But Becky, While I agree with your call for more attention paid to Internet politics, I disagree with your saying that media portrayls have been positive. I'm seeing mostly negative portrayls in the media of Twitter. Both in Canada and the US. Almost always written by journalists who don't know anything about it -- they write as foreign correspondents -- and who equate know-nothing punditry to hard-earned research. Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________ S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Department of Sociology 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388 University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 twitter:barrywellman http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _______________________________________________________________________ > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 13:39:52 -0400 > From: "Prof. Becky Lentz" <becky.lentz@mcgill.ca> > Subject: [CITASA] Seeking more balanced attention to 'internet' > policies as well as use > Dear Colleagues, > > As an addendum to (and agreement with) the positive portrayals of networked > life (see recent posts re Twitter and Networked Life) focused on the power > of the Internet paired with social networking technologies, I think it's > equally important to be keep a focus on debates about the policies that make > this infrastructure available, affordable, accessible, and democratic. > Perhaps not all necessarily "traditional" sociology topics, but important to > keeping another dimension of the conversation ever-present, especially from > a sociological perspective. By this I mean the conversation about policies > governing the Internet and communication infrastructure need not be driven > primarily from political science:

The media coverage of Twitter has been varied. Rich Sanchez of CNN uses it actively on his 3 pm news show & Oprah had a positive segment about Twitter on show last Friday. NPR is very active on Twitter & Saturday morning host Scott Simon has one of largest accounts on the network. If you look at the most active users (most messages sent) on the system, they are all either news feeds or radio feeds. It appears that those who use Twitter, take full advantage of the network while those who don't understand it, dismiss it...like the internet was dismissed by many in the early 1990s. Because Twitter has gotten a certain level of media buzz, this is inevitably followed by a backlash by people who feel a pressure to adopt it (which is completely unwarranted). Liz Pullen epullen@drew.edu

I don't think newsfeeds are "users" of Twitter in the community sense. My beef is with the multiple reporters (NY Times 3X, Toronto Globe, Little Rock TV) I've dealt with recently who treat it as a strange exotic beast, and who are still on the kick that the Internet is killing F2F community. Time to wring that canard's neck -- if i only knew how. Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________ S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Department of Sociology 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388 University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 twitter:barrywellman http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _______________________________________________________________________ On Sun, 19 Apr 2009, Elizabeth Pullen wrote: > Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 12:39:10 -0400 > From: Elizabeth Pullen <epullen@drew.edu> > To: Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca>, > communication and information technology section asa > <citasa@list.citasa.org> > Subject: Re: [CITASA] Media portrayls of Twitter, et al. > > The media coverage of Twitter has been varied. Rich Sanchez of CNN uses it actively on his 3 pm news show & Oprah had a positive segment about Twitter on show last Friday. NPR is very active on Twitter & Saturday morning host Scott Simon has one of largest accounts on the network. If you look at the most active users (most messages sent) on the system, they are all either news feeds or radio feeds. > > It appears that those who use Twitter, take full advantage of the network while those who don't understand it, dismiss it...like the internet was dismissed by many in the early 1990s. Because Twitter has gotten a certain level of media buzz, this is inevitably followed by a backlash by people who feel a pressure to adopt it (which is completely unwarranted). > > Liz Pullen > epullen@drew.edu >