If you don’t have time to read this article in full, the easiest way to skim information about this topic is to visit http://americancensorship.org/.

In the past year, we’ve dealt with various novel political moments around the world that have been enabled or augmented with networked technology, from Anonymous’ global “hacktivist” incidents to the numerous protests in the Middle East, topped off of course with the vibrant grassroots protests of the Occupy movement. Over the last few months, we’ve also seen another interesting case study taking place in American politics: rampant opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act, dubbed as “the most important bill in Congress you may have never heard of” by Chris Hayes of MSNBC.com.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

Watch Chris Hayes’ interview for a good introduction to the debate around SOPA.

SOPA, a bill currently making its way through the House of Representatives (along with its sibling PIPA, the Protect IP Act, currently in the Senate) has faced weeks of protest from Internet companies and users alike. Why? Well, on Google Plus, Sergey Brin — cofounder of Google — likened the potential effects of SOPA to the Internet censorship practiced in China, Iran, Libya, and Tunisia. Basically, to protect against international copyright infringement, SOPA allows the US to combat websites (such as file lockers or foreign link aggregators) that illegally distribute or even link to American-made media by blocking access to them. Theoretically, the bill has dangerous implications for websites that rely on user-generated content, from YouTube to 4chan. Many have already written about the worries that SOPA and PIPA cause, such as Alex Howard’s excellent, in-depth piece over at O’Reilly Radar. For more information on the bills, visit OpenCongress’s webpages, where you can see summaries of the legislation, which companies support and oppose them, and round-ups of by mainstream and blogged news: SOPA + PIPA. The bills are one more step in a long line of anti-piracy legislation, such as 2010′s Combatting online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA).

Within the first few weeks since SOPA was introduced, http://fightforthefuture.org/ introduced the hyperbolic http://freebieber.org/ to illustrate the fears ordinary Internet users should have in relation to the legislation. In essence, SOPA would radically undermine many of the fan practices that Henry and others have analyzed on this blog. Fight for the Future also released the following video (which was my first media exposure to SOPA):

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/31100268 w=400&h=225]

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

However, for the most part, criticism — or even basic coverage — of SOPA remained an online phenomenon. While there have been a few online articles written on CNN and a couple other networks, the mainstream news coverage of the bills remain fairly nonexistent, reports MediaMatters, likely due to the fact that the television networks largely support the bill. The Colbert Report featured a pair of short segments on SOPA in early December.

The Internet, though, largely worked around that problem.

In his book, Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software, UCLA anthropologist Chris Kelty describes free software programmer-activists as a recursive public. Drawing from Michael Warner’s concept of “publics and counterpublics” from Habermas’s “public sphere,” Kelty illustrates these programmers as a group that is addressed by copyright and code, and who work to make, maintain, and modify their technological networks and code as well as the discourse with which they engage as a public. This “circularity is essential to the phenomenon.”

Especially over the past two months, we’ve seen an exceptional effort on the part of online companies to engage users with the political process to oppose SOPA. For instance, on 16 November 2011, Tumblr blacked out every image, video, and word on each user’s dashboard, linking at the top of the page to http://www.tumblr.com/protect-the-net, where users could call their local representative.

The effort set of thousands of shared posts and hundreds of hours of calls.

While other companies attempted similar experiments (like Scribd on 21 December), Internet leaders joined together to spread word and inform Congress (such as with this letter from Facebook, Google, and Twitter on 15 November, and later this letter by many others on 14 December) and even political opponents of SOPA reached out on social media, like when Senator Ron Wyden asked people to sign their names at so he could read the list at a filibuster. Other experts eventually spoke up too.

But perhaps the most intriguing political effort occurred within one specific online community: Reddit.com.

Reddit, founded in 2005, is a social news and discussion website where users submit and vote on content. According to Alexa.com, Reddit is currently the 53rd most-visited site in the United States. Due to its increasing popularity, Reddit’s slogan is “the front page of the internet” — pertinent, because when a link hits the front page of Reddit, it can lend hundreds of thousands of page views. Though members at times highlight the site’s immaturity and incivility, its vibrant community — combined with the hypervisibility of the front page, has particularly thrived over the past couple of years, especially in terms of political participation and charity. Co-founded Alexis Ohanian gave a TEDtalk about Reddit’s dedication to strange things online and when that translates into a sort of political participation:

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

Humorously, every activist-related post on the official Reddit blog is tagged with “do it for splashy.

In terms of more prominent political activism, Reddit’s community — particularly it’s subreddit, /r/politics, and the emergent subreddit /r/SOPA — has unified around opposing SOPA, in line with the free-speech, utopian personality that pervades the site. For instance, a couple posts on /r/politics and r/technology that reached the front page [1, 2] helped bring rapid visibility to Senator Wyden’s filibuster initiative.

A more effective protest occurred in the form of a website boycott. GoDaddy, the domain register, was discovered to be a supporter of SOPA. After some discussion on Reddit, one r/politics thread reached the front page: GoDaddy supports SOPA, I’m transferring 51 domains & suggesting a move your domain day. Visibility of SOPA-related content was aided by a new subreddit, r/sopa, to which a global sidebar linked from the Reddit homepage. Less than 24 hours after the boycott started (even though, by numbers, it was deemed hardly successful), and with two more /r/politics threads that reached the front page [1, 2], GoDaddy reversed their stance and dropped support for SOPA.

SOPA debate continued to be fueled by various posts, including one by cofounder Alexis Ohanian: If SOPA existed, Steve & I never could’ve started reddit. Please help us win.. At the end of December, r/politics joined together to place pressure on SOPA-supporting Representative Paul Ryan; eventually, he reversed his position and denounced the bill.

Most notably, Alexis Ohanian recently announced on the Reddit blog that the entire site would voluntarily shut down on Wednesday 18 January 2012 for twelve hours, from 8am-8pm EST. Replacing the front page will be “a simple message about how the PIPA/SOPA legislation would shut down sites like reddit, link to resources to learn more, and suggest ways to take action.” This blacking out of Reddit coincides with a series of cybersecurity experts’ testimonies in Congress, at which Ohanian will be representing and speaking.

In reaction to SOPA (and PIPA, to which the opposition is now growing, since the SOPA vote has now been shelved), a vigorous public emerged across the web and united around discourse about the bills, particularly on Reddit.com. But to return to Kelty: is this a recursive public? Do the political users of Reddit have enough power and agency to maintain and modify their public?

I believe this question gets at a deeper question of ontology: what does political participation mean in a 1) networked, and 2) editable age? For instance, some users are able to promote their skills for discourse — eg., My friend and I wrote an application to boycott SOPA. Scan product barcodes and see if they’re made by a SOPA supporter. Enjoy. — but in certain cases, participation in technological systems becomes participation in a recursive public because that participation helps modify the system. In the case of Reddit, participation can become political when content reaches extreme visibility. And this is particularly important when we reconsider that the mass media has barely covered SOPA as a topic: due to this conflict, participation on a network platform like Reddit becomes an inherently political action.

And out of these seemingly-innocuous actions emerge more political moves. In reaction to the black out, other websites have agreed to join the effort, such as BoingBoing.net. Perhaps the decision with the most impact came on Monday, when Jimmy Wales announced that Wikipedia — which receives up to 25 million visitors per day at the English-language portal — would also shut down, but this time for a full 24 hours, after a lengthy discussion on Wales’ personal Wikipedia page. Wales responded to the announcement on Twitter by saying, “I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday.”

In a recent New York Times article, Reddit’s political actions were noted. “‘It’s encouraging that we got this far against the odds, but it’s far from over,’ said Erik Martin, the general manager of Reddit.com, a social news site that has generated some of the loudest criticism of the bills. ‘We’re all still pretty scared that this might pass in one form or another. It’s not a battle between Hollywood and tech, its people who get the Internet and those who don’t.” Of course, Reddit isn’t the only platform that is part of this important recursive public, just as Twitter wasn’t the saving grace of the Arab Spring or the Iranian Revolution. The efforts of hundreds of activists around the country have contributed immensely to the anti-SOPA effort. But keep in mind that Reddit has reached a pinnacle of political participation in the last few months, and I have a feeling that — like YouTube in the 2008 presidential elections — Reddit may be the site to watch in 2012.

Alex Leavitt is a PhD student at USC Annenberg, where he studies digital culture and networked technology. Recently, his work has focused on creative participation in immense online networks, examining global participatory phenomenon like Hatsune Miku and Minecraft. You can reach him on Twitter @alexleavitt or via email at aleavitt@usc.edu; to read more about his research, visit alexleavitt.com.

tl;dr – I was accused of being a book pirate for returning a book. (Picture of email below.)

Throughout the past semester — the first in my five-year PhD program — I’ve been trying to build out my personal Internet-and-digital-media-centric book library (inspired in part by the dozens of books my mentor, danah boyd has in her massive collection at Microsoft Research). Like most academics, I prefer physical copies of what I read, for the purpose of taking notes. The process of searching-and-buying has boiled down to me coming across interesting, new titles or texts I know I need to own but don’t and then going to Amazon.com to purchase a used copy (or new, if it’s below fifteen dollars).

I’m trying to be as frugal as possible, since I’ll probably end up buying dozens and dozens of books over the next couple of years; at the same time, I prefer clean physical copies, so if the new book is too expensive, I’ll scour the Used section for “Very Good” markers, making sure to note if the text has any folds or notes or highlights.

About a month ago, I remembered that I did not own a copy of Paul du Gay’s seminal media text, Doing cultural studies: the story of the Sony Walkman. While searching around, I also happened upon another book by du Gay, entitled Production of culture/cultures of production. This jumped out at me, because I’m doing a project on “open-source culture” and the production of digital creative works (see 1 and 2), and I figured this text might be relevant.

Without any further research, I (ignorantly) purchased the book: a “Used – Like New” copy for $6.79 with $3.99 shipping from tomweberfilms (5-star, 100% rating).

Eventually Poc/cop arrived; I flipped through the pristine copy. But I realized: it’s an undergraduate textbook. Fail.

Not that these types of books are necessarily bad: they’re actually really helpful for the citations at the end of each chapter. But a textbook with the sole purpose of occupying a place on an undergraduate syllabus isn’t the kind of material I’m willing to keep on my bookshelf.

So I waited a few weeks to return the book, since I had a handful of other items to return as well (in addition to the honest fact that I was busy at the end of the semester, plus being a bit lazy going about it, since the Amazon return policy is 30 days). Usually returning items on Amazon is fairly simple: you fill out a very short form stating the reason for returning the item and then print out a shipping label. Done. For example, if you return a piece of clothing that you buy via Amazon (or an Amazon affiliate), the options are:

• Too small
• Too large
• Style not as expected
• Ordered wrong style/size/color
• Different from website description
• Damaged during shipping
• Different from what was ordered
• Defective/Does not work properly
• Arrived in addition to what was ordered
• Better price available
• Missed estimate delivery date
• Accidental order
• No longer needed/wanted

However, when you return an item to vendors that use Amazon to list and sell their items (but are not necessarily Amazon affiliates), you have to send them a message noting the reason for the return (literally “Submit for approval”) before they can endorse the transaction. When you select the reasons for a book, you get:

• Accidental order
• Better price available
• Damanged due to inappropriate packaging
• Missed estimated delivery date
• Missing parts of accessories
• Damaged during shipping
• Different from what was ordered
• Defective/Does not work properly
• Arrived in addition to what was ordered
• No longer needed/wanted
• Unauthorized purchase
• Different from website description

But none of these selections really fit the nuance of my situation: I simply realized after the purchase that I shouldn’t have ordered the book. Ultimately, I went with “No longer needed/wanted” and sent off the request for approval.

A day or two later, I received the following response:

Screenshot taken at 4:31pm PST, 18 December 2011

I got a refund… but if you didn’t catch it, let me cut out the important part:

Notes: You purchased this book three weeks ago and now you decide that you do not want/need the item. I believe you are taking advantage of the system. You had ample time to photocopy or scan the book at my expense. You may dispose of the book as you see fit.

… what? Was I just accused of being a book pirate? I was hilariously surprised, in response to this unexpected development (additionally unexpected because I still got the refund, including shipping), but also from a critical standpoint, with regard to the assumptions embedded in the response.

“I believe you are taking advantage of the system… at my expense.

Assumption: Users who purchase physical media on Amazon and return them (especially those who choose the “No longer needed/wanted” option) are clearly copying the object(s).
Assumption: The selection items in the return request accurately depict a motivation or intention of the consumer.
Assumption: The selection items over-empower the consumers and exploit the vendors.
Assumption: It takes three weeks to scan a 356-page book.

Perhaps the second point is the more interesting one to muse on: as a consumer, I don’t really think much about the option I choose as a reason for the return. But apparently, for the vendor, the reason provides a level of measurement regarding motivations and other unseen processes that elude Amazon’s merchant analytics dashboard.

The issue was resolved with a quick response email:

Me: Sorry about the lag in the return time. I understand the situation you described that the delay might imply. (Do you actually have a lot of experience with book piracy through Amazon? I wouldn’t have necessarily expected that, but I guess it makes sense…) I’d still like to return the book, if that’s an option.

Vendor: You sound like a good person and I’m sure you just didn’t get around to it. Sorry for the accusing tone of my e-mail, but I’m sure it happens that people buy books, scan them or make notes from them, and then return them. If you want to ship the book back to me, that would be appreciated. Whatever the lowest cost option is.

The piracy invocation still provoked a number of questions with regard to how unintended consequences can emerge from interactions in social media:

• Does the vendor have a personal bias against media piracy?
• Does the vendor have experience with book piracy through Amazon? If not, what is the motivation behind the accusation?
• Has the vendor made these accusations to other customers in the past?
• How does is the accusation situated in relation to the 5-star, 100% Amazon rating and (lack of negative) comments?
• What does the vendor mean by “You may dispose of the book as you see fit?”

The situation, at least, provides a unique thought experiment about the role of social media — particularly socially-mediated systems, like Amazon, or more vaguely like ratings systems and response forms.

It seems like the current context of rapid and easy content circulation and the impersonal business-to-consumer relationships masquerading as social media consumer “engagement” has led to a conflux of hyperaware metrics (consumer tracking) with the uncertainty of social ingenuity (what some might call lifehacking). This is a situation that perhaps The Cluetrain Manifesto could not have predicted.

And it’s not like consumers are the only ones with the agency and power to exploit these systems. You’ve probably heard about Amazons’ $23,698,655.93 book about flies. More recently, on an episode of the GeekNights podcast, the hosts suggested that some vendors on Amazon are listing items that they don’t actually own (under the premise that they’ll buy the item for cheaper elsewhere in time to resell when the item is purchased).

Plainly, this incident is awkward, but at least it gave me a chance to sit down and think more about the role that social systems play in the coordination of communication, particularly in impersonal situations. I wonder if there have been other instances of assumptions embedded in or emergent from the use of neutral (more like “vague”) tagging systems to mediate transactions with the purpose of categorization, management, and metrics but from which materialize other unintended consequences. A cool study to do might be investigating the responses that vendors have to the types of form responses they receive — for example, do most vendors tend to have negative opinions of return requests they receive marked “no longer need/want”? How would reactions vary between the various possible drop-down responses.

It’s also interesting to weigh reactions like this against the cultural value of the ratings system. For instance, when I’m looking for a used book on Amazon, I’m mainly paying attention to the quality of the book. A difference of 100% and 90% in the stars-ratings of the store itself doesn’t necessarily faze me. Though I assume for the vendor, one negative review completely offsets their reputation within the marketplace (and I know that many eBay vendors have been particularly meticulous, even petulant, about grooming their ratings).

Oh, and of course an answer: no, I didn’t copy the book. (Though I have to admit, it’d be a pretty ingenious scheme, even if I’d probably use the library instead of Amazon.)

Edited 19 December 2011 for clarity.

Alex Leavitt is a PhD student in the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, where he studies the internet. While he has actually never copied an entire book (and though he frequently scans chapters from dozens), he does ideologically support projects like http://www.diybookscanner.org/ that help disseminate values of free culture. For more frequent updates, you can find him on Twitter at @alexleavitt.

In reality, I’ve dug a hole for studying the Internet and digital culture at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where I’ve spent the last few months reading and researching as I begin a 5-year-long journey to a doctoral degree.

But I’m hoping to put a lot more content back into this blog over the next year. Look forward to a bunch of things you can actually read in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, you can always follow me @alexleavitt on Twitter.

This essay is some immediate thinking about Google+ that I’ve been throwing around for the past couple weeks. Context: I joined G+ in the first wave of invites, so I’ve been watching the service for what amounts to “a while.” Most of my observations below come from 1) my experience working with danah boyd on her research projects at Microsoft Research New England over the past year, and 2) my personal experience as a Facebook early adopter (ie., only college students) in 2005.

Introduction

I’ve read dozens of articles over the past few weeks about how Google Plus (hereafter Google+) presents a challenge to Facebook (and Twitter), but I’m here to say that Facebook will maintain its dominance over Google’s social competitor because of one reason: Facebook’s social value.

What do I mean by social value, especially now that social, social network, social graph, and other uses of the buzzword have infiltrated and inundated the tech industry and start-up sector? Instead of defining social value directly, let me position it up against another term: informational value. If we think of a communication technology having social value, the technology allows us to inform and be informed about matters relating to our identities and our relationships. Communication technologies also have informational values: that is, supplying relevant data, stories, and news that don’t necessarily reflect our interpersonal connections. A simple distinction between these two values might be illustrated like this:

Status update reflecting social value: “I ate a hamburger today at lunch with Mary.”
Status update reflecting informational value: “I ate lunch today at Five Guys, and it was really good! [link to website]“

So, let me propose this observation: In its current structure, Google+ has no social value. It appears to have a great potential for informational value. Yet because Facebook’s structure allows its users to derive a high social value from the platform. Facebook will continue to maintain a large user population that uses Facebook specifically for its social value.

This is not to say that Facebook has no informational value. Actually, over the years, it’s quite obvious that Facebook has moved its strategy from emphasizing social value to informational value. For instance, the dominance of the News Feed as a major hub for interaction and the eventually-prominent practice of sharing and gathering news and links means that more and more users have found Facebook to be a great platform for producing and gathering news and advice.

However, Facebook’s history tells us a lot about its social value, and an important demographic of Facebook users — namely American teenagers — illustrates why Google+ might not be adopted for the reasons most tech-savvy adults want.

Facebook & Social Value in Collegiate Life

Although a lot of people criticized The Social Network for warping the truth behind Facebook’s history, there are actually some really interesting points that are emphasized throughout the film that not many critics picked up on. One of the most important, I believe, is the importance of college networks to Facebook’s success. This scene in particular stood out to me, where Mark and his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend Erica talk in Grendel’s Den (a local bar in Harvard Square):

Erica Albright: I have to go study.

Mark Zuckerberg: You don't have to study.

Erica Albright: [Exasperated and angry] Why do you keep saying I don't have to study?

Mark Zuckerberg: Because you go to BU!

Erica Albright: [Erica stares at him, furious]

I thought this joke was quite funny (disclaimer: I went to Boston University), but it also picks up on an important bit of Boston college culture that people who haven’t lived in the city don’t understand: networks between colleges are very important to student socialization. Each school is connected to each other through students’ IRL social networks.

The initial success of Facebook was built upon these collegiate connections. It’s readily apparent in The Social Network, when Mark explains the rollout strategy to Sean Parker at dinner: target universities developing their own Facebook-like online social networks by connecting all the colleges around them with Facebook. Of course, the key to student adoption of Facebook was contemporary collegiate youth culture itself: socialization over education, hook-up culture, cultural importance of parties. Another extremely important scene in The Social Network (again overlooked) is when Mark impulsively adds the “Relationship” status to users’ profile pages — important because it eventually played so a large role in college relationships (or time spent figuring out who was in one or who was single).

I bring up youth culture because for its first few years with college students — and eventually with high school students as well — Facebook played a gigantic social role in the lives of teenagers and young adults. Facebook connected youth, and we didn’t share links: we shared ourselves. The summer before I entered college, I spent countless hours looking through the “Boston University” network, searching out potential connections, figuring out who was in my dormitory and classes. Some of my friends even contacted random students and made friendships before school even started. The role of the profile in collegiate culture reigned supreme from around 2004 to 2008.

It’s also important to note that Facebook’s success within youth networks helped it dominate other services. MySpace’s popularity at the time took two paths: 1) those who were on MySpace saw value in Facebook’s clean interface and “safer” way for connecting real-life friendships with online relationships (and vice versa), and 2) those who were not using MySpace (like myself) saw immediate value in Facebook because it was a practical technology to organize the chaos of college life. MySpace’s demise began in 2008; the transition really took a hit as high school students began transitioning to Facebook in late 2006, who also saw it as a “less sketchy” online hangout spot (and the death knell truly rang in 2007 when the site opened up to anyone over age 13).

Today, a high majority of college and high school students maintain Facebook profiles. Students continue to structure their interpersonal relationships through Facebook: managing interesting, chatting with close friends, discovering gossip, bullying: all of which melds real-life with online life. This is especially pertinent for kids who don’t have as much mobility in their daily lives (eg., it’s difficult to hang out with friends after school), so many teens hit Facebook as a suitable replacement for the mall, park, library, etc.

Facebook Tensions: Adults & Differing Social Values

I’ve always had an issue with adults who say “I’m quitting Facebook; I don’t have a use for it.” (Sometimes this sentiment comes out as “I don’t like Facebook’s privacy issues. But it’s not like I had a use for it anyway.”) It especially irks me when these same adults chastise the younger generation for spending so much time on social network sites: what could kids possibly be doing on them? The answer is frequently “not much.” Teens are bored; Facebook provides them an outlet. But I realize that many adults see teens’ online social practices as similar to their own, which they are not. While it’s true that both kids and adults are constantly negotiating relationships with other people, students have infrastructure for those negotiations: schools. Schools continue to be the primary structure for many kids’ lives, and dynamics within schools heavily impact kids’ socialization. Adults may have something similar (like the workplace or an interest group), but youth interact with one another in school settings on a hyperdeterministic social level comparatively.

Even so, a lot of adults have managed to find similar social value in Facebook’s platform, primarily structured by interactions around the profile page: meeting old friends, keeping up to date about family, the social minutiae that make up everyday social life. But the tech-savvy adults who don’t find this value — the “I’m quitting Facebook”-ers — don’t because they have already established and maintained their personal networks in other spaces, usually email. It’s the same adults that were surprised about kids frequently using IM in the early 2000s — we teens hadn’t established networks yet, and IM was easier to keep on top of our friends… especially because AIM profiles in 2001 played the same role as Facebook profiles do now!

The ultimate issue with Facebook’s social value is its long-term sustainability. As we move through the rapidly-fluctuating phases of early life — from high school to college to young adulthood to 30+ — our social networks change with us. At the onset of Facebook, the social norm was to accept (almost) everybody you met in real life (in class, at a party, friends-of-friends) on Facebook. Why? It’s a difficult question, variable across different types of people. Personally, I’d wager it was half-cataloguing (contact info, keep track of people at college) and half-trend-setting (everyone Friends each other, so it’s easy to say “We’ll friend each other” after you meet someone). But over time, these saturated networks gave rise to issues, such as context collapse (of which Alice Marwick and danah have written extensively). In 2011, teens transitioning to college (the focus of Fred Stutzman’s work) must navigate a revised set of social norms for friending acquaintances; those exiting college face an entirely different set of norms. Teens may transition to email to maintain their connections in the work and professional environment; if not, we’ll probably see a mish-mash of various technologies struggling to maintain coherency.

Informational Value: Twitter as “Social Network”

I’ve talked a lot about social value, but let me tackle the concept of informational value before discussing Google+. The occasional comparison to Twitter is something I also want to address in this essay.

If we consider Facebook to be the purveyor of social value, Twitter embodies informational value. Twitter does away with the profile structure (maintaining only minimal details) in favor of sharing information: it curates an environment that is more news and links than personal, quotidian updates. Twitter also creates a physical structure of equality: every user’s tweet takes up at most around 250 pixels of space in the timeline. The maximum of 140 characters per message enforces brevity but also form: you get headlines rather than details, allowing the user to follow up on anything interesting after the initial glance by clicking a link (if provided). Facebook embodies similar design principles: matching profiles, similar updates (with separate Note pages for longer mental expulsions), equivalent photo albums. And as I stated before, over time, Facebook has attempted to force the emergence of more informational value by de-emphasizing the profile in favor of the Newsfeed.

Twitter, though, provides limited social value. The platform does not do a good job at helping users to manage interpersonal relationships or personal information (about yourself or others). While at their simplest, both Twitter and Facebook let a user manage “status updates,” but Twitter’s role equates more to blogging as Facebook feels more similar to instant messaging. Twitter, therefore, acts as a social network for managing users-as-information-carriers.

Google Plus: Poor Social Value, Lacking Informational Value

So let’s finally talk a bit about Google+. My argument is two-fold: Google+ has poor social value yet also lacks enough informational value. Google+ will probably not overtake Facebook as a platform for interpersonal socialization (for those that prefer that use of a social network), nor will it replace Twitter, because its design is not as streamlined and optimized for fast information filtering and curation.

It’s clear that Google+ was constructed for two reasons: 1) to maintain Google’s social graph as a valuable asset that could unite the company’s products, and 2) to create an appealing alternative to Facebook that approaches issues and ideologies of privacy in a more practical way. Millions of users have Gmail accounts and curate contact lists on Android phones; additionally, millions of other users (I can’t estimate the overlap) are concerned about Facebook’s past privacy debacles and the company’s general ideology to maintain a “public” culture.

But as much as the publicity/privacy issue is a major player in the push for popularity of this new platform, I don’t think that’s what’s ultimately at stake — especially if Google wants to reach the same level of use that Facebook currently boasts. The primary issue that Google+ should be concerned about is the balance between social value and information value.

Google+ currently features a profile system, but the profile is de-emphasized in favor of the Stream (informational > social). Also, there’s an issue with discovering streams: namely, you need to know the person (ie., have their email address) in order for them to appear as a potential contact (at least initially: eventually you can find other people through friends’ profiles or as content is shared by your friends). The conflict therefore is that the social network is built on existing relationships and hinders discovering new people: in either informational or social circumstances.

It goes without saying that one of the most important features to Facebook’s success was the Wall on each profile. Without a (public or private*) one-to-one communication affordance, every piece of information dispersed through Google+ is broadcast to the masses. The issue with broadcast, though, is that even with a system build around privacy (Circles), various users can follow other users, so one user can have thousands of followers (à la Twitter) but no understanding of who is actually following them or why. It’s a complicated mish-mash of Facebook and Twitter, but I don’t necessarily understand the full purpose of the combinations.

Overall, the people-you-already-know limitation, I think, is the largest barrier to participation on Google+. It also doesn’t help that the varying size of posts makes gleaning information from the Stream very difficult; in other words, Google+ does Twitter worse than Twitter.

*Apparently a private messaging system will be rolling out soon.

Conclusion: Google Plus & the Cultural Issue of Early Adopters

It’s clear that Google+ is still in beta: one quote of current user demographics set them at 88% male. It’s also clear that the invitation push went out through Google employees to their friends in a wave disseminating from the Silicon Valley tech industry. Are there issue with this? Most definitely. I think it’s actually worse than a Quora situation, which is a hangout for tech geeks to get their celebrity on (namely hope that tech industry elites answer their questions). The early adopters will shape the focus of Google+. And the fact that Facebook had one of the most unique early adopter communities (all college students) meant that it evolved in very particular and peculiar ways.

As I mentioned in the previous section, I don’t understand the intentions of the combination of Facebook’s and Twitter’s features. If we were to look back at social network site history, all the way to Friendster, we can see similar patterns in the initial structure: making connections with people you know already. But the platform allowed the discovery and interaction of unknown users, such that practices of flirtation and dating emerged within a very local context (namely, San Francisco; at least initially).

By designing for strict privacy, Google+ inhibits social value to emerge from the platform, unlike with Facebook, where the initial publicity within a structured social context (colleges) allowed for social norms to develop. Probably the looming issue is the consolidation of such social contexts outside of privileged and structured spaces.

Mindshare LA is a monthly event where ~350 Angelenos gather for a night of inspiration and interaction. The cornerstone of the evening is a curated program of short, eclectic presentations. Over the years Mindshare has become a mecca for intellectuals, artists, scientists and other progressive characters to meet, broaden their perspective and expand their networks.

When: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 from 6:30 PM – 11:55 PM Pacific

Where: The Los Angeles Theater Center

514 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013

Cost: $25 online, $30 at the door

Wednesday, July 20th Schedule

6:30pm / Doors & Happy Hour Drink Specials

Mix and mingle with the most exciting minds of LA and enjoy music, hors d’oeurvres, games & prizes! Arriving early? Food Trucks will be serving up delicious treats (OUT BACK) from 6:30pm onward. (see below for details…)

8:30pm / Program

Guest Host:

Jamye Waxman / M.Ed Human Sexuality Education & Author

Guest Presenters:

Dr. Marvin Belzer / Associate Director, Mindful Awareness Research Center, UCLA

An Experience of Mindfulness



Alex Leavitt / PhD student, Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, USC.

Social Disruption: How We Complicate Technology



Reid Mihalko / Sex and Relationship Expert

Date Your Species: Pragmatic Tools for Navigating Love, Lust and Intimacy

9:30pm – Midnight / Interactions & After-Party

All the info you need and the RSVP form can be found here.

We really want to meet people local to LA, but we’d love to meet new people going to the con anyway, so we have some friends to hang out with. Check out the meetup page!

Uncool Japan: The Trials & Tribulations of Japanese Pop Culture
6:30 pm in LP4
While fans in America consider Japan a pop culture mecca, otaku remain undesirable in Japan. This panel looks at the history and current developments around otaku and the “Japan Cool”-ification of Japanese media abroad. We’ll look at the history of the fandom and today’s anime consumer culture of Comiket, moé girls, and Akihabara; the Japanese government’s attempts to regulate otaku culture at home while promoting it internationally; and the struggles of anime trying to survive abroad. The panel also uses anime and manga about otaku as a lens for understanding these cultural issues.

New:
Anime Genesis Live: Benu’s Violent Torpedo of Moé
9:00pm in LP3
I’ll be making a guest appearance on Benu’s live podcast. Come say Hi!

Saturday July 2

Anime Intro & Ending Themes
10:30am in LP5
When we watch anime, our minds glaze over the animation that begins and ends our favorite series. But anime intros and outros are more important than you think! These small clips help sell series, promote bands, summarize plots, and emphasize important details. We’ll show many of the best and worst anime intro and ending themes on the market, the trends that flow through these promotional songs, and their importance in the context of anime’s history and popularity.

Sunday July 3

Anime Tune-Up
9:00am in LP5
Animation in anime comes in many styles, and a good lens to look at them is in anime about music. This panel takes a look at the whole gamut of musical anime — Beck, Nodame Cantibile, NANA, To-Y, Gravitation, and many more — to see what musical anime reveals about animation, the importance of precise animation (and how animators tend to ignore it), the creation of “fake” bands and songs, and how music works in the adaptation of manga to anime.

“Open-Source Culture” and the Cult of Hatsune Miku
AX Anime & Manga Studies Symposium Open Session 4
10:30am in LP5 (LACC 408B)
An academic analysis of Vocaloid as a case study of peer production in the creative industries.

Friday, July 1
2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Keynote Address: Prof. Ian Condry (Comparative Media Studies, MIT)

3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Roundtable Discussion 1
Theoretical perspectives on Japanese visual culture

* Samantha Close (University of California, Irvine)
* Amanda Landa (University of Texas at Austin)
* Gino Zarrinfar (University of Hawaii Manoa)

8:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Open Session 1

Andrea Gilroy (University of Oregon)
* This place is a nightmare: Globalization as horror in Katsuhiro Otomo’s Domu

Casey Brienza (University of Cambridge)
* Manga Revolution or logical evolution? Field theory on the rise and
demise of Tokyopop’s U.S. publishing programme

Saturday, July 2

12:00 – 1:30 p.m.
Open Session 2

Sandra Aragona (Claremont Graduate University)
Sherrie Bakelar (University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
* Between Yasashii and Bushido: The balancing power of warrior mothers in anime

Annie Manion (University of Southern California)
* Modernity and pre-war Japanese animation

* Deborah Scally (Southern Methodist University)
Cogito, ergo anime: Some thoughts on using anime and manga in the classroom

3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Open Session 3

Paul Cheng (University of California, Riverside)
* History, memory and aesthetics in animation: Isao Takahata’s Grave
of the Fireflies

Kukhee Choo (Tulane University)
* “Cool Japan”: Soft power in the 21st century

Gino Zarrinfar (University of Hawaii Manoa)
* The Guyver and societies of control

Sunday, July 3

10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Open Session 4

Samantha Close (University of California, Irvine)
* Real ninjas make AMV’s! Anime through the eyes of vidders

Northrop Davis (University of South Carolina)
* Title to be confirmed

Forrest Greenwood (University of Southern California)
* “Past fungibility”: Examining the speculative value of history in the doujin works of Takeshi Nogami

Alex Leavitt (University of Southern California)
* “Open-source culture”" and the cult of Hatsune Miku [this one is mine!]

3:30pm -4:30pm
Roundtable Discussion 2

Teaching, writing and thinking about anime/manga: New directions, new
opportunities

* Northrop Davis (University of South Carolina)
* Druann Pagliassotti (California Lutheran University)
* Kim Rudolph (University of Oklahoma)
* Deborah Scally (Southern Methodist University)

4:30pm – 5:00pm
Closing Remarks

Writing about otaku: Lessons from fandom, academia, and beyond
Lawrence Eng (Anime and Manga Research Circle)

This year at Anime Expo in Los Angeles, CA (where I’ve recently relocated for my PhD program), I’ll be giving a handful of panel talks. Additionally, I’m also presenting during the new AX Academic Symposium. Check out my schedule below, and feel free to swing by and say Hi!

BUT before we get to the schedule, here’s an interesting bit of information regarding one of the panels I submitted called “Scans, Trans, and Fans: A Closer Look at Piracy.” It was rejected by Anime Expo, but on unique grounds: “Unfortunately we have to deny this panel because we feel that the topic of fansubbing and scanlations will not be suitable for AX. We do not endorse these activities and have a zero-tolerance policy on even the slightest advocation of such practices. We hope you understand.” Pretty unexpected response, but valid nonetheless. One of the issues I was grappling with was an ethical conflict between presenting research and insights about the culture of piracy in the anime and manga fandoms while also basically teaching people how to pirate in those explanations. (Of course, the irony is that Crunchyroll will probably make a big appearance at AX, and we all know that while Crunchyroll promotes their business practices in reaction to piracy as a market failure, the company did start off distributing pirated content.) I’m not complaining about this outcome — though I would have loved to present this topic to the AX community — but I thought I’d share because it’s an interesting lens into the inner workings of the anime industry and how conventions play a role within that industry.

P.S. — If you’re interested, here’s the description of the piracy panel I submitted: The anime industry has borne the weight of critics against fan distribution of anime and manga over a number of decades, so this panel presents a chance to look closer at the details of the (illegal) translation, sharing, and globalization of Japanese popular media. When did this all start? Did it really help popularize the titles we know and love today? We’ll look at the early history of tape trading and fansubs, the market for bootlegs, how fansubs and scanlations took off online, what’s hurting the industry today, and some new initiatives in Japan that embrace aspects of sharing free media.

Anyway, on to the schedule:

Friday July 1

Uncool Japan: The Trials & Tribulations of Japanese Pop Culture
6:30 pm in LP4
[Note: A panel I've presented before, but this time from the critical perspective of "uncool" otaku culture.]
While fans in America consider Japan a pop culture mecca, otaku remain undesirable in Japan. This panel looks at the history and current developments around otaku and the “Japan Cool”-ification of Japanese media abroad. We’ll look at the history of the fandom and today’s anime consumer culture of Comiket, moé girls, and Akihabara; the Japanese government’s attempts to regulate otaku culture at home while promoting it internationally; and the struggles of anime trying to survive abroad. The panel also uses anime and manga about otaku as a lens for understanding these cultural issues.

Saturday July 2

Anime Intro & Ending Themes
10:30am in LP5
[Note: The usual and polished anime theme panel I've done at Anime Boston, Otakon, and waaay back at Anime Expo 2009.]
When we watch anime, our minds glaze over the animation that begins and ends our favorite series. But anime intros and outros are more important than you think! These small clips help sell series, promote bands, summarize plots, and emphasize important details. We’ll show many of the best and worst anime intro and ending themes on the market, the trends that flow through these promotional songs, and their importance in the context of anime’s history and popularity.

Sunday July 3

Anime Tune-Up
9:00am in LP5
[Note: This is a panel I tried out at Anime Boston 2011 for the con's musical theme, but I decided to bring it back for Anime Expo because people seemed to like it.]
Animation in anime comes in many styles, and a good lens to look at them is in anime about music. This panel takes a look at the whole gamut of musical anime — Beck, Nodame Cantibile, NANA, To-Y, Gravitation, and many more — to see what musical anime reveals about animation, the importance of precise animation (and how animators tend to ignore it), the creation of “fake” bands and songs, and how music works in the adaptation of manga to anime.

“Open-Source Culture” and the Cult of Hatsune Miku
(Academic Symposium Presentation)
TBD – sometime in the afternoon
An academic analysis of Vocaloid as a case study of peer production in the creative industries.