Research Journal Entry #6

Well, I’ve hit another road block regarding my research. Basically, I’ve read approximately a dozen articles, but only four of them are direct reports of research done by the authors themselves, and I need at least five. Sugar fudge.

Besides that, my annotations are going pretty well. It’s difficult for me to gauge what the strengths and weaknesses of each study are, but I’m managing. Figuring out the intentions of the researchers, the methods, and the results is pretty easy.

My goal is to finish the annotations by tomorrow afternoon on my lunch break, and then finish my readings for the Library 2.0 Literature review by Friday so I can start putting both of these projects together by the start of next week, and hopefully finish both of them by the end of June, so then I’ll really only have to worry about Cataloging for the first two weeks of July and then I’ll be g-o-n-e.

But in order to finish the annotations, I will probably need to figure out a fifth article…and there just isn’t that much research out there already on my topic specifically. Lots of information on how it relates to marketing, lots of information on how to manage it, but not a lot of information on information overload itself, which is weird.

And in order to finish my readings for 2.0, I will need to be able to stay awake while reading for more than half an hour at a time. Ugh. Easier said than done. The topic (how Facebook/social networking has affected interpersonal relationships) is actually really interesting to me, but I am not a natural reader. I am a natural sleeper.

Anyway, time to make dinner (mixed veggies sauteed in garlic and olive oil with whatever spices I can find in the cabinet…I wish I had some kind of sauce to go with it, but alas, I am a poor girl and a poor meal planner sometimes) and start on all that homework.

Big Data, Big Brother

The first blog entry I read was called Big Data and the Benefits from the Bubble, from Andrew McAfee’s blog. He argues that Web 2.0 has led to Bubble 2.0, a technology and information bubble that has produced “big data” (which Dan Kusnetzky explains as “the tools, processes and procedures allowing an organization to create, manipulate, and manage very large data sets and storage facilities”). Big Data is currently being used in a variety of ways, such as tracking and storing weather patterns from the Nation Weather Service and personal information on Facebook, but Andrew McAfee focuses his argument primarily upon its use to track and determine trends for the sake of marketing and advertising. The problem, as many people see it, is that all bubbles burst eventually and leave investors and employees scrambling to salvage their money and careers – in this case, investors in large marketing and advertising companies and those experts who are currently making a great living off of using data to get the right advertisement to the right person’s online experience. Andrew McAfee, however, believes that when Bubble 2.0 does burst, the technology will still be very useful in its own right and also be highly applicable to analyzing even more significant issues and making greater advances, in the fields of science, medicine, politics, language, etc.

My only concern with his article is that I don’t believe that Big Data is only being used first and foremost for marketing. Marketing and advertising is inarguably of enormous importance to the world and in the U.S. especially, but but I can’t imagine that all the other extremely well-known (and even more lesser-known) social, moral, and health issues are being overlooked and underanalyzed by all of the technological advances made in recent years.

I also read a blog entry called How Social Media and Big Data Will Unleash What We Know Dion Hinchcliffe. In it, the author discusses the invaluable resources that savvy businessmen and marketers can tap into through the private information that individuals now so freely offer up to the public through social media, and the methods through which nearly innumerable amounts of fast-paced and ever-changing data is gathered and analyzed as Big Data. Hinchcliffe also acknowledges the difficulty in “separating the wheat from the chaff,” which is a common phrase now used in relation to information overload and is here applied to the fact that although all of the information shared through social media networks is legitimate, not all of it is especially useful for the purposes of determining trends (think of the innocuous “yeah lol me 2” comments that may stem from a more significant statement of loving a new recording artist or brand of clothes), and this is where Big Data tools and processes are arguably most helpful. Finally, Hinchcliffe delves into the most pressing issue facing marketers and social media data analysists today, which is the speed with which they can process the information to determine trends, and the goal of being able to then predict those other trends to follow before they even happen. By beating time, they can (at least in theory) harness the power of suggestion to the fullest and then (as Andrew McAfee has also opined) be most able to get the right information/advertisement to the right person, even before they necessarily know it’s right themselves.

We are actively participating in our own objectification and commodification.

And so my readings come full circle.

The Networked Librarian

I really wasn’t a huge fan of the lecture – the slides were interesting, but I didn’t really agree with much of what the speaker opined about. While I do freely acknowledge (and bemoan) the loss of credibility that comes from “amateur” writers updating their blogs in a frenzy when they may not be fully informed or anything close to resembling experts, to belittle their importance to the world of news and information, particularly relative to “legitimate” news reporters or journalists, is disrespectful and shortsighted. Consider the number of times journalists are mislead and then mislead the public, but because they are “reputable” and have “real sources,” what they have to say carries an enormous amount of weight that may not be earned. Furthermore, the news is rarely presented without a certain (and sometimes significant) amount of bias (Fox News, anyone?), and at least with blogs, most people are aware of the fact that they are primarily opinion-based.

Also, I found this graphic/chart a while back, but I feel the need to share it now, in response to the speaker’s comments on the ads that are abundant throughout social media and the use of these sites as marketing tools.