Social media insights from Zena Applebaum @ the SLA 2014 conference

Day 2 of SLA social media insights

Day 2 of my first Special Libraries Association (SLA) conference and I'm thinking to myself, "this is where I belong". Here I am, attending several presentations where information consultants have similar assumptions regarding using social media tools to find information as I do. Mining blogs, Twitter and other social media platforms for insights seem to be the norm in the information consulting industry. To information consultants, social media presents a very important and free information source in addition to paid commercial databases.

Zena Applebaum, Director of Competitive Intelligence at Bennett Jones LLP, was one such presenter that gave a talk on this subject. Two things fascinated me from her presentation entitled "Social media-Turning noise into action":

1.     The assumption that social media can be information sources from which information should be collected 

2.     That one can develop a social media collection and acquisition policy (or procedures) to make decisions about what social media data or information one could collect.

It is these points that I want to briefly review and talk about here in this blog entry.

First and foremost, Applebaum argues that social media sits between the spectrum of primary research and secondary research. She further argues that social media provides access to people essentially talking about themselves and others without the researcher eliciting those responses. She further suggests that on social media, there are both individuals and institutions that provide information. Her questions are not so much whether or not such information can be trusted or what's the value of such information, but how do we get at that information. This is in contrast to my discussions with some academics and in academia (including a few librarians), who are suspicious of social media information and ask can the data be trusted and how can we know whether or not the social media information is authentic or meaningful. Further, I've found that from informal discussions within limited academic circles, that there are doubts about collecting and storing such information, as social media information is deemed to be either too trivial, ephemeral or lacking the authority of traditionally published/secondary sources and primary sources.  

The second thing that impressed me about Applebaum's talk was that she laid out what seemed to be guidelines for getting or acquiring social media data. In her presentation, she discussed the need for competitive intelligence specialists to have a framework for monitoring and collecting relevant information from social media. This begins by determining what she refers to as "key intelligence topics". According to Applebaum (2014)

Key Intelligence Topic - (KITs) are those topics identified as being of greatest significance to an organization’s senior executives, and which provide purpose and direction for Competitive intelligence operations. 

How do we determine these topics? Applebaum suggests that we conduct a series of interviews of a representative group of users from which we ascertain the relevant topics to monitor media and social media for. Then we are to grouped these topics into appropriate categories and get our stakeholders (the senior organizational executives/users) to allocate a priority to the same. Hence to begin the process, Applebaum recommends that we analyse who are our stakeholders (or users) and what decisions do they make. In addition, we must also ask:

•What knowledge do the users need?
•What intelligence can we provide?

The second step in the process is to define what she terms the "collection plan" (Using my collection development training, I would call it the collection development/acquisitions policy/procedures. However, her term may indicate less formality in the process). This involves determining the producers of the information that one needs and how to locate them. In Applebaum's presentation, this analysis of the sources that need to be monitored involves asking:

•Who has the information you need?
•Who is their audience?
•What social media will they use?
•How do you search those platforms?

In my own experience as a librarian, the first two steps are similar to the process that I go about when identifying and determining which publishers (and vendors of commercial databases) to contact for what materials are needed for my library. The last point relates to how do I find those publishers (or vendors) in order to make those purchases (nowadays, we just deal with agents rather than contacting the publishers directly. Unless we are collecting rare books or items). 

So when I examine this, I conclude that the skills of collection development are as relevant to social media information as they are to books and other items collected by libraries. In basic collection development policy we decide the purpose of our collection, its scope (and or limitations) and the types of decisions that we will make as to what sources to acquire or omit from the collection. Further, while we may not write it into our policy, we may implicitly establish procedures or a process to go about acquiring items for our collection. All this reinforces the idea to me that librarians can apply their skill sets (acquired from experience with traditional media and library sources) to new media and information sources/resources. The issue is whether or not we deem social media to be sources that we must collect, store, preserve and provide for our users to access.

References:

Applebaum, Z. (2014). Social media – Turning noise into action. Presented at Special Libraries Association 2014 Conference, June 8-10, Vancouver, BC. Retrieved from http://sla2014.sched.org/event/db8c0c4fe1b010468310ab57b62d9eda#.U5aEzfldUrW.

Social media sites are essentially "databases"

I once read that Facebook was a database (Arthur, 2009). I have even read that blogs were databases (Miles, 2005). And now I've heard that LinkedIn is a database. My new conclusion is that all social media are databases!

My conclusion came after reflecting on some tips on LinkedIn and other social media use from Sean Campbell, CEO of Cascade Insights. In his presentation at SLA, Sean discussed the subject of how to get a hold of people to talk to using social media (Campbell, 2014). His basic premise is that people talk about their work life story online using social media. If one wants to know about an industry, one can use social media tools to find those who talk about this industry. He argues that social media [specifically LinkedIn] are databases from which we can mine and extract individuals, groups and communities that talk about subjects relevant to providing insight for industries. As Sean puts it, the ordinary LinkedIn User does not see their profile as a database, but to LinkenIn employees, a person's profile is but one record in a large database of people information. 

The same can be said for Facebook. According to Garde-Hansen (2009), Facebook is a "database of users and for users" and each user's page is "a database of their life" (p. 141). Garde-Hansen (2009) therefore argues that while users experience Facebook as a place where they upload "non-textual content (their profile image, the profile images of their friends, shared photographs, functional icons, gift images and application icons)", this hides the "visibility of Facebook as a pre-programmed set of pathways to a database" (p. 140-141).

This truth also applies to Twitter and Google (and basically all social media sites). In a 2013 Wired magazine article, it is mentioned that Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google "teamed up to create what they call WebScaleSQL, a custom version of MySQL designed just for large scale web companies" that operate large databases (Finley, 2013). Further, blogs and blog content management systems, according to Miles (2005), also draw upon and store content of text, images, data and media objects from a database, and chronologically arrange or displays the content through templates accessible through a Web browser. So the truth is, that while we experience a clean, customised and personalised screen when uploading our user-generate content and viewing the stories told by our friends and others, we are essentially viewing records of a database that we update and input data for. In this regard, if we join any social media site, we essentially become data entry personnel. 

References:

Campbell, S. (2014). Sourcing with social media – For competitive intelligence and market research teams. Presentation at the Special Libraries Association 2014 Conference, June 8-10, Vancouver, BC. Retrieved from

Finley, K. (2013, Mar. 27) Google and Facebook team up to modernize old-school databases

Wired Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/2014/03/webscalesql/

Garde-Hansen, J. (2009). MyMemories?: Personal digital archive fever and Facebook. In Garde-Hansen, J., Hoskins, A., & Reading, A. (p. 135-50). Save as… digital memories. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Miles, A. (2005, May). Media rich versus rich media (or why video in a blog is not the same as a video blog). Hypertext paper presented at Blogtalk Downunder, Sydney, Australia. Retrieved from http://incsub.org/blogtalk/?page_id=76. [Last Accessed 23 August 2012].

The social media job of a Virtual Public Services Librarian (VPSL)

I attended a session with the presenter Virtual Public Services Librarian (VPSL) for Essex County Libraries, Adam Craig. Adam presented on his position as a VPSL, and what his work involves. Essentially his work boils down to 5 major activities:

• database selection
• print reference
• troubleshooting
• programs
• and social media

The above five activities are what Adam stated took up most of his time and are done either daily, weekly or monthly. For me, the aspects of his social media job that was the most fascinating involved:

• tweeting (or writing tweets)
• Facebook status updates
• writing blog posts
• checking statistics and social media accounts for interaction
• managing the library's social media accounts

Adam also outlined some of the non-traditional skills that one could apply or use for the job, which involved making use of one's hobbies such as:

• playing around social media
• working with graphics software like PhotoShop
• creating online videos

Adam also advises that one informs their use of social media with research, which includes

• finding out what is going on and new developments
• reading terms of service agreements
• checking Tech blogs like Wired

Adam also uses or leverages his social media skills into actual programs such as running training programs for seniors in Facebook use as well as for small businesses (Facebook page management; Blogging and microblogging etc.).

By and large, the presentation validated my own experience as a Departmental Librarian,  in which I did similar things except for blogging and tweeting (Please note: I do not blog or tweet for any institution. My blogs are all hobbies and personal/professional interests that I pursue in my own time, with my own resources). While he was doing his presentation, I could relate to it. I was also impressed that he did do training programs for small businesses. I however also noted, that far from being a job that he could do at home, he spent much of time travelling and interacting face to face with customers/library users and others. Hence he is a virtual public services librarian that does most of his work in physical locations and with face to face interaction.

When can regulating social media at work be a bad thing?

Once again I tackle the issue of social media policy by organizations. However this time in the context of research and readings that I have been doing.

Recently I read Gavett's (2013) blog post discussing the issues of employees airing criticisms of employer via social media and what's legal. I also read earlier an article by Feldman (2013) on the issue of government looking into company social media policies. Both articles reveal the issue of how employers have been able to take advantage of the lack of legal regulations pertaining to social media use by employees to dismiss workers. However, there are now legal loopholes that Gavett (2013) identifies in regards of workers coming together and organizing themselves similar to unions using social media. My own perspective on the matter is that companies are over-reacting to the negative consequences of social media use, and should adopt a more positive social media policy approach, which I hope to briefly outline here.

To begin the discussion, I would like to raise the issue of how people get work done in this new "knowledge or service economy". Orr (1996) showed us that part of workers' getting their job done is through forming communities in which they can discuss their work ideas and exchange solutions to problems, a practice commonly called forming communities of practice. Further, it has been suggested by researchers that such communities can be enriched innovatively when persons have electronic networks connecting to persons not only in their local geographical communities, but also persons outside of their organizations (Teigland & Wasko, 2005). Usually, top management ignores that the way that people get work done is not just individually sitting at their desk, but also through having ties or relationships with other persons that are able to help them solve problems (Brown & Duguid, 2000). When the work environment is unstable, workers tend to use and trust their online connection rather than their co-located relationships to get information that help them solve work problems (Hirsh & Dinkelacker, 2004). As such, management, by creating strict and stringent social media policies may be actually interfering with the electronic networks that their workers use to get information and communicate in order to solve work problems.

My recommendation is that rather than just specifying in one's policy how not to use social media and rather than attempting to limit or block social media use at work, management and organizations need to

1. discover how workers are actually using social media to do their work. This could be done by surveys or interviews. One such study that comes to mind is the one by Lampe, Vitak, Gray, and Ellison (2012) that studied university employees for how they use Facebook as an information source. While the study did not conclude whether Facebook was used only for work purposes, it did conclude that some of the employees surveyed preferred to ask questions via social media in order to get more tailored and trustworthy information (Lampe, Vitak, Gray & Ellison, 2012). This perspective of first, applying the Taylorist principle of studying workers before creating policies, can help inform management as to whether or not workers are actually getting information from social media that may be having an impact on the organization's productivity.
2. Elicit stories or incidents from workers where they were able to successful solve a problem at work because of social media. Having such stories can help management see directly how social media is being applied practically to solve work problems. These cases can also be shared with other employees as a form of knowledge sharing about how social media can be positively used at work. In  Lampe, Vitak, Gray, and Ellison's (2012) study, not all workers saw social media as a place to get answers to information queries. Hence, management can therefore use such success stories to train existing employees to see and recognise when they can exploit social media for work problem solving.

 With regard to point 2,  management may argue that workers may divulge proprietary information to outsiders through social media. My own take on the matter is that social media only documents what people do in everyday life. I am sure workers go to the bar or other unregulated spaces and from time to time share with other outsiders what they do at work. Yet, such sharing sometimes is more beneficial than harmful, as it leads them to find persons working on similar problems or having similar interests or even expertise that can be leveraged to help workers arrive at faster solutions to work problems.

In closing, I just want to argue that when an employer hires a worker, they are not just hiring one person, but they are also hiring that person's network of connections that the worker will turn to in order to get information in complex work problems that he or she cannot solve on his/her own. Hence, the informal networks and connections that a worker uses to get his or her work done is as important to the organisation as the worker's skills and knowledge, especially depending on the type of work being done and the tasks that are assigned. As such, when creating social media policies, companies must not only consider the PR nightmares and tragedies of other companies, but must also consider how social media may be positively used by its own workers to make the company successful.

On that note, I end with some conclusions from Choo (2002) that were written for the Web in general, but which I find also applicable to social media:

• the Web is not just an information network, but also a work space where employees communicate in order to acquire and access actionable information for work purposes.
• more liberal Web [and social media] policies are required and fewer controls in order to empower workers to use these resources to 'promote self-directed learning and problem solving' (p. 196).
• spaces for sharing what employees discover on the Web [or social media] that may be useful to others in the company could be created to permit collective or organizational learning and memory. 

This is the challenge that I suggest organizations take on rather than just adopting a negative or anti-social media use policies.


References:

Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (2000). The social life of information. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Choo, C. W. (2002). Information management for the intelligent organization : The art of scanning the environment (3rd ed.). Medford, NJ: Information Today.

Feldman, B. (2013, February 15). The government is watching social media policies. PRWeek Retrieved from http://www.prweekus.com/pages/login.aspx?returl=/the-government-is-watching-social-media-policies/article/279587/&pagetypeid=28&articleid=279587&accesslevel=2&expireddays=0&accessAndPrice=0

Gavett, G. (2013, February, 21). Is Your Social Media Policy Useless? Harvard Business Review [HBR] Blog Retrieved from
http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hbreditors/2013/02/is_your_social_media_policy_useless.html

Hirsh, S. & Dinkelacker, J. (2004). Seeking information in order to produce information: AN empirical study at Hewlett Packards Labs. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55:807-817. doi:10.1002/asi.20024


Lampe, C., Vitak, J., Gray, R., & Ellison, N. B. (2012). Perceptions of Facebook’s value as an information source. Paper presented at the CHI '12 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Austin, TX, USA. 3195--3204. doi: 10.1145/2207676.2208739

Orr, J. E. (1996). Talking about machines :An ethnography of a modern job. Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press.

Teigland, R., & Wasko, M. (2005). Knowledge exchange in electronic networks of practice. Encyclopedia of information science and technology (pp. 1757-1762) IGI Global. doi: 10.4018/978-1-59140-553-5.ch309

The curious case of Edwin Mellen Press suing a university librarian for libel

In a follow up to the blog entry on the threats to the freedom to blog, I just want to provide a bit more perspective on the curious case of Edwin Mellen Press suing a university librarian for libel (New, 2013). 

Prior to this year 2013, when faced with blogs that criticise businesses, corporations either sought to counteract those blogs by responding to them or denying the criticisms. Several of these cases are cited in Kline, Burstein, De Keijzer, and Berger (2005). However, within this year, this is the first time that I have seen where corporations faced with criticism from users of blogs go out to attack the critic by law suit. This is a very precedental law suit that has implications for blogging in general and for librarians and universities in particular.

For one, it raises the question of how much freedom do persons have to blog their criticisms and complaints, without being sued for defamation and libel? Second it raises the question of how much freedom do librarians have to blog their analysis of information sources and make it publicly accessible and available to others. Thirdly, it begs the question as to whether universities should permit staff and affiliates to blog any at all?

Unlike the regular complainers or customers, part of a librarian's work is to evaluate information sources in terms of quality and other criteria. As such, librarians in the process of engaging in their work must critically analyse information products and even technologies offered by vendors. From our evaluations, we must make recommendations. And within a university environment, we should be entitled to recommend to our users what sources they must avoid. Is it that, publishers that develop information products do not want us to put our evaluations on websites or blogs? Should publishers not act as businesses have done in the past, by spending the money to address the quality concerns of customers as posted on the Web rather than paying lawyers to sue for damages?


Finally, for universities, I can predict that policies will be put in place to prevent staff from criticising institutions and businesses in order to reduce liabilities and law suits. After all, the new capitalistic university, that has to raise much of its funding from institutions and corporations,  will need as many institutional and corporate friends as possible, and as little enemies as possible. Who else will they go to in order to "beg","solicit" or "ask for donations to their endowment fund"? Especially, if some of those leading/managing those corporations happen to be their alumni.

For librarians, the university's regulation of social media, perhaps may lead to more reliance on and preference for email or intranet as the technology to communicate, while websites and social media will be reserved for restricted and less authentic communication with those outside of one's organization. After all, we can still email our opinions to those who need to know in order keep it out of the public sphere and still have the desired effect. Until, companies and corporations decide to sue librarians and customers for defamation and libel through email.


References:

Kline, D., Burstein, D., De Keijzer, A. J., & Berger, P. (2005). Blog! :How the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture. New York: CDS Books in association with Squibnocket Partners LLC.

New, J. (2013, Feb 8). Edwin Mellen Press sues university librarian for libel. The Chronicle of Higher Education Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/edwin-mellen-press-sues-university-librarian-for-libel/42193

My own thoughts about my future research trajectory

This is perhaps a more personal post than previous on this blog. In this post, I express my own thoughts on my own role as a scholar and academic in the landscape of social media research.

I recently reflected on my first publication of an article on Facebook, which was the first research that engaged me and made me come alive (Scale, 2008). I also reflect on my current research on blogs. Back in 2007, I consciously chose to focus on Facebook and social media as an area of specialisation in the first place because, in coming to academia, I saw myself as not being an expert on the areas that my senior colleagues were in and wanted to master an area that they themselves were not experts in. Hence, my decision to target the virgin territory of emerging and new technologies.

This has in fact become my research trajectory for the next decade or so. The research story that I want to tell over the next decade of my life (if all things remain constant) is the story of how social media makes us more human. Instead of destroying our human identity, social media is actually reconstructing how we as human beings deal with meaning, existence and life in the everyday profound and mundane events and moments.

Everything that human beings have been doing for centuries in coping with their existence, grappling with who we are and formulating our identities continue online. Whether it is playing pranks on others (online trolling), gossiping, forming friendships, attacking enemies, to the more positive of telling our stories, sharing our experiences and knowledge, we all as human beings are just doing what what those before us did, but only digitally recording our actions, stories and events in our lives.

I am reminded that posting personal information on Facebook, Twitter or on a blog makes me more human. Such acts presents me as a real person that possess experiences  thoughts, feelings and ideas that another person can relate to. Like for instance, I posted over this week a comment:

"Sometimes you work on and rewrite a paper so much that you get tired of the subject and no longer want to do it."

This attracted number of unexpected like and comments that re-affirmed to me the value of academics blogging. The fact is that scholars and academic persons can be intimidating, especially for their students. Students who see these great lecturers and professors who have many publications and come to class as a repository of knowledge, feel that these persons are sometimes not human. Caribbean students in my experience see such persons as walking encyclopedias, especially if they are able to roll of their tongues the ideas disembodied in books and other publications. However, academics, by posting personal information online can reveal the other side to their identity. That they err, make mistakes and have feelings like everyone else. That they themselves have struggles that their students can relate to.

This is why I guess that I will continue to blog and post personal stuff online despite the fact that we live in a time of surveillance, and where nothing one post on the Internet is truly forgotten. For me the issue is that what we post and share online is just a fraction of ourselves in a moment and does not represent our constantly evolving identity.

When I return to the Caribbean (all things remaining constant), I believe that my task is to be the scholar and expert on how we as a Caribbean people, like  the rest of the globe, appropriate social media to demonstrate and express our humanity, while participating in global documentary practices that leave traces or digital 'foot/hand prints' of who we are, what we have done and how we are connected to and related to the rest of the world.

References:

Scale, Mark-Shane Everett. "Facebook as a Social Search Engine and the Implications for Libraries in the Twenty-first Century." Library Hi Tech 26.4 (2008): 540-56.