Is Facebook an Echo Chamber?

Researchers at Facebook this week published the results of an extensive research project examining the popular conception that social networking sites promulgate a singularity of information sources and voices - creating an echo chamber. With the ongoing demise of broad information sources, such as the newspaper, and the increasing usage of social media (e.g. Facbeook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and other news feeds as the primary, or only, source of news, people are not exposed to anywhere near the same diversity of issue coverage as they used to.

So the study, Rethinking Information Diversity in Networks, is an important contribution in understanding this area. It is truly impressive in its design, scale (millions of Facebook users), and dazzling graphs.  The study found that:

even though people are more likely to consume and share information that comes from close contacts that they interact with frequently (like discussing a photo from last night’s party), the vast majority of information comes from contacts that they interact with infrequently. These distant contacts are also more likely to share novel information, demonstrating that social networks can act as a powerful medium for sharing new ideas, highlighting new products and discussing current events.

Before I settled on my current research topic, I planned to research if the Internet promotes homophily and how to facilitating serendipitous information. I, as with many others, believe that access to a diversity of information sources and voices is important for an informed society and hence good government.

Facebook's study is really useful - but they are a couple claims that differ from my experience.

One, is that the nature of information on Facebook is diverse. It may be vast and it may be broad, but I found that with rare exceptions, the information circulated falls into maybe four categories. To me, I mostly see my social circle accounts, entertainment news & commentary, political news & rants, and occasionally news of the odd (okay it's me sharing those stories).

I am also not sure that those we are less close to, i.e. "weak ties", are necessarily that dissimilar and thus expose use to novel information.  I don't doubt the value of weak ties in sharing information, but I still think the information falls into common categories and still tends to roughly entail a common voice or political leaning. Weak ties are still similar to individuals or they wouldn't be a tie at all. People on social network sites certainly friend indiscriminately, even wantonly, but we don't usually friend our polar opposites.

There is no doubt that the Internet exposes us to a greater diversity of voices than older media allowed.  And the Internet definitely has improved the ability to share information - I did find out about this study through a friend's posting on Facebook. I'm still not convinced, however, that we are receiving anywhere near the diversity of coverage of issues and viewpoints that we need.

Sense of Place & Location-Based Services - Survey Summary

This past December, I designed a survey as part of my coursework for a PhD in Information at University at Toronto. As promised, I'm sharing my early results of the survey.

The survey sought to uncover foundational knowledge about how people form a sense of place (defined as the feelings and meanings attributed to place), the role of information in this process, and the potential of location-based services (LBS - defined as mobile applications or sites that deliver content based on a user's location). As location-based services are still an emerging technology, this subject has not been sufficiently addressed by academia or industry.

I'm still in the process of compiling and writing up the results, but here is a high-level summary of the findings grouped by research questions.

78 people completed the survey, with participants representing a cross-section of ages, education levels, and residences. 86% have a mobile device, with smartphones the most popular (68%) followed by GPS navigation device (31%), tablet (22%), and netbook (18%). Participants can be described as frequent users as over 80% (53 participants) indicated they used their device at least once a day.

1) What is the nature of relationships people have to places they encounter?

• 96% of participants indicating there was a place in which they associated strong feelings or meaning.
• When asked what place characteristics are meaningful, past personal experiences, physical qualities of place, and social dimensions received the strongest support with all over 75%.
• These findings confirmed phenomenologist place theorists, who believe that a relationship to place is a foundational experience in human existence and individual experience is the paramount way we process place.
• The factual elements of a place, its history and role in culture, were selected by at least half of respondents, the lack of stronger support for the these qualities was surprising as LBS can offer unique functionality to deliver this information (perhaps leading LBS have yet to effectively tap this).
• When describing a place where participants felt a "strong sense of place" in an open-ended question, 58 participants recounted experiences revealing personal experiences tied to place - a good example of this is: "Another place with a strong sense to it is an ordinary intersection... where I was told 'I love you' for the first time, in the romantic sense...the spot is still very dear!".
• Often accounts such as this reveal facets of a place hidden to others but are nonetheless significant - through LBS these types of accounts can now be made more visible.
• Descriptions of meaningful places often (67% of respondents to this question) mention emotions tied a place. Top mentioned emotions are nostalgia (fond remembrance), contentment, and excitement.

2) How are people currently using information in forming a sense of place?

• All participants agreed that access to information while at a given location is valuable.
• When asked to describe how they come to know of a specific place, experience was echoed here, with 50 participants indicating this was a primary information source.
• Personal experience was often described as an initial source of learning about a place, but was then followed by consulting various other information sources to learn more about place.
• Approximately half of respondents using two or more sources of information when learning about the place.
• When asked specifically the information sources participants use when visiting a new place for either a short (less than 1 day) or extended visit, the top five sources are (in descending order): Short visit - social network/word of mouth, website, pamphlets, mobile application, plaques. Extended visit: website, social network/word of mouth, print book, pamphlets, video or tv program.
• People are more apt to use an information source for extended visits than for short visits with the exception of mobile applications and plaques.
• In general, the more a visit demands of a person the more apt participants are to invest the time to consult a greater number of sources and more in-depth sources.

3) How, if at all, have mobile devices affected sense of place?

• The majority of participants with a mobile device are using it, in relation to place, to find location, directions or contact information.
• There is strong indication that participants are currently using mobiles to seek out facts about place beyond directions. This behaviour can be seen in the following comment: "I found out recently not to use a public car park ... after dark. The Foursquare entry had a tip that car thieves were targeting the car park".
• The ability to use mobile devices to record or share place was described by some participants as changing their experience of the place, as illustrated by this comment: "The process of inscribing your thoughts on a place while at that place is very useful in concretising your thoughts on that place. I think the practice of reflecting on the place to compose an entry requires a thinking about that place, and an ordering of thoughts about that place that gives meaning to the place (whether good or bad) and which in turn improves the memory one has of that place."
• Participants also expressed comments that they are experiencing the physical and digital worlds simultaneously, along the lines of "hybrid space" as discussed in academic litearature, this can be seen by this comment: "I pulled up a mobile app the other day when I took my children to a museum, so that I could supplement the information at the museum with information from the mobile app."
• The larger the device screen the more apt participants are to find something useful.
• The type of mobile device used does not have a strong association with usage of geotargetted information seeking via mobile device, the creation of place-based user generated content, or the likelihood to use a LBS.

4) What is the potential of location-based services to improve sense of place?

• Participants were not big users of LBS applications - of the people with a mobile device less than half have installed one of the most popular LBSs.
• The most installed used mobile applications with LBS functionality used by participants were Foursquare at 23%, Google 23%, and Facebook at 22%.
• All three of these, with the exception of Google’s Places, predominantly revolve around geo-social networking. Although place-based information can be found in the form of "tips" left by friends or made public, the core functionality of these leading apps are tracking the whereabouts of one’s social network.
• Of the participants using LBS, they expressed appreciation for the ability for the applications to enhance their sense of place by learning more about a place, as typified by these comments: "I think they have affected how much I can find out about a place and provides access to types of information about a place that I wouldn't otherwise have access to - provides richer dimensions to knowing about a place" and "Location based services have, by bringing other peoples social gazetteers into consideration, made a sense of place easier to achieve."
• LBSs were also mentioned by participants as improving their attachment to place.

5) What could be done with mobile technology to improve sense of place?

• To meet the needs of users, however, there improvements to LBS or mobile technology in general are need. Over 60% of participants offered suggestions.
• The top five suggestions were:  better content (32% support) , new functionality (26%), personalization features (21%), user experience improved (21%), and content available in more locations (17%).

Final thoughts

As one considers the possible implications for location-based services accessed via a mobile device to affect sense of place, the current iterations of technology may not reflect the qualities of future versions. The LBS market is rapidly evolving and new features and innovations as well as improvements to existing features will undoubtedly continue. Ideally, I would like my research as it continues to be able to inform future developments in this area.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this survey!

I held a random draw for an iTunes giftcard and a participant from Vancouver was chosen.

I'll revise and enhance these findings as I continue my data analysis. But I'd love to hear any thoughts below on these early results.

Locative Media & Media Used to Convey Place Information

As much research continues into how we use location based services on mobile devices to access geotargetted information, I've been considering other ways we can access information about place. There is a lot of buzz over the past couple years about locative media - with a frequent assumption that it is new technology. Humans have had ways to leave information about a place at the place for millennia. I'm not convinced that new technology has created an entirely new experience, but rather has facilitate access to this information.

I've found it helpful for my research to maintain a list of various forms of media used to convey place-related information.

The table below lists each medium, its corresponding modalities, the presence of user participation functionality, and the physical portability of the medium.

Medium	Modalities	User participation	Portability
Audio tours	Sound	No	Mobile
Billboards	Visual	No	Situated
Books and e-books	Visual	No	Mobile
Directories	Visual	No	Situated (if in phone booth), mobile otherwise
Films and videos	Visual, sound	Yes (if creating)	Situated - if viewing on tv or cinema Mobile - if viewing on mobile device
Flags	Visual	No	Situated
GPS devices (for cars or hiking)	Visual, haptic	Yes	Mobile
Graffiti	Visual	Yes	Situated
Guestbooks (physical)	Visual	Yes	Situated
Guides (human)	Visual, sound	Yes	Mobile
Help desks/info booths	Visual, sound	Yes	Situated
Interactive kiosks	Visual, sound, haptic	Yes	Situated
Maps, atlases, and charts	Visual	No	Mobile
Media facades and electronic billboards	Visual, sound	No	Situated
Mobile applications	Visual, sound, haptic	Yes	Mobile
Newspapers	Visual	No	Mobile
Pamphlets	Visual	No	Mobile
Photographs	Visual	Yes (if creating)	Mobile
Plaques	Visual	No	Situated
Posters	Visual	No	Situated
Sandwich boards	Visual, sound	Yes	Situated (somewhat mobile)
Sculptures	Visual	No	Situated
Signage (print & electronic)	Visual	No	Situated
Television shows	Visual, sound	No	Situated
Website	Visual, sound	Yes	Situated (unless viewing on mobile device)
Word of mouth	Visual, sound	Yes	Mobile

Let me know if I missed a medium or if there's another key dimension I should add to this table.

My Favourite Webslinger Posts of 2011

As the old year is almost over, I have a tradition of recalling my favourite blog posts from the preceding year.

Here are my favourite posts from the past year. The provide a snapshot of my evolving interests in online topics and my personal past-times.

January
Chicago Is My Kind of Town
To celebrate a milestone birthday of mine, my wife took me on a trip to Chicago. I was greatly impressed by the city's cool use of digital media.

February
Pondering Effects of Foursquare
After eagerly adopting (and blogging about) the geosocial location-based mobile service, Foursquare I cooled off to its use. I've resumed using it in late 2011 as it is has become the prime LBS and perhaps only one to hit critical mass. This post recounts how I uses it and my hopes for it to offer richer experiences.

March
IPTV - TV over the Internet with Bell Fibe
After years of using rabbit ears, I got my family cable TV for Christmas last year. I got Bell's new Fibe service, which is delivered over the Internet. The blog post details some of its pros and cons. But recently Bell Fibe launched some great new apps, including Facebook and Twitter - so I'm liking it even more now.

April
Types of Geotargetted Information
My doctoral research this year has been laying down ground work on on central concepts for location-based services. This posts looks into the nature of various forms of geotargetted information.

May
Elegy for Yahoo
When I first started using the Internet - first email, calendars and web searching, then photo sharing, blogging, and folksonomies it was all via Yahoo. But when Yahoo "updated" their services and didn't support syncing with my BlackBerry I sadly had to quit using them.  I believe my experience is indicative of Yahoo's overall fate.

June
TEDx LibrariansTO - An Idea Worth Spreading
I'm not a fan of the elitism of TED conferences, but I think their format for presentations is highly effective. This posts recaps what I found particularly effective about the TED format, as I experienced at a TEDx event.

July
A good month so I have two favourites:

McLuhan Centenary
2011 was the hundredth anniversary of Toronto's media visionary Marshall McLuhan. His program is now housed at the Faculty of Information (iSchool) at the University of Toronto (where I'm studying).  There were lots of events to mark his centennary and this posts highlights some of McLuhan's bon mots on media.

Good Things Grow in Ontario
Foodland Ontario ran one of the most fun and effective social media campaigns that I've heard of (and I don't just say that as my kid entered).

August and September
- No posts; on vacation to Alaska and Whistler and then back to iSchool.

October
Locative Media Innovation Day
Location based services and locative media are the subject of my doctoral research, so I was really excited to attend a local conference on the subject on Toronto's new premier conference venue, TIFF.

November
Blogging is History
iSchool often has great speakers. This blog post captured a public lecture on archiving considerations for bloggers. I was surprised by how many important considerations I - and I'm sure many other bloggers - was missing.

December
The Top 15 Canadians in Digital Media
I particularly like this post on an article I wrote for Backbone Magazine for a few reasons. For one, I I think it is important to honour Canadians making significant contributions to the digital media sphere, and I think this article highlights 15 incredible Canadians. But also, this article began as a blog post I wrote for Canada Day in 2008. It's great to see something that started here evolve into something more prominent.

2011 also saw the loss of my mentor and digital pioneer, Liz Metcalfe. Canada's online scene is not the same without her and we greatly miss her.

I blogged more in 2011 than I have in years. But I missed a post for September 29th of 2011 which was the five year anniversary of Webslinger. What began as an experiment in blogging - and despite occasional neglect and even considerations of abandonment - has become a vital part of my academic and personal life.

The Top 15 Canadians in Digital Media

A blog post that I started a couple years ago in honour of Canada Day to track notable Canadians working in digital media has continued to grow over the years. Backbone Magazine asked me to write an article on this, so I selected 15 Canadians whose contributions to digital media was particularly outstanding.

The article, The Top 15 Canadians in digital media, is the November/December cover story for the print edition of Backbone Magazine. But the article is also available online on Backbone's website (along with other of my blog posts).

The editor of the magazine also started a discussion on LinkedIn to hear from other people on who else should be added to the list. I'd love to keep this list going - encompassing more people and a broader spectrum of industries and roles.








So please offer any suggestions you can think of either on the LinkedIn group or here.

Practitioner barriers to diffusion and implementation of web accessibility

My research on the adoption challenges of web accessibility that I conducted during my master's research has been published this month in an academic journal.  The article Practitioner barriers to diffusion and implementation of web accessibility is published in the journal "Technology and Disability" (Volume 23, Number 4).

The paper looked at how as people are increasingly integrating online activities into their daily lives, disabled people are often impeded from accessing websites due to code and design barriers. Despite guidelines on how to improve web accessibility that have been around since the early days of the Web, accessibility adoption remains low. The responsibility to implement web accessibility tends to fall on web practitioners, yet prior scholarship has failed to adequately consult this group on their barriers to adoption.

I conducted a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with web practitioners from  various sectors, locations, and job duties. I found that current social and individual values, inadequate guidelines and support, and monetary demands are halting the diffusion of web accessibility. These factors perpetuate an artificial construct of online disability and impede developments towards an inclusive Web medium.

The paper offered a model and recommendations to remediate this environment and thus improve accessibility rates. I have previously posted my recommendations on this blog, but my model has been updated and I will include it here.

Thanks to everyone who helped out with this research either as participants or as reviewers!

Answer My Survey on Sense of Place & Location Based Services

Over the past few months, I’ve been exploring how location-based services and geotargetted information affect our relationship to the places we encounter. More people are using these mobile applications, including Foursquare, Gowalla, Google Places, SCVNGR, Layar, and a seeming endless array of apps to help us locate and learn more about everything from where we parked our car to the nearest restaurant.

Despite the growing popularity of location-based services, they still have not been well studied.  My PhD work is examining the interplay of people, mobile applications, and space. One of my first steps is to uncover how sense of place is formulated and how location-based surveys may affect this. 

As such, I’m conducting a survey on location-based services (LBS) and sense of place. I think it is important to hear from mobile device users to understand how their usage of LBS might influence sense of place. This research will be used for coursework for my PhD studies at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto.

I will be posting a summary of the findings here on the blog so that we can all better understand this growing technological trend.


Update December 20, 2011: The survey is now closed, but if you have thoughts on how location based services affect your sense of a place, please share them below.