The Journal of Social Media

Need to get a fix on where we're coming from?

Our aim is to address some of the really tough questions about 'social media' and stimulate conversations about them:

What kind of questions?

For instance:

• What the hell is social media, really?
• Has anything actually changed?
• Is there actually a difference between social media and any other kind of media?
• Is there such a thing as anti-social media?
• If something important is happening – what should we do about it?

THE CONVERSATION BOX

Where we practice what we preach

This page is a good example of a problem the Social Media Lab is really interested in tackling.

We’ve been wondering for a while if people (including us) have been getting online communications completely wrong.

Conversations not messages? Ha!

It is tempting to imagine that once printed material has made the journey from boring old pieces of paper or a word file to this fabulously sexy medium, it will suddenly become easier to read and easier to understand and that your corporate voice will magically become more credible, more accessible and more exciting.

We don't think these assumptions bear close scrutiny.

Usability is not enough

We know that we aren't the only sceptics because usability people have been banging on about these problems since before the web began.

But unlike usability experts, we don't think that 'getting the usability right' is good enough.

Why not?

The text on the left of this sidebar, for instance, has pretty good usability.

It's very structured, clear and 'skimmable' which makes it quite accessible.

It's also expressed in a corporate voice that is coherent, focussed, thematically consistent, question-based and problem-oriented, which makes it potentially useful, although it has an unforgivable lack of hyperlinks (our excuse is - we're still working on them).

So, what’s missing?

If we are concerned with the Social part of Social Media, can we still spot something lacking in material like this, no matter how 'fit for purpose' it might be (even once we've put in all the useful hyperlinks we can think of)?

We don't mean something that can be fixed by 'jazzing it up' - by, for example, interspersing or overlaying eye-popping graphics, or inserting witty but otherwise redundant aphorisms into the body copy.

The social is missing

That’s because we don't think that 'socialising' the corporate voice should require that we undermine the usability of printed content or impose unacceptable 'creativity overheads' on authors or publishers.

We think that the corporate voice, once it goes online, finds itself (and is found by many readers) in an uprecedentedly busy, unpredictable and dynamic (i.e social) environment.

Radical recontextualistion

The context that the visitor is coming from and the experience that the reader has had - immediately prior to arriving at this web page - is almost impossible to nail down.

If they have found a page from your website on Google, they may never have seen your home page or any other page on your site.

Everything you have done on the rest of your website to close down ambiguities and make that one page fit neatly into the context of who you are and what you do can no longer be relied upon to deliver your corporate voice and make the things you have to say mean what you meant them to say.

So, despite the fact that some of the things you have to say are 'just functional' and thus 'inevitably boring' - such as a page like this one that's a typical 'who we are and what we do' statement - it's important to see if there might possibly be a treatment (and we are convinced that there is one) which we can apply to that voice on any web page which will make it much less likely that the person finding that page on Google will regret wasting their time trying to work out why they should be reading it.

Wondering how to do it?

We think a ‘CONVERSATION BOX’ like this might be a step in the right direction.

Why do we think these questions are important?

Because, if the rules of the game have changed, and media is going to be participative, deliberative and social from now on, then this is going to affect:

• Our lives and our work
• Government and politics
• Business and media
• Management, marketing and communications

in ways that we currently don't understand.

So who are we talking to?

We're aiming to reach out to audiences that in the past haven't had much to do with each other.

But we think it's about time that they did and we're intending to make sure that they do.

Audience One – Communications professionals

In particular we're going to be engaging with social media evangelists and sceptics amongst:

• Bloggers
• Professional journalists
• Broadcasters
• Marketeers and PRs

Audience Two – Human behaviour specialists

And because media is now social, perhaps it's about time we tried to introduce real rigour and genuine insights into our conversations about the social - rather than just the media - dimension of social media.

So we're going to be engaging with professional analysts of social behaviour and social communication including:

• Anthropologists (social and cultural)
• Psychologists (social and organisational)
• Philosophers
• Sociologists

Audience Three – CEOs and other Senior Executives, CIOs and management gurus

And because every company will soon be operating in a social media environment - whether they like it or not - we're going to get:

• Leading business school thinkers
• C-level management in key industries knowledge-based, high-tech and media
• prime movers in NGO and campaigning organisations, the public sector and government

involved so that this conversation is more than a media scrum or academic seminar. 

Audience Four – The Investment community

Now we shouldn't have to give compelling reasons for why we'll be talking to these guys, not after October 9th, 2006

• Venture Capitalists
• Financial Analysts

Audience Five – Human Resources Professionals

The impact of social media upon human resourcing may only become clear if and when so-called 'bubble behaviours' go mainstream.

Now if that point arrives then very large numbers of people in communications and management may need to be either completely retrained or recruited from a near-to-non existent talent-pool.

That's why we will also be reaching out now to those people involved in:

• Recruitment
• Training
• Industrial Relations
• Health and Safety

Because we can't wait till if and then to talk about what we think the issues actually are.

So who's behind this?

The Journal of Social Media editors are Peter Friedman and Stephen Fitzpatrick (also prime movers behind the Social Media Lab)

Contributing editors include Chris Oliver, Ken Eisold, Jon Stokes, Bruce Irvine, Colin Quine, John Bazalgette, Reenee Singh, Jenny Harris, Alan Rowan.

Thom McIntosh who's responsibe for user-experience design and technical support is an associate of the Social Media Lab, the organisation sponsoring the Journal of Social Media.

So what's the Social Media Lab?

Well, the Social Media Lab itself is a research facility that provides research and development services to organisations seeking to formulate socially engaged communications responses.

There's a section of the site completely devoted to the Social Media Lab, its mission and its history as well as interviews with social media lab people, should you wish to learn more.

Comments

[Debbie Todd]

Wow - this is all really interesting. I'm sure I'll be making many visits.