we can haz blog?

You Are My Sunshine...

2009-04-30T23:33:58Z

Pretty sad stuff, huh? A mom with lung cancer who isn't going to be there for her child because she didn't stop smoking, making a home movie in her living room for her baby. It literally almost made me cry. I'm kind of a softy, though.]]> Journal of Advertising, 36(2), 33-48. Retrieved from PsychINFO database.

"Come so far, but got so far to go.."

2009-04-26T23:26:24Z

For my final exploring the field entry, I want to talk about an article that gives me hope that sarcasm actually will occur in the conversations I will be setting up for my comp next year. At the same time, it also makes me rethink my design and makes me wonder if perhaps I want to use friends AND "strangers", or some different combination of participants, but that is something for me to ponder about over the summer and not something to ramble on about here. The main focus about Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.'s article Irony in Talk Among Friends for me was the overwhelming prevalence of sarcastic exchanges in conversations between college student's and their friends. ]]> Metaphor and Symbol, 15(1&2), 5-27.

Are you man enough?

2009-04-26T01:57:45Z

The article that I focus on for this Exploring the Field talks about the difference in interruptive behavior and status differences in group conversations. Because men are viewed as being in positions of dominance, Smith-Lovin & Brody hypothesized that men will interrupt most often, regardless of who they are talking to. Researchers found that interruptions were not as common as they had expected. They found that males interrupt females but not other males. Females were found to interrupt equally for both males and females. The results show that men may interrupt more often due to expectation states framework which suggests that males use their status as a status diffentiation and therefore attempt to dominate men. Women, on the other hand, are inferior to men and therefore interrupt equally, knowing that they hold this position. Although this article looks specifically at group conversations, I believe that it will extend to my experiment even between 2-person conversations. I am still in the process of deciding on a clear topic however I am interested in extending a previous comp by looking just at male participants (the previous, just female). After filling out a questionairre related to gender, I will see a range of gender associations within men and will be able to see behaviors across gender. So this article will help me in the process by understanding the role that sex plays in language behavior. I will look at gender specifically to see if the same is true across gender. If this is the case I would find that men who identify as more masculine will interrupt men who identify as more feminine. Another aspect of my project that I need to consider is the situation I am going to present to the participants. As this article has said, interruptions are not as common in conversations as one might think. Because of this I have to set up a situation in which is going to elicit strong opinions so that interruptions can occur. With a good situation or question and a time restraint, the occurance of interruptions is greater. ]]> American Sociological Review, 54, 424-435.

"I mean, what are you gonna do? Turn off your tv AND your computer?!"

2009-04-09T12:36:59Z

One thing Prof. Knupsky said to us in our last class really stuck with me. After a certain point, having an excess of statistics loses your reader as well as the meaning/argument. Reading through the first several pages of Chapter 3 once again featured statistic after statistic, and I don't know if it was because of my less than ideal state of sleep deprivation that my attention span and cognitive abilities are limited, but I feel as though I could have skipped the first ten pages without any real trouble, as he doesn't get to his own argument until "That's the claim" on page 84. Did we really need 12 pages of introductions and statistics before he got to what he really wanted to talk about? Anyway, I, like Rachel, found that my reactions to this chapter were somewhat choppy and therefore may require some bullet points. Always On, which made me glad that I had that base of opinion and specific view that she offered. Once Bauerlein started his real argument, he did bring up some good points, even if he featured them in the "untrue/that's the claim" section. -On page 84, the same I mentioned before, he has a really interesting statement right before the "that's the claim" line. Here it is in case you don't have your book handy (you little Millennial, you!)

Individuals who've grown up surrounded by technology develop different hard-wiring, their minds adapted to information and entertainment practices and speeds that minds maturing in pre-digital habitats can barely comprehend, much less assimilate.

Bam. I guess you could say this is one point I would like to discuss in class. I remember mentioning it during our Baron reading period but I don't think it was stated so explicitly as it is here. Here's the Hulu ad from the superbowl which states that aliens intend to melt your brain using their new form of free, mobile television. As Alec Baldwin states, "And the best part is, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. I mean, what are you gonna do, turn off your tv AND your computer?" Does using this technology make us smarter or dumber? People are arguing both sides, and no one really seems to know. What about people in Japan who kick our butts at math and science and everyone is permanently glued to their all in one cell phone? I know you're not supposed to let your infant watch Baby Einstein videos as it messes them up, but is there anything wrong with settling down with some quality Sesame Street? I feel like there are a lot more interactive, semi-educational shows now than there were when I was young... it was all about waking up for the mindless Saturday morning cartoons and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Cowabunga, dude. ]]>

thee Dumest genaracian

2009-04-09T03:47:28Z

I will start my discussion on Chapter 3 where Rachel has ended it by thinking about the last question that she poses on changing the way we view intelligence. This struck me most on page 94 when Bauerlein says, "they navigate the multimedia like pros...they know remarkably little about the wider world, about civics, history, math, science, and foreign affair...". At this part of the chapter, like Rachel has mentioned, I just wanted to ask, why can't we change what is considered intelligent? Intelligence and the categorizes that fall under it have been constructed from somewhere and if half of the population no longer fits the mold of what was considered intelligent, then why not restructure it? Or, do you think it has already changed except for some people beyond this generation who disagree with these differences? On the topic of libraries and the elimination of books, I have different opinions than stated in this chapter. I do agree that library books seem more deserted than they had been before computers and other technology but this is because most often, on-line articles and sources have the most recent information. Looking at books from ten years ago, especially for a topic in college courses such as Psychology, will leave a student behind and have outdated information. I do understand, especially because I would rather read something on paper, the differences that concrete text and on-line information have but, I also can see advantages of the access and current availability that the internet offers. Also, reading a little further Bauerlein mentions internet terminals in public libraries rising each year. Although the internet may not always be used as an educational tool, I feel as if it is a good thing that so many people are using libraries for something. ]]> ...and to think something so small could have such a big effect. In my opinion, if you are receiving information and learning, why does it need to be in the form of paper in order to be considered valid?

Facebook Birthday Pie Chart

2009-04-08T05:17:28Z

I'm pretty sure this is just some guy messing around and creating a graphic, but it's amusing nonetheless. I had brought it up a few classes ago, so i thought I'd finally post it. http://graphjam.com/2008/10/01/song-chart-memes-facebook-wall-activity/

I never really thought of myself as a revolutionary before..

2009-04-08T04:49:32Z

My thoughts from chapter 3 are very jumbly and all over the place, so I'll try to find some sense of flow and just go for it. -On page 75, Bauerline shows his disdain that children ranging from six months to six years of age spent an average of one hour and 58 minutes using screen media. If this weren't enough, he goes on to say that they are only spending 39 minutes with books. My question is, those children who were spending this amount of time with screen media, what were they doing? Were they watching/using education programs? If so, is that really so bad? Also, with the disproportionate reading time, one has to realize that many of these kids probably can't read too many books on their own and while parents should read to their kids, I think of book reading as a prenap/prebedtime activity, which might just add up to 39 minutes a day. -Twice, on page 79 and on page 82 Bauerline mentions statistics about the amount of technological equipment used in an average week and about the amount of students who claim an intense attachment to their cell phones and admit to having a profile on an SNS. By the time he makes his point that all of this time being spent and this dependency is bad, I've completely forgotten what he was talking about. Again, it seems like he may be throwing numbers in just for importance sake. - Bauerline's observes on page 98 that the amount of books in a library is decreasing and libraries may soon become what he calls multimedia information centers. My question about this is; are there less books because they are only stocking one copy of a general where they may have previously stocked several because copies are available electronically? If this is so, is it really bad to save a tree or two, since we honestly would probably just look it up online anyway. -With Bauerline's comment about the Apple's back-to-school campaign on page 97, I couldn't help but notice he failed to refer to Apple's laptops as Macbooks, which is what they were called. I think that Apple was just using a creative play on words to sell their products, not suggesting that standard books were obsolete. Thoughts? -Also, while Bauerline quotes the ACT's National Curriculum Survey as saying the 35% of college teachers said that most students are less ready for college than in previous years, I again question if this is due to the outpouring of technology. As we have discussed previously in class, I think this is more due to the constant preparation for standardized tests and the 5 paragraph standard essay that is drilled into our heads. While it is a bit alarming that while IQ scores continue to rise, there is no translation over into knowledge, test scores and grades I think we again need to think about what all goes into measuring intelligence. As we enter this new age of technophilia, does our definition of intelligence need to change as well?

A view of an interview

2009-04-07T02:28:30Z

As I continue this journey into the topic of interruptions for my senior comp, I have found alot of different articles that have allowed me to have a better understanding of power dynamics and the ways in which we communicate with one another. Although I have initially looked at interruptions in general, I have found specific situational context for interruptive behavior that is very interesting and can help set up ideas for my comp. This article by Menz and Al-Roubaie looks at interruptions in doctor-patient interruptions. They are analyzing three specific ideas. One is to see if interruptions correlate with a person's gender. The second is to see the relationship between interruptions and the doctor's level of training (as either intern or senior). The last is if the length of the interview led to more interruptions. Both supportive and non-supportive interruptions were evaluated. Supportive interruptions were coded as signals of interest in what was being said, described as "physicians maintenance and co-construction of patient-initiated topics" (649). Non-supportive interruptions included violating speaker and are described as "overlapping sequences as violation to speaker's rights" (650). Results show that doctors of either status (senior or intern) were involved in more non-supportive interruptive behavior than patients. Patients interrupt interns more than senior status doctors. Overall females in general initiated supporting interruptions more than males. This article is important in understanding status and the role that status plays in interruptive behavior. Also, in terms of gender, this experiment shows different ways in which people interrupt and what type of interruptions occur. I like the ideas that Menz and Al-Roubaie lay out in their study and think that understanding status difference is an important factor to consider when thinking about conversational behavior in two person or group conversations. The only thing to consider is that in these interviews doctors in a hospital setting are typically not going to bring up issues in which cause argument among patients and therefore non-supportive interruptions are not going to be aggressive power displays. As I continue my comp research, I am interested in looking into more situational context in which elicit interruptions or that look at status differences among individuals in conversation. Menz, F. & Al-Roubaie, A. (2008). Interruptions, status, and gender in medical interviews:The harder you brake, the longer it takes. Discourse & Society, 19(5), 645-66.

Don't do drugs... because.. uh.. it's bad..

2009-04-06T02:41:40Z

"marijuana is a gateway drug." Not a very strong or convincing argument against doing drugs, is it? A. Lang & N. Yegiyan didn't think so, either. The 2008 study, "Understanding the Interactive Effects of Emotional Appeal & Clain Strength in Health Messages", looks at how an audience perceives anti-drug PSAs (what are referred to as health messages). This plays right into what I want to do for my comp which will focus on creating effective PSAs. Lang & Yegiyan investigate how PSAs can be effective and what makes them fail or even "boomerang". In this case, when a PSA boomerangs, it means that instead of decreasing or discouraging drug use, it encourages teens to try them. Not exactly worth spending large amounts of money on, which the government has been known to do. (see video)
Stop Government Spending on Anti-marijuana Propaganda ]]>
Sixth Sense - Anti-Marijuana PSA Lang, A., & Yegiyan, N. (2008). Understanding the interactive effects of emotional appeal and claim strength in health messages. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 52(3), 432-447. Link to abstract and other info here Link to PDF here

It's a joke, and I've got the winky face to prove it ;)

2009-03-26T04:48:09Z

The Provine et. al article about :) ;) :( emotional expression was very interesting. :) The study itself was pretty standard, :-/ but they got extremely :-D robust results. (which were semi-expected?) But what I really :-))) enjoyed about it were the parts :-P which didn't really deal with the experiment itself :-O. Alright, looking back at that, I want to kick myself in the face. Ugh... that's so awkward and terrible. I definitely understand the whole punctuation thing...especially because I read this in my head as me speaking it and all the emoticons just keep interrupting the flow of what's happening. I guess I could see an occasional smiley after a phase break at mid-statement such as with a comma, but other than that... Ew... that was rough. The article brought up a lot of different applications and examples which I thought were valuable, such as the use of canned laughter on TV shows to indicate to people when they should be laughing or when something is funny. The idea of higher-order versus lower-level processes was also cool. Even though deaf individuals were not limited in their actual vocal tracts to limit them from laughing, they still placed their emotional content as punctuation, rather than something in the middle of statements.]]> Parents often first notice the symptoms of Asperger's syndrome when their child starts preschool and begins to interact with other children. Children with Asperger's syndrome may: -Not pick up on social cues and may lack inborn social skills, such as being able to read others' body language, start or maintain a conversation, and take turns talking. -Be unable to recognize subtle differences in speech tone, pitch, and accent that alter the meaning of others’ speech. Thus, your child may not understand a joke or may take a sarcastic comment literally. Likewise, his or her speech may be flat and difficult to understand because it lacks tone, pitch, and accent. It made me wonder about the use of emoticons in children and adults with Asperger's. Would they use them less overall, or be more likely to put them in the middle of statements rather than using it as "punctuation"? I know that my cousin has learned to pick up cues and has greatly improved, and I wonder if communication using CMC and emoticons would make emotion easier to convey. Possibly it could be used, similarly to the canned laughter present on TV sitcoms, to show an unmistakable emotion. While it may sometimes be hard to tell if someone is being funny or sarcastic even in person, reading a statement with a LOL emoticon afterward makes it pretty clear. Just something I started thinking about :) Provine, R. R., Spencer, R. J., & Mandell, D. L. (2007, September). Emotional expression online: Emoticons punctuate website text messages. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 26(3), 299-307. doi:10.1177/0261927X06303481 Asperger's syndrome - symptoms. (2008, April 30). WebMD. Retrieved March 26, 2009, from http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/tc/aspergers- syndrome-symptoms

Uh :) what's so funny

2009-03-25T17:47:31Z

Why is there such an urge for people to share emotions and since we do not know how the opposite party reacts, are these emotions actually just reassuring the sender of their own emotion? Do you think that people who use emoticons for an emotion such as laughter are actually received as funny people in person as well or are they more often trying to be funny. ]]> Two ideas that interested me in Derks et al article stem from the idea of relationships on-line. The first was the idea of sharing emotions with people other than close friends on-line. As the research has shown, in general people express emotions such as crying and laughter, happiness and sadness most often in intimate settings. Now with status updates, away messages and the like, broadcasting your emotions to everyone online is something that so many people do. Derks et al suggest that these tools actually strengthen social relationships. Does emotional expression actually cause relationships to be strengthened? The other idea that interested me was Intertherapy which is therapy through the Internet where therapists provide advice for patients through the computer. It is thought that some people more openly express themselves through the internet rather than face-to-face, saying it eliminates social anxiety. Is this therapy really a good thing or should people be forced to overcome social anxiety and have face-to-face interactions? And if it is a good thing, will more types of normal face-to-face interactions turn into computer-based activities?

So people actually do use emoticons..

2009-03-25T03:20:22Z

The big picture that stayed with me after reading this article was the fact that I was shocked that the researchers found such a large amount of emoticons on the message boards. Everything we've read up to this point says that the use of emoticons is largely exaggerated by the media, but these researchers found 1,000 emoticons in 849 posts. That's more than one emoticon per post in some cases. The researchers did only look at posts that contained an emoticon and I'd be interested to know how many posts were eliminated from use in the study. My big question after reading this does not directly relate to the placement of emoticons in comparison with emotions in verbal speech, but with the massive difference in emoticon usage. The message boards are an asynchronous form of communication, so maybe emotions need to be more obviously laid out, but is that the difference that's making for a huge difference in emoticon use? Or is it something different or more?

Common Ground is a very common theme in Sarcasm Research...

2009-03-25T02:27:20Z

A huge part of sarcasm in research is something called common ground. Common ground is the shared belief, ideals, and past situations shared by two or more persons that create a relationship between the people. This common ground helps irony be correctly interpreted. In the article "Does Irony Go Better with Friends," the researchers are focusing on common ground shared by, you guessed it people who have a "close, familiar, supportive, and liking relationship" or friends (144). In the study, participants were presented with a scenario between two people with either a friendship or a nonfriendship setting that finished off with a statement that was the focal point of the example. The participants were then asked questions such as "Is the speaker being ironic?" and "How certain are you that you correctly interpreted the speaker's intent?" (151). It was found that there was a positive correlation between the use of irony and certainty it would be understood. As the researchers expected, the ironic statements made to someone who was a friend was considered to be funnier and more appropriate than ironic comments made to someone who was not a friend. ]]> Metaphor and Symbol, 19(2), 143-163.

WebCT is CMC! (but Sakai is better)

2009-03-05T12:43:36Z

As I sit here in pajamas and sweatpants with un-brushed hair, hunched over my computer with an energy drink, I am able to appreciate the convenience that CMC and computers in general offer. It has been a commonly used joke that you can surf the net or go shopping in your pajamas, or even underwear, etc, if that is your desire. The ability to use the internet for communication allows us to remain in the privacy of our own living spaces if we so choose, which I think is a valuable tool. Also, I can do it any time, day or night. I don't have to blog at a normal hour of the day; I could do it at 4 am if I wanted to. The study done about computer-mediated communication in students who were enrolled in face-to-face courses was an interesting one. I thought it was a good area to study, because CMC is definitely not something just used for distance learning, though I do see a lot of those "Earn your degree online in just 6 months!!!" ads. This seems like a study that will become outdated quickly, and I wonder if the data collected today, only 3 years later, would be much more swayed towards CMC as it has increased in integration. Before you go to the main part of my blog entry, though, I think you should check out this wonderful illustration I found about CMC. As you can see, CMC involves kindness, wise thoughts, comparisons, investigation, and everyone involved has a smile on their face. What could be better?!]]>

2b oar nt 2b. tht iz the ?

2009-03-04T01:03:14Z

I was fascinated by the new world that Crystal opened up for me in Chapter 4 of Txting. Who knew that an entire genre existed just for works using SMS? I didn't that's for sure. A lot of the works he discussed in the chapter were from other countries, so I decided to do some yahooing and see what I could discover. ]]> http://www.allsmsmessages.com/files/sms-poems/sms-poems.html The catch phrase for this website reads as follows: This page contains SMS Poem including beautiful URDU SMS Poem and cute SMS Poem. Poetry text messaging is one of the most classical ways of expression by sending Poem SMS, Poems SMS, and cute SMS Poems, you can best express your feelings. SMS poetry as one of the most classical ways of expression? I'm sure Shakespeare is rolling over in his grave right now. But, if he has any sense, he'll do a 360 and start to pay attention to what is happening here. All forms of "writing play" were ground breaking and earth shattering when they happened, now many of them have gained respect. Why couldn't SMS literature be the same? I think the fact that there have been several competitions hosted by reputable newspapers and a few books published is so surprising, yet very intriguing. Will it be the new fad for people to subscribe to SMS blogs or novels and receive a chapter or a post a day? Will these subscriptions come with dictionaries so those who are less experienced can decipher the meanings? Or is this just a fad that will elicit a following like other word plays have and will never come into the mainstream? In any case, I think it's a fun exercise for the English language, linguists still your hearts, and I really think we should all try and write something of "substance" in 160 characters or less and see what we come up with. Maybe post your poem, joke, or anecdote here? Just a thought... And now for a little fun, we talked about how abominable it is to break up with someone over text messaging, but here are a few SMS breakup messages from the site I mentioned above. 4getn u is hard 2 do, 4gtn me is up2 u, 4gt me not, 4gt me neva, but don’t 4get, we’re gr8 2gether. i luved u once u luved me not.i luved u twice but i 4got.u neva luv me u neva will but even so i luv u still. I hate you, you hate me, what are we waiting for? Let's do it. Have I told you latley how much I am in love with you??? No?? Think about it, have a great life...