The Ayman and Naaman Show

Just an interesting tidbit of information I discovered when preparing my class on Retrieving and Evaluating Electronic Information (here’s my previous post on planning the class). Covering the topic of bias in search engines, and in particular Google, we talked about how PageRank introduces various bias in the type of information it makes available. I assigned as reading the excellent honor’s thesis (pdf, via the Internet Archive) from 2005 by Stanford undergrad Alejandro M. Diaz. Alejandro’s (where are you now? leave a comment if you read this!) thesis is a straightforward, accessible (if not always “scientific”) account of the different bias that are reflected in Google and Page Rank. A sample quote:

Our description of PageRank, like that put forth by its inventors, makes heavy but unqualified use of the term “important.” This is somewhat disconcerting since importance, like relevancy, is a highly subtle, ambiguous, and subjective thing… To the algorithm, being “important” simply means being “popular.”

It is therefore interesting to see how Google itself changed the way they talk about PageRank. Thanks to the Internet Archive, I give you a direct comparison of the text on the official Google “corporate tech” page, highlighted for your reading pleasure and emphasis:

PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page’s importance by the number of votes it receives.

- Google, 2002 (via the Internet Archive)

PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

- Google, 2009

In fact, the change in language, as you can see on the Internet Archive history for the Google Corporate Technology page was done as late as 2007, and to be accurate, sometime between April 6th and May 6th, 2007 – the same month Google has bought DoubleClick (don’t know what this says but conspiracy theorists are welcome to suggest ideas).

Continuing on my thoughts following Paul DiMaggio’s visit, about the digital divide. Mobile information access may be one technological element that will mark the divide going forward. But there might be another element that might create a social divide that will be very hard to bridge.

I’m talking about social networks, and in particular, the potential articulation of social networks online.

It’s not only the case that you can see who someone’s friends are, you can figure out how that person is connected to you in 1, 2, 3 or 10 links. Such information could be widely available on the web (already available in LinkedIn, and may become available on Facebook any time). This articulation of social ties may lead to even more favoritism and rich-get-richer in making friends and, say, hiring decisions.

We already know that homophily plays a big role in offline (great overview from Miller McPherson et al.) and online social networks. With the disappearance of web anonymity (on Facebook, almost everyone is the real him or her) it is likely that these networks homophily trends will continue to dominate and even exacerbate.

What does this mean? Employers will have the choice not only to select employees who are friends or from the same alma-mater; they will be able to see how distant an applicant is from them in the social network (and perhaps examine the applicant’s direct social network ties). This is not a digital divide: maybe the technically-weak are not part of online social networks at all yet (a fact that already hurts them), but even when they join the online world and join a social network, their potential immeidiate ties in the virtual world may actually hurt their social advancement because of that new social network selection bias.

And that’s before Facebook even starts “PageRanking” people.

Or, you can take a positive view and claim that if the span of a social network is not that wide (say, a low mean shortest path between each two elements in a fully-connected social graph) such articulation of ties might actually be beneficial to “weaker” nodes in that graph as it will help them connect to more “important” people. Which will it be?

Nice thing about being at a school that has a significant portion of social science and humanities academics: I frequently now hear speakers that go beyond technology, or at the very least look at it from a different angle.

Princeton sociology professor Paul DiMaggio’s presentation at Rutgers was exactly that. Titled Digital Inequality, his talk described research (done with his students) that attempted to answer important questions about the digital divide:

• Does the digital divide exist? What differences exist between different groups, and did the magnitude of the difference change over time?
• Does it matter? In other words, what is the impact of technology access on people’s economic and social status?
• Will it continue, or is the gap likely to be closed at some point?

Paul described a series of interesting (and often innovative) quantitative analysis studies that answered these questions (yes, and slightly mitigated; yes, potentially significant; and no, it is likely to persist). Squeezing all these studies in one hour left many details out (I guess I could read the papers…) but made a fascinating and informative talk.

Of course, as the digital divide refers to differences in access to “information technology”, the studies so far referred to PC/computer and (later) Internet access. That raised the questions: what is the next barrier to create the digital divide? In other words, after every child has a laptop and free Internet access (or something), where will be the new divide?

One possible answer is mobile devices and services – the mobile web. Cara Wallis told us last week that even low-income (local) immigrants in China invest more than they can afford in their mobile device, but nevertheless, low-income populations worldwide are still likely to be locked out of getting advanced mobile devices and access to expansive ($20-$30 a month in the US) mobile access plans.

So, I am pretty sure the digital divide exists and will deepen in the domain of mobile computing. However, what about Paul’s second question: does it matter? Does that fact that I can look up the nearest and most recommended Chinese restaurant, wherever I am; or listen to NPR stations from California on the NJ Transit impact my economic or social status? My colleague (and chair of our Communication department) Jim Katz hints that at least social status can be gained.

Of course, an alternative viewpoint could say that mobile devices can actually be cheap and available enough to actually reduce the barriers and mitigate the digital divide. It’s true, a good portion of the population in developing countries holds a cell phone, but those are yet to do anything beyond text messaging and voice.

Next time on A&N.net: the socio-digital divide (Naaman’s additional factor in the future of the digital divide).

Ian lured me out with this one, claiming that all media is now “social media”:

We’ve reached a tipping point. In my mind the lines between social media  and other types of media are so blurred that it’s not even useful to distinguish the two, just drop the “social” because all media is now social.

As someone who shares a blog (with Ayman, no less) that has the term “social media” in the (sub)title – I thought I need to provide my view on the matter. Well, here is my definition:

Social media: Online media published or shared by individuals and organizations, in an environment that encourages significant individual participation and that promotes curation, discussion and re-use.*

So, is everything “Social Media”? Not yet, I don’t think so. Let’s look at my definition above, which is closer to Stowe Boyd’s definition from Ian’s earlier post. There are several key words in the definition that explain my claim. The main one is “significant individual participation”. The NY Times article comments, for example, do not allow such participation. Yes, one can comment and discuss, but way below the fold and on a different page altogether. The contribution is not significant, even for the small crowd that makes the jump.

On the other hand, Twitter for example is an environment where individual participation is the main feature and fall comfortably into the heart on my definition above.

What about blogs? Well, it depends. Blogs of personal authors are by definition “social media”. But the more mainstream “blogs” (or, say, alternative news outlets) are not social media unless they give the viewers/readers/visitors a significant voice and participation in the conversation. Yes, it might not be easy to make the call for any specific blog. What do you think this is, mathematics?

Of course, as Ian notes, the CNN/Facebook inaugural “experience” is certainly “social media” even according to mine definition. In fact, as I commented on Ayman’s previous post, the CNN-Facebook inaugural address was a game changer that will be marked as the moment that TV watching had changed forever.

Just a few last notes about the definition above. Three key concepts there are “curation, discussion and re-use” that describe the type of additional participation allowed. All three assume that those uses (e.g., tagging for a type of curation, commenting or trackbacking as discussion and referenced remix/embed/quote as re-use) are significant factors in social media, but the base criteria is always the significant individual participation.

Yes, Social Media is still Made of People.**

* Ayman helped define in a rare showing of, at once, comradery and patience!
** Damn it, we’re not the only ones that thought of this. Here’s the reference for those of you not raised on this particular culture’s trash.

I’m often amazed about the “real world”.  Naaman would say here that I have yet to experience it but my case in point is I got cable tv.  I haven’t had cable tv…well.  Ever. With the exception of couch surfing at my friend’s places.  Comcast in SF gives you some unreal number of channels…most of which require an additional fee – and with the exception of Anthony Bourdain and Alton Brown (on Travel HD and Food HD)…ok and Top Chef on Bravo. I really don’t need cable tv.  So I’ve thought about canceling it after the 1.5 months I’ve had it.  What’s curious here is, I’ve lost my old pattern.  I used to just go to a friends place and watch my stories there.  Or better yet, one friend of mine always wants to show me her favorite new show on SpikeTV.   TV just isn’t fun by yourself.  Now I find myself IMing my friends to see if one of them is watching a show…so I might chat and watch.

While this has been the recent subject of much research and discussion, I want to talk politics for a moment.  Throughout the debates, CurrentTV ran a ‘hack the debate’ program. 

Basically, while you watched the presidential debates, they would show Tweets from Twitter’s public timeline marked with the tag #CURRENT.  This was an amazing feat indeed.  Why?  They not only did it on the web—they did it on their cable tv channel!  While this may seem like just some technical wiring, there is more here. CurrentTV was using Twitter as a filter for op-ed content which (one could only assume) was filtered by their editors in real time.  This is an example of not just ’send your photo to us and we will put it on the air’.  Rather, the production of the entire show revolved around the success and the compelling nature of people and how they tweet.  Unfortunately, for me and TV, I don’t care what other people think.  I care about what my friends think.

Enter CNN. Together with Facebook, they made an app which is dead simple. In 2006, I was on faculty at the Medill School of Journalism where I was teaching News and New Media. I recall demoing Facebook to the class and explaining this was going to be the future of aggregation, but that’s another post. Moving on, show me the TV and what my friends status updates are!

And now, I get to see what my friends are saying. Plus, I can individually respond to each status message. This creates a mini conversation. Sweet indeed. I watched the inauguration with all my friends at the same time. There was some debate (amongst my Facebook friends) if this was really a conversation. Ustream had a nifty stream and chat room (which you could interact with from your iPhone even) – but the chat room is a different thing. Its continuous. Not episodic. Me, I liked the status messages and short conversations. Not as telegraphic as twitter, not so committal as a chat room.

Course this brings me back to my TV. WGNTV in Chicago published my watching of the event (in a piece edited by a former student of mine from Medill). I saw her update her Facebook status asking if you have an iPhone and are watching the inauguration, send a photo.

Two streams. One conversation. It was sweet indeed. More so, the lull of silence during the inauguration address really did add to the experience from the sofa. Even if it was in the form of a visual mute. Hey readers, how did you watch the inauguration?