Worth Reading, Feb 27, 2012
We’re back from a Presidents Day break last week (and, well, for me from being very under the weather as well).
- Pew Research on Privacy: The Pew Internet and American Life Project released new data on social network users and privacy, “Privacy management on social media sites.” The report notes, ”Profile “pruning” is on the rise. Deleting unwanted friends, comments and photo tags [has grown] in popularity.”
- Pinterest and Copyright: While Pinterest is continuing to grow in adoption, questions about its ability to manage copyright issues are also rising. See: “Is Pinterest a Haven for Copyright Violations?,” “Pinterest’s uneasy relationship with copyright law: what happens next” and “New code lets websites opt-out of Pinterest.”
- Twitter and Rumors: Two interesting pieces on the intersection of Twitter and rumors or misinformation. “Twitter and Death Hoaxes, Alive and Sadly, Well,” from the New York Times; and from The Guardian, a fascinating interactive look at how specific rumors spread on Twitter during the UK riots last year, “Riot rumours: how misinformation spread on Twitter during a time of crisis.”
- New NPR Ethics Handbook: Craig Silverman at Poynter reviewed NPR’s new Ethics Handbook, “NPR handbook offers accuracy tips for all news orgs, including ‘errors are inevitable.’”
- China and Social Media: Nieman Journalism Lab reviewed a fairly new site that draws news from social media within China called Tea Leaf Nation, “Tea Leaf Nation: A look at China through a social media lens.”
- China and Human Rights: This is a worth listening, but if you didn’t hear the This American Life episode in January with Mike Daisey, “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,” it’s recommended. (Part of the episode is excerpted from Daisey’s live show, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” running in NYC currently at the Public Theater).
Worth Reading, February 13, 2012: Other People’s Reflections on China
This is my first post since the Logos Institute Blog began its weekly “what we’re reading” series.
I haven’t been reading as much lately as I usually do, because I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my next book, about which you’ll hear much more in the coming months.
But when I’ve read it has mostly been building upon my reflections on China by paying attention to what others with far more experience there are saying.
An excellent starting point for anyone interested in understanding China from the perspective of the United States is Henry Kissinger’s On China. This first-hand account from the nation’s architect of the 1972 Opening to China is both a fascinating read and a good guidebook to the seminal moments in China’s and the United States’ increasingly important relationship.
But to really understand how China got from 1972 to the present, from a Chinese perspective, the indispensable read is Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by Ezra F. Vogel. The author is Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard. He took a break from teaching to spend time in the CIA in the 1990s as the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia. His voluminous and deeply-researched book includes private and Party papers, interviews with family members and participants at major events, and a deep understanding of the day-to-day workings of the key players.
It’s particularly interesting (and both fun and scary) to read Deng’s accounts of his meetings with Henry Kissinger side-by-side with Kissinger’s. The book also places those meetings into a Chinese context and shows how the U.S. mis-calculated significantly again and again in its relationships with China — from the risk of Chinese intervention in the Korean war to China’s relationship with Vietnam. China invaded Vietnam soon after we left, worried about Vietnam’s likely invasion of Cambodia and fearing Soviet encirclement. So much for our fear of global communist domination.
Worth Reading, Feb 6, 2012
From Facebook’s IPO to the Komen/Planned Parenthood crisis to the biggest television event of the year, it was a full week.
- Facebook IPO: Facebook finally filed for its IPO last week, one of the most widely read pieces of financial communication in a long time. A helpful summary from The New York Times, “Facebook Filing: The Highlights.”
- Komen for the Cure/Planned Parenthood Crisis: Komen’s decision to halt funding of a Planned Parenthood program that provided breast cancer screenings resulted in a crisis that spread like wildfire and ended with a change in policy and apology from Komen at the end of last week. Good summary by Kivi Leroux Miller, “The Accidental Rebranding of Komen for the Cure;” good media analysis by Jay Rosen, “Interview as Train Wreck: Susan G. Komen Foundation meets Andrea Mitchell;” and a good example from Beth Kanter of the use of Pinterest in protest, “Komen Can Kiss My Mammogram.”
- Pinterest: Speaking of Pinterest, reading lots of analysis and research on this new(ish) social site, including on referral traffic, demographics, its relationship to copyright laws, strong brand examples, and “What Pinterest is Doing That Facebook Isn’t.”
- Super Bowl: The big game by the numbers, from Google and Twitter, which saw record tweet-per-second activity last night.
Worth Reading, Jan 30, 2012
It’s hard to believe, but January 2012 marks the fourth anniversary of this Logos blog, with our first blog post published by my colleague Fred Garcia on January 2nd, 2008.
In the last four years, we’ve all posted at various times, although the overall speed and frequency of the blog has slowed quite a bit in the last two years. All of the usual culprits are part of that reason, but the biggest culprit has been time (or lack thereof). While we’re thankful that the last four years have kept us busy, our blogging has seen a definite downward trend as a result.
Today marks the start of a new weekly series on this blog: “Worth Reading,” a collection of notable reads from the previous week (or so). We’ve had a more sporadic “Worth Reading” series for some time, but this weekly series aims to fill a request expressed to us to more closely follow what we’re keeping up with in quicker, more consumable bites.
- Newspapers & fact-checking: We followed with great interest the continued discussion prompted by Arthur S. Brisbane’s column at the New York Times earlier this month, “Should the Times Be a Truth Vigilante?” In particular, analysis by Lucas Graves at Nieman Journalism Lab, “Digging deeper into The New York Times’ fact-checking faux pas;” Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic, “Why Newspaper’s Often Don’t Call Out Politicians for Lying;” and Gene Lyons at Salon, “Newspapers, truth vigilantes no more” are worth reading, as is a follow-up piece by Brisbane, “Keeping Them Honest.”
- Edelman Trust Barometer: The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer continues Edelman’s research into the state of trust in countries, industries, information sources and spokespeople around the world, with 2012 seeing “the biggest decline in trust in government in Barometer history.” Lots of other relevant data in the full report.
- Facebook research: Two interesting pieces of research on Facebook: “How Journalists Are Using Facebook Subscribe,” a look at the changes since Facebook allowed users to “Subscribe” to public figures’ accounts, including journalists, in September 2011; and “Rethinking Information Diversity in Networks,” with additional analysis on Slate, “The End of the Echo Chamber.”
- Employees and social media: Thoughtful analysis by Shel Holtz on a recent report on employees and social media, “Rejoice! Employee use of social media has tripled!“
- Nonprofits and mobile giving: For nonprofits, Pew Internet’s report on “Real Time Charitable Giving” tracks the increase in giving from mobile phones.
- Twitter and international policy: And finally, lots of discussion at the end of last week about Twitter’s new international policy, including good summary and analysis from Alex Howard on Gov20.GovFresh, “On Twitter, censorship and Internet freedom” (with lots of updates and links to other analysis), and “What Would it Take to Get Twitter Unblocked in China?” on the WSJ.
These weekly updates will be a compendium of various topics that touch on a range of our work, and we look forward to more frequent updates in 2012.
Reflections on China
I have just returned from two weeks of teaching in China, and it has gotten me thinking.
Ten Things Executives Need to Know (and Do) About Human Rights
An expanded version of this post, “UN Human Rights Framework: What executives need to know and do about human rights, Part I and Part II” appears on the website of Ethical Corporation (UK).
Human rights have been a concern for some companies since the anti-Apartheid divestment campaigns of the 1980s, but there has been no broad-based uptake of human rights as a business discipline. Relatively few companies have human rights in their corporate vocabulary.
This may be the year human rights go mainstream, thanks, largely, to the work of John Ruggie, serving for the past six years as the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative on Business and Human Rights.
Ruggie has forged a working consensus among companies, governments and advocates that human rights are not just a business concern, but that both governments and companies have human rights responsibilities. The Ruggie, or UN, Framework – “Protect, Respect and Remedy” – asserts that governments must protect against abuses by companies; companies must respect human rights; and victims must have access to remedies.
“Protect, respect and remedy” is a phrase that many executives will hear and be asked to explain over the next twelve months. This Spring, the UN Human Rights Council is expected to endorse Guiding Principles for both governments and companies to meet their responsibilities under the Framework. For the first time, companies have a clear roadmap for making human rights part of their compliance and corporate responsibility efforts. If you are, or advise, one of those executives, there are ten things you need to know (and do) about human rights: (more…)
BP: A Failure of Leadership and Management on a Massive Scale
“The nicest thing about not planning is that
failure comes as a complete surprise,
rather than being preceded by a period of
worry and depression.”
Sir John Harvey-Jones
The catastrophic loss of the Deepwater Horizon rig on the Macondo well seemed to come as a complete surprise, especially to those who were closest to it. It shouldn’t have.
Last year I blogged that the seeds of the Deepwater Horizon explosion were planted well before April 20, 2010.
The verdict is now in on the BP disaster: The sequence of mis-steps that resulted in 11 people killed and millions of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico was the result of a failure of leadership and management on a massive scale.
BP: Benighted Planning
“Plan for what is difficult when it is most easy,
do what is great while it is small.
The most difficult things in the world must be done
while they are still easy,
the greatest things in the world must be done
while they are still small.”
The Tao-te Ching, or The Way and Its Power
Lao Tzu (604-581 BCE)
….
Let’s simply stipulate that BP’s response to its disaster in the Gulf is shaping up to be the new standard for mishandled crises.
We’ll continue to harvest how-not-to lessons from BP as long as Tony Hayward continues to talk, the oil continues to flow, and beaches, fisheries, wetlands, wildlife, and livelihoods remain at risk.
But what are the deeper lessons?
I believe the key is this: The seeds of what happened after the April 20 explosion were planted well before April 20.
To harvest the most meaningful lessons from BP requires us to look at the sequence of events leading to the fire, explosion, collapse of the rig, death of 11 workers, and the surge of oil into the Gulf.
Prevention More Important Than Response
However important getting crisis response right may be, crisis prevention is even more important.
BP got both spectacularly wrong.
SXSWi Speakers Wrap-Up: Clay Shirky
Clay Shirky by Joi
Clay Shirky, NYU professor and author of Here Comes Everybody, was another highlight of my time in Austin. His talk, “Monkeys with Internet Access: Sharing, Human Nature, and Digital Data,” touched on a number of themes and was grouped in three parts:
- Buses and Bibles
- Monkeys and Balloons
- Lingerie and Garbage
Part One: Buses and Bibles
Shirky began with a discussion of the inefficiencies of modern cities, and how many of the solutions people present to address the inefficiencies are engineering solutions, but that a new approach treating inefficiencies with information solutions may provide a better alternative. For example, in Canada an approach to congested roads is a ride share network – sharing information about who’s going where when. This approach is better for almost everyone BUT bus companies, who filed suit against the company offering the service.
Key point 1: “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.”
Shirky calls that kind of sharing “jackhammer sharing — sharing that’s powerful enough that it actually destroys existing things in the environment.” That kind of sharing “doesn’t happen very often, but it sometimes does around media revolutions.” He connected this idea to Gutenberg and the printing press.
Key point 2: “Abundance breaks more things than scarcity. When things become really abundant, the price goes away. The things that were previously thought of as scarce that are now available to everyone change the world. [E.g. Scribes vs. printing press.] We generally know how to manage scarcity, we don’t know how to manage abundance.”
Part Two: Monkeys and Balloons
This section began with a background on Napster, and Shirky argued that Napster changed the motivation around sharing, which wasn’t a new motivation, more of a bringing back of an old one. Shirky discussed three modes of sharing from the book Why We Cooperate.
Key point 3: There are three different types of sharing: 1. Sharing goods; 2. Sharing services; and 3. Sharing information. Sharing goods is the hardest, sharing services a little easier and sharing information is the easiest of all. “Napster took the world of music, where music was always shared as goods or services, and made it possible to share as information.” We’re programmed to share information – it gives us a positive feeling.
Part Three: Lingerie and Garbage
Here, Shirky gave a number of examples of institutions, groups or initiatives that centered around sharing information that creates a kind of civic value (e.g. Ushahidi, PatientsLikeMe). We now have tools that swing the way we share information with each other.
Key point 4: “Intrinsic motivation and private action was just an accident. Now we can do big things for love, not just private things for love. We’re moving from doing little things for love and big things for money, to doing big things for love.”
On Presenting
Shirky is a master presenter. No tools, no technology, no (visible) notes. Just a man in a three wolf man t-shirt, a well-crafted story and an astute sense of his audience. (I haven’t yet been able to find good video of his talk at SXSW this year, but you can see one of his TED talks here.)
[Note: This post is cross-posted on my personal blog.]
SXSWi Speakers Wrap-Up: danah boyd
I’m back from Austin, slowly catching up in the office and working on synthesizing my thoughts from SXSW Interactive 2010. This was my second time attending, and there were a few things that I did differently and that were different in terms of the conference than in 2009. The SXSW experience contains many different parts, so I thought I’d break them down into more manageable bits versus one big overview post. I’m planning to break the pieces into the following parts, and if meaty enough a particular speaker or discussion might have its own post:
- Part One: Solo Speakers
- Part Two: Panel Discussions
- Part Three: Technology
Part One: Solo Speakers
From my experience last year, I found that I get a lot from the best solo speakers as SXSW, and that panel discussions can be a bit more hit or miss. There were both keynote speakers each day and multiple sessions daily of what they called “featured speakers.” I arrived a bit later than anticipated Friday afternoon and stayed till Tuesday morning, but was able to fit in a lot of content between Saturday — Monday.
danah boyd
Danah Boyd theme chart by jdlasica
danah boyd delivered the Opening Remarks for the conference, and she was someone I was really looking forward to hear speak. She’s with the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Microsoft Research New England, and her research into social media (and youth & teens in particular) is something I’ve shared in both my consulting and teaching work. Her talk at SXSW, “Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity,” centered on a few themes, and what I think she did particularly well was to shed light on the nuance of the debate around privacy online, which too often devolves into two extremes.
I took five pages of notes, but I’ll try to paraphrase what I saw as the main points from her talk:
- Privacy is about control of information flows. When people feel like they don’t have control of their information they feel like their privacy has been violated. This includes the opt-out versus opt-in debate.
- Technologists assume that the most optimized system is the best one, but forget about social values and social rituals. (e.g. discussion of Google Buzz launch)
- Merging worlds. Just because someone puts something online doesn’t mean they want it to be publicized (difference between public and publicity). There’s a security in obscurity – most people online have very few followers. Making something that’s public more public can be a violation of privacy.
- By continuing to argue that privacy is dead, technologists work to make data more public and things public that were never meant to be. We’re seeing a switch to public by default, private through effort.
- With privilege, it’s easy to take for granted things that not everyone gets to experience, and with privilege comes a different value proposition – what one person may gain from publicness, another person may lose. This affects not only groups sometimes thought of as marginalized (immigrants, victims of abuse, LGBT community), but also groups like teachers – they have more to lose by public information online. Public by default isn’t always a democratizer.
Her full unedited talk is available on her site here. I urge you to spend the time reading it, as I’ve captured only a small sliver of a very wise discussion.
[Note: this post is cross-posted on my personal blog.]