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Sorry, this entry is only available in 日本語.

Running counter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s insistence that everyone has only one identity (and that you’re showing a lack of integrity if you do stuff that suggests you don’t (see Kirkpatrick, 2010, p. 199)), Google has rolled out their big attempt at a social networking platform with Google+, including features which affirm that most normal people do, in fact, prefer to reveal different things to different people.

The feature I’m talking about is ‘circles’. I was not, unfortunately, one of the chosen ones (Google sent out invitations to a certain number of Google account registrants to try the new service), but from the look of their intro videos, my first impressions were that the ability to create circles of contacts with whom you can choose to share some information but not other information could be quite popular. But then again, that increases the work you’ve got to put in.

Will Google+ take off? As one of my contacts on Facebook commented:

Facebook has the Microsoft advantage. Everyone is there because everyone is there.

My impressions were, however, that Google is clearly marketing Google+ to the 25 year-old plus market (at least at this stage). Just look at the intro videos. Could this mean that Facebook could become the next MySpace, with the older, more professional crowd going for the more sophisticated personal-relationship-management features of Google+?

Another thought I had, was how Google+ might fare in Japan. Google has created a Japanese version of the platform. Mixi just recently, very quietly, introduced a small change in the way contacts’ names are displayed in one’s contact list (maimiku); now, you can see the real name of your contacts (if you contacts don’t do anything about their display options). Google+ is of course very much aimed at the social graph, with real-faces and live interaction (how might Hangouts – see video below – fare in Japan?). Japanese have for a long time been quite happy with nicknames and avatars (consisting of cartoon characters and household pets); is this subtle shift in Mixi’s display defaults, plus more and more Japanese moving onto Facebook, going to ease Japanese users into face-to-face social networking, paving the way for Google+’s entrance into the Japanese market? But then again, in one review (http://www.itmedia.co.jp/news/articles/1106/29/news074.html), the profile image is still a cartoon avatar…circles seems to be heavily featured and well received…

One thing is for sure though. I only recently dragged my father and father-in-law (kicking and screaming, I might add) onto Facebook, to keep up with them and for them to keep up with me. To ask them to now change to Google+ would be an herculean task of unimaginable degrees. Like my friend on Facebook suggested, Facebook has a massive advantage; everyone is on Facebook because everyone is on Facebook.

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Kirkpatrick, D. (2010). The Facebook effect : the inside story of the company that is connecting the world (1st ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster.

Mashable’s look at Google+: http://mashable.com/2011/06/28/google-plus-review/

The Washington Post’s look at Google+: http://tinyurl.com/3ljeob5

Japanese Review: http://www.itmedia.co.jp/news/articles/1106/29/news074.html

I recently presented my research into Japanese users of Mixi, Facebook, and Twitter at the Hokkaido Branch of the Japan Information-Culturology Society. I argued that the present state of  Japanese social networks on Mixi and Facebook respectively reflect low- and high-relational mobility environments, with Japanese users on Mixi adapting to the low-relationally mobile Mixi environment (namely by low levels of self-disclosure and forming tight in-groups characterized by high levels of commitment), and the same Japanese users also adapting, in different ways, to the high-relationally mobile Facebook environment (higher levels of self-disclosure and forming less committed relationships with a larger number of people).

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今日は情報文化学会北海道支部の研究発表会で、今年2月に行った「ミクシィ・フェイスブック・ツイッターのユーザー意識と行動に関する調査」に基づいて発表します。15分のはずの発表を20分ほどの内容をつめていて、課題をなかなか深く説明したりする余地がありませんが、一応以下の論説が出来上がっています。論文は発表のフィードバックなどを考慮して発表後に取り組む予定です。

ミクシィとフェイスブックの同時並行的日本人利用者を対象に行ったアンケート調査に基づいて、関係流動性という鍵概念を中心に、「現在のミクシィとフェイスブックは既存の社会生態の属性を反映している」とのことを論じるプレゼンです。発表者ノート付きのパワーポイントのファイル（pptx）のダウンロードはこちら：JICS_20110528.pptx (4.4MB)

上のスライドシェアー版のプレゼンにフォントとレイアウトが一部崩れているため、

元のパワーポイントファイル（JICS_20110528.pptx）をダウンロードすることをお勧めします

Sorry, this entry is only available in 日本語.

The Nagoya University Graduate School of International Development has put together an online survey for Japanese users of Mixi and Facebook, or Mixi and Twitter…it is a comparative survey…trying to get a handle on how Japanese SNS users interract with different kinds of social networking sites. If you’ve got any Japanese friends who use both Mixi and either Facebook or Twitter, then pass this on to them!

Link to survey (Japanese): http://bit.ly/fTN8IS

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アンケートのご協力をお願いします～。ここです：http://bit.ly/fTN8IS

日本でのソーシャルネットワーク（SNS）の利用傾向に超興味があります。去年フェイスブックの日本人利用者のパラドックスについて書いていたように、人のソーシャルメディアとの接し方が奥深い。また、現在日本において、ミクシィ・ツイッター・フェイスブック間のユーザー数確保激戦が起こっていて（フェイスブックは急増するのか？！）SNS「業界」ではとても活気な時期だといえるでしょう。

その奥深さを少しでも探るために、日本人のSNSユーザを対象にオンラインのアンケートを作りました。そしてSNSのユーザといっても、この調査 が、ミクシィと同時に、フェイスブックかツイッターかのどちらかを利用している日本人を対象にしています。ミクシィやフェイスブックの利用、あるいはミク シィとツイッターの利用にはある特定の使い分けがあるのかとか、利用動機や利用方法が違ったりするのかとか、といった要素を把握・探索しようとしていま す。

簡単に言えば、実態調査です。是非とも参加いただいて、ご協力をお願いいたします。リンクは以下のとおりです。

http://bit.ly/fTN8IS

希望のある参加者５名に抽選で１０００円分のAmazon.co.jpのギフト券を差し上げますよ～。

調査期間は２月１３日までの２週間半です。お早めにやってください。

ちなみに、調査の結果やレポートをツイッターやこのブログなどで公開しますので、是非フォローをください（@rob_thomson）。

A wee short film I starred in recently…created by the Nagoya University Media Professional Course peeps:

“When [tragic news] happens closer to home, it’s a very different story,” writes New Zealand-based journalist Jehan Casinader. In his very last blog post of 2010, he asks big questions of Kiwis’ motivations for following three of the biggest news stories of 2010: the Chilean mine incident, the Pike River mining disaster, and the Christchurch earthquake. Casinader puts it out there:

The cynic in me believes many Kiwis were only interested in the Chilean mine crisis because of the compelling twists and turns in the rescue saga. Would they live? Would they die? Did Kiwis follow that story because they cared? Or because of the drama, the tragedy and the triumph?

He says he can’t answer that question for all New Zealanders. I can speak for myself, and I have to confess that for me, it was simply for the drama of it all. It is my hunch that for the great majority of Kiwis who followed that story, it was probably the same. It was because of the chilling suspense that I sat transfixed at my laptop urging the drama to unfold in whatever way it may. The result of the story meant little to me here in Japan. My everyday life would go on unchanged regardless of the outcome. Had the story ended a tragedy, I would have received just as much a rush of emotion as I had when the last miner was pulled from that inglorious hole. I would have massaged the internet cable attached to my computer should it have got the gripping content to me faster.

Of course, there’s nothing surprising about this. This is the way we are wired. Or, to put it more succinctly, have become wired. Our mediums of information requires this of us. The late Neil Postman, a brilliant media critic of his time, brings this into perspective. He suggests in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), that ever since the emergence of the telegraph in early US history, those of us fortunate enough to become mass consumers of information have become addicts to disjointed, context-free, irrelevant information. Information which has endless value as entertainment. Before electronic transferal of information, in a time when information from afar was conveyed across distance only with an extreme investment of time and sweat, “what people knew about had action-value.”  People knew because the had to know. The telegram, on the other hand, “sent information which answered no question we had asked, and which, in any case, did not permit the right of reply…facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation” (Postman, p.69-70).

In this sort of world, context-free and very often irrelevant facts are supplied to the public in an endless fashion, and are indeed by their very quantity and nature extremely entertaining.  With the advent of television news (and by extension I would include internet news feeds – a medium that, in my opinion, quite effectively fools us into believing that we’re becoming better informed), where, as Postman put it, “the overarching presumption is that [the television] is there for our amusement and pleasure,” we are no longer horrified by the images we see on the screen. We are, rather, momentarily moved, but torn out of any state of reflection or catharsis as soon as possible by the next piece of fact. I agree with Postman where he tosses electronic media a bone: all this is not due to some dark conspiracy on the part of the news station. The medium of television requires that information be provided in this way. Any other way would go against the very model upon which the media thrives. Fact followed by fact, image followed by image; a world dominated by a “now…this” television metaphor is indeed a stage. The value of information has, over the last century or so, experienced a marked shift from one kind of value to another.

It follows therefore that it is understandable the fact that New Zealanders were truly and deeply halted in their tracks with news of disasters in their own back yards. The fact that the Pike River disaster and the Christchurch earthquake moved them to a much deeper level than an irrelevant yet gripping story of intrigue from the other side of the planet, is hardly surprising. The information had action-value. It gave people a sense of responsibility. A sense of action-needed. It wasn’t just another snippet of juicy irrelevant entertainment-news from who-cares-where-so-long-as-it’ll-scare.

And now the question. Hard-hitting local news: will it create the neural pathways required to re-wire our brains from a “now…this” mentality when consuming seemingly irrelevant context-free news? Will it create mental connections that will allow us to see the humanity of far-flung suffering, as depicted on our computer screens? Can it jolt us into at least an uncomfortable feeling of required action that lasts longer than just the 7pm news ending credits? I, too, hope it will.

Sorry, only Japanese for this update. This is a report and presentation I prepared for my Contemporary Broadcasting History class at Nagoya University. It is a very basic overview of where the 1996 US Telecommunications Acts stands in US telecommunications act history, and what it means for the media landscape today.

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名古屋大学国際言語文化研究科のメディアプロフェショナルコースの現代放送メディア論の授業のために作った発表とプチレポートです。1996年米国通信法の影響についてのレポートですが、やはりひとつの大雑把な影響に絞るのは無理だということが最終的な結論で、いくつかの観点からその影響を考察してみました。そして、発表は最近話題になったprezi.comで作成してみました。prezi.comの日本語版がないけれども、日本語文字セットがありますから一応日本語文字対応にはなっています。

レポートはこちら：1996年米国通信法―レポート（PDF)

1996年の米国通信法以来、米国のメディア学の領域において話題に挙げられているのはメディア集中（media concentration）という話題である。概していうと、1996年の通信法律改善によるメディア所有制限の緩和によって、短い間に多数の大きなメディア企業買収が起こり、結果的に世界的に有力な雄大な複合・多国籍メディア企業が生まれた。これらの買収は、社会の格領域ごとに異なる影響をもたらしたといえる。すなわち、コンテンツの多様性を衰退させたという意見がある一方、コンテンツの質を考えた上では通信料が格安になったという意見がある…続きを読む