As a Master Do It

An affair on a videotape

We all know that most of the political parties of the developed world are using new media for promoting their campaigns, for propaganda and to engage audiences. We all also know that social media platforms are in the core of protest organization and are the reason for “the new rebellion” wave of protesters of the web 2.0 generation. All around the world revolutionary protests have been led thanks to the social media, several regimes changed, many people went out on the street, many went arrested. Thousands of personal stories and group activities can be told, shared, recounted… The fact that out there most of the people using social media were engaged in one or another way to political activism is saying enough what are the consequences for the political environment and what processes has social media unleashed along with the innocent funny entertainment sharing.

And when the protest changed their shape and moved not only to social media, but also went digital:

The brain of the human is designed to perceive easily through pictures and visual elements. Scientists have proven that the brain projects what it perceives and activates all neurons and senses when eye is looking at more complex visualization consisting of more than one element. This is the reason why brain remembers more when looking at a picture than hearing a word or reading a text. It's about how many neurons and different parts of the brain complexity the perceived information has activated. 

These are the reasons why communication processes and information convey drives back to the visualization and drawings. If we look back in time, the first communication and information spreading was carry through drawing. Later on letter and text appears as an alternative and more concise way for message transmission. Nowadays, humans combine both text and image as complimentary elements. However, this process of human brain evolution also compounds of its micro-steps and if we look at the digital driven world in which contemporary society is pioneer, image communication is evolving in new dimensions and text more often is used as complementary tool, but visualization is in the core of information provision. 

Check these videos for more argumentation and related examples: 

Isotype as a simple solution for easier life

Consistent visualization is an efficient way to convey information evolving from the need of simpler methods to teach and learn through charts, pictures and visual content. As people often are more confused when using not presented clearly visual tools for information new methods should be implemented.

Isotype (International System of TYpographic Picture Education) is a method for presenting information with special visual dictionary and grammar. The main facts and explanations can be explained by symbol language with little related text. Isotype method follows two main steps: 1) development of easy to understood and remember symbols; 2) relevant combination of the symbols for high understanding;

Isotype aims at humanizing and develop the methods for information transmission and reception. The simplest way to be explained this method is as a “picture language”. Nowadays, we are surrounded by many types of isotype visual elements from all the signs indicating specific location (toilet, exit, stairs) or allowed / prohibited behavior (street rules, smoking areas) to all the digital driven devices and navigation options (keyboards symbols, touch screen visualizations, mobile application manuals, menus, options, etc.). Digital world is the most isotype related one as everything consists of minimal text, more visual explications and aiming at easy to navigate and understand language. Opening any mobile application most of them are created by isotype method. In the modern technology world they are so well developed that rarely users have problem in understanding or operating the navigation bars on the mobile apps. This clearly shows the high efficiency of isotype method implementation and its evolving along with the new technology environment. 

I will share my personal timeline of experience and memories archive of my Facebook observation and analyses of the platform’s reactions to my social behavior. The topic about Facebook engagement and dedication is quite provocative to me, because for a long time I have controversial feelings about sharing any kind of information on it and finally I came to the conclusion that any step to escape is worthless.

Burden by work and experience.

Four years ago I used to work at an association for consumer protection and as at that time Facebook privacy issues started rising and in Bulgaria more and more people were engaging to the network, our team decided to flash some attention on the users behavior, their awareness of social network sharing and privacy policy. We did short research if people really know that they are sharing their data by posting stuff, what this information is used for and if they are aware how to protect their personal data at least on public if not of the social network. Of course, really few participant of our survey thought about that before to ask them those questions. They perceived it totally on the bright side of the entertainment.

However, being aware of those privacy issues I wasn’t very active on my social profile and didn’t want to share a lot of information. Most of the things I had posted before, I deleted or left hidden. Of course, this is meaningless when we come to the point what Facebook owns and poses of my private life.

The surprise came somewhere years later, when even not sharing anything to my wall, Facebook started testing and using algorithms to recognize me, to try to guess where I come from, where I am and things like this, based on my friends list, my likes, tags of others, etc. As long as I remember, the first step to this more personalized targeting was the artless friend suggestions. They evolved to personalized ad banners targeting and other tracking systems that were tested and implemented to different profiles.

Meanwhile I started working as an intern in Digital agency for online marketing and I experienced from the underside where users information goes and how it looks like in numbers. It was impressive for me. Both I found it very useful for my current job, but also very shocking having the background of the survey we held in 2010. I imagined all those people who even didn’t know that they are sharing targeted information, how are manipulated and their attention is grabbed without any clue of that. I started asking my friends about what suggestions are they receiving through Facebook, what banners they are displayed and I was explaining them about my new job and what I know about them using their data for Facebook ads and Facebook page manager. None of them knew what I am talking about. They still used it as fun tool.

I didn’t change my Facebook behavior as there was almost anything to be changed. I just used it for chatting and reviewing some information, but without engaging too much. It was kind of passive usage.

But once into “the eye of the tiger” you cannot escape. Trace is left after you.

At some point naïve and self-limiting were my tries to escape of the Facebook centrifuge. One day the network started asking me “are you studying at X, Y or Z university?”, “have you graduated X, Y or Z school?”, even it went further – it started suggesting to my friends to ask by banner posts where I currently live. My refuse to provide this information made the network a bit aggressive in its intentions to get my data. I started receiving as friend’s posts questions about my current location, which places I have visited and much more question attacks under a “friend” camouflage. Being aware why is this for, of course, I was ignoring them. But I am not part of the average user sample, so I can only imagine how many people get into this trap and provide their personal data spontaneously.

At the beginning after this attacks I was little surprised again (but this was just for a minute) why Facebook makes so good strikes about my personal life even when I haven’t provided any information. But fast my lamp ignited the light that my friends’ information and the things they had shared combined together give enough traces leading to me as my personality to be revealed. Smart and easy.

So, it appeared my precautions were kind of useless as Facebook already knows everything. It just wanted greedily to know it from me personally, just in case the algorithm is not used vainly.

Keeping that line of thoughts, the only solution if I don’t want to be tracked so insolently is to give up and stop the current flow of targeting to me. But this is not even a slight solution. I am just a drop of a huge global ocean which cannot be dried. Being in it or out of it, anyway it will impact me as I am part of the society.

So, my behavior changed. I started taking as much as I can from the social media, still without providing too much as direct content, but every action, click and step are my contribution to the big social media data.

There is no escape. 

It’s like the air in the brave new world.

Where the studies meet the real example

In our Master studies, we are just about to meet for third time in academic level to the Big Data matter - underestimated by some, overestimated by others and the Holy Grail of the future. That mysterious is the Big Data for most of the students that are now fighting with different software and programs in terms to find some practical implementation of all the theories on paper.

That’s for beginners.

However, there are some very advanced guys in the Big Data analysis using all kind of methods, researches, traditional and innovative approaches and all that could be used to gather information from the very basic approach such as face-to-face discussion to the most complex networking or statistical analyses. And, parenthetically, they are sitting next to us.

Let me introduce you the people that I met on Social Media Week who know how to use Big Data and really implement their knowledge to develop human society significant findings, to trigger innovation and to go some levels up in the science and social digital dimensions.

Firstly, I am linking you to the discussion panel on the topic “Can big data save lives?”. Clicking on the link you will find stream of the whole presentation. Anyway, the highlights of this lecture are few:

Big data for science, or how health organizations, such as Erasmus MC, use Big Data. Fred Balverd, a science communicator at Erasmus MC, explains about the idea to make stratification of patients based on genetic profile. He discuss how personalized medicines, treatment and therapy can be developed through Big Data analyses and describes the methods they use to reach that goal.

 How can data save the world? Tijs Van Den Broek,project leader of University of Twente’s team, currently research the process and effectiveness of cancer early diagnosis campaigns on Twitter. The project won Twitter data grant that provides access to the network archives for big data insights. Tijs explains what findings they have reached and through what processes is his team passing.

 What are Social media analysis companies doing and how they do it?  Check the project of Alex Slatman - OBI4Wan, company for Online Monitoring and Webcare services.

 Another interesting lecture of Social Media Week was about Twitcops & Innovation in the Dutch police . It seems that they do not use Big Data analysis in depth and in the very scientific way, but still it is interesting method of crime resolving and monitoring of the public order through social media data usage. 

Your life and “Big data”

Where big data is, where am I?

At the beginning of our DRM course I would like to raise a bit the academic motivation of the fellows and give a bit different reading of the subject we examine. I assume that already we all know (or at least have some idea) what big data is. So, thinking about it, we are not only part of the big data collection as object of its analysis, but we are also its final consumers and beneficiaries. Big data researches affect all aspects of your life.

My handmade mind map represents small part of examples where huge discoveries and development has been achieved thanks to the big data trace. To find out in more details where and how big data is applied successfully on those topics in recent and future projects you could visit European Commission website at “Digital agenda for Europе” page. In addition, I link you to one more article that shows 10 simple ways big data make huge difference in your life.

If you are more interested to hear what European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes has to say on big data, click to her official statement.