Week 1: Social Capital & the Media Landscape
Ryan Thornburg University of North Carolina
@rtburg
What You Will Learn This Week
• What is social media?
• Brief history of social media & audience engagement
• Who uses social media for news, and how?
• Key components of social journalism
• Examples of professional social journalism
In This Lecture…
• What is Social Capital?
• History of Social Media
• The Big Ideas
What is Social Capital?
• Personal connections that help people act more effectively
What is Social Capital?
bigger is not BETTER
What Creates Social Capital?
• Political Knowledge
• Trust
• Civic Engagement (voting, group membership)
• I have information that I trust. I know how to use it and I have the social network needed to activate it.
Social Networks Build
Social Capital
What is a Social Network?
What is a Social Network? • Web-based service that allows individuals to
– Construct a public or semi-public profile – Choose and display a list of other users with whom
they’re connected (either one way or mutual)
– View and traverse the connections made by others within the system
» danah boyd and Nicole B. Ellison
Next Up: History & ‘Big Ideas’
Pace of Change Increasing
1700s – Pamphleteers
1900s – Penny press
– “community correspondents”
1700
1800
1900
2000
Pace of Change Increasing
1945 – Barry Gray put his radio mic up to the phone receiver. (Also George Roy Clough in Texas) 1945 – As We May Think: “here is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record” 1960 – launch of first all-talk radio stations in LA and St. Louis. 1968 – BBC Radio Nottingham
1700
1800
2000
1900
Pace of Change Increasing
1969 – ARPANET – peer-to-peer 1980s -- CompuServe, FidoNet and BBs 1986 – Email Listserv 1990/1991 – hypertext, the WWW and HTML 1997-2000 – SixDegrees.com – first social network platform, create profiles, list friends and surf others’ lists
1700
1800
2000
1900
Pace of Change Increasing
1997-2000 – SixDegrees.com 1999- Napster ; LiveJournal; Blogger/PyraLabs; BlackBerry; cross-network SMS 2002-2004 Friendster 2002 – TinyURL 2003- LinkedIn 2003-2008 - MySpace; 2003/2004 – Orkut, Hi5, Flickr, Facebook, Dodgeball 2005- YouTube, Bebo, Ning 2006- Facebook (all); Twitter 2007 – iPhone; Tumblr 2008 – TweetDeck, HootSuite 2009 - SocialFlow 2010 – Instagram; Pinterest 2012 – Vine
1700
1800
1900
2000
The Big Ideas
1. Your audience knows more than you.
2. Conversation, Not a Lecture
3. Process, Not a Product
4. Your most loyal readers are your best distributors and best sources
5. The Strength of Weak Ties