This blog post has information about presenting your paper to the class on December 8.

You have only 8 minutes to present your paper. Please practice and time your presentation. 8 minutes is a VERY short time.

Your presentation should include the following:

1. Research goal: what did you set out to do? (30 seconds)
2. Methods: what did you do? (1.5 minutes)
3. Results: what did you find out? (5 minutes)
4. So, what?!: why do the findings matter, and to whom? (1 minute)

No need to provide an overview since all presentations will follow the same format. We should have a few minutes for Q&A after each session of 4 papers.

Please upload your slides to the classroom computer as soon as you get to class. I am organizing the papers thematically so each session has some coherence. Here are the initials of people in each group:

1 – JM, HMK, RW, FA

2 – JS, ZZ, JM, LI

3 – DC, KT, ES, JW

Please ask any questions about these assignments (draft, peer feedback, presentation) in the comments below.

The main points I would like you to remember are the democratizing potential of social tagging and folksonomies. Since labeling and classifying can have a foundational impact on how we relate to the world, it is very important that more people have access to creating structure and organizing the world. The world according to Dewey looks very different than the worlds according to a Buddhist monk, for example. Now we can, in theory, have access to both worldviews. In practice, issues of access, of cultural domination, of being unable to see outside the constraints of the mainstream worldview, threaten the democratizing promise of social tagging.

I also recommend you read Intertwingled by Peter Morville, or at least the second chapter.

Make sure you have a strong Internet connection and a headset with microphone for the Web conference.

Please use online communication tools to organize the presentations. Please do not rush to a decision like last time. Begin by brainstorming topics, then ranking them, then selecting what you want to do. Feel free to use any tools: Twitter, Google Docs, etc.

Keep the presentations informative but also entertaining. Do mention your sources and do educate us about something we don’t already know. But, you do not need to work on this presentation as much as you would on the final paper.

Please ask questions about the presentations in the comments below, or use them as you wish to organize and coordinate.

Update:

Here are my expectations of a GOOD presentation. A good presentation…

• is clear and well organized. Has a clear main point and take-away that comes through clearly
• communicates to the audience how it is organized
• is informative and maybe even entertaining; it addresses the topic in some depth.
• is well-informed by a variety of sources, not all scholarly sources.
• establishes and maintains credibility by stating the sources of the information presented, throughout the presentation
• uses carefully prepared slides, not a collection of bullet points
• has smooth transitions between topics and speakers
• is delivered clearly and fluently
• is delivered within established time limits

It is up to the group to decide how many presentation to give, and whether to make them team or individual. It is up to the group to divide the available time among presentations. The presentations need not all be the same length, but they do need to fit in the 6-9 time slot. Allow time for two 10 minute breaks, some buffer for technical difficulties (15 min), and time for questions and discussion.

Each student will browse a number of journals and conference proceedings from 2014 and identify 2 articles they want to read. The 2 articles must be outside the student’s main area of interest.

Then, each student will blog reading notes about the 2 articles before class time. The reading notes will be detailed enough to help others understand the article, but will still be concise. Make this an exercise in the art of effective explanation of scholarly research.

Then, during class time, all students will read and comment upon each other’s blog posts.

After class, please write a reflection where you preserve your takeaways. You might want to record:

• ideas you learned about that you want to remember
• articles you might want to read in the future
• ideas you might want to look into in the future

Please find below a list of publication outlets where you are likely to find research on social media. Browse their tables of contents for the current year and pick 2 articles. Of course, you will need to get the full text through the libraries’ site.

• First Monday
• New Media and Society
• ACM CSCW conference proceedings
• ACM CHI conference proceedings
• ICSWM conference proceedings

This list is not exclusive, it’s just what I could think of off the top of my head, but I am missing many other ACM conferences that  publish social media research. As you come across more, please list them in the comments below.

Please try to remember:

• the definition of self-organizing
• classifications and patterns about online collective action
• the organizing power of a hashtag
• methods for studying online self-organizing using social media data
• implications of self-organizing for shifting power relations in society

What are your specific takeaways from class?

We then took sides and represented the pros and cons of crowdsourcing for workers and requestors. I would like to crowdsource this blog post, so please post in the comments the links to your small presentation, and the main argument that you think represents the point of view you worked on.

After Alex’s visit, we worked with the readings on trust.

Specifically, we identified the story line behind the 4 readings: We know a lot about online trust in the Web 1.0 era. Social media has an influence on social trust, which is related to social capital and to civic and political participation. The sharing economy is the next step, and it opens up a whole new world/can of worms re: trust.

We then worked on identifying the specific arguments and phrases authors use to position their work in the “garden” of existing research. I hope you learned from that, continue to pay attention to that as you read, and use the techniques in your own writing.

You might also find it useful to look at the review of this class from last year, which includes some slides and more details on literature reviews.

In your reading notes, aim for quality, not quantity. Write one “tweet” that summarizes the main point of the reading rather than 2 rambling paragraphs that make me wonder whether you understood what you read. Capture the essence. The reading notes I ask for are not a simple summary of what you read. That’s too easy. You can keep a summary for yourself if it helps you, but what I ask for is an assessment – thinking about those ideas and deciding which one is the most important. As you saw in class, that’s not easy – it requires more thinking, less writing. Let that be your mantra:

More thinking, less doing. Work smart.

For your blog posts, which I have really enjoyed reading, I invite you to become familiar with blogging culture and expectations. I feel that most of you expect way more of yourselves than blogging requires. I asked you about this yesterday, but didn’t get answers, so I don’t know if my feeling is correct…

Not every blog post needs to be smart and well-documented. It is OK to post a short commentary, an example, a half-baked thought that shows us what you’re thinking about. It’s OK to keep blog posts short, concise, and smart. It’s OK to keep each sentence short, concise, and smart. Academic writing is notoriously bad. Unlearn it.

In academese, the writer’s chief goal is to defend himself against the accusation that he is naïve about his own enterprise. So academics describe what other academics do instead of what they study (“In recent years there has been increased interest in X”). They use many metaconcepts—concepts about concepts, like level, perspective, framework, and approach—instead of writing “call the police,” they write, “approach this problem from a law-enforcement perspective.” They turn verbs into nouns—instead of writing, “People cooperated more,” they write, “Levels of cooperation increased.” And they sprinkle their prose with hedges—somewhat, virtually, partially—in an attempt to get off the hook should anyone ever try to prove them wrong.  – Harvard Psychologist Steven Pinker, from his book that came out yesterday and that I can’t wait to read.

So, tell me. In your understanding, what makes good writing? What makes good writing for blog posts?