In my thesis the term social media, was analyzed and its consequences and manifestations were examined. Social media was studied by its attributes, preconditions, consequences and neighboring terms.

According the research social media is a technology-related and structural process where individuals and groups are building shared meanings, through peer production and produsage, with help of content, communities and network technologies. Social media is also a post-industrial phenomenon and because of the changes in the production and distribution structures, it has an impact on society, economy and culture.

Master’s thesis: Erkkola, Jussi-Pekka: Sosiaalisen median käsitteestä (pdf). Lopputyö. Medialaboratorio, Taideteollinen korkeakoulu 2008.

The event takes place in Punavuoren Ahven at 19:00. As far as I understood the seats are limited, but there might be some space still for couple of attendees. There will be live reporting during the event. I guess #seminaarikannu in Jaiku might the best place to check for the reporting.

My feeling is that the discussion will be quite interesting and at least I’ll try to bring some interesting insight to the panel. I know all the panelists so I hope we will have at least some fun. After the session you might find me from Grand One ‘09 gala in Apollo.

UPDATE 20.4.09: Here are the links to the Qaiku thread and Qik videos about the event.

This reminded me about uses and gratifications research, which studies why do people use media and what do they use them for. While uses and gratifications research is an influential tradition in mass media research, it might be fun to study social media through its theoretical perspective.

Uses and gratifications approach emphasizes motives and the self-perceived needs of audience members and there is not only one way that people uses media. Denis McQuail (1983) has classified four common reasons for media use:

• Entertainment – People are using media for relaxing, escaping from problems and emotional release.
• Integration and Social Interaction – Media can help maintaining social roles, enabling one to connect with family, friends and society and having a substitute for real-life companionship. Also media consumption helps finding a basis for conversation and social interaction.
• Personal Identity – With media people can reinforce their personal values, find models of behavior and identify with valued others (in the media). Media can also help to gain insight into oneself.
• Information – Using media to find information might be the most obvious use case for media.

One of the most interesting aspects of McQuail’s classifications is the notion that people are using media for having a substitute for real-life companionship. In TV-series and films people have usually their favorite characters and actors. Parasocial relationship or parasocial interaction is a term to describe these one-sided, parasocial interpersonal relationships in which one party knows a great deal about the other, but the other does not (Horton & Wohl, 1956). The most common form of such relationships are one-sided relations between celebrities and audience or fans.

The theory of parasocial relationships becomes quite interesting while examining Twitter with it. In Twitter you can find bunch of big celebrities with thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers. If you have used Twitter, you know that there is no way to interact constantly with all of your followers when you have reached certain limit. This is why at some point Twitter transforms from personal medium to mass medium for some popular tweeters. But this doesn’t prevent celebrities to reply to the tweet of their followers. Twitter has a possibility for interaction which is missing from traditional mass media. This kind of possibility and activity might make parasocial relationships even stronger. One reply from the star doesn’t build real relationship.

Studies also show that the linked structures of social networks do not reveal actual interactions among people. Scarcity of attention and the daily rhythms of life makes people default to interacting with those few that matter and that reciprocate their attention (Huberman, Romero & Wu, 2009). Even if people are following or their have plenty of followers or friends, they are only interacting with few other users. It seems that there are plenty of parasocial relationships in Twitter.

If I study my own behaviors in Twitter and my common reasons for the usage, McQuail’s four categories make sense, even if they were results of mass media research. My main drivers to use Twitter is to connect with friends and to find interesting information. The results seems to be even too self-evidence and this has been one of the main critiques against uses and gratifications research.

Horton, Donald; R. Richard Wohl (1956). “Mass communication and para-social interaction: Observations on intimacy at a distance”. Psychiatry 19 (3): 215–229. republished.
McQuail, D. (1983). Mass Communication Theory (1st ed.). London: Sage.
Huberman, A. Romero, D. M. & Wu, F. (2009) Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope. First Monday, Volume 14, Number 1 – 5 January 2009

At Nokia we are splitting our activities in internet into three different chunks. With owned media we mean our own domains (e.g. www.nokia.com) and other venues where we have official presence (e.g. www.facebook.com/nokia). Bought media is the more traditional display advertisement, like banners and sponsored links in search engines. Earned media is definitely the most interesting part of the pie. If you want to get people to discuss about your products or spread the word, you need to add value to different communities. No value, no discussion, no earned media.

Now this blog is on the bleeding edge when it comes to commenting features! ;D

Now at least two Finnish PR agencies have been testing out how to use Twitter. Cision Wire Finland and Net Profile are both feeding links to press releases of their clients in Twitter.

Curretly these accounts have only handful or no followers. Cision seems to have created Twitter accounts to all of their Nordic markets. Netprofile is tweeting about their clients, so it is not really a PR wire. I guess these activities are mainly done for SEO at the moment. (There’s no traditional SEO value, because nofollow link values.) This kind of usage of Twitter is a quite traditional push-PR.

If you are interested to know how to use Twitter in an effective way for public relations, I recommend you to read about MicroPR. The main reason behind MircoPR is to force PR firms to approach bloggers and other social media voices in the open using open social flow apps like Twitter. MircoPR also enforces PR agencies to jettison the old press release model with all the claptrap. In MicroPR bloggers, journalists, analysts, send a public message @MicroPR when you want to reach PR professionals. This approach enables a broader, more effective network of resources for stories today and in the future.

Make sure also to read an another great post by Brian Solis about Twitter tools for community and communications professionals.

I find it quite funny that the video refers Finnair’s management approach as blog-leadership (blogijohtaminen). If you are unaware of the Untergang meme, check the first(?) Untergang mashup about Xbox live.

(via @taehtinen)

The corporate blog is a neat way for Finnair to express its views on this issue. The other party in this dispute, the pilots, is having harder time to voice their opinion on the topic. While pilots are resorting to press for expressing their views, their message is also filtered and toned down.

One interesting detail in this controversy is that Panu Mäki, a pilot, has reproached Finnair in Kauppalehti for not publishing his comment in the blog. Finnair has stated that they only approve short and brisk comments in their their blog. Maybe Finnair should have commenting guidelines stated clearly somewhere in their blog.

Might Putty

WTF blanket

(via Twitter)