Status Update Post

The short answer to how my research is going is: very well and alarmingly. The longer answer takes more explaining. I have collected all of the data for the author inventory and have closed my reader survey to further data collection. I need to spend some more time thinking about what my results might mean and collecting some good industry numbers from sources other than purely academic journals.

To advance the portion of the study that deals with writers I collected the complete list of mystery titles due for release from HarperCollins within two months from the start date of the study. After removing multiple listings for authors I was left with a pool of thirty writers. They turned out to be good mix of newer authors and those with multiple best sellers.

After I started collecting data I had to make one change to my collection practices. Originally I was trying to determine whether or not the authors had Facebook pages. I ended up adding a category to differentiate between personal Facebook pages and profile pages. The former is more elaborate and often includes postings by the author. It is a more personalized space. The author, the publisher, or fans may orchestrate profile pages. They are simpler and never contain direct postings from the author. I found that writers had one or the other, or neither, of these options, but never both.

What I found is that authors are all over the map with regard to which forms, and how many forms, of digital media they use. The variable usage rate between authors isn’t much of a surprise. Most of the reading I have done has had a certain “bandwagon” feel. No one really knows what effect the digital age is going to have on publishing and everyone is afraid to be left behind.

Web pages have been nearly universally adopted, but vary widely in content. Blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts are less used. My initial impression of the data held a couple of surprises. The first is that many of the digital sites are seldom used. An author may have a blog but that doesn’t mean he/she is posting to it. The second surprise was that a current multiple best selling author had no digital media sites while Agatha Christie, who has been extremely dead for some time, uses all four categories tested.

I sent my survey cover letter to six different reading groups and have closed the survey with sixty respondents. My initial impression of the data is that survey participants have a low rate of usage of author’s digital media sites. I was surprised that the sorts of things they report wanting from such sites are informational rather than interactive. Much of the reading I have done has promoted the use of digital media to develop relationships and conversations between producers and users of digital media, but my data seems to suggest that the audience isn’t interested.

One possible factor affecting my results is that the survey population is relatively homogenous. In choosing reading groups I helped to insure that respondents were probable members of the niche market for writer’s marketing efforts, but a result is that they are mostly women and mostly older. I need to research the demographics of readership in the United States and use of online sites by older adults in order to situate my results.

My biggest current challenge, as I see it, is time. Currently I am trying to lay the paper out, order my arguments, and assign total percentages of the project to different sections. I am still uncertain how to present the inventory and survey data in the context of the paper and could use some direction.

Research Blog #5

O'Cass, Aron, and Jamie Carlson. "Examining the effects of website-induced flow in             professional sporting team websites." Internet Research 20.2 (2010): 115-134. Web. 27 Sep 2010.

An article about flow experience using sports team websites may not seem like a logical choice for my project, but I think it is. Authors, fiction genres, and specific book series generate interest and fandom in much the same way that sports figures and teams do.

The concept of flow is an attempt at explaining what happens to individuals when they are completely immersed in a task. During flow tasks seem effortless and the sense that time is passing loses meaning. For marketing the implication is that creating online experiences that lead to flow will encourage site users to linger longer and return more frequently. O’Cass and Carlson tried, in this study, to investigate the relationship between flow and affective components such as aroused feelings and satisfaction. They also investigated behavioral outcomes such as website revisits, purchases, and word-of-mouth referrals.

The researchers posed several hypotheses. They were:

·      Flow will have a significant positive influence on satisfaction with the sporting organization’s website.

·      Flow will have a significant positive influence on the arousal of positive feelings from the sporting organization’s website.

·      Flow will have a significant positive influence on the development of loyalty for the sporting organization’s website.

·      Flow will have a significant positive influence on the development of positive word-of-mouth about the sporting organization’s website.

The methodology used by O’Cass and Carlson was complex and exhaustively tested. They developed a set of 30 questions based on seven previous studies. These items and their scales were then reviewed by a panel of “senior academic experts” and pre-tested by a small sampling of potential participants. A final set of 21 questions was then administered via an online questionnaire to randomly selected individuals from a marketing firm’s online panel. The researcher’s additionally controlled for age, gender, and perceived Internet expertise.

Results supported the hypotheses. Flow was found to impact the formation of customer satisfaction and also to make a significant contribution to website loyalty and word-of-mouth. The findings suggest that constructing online experiences that promote flow should be a high priority for marketers.

The authors suggest that those features promoting flow include content, navigation, responsiveness, and supplementary service offers. As they have no research to support this I think this is an area where future research could be of use. These findings may also be limited in their transferability. Some service categories, such as online retailers, may not operate in the same way as a site designed to produce ongoing fan-based relationships such as is found in the sites studied here. A further restriction of this study is that it does not account for a respondent’s previous involvement with a given sports franchise. It is not wild conjecture to suppose that a previous relationship with a team would predispose a more positive online experience or to reason that an attachment to a competing team would inhibit the ability of site design to induce flow.

Research Post #4

Bennett, W. Lance, and Jarol B. Manheim. "The One-Step Flow of Communication."Politics, Social Networks, and the History of Mass Communications Research: Rereading Personal Influence. Ed. Peter Simonson. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2006. Print.

This article is considerably different from the others I have chosen. Instead of recounting a study the authors are, instead, offering a reinterpretation of an existing theory.

In classic two-step flow theory messages are issued via mass media to a homogenous audience. Opinion leaders interpret and contextualize the message for smaller groups, allowing the same message to have different meanings for different groups. Bennett and Manheim hypothesize that social and technological changes leading to individual isolation, communication channel fragmentation, and message targeting technology have combined to change not just the message, but also the recipient of information.

When two-step flow theory was first proposed civil society was strong. The authors suggest that since the 1990s mass media audiences have declined while niche media audiences have grown. The fragmentation of society has meant that people have become more responsible for managing their own emotional and cognitive realities. The result of this has been a move toward participation in multiple, fluid, lifestyle-based social networks and less reliance on interpersonal influence.

Messages designed for this changed audience need to be framed in terms of the needs, wants, expectations, preferences, and interests of individual audience members rather than those of larger groups. The only way to do that, the authors contend, is through the use of technology in a one-step process.

It is interesting to wonder whether changes to the audience have necessitated new methods of message delivery, or whether new technologies have precipitated changes in the audience. Regardless of the answer to this chicken-and-egg riddle digitization and miniaturization are increasing individualization in delivery and reception of information.

Bennett and Manheim point to three results stemming from these changes. The first is evolving media habits. The authors compare the old “appointment-based” society of people gathering around network broadcasts to the new forms of on-demand news and podcasts.

The second change noted by the authors is a micro-level change in how people receive information. People physically process information differently dependent on the medium. Readers react differently than TV watchers. Cell phones and constant web connectivity have not been studied sufficiently to point out how they may differ from previous modes of communication.

The third result of technological changes has been at the macro level, with new forms of media replacing the old. Television replaced radio and is now being replaced by new digital media. With new media it is possible to preselect perceptions and values. For example, if I look at a page on Amazon.com I will be shown what other people who bought the item also bought, or how many of them chose this particular product over another offering. Amazon can send information through channels and embedded with clues that clarify how the information is relevant to me, as an individual.

The authors end by expressing some concern over how these changes will be used and what long-term changes may result. The technologies we choose to send messages, and how we use them, have the power to further isolate individuals or to build communities.

Research Blog #3

Wright, Donald K., and Michelle D. Hinson. "How Blogs and Social Media are Changing Public Relations and the Way it is Practiced." Public Relations Journal 2.2 (2008): 1-21. Web. 15 Sep 2010.

I chose this article because it offers a bridge between academic and industry views of how blogs operate as communication channels. The authors see themselves as approaching blog use from a theoretical stance but are conducting their research on individuals who are industry insiders.

Wright and Hinson point to a lack of scholarly inquiry regarding the impact of blogs and other social media on public relations practice. Most studies, they contend, have been conducted by parties with a vested interest in the outcome, such as large public relations firms or authors of books on blogging. Wright and Hinson acknowledge the importance of understanding how key constituents in public relations are gathering and sharing information. The rise of bloggers who are becoming “influentials” or “opinion leaders”, for example, has direct implications for central components of Lazarsfeld’s two-step flow theory. Additionally, the faster pace of feedback allowed by digital media is changing the dynamics of communications.

This article reports on a three-year international survey of public relations practitioners. The 2006 and 2007 surveys suggested an increase in the number of public relations professionals who were aware of blogging by employees in their organizations. Questions regarding the ethics of blogging and corporation’s reactions to blogging by employees reported mixed results. The 2008 survey, with which this article is most concerned, added additional research objectives:

·      Have blogs and social media enhanced the practice of public relation?

·      Do blogs and social media influence traditional, mainstream news media? Is the reverse true?

·      Has the emergence of social media (including blogs) changed how organizations communicate?

·      Do blogs and social media compliment or conflict with mainstream traditional news media?

To answer these questions the authors issued email invitations to public relations practitioners randomly sampled from the membership of professional organizations. Respondents represented an international sample that also spanned corporations, small agencies, and academic institutions.

Survey respondents agreed that blogs have changed how their organizations communicate and believe that blogs have a complimentary relationship with mainstream media. They believed that blogs were beneficial to the practice of public relations, that blogs influence major media, and that the reverse is also true. The major advantages of blogs were seen to be the more instantaneous communications available through blogging and the low cost associated with growing relationships with strategic publics. Respondents did not, however, feel that blogs are as credible or reliable as mainstream media.

This study shows that blogs are seen as a valuable and increasingly commonplace method for communicating with publics. What it does not do is to reinforce the opinions of industry professionals with evidence of actual benefits. While it is possible that blogs are growing relationships between corporations and individuals and influencing opinions, it is also possible that public relations professionals are basing their beliefs about blogs on nothing more substantial than the current vogue within the industry.

Research Post #2 - Birds of a Feather

Li, Jamy, and Mark Chignell. "Birds of a Feather: How personality influences blog writing and reading." International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 68.9 (2010): 589-602. Web. 26 Sep 2010.

I chose this article as part of my continuing exploration of whether it is possible to impart a sense of self through written digital media and the ability of the audience to detect or connect to that digital self.

Li and Chignell conducted a small, controlled, and very interesting study. The authors identify a key attractor of blogs as their social nature. Blogs can assist in the formation of communities through subject, networking of links, comments from readers, etc. Li and Chignell’s study was designed to investigate how an author’s personality is expressed in blog text through an examination of linguistic characteristics, and how well readers could judge the writer’s personalities based solely on the blog entries.

Prior to the start of the experiment Li and Chignell administered a “Big Five” test to measure participants impressions of their own personalities. A controlled environment was created in which eight blog authors used identical equipment, were limited in their choice of blogging interface, and were given equal time to compose a minimum number of entries in two different blogging genres. A group of twelve participants then read the blog entries and were asked to rate interpersonal attraction, using a two-item measure, and the perceived personality of the blog author using the same scale that was delivered to both authors and readers in the preliminary questionnaire.

Blog readers agreed among themselves about the personalities of the bloggers and results suggested that blog text presents a consistently decodable version of an author’s personality. Interestingly, while readers agreed about an author’s personality, their construction did not always match the author’s self-reported personality. This suggests, to me, that the digital personas created by authors may have a web presence that is different than that intended and that, due to the permanence of digital records, the unintended personality may have considerable longevity.

Readers were better able to assess personality traits in journal blog entries as compared to commentary entries. The small nature of the sample suggests a need for further study. The study did offer support for the concept that readers are more attracted to writers who they think are similar to themselves in personality. This finding is consistent with earlier studies.

The controlled environment in which the study was conducted is one of its strengths and also one of its greatest weaknesses. By removing other elements of a “true” web experience the authors were able to make a stronger argument that their findings were the result of the blog texts rather than other environmental conditions. The same situation, however, makes it hard to translate the results into generalized statements about personality presentation and audience reception in a larger and messier reality. The length of entries used in this study was shorter than average web entries. Since readers were able to perceive personality traits here, it would be interesting to study whether the same holds true for even shorter messages, such as those on Twitter. More study is clearly necessary. 

Metaphor Post - Parisian Love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU

Google, without a tangible product or fixed physical location, is a company that particularly needs to remind consumers of the benefits of its use. The company’s 2010 Superbowl ad Parisian Love does this by promoting two central ideas; “Google helps you create your life” and “Google is essentially feminine”.

Parisian Love is, on the surface, a very simple advertisement. An unseen user types a series of searches into Google’s signature plain interface. The computer and keyboard are not shown and the only other elements included in the ad are music and a few background noises. No voiceover. No arguments or explanations of benefits. How, then, does the ad convey its two central themes?

The typed searches follow a dramatic arc, from tentative initial engagement with a greater world, through discovery, and onward to a new and better future. The lack of hardware in the commercial creates immediacy. There are no barriers between the search engine and the user; they are operating together as a unit. Google is presented as an active partner designed to increase the human partner’s agency rather than as a passive receptor of input. It offers suggested search terms, corrects spelling (from louve to Louvre), offers quick basic information (translating “tu es tres mignon”), and concrete directions with visual clues (the map with a photograph of a church). The collaboration is so integrated that Google seems able to read the human user’s mind. The result is that the user is able to successfully navigate a confusing and uncertain world to construct favorable outcomes. We, as viewers, take away the idea that making a life is better and easier with Google than without it. The power of Google is our power.

This message is reinforced by the music, the dominant audio element in the ad. As the ad starts the search box is empty and the flashing cursor keeps time with hesitant, repeated piano notes that are strongly reminiscent of a heartbeat. As the user asks more and more from Google the music quickens, becoming more complex and melodic. The connectivity established at the beginning allows faster paced and more confident life choices.

The second theme promoted by Parisian Love involves the nature of this active and apparently indispensible partner. To understand the devices used to position Google as a feminine embodiment of technology it is important to remember that this commercial made its television debut during the 2010 Superbowl. During the game Anhueser-Busch ran 11 different beer commercials. Other major campaigns were for Doritos and the annual onslaught of “too hot for TV” Go Daddy commercials. Google’s ad is designed to be very different from these notably masculine and aggressive commercials. Traditional Superbowl ads rely on broad humor, beautiful women, and over the top special effects. Parisian Love gives, instead, a forthright presentation of sentiment, relationships, and the pleasures of conversation and food. Traditionally feminine themes replace predominantly masculine ones.  

After viewing Parisian Love there can be no doubt in the viewer’s mind that Google is different.  Where Bud Light ads are slapstick Google is charming. Where Go Daddy is assertively sexual Google is yearningly romantic. Google’s ad is warm and familiar, careful to eliminate any reason for feelings of intimidation or fear of technology use. Any wish you have is Google’s wish, from understanding French films to locating the nearest source of chocolate. By promoting itself using these kinds of motifs Google presents itself as inherently feminine.

Google’s professed corporate philosophy has always included a focus on ease of use and social responsibility. Parisian Love operates to exemplify those core values.

Research Blog Post #1

Papacharissi, Zizi. "The Presentation of Self in Virtual Life: Characteristics of Personal Home Pages." Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 79.3 (2002): 643-660. Web. 8 Sep 2010.

As a research focus I am primarily interested in how creative fiction writers use digital technologies in identity performance. I chose this article as a starting point for my research because it contains a general discussion of identity performance and demonstrates application of theory to a digital environment.

Papacharissi posits two main research questions: (1) What are Web page characteristics through which visual actors pursue self-presentation online, and (2) How are the characteristics of personal home pages related? Papacharissi conducted a content analysis of a random sample by using coders to investigate the homepages of previously surveyed homepage owners. The coders noted the number and variety of pages making up each site, classified them into categories, recorded the number of feedback mechanisms and links, and attempted to measure the interactivity of each home page. Papacharissi used dimensions of interactivity previously suggested by Ha and James for use in analyzing commercial sites. These dimensions are playfulness, availability of choice, connectedness to the audience, ability for information collection, and reciprocity. Additionally, the concept of vividness as presented in the work of Jonathan Steuer was used to measure successful online identity performance.

Results indicated that homepage owners used a combination of design elements to construct a “front”, as defined by Goffman in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. A front is comprised of elements used to background an identity performance in the same way that scenery and stage props are used in theater. In the case of personal homepages those include Web templates and publishing elements such as color, font type, and space. Feedback mechanisms were seen as indicating a desire for interpersonal communication and social approval. A need for affiliation was indicated by membership in Web page communities.

The strength of Papacharissi’s study lies in demonstrating that it is possible to express and perform identity without traditional elements such as verbal and visual clues, and in suggesting that the ability of the individual to orchestrate elements of the performance in advance may benefit overall effectiveness. Additionally, the study shows that dimensions used to evaluate commercial sites are equally appropriate for personal ones. This is important for my own research because my initial theories suggest that creative fiction writers are likely to use digital media in a hybridization of public and private; presenting seemingly personal information for commercial reasons.

The study’s weakness is a failure to clearly demonstrate that personal homepages are constructed consciously and intentionally to perform a specific identity. The choice of site elements could be as easily influenced by the technical capabilities of the user or options offered by the host as by deliberate user design.  The study is also limited to homepages whereas I am interested in how individuals use multiple forms of digital media.