The Transparency Problem

Tomorrow in class, we will be discussing and practicing online research. We'll discuss not only effective methods of keyword searching using Google, Ask, and Yahoo, but also how to navigate the somewhat ominous Purdue Calumet Library page.

There's more to Googling than just typing random words in the search field. Starting at Google, we'll discuss the importance of tracking and revising keywords, which eliminates duplicate searches. Then, we'll discuss Boolean searches, wildcard searching and sub-searching.

We'll begin with Google because this is the familiar research environment for the students. Why? By starting with something familiar, we can segway into something unfamiliar, which is what I do when we go to the Library website. There's no difference in methodology between Web research and library research.

There's also no difference in evaluating the sources. One of my CSW students made this point in his blog. He said, "As far as sources are concerned, the differences between online and print sources are minimal...In addition, checking for the integrity of a source remains the same. Find details about the parent company and author. Anyone can publish a book and anyone can post a blog. Common sense is also a great tool."

It's true. Just because information came out of a book, or an encyclopedia, or some other source traditionally recognized as authoritative, this does not make it so. And common sense is a great tool.

But that's where it gets sticky...

One of the pieces of research I have for my thesis is the MacArthur Foundation's Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. One of the aspects of participatory culture discussed in this paper is the Transparency Problem.

In a nutshell, the Transparency Problem is what happens when a generation (or others) who have grown accustomed to suspending disbelief (p. 15) while immersing themselves in online environments so that a more realistic experience can be carried into effect.

I wondered how the Transparency Problem might affect online research - is it difficult to unsuspend disbelief in order to critically think?

While I was digesting the idea of a Transparency Problem, it occurred to me that perhaps the Transparency Problem isn't just a factor of immersive play environments; what if it is also related to the constant onslaught of rapid information in a variety of medias? What if the brain suspends disbelief as a filter?

I may be an exception, I don't know, but I do know that I have a very high filter (suspension of disbelief?) in regards to media information. I'm also a great deal older than the average person who has been enculturated in a digital environment.

So, what I'm wondering is are students truly superficial searchers of irrelvant data, or are they merely unable to unsuspend their disbelief?

Different Pokes for Different Folks

While I was doing some research for my thesis (one page written, YAY!) /killing myself now... I tripped across The Parent Chronicles.

Keywords return the most interesting hits.

Anyway, the site offers advice to parents who are trying to communicate with, relate to and understand their kids. Cool. The video on the home page is a definite must-see for those seeking a clarification of the word "clueless."

After I watched the video, I clicked on the TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR TEEN'S WORLD quiz. As I always do on these teen slang quizzes, I scored 100. Dunno if that's a good thing or not. I admit, however, to tripping up a bit on one item:




Huh?

Okay, not huh to the terminology, but huh to the choice of definitions. I knew the question was addressing Facebook, but the choices didn't correlate to what I understood to be an everyday poke.

I thought this through....

"Well," I thought to myself. "Poking really isn't 'text messaging,'" (although an argument does exist for it to be considered as such). "It's not a new term for a teen's car, at least not in our lexicon...it's not really an online form of flirtation in the general sense, but it *could be* a rude way to get someone's attention in class."

Hmmmmm....

Since the Parent Chronicles site discusses the perils of online communication, I figured it had to be C) An online form of flirtation, so I chose C).



Facebook.com encourages its users to interpret the poke in different ways, but it is generally considered a form of online flirtation.

O RLY?

Sooo.....according to the response on this quiz, I have flirted with my BIL (yuk), my students (EEK), my colleagues (uhhhh) and my kids (ACK).

In addition to being an active Facebook user, studying social networking sites (SNS) has pretty much consumed my life for the last four or five months, and I didn't remember seeing anything about a poke generally being considered a form of online flirtation. Did I miss a memo? Had I been committing some type of inappropriate action online? Is my BIL going to make a move on me? Would I soon receive a cease-and-desist order from a student's parent?

Thinking that maybe the Facebook community was in on something that I apparently just_didn't_get, I decided to do a quick informal search.

The first hit I clicked on was an article by Kira Shewfelt in the Daily News Egypt defines the poke as a form of affection, where the interpretation is left to the relationship between the poker and the pokee. This Letter to the Editor is a response to someone who complained about "Promiscuous Poking," evidently the crime of over-poking somebody, an offense mentioned here, in Yahoo! Answers.

Okay, normally, I wouldn't take Yahoo! Answers seriously, but in My Search for Meaning (of the Poke), I found the varied Yahoo! responses to be representative of what I understand to be the definition of a poke, which is that the definition shifts depending on context (relationship) and content (type of poke) There's a huge difference between an everyday poke to a friend or an acquaintance and a "throw an apple bottom at" Super Poke.

Pokes permutate, if you will.

Even Facebook doesn't exactly know what a poke is:

"A poke is a way to interact with your friends on Facebook. When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings."


So why, I wonder, would a site like Parent Chronicles, whose goal appears to be bridging the divide between teens and their parents, burn a huge hole in that bridge by delivering the message that "a poke is generally considered to be a form of online flirtation?"

Oh NOOOOO... Web 2.0!

While surfing through the internet, I tripped over this. Tim, the Boomer-age author, is commenting on the Net Gen use of YouTube and suggests that Net Gens prefer a 2-D version of live music over an actual live performance. He goes on to mention the observations of a show MC, who expressed surprise over the number of people in the audience of a live Jake Shimabukuro concert.

Tim states, "Call me a baby boomer -but I just can’t get the same vibe sitting in from of a computer in a lonely study at home."

I don't think Tim, nor the MC, is quite understanding how Web 2.0 (or Net Gens) work.

Let's say Sarah is at home browsing through her friends' Myspace profiles. She discovers that her friend Mike has a Jake Shimabukuro song on her Playlist.com jukebox. Sarah wants to know more about Jake, so she does a YouTube search and finds several Jake Shimabukuro videos. She quite likes Jake's music, so she Twitters and tells everybody about Jake. Sarah receives an IM from her friend Vicky who tells her she saw Sarah's Twitter, and she searched for and found Jake on Facebook's iLike app. She's added a couple of videos to her FB profile. Vicky's friend Aimee sees in her FB News Feed that Vicky has added Jake Shimabukuro videos to her profile, so she goes and watches them. Aimee likes Jake, too, so she goes to her iTunes store and downloads a couple of his songs. This all happens in a span of about 15 minutes.

Soon, Jake comes to town to give a concert at a local festival. Sarah, Mike, Vicky, and Aimee all know each other from online interactions, and organize a trip to the concert via a Facebook event. They discover that 100 more of their friends all discovered Jake Shimabukuro through their collective Twittering, FBing, Myspacing, IMing and texting. 104 people show up at the concert who wouldn't otherwise have been there if it weren't for the collaboration offered by Web 2.0 tools.

The MC is surprised how many people are there, as many educators would be surprised to see how many of my students are actively participating in the FB group for our class, posting their own photos and writing way beyond anything I expected them to write. What the MC, Tim, and educators don't understand is that Web 2.0 isn't hindering anything; Web 2.0 is a way to facilitate and encourage communication, negotiation and meaning making within and between peer communities successfully and in a rapid manner. Even so, Web 2.0 shoudn't be viewed as a panacea, but rather a bridge over a gap.