I hate to admit it, but I had never heard of this comedian, Louis CK. This YouTube clip entitled “Everything’s Amazing, Nobody’s Happy” from Late Night with Conan O’Brien is hilarious.  After you finishing laughing, think about the implications of his jokes: the psychological expectations that are becoming standard about the speed of interactions. Read Full Story

Why would someone use television ads, billboards, and print to drive people to online and social media sites? 1) For the right audience, social media has lots of advantages, speed of dissemination, trust, interaction, expectations, collaboration, and emotional investment in user-generated content, engagement, curiosity, or 2) you are trying to look very hip and don’t care if it motivates action. The ‘Hang in there Jack’ campaign is one very effective example. It successfully crosses from tra... Read Full Story

An Associated Press article in the Herald Dispatch article today says “Governor says Ohio schools need new focus.” The news brief says: Concepts such as problem solving, critical thinking, cultural awareness and media literacy would overtake memorization and pencil-and-paper tests in an educational overhaul trumpeted by Gov. Ted Strickland. Strickland’s education aims in his two-year budget proposal would not only change how schools are funded, but also how students are taught. Oh... Read Full Story

In a brief Q&A (2/22/09) in USA Today Weekend by advice columnist Dennie Hughes, she quotes me saying it’s okay to indulge in celebrity gossip. I think most people tend to dismiss gossip as pretty shallow stuff, in spite of what we read at the dentist’s office. And that might be true, except for the fact that the essence of the gossip experience lies in both the shared experience and all the other information that is exchanged when we gossip about anything. That information is al... Read Full Story

What makes positive media? There is a huge pile of research looking at the negative aspects of media, particularly related to advertising. There are studies addressing social concerns about the impact of media on how people define themselves, success, society and, well, pretty much everything. The quality of the research varies, of course, but there are many legitimate issues to be addressed. There is a pretty unified chorus against negative media, however you define it. But what is p... Read Full Story

Newsweek’s Technology Section has an article called “Twitter, Unmasked: Who is really writing all those Tweets? Professional microbloggers.” This article  underscores the importance of looking at new media with an open-mind. Too many people I know, when faced with media that is not indigenous to their technological coming of age, spend way too long explaining why something isn’t important (or worse, is dangerous) without trying to their outside their initial reaction and looking to see... Read Full Story

I was doing some research on social media and Web 2.0 and came across this nice little overview video of online media. The Online Media from RealWire on Vimeo. Read Full Story

One of my favorite blogs, Cognitive Daily, posted an article reviewing the publication of a study by Berger replicating the famous experiments by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s and 1970s. Milgram’s experiments tested obedience to authority by having a study volunteer administer electric shocks to an anonymous participant under the direction of a person in a lab coat. If you aren’t familiar with the study, read the Cognitive Daily account. Berger’s study was done about two ye... Read Full Story

I was doing some research for an online course I’m teaching at Fielding Graduate University in Digital Narrative and Emerging Technologies, and came across this absolutely brilliant video called “The Bus” by photographer Daniel Meadows. It is beautifully produced, but has an incredible tenderness and humanity. Meadows teaches and researches Digital Storytelling in the U.K. Here is how he describes digital storytelling: Digital Stories are short, personal, multimedia tales. ... Read Full Story

Pew Internet & American Life Project researcher Amanda Lenhart reports in Adults and Social Network Websites that the number of adult Internet users who have taken up social networking has more than quadrupled since 2005. (Chart from USA Today.) This isn’t surprising if you consider the way conversations have moved toward social media as a marketing tool in lieu of a mere social connection with friends.  Networks have properties that defy traditional linear ways of thinking about ma... Read Full Story