The launch of the SpaceX Dragon is a major step toward the privatization of space travel, which according to Messrs. Clarke and Kubrick should’ve been handled by 2001:

Too bad PanAm isn’t around for this. I wonder if this is really the beginning of a new era? Can we afford space travel in the 21st century? I’m part of the science-fiction generation, raised on an assumption that interplanetary travel would be a fact of everyday life by now. Turns out it’s been slow going for puny humans.

I’m leading a two-week asynchronous discussion with erudite author and culture critic Mark Dery, whose provocative essay collection I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts has been turning my head on its axle. At the moment, we’re discussing apocalypse:

I *do* think we live in times of chaos and complexity, when society is “far from equilibrium,” as
scientists who study dynamical systems like to say. Steven Pinker’s claim, in _The Better Angels of Our Nature_, that violence is on the decline notwithstanding, most peoples’ experience of the wider world—which is to say, as a funhouse-mirror reflection in the media—seems to be as a growingly out-of-control place. Ideological extremism and lockstep partisanship are monkeywrenching the American political system—an article by Ezra Klein in the March 19 _New Yorker_ notes that ideological “rigidity has made American democracy much more difficult to manage”; the culture wars are reaching a boiling point, ginned up by backroom dealmakers like the Koch brothers, whose real agenda is simply to create the most deregulated, tax-free landscape in which to Do the Lord’s Work; and Angry White Guys are stockpiling guns and training their crosshairs on scapegoats, post-traumatically stressed by a black man in the Oval Office, the demographic rise of the nonwhite population, the sea change in households where women earn more than men, and the econopocalypse.

But if you’re shopping for apocalypses, the rough beast right around the bend is Envirogeddon. Come of the middle of the 21st century, we—at least, those of us who can’t afford a climate-controlled biosphere lush with hydroponic greenery and an artesian well guarded by a private army—are going to be living in one of Ballard’s disaster novels. Global Weirding, as climate scientists call it, is *the* pressing issue of the near future, and I have every confidence my friends on the right will bury their heads in the sand, on that issue, until the sand superheats and turns to glass.

If you’re not a member of the WELL but want to submit a comment or question, just scroll to the bottom of the page and look for: Nonmember: Submit a comment or question. That links to a form that, when submitted, will send your comment or question to someone at the WELL who can add it to this discussion.

See larger image I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams (Hardcover) By (author) Mark Dery List Price: $24.95 USD New From: $15.70 In Stock Used from: $11.85 In Stock

Spectacular time-lapse of Yosemite by Shawn Reeder, via Laughing Squid…

This video by Alexandra Pelosi illustrates the problematic state of news today: media depictions of Sanford, Florida following the Trayvon Martin killing are wildly inaccurate. No wonder Americans are going crazy…

The session that impressed me most at last week’s International Symposium on Online Journalism was this one, led by Aron Pilhofer of the New York Times. Major innovations are possible in data journalism;the key is getting or creating the requisite databases. The journalism is in extracting meaning.

Richard Gingras, Google News

The leader of Google News gave an insightful talk about the current state of online journalism. Here are my tweets during his keynote. Appreciated his visionary thinking about the state and future of news, especially the extent to which the concept of a “news story” is being redefined and reshaped as the Internet evolves past old media paradigms (page/periodical/book) and new forms of distribution emerge that are a more natural fit for technical and social networks. One caveat: he doesn’t really have to think the same way as some of the other speakers about finding a new business model – Google already has one that works. Also note that he was feeling good about Google+. (You think Facebook has Google+ beat? We used to think that Apple was never going to be a leader.)

(Pardon my typos.)

ISOJ Program

Angela Lee: Audience preference and editorial judgment: a study of time-lagged influence in online news

To what extent are audiences influencing editors and journalists, and vice versa? Editorial judgement measured based on placement on paper; audience preference measured by clicks, looking at a 3-hour interval. Audience preference influences editorial decisions three hours later (which suggests editors are watching behavior and responding). However not seeing a reciprocal effect of editorial judgement on audiences.

I’m wondering if the results are influenced by assumptions embedded in the structure of the methodology for the report.

Some popular stories get pushed down on the home page, not sure why? Could be relevance of speed and immediacy – stories might be pushed down to make room for fresh content. Lee calls for input from journalists at the conference.

Alfred Hermida (who’s also been live blogging the conference, and who wrote the book on Participatory Journalism).

Sourcing the Arab Spring: A case study of Andy Carvin’s sources during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. How is sourcing evolving in the networked social sphere?

“We looked at sourcing, because sourcing matters.” Who we talk to as journalists affects not just what we report, but the meaning we derive from the reporting. When journalists cite non-elite sources or alternative voices, we treat them as deviant, as the others. Powerful and privileged dominate sourcing.

Carvin was doing a very different type of reporting, messaging and retweeting on Twitter. Carvin was like a “must-read newswire” (per Columbia Journalism Review). 162 sources in Tunisia, 185 sources in Egypt. Coded into categories: mainstream media, institutional elites, alternative voices, and other. Alternative voices included people involved in the protests.

Tunisia source types: alternative voices were 23%, and 32% institutional elites – but the latter were most “digerati.” Source type doesn’t necessarily give the whole picture: if you look at frequency, alternative voices 31% vs institutional elites 30%. He’s priviligeing alternative voices.

Egypt: source type inclues 39% mainstream media (journalists) vs 23% alternative voices – but looking at frequency, alternative voices 50% vs 33% mainstream media.

Here we see a reversal of traditional patterns of sources, esp with regard to protests. Alternative voices are amplified in Carvin’s reporting. On Twitter, you have an ability to bring in a broader range of voices. Carvin was turning to people on the street to get a sense what was actually happening.

Balance may be an issue here, where alternative source were more predominant.

Information cascade: Carvin may have influenced other reporting with his reporting based quite a bit on “rebel voices.”

How far does this reshape the narrative coming out of Tunisia or Tahrir Square? How does this impact sentiment?

Carvin used Twitter in a very new way, overturning the sourcing paradigm of traditional journalism. This gets to the role of journalist as curator, where journalist is a central node in a distributed network – the networked newsroom.

Mark Coddington, University of Texas at Austin, on Citizen Journalism. Who knows best? Attitudes and perceptions of citizen journalism and the news through the lens of creators and consumers.

People participating in the creation of content classified as news – this is a niche group that is largely reactionary – reacting to news sourced from traditional news, not creating their own content. They are co-opted. They are valued increasingly for the data they provide. In fact, they are increasingly valuable through creation of content.

Citizen journalist or participatory journalist content, while seen as valuable, not generally considered as valuable as professional news content.

What is good journalism – values of the profession: accuracy, autonomy, objectivity, watchdog role. Public’s tenets overlap somewhat, they view journalism from populist perspective: gives voice to the people.

Will citizen journalists and power consumers of news affirm the professional journalists’ perspective?

Distinction between content creation and consumption. More important may be type of consumption – consumers of news vs consumers of citizen journalism. Latter more positive toward citizen journalism and are not as concerned about the values of professional journalism.

Emily Metzgar: Asserting ″truth″ in political debates: A study of partisan Twitter users

Twitter influences the communication ecosystem. It performs many functions once reserved for professional journalists. It connects citizens who can organize (Shirky: headless organizations). Empowers the “former audience.” Is disruptive in some way.

The big picture: we know that Twitter is growing in popularity, increasingly used for political discourse, can be studied. How are journalistic behaviors manifesting on Twitter? How is political rhetoric used there?

The Truthy Project: collecting massive amounts of data. Mining that data for this study. Doing hand-coded content analysis.

Basic question: if Twitter is becoming a powerful new platform for storytelling, how are users leveraging it?

Literature gathered: Twitter in context, user generated content, the Internet and politics (mother of all intervening variables), media credibility, media literacy. How do we make sense of the massive amounts of information?

Borrowed from Kovach and Rosenstiel: Blur.

Four types of journalism

• Verification
• Assertion
• Affirmation
• Special interest
• “None of the above”

Types of political rhetoric per Benoit & Wicks.

Draw on previous work looking at analysis of Twittersphere based on partisan division.

#tcot True Conservatives on Twitter
#p2 Progressives 2.0

Snapshot of the hashtag communities.

To what extent to Twitter users produce content consistent with partisan categories?

What are the characteristics of the tweets?

• Retweets more associated with the left.
• Tweets tend to be scandal-oriented and emotionally charged.
• Links tend to assist with verification.
• Attack is the most common form of political rhetoric.

Vittoria Sacco: Curation: a new form of gatewatching for social media?

Online journalists creating new forms, shaping phenomena.

Limits: overwhelming abundance of information. Social media often lack a clear story line.

Gatewatching may replace traditional gatekeeping role.

Gatekeeping is practice of deciding why one story is important, another not. Gatewatching more participatory – point to sources rather than being a source.

Curating a story can include derivation from the source and attachment of additional information (social media etc.)

Storify.com provides a way to pull a story together from curated sources.

Which sources employed in social media creation?

I was actively live tweeting the International Sympsium on Online Journalism when I hit Twitter’s limit of 1000 posts within 24 hours. (I’m finding it a little hard to believe I posted that much, but that’s what Twitter’s algorithm is saying, I suppose).

I’ll do some live blogging here instead, offering this brief post by way of explanation – if you find this interesting, see the @jonl posts for #isoj and #isoj12. I’ll look for a chance to storify some of those tweets later.

David Isenberg explains that spectrum for various forms of wireless transmission and communication is treated as scarce, similar to real estate, because a scarcity model works for “cellcos” (cellular communication companies, former telcos) In fact, spectrum is infinite. [Link]

The core of the story is whether or not spectrum is a rival good. A rival good is something that when it’s used by one party can’t be used by another. The cellcos say it is. Current FCC regulation does too. But David Reed has repeatedly pointed out that physics — our understanding of physical reality — says otherwise. The article paraphrases him: electromagnetic spectrum is not finite. Not finite. In other words, infinite.

Yesterday (4/17/2012) I was part of a nonprofit Green Tech seminar hosted by TechSoup, with Evonne Heyning moderating. Also presenting: Jamie Henn from 350.org, Kevin Danaher and Zoey Krol from the San Francisco Department of Environment. See http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/community/b/tsblog/archive

The Pew Internet and American Life project’s Amanda Lenhart presented at the Annenberg Public Policty Center on Internet use among the young. No huge surprises here – access is often mobile, and texting is a big part of the online experience for young people.

“In her talk, Amanda focused on bringing together data that highlights the demographic differences among groups of youth in their adoption, use and experiences with technology and social media. While such data may have illustrated what was called a ‘digital divide’ in the past, it now highlights a variety of digital differences among groups of youth.”

Readers of this blog will be aware of my fascination with the concept and churn of culture. I’ve just run across mention of a new book called Culturematic by anthropologist Grant McCracken. McCracken will be the guest tomorrow on the Yi-Tan weekly call.

From Amazon’s book description:

A Culturematic is a little machine for making culture. It’s an ingenuity engine.

Once wound up and released, the Culturematic acts as a probe into the often-alien world of contemporary culture, to test the atmosphere, to see what life it can sustain, to see who responds and how. Culturematics start small but can scale up ferociously, bootstrapping themselves as they go.

Because they are so inexpensive, we can afford to fire off a multitude of Culturematics simultaneously. This is evolutionary strategy, iterative innovation, and rapid prototyping all at once. Culturematics are fast, cheap, and out of control. Perhaps as important, they fail early and often. They are the perfect antidote to a world where we cannot guess what’s coming next.

See larger image Culturematic: How Reality TV, John Cheever, a Pie Lab, Julia Child, Fantasy Football . . . Will Help You Create and Execute Breakthrough Ideas (Hardcover) By (author) Grant McCracken List Price: $28.00 USD New From: $13.89 In Stock Used from: $12.95 In Stock