It's hard (for me anyway) to not continually reflect on technology and emerging behaviors--and how that cycle manifests in the next technological development. I was reading Citizen Marketers today and the authors mentioned McLuhan’s remarks about the political changes resulting from the widespread introduction of television. This got me to the larger implications of the subtle changes in our culture from these amazing news tools and systems of connecting. In particular, I was thinking about how the incredible democratization of social media is threatening to seriously change the political arena. We saw how Obama effectively used social media to reach a new voting population. We also see him intensively using television communication—more frequently than any administration before him. (That is not a value judgment, just an observation.) It struck me that politicians of both affiliations should prefer traditional media, not just because they are 'digital immigrants' … [Read more...]
As We Close Guantanamo, Remember Milgram’s Studies
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 years ago and the results were statistically insignificantly different from the original study. As recently as two years ago, people were still willing to fry the hell out of someone if a guy in a lab coat told them it was okay. As I read this article, I could not help but think about all the abuses of power we have witnessed in the last several years, from the Patriot Act to Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo. I remembered my father's favorite cartoon from Pogo with the now infamous lines: "We have met the enemy and he … [Read more...]
Website Hijacking to Spread a Message of Protest
The power of media to distribute information to a wide audience makes "stealing" media an effective method of disrupting or redirecting information flows. The Media Psychology Research Center homepage was hijacked yesterday by a Gaza protest group. (Thanks, Larry, for the heads up!) I have included a thumbnail of the intruding page below. The page, as you can see, is an angry display of outrage with photographs of people, mostly children, ripped apart (literally) by bombs and artillery attacks. The frustration and anger in the page was palpable even if the graphic display was rudimentary (i.e. no graphic design team had been hired to assemble the message.) At the same time, about half-way down the protest page was a small message: "Don't worry. Nothing of your files deleted." I found that kind of charming amidst all the chaos. Once I had overcome my panic given my lack of technical expertise in solving such problems and found a solution … [Read more...]
