Carli Brosseau is TucsonCitizen.com's social media editor. She is also a creative writing teacher and freelance reporter whose work has appeared in the New York Times and Caesura, among other places.
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More and more, people are using Facebook as a news source. Collectively, we spend 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. But Facebook tweaks the system often. Sometimes, a change is a temporary; other times, it’s more permanent. It’s hard to know how important a change is—or in certain cases, even that a change has take place—unless you’re paying a lot of attention.
One of the most significant changes in the past year has been in the filtering of what appears in your personal news feed. Thomas E. Weber of the Daily Beast posted a great explanation of his effort to get to the bottom of how it works. The story was reported a while ago now, and there seem to have been changes made since, but I think the logic still applies. The crux of the issue is that what appears in your news feed is a function of your past Facebook activity. Because the algorithm that determines what appears is secret—read Facebook’s explanation of it here—it’s difficult to know why you’re seeing what you’re seeing.
There is, however, a way to change the filter. If you suspect that you are not seeing every post your friends make in your news feed (and you want to), scroll all the way down to the bottom of your news feed. You should see an Edit Options link on the right side of a light blue box. When you click on it, a box pops up. There, you can change the news feed settings to show posts from everyone, rather than friends and pages you interact with most. In that same box, you can choose friends that you’d rather not hear from. So you can have it both ways. Sort of.
I’d like to hear from you. Did you have an issue with this? Did this explanation help you out in any way? Send me your burning Facebook questions, and I’ll see what I can do to get an answer.
In New York, the emphasis on social media and other digital technology comes from the top.
“Any organization, in the public or private sector, that wants to be a leader in customer service must be a leader in digital media.”
— Mayor Mike Bloomberg
Right now, New York City agencies manage more than 200 social media channels. The city’s website – nyc.gov – gets about 2.8 million visitors per month and has an additional audience of over 1.2 million users through social media. The idea is to create a more centralized mechanism for exchanging information. This will involve training for agencies that currently use social media, working with digital media companies, and creating an advisory group called SMART (Social Media Advisory & Research Taskforce). According to the press release, SMART will manage citywide social media feeds including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Tumblr; provide recommendations on social media tools and strategies; help other agencies with social media; evaluate new platforms; and update guidelines and policies.
The city plans to redesign the website and host its first “Hackathon,” which it hopes will produces possible prototypes for the new nyc.gov. It plans to expand NYC Platform, an open government framework featuring Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for city data, launch a hub for feedback from the developer community and create an NYC App store.
The road map includes important steps toward making city government more accessible, though as a journalist, I worry about the centralization of information. I’m hopeful that the collaboration between NYC and the various social media companies now dominating the market will result in innovations that can be adopted by local governments across the country to improve local services.
Facebook Director of Public Policy Tim Sparapani was quoted in the press release as saying that was the purpose of the project: “Social technologies like Facebook can enhance transparency, collaboration, information sharing, and citizen engagement and we’re excited to be part of this initiative. It is our hope that Mayor Bloomberg’s program becomes a model for other cities to replicate as governments around the world find innovative ways to connect with citizens, provide information and deliver services.” We’ll see.
What do you think? Do you have any suggestions for the city of Tucson or Pima County? Check back for more coverage of how local agencies are adapting to the digital world.
Having high-quality cameras on cellphones has changed how often people take pictures and what they shoot. I can say that definitively for myself anyway. I now regularly take pictures of signs I like, places where I’m reporting from and innumerable photos of my dogs. Social apps like Instagram and Hipstamatic make it clear that I’m not alone.
I have another theory: Having high-quality and easy-to-use cameras on phones also changes how we see the world. When more of the world becomes photographable, we see more of the world as photographable. We begin to look at the world with that frame. Another personal anecdote: Adopting my first dog completely changed my relationship to my neighborhood. It wasn’t only that I was out walking more and therefore more likely to observe people and places. It was that I was interested in what Flora was interested in — chicken bones, gates, fragrant flowers — and as a result, I saw a completely different neighborhood. My appreciation for the neighborhood grew from understanding it in that new way.
This is all by way of introduction, a demonstration of an idea at work. Tohono Chul Park curators apparently had a similar idea. They invited Tucson artists to capture their impressions of the special qualities of the place using the cameras in their cellphones. The exhibit, called “Picturing Tucson,” will include 5 x 7″ images of a range of perspectives of the city and the details that the artists hope will make you want to stop and look more closely. It opens May 19 and runs through July 12. I look forward to checking it out.
Tohono Chul Park is located at 7366 N. Paseo del Norte. It’s open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Admission costs $7 for adults, $5 for seniors and $3 for students. Children under 5 can go for free.
So I know I promised a weekly column about a fix, but this week I simply want to bring your attention to news from SeeClickFix itself. SeeClickFix just last week announced a brand new Facebook application. The company’s CEO, Ben Berkowitz, described the the rationale in a press release.
Facebook has proven to be a powerful platform for encouraging people to plant virtual trees and improve virtual neighborhoods. When considering recent events, like the revolutionary wave in the Middle East, it’s also proven to be a powerful tool for organizing around social and political issues.
The app takes what many see as a boring and likely useless exercise in civic duty and turns it into a game. Community Manager Emma Richards describes the idea like this:
The app is a comprehensive SeeClickFix platform available directly within users’ Facebook accounts. Facebook has proven to be a powerful platform for organizing groups of people online to effect change offline. We hope our deepening integration with Facebook will empower citizens to help themselves and those around them. With FarmVille, users can collaborate with virtual ‘neighbors’ to plant and harvest virtual crops. With the SeeClickFix app, however, users will be able to connect with their real neighbors to plant real trees in their real communities.
As an incentive for using the app, participants will receive Civic Points, and who doesn’t want those? Check it out. Receiving those points is more satisfying than you might think. You get 60 just for signing up. Did you file any of the reports visible below? If so, let me know.
Announcing a new regular feature on Social Citizen — The Fix. Each Tuesday, I will post the most recent SeeClickFix reports and write a story about a lingering complaint or a recent repair.
SeeClickFix is a social forum for reporting problems to local government, and the city administration is taking notes. Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup’s aide Andrew Greenhill is active in the Gov. 2.0 movement, and he has advocated the use of SeeClickFix as a tool for prioritizing city problems. City residents can both report problems and vote for the reports they think need the most immediate fix. City officials then know an issue’s exact location and how dire it is. Through this regular feature, I’ll track just how well the pipeline is working.
If you have suggestions or would like your work to be featured, send an email to carli.brosseau@tucsoncitizen.com or tweet me @carlibrosseau.
That’s about the same rate for Germans on Facebook. But if you compare Americans to Facebooking Colombians, of whom 39 percent envision peace within 50 years, the picture changes. Americans, who I thought appeared optimists at first blush, appear cynical, depressed even.
Facebook graphs the daily results of its survey, and the results are startling. Isrealis see a greater chance of peace than Americans. So do Egyptians. And Turks. And Taiwanese.
So what’s the deal? I wish I had a solid answer. I don’t, but I think we can fairly assume that the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya have something to do with current American attitudes toward peace. None of those conflicts has proven as easy to extricate the country from as was initially announced. I also wonder how tied this issue is to budget talks.
Facebook wonders how tied the conflicts are to friendships that bridge conflictual divides. Trends in Facebook friendships among Israelis and Palestinians, Indians and Pakistanis, Jews and Muslims and other warring pairs are graphed and counted. Only Facebook could establish almost 67,000 India-Pakistani “friendships” in 24 hours. I hope those links mean as much as Mark Zuckerberg thinks they do.
This post is months late. It’s a status similar to that of the cleaning of my overfull and under-organized shoe bin. But for those of you who are getting to the spring cleaning now, this may be of interest. Yardsellr is an app that allows you to skip the yard sale in the sweltering late March heat. (Yes, it is 90 degrees today.) It takes the whole experience and makes it virtual, integrated into Facebook.
Logging into Yardsellr happens through your Facebook account because Facebook is a quick and easy way to get your items seen by your friends and other Yardsellr users. You can invite all of your friends to your Yardsale event and ask them to promote your event as well. When your friends promote your Yardsale for you, even more people see the stuff you’re selling. If your friends are nice enough to promote your Yardsale for you and they sell on Yardsellr as well, be sure and return the favor.
The system is based on sharing information and the nugget of wisdom that made Mark Zuckerberg the celebrity he is today — friends trust their friends and thus are more likely to act on information they receive from their friends than from strangers. Friends work for each of us as a filter. They play a part in determining what we see, what we consider and, of course, even what we buy. Enter Yardsellr, 100% dependent on that notion. The company was founded by Danny Leffel, formerly of eBay, to take online selling to the next level. There is no cost to buying or selling, just for additional and optional social marketing.
Yardsellr has entered the Tucson market and is looking to expand. Check it out if you had a yard sale in mind but think lemonade might not be enough to beat the heat. Also check it out if you are particularly into Elvis, Hello Kitty or Star Wars. These products are specialties. Or is that just what they predict I’ll buy?
Many creative professionals these days work from home. There is a wonderful freedom that comes with that — pajama wearing, dog walks anytime you hit a metaphorical wall — but there are downsides, too.
Isolation ranks high on the list of cons for many creative people I know. We all need a little action. As someone who transitioned from working in a rowdy newsroom to a dark and quiet home office, I can relate. At a certain point, I started singing to the dogs. Regularly. Then I knew things had to change.
If the situation sounds familiar, here are a couple of ideas.
Spoke6 is a co-working outfit located at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Sixth Street. For $150 a month, you can use a desk, a storage locker, bathrooms, showers, a kitchen, a conference room. There is a $20 day-pass option, as well.
Gangplank is a Chandler-based co-working alternative looking to expand to Tucson. They espouse a non-profit, drop-in-for-free model and are currently looking for Tucson businesses or nonprofits with whom to work out a partnership deal.
To find out the answer to that eternal question, go to TucsonCitizen.com’s Facebook page. Take our quiz, and you’ll be entered into a drawing for a $100 gift certificate to Antigone Books. Second prize is a book by TucsonCitizen.com’s Logical Lizard blogger Geoff Notkin, who is also a star of the Science Channel show “Meteorite Men.” Notkin has generously donated a signed copy of “Meteorite Hunting: How to Find Treasure From Space.” as well as an exclusive “Meteorite Men” badge and a promotional photograph signed by both Notkin and his expedition partner and co-star Steve Arnold. He’ll also be at our Tucson Festival of Books booth with a spectacular array of meteorites.
While you’re at it, go ahead and push that “Like” button at the top of the Facebook page. In return, you’ll get a steady stream of Tucson news and commentary and notice of our upcoming contests and giveaways. You’ll also be part of Tucson’s largest network of citizen journalists, a community that cares about reading and writing and the state of the world, more specifically, the state of Tucson, our home and very likely yours too. While you’re still at it, give Antigone Books some Facebook like love, as well.
One other thing: You may think that you have already “liked” TucsonCitizen.com’s Facebook page by hitting the button that up until recently was located on the left side of our pages. While a push of that button did indicate to others that you liked what you were reading, it did not add you to the people who receive news from TucsonCitizen.com in their news feed. A like on the top of our Facebook page would do that, as would a click on the like button in the Facebook box now on the right side of our home page. We would love for you to do that, as we would love to hear what you think. What good is a one-way conversation?
So tell us what you think. In the process, you might even win a prize.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. — The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Or, if you prefer, in video form:
It’s Sunshine Week, a week for dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. It’s a week for action. That part falls to you. Sunshine Week’s backers – most prominently the American Society of News Editors – describes this year’s worthy goals like this:
This Sunshine Week, we urge citizens to press their public officials to do more, seeking not just broad statements of support for greater transparency but specific pledges and plans of action to enhance the public’s right to know.
Sunshine Week 2011 can be a time when you as a citizen or civic organization make a difference by identifying local or state open government shortcomings and then asking your public officials to pledge and initiate specific improvements in local or state law and practice.
To assist your efforts, the Sunshine Week team presents a sample Open Government Proclamation that you, or your group, can take to your public officials to seek a commitment on open government with specific action that will lead to increased sunshine.
So get out there! Call your government to account. As a tribute (and a small push), I offer some highlights of resources for local newsgatherers.
For Arizona journalists and bloggers alike, the Arizona First Amendment Coalition compiles great online resources. There’s a link to the Arizona Public Records Book, the Open Meetings Law, a journalist’s guide to Family Educational Rights and Policy Act. These are rules Arizona newsgatherers should know. No excuses – you can’t argue for your rights if you don’t know them. The coalition also posts a link to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) letter generator to help you get started.
A note on public records requests: Ask for what you want firmly. In general, I am a huge fan of manners, but research shows that with records request, this approach doesn’t work. The University of Arizona’s David Cuillier publishes a study contrasting the approaches in the journal “Communication Law and Policy.” It’s definitely worth a read.
Also, a reminder: The First Amendment doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want. There are restrictions, the most famous of which involves fire and a theater. You can’t publish as fact something you know is false. Well, you can, but the trouble that will follow makes the prospect a dubious exercise in judgement. The First Amendment Center has great resources illuminating this point and others. Among my favorites are the yearly State of the First Amendment reports.
I can’t conclude this post without pointing you toward my very favorite resource for newsgatherers interested in government accountability – Investigative Reporters and Editors. Their site holds a treasure trove of tips on how to get information and how to interpret it. There are links to recent investigations, training opportunities and how-tos of many kinds. I guarantee a perusal of that site will leave you with a long list of story ideas and strategies. We will all be better off for it.
More and more, people are using Facebook as a news source. Collectively, we spend 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. But Facebook tweaks the system often. Sometimes, a change is a temporary; other times, it’s more permanent. It’s hard to know how important a change is—or in certain cases, even that a change has take place—unless you’re paying a lot of attention.
