Social media play an important role in sharing experiences, thoughts, feelings … During Obama’s Inauguration Day a lot of people used social media to get/stay connected with others and thus being part of that historical day. Some numbers:

During Obama’s inauguration Twitter reported five times more tweets.

But also on YouTube, this week only 332 000 new videos  containing the tag “Obama” were uploaded and 17 000 with the tag “Inauguration”.`

The full report can be found on Mashable

Katrien already wrote on the perils of using Facebook. I now found an interesting work on using Facebook for activism. On the site of DigiActive, a volunteer organization dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use the Internet and mobile phones to increase their impact, you can find “Introduction to Facebook Activism” written by Dan Schultz.

Because of its massive user base and the free applications one can create and install Facebook is too interesting to ignore. This small guide (its only 15 pages long) contains some pro & cons of Facebook activism, a practical guide for setting up activists events and three examples of Facebookactivism: Monk’s protst in Burma, Help Fouad Campaign from Morocco and the Free Kareem Campaign from Egypt.

The most interesting content is off course the analysis of these three different campaigns as it gives an insight on how a sometimes spontaneous action evolves into a massivley supported cause on Facebook and what problems and questions could then pop up (for example, the lack of anonimity in these sometimes dangerous campaigns).

Download Introduction to Facebook Activism (pdf)

Source: DigiActive

A new year is around the corner … the perfect time for overviews and lists the summarize the past year. Also search engine Google just published the yearly Zeitgeist- report. With this Google want to reveal a certain zeitgeist (the spirit of the times) by analysing the millions of search queries people daily insert.

Most populair search queries were: ‘Sarah Palin’, ‘Beijing 2008′ and social media sites like Facebook, Tuenti and Wer kennt wen.

In preparation for my class on Social Media I came across two interesting courses dealing with a variety of topics which I perceive as key elements of what can be called Social Media.

Creative Networking - Burak Arikan

At the NYU artist & researcher Burak Arikan teaches a class on creative networks. He focuses on the emergence of networks within the context of art. His course consists of two parts. One part focuses on the structures of networks. What is for example swarming, distance or clustering? The second phase deals with the processes taking place in social networks.

I especially like his structured approach and the fresh graphic style for visualising the different concepts.

Creative Networking, NYU / ITP

Digital Methods Course - New Media TEMLab, University of Amsterdam& Govcom.org

Google Movie Image

The Digital Methods course is a way to try to find new research methodologies (besides the existing ones mostly originating from social sciences) linked to the specific language of new media.

On their opening page they provide a summary, if you click deeper you reach the Wiki which is constantly updated and gives hands on advice to do research.

Digital Methods Course