HELPING PEOPLE'S

By Cheryl Jadav, student in the MA in Social Media at the University of Westminster Watch the video here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxn4HjbTfYU If you’re reading this, obviously, you follow social media! Has politics and political democracy fascinated you? Do you wonder what impacts and what role does social media play, not only in our routinely life but in something as important and broad as politics and democracy? The interview with Dr. Dan Mercea of City University London highlights the importance of social media in participatory politics. As he suggests, ‘Social Media is an instrument’ that supports democracy. As Dan Mercea puts in, the book is a ‘fairly dated collection in internet time’. A collection based on a conference held in 2011, this book is for those who are interested in studying the internet and social media, politics and democracy. Over the last couple of years, we have seen our social networks being flooded by the updates on the political occurrences thro...

By Abdullah Anees , student in the MA in Social Media at the University of Westminster Watch the video here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz2l-6yUHbg At the beginning of our semester we were asked by our teacher Christian Fuchs to write a book review. The book had to be an academic reflection on social media. So I went away and searched for books by authors I could interview face to face. I came across ‘Writing on the wall’ by Tom Standage, the digital editor of The Economist. In “Writing on the wall”, he argues how the concept of social media initially dates back to the Roman Period one century BC. He took me on an historical journey throughout time and highlighted how concepts of social media played roles throughout history. From Cicero ’s letters to Luther’s pamphlets to the modern day revolutions, Tom Standage discusses how sharing ideas that spread have had influences throughout time. After reading the book I can actually say looking back at history from a social media pe...

Wow, we've been blown away by the response to our call for contributors , please see our previous post for the background to this crowdsourced project. If you've already read that and are keen to get going then here are your next steps: Step 1 - email us at: nsmnss@natcen.ac.uk we will then send you a link to access the contributors spreadsheet. Step 2 - complete the Google Doc spreadsheet with your basic information and any ideas or suggestions you have for the book, we can then send you a log in for the platform we'll be using to publish the book. Step 3 - get writing! Step 3a . - ( optional ) send it to us if you would like the editorial support group to provide some constructive feedback. Step 4 -  upload it - you're done!  Are we uploading content ourselves then? Ideally yes, it would be really helpful if, once you have written your blog, you could upload it yourself. We are a small team & the network is currently unfunded so we have chosen a process w...

We've been thinking a lot at #NSMNSS about what types of activities the network should support next. One idea we've been ruminating on for a while is creating a volume of crowdsourced blogs on the impact social media are having on social science research methods . (We are also supporting the development of a new Sage Handbook of Social Media Research Methods which many network members will be contributing to but this is on a longer time-span and will be published in a more traditional way.) We got the idea for this from David De Souza (@dds180) and his hugely successful HR book of blogs Humane, Resourced which topped the best seller nonfiction business charts last year. We want to try and replicate this success and believe it will be a great showcase for network members to share their experiences and views about social media research with a wider audience. The broad idea is to reach 100+ pages of content collected from a  multitude of contributors from across the social scie...

This post by Ernesto Priego was originally published here . We're delighted to share it as it touches on many issues network members have been discussing, so thanks to Ernesto for allowing us to repost. Twitter ecosystem quadrant, via blog.twitter.com This is just a quick snippet to jot down some ideas as some kind of follow-up to my blog post on the Ethics of researching Twitter datasets republished today [28 May 2014] by the LSE Impact blog. If you have ever tried to keep up with Twitter you will know how hard it is. Tweets are like butterflies– one can only really look at them for long if one pins them down out of their natural environment. The reason why we have access to Twitter in any form is because of Twitter’s API , which stands for “Application Programming Interface”. As Twitter explains it , “An API is a defined way for a program to accomplish a task, usually by retrieving or modifying data. In Twitter’s case, we provide an API method for just about every feature ...

By Jamileh Kadivar, student in the MA in Social Media at the University of Westminster. Watch the video here  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKeMTkqYF9I The video I produced is an introduction to Tweets and The Streets: Social Media And Contemporary Activism, a must read and a great book with lots of interesting insights and a strong research foundations. The book was written by Paolo Gerbaudo and published by Pluto Press in 2012. The video includes two interviews. In the beginning, I present the main arguments of the book and introduce the author as an academic, a journalist and also an activist; then, you can watch the interviewees' replies to my questions. Finally, I present my own conclusion. The first interview was conducted with Paolo Gerbaudo on March 2nd, 2014, by Skype. Dr. Paolo Gerbaudo, a lecturer in Digital Culture and Society at King’s College London, answers questions about the key terms in his book, such as 'choreography of assembly' and 'choreogr...

By Keurkoon Phoomwittaya, student in the MA in Social Media at the University of Westminster Watch the video here:  https://vimeo.com/90989359 In the early days of social interaction on the Internet I tried out different identities with avatars and used pseudonyms in virtual worlds. I learned and shared ideas in online forums that I was interested in such as Hamster Lovers society or the Thai fiction writers community. Nowadays, social media enterprises such as Facebook attract more people to spend their time on the platforms. At any time and on the move we can simulate ourselves to feel as if we were connected together and close with each other. The little mobile devices in our pockets shape and affect how we think about ourselves and relationships with others. Because of my interest in such topics I became curious to read the book “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other” by Sherry Turkle. I made a documentary based on the issues that her boo...