Trust, Twitter, and "Going Viral": SMSociety13 #1

SMSociety Post #1

So I was at the SMSocial13 conference @ Dalhousie University. It is a conference on Social Media: its use, impact, and possibilities.  The presentations from the first morning went from 'big data' analyses (1 billion tweets) to small networks of Canadian military spouse bloggers.  It is good to see old friends and meet some new ones.  Interestingly conversations among both groups turned to when I'm finishing my PhD.  I suspect collusion but I digress.

Saturday Morning Keynote: Our keynote speaker was Sharad Goel, a senior researcher with Microsoft.  He's the guy who has the system big enough to map out 1 billion tweets.  He asked an interesting question: "what does 'going viral' really mean?"  Oddly enough my blog has never gone viral (insert kitten picture here) so I listened intently.  He examined the way videos, online games, tweets, and pics spread online, and mapped out those relationships.  Guess what he found? 93% of stuff posted never gets reposted/retweeted, 5% gets one reposted by one person, and fewer still by two and three.  What percentage of posts get reposted by someone, and in turns gets reposted by another? 0.3%.  This is not viral yet; you have only graduated from friend repost to social repost.  A few of these continue to spread, and these are the ones Sharad focused on.

How do they spread?  Well a variety of ways, sometimes it starts with a broadcast to a wide audience, and some of those begin to repost.  Other times it starts with one person, and then like the common cold you give it to your friend, and it spreads one person at a time.  It can be various combinations of the two; I think of Gangnam style as one that spread through a variety of means including word of mouth.  He did raise questions about this thing the media calls "going viral"; we know it happens but it seems that the way it happens is still the person to person, one "like" at a time.  So in the end Sharad couldn't tell me how to make my blog go viral.  His exact words to us were, "if I knew that I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't tell you, and I'd start a company."

I had a good discussion with a couple of other attendees about the role of "trust" in online sharing.  We share through our personal networks, but we share differently based on trust relationships.  The broadcast post assumes we trust in the broadcast source.  In an earlier post I noted that Lady Gaga and "the Beib" have many more followers, but religious leaders like the Joyce Meyers, Joel Osteen and Dalai Lama are much more likely to be retweeted.  The trust relationship is different.

In the 1980s before online communication, I read a lot about the role of trust in the context of cross cultural communication and religion. Religious conversion is one of the most dramatic shared experiences, and requires a prior trust bond: I trust you so I am more willing to trust your Jesus.  Religious proselytizing had its own broadcast models through traditional media. Evangelists like Billy Graham reached many people this way.  But rarely was this their first experience with the message. They usually had a prior one-to-one interpersonal trust relationship (the friend who brought them).  Broadcast played a role but by building on the trust of individual relationships.

The theme of trust came through in other social media presentations so we'll continue this conversation later this week.  In the meantime enjoy one of my favourite viral videos again.

Cheesy but fun!

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Brother, can you spare an interview?

It is finished.  No, I am not quitting my PhD.  I have considered it, and I have asked the existential question "why am I doing this? often"  But I digress.

It is time to quit gathering data on the information seeking of leaders of churches in transition.  Did I get all the data I wanted? No, but I got enough.

WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE WANT TO BE IN MY STUDY?

Hey, I'm a great guy! Why aren't leaders lining up to participate?  I have been reflecting on why it has been so difficult to recruit church leaders.  I have identified five reasons.  Can you think of any more?

1. Closing the Deal

My prospects are busy people.  They need to know how participation will benefit their church.  I need to clearly communicate that benefit and sometimes I am too timid.  Do I believe my research is important?  How can I communicate that better?  This is something I need to think through when I am designing my study.  This is a question about both style and substance.

2.  Ships that Pass in the Night

Sometimes we just can't connect.  The research usually occurs over many months so if the church is not local this would require extended travel and might not be feasible for a researcher with a full-time job.  Their timetable may to be too tight to accommodate me.   We have a complex game of email/phone tag and it just doesn't work in the end.  This eliminated a couple of my prospects.

3.  Transition Trauma

The churches I am seeking are engaged in transition or change.  They usually have good reasons to change.  The process of change might have significant legal and social repercussions for that church so church leaders might not want someone looking over their shoulders.  If the change is theological, the church might be at odds with their denomination.  If the change is structural, board members and staff might be removed.  Some transitions can be disastrous.  This removed a couple more from my list.

4.  Transparency Troubles

Churches are not all comfortable with the same level of transparency.  Churches have legal requirements for financial accountability that most take seriously.  Some open their business meetings to visitors, and some restrict them to members only.  I have been overwhelmed by how welcome some leaders have been to let me, an outsider, be a "fly on the wall."  Others have not.  But I should add that this isn't just a church issue.  It is human nature to seek to protect oneself from potential criticism, and it happens in the university context as well.  So others buzzed off.

5.  Professionals vs. Academics

I am an academic and a professional.  There is a huge divide between these worlds sometimes.  I have written in the fields of law and librarianship.  Research has shown that judges are decreasingly citing academic writing, finding it "unhelpful for the bar." In librarianship much of the theoretical work has failed to make an impact on library management.  I believe this is applicable to the Church context.  Many church leaders, especially lay leaders, are occupied with the "how" and "what" questions, and not the "why."  I need to make my world accessible to them if I wish to engage with them and they with me.  The list gets shorter.

I am very grateful for the leaders who had opened themselves and their churches to me.  I hope and pray that I represent them fairly, and that my research finds a usefulness.  Time to quit and finish writing.

Thank you for your time.

David


"Sale Sale", Simon Gregg, CC License, http://www.flickr.com/photos/xrrr/
"Ships that Pass in the Night", Lynn Hand, CC License, http://www.flickr.com/photos/your_teacher/3160970910/
"Change", busy.pochi, CC License, http://www.flickr.com/photos/busy-pochi/5170100206/
"Fly on the Wall", Matthileo, CC License, http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthileo/5105598473/
"Ivory Tower", David Schumaker, CC License, http://www.flickr.com/photos/rockbandit/9052784451/

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Navigating the Family Tree...

In my research I do not question my respondents' faith (though I can explore its impact on a persons' life and community.)  On a personal level the people I meet, from across the Christian spectrum, often challenge my own faith.  It has been an unintended yet rewarding part of my research experience.

But I am reminded of an old joke:

A man died and went to heaven, and Saint Peter took him on a tour. He showed him the harps, the streets of gold, the cherubs. The man noticed that there were groups of people gathered in different spots, so he asked about them. “Those over there, sitting quietly and looking very serious—those are the Presbyterians. And those eating the big potluck meal—those are the Methodists. The ones with all the tambourines are the Pentecostals.” As he went on, the man noticed one group set apart from the others. “What about them over there?” he asked. “Keep your voice down,” Peter said. “Those are the Baptists, and they think they’re the only ones here.”

Lots of stereotypes here! I have heard this joke naming different groups, but this version hits home for me.  It points out the fragmentation of Christianity: divided by history, culture, and theology. 

Also I am a Baptist.  It is neither the tradition I was born into (Roman Catholicism) nor raised in (Plymouth Brethren) but the one that I have chosen.  The Baptist tradition does interpret the Bible's standard for membership in the family of God narrowly.  Jesus' words in the Gospel of Luke are oft cited: “Enter through the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."   It is more than religious prejudice (though there exists some of that too.)  Baptists often describe faith and salvation in different terms than Catholics, Anglicans, Pentecostals, Mennonites, United Church, etc.  Sometimes the differences are semantic and sometimes substantive; differences we can gloss over and differences that are deal breakers.  There are groups that come knocking on my door that might consider themselves Christian but are so fundamentally different as to be another religion.  There is also the concern among Baptists that many in mainline Christian denominations are culturally Christian but have no personal faith.  I have heard members of mainline groups express the same concerns "that the mission field is in our own pews."  To be fair, I believe there are also many cultural Christians in Baptist Churches.  Canadian Sociologist Reg Bibby reminded us in Restless Churches that evangelicals have our own home missions.

In my research I engage with Christians whose beliefs and practices are different from mine.  I also encounter those whose relationships with God seems personal, powerful, and far deeper than mine.  So I am faced with a conflict.  I cannot ignore theology.  Theology transforms my worldview and enables me to interpret my experience.  I must reject some teachings as incompatible with what I understand from the Bible.  That is a Christian responsibility.  But I am know that God does not require perfect theology to be part of His family (which is good or I wouldn't get past the Pearly Gates!)  The requirements to be saved are remarkably few. 


The researcher must maintain his objectivity.  The believer will take each profession of faith at face value.  I will explore each faith story to understand it and on the word of their testimony I will consider them my brother and sister in the faith regardless of the church they attend.  Hopefully they will do the same for me.  We'll work on their theology later (and perhaps they will try to work on mine.)


Enjoy this short video from the folks at Muddy River Media on the Entrance Interview for Heaven.

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Yielding the Middle: the Decline (and Fall?) of the Academic Library

From where I sit I can see Gibbons "The History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" on my bookshelf.  It seems pretentious to claim to understand all the factors that led to Rome's collapse, though many historians has attempted to do so.  Equally pretentious would be my assessment of the decline (and fall?) of the Academic Library.  I have blogged before about academic libraries, sometimes optimistically and often not.  Librarianship is experiencing a sea change no doubt, and times are hard for academic libraries in Canada.  When my own library opened its new building in 1989 there were 19-20 staff; when I joined the library in 2000 I think there were 14 staff and a small army of part-time students.  Now we have 10 staff; a handful of students, and an a growing belief that if anyone leaves they will not be replaced.  I'm not a stats guy but I see where this is heading. 

When I scan the national librarian jobsites (FIMS, FIS, LibraryJobs, CLA) I believe I see a disquieting trend: a rise in the percentage of part-time or term academic librarian positions, and the downgrading of existing positions to lower paying entry level (a form of ageism but that is another post.)  I regularly provide job references for new library school graduates and I know it is a hard market.  Collection budgets, once protected from cuts, are now relentlessly being whittled away.  Some might like to describe this as a re-tooling to be a new lean mean fighting machine.  I think it is something else.

I fear as a profession we are yielding the middle ground.  I'm referring to the Ackoff's Data-Information-Knowledge hierarchy where data are those disorganized facts and observations that becomes usable information when given structure and context and thus meaning.  Knowledge then might be thought of as information applied; where experience, skills, and information are combined to address a problem.  I do these concepts an injustice by my brevity but you get the idea.

Data was the domain of researchers; they created data, managed it, structured it, and created new information.  Then that new information became the domain of librarians, who created structures to preserve it and make it accessible.  Ideally practitioners would take that new information we provide and use it in applied ways for the good of society.  Again an over-simplification.  There were gaps in the system, not all that info got into the hands of practitioners which is why there is a new emphasis on Knowledge Mobilization. 

In the information age, information access is big business, and academic libraries lost their monopoly.  We began to scramble to find a new role, increasingly yielding that middle ground to the Corporate Information Services offering "comprehensive one point of access", and looking instead to the other sides of the pyramid.  Academic Libraries have seen an opportunity, as research data has grown in size and complexity, to become curators of that data.  But they aren't the only ones, and we have no monopoly.  My non-sensitive research projects, for example, are housed on commercial project management sites.  They offer shared access and scalability tools beyond the capacity of most Canadian academic libraries.  Open Access repositories offer some possibilities but how many repositories does a country Canada's size need.  As positions like data analysts become the new hot career choice,  Library/Information Schools who may be facing declining enrollment are focusing more on data, as are the faculties of Management and Computer Science.  The other growth priority is knowledge management particularly in business, though this has not attracted the attention of academic libraries. 

I wonder what comes next.  What will the campus look like A.L. (After Libraries)?  What do librarians do when libraries become simply student centers?  If they have technology skills they migrate to university IT departments.  If they have field research or project management skills they can slide into research centers.  Many will simple retire or drop out.  Perhaps I am being needlessly morose and melancholy, but I have another 19 years until retirement.  I need to be thinking ahead.

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