Posts about social media platforms, how to use them and techniques for getting the best results.
reuters institute
The new Digital News Report is out - and things are looking grim in the intersection of social media and news. Here's a couple of preliminary observations.
memes
Abby Rabinowitz, writing for Nautilus about memes [http://nautil.us/issue/5/fame/the-meme-as-meme]: > But trawling the Internet, I found a strange paradox: While memes were everywhere, serious meme theory was almost nowhere. Richard Dawkins, the famous evolutionary biologist who coined the word “meme” in his classic 1976 book,
media
> Social media first undermined the media’s and institutions’ credibility, and now their own. Peter Bihr [https://thewavingcat.com/2018/03/01/welcome-to-the-post-social-media-era/]
internet research agency
Russia’s Troll Operation Was Not That Sophisticated [https://medium.com/the-atlantic/russias-troll-operation-was-not-that-sophisticated-39111b4f1ce4] : > The Russians tracked how well what they were posting was connecting with people. “In order to gauge the performance of various groups on social media sites, the ORGANIZATION tracked certain metrics like the group’s size,
product management
This is a damning summation of Twitter’s structural problems [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/how-twitter-lost-the-internet-war]: > “It’s a technology company with crappy technologists, a revolving door of product heads and C.E.O.s, and no real core of technological innovation. You had Del saying, ‘Trolls
culture
At the end of a session at LCC [http://www.arts.ac.uk/lcc/courses/undergraduate/ba-hons-journalism/] today — I’m doing a small series of workshops on social media in journalism for the 2nd year undergraduates there under the auspices of Russell Merryman [http://www.arts.ac.uk/lcc/people/
The big social network pretends to like and need news. But it’s all a front, and the façade is beginning to crumble…
bots
There’s a great piece of reporting from the New York Times that’s been, quite deservedly, doing the rounds for the last couple of days, exposing the seedy underbelly of the influencer economy [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/100000005704904.app.html] . It’s been an
Facebook has made a major announcement about the future of its newsfeed [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-bringing-people-closer-together/] and, in particular, its relationship to news publishers [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/technology/facebook-news-feed.html]. It is, of course, posted in that relentlessly upbeat obfuscation that’s
espionage
Reuters [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-security-china/german-intelligence-unmasks-alleged-covert-chinese-social-media-profiles-idUSKBN1E40CA] : > Germany’s intelligence service has published the details of social network profiles which it says are fronts faked by Chinese intelligence to gather personal information about German officials and politicians. I think it’s fair to say that social networks have
So, Facebook updated its verified-user-only app Mentions to become Creator [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/11/announcing-new-tools-for-the-creator-community/] , which is available to anyone. Here’s the video that they’re using to promote it: And here’s how they’re describing the main functions: * Live Creative Kit: Access exclusive tools
fake news
This post by JP Rangaswami resonated with me, because it summed up one of the areas digital seems to have gone wrong [http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2017/10/30/on-platforms-and-sustainability/]: > So is that it? Back to seats and eyeballs, channelled not connected, “audiences” sucking up linear “content”? Back to a