"Social media is about conversation. This increasing emphasis on two way communication and conversation has transformed organisational communications and is crucial to effective online knowledge sharing. Communicators using online media use the term ‘engagement’ to describe the process of moving to a situation where users and producers interact online, discussing and sharing content."
FB is associating 'likes' with people without their knowledge.
Why educators should know about social networking tools.
"Focusing on the ethical issues that arise in social media research, we looked at issues around understanding digital identities, the ethics of platforms and public and private data. This is the first in a series of posts detailing the discussions we held as part of the breakout session. "
"A total of 125 students taking a first year seminar course for pre-health professional majors participated in this study (70 in the experimental group and 55 in the control group). With the experimental group, Twitter was used for various types of academic and co-curricular discussions. Engagement was quantified by using a 19-item scale based on the National Survey of Student Engagement. To assess differences in engagement and grades, we used mixed effects analysis of variance (ANOVA) models, with class sections nested within treatment groups. We also conducted content analyses of samples of Twitter exchanges. The ANOVA results showed that the experimental group had a significantly greater increase in engagement than the control group, as well as higher semester grade point averages. Analyses of Twitter communications showed that students and faculty were both highly engaged in the learning process in ways that transcended traditional classroom activities."
The 'spoof' site attacking Shell Oil exploitation of the Arctic. Developed by Greenpeace activists it caught a lot of people as being a real Shell site.
The Age on the Shell Arctic social media attack
Marketing but some good stuff in the final 'Nutshell' section where it makes the connection to people.
Groups and pages in Facebook - for education
9 year old Martha Payne's blog about her school dinners. Went viral and then some when the local council tried to ban her taking photos of her meals. Social media did the rest.