Economics of Religion | Archives: Why the Jehovah's Witnesses Grow so Rapidly: A Theoretical Application [Stark,Iannacone]

Economics of Religion | Archives: Why the Jehovah's Witnesses Grow so Rapidly: A Theoretical Application [Stark,Iannacone]: "Abstract: This paper applies a general theory of why religious movements succeed or fail to explain why the Jehovah’s Witnesses are the most rapidly growing religious movement in the western world. In addition to qualitative assessments of Witness doctrines, organizational structures, internal networks, and socialization, we utilize quantitative data from a variety of sources to assess such things as the impact of failed prophesies, how “strictness” eliminates free-riders and strengthens congregations, the demographic make-up of the Witness “labor force”, and the effects of continuity with local religious cultures on success."

Includes full text of article.

People don’t trust company blogs. What you should do about it.

People don’t trust company blogs. What you should do about it.: "This result comes from a survey we did in Q2 of 2008. Have a look at the data yourself. Not only do blogs rank below newspapers and portals, they rank below wikis, direct mail, company email, and message board posts. Only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say they trust them."

I thought this article was worth reading because it draws attention to the level of suspicion held for corporations. For me, it underpins just why businesses shouldn't blog unless they're willing to be genuinely engaged in a conversation and not booming out marketing speak.

Micro Persuasion: Social Networking Demographics: Boomers Jump In, Gen Y Plateaus

Micro Persuasion: Social Networking Demographics: Boomers Jump In, Gen Y Plateaus

Rubel calls attention to an Accenture study which shows the social technology adoption rate is plateauing for GenY. Is this a sign they're losing interest or that they're already connected enough?

All the world wide web's a stage | Pearson

Pearson discusses performance and identity formation on social networking sites.

The Future of Reputation

The Future of Reputation

Professionally produced and written e-book about reputation on the Internet.

Is the internet weakening our social ties?

Does the Internet weaken our social ties? Not according to research conducted by Pew in 2004. Based on the work of Barry Wellman this study shows that those who are active in a face-to-face setting are more likely to actively use the Internet to maintain their relationships.

Wellman argues that the Internet promotes "networked individualism" which allows  individuals to move beyond a small core of trusted friends and access more diverse advice from a network of contacts. While the ties between these individuals may not be strong ties, they nonetheless provide the support demanded by circumstances at the time of the contact.

But the report was conducted in 2004, before the success of Facebook and certainly before the launch of Twitter. Wellman's study focussed on the use of emails in the maintenance of social networks. Since 2004 much has happened to reshape the way individuals participate on the Internet particularly as a result of the emergence of online social networking and bookmarking sites.

Too, the research was conducted in the US and takes no account of the way the Internet shapes social interactions in communities where net access is limited.

Wordlings in a web 2.0 world | Carolyne Lee

It's easy for business people to be dragged into managerial speak. The jargon of an industry sucks us in to talking in the lingo of our "ist". But all too often it's a language that becomes, as Carolyne Lee, describes it, "turgid". Words and phrases are emptied of meaning. Passion vanishes, swallowed by the carefully measured, lawyer-friendly, litigation-safe press release.

In Wordlings in a Web 2.0 World, Lee proposes that "word bytes" are memorable. They're loaded with meaning and full of colour and life. They build images of subjects and events, ones that come to life and create emotion.

When I read Lee's high praise for short, cleverly-crafted, meaning dense poetry I can't help but reflect on the critisism heaped on Twitter by the uninformed and the intellectual alike. Twitter forces the writer to create meaning despite brevity. It is this Zen-like brevity which demands creativity, enforces discipline and has the potential to produce lasting word bytes.

Lee's article is one that encourages me to write from the heart and to write with passion and soul. It urges me to write with brevity and purpose and to expose my humanity and imperfections.

Academic research

What is a Journal?
http://www.pcc.edu/library/research/what_journal.html


Distinguishing Scholarly Journals from Other Periodicals
http://copia.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/skill20.html

What is a refereed journal?
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/lsx/tutorial/section2.html
 

With thanks to Cynthia for providing these links. 

Thesis statement

I've spent the last 4 hours defining a thesis statement for my final essay. I've come up with

"Does the Internet enable new means of creating economic value from information?"

I'm a slow writer, huh?

CyberDemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere

CyberDemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere

Poster claims that there has been more instances of human rights violations committed through the apparatus of US government than has been caused by terrorists. He states that terrorism is used as a propaganda exercise as a way to deflect attention away from the government abuse of a mainly imagined dangerous enemy. Possibilities for new forms of human empowerment are given up in order to retain existing power structures.

Commodification brings the questions of the possibility of democracy through the Internet down to already existing structures that do away with future possibilities. That is to say the interests of content providers and telecommunications companies become paramount rather than opening up possibilities of new forms of governance that might do away with existing structures.

Politics for this modern perspective is then the arduous extraction of an autonomous agent from the contingent obstacles imposed by the past. In its rush to ontologize freedom, the modern view of the subject hides the process of its historical construction.

What the fuck did that last sentence mean? Perhaps I'll understand by the end of next decade.

The Internet is a decentralised communication system brought together by disparate and conflicting forces that now produce frictionless reproduction and dissemination of information. What will the effects of these be on society, Poster asks.

Wrong question he says. The Net dematerialises communication and transforms the position of the person engaging in the communication. The Internet is what Germany is to Germans - it makes them Germans. Unlike a hammer which doesn't make people hammers but drives in nails.

Some people use the Internet like a hammer - as simply a way to get things done; to replace other forms of communication such as the post. Is there a new politics on the Internet, he asks. If there is a public sphere on the Internet who populates it and how? What interactions occur on this space that exists only in electrons (my word, not his).

The old public spaces, such as the Agora and the town hall have given away to TV which isolates people. Where then is the public space if television has become the medium of political influence? The public, he argues, has been replaced by publicity.

Quoting other scholars, Poster opines that the public space is everything which is not private. With the conception of private space now being confined to what is said inside the home, this poses problems.

For Poster, the Habermasian view of the public space where real people meet to have real dialogue and come to real consensus cannot stand against the new forms of communication presented through the Internet. The disembodiement of subjects and the manner in which machines play a crucial role in the line of communication poses too many problems for Poster to accept Habermas' notion.

Poster observes that the Internet has created new forms of decentralised conversation, new collectives of people, new ways to undermine the power of the state, new ways to view property; and yet he notes that theory has not caught up with this development despite society creating this new form of democratic engagement.

"The "magic" of the Internet is that it is a technology that puts cultural acts, symbolizations in all forms, in the hands of all participants; it radically decentralizes the positions of speech, publishing, filmmaking, radio and television broadcasting, in short the apparatuses of cultural production."

Poster believes that the creation of the subject and discourse on the Internet is part of the same dynamic process.

Politics will need to be re-thought to accommodate the disembodiment that occurs on the Internet. A new form of leader will necessarily need to emerge.

First Monday

Just received an email from First Monday about my article about Twitter. They gave me some great feedback which I'll use for future pieces submitted to peer-reviewed journals.

To summarise their feedback; be sharper with citations, don't make grandiose statements that aren't supported, and support claims with evidence.

One of my goals over the next 12 months is to have an article published in a journal. I now have a much greater respect for the thinking and work that goes into articles that appear on First Monday and I'll be working to make my future work much sharper.

P.S. Yes, I am a bit disappointed, but I'm also really excited to have received such detailed advice.

How to write a report

All you need to know about preparing a professional quality report from Curtin University.

Free analytical research report anyone?

Over the next few days I'll be writing an analytical research report examining an issue or practice that has come to my attention in the process of completing one of my class projects, which involved preparing a business plan for an Internet media business. It's supposed to give me better research skills and the opportunity to critically evaluate my findings. Basically that's the brief, but the real story is the lecturer is quite OK on us researching and writing about any half decent business issue.

You know what the trouble is here? I have no idea what the issue is. I might do something about web 2.0, the insignificance economy, modularisation of information or...I don't know.

Any ideas? If you want me to write a free paper about something of concern in your business now is your chance to say so.

Zotero - The Next-Generation Research Tool

Worth checking out.

Zotero - The Next-Generation Research Tool:

"Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself."