Live Blogging
Articles in this category are live blogs of my notes authored at (or shortly after) events, conferences, discussions, and presentations related to my areas of scholarly interest: digital strategic communication, digital & media literacy, information design, and human communication.
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Social Media & Education: School, Teacher, Student & Classroom
The leaders of Social Media Charlotte invited me to speak at the December 2010 breakfast meeting titled, “Social Media & Education: School, Teacher, Student & Classroom.” The panel – which included Dr. Jeri Langford (Associate Professor at Johnson & Wales University), Adam Brooks (Communications Director for Central Piedmont Community College), and Brian Baute (IT Director…
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Reflections on NCA 2010
The annual conference of the National Communication Association is typically a whirlwind of thought-provoking formal sessions and informal discussions. This year was no exception. I began this conference with a 5.14 mile run, complete with a beautiful view of Sunday’s sunrise (at right). My run took me down Market Street to the bay, around the…
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A Month with @Mashable
When I decided to immerse myself in Twitter in early 2009, my goal was to learn the means whereby a business might effectively tweet. I chose Pete Cashmore of Mashable (then named “Mashup”) as a guide for my learning and performed a content analysis of his 747 tweets in the month of May 2009. The…
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Moving from Chalk to YouTube: Teaching with Technology
Dan O’Hair, Dean of the College of Communications and Information Studies at the University of Kentucky and past-president of the National Communication Association (NCA), is a leader in the field of communication. At the NCA 2010 annual conference, Dr. O’Hair presented on his experiences with online and hybrid instruction. Online and hybrid education has many…
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Sharing, Hiding, and Finding Ourselves on Facebook
Four papers presented at the National Communication Association 2010 annual conference dealt with the issues and motivations that impact information sharing on Facebook. Exploring Privacy Management and Disclosure on Facebook Camille A. Hall, Keturi D. Beatty, Bethany Petty, and Zuoming Wang (University of North Texas) Hall et.al. discussed the effects of profile-owner’s gender and potential…
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Digital Privacy and Digital Literacy
Knowledge of the role of Internet surveillance could play a role in our privacy behaviors online. For the typical Internet user, survelliance knowledge could include Internet tracking, marketing research, and demographic-driven advertising, among others. Yet, many typical Internet users lack basic knowledge of the surveillance practices that occur on sites they visit regularly. Some of…
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Social Media for Crisis Communication
Social media outlets have a role to play as one tool in an effective crisis communication strategy, say researchers Shari Veil (University of Kentucky), Tara Buehner (University of Oklahoma), and Michael Palenchar (Univ of Tennessee, Knoxville). At the National Communication Association 2010 annual conference, they presented a paper entitled, “Increasing Dialogue in Disasters: Incorporating Social…
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Connecting to Publics with Social Media
Public relations practice has been dramatically impacted by social media. Papers presented in the Public Relations Division at the National Communication Association 2010 annual conference tied social media and web-based tools to core functions of public relations practice – using a variety of theoretical frames. Each provides unique insights into the theory and practice of…
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Theorizing Social Media
Standing room only in a packed meeting room set the tone for a session on “Theorizing social media” at the National Communication Association Annual Conference, demonstrating the growing interest among communication scholars for understanding advancing technologies in the framework of existing communication theory. One attendee remarked, “All the scholarship on social media, when it is…
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The State of the Communication Discipline
The National Communication Association offered its inaugural “State of the Discipline” Address at the 2010 Annual Conference. Dr. David Zarefsky of Northwestern University was chosen to begin this discussion having attended 43 consecutive NCA conferences and served in numerous leadership roles. From Zarefsky’s perspective, is communication a discipline? “Yes and no.” We lack widely-known scholarly…
J.A.McArthur 