Youth, mobility and media

Archive for March, 2008

Should advertisers stay clear of unpredictable, user-generated content?

Improveverywhere's Food Court Mission

Improveverywhere (IE), the informal flash mobbing group that stages ‘missions’ in public places (mass standstill on Grand Central Station, synchro swimming in Washington Square Park fountain etc.), has posted a video of their most recent event: a spontaneous musical by ’staff’ in the food court of a Los Angeles mall. It struck a chord with me because at high-school my clique of friends dreamed of a similar outburst in the class room or on the hockey pitch (but of course we never carried it out in those deferential, British, pre-Hairspray days). If you look at IE’s blog most comments are full of admiration for the food court video; but one or two see this mission as a departure from IE’s core of informal, inclusive activities. Typically, IE’s missions are organised via internet (their web site, social networking) and mobile phone. Participants (‘agents’) turn up on the day ready to do what’s necessary, and it works, more or less. The food court mission required a song to be written, a day’s rehearsal, negotiations with the mall authorities, and a team of actors who could sing and dance. Instead of IE’s typical compilations of unsteady video clips after the event, a professional-looking edit was posted. And the end result was less about the experience of the individuals involved (although it must have been a blast) than about the reactions of bystanders in the mall, as this erupted in front of them. But it was fun to watch and share, and most bloggers wished they had been there to experience it, so why carp?

Coincidentally Newsweek published an article last week, The Revenge of the Experts, claiming that web users now seek expert knowledge rather than peer commentary on the web. The article used Google’s Knol expert knowledge pilot and Mahalo (a start up Google rival, where search results are vetted by experts) as examples of responses to this need. Read a little further in the Newsweek article, though, and you find a comment from Jason Calaconis, Mahalo’s founder, ‘The more trusted an environment, the more you can charge [advertisers] for it.’ Ah, so that might be what’s going on. Could it be that users are being sent an ever-so-subtle message about peer group unreliability in order to drive them to more profitable sites? And will they be getting what they’re looking for even when they choose those authoritative-looking sites? According to Mindhacks, a set of apparently authoritative articles on sleep disorders have been published by the National Sleep Foundation, an organisation that receives funding from drug companies, which it spends on ‘public education’ i.e. advertising the existence of sleep disorders. Not an isolated example, I am sure, but just an indicator of the potential for messages with a specific bias from an apparently authoritative source.

It’s a bit of a stretch from Improveverywhere to the National Sleep Foundation but it’s worth it to make the point that much can be lost when basic user-generation is compromised. Heartwarming as the food court video is, it raises the bar for other IE missions. Will its high production values put them off? Will highly orchestrated mobs like this reduce the inclusivity of future missions (as far as I can tell many people join IE and turn up for missions without knowing anyone else who involved, and that’s where their social networking begins)? It will be interesting to see. It could go either way: the video could spawn many more adventurous mobs, or it could clip the wings of the project as a whole.

More generally the web is messy and full of mis-information, and production values are often low. But, nevertheless, good information will out. As the commercial story behind the Newsweek article unfolds, Andrew Keen, author of ‘The Cult of the Amateur’ is quoted as saying ‘no one wants to advertise next to crap’. But what’s his definition of crap? Slightly rough content, sometimes contradictory, sometimes superficial but which is, nevertheless, up-to-date and may just include some nuggets you couldn’t find anywhere else? User-generated content has its pitfalls, and web users need to be educated about them (and about the pitfalls (and strengths) of expert information too). But to lose peer commentary, to authorise and sanitise it would be to lose much of what drives people to the web in the first place. Olly Buxton, writing one of several critical Amazon reviews of Keen’s book, picks up on the issue of what can be gained from user-generated content. Citing the Britannica/Wikipedia dispute he writes
‘if the choice were blind faith in Encyclopaedia Britannica or a sceptical read of Wikipedia, I know which I’d have, and which I’d counsel for my children - especially since Wikipedia is automatically up-to-date, preternaturally following the zeitgeist, and replete with good know-how on things that Britannica would never have in a million years’.

So I would say to advertisers think twice before investing in the authority and expertise the internet ‘controllers’ want to bring about; there may be more to trust (and to invest in) in peer commentary, ‘crap’ notwithstanding.

Newsweek link via Putting People First

2 comments March 12th, 2008

how youth find privacy in interstitial spaces

The NYTimes ran a piece today called Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK). (Note: the article is very American-centric - in the States, older folks tend to be texting illiterate.) The article begins with an anecdote of a parent shuttling around his daughter and her friend. They are talking and dad butts in and they roll their eyes. And then there is silence. When dad comments to his daughter that she’s being rude for texting on her phone rather than talking to her friend, the daughter replies: “But, Dad, we’re texting each other. I don’t want you to hear what I’m saying.”

First and foremost, the notion of “privacy” is about having a sense of control over how and when information flows to who. Given the structures of their lives, teens have often had very little control over their social context. In school, at home, at church… there are always adults listening in. Forever more, there have been pressures to find interstitial spaces to assert control over communications. Note passing, whispering, putting notes in lockers, arranging simultaneous bathroom visits, pig latin, neighbor to neighbor string communication… all of these have been about trying to find ways to communicate outside of the watchful eyes of adults, an attempt to assert privacy while stuck in a fundamentally public context. The mobile phone is the next in line of a long line of efforts to communicate in the spaces between.

At the same time, the mobile phone changes the rules. Texting allows people to communicate even when they aren’t at arms length or can’t arrange simultaneous interactions. Because texting happens silently, it’s far more effective as a backchannel mechanism than whispering. Codes are not necessarily about hiding from adults as much as efficiency; deleting sent/received messages is far more effective than codes.

Over the years, parenting has become more and more about surveillance. In this mindset, good parents are those who stalk their kids. Parents complain that their children ignore them when they’re in the same space, preferring their friends. When was this not the case? What’s different now is that there are fewer siblings/cousins running around to team up with. There’s less free time to just “hang out.” There’s no openness to go out after school and “be home by dark” (a practice that used to start in early childhood). With activities and scheduling and this and that, I’m always amazed that children don’t demand more time for friend time.

There’s an arms race going on: parental surveillance vs. technology to assert privacy. We aren’t seeing the radical OMG technology ruins everything stage. We’re seeing the next in line of a long progression. And it’s just the beginning. The arms race is heating up. As parents implement keyboard tracking, kids go to texting. How long until parents demand that companies send them transcripts of everything? What will come next? We are in the midst of the privacy wars and it’s not so clean as “where’s my privacy” vs. “kids these days are so public.” The very nature of publicity and privacy are getting disrupted. As kids work to be invisible to people who hold direct power over them (parents, teachers, etc.), they happily expose themselves to audiences of peers. And they expose themselves to corporations. They know that the company can see everything they send through their servers/service, but who cares? Until these companies show clear allegiance with their parents, they’re happy to assume that the companies are on their side and can do them no harm.

Generation gap and technology ruining everything stories will be forever more. These do sell and they are fun to read. Yet, for parents and teachers and other concerned folks wanting to get a clear perspective of what’s going on, it’s important to remember that at the end of the day, the intentions and desires aren’t changing… it’s just the architecture that makes the practices possible that is. The refraction of light is changing because the medium through which it is channeled is changing, but the light itself stays the same and to guide our children, we need to remember to pay attention to the light, not the refraction or the medium that’s causing the refraction.

3 comments March 9th, 2008

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