HELPING PEOPLE'S

Jamileh Kadivar is a student in the Social Media MA at the University of Westminster. As a person who has studied Political science before and is familiar with some terms and aspects of politics, finding a way to make a connection between my previous knowledge and experience with new studies of social media seemed difficult at the beginning. At first, I thought that I had started in a completely new era with new terms which are completely different from what I knew. In some aspects this view was correct and I felt like Alice in Wonderland, but I found the missing linkage between these two different eras in “power”. I learnt about surveillance, especially government surveillance, internet surveillance and counter-surveillance in social media, and I understood that social media can be useful for political analysis too. “Power” plays a key role in politics and many scholars believe politics is a science of power; power to control others. In social media, and the internet and web 2.0 also,...

María Belén Conti is a student in the Social Media MA at the University of Westminster. As a journalist, I usually find myself in a difficult situation when it comes to social media: would it affect my job opportunities if I openly express my opinion of certain topics online as my friends do? Should I always be professional because if anything personal is filtered I will lose my credibility (major asset for a journalist)? Some may say that the best solution is to have two different profiles, one for personal and other professional proposes ( EFE, 2011 ; Restrepo, 2012 ). But again, the personal profile is there and the chance of information, opinions or photos filtering to audiences we don’t want to reach is still high. “You have one identity...The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly... Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity”, said Mark Z...

By  Janet Salmons, PhD   #einterview We have heard researchers’ voices throughout NSMNSS events, Tweetchats and blog posts. Students, alt-academic independent researchers, respected scholars and research institute staff have discussed wide-ranging methodological and ethical issues associated with media-related research. Publication is an important next step for any researcher, one we have not yet explored in the NSMNSS project. To introduce an editor’s perspective into the mix I asked New Media & Society editor Dr. Steve Jones to share some insights. New media was indeed new in 1999 when Dr. Jones and colleagues Nicholas Jankowski, Rohan Samarajiva and Roger Silverstone launched New Media & Society. With appreciation for the potential of emerging ways and means of communication they sought to create an international, interdisciplinary journal that could “contribute to the social, cultural and political understanding of new media and information tech...

14 March, 2014:  Market Research Society, Annual Conference. Includes sessions related to social media, and registration is now open.  http://www.mrsannualconference.com/ 23-25 April, 2014:  British Sociological Association, Conference on ‘Changing Society’ at Leeds University. Registration open- sessions on social media research.  http://www.britsoc.co.uk/events/bsa-annual-conference.aspx   16 May, 2014 : Social Research Association, call for papers for fourth annual all-day Social Media in Social Research conference. Scheduled for Friday, 16 May at the British Library in London. Submissions to: admin@the-sra.org.uk | Deadline: 10 March 2014  |   www.the-sra.org.uk 30 June, 2014:  Mashable’s World Social Media Day http://mashable.com/smday/ 10-11 July, 2014 : European  Conference  on Social Media. Registration to attend is open for this event,  hosted in  Brighton, UK. http://academic-conferences.org/ecsm/ecsm2014/ ecsm14...

Akin Olaniyan is a student in the Social Media MA at the University of Westminster.   Making sense of the obvious tension between online visibility and privacy is never going to be a straightforward thing for me. Having worked as a reporter and a corporate communication specialist for more than two decades, I have some sense of dealing with public scrutiny of my work. Until now, social media was just for me another platform.  If you know newspapers, I used to think, you shouldn’t have problems functioning in the new environment that digital convergence has created. Or so I thought. Just weeks after arriving for the Social Media MA at Westminster University , I have come to agree with danah boyd that being visible through social media can both complicate and enrich our lives (boyd, 2012). Social media networking sites like Facebook and Twitter offer new ways of engagement that have collapsed the walls of privacy, sometimes with terrible consequences. Henry Jenkins captures thi...