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Social media today can take some wisdom from past research into social networks. Mark Granovetter’s famous sociological study of how people hear about job opportunities found that “weak ties” to friends and acquaintances are actually more beneficial than “strong ties” to family and close friends. Social media marketers need to consider who has weak ties [...]

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Categories: Blog · Popular · anthropology · culture · facebook · home · management · organizations · personas · social media · social networks

Gladwell sparked quite the social media flare when he claimed recently that social media pundits greatly overestimate social media’s ability to effect social change. He compared the famous civil-rights era lunch-counter sit-ins to the revolutionary activity in contemporary Iran and found good, old-fashioned face-to-face relationships were a more effective mobilization tool than the new-fangled Twitter [...]

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Categories: Blog · anthropology · culture · facebook · home · organizations · qualitative research · sample size · social capital · social media · sociology

I was recently invited to speak at Ottawa’s Social Media Breakfast. The organizers, Simon Chen, Rob Lane and Ryan Anderson, asked me specifically to bring a sociologist’s understanding to social media. Below is my presentation. For the full version, with the notes, visit the full slideshare version.
My essential argument for the presentation was that we [...]

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Categories: Blog · bourdieu · design · facebook · goffman · home · interaction design · market research · social capital · social media · social networks · sociology · technology design · user experience

For those of you who caught my Ignite TO presentation, here are the slides. For those of you who missed it, below is a text summary that goes with the slides.
I’d like to give thanks to my teacher and friend, Dr. Karen Anderson, whose scholarly work underpins many of the ideas in this presentation.
Slide 1:
This [...]

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Categories: design · facebook · goffman · interaction design · sociology · technology design · user experience

My article on understanding organizational culture is now up on the interaction design site, Johnny Holland. The post provides an overview of key factors in organizational culture and how these factors affect an organization’s culture. It’s specifically intended to help designers understand their clients’ business culture and to avoid the all-too-common trap of “missing the [...]

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Categories: anthropology · culture · facebook · interaction design · product design · qualitative research · sociology · technology design

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