A classic information illusion arises on the net: the conflation of a click with a look with a read. It's easy to track how many far away computers access a web page, not so easy to figure out whether anything on that web page was seen, read, thought about, etc.
So, a small experiment so I can come up with a tentative correction factor for the "visitor" count. If you actually read a post here could you post a very short comment to the effect of "yes, in Portland (or where ever)"? I'll set it so it can be anonymous and not require signin and so on. I'll leave this hear for a day or two to see if it garners any results.
Just click on "comments" below and a new window will open up.
Thanks,
Dan
Friday, September 26, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Notification and the Life Course
We've become so aware of our embeddedness in networks that it's easy to forget that you have to learn how to be a node. Competent execution of one's responsibilities as a part of social information networks is a learned skill. A lot of early childhood socialization is informational; kids need to learn what needs to be reported to whom. What kinds of things you tell everybody and what kinds of things you say only at home? Which things need to be reported to adults immediately and which not? They learn that it's not nice to tattle, never to cry wolf, always to tell the truth, etc. And such informational socialization is a life-long process.
Perhaps the network in which we all spend the greatest share of our social time is the family. It turns out that there's a neat evolution of notification expectations and practices across the life course. First we teach kids to notify us if they feel sick, see something dangerous, get approached by strangers, etc. Then they have to learn that some things are not disclosed to people outside the family, that it's not nice to tattle, and that they should never cry wolf. As our roles in the family change, it is a continuing challenge to "get notification right."
For several pre-adolescent years kids are pretty much informational open books. Parents are either in on or let in on much if not almost everything that happens in their lives.
Then, as the teenage years approach, parents have to ask and prod and they start receiving "none of your business" type responses. As kids get the use of the car and gain other access to spatial independence, parents become more and more dependent on what the child elects to notify them about. They have to invest more and more in notificational oversight: "call me when you get there," "tell me who you are with," "let us know when you are leaving." This is notificational socialization round three, training the kid in the notificational expectations that attach to their new status as semi-autonomous semi-adult. Rules and norms are called on to replace more direct information channels previously supplied by first-hand surveillance.
A big source of emotional conflict around notification at this stage is the growing contradiction of informational asymmetry experienced by the teenager. They know the parent can ask "where, when, with who, how long," and they know well that they have no hope of extracting similar information from the parent.
But then the kids go off to college and their entire life is suddenly out of view. We switch to phone calls and emails and spend out time exhorting them to call or write more often and to have more to say when they do.
And around this time, we see emerging an interesting conflict between parents as one forgets to mention right away, news received in a phone call or email. You know the response when in the company of friends one parent says "Our oldest just the other day said she was having an interesting time in her math class" and the other parent thinks "Hmmmm, that's news to me...." The classic notificational rebuke will follow: you should have told me that sooner!
Those same parents have parents of their own, of course, and will soon experience the notificational conflicts that go on between older adults and adult children. They get a phone call from mom describing a medical or financial emergency that occured a week or two before: "Ma! I can't believe you are just telling me this now!" It's quite possibly a vain attempt at late life socialization, but the adult children will work this angle just the same. The comeback is standard: "We didn't want to worry you."
The adult child is robbed of the ultimate informational comfort: no news is good news. They have to worry all the time and they say this makes them feel like they are dealing with a child. And it does, of course. But it's different too. Parents often withhold information from kids because they are too young to be told or because they don't need to worry about something. As older adults with adult children, there are vestiges of these sentiments – our adult problems are ours – and to yield to their adult children's "you should tell me right away" is to give up some of the relational adultness they have earned. And for the adult children to demand it is, in a way, an attempt, innocent as it may be, at replacing the adult-adult relationship by adopting the adult role and tilting their informational relationship with their adult parents toward notificational asymmetry.
Perhaps the network in which we all spend the greatest share of our social time is the family. It turns out that there's a neat evolution of notification expectations and practices across the life course. First we teach kids to notify us if they feel sick, see something dangerous, get approached by strangers, etc. Then they have to learn that some things are not disclosed to people outside the family, that it's not nice to tattle, and that they should never cry wolf. As our roles in the family change, it is a continuing challenge to "get notification right."
For several pre-adolescent years kids are pretty much informational open books. Parents are either in on or let in on much if not almost everything that happens in their lives.
Then, as the teenage years approach, parents have to ask and prod and they start receiving "none of your business" type responses. As kids get the use of the car and gain other access to spatial independence, parents become more and more dependent on what the child elects to notify them about. They have to invest more and more in notificational oversight: "call me when you get there," "tell me who you are with," "let us know when you are leaving." This is notificational socialization round three, training the kid in the notificational expectations that attach to their new status as semi-autonomous semi-adult. Rules and norms are called on to replace more direct information channels previously supplied by first-hand surveillance.
A big source of emotional conflict around notification at this stage is the growing contradiction of informational asymmetry experienced by the teenager. They know the parent can ask "where, when, with who, how long," and they know well that they have no hope of extracting similar information from the parent.
But then the kids go off to college and their entire life is suddenly out of view. We switch to phone calls and emails and spend out time exhorting them to call or write more often and to have more to say when they do.
And around this time, we see emerging an interesting conflict between parents as one forgets to mention right away, news received in a phone call or email. You know the response when in the company of friends one parent says "Our oldest just the other day said she was having an interesting time in her math class" and the other parent thinks "Hmmmm, that's news to me...." The classic notificational rebuke will follow: you should have told me that sooner!
Those same parents have parents of their own, of course, and will soon experience the notificational conflicts that go on between older adults and adult children. They get a phone call from mom describing a medical or financial emergency that occured a week or two before: "Ma! I can't believe you are just telling me this now!" It's quite possibly a vain attempt at late life socialization, but the adult children will work this angle just the same. The comeback is standard: "We didn't want to worry you."
The adult child is robbed of the ultimate informational comfort: no news is good news. They have to worry all the time and they say this makes them feel like they are dealing with a child. And it does, of course. But it's different too. Parents often withhold information from kids because they are too young to be told or because they don't need to worry about something. As older adults with adult children, there are vestiges of these sentiments – our adult problems are ours – and to yield to their adult children's "you should tell me right away" is to give up some of the relational adultness they have earned. And for the adult children to demand it is, in a way, an attempt, innocent as it may be, at replacing the adult-adult relationship by adopting the adult role and tilting their informational relationship with their adult parents toward notificational asymmetry.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Quick Followup : More notification in "Mad Men"
An earlier post (8 September) described the use of notificational deviance as a dramatic plot device using the television series Mad Men as an example. The most recent episode provided another delightful example of the use of notification to communicate and structure social relationships.
Early in the episode "A Night to Remember" there is a great scene where Pete and Duck are leaving Don's office. As the two are heading out the door, a quick conversation about an upcoming dinner/meeting occurs between Duck and Pete. Pete is obviously out of the loop (and wasn't invited). He lingers for a fraction of a second behind Duck and shoots Don a look. Don's shoulder shrug and "oh well" facial expression do a marvelous job of putting Pete in his place. He doesn't even deserve an explanation of what it is he has been left out of and he so feels it that he doesn't display his usual out-of-place brashness.
Notification and the Public Sphere
Working today on the outline for a chapter on "notification and the public sphere." In previous chapters the focus was notification and the maintenance of relationships among individuals. In this chapter I look at the broader distribution of information in society and the institutions that give rise to it.
The raw material I am working with runs the gamut from sunshine and freedom of information laws, mandatory disclosure regulations, discovery in legal context, state mandated notification, truth and reconciliation commissions, emergency warning systems, diplomatic protocol, gag rules, and privacy standards. Generically, I'm thinking of these as "information institutions."
This is admittedly a big bucket of diverse phenomena; today's work was a first stab at grouping and categorizing and discovering underlying dimensions that organize these things as manifestations of basic informational forms.
Here are my preliminary categories.
Sunshine, Stickers, Labels, and Report Cards. Laws and rules that say that the state and private and public actors cannot keep (all) secrets. Some of these are things like sunshine laws that promote accountability or combat corruption, others are disclosure rules that address information asymmetry between producers and consumers or between service providers and the public. This category resonates with the "is more information always better" posts that have appeared here previously.
Structured Honesty: Social Organization of Informational Equality. Being able to say "I don't have to tell you" is an important manifestation of inequality with both material and symbolic consequences. In various forms, the capacity to maintain some control over the disposition of some information is widely recognized as a key component of autonomous personhood. This category includes institutions that collectively enforce (true) information sharing -- from legal rules of discovery to truth commissions. It is, I think, distinct from the previous and next categories, but I'm still working on a rigorous way to distinguish them. The "democracy and the information order" posts that have appeared previously would fall into this category (6 August 2008, 20 September 2007, 22 May 2007, 11 March 2007)
The Social Organization of Omniscience (includes warning systems). These can be distinguished from the disclosure examples because in those cases one entity either has the information and just needs to be compelled to release it or has/controls access to the information and needs to be compelled to collect and release it. By contrast, this category includes cases where either the information is dispersed and we organize a means to detect and aggregate and channel it. Or, where a special channel is set aside to that one type of information (perhaps a rare one) can take precedence. Examples: ER doctors who must report abuse or abortion providers who must provide parental notification for minors, emergency warning systems (tornado.,hurricane, tsunami), airport announcements that recruit everyone as a lookout for unattended bags (see also post on children as spies).
Protocol. In diplomacy, for example, protocol strongly regulates who would speak with whom. As in computer communication protocols, these institutions allow us to tie systems together.
Socially Sanctioned Non-Telling. This is almost the opposite of the first category (leaving an interesting space in between) -- secrets that are socially organized. Gag rules and sealed agreements, trade secrets, intellectual property regimes, governments classification systems (top secret, etc.), official secrets acts, privacy standards.
The raw material I am working with runs the gamut from sunshine and freedom of information laws, mandatory disclosure regulations, discovery in legal context, state mandated notification, truth and reconciliation commissions, emergency warning systems, diplomatic protocol, gag rules, and privacy standards. Generically, I'm thinking of these as "information institutions."
This is admittedly a big bucket of diverse phenomena; today's work was a first stab at grouping and categorizing and discovering underlying dimensions that organize these things as manifestations of basic informational forms.
Here are my preliminary categories.
Sunshine, Stickers, Labels, and Report Cards. Laws and rules that say that the state and private and public actors cannot keep (all) secrets. Some of these are things like sunshine laws that promote accountability or combat corruption, others are disclosure rules that address information asymmetry between producers and consumers or between service providers and the public. This category resonates with the "is more information always better" posts that have appeared here previously.
Structured Honesty: Social Organization of Informational Equality. Being able to say "I don't have to tell you" is an important manifestation of inequality with both material and symbolic consequences. In various forms, the capacity to maintain some control over the disposition of some information is widely recognized as a key component of autonomous personhood. This category includes institutions that collectively enforce (true) information sharing -- from legal rules of discovery to truth commissions. It is, I think, distinct from the previous and next categories, but I'm still working on a rigorous way to distinguish them. The "democracy and the information order" posts that have appeared previously would fall into this category (6 August 2008, 20 September 2007, 22 May 2007, 11 March 2007)
The Social Organization of Omniscience (includes warning systems). These can be distinguished from the disclosure examples because in those cases one entity either has the information and just needs to be compelled to release it or has/controls access to the information and needs to be compelled to collect and release it. By contrast, this category includes cases where either the information is dispersed and we organize a means to detect and aggregate and channel it. Or, where a special channel is set aside to that one type of information (perhaps a rare one) can take precedence. Examples: ER doctors who must report abuse or abortion providers who must provide parental notification for minors, emergency warning systems (tornado.,hurricane, tsunami), airport announcements that recruit everyone as a lookout for unattended bags (see also post on children as spies).
Protocol. In diplomacy, for example, protocol strongly regulates who would speak with whom. As in computer communication protocols, these institutions allow us to tie systems together.
Socially Sanctioned Non-Telling. This is almost the opposite of the first category (leaving an interesting space in between) -- secrets that are socially organized. Gag rules and sealed agreements, trade secrets, intellectual property regimes, governments classification systems (top secret, etc.), official secrets acts, privacy standards.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Talking to Ourselves
This post is not my usual brand of sociology of information. It's true that the topics I'm including under that title DO veer off in the direction of media and journalism and related public discourse realms, but since there are already well established and well defined fields that study that stuff, I've felt there's no reason for the sociology of information to be intellectually imperialist in its aspirations.
But just the same....
My local radio station is fund-raising this week. During one of the pledge breaks the hosts were talking about a lefty show that had an episode on voter suppression (meaning republicans are trying to prevent folks from voting democratic). They bantered back and forth to the effect of "We know there was lots of voter suppression in the 2004 election and it's still going on, you know...." My politics being more or less the same as theirs, my main reaction was a simple "yup" between spoonfuls of cereal. The next thing they said was that there would be a local show about the presidential debate next week. Both sort of tripped over words trying to express something like "because we're different [from the national crowd] here in the (San Francisco) Bay Area."
First, I'm sure that if I played with my radio dial or sat down at my computer I could really fast find a right wing radio show that was all up in arms about "voter fraud" (meaning some people who shouldn't be allowed to vote voted democratic). So what? Seems so symptomatic of the state of our public discourse : preaching to the choir on both sides; demonization and fear mongering. "Our" side is probably right, but I just found myself wondering what we hope to accomplish with this kind of "journalism." Does it fan the flames of my indignation? Burn in more deeply my conviction? Or does it just make it less and less likely that we'll ever manage to have a conversation with someone who disagrees with us and less likely that either will budge if we did?
For the second thing, back to the radio hosts' comment about the Bay Area being different. Again, I suspect there are lots of radio hosts around the country saying more or less the same thing this morning. And each of them is comparing local sensibilities to an idealized version of some "outsider" them. We Texans are a might bit different from those New Yorkers! We Floridians are not like the rest of the south. We south Floridians are not like the rest of Florida. And on and on. If we (whoever we are) really want to win this election, you'd think one of the most important things would be to listen to people who are not like us, listen good, and learn how to talk with them too.
It is interesting that we could live in an "information age" and yet maybe have lost the ability to talk.
Perhaps of Interest
Diana C. Mutz Hearing the Other Side. Cambridge University Press
But just the same....
My local radio station is fund-raising this week. During one of the pledge breaks the hosts were talking about a lefty show that had an episode on voter suppression (meaning republicans are trying to prevent folks from voting democratic). They bantered back and forth to the effect of "We know there was lots of voter suppression in the 2004 election and it's still going on, you know...." My politics being more or less the same as theirs, my main reaction was a simple "yup" between spoonfuls of cereal. The next thing they said was that there would be a local show about the presidential debate next week. Both sort of tripped over words trying to express something like "because we're different [from the national crowd] here in the (San Francisco) Bay Area."
First, I'm sure that if I played with my radio dial or sat down at my computer I could really fast find a right wing radio show that was all up in arms about "voter fraud" (meaning some people who shouldn't be allowed to vote voted democratic). So what? Seems so symptomatic of the state of our public discourse : preaching to the choir on both sides; demonization and fear mongering. "Our" side is probably right, but I just found myself wondering what we hope to accomplish with this kind of "journalism." Does it fan the flames of my indignation? Burn in more deeply my conviction? Or does it just make it less and less likely that we'll ever manage to have a conversation with someone who disagrees with us and less likely that either will budge if we did?
For the second thing, back to the radio hosts' comment about the Bay Area being different. Again, I suspect there are lots of radio hosts around the country saying more or less the same thing this morning. And each of them is comparing local sensibilities to an idealized version of some "outsider" them. We Texans are a might bit different from those New Yorkers! We Floridians are not like the rest of the south. We south Floridians are not like the rest of Florida. And on and on. If we (whoever we are) really want to win this election, you'd think one of the most important things would be to listen to people who are not like us, listen good, and learn how to talk with them too.
It is interesting that we could live in an "information age" and yet maybe have lost the ability to talk.
Perhaps of Interest
Diana C. Mutz Hearing the Other Side. Cambridge University Press
The Economy and Information : Does More Info Make the World a Better Place?
This week's serial superlatives in things economic -- each day the "events of recent days" were "the most stunning thing to happen since the thirties" -- has led to lots and lots of hand wringing and calls for new kinds or amounts of regulation. And a lot of what folks are saying has to do with information -- more of it, in public, is what we need!
This brings to mind two things I've recently read. One is a 2007 book by Fung, Graham, and Weil called Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency (Cambridge University Press). It is a report on an empirical study of 18 cases of what they call "targeted transparency" -- legislated requirements that corporations (or other private entities) disclose specific information so that the public can make informed choices about their products, services, etc. They looked at the history of disclosure as public policy, why it emerged when it did, whether it's likely to continue to expand, and whether, and under what conditions, it works. In a nutshell, they conclude that it works well in some cases, not at all in others. The process is always political and it works when the results of the political process produce a system that is "user oriented" and "sustainable." I'll post a full review of the book here in the near future.
The other piece I was reminded of was by Malcom Gladwell in a January 2007 New Yorker: "Open Secrets: Enron, intelligence, and the perils of too much information." In it Gladwell builds on, among others, the work of Yale law professor Jonathan Macey who, in a review article about the Enron debacle, argued that the problem was not information that Enron hid, but the fact that no one could put together the puzzle pieces represented by the information they disclosed.
I recommend both Fung et al. and the Gladwell piece as grist for your thought mill this week.
See also this old post on the "is more better" question.
This brings to mind two things I've recently read. One is a 2007 book by Fung, Graham, and Weil called Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency (Cambridge University Press). It is a report on an empirical study of 18 cases of what they call "targeted transparency" -- legislated requirements that corporations (or other private entities) disclose specific information so that the public can make informed choices about their products, services, etc. They looked at the history of disclosure as public policy, why it emerged when it did, whether it's likely to continue to expand, and whether, and under what conditions, it works. In a nutshell, they conclude that it works well in some cases, not at all in others. The process is always political and it works when the results of the political process produce a system that is "user oriented" and "sustainable." I'll post a full review of the book here in the near future.
The other piece I was reminded of was by Malcom Gladwell in a January 2007 New Yorker: "Open Secrets: Enron, intelligence, and the perils of too much information." In it Gladwell builds on, among others, the work of Yale law professor Jonathan Macey who, in a review article about the Enron debacle, argued that the problem was not information that Enron hid, but the fact that no one could put together the puzzle pieces represented by the information they disclosed.
I recommend both Fung et al. and the Gladwell piece as grist for your thought mill this week.
See also this old post on the "is more better" question.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Information, People, Machines, and Systems
Last week United Airlines (or more properly its stockholders) had an unfortunate information experience. It turns out to be pretty delicious stuff from a sociology of information point of view. Apparently, a small newspaper in Florida linked to an old news story about UAL declaring bankruptcy (in December 2002). A google search by a staff member at a financial information website brings up the article (some sources say on a page with that day's date on top so that it was easily mistaken for new news as opposed to old news). The info goes on the newsletter site and they are picked up by Bloomberg, perhaps the most widely distributed financial news service. Services like Bloomberg serve up headlines that anyone can see with links to full stories available only to subscribers. Once the headline hit Bloomberg, traders around the world start dumping UAL stock and other news services apparently compounded the misinformation by repeating it.[see also FN1]
Now much of the post mortem inquiry into this event seems to suggest that the main culprit was automation (e.g. Katherine Thompson on The Editors' Weblog). One version of this is that what we saw was a tightly knit network of automated search agents and news consolidators run amok (I'm imaginging someone has already thought through the "small world" and "preferential network attachment" angles on this). Humans, this take suggests, serve a useful purpose as governors (in the mechanical sense rather than the state government sense) because they can have a "that sounds funny to me" reaction and double check something before passing it on.
So there's lots of grist here for my chapter on technology and the information order, but for the moment I'm stuck on what we learn here about our assumptions about humans as components of information networks. Of course, we all know examples of people who don't think before passing along what they have heard, but we recognize that we think of it as a basic norm of communication network membership: use common sense, don't be a hollow, mechanical repeater. It's a responsibility hinted at by many religions' prohibitions against gossip, idle talk, and so on, although these are often primarily about spreading harmful (true or false) personal information.
Now much of the post mortem inquiry into this event seems to suggest that the main culprit was automation (e.g. Katherine Thompson on The Editors' Weblog). One version of this is that what we saw was a tightly knit network of automated search agents and news consolidators run amok (I'm imaginging someone has already thought through the "small world" and "preferential network attachment" angles on this). Humans, this take suggests, serve a useful purpose as governors (in the mechanical sense rather than the state government sense) because they can have a "that sounds funny to me" reaction and double check something before passing it on.
So there's lots of grist here for my chapter on technology and the information order, but for the moment I'm stuck on what we learn here about our assumptions about humans as components of information networks. Of course, we all know examples of people who don't think before passing along what they have heard, but we recognize that we think of it as a basic norm of communication network membership: use common sense, don't be a hollow, mechanical repeater. It's a responsibility hinted at by many religions' prohibitions against gossip, idle talk, and so on, although these are often primarily about spreading harmful (true or false) personal information.
In addition to the above ideas, I'll file this under "the headline problem" -- how info on the net is easily passed around (or acted on) by folks who have not read past the headline and how news consolidators and interfaces that show abbreviated titles can exacerbate this.
FN1: On a completely different analytical trajectory, one might inquire as to whether there will be a tendency here for the fingers to point, and the investigative paths to lead, in the direction of the deepest pockets (probably google).
FN1: On a completely different analytical trajectory, one might inquire as to whether there will be a tendency here for the fingers to point, and the investigative paths to lead, in the direction of the deepest pockets (probably google).
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