a safe space to express your opinion about your boss/coworkers/bus-driver/car-mechanic using the full extent of your vocabulary, probably not.

Tier 2. Personal information that people share with work colleagues and contacts, such as their professional portfolio, education, training and job history, etc.

This type of information would probably reside on work-related social networks, like LinkedIn or Monster.com.

Which may be a liability in the workplace if your manager doesn’t like their employees being poached.

Tier 3. A less private level of personal information which is likely to be relatively* impact-free if made public knowledge and maybe of interest to commercial or political entities (eg: I prefer Toyotas to Fords, I’m a Mac, preferred to Hillary to Obama but contributed to both, want a carbon tax, etc).

This stuff should be kept on recreational social networks available to all if at all, unless it’s relevant to an individual’s work situation.

*If you don't mind targeted ads, possibly unaccountable corporations knowing your every spending pattern (including your daily movements like when you are home), etc.

Of course, an individual’s entire life may not always suit such a simplified tier system. A guiding principle for all online interactions should be whether or not an individual would feel comfortable sharing said information with anyone that individual might see on the street who will then have the opportunity to repeat that information at the worst possible time, and exercising discretion accordingly.

Module 5 - The postening (part 1)

2011-05-29T23:56:00.000-07:00

Social Networking module five looked at the policy demands of social media and the ever-shifting nature of attempting to cater to its implications.

The module was divided into four sections:

Digital convergence, trends and shifts
Social media implications and contexts
Identity, privacy, security and trust
The challenge of finding authentic information in a socially networked world

This post and the one after it will function as a holding space for my notes and observations re: the tasks associated with each section, as well as have a rant/reflection about the policy implication of social media in the workplace (both generally and in a library context).

Digital convergence, trends and shifts

Summarising Did You Know 4.0 (data current to October 2009):

Print media circulation is terminal (a decline of 7 million in 25 years is horrifying considering the population has increased since then) while online readership is up to 30 million in just 5 years; meanwhile traditional media (within print, television and radio) advertising is experiencing double figure declines while mobile web and personal computing browsing advertising is experiencing 18% and 9% growth
more audiovisual content was uploaded to YouTube in 2 months than the totality of content aired to date by the three major TV networks of the USA since 1948 - those decades-old, established networks attract only 10 million unique visitors to their websites versus 250 million unique visitors for MySpace/Facebook/YouTube
95% of songs downloaded in 2008 were not paid for, meanwhile 93% of USAmericans own mobiles but one third don’t feel safe using them for purchases (except pizza delivery)
Political fundraising in the USA is more efficient via social networking eg: McCain’s Presidential fundraising in February 2008 raised $11 million from regular fundraisers b vs the $55 million raised by Obama who used social media networks
17% of the largest USA companies have disciplined employees for violating social media policies

The primary messages I took away from viewing the video Did You Know 4.0 was that social media was growing and soon to be deeply embedded aspect of the socio-political landscape within the USA, and that organisations will need to develop policies to regulate their responses to employee behaviours as the employees participate in this new medium. Soon (if not already) it will be more common for employees to open a Facebook page during their lunch break than a newspaper, and whether or not employers allow their employees to use the web from work PCs is irrelevant to prevent such access as by 2020 mobile web will be the primary means of accessing the web.
So where to from here? Given the issues raised in the video, a starting point for organisations would bel social media policies that incorporate the following potential solutions:

The phasing out of anonymous use of work PCs, as open access to organisational resources leaves organisations vulnerable to liability for common illegal behaviours such as the download and upload of pirated media, download/upload of banned content (such as homemade explosive assembly instructions, child abuse material, etc), and the generation of defamatory content and/or cyberbullying activities;
Permitting employees to use work PCs during times of non-peak demand and/or when use will not interfere with their duties (eg: during lunch breaks, or after a day’s work quota has been reached);
All employees must include (if they are to identify themselves as an employee of the organisation on a social network) text in their account profile (or where applicable) indicating that the content generated by them on this account (be it videos uploaded, comments made, political group affiliations declared, etc) are their own and not the product of the employing organisation (except where appropriate, eg: corporate spokespeople).

Of course, one convergence that the video didn’t talk about was the notion of social media networks causing the divide between work time and personal time to blur, but I’ll be getting to that shortly.

Social media implications and contexts
Bertot, Jaeger et al (2009) conducted a survey into the role public libraries as a core provider of internet service to the public, including access and literacy services, and the counter-claim that such a development sees public libraries evolving away from their status as a learning and community syupport centre towards a provider of alleged entertainment facilities. The affect of the Global Financial Crisis (as usual for a USA publication referred to as “the unprecedented economic downturn”) is mentioned initially as stirring intense demand for the frequently free internet services offered by libraries, statistics from the survey measured adequacy of internet services to meet demand which appeared to be soaring in areas most affected by the downturn and fast outpacing the resources provided to libraries.
The survey found that libraries were the only source of free internet access in three quarters of communities - a shocking statistic - and implied that one strategy that libraries could pursue to stretch their resources further would be to restrict access to social networking sites...which would notiobnally free up time for education, training and job-seekers but which ignores the emerging likelyhood that the latter are more likely to be successful in their search if they have access to and maintain their social networks!
Jenkins, Clinton et al (2006) talks about the emerging online participatory culture wherein social status , connections, skills and empowerment is derived from affilliations, expression spaces, collaborations and information flows enabled by online communities.The paper discusses the emerging policy problems of unequal access, susceptibility to media propaganda and the ethical problems of deprofessionalisation and de-centralisation of editorial authority (and “Old Empire” concept wherein MSM editorial authority is, apparently, desirable). The paper also discusses the skills and competencies needed for the development of young citizens’ into full participants in the new online culture, and offers justification for direct changes to current teaching methodologies that may be stuck with material catered for the old paradigm of community engagement and citizen activism.

Reflections on political use of social media

2011-05-21T08:22:00.000-07:00

Last week as part of my studies (after a month of much drama re: new job, partner injury and the old job) I managed to rattle out an assignment involving a period of monitoring political social media network usage.

For the report I monitored the ALP and Greens social network presence on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube from the beginning of this month through to the Saturday after the release of the Federal Budget, with the aim of comparing the ways in which the two parties used the various platforms during a time of significant policy debate.

It was an interesting experience. From doing a look around at the number of views/retweets/likes/etc each bit of social network content gathered I've gained a stronger perspective as to what constitutes an affordable social networking experience for the intangiable "average user" (albeit, not one that can be disaggregated down to demographic groups - which seems to be 9/10's of the current political campaigning lore's aim).

Unfortunately, due to absurdly small word count restrictions or my bad research presentation skills - probably the latter - I had to cut the section recommending ways in which the two parties could improve their use of their various social networking accounts out of the final version of the assignment.

Fortunately (mostly for my sanity, as the project had a wonderful tendency to broaden its scope every time I set finger to key) I hadn't gotten to the stage where I might have edited and honed the raw recommendations into the horrid little essay style which whoever reading this has probably already suffered enough of.

So it follows that the recommendations below are in gloriously readable dot-point format and are relatively informal.

I hope someone enjoys them.

Recommendations for the Australian Labor Party

Possibly promoting Member of Parliament social networking contributions on their main page (see The Greens' main page, which has a feed of the latest tweets from their MPs) might be a good idea if the aim is to project the image of a party that engages with digital citizens.
maintain a list of MPs who twitter/Facebook/myspace/etc in each State on their federal and State sites so that would-be followers can find them easier.
encourage more direct engagement on social networks: have rostered MPs (or, more realistically, staffers) reply to posts on the ALP Facebook group wall about matters within their portfolio via their Facebook accounts and similarly (for Twitter) generate reply tweets regarding policy discussions, but keep them short - link to a page with facts debunking an argument rather than attempting to explain complex arguments in 160 characters. It may be better to reply to critiquing messages via an associated account (maybe the one associated with the Minister whose portfolio is being critiqued?)
have more MPs run their social network presences rather than staffers (as it gives the subscriber/follower/fan a greater sense of involvement and personalisation) or at least attempt to educate staffers as to more effective at social media engagement (eg: if your Minister is putting out a press release, a bland title and a shortened URL link is the minimum you should do. Far better would be to use hashtags so people interested in the topic can find the tweet easier and for additional links to a blog post explaining/supporting the press release would be grand).
Use Julia Gillard’s Twitter account more - despite being older than the party’s account and attracting more than ten times the number of followers it has less than a quarter of the content. The disparity in following numbers may be linked to the ALP account’s status as a relatively dry read, @JuliaGillard’s isn't particularly enthralling though. @KRuddMP and @TurnbullMalcolm are interesting case studies re: non-dry political style;
re-branding Labor Connect so it doesn’t have two faceless white men as its logo might be a first step (the ALP has enough problems with allegations that it’s run by faceless men without its primary web presence visually confirming the rumour).

Recommendations for the Australian Greens:

on their website: have links to the primary Greens social network accounts; also have a page which has each MP/party official’s social network involvement rather than spreading it across multiple pages - this would make it easier to follow/subscribe-to/like/etc each respective party official;
more on-message focus when a major policy event is occurring, keeping the official accounts clear for Australian issue information dissemination rather than tangentially relevant (the Canadian election generated lots of noise during a rather busy policy week in the lead up to the federal budget - where the Greens had quite a few policy victories that it could claim);
Use Senator Bob Brown’s Twitter account more - it attracts five times the number of followers yet generates almost no content from day to day compared to the other accounts;
keep reply tweets short and link to content on blogs or elsewhere if the reply’s message cannot be contained in a single tweet or will be hidden in Facebook comments (there was a horrible example of over-engagement in the @GreenMPs account around 13 May where more oxygen was given to a possible troll than necessary).

A note on the following posts

2011-03-29T23:40:00.001-07:00

The unit that I'm doing at Charles Stuart University require I keep an Online Learning Journal which is meant to reflect my thoughts and learning process as I study the INF 505 Social Networking unit.

As there was a heck of a lot of readings and activities associated with the weekly tasks and I've not always been able to access Blogger (yay work-based internet restrictions), I’ve kept most of my work off this OLJ until I’d had the time to pull everything together. Thus the weird structure of the following posts (starting with Module 5, which I've been working through more recently). Expect later posts to be a little easier on the eye and hopefully not completely daunting to read/unreadable.

Interesting little webgame: Spent

2011-03-19T03:04:00.000-07:00

Spent is a web-browser based game run out of the USA by the Urban Ministries of Durham designed to raise awareness of the plight faced by the fourteen million United States Americans currently out of work.

Playing Spent sees you take on the role of a single parent whose savings are down to their last $1000, who is homeless and cannot afford to be picky about their next job (and thus forced to find a minimum "wage" position) and need to make it through to the next month.

As befitting a society where Ayn Rand's ideological influence extended to top policy makers in the country, the USA mimimum wage is not a living wage, and this very effective bit of web-based activism demonstrates this point with brutal efficiency, as your single parent is forced to choose between compromising their health, their child's education and/or their dignity (eg: your single parent has to choose between spending two weeks of income on fixing a tooth requiring root canal surgery or getting medical care for a beloved family pet...not fun).

Each choice your in-game single parent makes is followed by data bubbles relating to the real-world statistics underpinning the choice (eg: "most low-income workers in the USA opt not to spend money on health insurance due to the expense" flashes up when you choose to acquire or turn down health insurance).

Why am I mentioning this here?
Well, I mention it because the game is designed to raise awareness, and it uses social media network tech to do so. If you run out of cash you can use Facebook or Twitter to ask your social network outside of the game to assist you in the game...which would be a very effective method of awareness raising in a world where Farmville and other Facebook apps didn't already generate a steady stream of irritating requests on social networks.

Personally, I don't think this method of viral marketing/awareness raising has been particularly effective (as I found out about Spent through a gaming column rather than a social media network) but I could see that it might be more effective as an awareness raising program for specific regions - a version of Spent based in urban Australia would be highly effective at raising awareness re: working conditions around election time.

First entry: Current Understanding/Definition of Social Networking Technology

2011-03-02T05:41:00.000-08:00

A social networking technology (SNT) is any platform or technology that enables a group of individuals using it to build a network of connections which allow them to share information, which can then be used for a common purpose. This purpose can be by the design of the creators of the SNT (eg: gathering commercially valuable information about consumer trends as per Facebook) or spontaneously generated by the users themselves (eg: guerrilla marketing/political campaigns generated via Twitter).

I use or have used the following social networking technologies:

Livejournal, a defunct account that no longer gets updated, but occasionally used as its original commissioned purpose: a primitive-yet-functional RSS reader that presents feed in never-out-of-fashion chronological order;
Facebook, I'm not much of an app user, I'm more there for Event invites and to occasionally check the status of non-Farmville-playing friends, I'm looking forward to saving some cash via the Groupon/Spreet/LivingSocial-killing functions which Mark Zuckerberg is rumoured to be rolling out this year);
Twitter (aka my mobile venting tool for the frustrations of contemporary society and useful source of factoids for bus trips), @libratorr since 4/8/2007;
X-Box Live (currently standing at 4175 Gamer Points…a source of mild dissatisfaction) which I've primarily used as a means of instant-messaging friends who are lost in Ferelden; and
Wikipedia (jumped on for work reasons, stayed for the lulz).

As a practicing corporate solo librarian whose clients have evolving and specialised information needs I’m looking forward to gaining applicable skills and knowledge which I can use to foster a library service that makes use of social media technologies to empower my clients to retrieve and retain information useful to their work.