While many would believe that social networks sites (SNS) offer the opportunity to mingle with a different segment of people than in real lives, a study (2008) by Eszter Hargittai suggests that college-age students in USA are more likely to be using online networks to interact with their friends in real life. The results suggested that students of Asian origin were more likely to use Friendster and Xanga whereas Hispanic students were more likely to be present on MySpace. Therefore, indicating that possibly students may be sticking with their own kind even on SNS.

When it comes to gender, more women are likely to use MySpace than men, however, on other SNS there is equal representation of both. Besides ethnicity and gender, the other factors that affected SNS use were parental education (high school or college degree), living context (at home or campus) and experience with Internet use. Facebook and Xanga users were more likely to have a parent with a college degree, were not living at home and used Internet for more hours weekly. MySpace users were more likely to be Hispanic, female and have a parent with less than high school degree.

Thus despite possibilities of leveling the field, SNS use of college-age students indicate that this is not yet happening.

Several people have been inquiring me about some useful web resources on Indian mobile sector. Here is a list of websites I have found useful. I will keep adding to it as and when I find more websites.

1. Internet & Mobile Association of India : This website provides information about internet and mobile industry in India.

2. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India : Indian government’s website on internet and mobile industry related consultation papers and press releases.

3. Cellular Operators Association of India : Latest information on the Indian mobile sector.

If you know of any comprehensive website that provides information on India’s internet and mobile sector, do let me know.

pb9dfcveij

An Australian mom has launched a social networking website for kids aged 8 – 12 years old. On realizing that she wanted a safe social networking website for her daughters aged 7 and 9 years old, she came up with the idea and contracted a Brisbane technology company to design the website. The website membership is free for first month, after which there is a membership fee.

Upon joining, the kids can choose one of the 10 native Australian animals as their avatar and one of the five houses as their residence. They start with 100 “ekidna gold nuggets” which they can use to dress up their avatars and decorate their houses. The kids have to maintain their own gardens and can trade-in their plants for in-game cash. It appears that kids can learn something about managing finances!!!

The built-in chats are monitored for foul languages and the safety feature includes parents entering a password everytime the child makes a new friend and no one can send out links. Also there is no advertising.

Sounds interesting and safe computer fun for kids!!!

Here are the links for the eKidnaworld.com and a detailed article about the website.

Digital Activism is becoming an important topic of discussion on internet, thanks to some very good digital activism campaigns across the world. Facebook, blogs, twitter and mobile phones are becoming important tools for people to connect with others and build a grassroots campaign.

Today I attended an interesting presentation by Mary Joyce co-founder of digiactivism on Digital Activism. Several questions and thoughts emerged in my mind after listening to her presentation -

1. What exactly is digital activism? Is it individuals advocating for a cause or a network of people coming together to take action for a cause? Because an individual may have an opinion or a personal agenda which may be worthy of action but should it be characterized as digital activism? Or is it individuals creating awareness, networking with people and building consensus to take action?

2. How important is the language used in a digital activism campaign? For example, using threatening language against the government may be risky and lead to a blocking of social media? But when the same issue is presented in a non-threatening language it may be more persuasive?

3. Are digital activism platforms connecting the converted or are they useful in converting?

One of the perils of blogging is that it makes plagiarism easy, but one of the perks is that you easily catch the culprit. Now what?

Take the case of Niranjana Iyer, who is an Indian blogger based in Ontario, Canada. You can read her post on the issue here. But Niranjana’s post, which came to my notice (via @twilightfairy) on Twitter, clearly shows how Ms. Damayanti Datta plagiarised her post. Apparently, this is not the first time, that Ms. Datta has plagiarised, she did it for another story before.

Why am I writing about this case?

First of all, when I checked out Niranjana’s blog I read few of her published stories and I couldn’t stop. I was compelled to write about the incident, because she is a sensitive writer whose writing touched my heart.

Second, despite the fact that Canada and India are oceans apart, it was quite easy to find out about the incident. This also shows that the readers are aware and they are reading both the online and the mainstream press. It also points out to the issue of “Crisis of accountability” that Jay Rosen mentioned in his talk.

The worst aspect of this scenario is that I loved reading India Today while I was in India and it is indeed a leading Indian magazine (atleast to my knowledge). I still read it once in a while to keep in touch with the important issues back home. I am also using story from India Today in my dissertation as reference. The magazine has built a reputation over several years and this one mistake can ruin it’s reputation.

It is really sad but it’s important to create awareness and I want you to judge for yourself.

Today, I listened to an interesting talk on “journalism in the Web Age” by Jay Rosen. In his talk he focused on the “crisis of the press”. He first talked about the problems that the old press media is facing today and he summed it up very nicely in three words – “sustainability, puzzled, unsolved.” The real problem the old school journalism is facing today is of “sustainability”. They can’t sustain themselves if they keep on doing, what they were doing. He said that the press industry faces five crisis -

1. Crisis of Adaptation – the real failure of print media is in it’s inaibilityto adapt to the new system. If they had, they wouldn’t be in this state.

2. Crisis of Advertising – In the earlier system, 50% of the advertising money was wasted. The internet has solved this problem and advertising has become more efficient. 

3. Crisis of Authority – Newspapers had authority and they have let the people down.

4. Crisis in teaching, learning and training – The Journalism training needs to change as technology is changing very fast. New training models need to evolve.

5. Crisis of accountabililty – The internet is holding press accountable.

I found his talk very interesting and thought provoking. His insights on why old system of journalism is at it’s decline, provides a starting point to start thinking.

After the talk we had a very engaging discussion on how journalism schools can adpat to this changing environment and what needs to change. One very important point he made during the discussion was that right now, the way things are changing it’s very difficult to predict what’s going to happen and how things will shape up. As the industry is in a state of flux and the new system is evolving. At this time, the best thing would be to reflect and see what went wrong and to analyse what is it that is going to remain of the old system.

It is time to seek questions, answers will evolve!!!

The Danish government has funded the development and launch of an Internet and mobile game on “climate change” for school children in India.

Downloading is an important aspect of cyberculture especially music downloads. Like the text messaging culture, downloading to me is also user generated culture. It was the prevalence of illegal downloading that led Apple to launch itunes and legalize downloading. However, that didn’t stop illegal downloading, it still continues. Despite several attempts, the music industry has yet to find a way to stop illegal downloading of music.

Downloading of content remains one of the top activities among college students. In this study, Kinnally, Lacayo, McClung & Saplosky 2008 examine the motivations of college students for downloading music. How motivations for downloading are linked to music affinity? and whether there is a relation between motivations for music downloading, music affinity and post-downloading activities such as filesharing, no. of songs downloaded, building a library of music, and CD burning.

They used the “uses and gratifications” approach and conducted a survey on around 500 students in a US university. The results of the study showed that entertainment/ pass time was the top most factor, followed by convenience/ economic utility and surveillance/ information seeking, for downloading music by college students. Other reasons were storage utility factor / ease of storing and social utility factor, that is, the downloading experience providing a topic of conversation among peers.

However, the relation between music affinity and downloading indicated that music fans download for fun, to learn about music and talk about the experience with friends. Cost and convenience are not an important factor for them. They also found that file sharing and downloading activity were not particularly related and perhaps the motives for both these activities would be very different. Males were more likely to download music, build a music library and burn CDs.

Towards the end, the researchers raise an important question that in future studies the distinction should be made between those who just download music and those who do it for participating in file-sharing networks.

I think this study once again highlights the importance of social nature of activities on internet. Although not quite like text messaging where social interaction is the primary activity or blogging which allows for exhange of ideas, downloading and sharing allows young people to participate in a cultural exchange that makes them more connected to the social world they belong.