Social Media Lab

So what on earth does a Social Media Lab look like?

The social media lab is a communications and media research facility. We have an exclusive focus upon social media and organisational development

THE CONVERSATION BOX

Whose voice is this?

Now isn’t the voice on the left a great example of that corporate voice that you’re all too familiar with?

You know, the one that mesmerizes you, the one that whispers ‘this is the voice of God and you will believe’.

Trouble is, that trance isn’t so easily induced these days. People have learned to resist its seductive rhetoric.

These days everyone is suspicious of that God-like tone.

But old habits die hard.

How did that voice compel our attention and our assent for so long?

What are the strategies of the God-like tone?

Can we name them so that we can put them to one side and move on, learn a new voice that’s, well, a bit more human, a bit more like the voice that you and I use when we’re actually talking?

Tricks of the trade

It preaches and instructs, telling you how things really are, what’s gone wrong and how to put it right.

Its tone is quite deliberately abstract, cold and impersonal and it makes all kind of unsubstantiated claims (where are the examples for instance?)

How could you resist that paternal voice? Where else can you hear the ghost of the Victorian father speaking like that – in a voice that knows how things really are – in hese uncertain post-modern times?

Solutions-based language

It’s so seductive, the ‘solutions-based’ language that it deploys to elide the struggle and conflict and pain that is inevitably a part of working with others to solve really challenging problems.

Where's all the human drama in this grandiose talk about changing one ‘voice’ for another, as if the forms of corporate life that these ways of talking and acting are embedded in could be magically spirited away with the waving of a wand?

We are talking about a massive breakdown of legitimacy and authority here, aren’t we?

Who can really claim how to put this right, to say what 'this' is or even that in which 'rightness' might consist?

All the real problems – what and where are they? – are taking place 'offstage'.

Therein lies the tragic dimension of this dying god; in his unvocalised externalities.

Second nature

But this voice is second nature to anyone currently at work in the corporate 'communications' industry.

It’s so close.

It’s so easy.

Can we distance ourselves enough to find another way?

What are we afraid of?

Our research and development is focused in three areas:

Experience mining

Experience mining research and development is centred upon the creation of a structured approach for discovering concealed communications capital inside organisational and business processes.

Once accessed and realised, this concealed communications capital can be utilised to ‘fuel’ structured and sustainable conversational marketing and communications programmes

Experience mining services

Corporate voice

Corporate voice research and development work is concerned with enabling an organisation to make the transition from:

the current ‘broadcast’ style corporate voice which is:

• message based
• experience poor
• monolithic

to a ‘conversational’ corporate voice which is:

• realtime
• experience rich
• multi-dimensional

Corporate Voice services

Experience sharing

Experience sharing research explores sustainable ways of deploying conversational communications:

Current lines of research include:

• How to embed experience rich communications into day-to-day business processes.
• How to integrate conversational style communications into communications strategy
• How roles, responsibilities and skill-sets change in a conversationally enabled organisation

Experience sharing services

History

The Social Media Lab was originally a corporately funded research project which turned into a rolling 6 year investigation into emerging social behaviours on the internet.

This research project led to a number of development projects which tested and further refined the research findings

The most recent project was conducted on behalf of the Inward Investment Group (IIG) at the Department of Trade and Industry. 

We feel that this is the right time to put the project onto a formal footing and to engage in a public conversation about our work with the social media community via the Journal of Social Media.

People

Peter Friedman

Peter Friedman is Director of Research at the Social Media Lab

Stephen Fitzpatrick

Stephen Fitzpatrick is Director of Strategy at the Social Media Lab

Thom McIntosh

Thom McIntosh is an associate of the Social Media Lab specialising in user-experience design

Karen Appleby

Karen Appleby is Adminisration Manager

I Just don't get it

"The voice you're using in the "Conversation Box" above seems to be just as impersonal and preachy as the stuff on the left.

I't's just as much of an example of the godlike tone you're telling us is no good (at least you're saying one thing I agree with).

So if even you can't stop using this godlike tone, why on earth should we trust you to help us try and sound more like human beings than gods?"

Partners and network

The Social Media Lab draws upon the resources of a number of institutions including:

The Management School at the Institute of Family Therapy
The Grubb Institute of Human Science and Behaviour
National Theatre’s Theatreworks Management Development Department

as well as an diverse interdisciplinary network which comprises:

• communications professionals

and academics, theorists and practitioners from a diverse range of disciplines:

• psychology
• anthropology
• philosophy
• sociology