Lecture for the students of Digital Creativity and New Media Management, Birkbeck, University of London. February 2011

1. WORLD DOMINATION:
Intro to Social Media and some interesting research questions
they raise
Sofia Gkiousou
Birkbeck, University of London
February 2011

7. Marketing is no longer about
the stuff that you make, but
about the stories you tell.
Seth Godin

8. The new tech
Smaller, faster, better?

9. The cult of
the amateur
Oldie but goodie

10. The time of
convergence?
The constant feedback loops
between amateurs & professionals.

11. THE
REVOLUTION

15. THE
REVOLUTION
Ummmm.... kinda

16. Social Network Sites
“web-based services that allow individuals to:
1. construct a public or semi-public profile within a
bounded system,
2. articulate a list of other users with whom they share a
connection, and
3. view and traverse their list of connections and those
made by others within the system.”
(boyd & Ellison, 2007)

17. More than 500 million active users
People spend over 700 billion minutes per
month on Facebook

18. More than 200 million active users currently
accessing Facebook through their mobile
devices.
People that use Facebook on their mobile
devices are twice as active on Facebook than
non-mobile users.

21. 2 billion videos a day
watched. Every minute,
24 hours of video
uploaded to YouTube.

23. Identity construction
Community cohesion and dynamics
Collaboration
Learning
Creativity
Privacy
IP & copyright (Creative Commons?)
Monetization

24. More people than ever can participate in
culture, contributing their ideas, views,
information.
The web allows them not just to publish but
to share and connect, to collaborate and
when the conditions are right, to create,
together, at scale.

26. Large-scale information gathering and processing
activities that have emerged in web communities.
Harnessing individual expertise towards shared
goals & objectives.
‘No one knows everything, everyone knows
something, all knowledge resides in humanity’

28. participation

29. Enter The virus

30. IDENTITY
How do you construct it? How do you perform it?

31. POWER
Who has it? Who is the influential user? Who ROCKS?

32. TRUST
Vague? Or the savvier you get the more specific it
becomes?

33. INDICATIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
•Levy, Pierre (1997) Collective Intelligence. Cambridge: Perseus
•Jenkins Henry (2004) The cultural logic of media convergence. International Journal of
Cultural Studies, Volume 7(1): 33–43
•Deuze Mark (2006) Participation, Remediation, Bricolage: Considering Principal
Components of a Digital Culture. The Information Society, 22: 63–75
•Featherstone, Mike (2009) Ubiquitous Media An Introduction. Theory, Culture & Society,
Vol. 26(2–3): 1–22
•Westlake, E.J. (2008) Friend Me if You Facebook Generation Y and Performative
Surveillance. TDR: The Drama Review 52:4
•Buckingham, David; Pini, Maria; Willett, Rebekah (2007) ‘Take back the tube!’: The
discursive construction of amateur film and video making. Journal of Media Practice Volume
8 Number 2
•Bargh, John A; McKenna, Katelyn Y. A. (2004) The Internet and Social Life. Annual Review
of Psychology, 55:573–90
•Bolter, Jay David, and Grusin, Richard (1999) Remediation: Understanding new media.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
•Kenny, D. And Marshall, J.F. (2000) Contextual Marketing – The Real Business of the
Internet, Harvard Business Review, November – December 2000
•Moore, R.E. (2003) From genericide to viral marketing: on ‘brand’, Language &
Communication, Vol. 23, ppp. 331 – 357