Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Will Save Us
By: Mason Giem
contributor, updated 5:39 p.m. MT, Tues., Nov. 18, 2008). According to
and College Students’ Use of, Online Social Network Sites, Nicole B.
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community organizing tool of the future.
to the general public and the membership list and organizing tools will
only continue to grow. The tools for building social capital that are
available on Facebook, far exceed any tools used in the past. These
interests and to share ideas on the group’s webpage. They can do this
to come together for some of the most outrageous reasons e.g. “Ben is
kind of bridging social capital that has not been seen to this extent in
history before but is only one opportunity that Facebook offers its
than ever before. There is little effort required to send out event
more likely to check their Facebook page before they check their email
page. The events page can even contain links to pictures and videos
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promoting the event, as well as create guest lists by which estimates
that can even be linked up to your igoogle homepage. These are only
and corporate sponsorships. These places in the digital world are going
world.
The program, Lexicon, adds up the number of certain key words that
are said on peoples walls, without knowing exactly who said them,
adds them up and now has very good information on the demographic
trends of its users. These trends can be analyzed through their location
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The map tool can be tailored to show and compare statistics for
(http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/new/?
topic=mccain&topic_2=obama&country=US&maps=&map_normalize
California and Hawaii talked about Obama a lot, where Kansas and
Kentucky were talking about McCain a lot. The map also indicates what
different parts of the country are talking about and in what percentage
of the total posts. The access to this information has the ability to
spawn a whole host of new research into current and upcoming trends
people in Great Britain are talking about, and what impacts that may
subject. They are either saying positive things or negative things. For
example, talk related to Obama after the election soared to over 78%
positive (http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/new/?
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sentiment&topic=obama).
sociologists the ability to see what interests relate to each other and
than it can be seen that people that talked about politics were also
that talked about politics and McCain on October 12th, and most of
them were between the ages of 28 and 36, and %63 - %71 were males
(http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/new/?
same website and see results from politics and Obama there were only
above the age of 32 and more than %70 of them were males. The
news from October 11th claims that John McCain released his
(http://www.allamericanpatriots.com/48734750_john_mccain_john_mcc
possibly be the best tool available on the Lexicon application right now
through this program, but I think there is still more that could be
added. For example I would like to see specific dates on the map
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application to make it easier to track trends and discussions across the
categories. Because this program was only released to the public a few
with transcribing and the math involved in finding the statistics, they
are done for you. Now we just get to look at the pretty graphs and
Almost all organizations that come from the people themselves serve
community organizing.
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to purchase the ad time, I would be thinking of a big non-profit like the
led U.S. citizens into a widespread emotional outcry for vengeance that
radio stations and only Facebook, if we would have gone to war? Would
there have been larger protests? Would Bush have been elected again?
most open place to share ideas and values that increase social capital.
retaliation opens up doors for all that have ever had their voice
suppressed. Women, gays, and poor people that have historically had
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their voices suppressed for fear of physical harm can now speak loud
and clear about their beliefs and ideas to the entire world. “The fact
that nearly all Facebook users include their high school name in their
important to note that trends and ideas do not just become big time
topics in the Facebook world, but are generated through lots of people
All of these social capital building tools were not available when
about the declining amount of social capital in the United States. With
bowling leagues, the Elks Club and the Free Mason’s, as indicators of a
have been worried in 2000 as well if I would have been old enough to
think about that kind of stuff. Putman did not have the ability to realize
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he wrote his book and I feel his opinion would be much different now.
Events and Causes are going to continue to grow and prosper. The
stepping-stone into the next shift in America’s quest for the perfect
society.
Reference:
http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/new/?
topic=mccain&topic_2=obama&country=US&maps=&map_norm
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alize=1.
http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/new/?sentiment&topic=obama.
http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/new/?
window_length=14&associations=&topic=politics.
http://www.allamericanpatriots.com/48734750_john_mccain_john_mcc
ain_john_mccains_bush_health_care_plan_more_same.
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