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Online Safety: Educate not Legislate

May 27, 2010 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 3 Comments
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Previously published in Psychology Today “Positively Media.”

Facebook’s recent privacy control changes have triggered a big response of concern, indignation, and pages of analysis. One thing you have to love about social media, when people are ticked off, you find out pretty fast. Facebook is doing some rhetorical back-pedaling but when people are angry, they demand solutions—often in haste and not often rationally. This has added fuel to the political fire to regulate social networking sites like Facebook. It’s time to take a deep breath and realize that we need a longer view to achieve a solution that is both effective and sustainable. That solution is education, not legislation. We need to redefine media literacy to include understanding how media technologies work and how they are used, not focus on content. We need to elevate media literacy to media citizenship.

Facebook violated a social contract with its users. People are rightfully frustrated when they sign up for something and the rules change. But for Facebook users, this is more than that. The changes to privacy controls violate cultural expectations and cross a psychological boundary, not just the fine print. The sense of betrayal is heightened because of the personal investment, not to mention exposure, people have in an online identity, experience, friends, and community. There is a danger, though, that these emotions will cloud people’s vision about the longer-term and the more fundamental principles at stake. Short-term fixes won’t address longer-term issues.

Whatever the core issues are—and not everyone agrees—the problems are not unique to Facebook. We are all grappling with the implications of a digitally connected world and what this means for a myriad of issues. The solution, however, is not in lawsuits or regulation. Both are a waste of resources and neither will achieve a positive objective: making people safe and effective navigators of the continually evolving digital landscape. The solution is in education.

It’s time we admitted that we are a technology-rich society and redefined media literacy to include understanding how media technologies work, not just what’s in them. We need to elevate media literacy to media citizenship. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Culture & Society, Education, Social Media & Networks Tagged With: , , ,

Drucker and Facebook–Organizing for Change

October 19, 2009 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 7 Comments
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There’s a story about the demise of Facebook in the Washington Post: Worldwide ebb for Facebook.
I like the logic–when a company’s been around long enough for someone to make a movie out of it, then it’s probably on the downhill slide, even if they do get Justin Timberlake.

That people are interested in something new shouldn’t be surprising to anyone in business, marketing or evolutionary psychology.  Same ol’, same ol’ won’t cut it, especially in a world where expectations about the speed of change have reached new highs.  But rather than speculate on trends and following the migration across social media tools of whoever’s cool, it’s time to revisit some words of wisdom from the original management guru, Peter Drucker.

Organizations must be organized for innovation.  Using economist Joseph Schumpeter’s term “creative destruction,”  Drucker said companies should be:

organized for the systematic abandonment of whatever is established, customary, family and comfortable, whether that is a product, service, or process; a set of skills; human and social relationships; or the organization itself.  In short, itmust be organized for constant change.  The organization’s function is to put knowledge to work–on tools, products, and processes; on the design of work; on knowledge itself.  it is the nature of knowledge that it changes fast and that today’s certainties always become tomorrow’s absurdities.” (Drucker, 2006, p. 140)

Just because companies like Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest are using new technologies and breaking new ground, doesn’t mean they aren’t subject to the same needs for good management practices that cultivate innovation.  It will be up to Facebook’s management, not a few trendsetters, if Facebook is to stay prosperous and viable.
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Drucker, P. (2006) Classic Drucker: Wisdom from Peter Drucker from the Pages of Harvard Business Review. Cambridge, Harvard Business Press.

Filed Under: Brands & Identity, Psychology Tagged With: , , ,

Hang in There Jack: A Case Study in Cross-Platform Digital Storytelling

February 25, 2009 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 1 Comment
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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 traditional media to the Internet (Hangintherejack.com) and social media applications such as Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter and invites a relationship with the user by encouraging user-generated content via different avenues: comments, videos, text messages, and snail mail get well cards. By doing this, it shifts the focus of the advertising message from the company (Jack in the Box, Inc.) to the user. Jack is now the vehicle for dissemination not the primary message. The hand-off from individual to individual via these various applications gives Jack’s storyline a sustainability and a patina of authenticity that could not happen with a direct ad campaign.


Demographically, this campaign will appeal most to users who are young or early adopters (Pew Internet Report : Use of Twitter is about 20% until you hit 34, then it starts dropping off steadily to 10% of 35 to 44 year olds and 5% of 45 to 54 year olds using Twitter. It’s down to 2% by the time you hit 65.)   Over half the Internet population is under 44; although there is growth across all age groups. The interesting thing about these stats combined with the emphasis on the ‘Get Well Jack’ videos is that downloading videos is growing in popularity across all ages. And I’m quite confident that Jack made these marketing decisions knowing the demographics of his customer base.

Jack has created (and I hate to use this word) buzz by successfully integrating multiple media applications and platforms.  There really is something for everyone in the mix. In the new media environment, integration is key and the envelope will  continue to be pushed.  I wonder, will we see a mobile Jack app beyond texting? Is there an integration between the physical sites to the web/social network sites, like streaming video where people in a Jack in the Box can send their message to Jack, or coupons sent to people who submit videos to the site?   If there isn’t already, there should be.

Personally, I’d like to see Jack in the Box extend this campaign and direct their customers to send messages to real people in real hospitals who could use some emotional support and cheering up. That would create tangible social capital for their brand by converting playful enthusiasm into empathy and awareness of others.

Is there potential downside? Probably not. The questions I would have asked during planning are: Will the story play out in a way that meets the expectations of the fans? Will the narrative stay fresh or will people will get bored and move on? Can we continue to drive it into new applications and create new linkages? Is the story line a little morbid (especially in this economy)? Will it alienate people who don’t want to watch someone in a hospital bed? Or those digital immigrants who them feel out of it and irrelevant with new technology?

The sales numbers and interest level will be interesting to track. I will resist any urge to mention boxes in relation to thinking, but Jack has created a good case study here.

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Photos from http://www.hangintherejack.com
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Filed Under: Brands & Identity, Emerging Technologies, Politics & Policy, Social Media & Networks Tagged With: , , , ,

New Communication Rules Bring New Communication Careers

February 14, 2009 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge Leave a Comment
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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 how the technology is being used and experienced.   As a media psychologist, I’m kind of fixated on that experience thing.

Piles of psychological research shows that humans are social animals that need to be connected to others, and, among other things, that interpersonal connections are essential for mental and physical health, and that different people have different connection styles.  A lot of people fretted and tried to prove that Web 2.0 technology was going to isolate people and deprive them of their social skill repertoire.  With interpersonal connections such a big theme in human lives, why are so many people surprised to find out that social networks, like Twitter and Facebook, become real connections, even 140 characters at a time? These  social connections have enormous impact on how information is passed along and how trust and credibility is established, but by entirely new routes and rules.  The Newsweek article says:

While some microbloggers are who they say they are, plenty of celeb feeds (Ryan Seacrest’s, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s, Barack Obama’s) are actually being penned by folks like the one Spears sought out. And the skills she required—experience launching online communities, addiction to MySpace and Facebook, graphic design experience, and a love for “creating relationships”—are the same ones companies need as they venture onto Twitter. That explains why, on the corporate side, business are relying on in-house publicists, marketing managers and new professional blogging firms like Twit4hire to helm their accounts.

The article excerpt show how how professions will emerge in response to technological innovation. (Twit4Hire may be the best name of all time.) Parents need to embrace the idea that when kids say they don’t know what they want to be when they grow up, they mean it; they don’t even know what the choices will be.

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Filed Under: Cognition, Emerging Technologies, Social Media & Networks Tagged With: , ,

The Digital Social “Me”

January 8, 2009 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 2 Comments
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I sat with a group of educators, marketers, public relations professionals, investor relations professionals, and web developers yesterday talking about how to develop a graduate level program focused on social media. This was especially interesting because as the only psychologist, my vantage point was quite different. Where marketers talk about metrics and stats in media use, I wonder about how people interpret or make meaning out of the experience. To me, the metrics might show if the net result is positive or negative but they don’t illuminate much under the hood. I always enjoy it when I get to see a different way of looking at something or thinking about something by talking with smart people. The discussions also reinforce my opinion that effective media applications come from a multi-disciplinary foundation.

One topic of discussion was, what does a program focused on social media even mean? What is social media? Is it the same as Web 2.0? Is it part of Web 2.0? Will anyone who might be interested in the program recognize what it’s about from these labels?

This got me thinking about identity (which is just another word for branding, even though it’s most often applied to people). I define Web 2.0 as when technology went interactive rather than being a unidirectional experience. No matter how you define Web 2.0, the existence of 2.0 means establishing a common term is both more important and harder than it’s ever been. This is because the world is networked. You don’t have to work hard at achieving a definition among a few geographically proximate folks with similar life experiences. With Web 2.0 connectivity, the flood gates are open to ideas, experiences, assumptions, and beliefs of all kinds.

Creating commonalities is a distinctly human activity. It satisfies to very basic hard-wired human needs: order and social contact. Social media is one of the ways people come together to find commonalities and create communities and groups.

We all know that today’s kids have experiences that we did not have growing up. Most of them are impacted by some kind of technology. Facebook is essentially the “Youth Activity Center” at my high school. It was public in that anyone in the high school could attend, but it was private because you hung out with your friends in your section of the place, clearing defining your group identity with your clothes, hair, and various other behavioral accoutrements of teenageness. I came across this lecture by danah boyd at the Handheld Learning 2008 Conference. (FYI – the conference site is also very cool with videos of many speakers and is definitely worth checking out.) Danah’s area of expertise is social media–she talks about her research findings and impression of the way social media provides what I think of as the digital construction of identity–how social media sites in particular, but digital representations of individuals in general, display an incredibly rich tableau of information about an individual, what is important to him/her, how he/she want to be seen, their environmental and social context, These identities are essentially narratives that, while public, are distinctly targeted to their audience and consequently tell as about the audience as about the individual.

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Filed Under: Cognition, Education, Emerging Technologies, Social Media & Networks Tagged With: , , , ,
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