Wikipedia – research tool, appreciated by foreign students and professors, disliked by Slovenians

In my years that I spent on Faculty of social sciences, I often listened to my professors saying that Wikipedia is not a relevant source and that we are not allowed to use it as a reference in our seminar papers and essays. I understood their position in a way, because Wikipedia is a tool, which changes constantly and everyone can help to create it. That is why information is often not verified. I have to admit that I share a little bit of their hesitation, but I am not quite sure if it is because I have listened to professors’ arguments for 4 years or because I am just so distrustful when it comes to dealing with sources that are relevant for my research, especially the ones which are not published in scientific journals. But I was always curious to find out for what and how much other students use Wikipedia. So I found a research from Allison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, conducted in the spring of 2009 in the U.S., which deals with the use of Wikipedia. The researchers present findings from a survey of U.S. college students on six campuses. The mayor findings of the study are:

1. Far more students, than not, used Wikipedia. Wikipedia was used in addition to a small set of other commonly used information resources at the beginning of the research process.
2. Reasons for using Wikipedia were diverse: Wikipedia provided students with a summary about a topic, the meaning of related terms, and also got students started on their research and offered a usable interface.
3. Respondents who were majoring in architecture, engineering, or the sciences were more likely to use Wikipedia than respondents in other majors.

A majority of respondents frequently used Wikipedia for background information, but less often than they used other common resources, such as course readings and Google. The findings suggest that students used Wikipedia for its summaries and to get started, and because of usability, comprehensibility, and lesser so, for credibility or its peer–to–peer capabilities.
The results of the research are very interesting (if you want to read the whole research and its findings, visit http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2830/2476), but despite that, I couldn’t help wondering if the sample (6 campuses in U.S.) is big enough to call it representative. It would probably be useful to expand the sample to more faculties. It would also be interesting to conduct a similar research in Europe and compare it to the one from U.S. But I would probably most gladly like to see the results from our home environment, that is from Slovenia. Namely, I am not sure if it is just us Slovenians that are so reserved or the whole Europe is. But I agree, that it would be a pity, that such a great tool for research, would not be made good use of and I hope that we can get rid of our hindrances in the future.

Source: Head, Alison J. and Michael B. Eisenberg. 2010. How today's college students use Wikipedia for course-related research. First Monday, vol. 5, number 3, 1. march.

With new media, we have more power than we realize...

I found a video on Youtube that I thought was really interesting. It's a public lecture from Clay Shirky, who speaks about the new media, which are responsible for the transformation of public participation. You can find the video on this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_iN_QubRs0

Shirky speaks about how the new media, for example Facebook, Twitter and (although a little older) cell phones made a difference in citizen participation. In the past, there was one-to-many communication, where the government and the leading organizations distributed their messages to a disperse group of people, who weren't in contact with each other. Now, we face the many-to-many communication, where people are no longer disconected to each other and can talk back. The messages no longer come from just one source, but from many sources. And because of the high number of incoming messages, the government is no longer able to control and to censor the messages. We now have the power to talk, to change things, to participate. And for once, the governments cannot stop this, so all they can do, is to adapt. The world of public/citizen participation is undoubtedly changing, and it is all because of the help of new technology that we so often take for granted, but can be used more wisely and effectively to change things and make them better.
Although Shirky speaks about things that are already known to people who deal with new media and the internet, it is still a good speech to listen to, because it is interesting, enlightening and it makes people think.

Facebook – a help for nurturing old relationships, not to establish new ones

I recently found a message on my Facebook profile from a person from Miami, USA, who I never heard of until that day. I instantly recalled a blog post of an acquaintance of mine, who wrote about the dating experience in the ‘’online’’ era. He explains that in the past, people met face-to-face and a man would ask a woman for her phone number. Relationships were more restricted and there were more boundaries. Then came the Internet and its tools like the now died out IRC and the Messenger. By then, we didn’t ask each other for our phone numbers, instead we asked for each others nickname on the IRC or our e-mail address on the Messenger. The other person still needed to respond to that request, and that lead to more contact or none whatsoever. Now, with the rise of Facebook, we don’t even need to ask the other person for his or her permission, it enough to know his or her name and last name or a few of his or her friends.

And now I asked myself where does this lead to. In the past the contacts between people were more genuine, you communicated with people, who you actually knew and wanted to talk to. Your privacy is there for all to see and even if you restrict you privacy settings that only your ‘’friends’’ can see your information, you know it is still somewhere out there. Now you have 500 friends, most of which you know just by name or which you met only once, and you can see their most private information that they share on Facebook. The relationships became looser and even with those friends, that are our real ones, the relationships aren’t the same. In the past, before all the modern technology, we could easily agree upon where and when we will meet and that was that. Now, when we have all this technology in our reach, we more often postpone or even cancel meetings (often with the excuse that we will meet on the internet tonight or the day after). Mobility gave us too much power, that we are using when it suits us (and I am not saying that this is wrong most of the time). Don’t get me wrong, I think the modern technology, including mobile phones and social networks are great, but only if you know, why you are using them. We should think of Facebook, for example, as a tool to nurture and to evolve already created relationships and not to create new ones. If we use it for our search for new relationships or for other things that are missing in our ''real'' lives, we are missing its point...

So, let's start...

In my postgraduate course named ''New media and society'' I was given an assignment to write a blog. Although I think of myself as a person who easily accepts new technologies on (and off) the Internet and uses them with no bigger problem, I never thought I would ever write a blog. Blogs are not new anymore and are a frequently used medium for expressing oneself, so I guess it's about time that I too join those individuals and about time that I include blogs on the list of Internet tools and media that I use daily (or at least weekly).

The purpose of this blog is to write about new media and society, about the Internet and its novelties and about my reflections on them. I graduated in Communication studies in 2009 on Faculty of social science in Ljubljana, where we studied about older and newer media and their consequences on individuals and on society. But because we almost can't keep up with the constant development of new media and technologies, and because of my interest in this area, in my postgraduate study (also Communication studies) I chose a course named New media and society, where I have the opportunity to listen to Nicholas Jankowski, the initiator and co-editor of the journal New Media and Society and a professor from whom we can all learn a lot about this area of research. I hope to upgrade my knowledge on new media and their consequences, and I will share a part of this newly gained knowledge on this blog...

Will be posting soon, Ines