Social Media Conference on Nov 30, 2012

Here at the Texas Social Media Research Institute we are in the midst of preparing for our second annual Social Media Conference, which will be held at Tarleton State University on November 30, 2012.  

The conference will bring together will bring together social media experts, practitioners, and novices from across Texas, the U.S. and (we hope) the world.  This year's theme is "Connecting and Creating Communities."

Last year's inaugural conference included presentations on original social media research done by college students, how-to sessions from educators, and talks by social media experts.

Pictures from last year's conference.

For more information on the conference, including submissions, registration, contact information, and sponsorship, check out this flyer.

Who is following you? Tips to make you safer on Twitter

Have you ever looked at who is following you on Twitter?
Whether your personal or small business account, it is important to keep up with who is actually seeing what you post. Maybe it’s your competition, your regular customer, or RandomMan from RandomTown. Your ultimate goal is to have multiple followers, but are you being that effective if your followers aren’t even your target market, or are spammers? 

Did you know that about 40 percent of social media accounts were created by spammers?
That’s what Mark Risher told Bloomberg Businessweek in May. Risher is chief executive officer of Impermium, a company that sells anti-spam software.

While Twitter accounts are less personal than your Facebook profile, it is still important to be cautious of what you post and where.
Here are a few tips to be safer on Twitter.
First, take time every quarter to review your list of followers. Watch how many times a follower tweets. The most typical tweet for a spammer boils down to money -- the “get rich from working at home click on this link” is probably your average spammer. You can delete him or her by hovering over the “following” button to select “unfollow.”

What about the tweets that may be a little bit harder to justify?
For example, you read a tweet from your favorite musical artist about free tickets to a show -- all you have to do is click on the link and fill out the information. Before you click to win, make sure this is official Twitter page for the star.

Look for the blue check mark that can be found by the user’s name. This check mark is a symbol Twitter uses to inform tweeps (Twitter users) that the person is in fact who they say they are. The blue check is crucial for every Twitter account. 

Like other computer communication, be careful of the links you click.
Just because it goes through Twitter doesn’t automatically mean it is a safe site or a safe place to distribute information. Remember to always scroll down to the bottom of the screen and look for some type of security policy or icon.

Click on the icon to make sure the information you are about to submit is safe. As always, use extreme caution in giving out social security numbers, credit card numbers, email, passwords, and home addresses. 

If you find spammers on your list of followers, you can opt to block them. While logged into Twitter, go to the spammer’s profile page and look for the person icon on the top right. In the dropdown menu, select block. Don’t fall victim to spammers through your social media accounts and take time to purge them from your follower list.

The Texas Social Media Research Institute, based at Tarleton State University, is a cross-discipline collaboration focused on social media. Note: This post was originally published as a column in the the Stephenville Empire-Tribune and is reprinted with permission. Intern Brooke King authored this column.

Shot @ Life Campaign - Do what you love (social media) and raise funds for vaccinations in developing countries!

Readers,

Are you participating in the Shot @ Life Campaign this month? This is an innovative social media activity that focuses on developing countries, vaccinations, and activism!

Get involved!

Step 1 - Watch this video to find out about "Blogust Campaign" - Blog Relay for Good.

Step 2 - Each day, read the featured blogger's entry. For example on August 11th, Suzanne Chen (who is the author of the Mom Confessionals blog) will write about the Blogust Blog Relay. Then, remember to write a comment on her entry! Each comment increases the amount of money allocated to children's vaccines in developing countries.

Here are some of the featured blogger's profiles!

Justice Fergie blog - Stacey Ferguson

Todo Bebe blog - Jeanette Kaplun

Dad Labs blog - Clay Nichols

Step 3 - Reach the subsequent blogs! There are some VERY interesting bloggers!

Have you participated yet? Tell us about it!

By the way, here is a story about this wonderful campaign from CBS Atlanta!

Sincerely,

The Texas Social Media Research Institute (TSMRI)

TSMRI 2012-2013 Fellows announced

The Texas Social Media Research has selected its academic fellows for the 2012-2013 school year.  The fellows include Robin Bartoletti, Texas Woman's University; Mark Gammon, University of Colorado, Boulder; Lora Helvie-Mason, Southern University at New Orleans; Randy McCamey, Tarleton State University; Jeton McClinton, Jackson State University; and Jennifer Novak Ladd, Tarleton State University.

The selected TSMRI fellows anticipate doing research on such aspects as roles of social media in the classroom/workplace, expectations of privacy, perception, image of students/professors who engage in social networking, and understanding niche social networks such as Instagram.Fellows will present their research at the 2012 Social Media Conference on Nov. 30 at Tarleton State University, as well as other conferences and through academic journals.

Congratulations!

Social Media and the Olympics

2012 Olympic medals. Used with permission from Wikimedia Commons.

Gold. Silver. Bronze. 

The Olympics are probably blowing up your social media feeds right now. 

This Olympics is expected to topple previous social media records for sporting events.

And there will be drama.  For example, a tweet has already cost one Olympian her spot on the team. 

Reactions to NBC Olympic Coverage
If you're an avid Twitter user, you may have seen tweets with the hash tag #nbcfail, referring to the less-than-stellar Olympics coverage of NBC. Their much-criticized coverage  has included inane (and at times offensive) commentary, inadvertent spoilers, a delayed broadcast, and the cutting of an on-air tribute for victims of the July 7, 2005 London bombings. A British journalist who complained about the coverage and tweeted an NBC executive's email address to his followers had his Twitter account temporarily suspended.  

This is a screenshot of a Storify on NBC's Olympic coverage.

Other drama? Well, for one thing, the gold medal victory of U.S. gymnast Gabby Douglas was tarnished slightly by social media users who took to various formats to complain about, of all things, her hair. And in slightly stranger news, various tributes to the exuberance of Samuel L. Jackson's Olympic tweets have also surfaced online.

Social Media Research and the Olympics
If you're a researcher, keep in mind that social media and the Olympics will be ripe for study this summer. Right now, you might be collecting tweets for analysis of any number of topics connected to the sporting event. Four years ago, Hutchins and Mikosza looked at social media during the Beijing Games. Their article "The Web 2.0 Olympics: Athlete Blogging,Social Networking and Policy Contradictions at the 2008 Beijing Games"* is a good read. The authors highlight contradictions in the 2008 blogging guidelines like athletes being encouraged to express themselves but limiting marketing messages and avoiding comments on political systems. 

During the 2008 Games, one media manager attempted to write a sample blog post for his athletes, to demonstrate writing within the guidelines. According to Hutchins and Mikosza, he found it “rather difficult” to follow the contradictory rules in the social media policy. The article is also a nice recap of the social media issues during the games that you may have forgotten by now, like the photos of track cyclist Mike Friedman wearing an anti-pollution mask and the defense of his choice on his personal blog and swimmer Stephanie Rice’s party dress pictures on her Facebook page that were published in media outlets. Hutchins and Mikosza said controlling Twitter would be the next difficult challenge for the Olympic committee in future games. What do you think? 

2012 Olympics Social Media Policies

Check out the blogging policy for the London Games. http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Games_London_2012/IOC_Social_Media_Blogging_and_Internet_Guidelines-London.pdf.     Let’s say you are an Olympic athlete in London today. Would you be able to write a blog that meets these policies? Let us know how it goes! 

*This article is not available for free online, but you should be able to access it through a public or university library. Here is the citation: Hutchins, B. B., & Mikosza, J. J. (2010). The Web 2.0 Olympics: Athlete Blogging, Social Networking and Policy Contradictions at the 2008 Beijing Games. Convergence -London-, 16(3), 279-297.