the sort of assignment (I think) we want our students to create

What impresses me is that this has been viewed 541,000 times.  Our students could do work every bit as good as this.....I'm not saying this should be the only type of work they do - but certainly this should be part of the work that they do.

Comments

[Brian Reid]

I'm not sure I would want Dartmouth students doing such shoddy academic work. The "references" for the statistics quoted in the video are at http://socialnomics.net/2009/08/11/statistics-show-social-media-is-bigger-than-you-think/ .

I started to look at a few:

Stat 1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network

Ref 1. Source: Grunwald Associates National Study – Info highlighted on Trendsspotting Blog

Comment 1. The reference does not say anything about size of Gen Y versus size of Baby Boomers. Generation Y is not clearly defined, but most would have it's birth year ending around 2000. So how is it growing? Or are the Baby Boomers dying off at high rates? The actual reference says 96% of teens/tweens have used some form of "social networking technology including IM/chat, text messaging and email." That does NOT say that they have joined a "social network", at least as I think of a social network. Also the reference is much more narrow that most definitions of Generation Y.

Stat 2. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web

Ref 2. Source: Huffington Post

Comment 2. The Huffington Post is not an original source. In this case Huffington references a Reuters article about a book by Bill Tancer, "Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters". What Tancer, who works at Hitwise, says in his book is that searches for social networking sites are greater now than searches for porn sites. It doesn't say that social media is the #1 activity on the web. I think the most interesting thing in the Reuters article is Tancer's statement "With the explosion of this type of false information on the Internet I think we will see someone come forward and develop a new type of software that can filter for the most accurate information. Maybe accuracy is the next thing we will all search for." Maybe this new filter could be applied to this Socialnomics video!

Stat 3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media

Ref 3. Source: McKinsey Study also posted by David Dalka

Comment 3. The source is a blog by David Dalka, referencing "McKinsey". I couldn't easily find the original reference, but since it's in a blog so I guess we should believe it. Also, the video lifts the exact phrase "1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media" from Dalka's blog entry which was posted in 2006. The video is posted in 2009. So what year are we talking about?

And the sloppiness keeps going and going. There is lots more questionabble stuff like "Attempting to relocate" the source and:

Stat 10. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%

Ref 10. Source: Jobvite Social Recruitment Survey Note: 80% will use social networks in their assessment. 95% will use LinkedIn in their assessment. When we revise the Video needs to be updated changing “their” to “a” primary tool need to see if we bump 80% to 95%

Comment 10: This "survey" is by a company that offers online and Web 2 job recruitement solutions. The is no mention of who actually was surveyed. I doubt it was a random sample of all businesses across the US, or the world.

Stat 17. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English

Ref 17. Source: www.wikipedia.org - calculated based on # articles per language category

Comment 17. There is no reference for the studies that "show" Wikipedia to be more reliable that Encylopedia Britannica.

Stat 32. According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available

Ref 32. Source: Henry Blodget Silicon Alley Insider http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-kindle-sales-now-a-shocking-35-of-book-sales-when-kindle-version-available-2009-5

Comment 32. Here the source actually has a picture with Jeff Bezos and a chart. OK, but note that the actual statistic is 35% of the sales are for the Kindle when the book is available on Kindle. The video leaves out the "when available on Kindle" part - this is a somewhat significant part of the statistic.

This sloppiness almost seems like a hallmark of social media. I wouldn't recommend it in an academic setting.

[Joshua Kim]

Brian...this is the greatest blog commentary I've ever read. Seriously...I hope you post this on the YouTube video...and maybe even track down the creator and send your comments.

In my mind, the force of your critique helps prove the point of the value of this sort of platform and creation for learning.

If a student had turned in a paper with all these bad sources and questionable conclusions then the critique would have been private and hidden. Having student work posted online, and having faculty, students, and other interested parties critique the work both expands the critique and increases the push towards accuracy.

We never said that students will automatically create great work if they post it online. Students need to get their 10,000 hours, find their passion, and engage in communities. My point is that social media platforms, web publishing platforms (like YouTube) and authoring tools (like iMovie, Jing, Relay..etc. etc.) allow a range of students to become creators and sharers.

So the author has had the presentation viewed 500,000 times. How can your critique get out there into the conversation? How can we push this student (I'm assuming they are a student for rhetorical purposes) to learn how to build arguments with sound evidence? This seems like learning to me.

[Brian Reid]

You can see a lot of the particular problems with the video pointed out in the comments at http://socialnomics.net/2009/08/11/statistics-show-social-media-is-bigger-than-you-think/ . And I will give Erik Qualman credit for at least giving a list of sources and responding to people's critiques, and he makes reference to an improved version 2 of the video.

Having students do projects in various media can be useful, although to do it well in any particular unfamiliar medium may take significantly more time.

The option of publishing to the wide world should be used carefully however, in my opinion. As one is learning a topic in an academic setting, I can certainly see publishing to a class blog to solicit peer comments in addition to instructor comments. To publish something of academic integrity to the wider world, it should be subject first to significant review. I could see such publication being a culimnating goal of some college courses.

[Clayn Lambert]

I would like to posed two questions about a comment included at the end of previous comments about the video:

"This sloppiness almost seems like a hallmark of social media. I wouldn't recommend it in an academic setting."

1. Could you be more specific about what you mean by sloppiness and hallmarks of social media. Are you implying that social media is inherently inaccurate or incorrect? Or are you commenting on the glaring examples that seem to persist in social arenas, despite the efforts to educate users on the truth? Do you have more concrete evidence to support what seems to be a fairly sweeping generalization.

2. What do you mean by "recommending it in an academic setting"? Are you saying that you wouldn't recommend using or presenting it in a classroom? Or are you talking about using the approach and concept (socially-generated media in general) in a classroom setting? Admittedly, the errors you point out are pretty blatant, but is this the fault of the medium or the work performed by the artists creating it?

I ask because I have numerous examples each semester of ineffective, incomplete, or shoddy research papers. By this argument, wouldn't the research paper have the same "hallmarks" of sloppiness? Wouldn't it be better to say that the blame for the mistakes lies not in the medium, but in the users who created it?

I agree that one of the weaknesses of social media is that it tends to minimize or even skip the time-honored step of private peer review, where users are expected to delay publication of their content until its content can be verified and supported by outside review. The loss of this editorial step seems to clearly be affecting the civil discourse in academic and larger social circles. Individuals no longer take the time to step away from their communications, to consider the ramifications of what their comments may have.

However, I might make the argument that to many of the audiences that consume social media, the concept of publication as a concrete and finite act has lost its meaning.

As an example, consider the impact the word processor had on the act of writing. For centuries, writing was an act that took place with a pen or pencil, if not with even more crude tools. Modifications to a written manuscript required laborious effort in recreating the entire document over again. This fact caused many writers to take the revision process much more seriously; indeed, a simple spelling mistake at the end of a typewritten page often required recreating the entire page over again. Thus, writers were much more willing to take time to make sure their product was as correct as possible before engaging in the final act of publication.

However, as word processors began to become more and more accessible, the act of writing was altered dramatically. Now, changes and alterations could be made to a text with little or no effort. Writers no longer had to limit themselves in terms of the time they could spend on revising a document. Drastic changes could be made to a document just moments before it was submitted or published without significant effort by the author.

Writing instructors were split on this development. Many rejoiced in the idea that students and writers were now free to focus on much more deep and meaningful revisions of text, since the effort to make those changes had been simplified. Others bemoaned this change. In their minds, the time required to make those changes was price that demanded writers to take the process of revision more seriously. Students could ill afford to blow off revision and proofreading, as making changes was a time-consuming activity.

It seems to me that we are in a similar watershed moment in terms of social media.

In a world where wikis, blogs, and other social networks allow information to exist in a much more fluid and dynamic state, where content can change on a second by second basis to reflect changes in the nature of the information itself, publication takes on a radically new meaning. Publication, in these settings, is not the final step in the creation, development, and dissemination of information.

To use a metaphor: publishing might be seen as less the setting of information in stone, but rather pouring water into a larger stream or river. The information added is integrated into the stream of conversation, where it can be pulled apart and reformulated in a myriad of ways. Publication is not, at least in the minds of many students, a culminating act, but just a contribution to a larger collaboration of many minds seeking information and understanding together.

If this is the case, the task for instructors, in my opinion, is not to limit or stop students from adding to the stream, but helping them learn how to purify and improve the quality of the water they are adding to the river. Focusing on helping students to improve their critical thinking and questioning skills, helping them to improve their evaluative skills when observing and aggregating new information would seem to be the most effective way to improve the overall quality of the river.

You can't stop the river. But you can help make it a little better.

[Brian Reid]

Good questions and comments, Clayn. Sorry that I was a little unclear (sloppy?) in my comment about sloppiness. I meant that since I wouldn't recommend sloppiness in an academic setting, I wouldn't recommend that particular video as an exemplar of scholarly work. I meant it very specifically about that video, not the medium.

Aadmittedly, I was being a little provocative with my "hallmark" commment. However, I did temper the comments with "almost seems like a hallmark." I don't really think that there is anything inherently sloppy with social media, but I do think that a lot of social media seems to be spewed out with limited review. As a counter to that generalization, we seem to be having a reasoned, thoughtful discourse in this social media setting. A little more such thoughtfulness and review before putting things in the "river" could be a good thing.

I wonder if part of the issue is one of "audience," a factor that is traditionally considered in rhetoric. If the Social Media Revolution video is seen as essentially an advertisement for a book, and the audience is people who might buy the book, then maybe its level of "facts" is ok. As a example of scholarly work about social media, where the audience is other scholars, it's not ok.