Psychological profiling and forensic analysis -- in social media?

Ever since Fritz Lang's "M," featuring a maniacal performance by Peter Lorre in the role of a marked man (literally - ! ) furtively evading a public stirred by published reports of a child molester on the loose, we've had a dark fascination with the mentality of criminals. They are pursued by cops, private eyes, private citizens, mobs and mobsters, and more recently, forensic professionals. Witch hunts aside, the two most common methods of capturing the criminal are with deductive or inductive reasoning: the analysis of evidence, or psychological insight. The pursuers either read the signs of the crime for the criminal behind it, or figure out where he's likely to strike next based on a grasp of his motives and obsessions.

It would be interesting to apply this to social media analysis... One might use site and user behavior and activity to form a bed of evidence, and accompany that with insights into user psychology, habits, tastes, preferences, and other interests, for predictive purposes. With a solid framework marketers and advertisers might more successfully reach the right consumer at the right time. A multiply-targeted and designed campaign, scripted to appeal according to user interests, and launched into the user activities most likely to reach that consumer, and to provide the greatest benefit to the marketer, would eliminate some of the wasted effort of today's online marketing.

It's worth the thought. After all, it took decades for the film industry to produce the genres we're familiar with today. At this time we're still in the nascent stages of creating genres of social activity online -- and truth be told most of them have been designed and engineered by, well, designers and engineers. Content owners and producers, those in publishing and entertainment for example, have yet to engage broadly in using social media tools not only to promote and distribute but to create and develop their properties. So what we know of social media is a reflection still of what the end user does with them -- unencumbered by scripts or production value, but also perhaps wanting for more compelling experiences and narratives.

It wouldn't be difficult to imagine a marketing industry that takes advantage of the bridging opportunities here. Social media marketing vehicles might emerge that are far more interactive, narrative, engaging, and content-rich than the simple viral and pass-along popups and widgets we're seeing even today. This might be a case of wishful thinking, it's hard to tell. But it's safe to say that we've yet to push the frontiers here.

We may still be in social media's era of silent film. Could it be that we've yet to think of what we'll do with the "talkies?"

Some sociology on the coupling of social media and mass media

Reading Notes: Social Media, Mass Media PDF, 45 pages

The Reality of the Mass Media, by Niklas Luhmann, and Anthony Giddens' Modernity and Self Identity together provide a rich basis for unpacking how online media, and social media (user generated content) in particular, couple with the mass media. Each observes the other, further extending and enriching the content of news, advertising, and entertainment through the participation of members of the audience on blogs, content aggregators, social networking sites, and even on recent hits like Youtube. These reading notes are theoretical in tone and substance, and are intended for those interested in social interaction design, especially in how it maps to theories of mass media and a sociology of the media's construction of a reality reproduced daily by social media users.

Reading Notes: Social Media, Mass Media PDF, 45 pages

From the reading notes summary ...


Social Software Design Notes (SxD)

Reading Notes on Modernity and Self Identity by Anthony Giddens and The Reality of Mass Media by Niklas Luhmann

Summary
These reading notes describe a systems-theoretical view of mass media and web and social media that posits a) that users, regardless of their individual intentions and interests, engage mass media in form and in content, and that b) the social web extends the domain and reach of mass media while also presenting it real challenges, and c) that this exchange occurs through the social practices of online communication and interaction as well as through the structural and functional coupling (e.g. business) of web media and mass media. In short, the social web offers users a chance to communicate and interact around cultural narratives, news and events as told by the mass media, and more without themselves belonging to the mass media, and the mass media, by observing this user generated content, can inform itself and adjust accordingly. But the social web and the mass media are doing more than observing one another (blogs on movies, cited in newspapers or on TV, and so on): the very forms in which many new online phenomena (call them social media, social software, web 2.0, etc.) take shape implicitly, if not explicitly, refer to forms of mass media communication. In other words, the social practices users engage in refer as much to the mass media as to daily social interactions. This, if it were accurate, would offer an interesting view of social media, for it would suggest that people understand and can engage with the online world through the mass media world and can make the mass media their own. To suggest that users don't simply take what they do in every-day life and adapt it to the online world, but refer also to the how content is produced on the radio, on TV, in films, in advertising for examples of form and representation if not also narrative construction and distinctions between truth and fiction, truthfulness and falsehoods, would be to suggest that the way forward for social interaction design should involve merging direct and immediate communication interests of individuals with the indirect or mediated means of production of media's abstract forms.

The above thesis is constructed in these reading notes from the sociologies of Anthony Giddens and Niklas Luhmann. It offers a bridge from user-centric design to media theory and avoids the weak subject position common to many structuralist theories by suggesting that users put their understanding of the mass media to their own use. Mass media constructions of a world can equally serve individuals who, engaging in mediated communities and social interactions, need forms of representation with which to package their communication so that it can be understood by those who come across it. Unable to be there when communication occurs (online), users rely on the familiarity of packaging to provide context for their communication. Packaging provides the promise of control over the reception and interpretation of their communication. (Utterances uttered in face-to-face interactions don't serve users of online social media insofar was users can't be present online to utter the utterance in the presence of others in the first place.) And what better source of forms of presentation than the media, which invented the possibility of representational languages and systems in the first place? Media theory takes a functional view of mass media, claiming that the production of stories and events not only sustain business, industry, politics, law, and so on, but connect to consumers by producing news of interest to them. These reading notes suggest a view of new media that connects online and web media to mass media with the difference that users are involved in social practices that engage the Self in relations of trust and trust commitments. Seen from a business perspective, then, social media extend the fictions, and to some extent the functions, of realities constructed by mass media. This time, however, individual users are the systems' "producers," storytellers, journalists, and so on. Communication and interaction extend mass media distribution, and accelerate and extend the reproduction of news and events. Social media also contribute the truth and authenticity that belongs to interpersonal communication, and which can only be emulated by mass media.

Investigation
Social software systems vary in theme, or genre, as well as in their UI and design. Dating sites (match.com, eharmony.com) focus on personal information; their users are interested in people. Career networking sites (linkedin.com) focus on people also, but present the professional in the context of professional networks and histories. Both dating and career networking sites are thus biographical and representational. Myspace and Facebook also deal with people, but this time more actively than dating and career networking sites, for they not only capture social networks but produce them. In many ways they resemble interactive mass media: they're involved in creating social scenes, they spawn and promote bands, clubs, events, news, and so on. Blogging and discussion sites also engage in the creation of news, but this time emphasizing news, viewpoints, perspectives, and expertise more than member personality. There are recommendation sites and systems too, which tend to subordinate the biographical presentation of a person (e.g. personality and character) to the objects reviewed: books, movies, music, restaurants, web sites, travel, products, and so forth. All of these systems engage similar technologies, user interface techniques, and user practices. It seems highly likely that as users, our use of these sites is informed by our understanding not only of the genres of mass media programs, but also their means of production. In other words, we know something about how to present news, we get the difference between news and advertising, we know a lot about celebrities and why we're interested in them, what makes them popular, and how to talk about them. Social practices of social software use, in other words, are informed by existing mass media. But now we can participate in a world online that is coupled to the mass media through observation of it, at a minimum, and structurally, at a maximum (where social media are functionally, economically, and structurally coupled to the function, economics and structural organization of mass media). Mass media do not permit two-way communication with their audience; social media of course do. These reading notes cover two sociologists (Anthony Giddens and Niklas Luhmann), whose work can help us unpack the social practices emerging around social software and social media within a higher-level analysis of mass media (media theory).




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YouTube: videos are signs, watching is social

Marshall McLuhan, in Understanding Media, writes:

"What we are considering here, however, are the psychic and social consequences of the designs or patterns as they amplify or accelerate existing processes. For the 'message' of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs."

To say that YouTube is not just video hosting or video watching is stating the obvious. The social participation YouTube gets in the video posting, commenting, rating, and circulating is what made it the killer app of hosted video. It is precisely YouTube's popularity that set it apart, and earned it the ability command a huge acquisition fee (read: head count. It was the audience head count, which to Google looked impressively like loyalty, and they may be right, which is why they'll leave it as YouTube for a while and keep their little "video NEW!" link sandwiched between images and news)...

I asked in a recent post what the content of YouTube is, using McLuhan's formula that a medium's content is a previous medium: "This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the 'content' of any medium is always another medium. The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph.” Then if the content of YouTube is television, its value was measured in terms of audience share (not advertising or programming quality). YouTube was clearly the biggest of the online video networks.

If the content of YouTube was television, but modified because it is online, then its formal content was television, its content as substance is viewers (users). And why is this so important? Because it would be a mistake to see YouTube in terms of its core value proposition: watching video. YouTube is a communication medium, and its real value lies in providing a marketplace "in" which people gather to pass around videos they like. "Watch this, you'll like it" is conversation. It's a statement, and YouTube is full of them. Look up Robin Williams and the first page of results are all the same 2 min and 19 second clip of Mr Williams doing a Scotsman inventing Golf. Why? Because posting is, as we learned from blogging, the fundamental act of communicating. Not reading. Not watching. (Not listening!)

This will all get more interesting as we look at the nature of utterances and communication involving video as reference. We need to compare YouTube and related phenomena to the blogosphere and to blogging. Ask yourself, what is it to refer to a cultural commodity or object, in a statement addressed to friends (or anonymously, to the world). What is that act? Is it a "look at this" act or is it a "look at me" act?

Or is it a "look at me looking at this" act? Let's suppose that the videos on YouTube are like commodities, and that they have the sign value that we associate with fast cars, exclusive brands, and other status symbols. I'm not suggesting of course that some YouTube videos better brands than others — videos aren't brands. I'm suggesting that videos signify social relations.

Videos on YouTube, because they are on YouTube, accrue social significance. That a person wants to share a video with somebody, be it by telling a friend or by posting, or by commenting, means that person likes it. And wants to communicate that like. In a "public" setting, identifying with a commodity carries social connotations. I'm into guitar rock. Or stand up. Check out these Bush out-takes. etc. Each video, in addition to its own content, has a reflective signification also: to like something is a reflection of my likes. The particular (video) makes a general reference (this is my taste). That's the social move. Association with videos can now become social, using the commodity form, as other commodities are social (the status symbols mentioned above). And they're free! Fast! And the consumption of them is ephemeral, and it doesn't oblige anyone to post one back, or to applaud, even to publicly agree.

The social works in online marketplaces like this by establishing a communicable interest between a user and his or her selections (books, videos, music, blogs, etc). If the interest were personal only, it wouldn't need to be communicable. It could just make sense to the person and end there. Its communicability is a sign that it's social. But in each medium, in each application (social software site, community, marketplace, etc) the site has to successfully create an audience/public, and successfully enable the linking of user to interests, and communication of these selections to individuals, groups, and the audience at large. One cannot really wait for the other. Hence the importance of viral marketing, and hence the advantage that has returned to first movers.

Our next investigation ought to be into the changing nature of sign value, of commodities as form and of our relations to each other through these mediators.


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Pay Attention to YouTube!

I'm on a bit of a Marshall McLuhan kick this week, with YouTube's acquisition to Google still in the air. And Kim Jong Il leaping up and down at the far eastern edge of the map: living, ridiculous proof that power is all about getting attention (Dumb and Dumber: starring Bush and Kim Jong Il). I don't think Robin Williams could've scripted a better skit; nor the South Park team have animated it any better than Kim did himself. Let's all pay attention to lonely wittle Kim Jong Il.

But back to our original news... YouTube. Why did Google take it when they had their own video service? Because Google's wasn't as popular. And why not? Because Google approached video as information. Youtube saw it as television.

This is not about videos, it's about television, and the future of television most importantly. Which will be why Sumner and Ballmer and Murdoch are still awake at night unsure of whether they just were too stingy. Marshall McLuhan claimed that television was a social medium. Film was not. YouTube is the present-day television, not television. YouTube, aptly named, since "You" (= My) and Tube (= Television) precisely describe television's reconfiguration in the Communication Age. Yes, and MyTube would've sounded a bit weird. But MyTube would've seemed a bit, well, narcissistic (ah, the truth about teenagers and MySpace is written in the name!). And it would've missed the function of Communication as it's applied to television. Since television is configured as a broadcast medium, it's reconfiguration is as a communication medium. MyTube would've missed the point. YouTube captures it: television communicates only if it's seen by others with whom one is communicating (namely, one's friends, or social network).

The social aspect of television is the reflection: to see others seeing what you're seeing. To share the experience of watching. Well, we don't often watch television that way any more. Sharing couches and armchairs, turned and tuned into the same network broadcast, primetime, dinner tray, dog splayed out on the floor thinking it's all about him. We live in a play-shifted, time-shifted day and age in which communication is as likely to happen asynchronously as it is to happen at all: that is, over the internet and not face to face. YouTube is about watching socially, but of course from one's own computer, out of synch in time, but in synch in terms of the content.

Google missed this because Google saw video as indexable, searchable, categorizable and taggable content. Flickr misses this because photos aren't social (they're a show and tell, which is a bit different because it takes the form of speaker/audience, not broadcast/audience). I watch you watching television. Television directs vision to itself but in the social context of watching together. There's always at least a peripheral perception of others watching (Not in film -- room's too dark. Social's not the point there. In fact movies open with a warning to turn off your cell phone. Most definitely not social...ah, but the experience is social, yes. But not the medium.).

The new generation doesn't sit down to watch prime time tv together. It's on YouTube, which provides the asynchronicity of experience, personaliz-ability of tags, uploading, favorites lists, channels, and a play duration much better suited to consumption than tv. Content in minutes, not half hour blocks. And played, of course, over the medium that's mine, that's mobile, that's interactive, and that's connected: the computer.

Google bought YouTube. Makes perfect sense.


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