Radio Berkman

Until everyone started using the net to date sociologists didn’t have much information to go by when trying to figure out the beautiful process of human courtship. Only things like this.

But dating sites are the 2nd leading source for modern relationships. And the data collected by dating sites sheds some light on how the heck people are getting together in the first place.

Berkman Fellow, Harvard PhD Candidate, and Friend of the Show, Kevin Lewis dug into some of this data and shares his amazing findings on how folks are pairing up online.

We’re so easily influenced by the habits and interests of our friends, you might think that social networks like Facebook would only magnify the power of peer pressure.

But recent research from Harvard sociologists Kevin Lewis, Marco Gonzalez, and Jason Kaufman shows that people are more likely to stick with their own interests than we might think.

From the abstract of the report Social selection and peer influence in an online social network:

"Using data on the Facebook activity of a cohort of college students over 4 years, we find that students who share certain tastes in music and in movies, but not in books, are significantly likely to befriend one another. Meanwhile, we find little evidence for the diffusion of tastes among Facebook friends—except for tastes in classical/jazz music."

So while younger folks are likely to build friendships based on certain cultural tastes they’re not likely to warm to their friends tastes so easily. This is surprising, say the researchers, given previous data and assumptions about how tastes spread virally on the net.

David Weinberger chatted with Kevin Lewis to get more details on this study.

Two weeks ago, the Berkman Center co-sponsored the third – and, we learned, final! – ROFLCon. For the n00bz, ROFLCon is a conference named after the acronym for “rolling on the floor, laughing” and devoted to celebrating internet culture. Friend of the Show Tim Hwang co-founded the event in 2008 when he and Christina Xu invited Tron Guy to Cambridge.

Both ROFLCon and internet culture have evolved since then, so we sent producer Frances Harlow on location to ask attendees, “What are memes, and do they really matter?”

In today's episode we wrap up our coverage of last week's Rethink Music conference with a conversation between guest host Chris Bavitz and Kristin Thomson.

In addition to her work as community organizer, social policy researcher, entrepreneur and musician, Kristin is a consultant at the Future of Music Coalition, which recently unveiled the findings from its massive Artist Revenue Streams project designed to answer the question, "How are today’s musicians earning money?"

After interviewing more than eighty composers and performers, conducting a dozen financial case studies, and distributing an online survey to more than 5,000 musicians, the Future of Music Coalition has identified no less than 42 distinct revenue streams ranging from karaoke licensing to merchandise sales.

Friend of the show, Assistant Director of Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, and lecturer at Harvard Law School Chris asked Kristin about her research and its implications for contemporary musicians.

Dave Herlihy currently teaches music industry classes at Northeastern University and operates his own practice specializing in entertainment law, intellectual property, copyright, trademark, licensing, and new media.

But twenty-five years ago he was the lead singer of O Positive, a Boston-area band poised on the brink of a major label record deal.

Friend of the show, Assistant Director of Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic, and lecturer at Harvard Law School Chris Bavitz interviewed Dave about his band’s trajectory from being the “best band in the basement” to appearing on the Billboard charts (and what came after).

Dave also offers his insight into the role of record labels in the YouTube era, and how he would resolve media licensing issues if he were an enlightened despot, and how to get famous.

The #Kony2012 video, and accompanying campaign and meme, has done a lot to raise awareness.

Of WHAT exactly, it’s hard to tell.

The intended target for attention — the Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony — is certainly a big one.

But the video was flawed. In favor of simplicity it glossed over crucial facts and advocated passionately for questionable solutions, in the end bringing more critical attention back to Invisible Children, the charismatic American youth group behind the campaign.

Most of all the explosion of Kony 2012 has raised awareness about sensitivities around the politics of intervention in Africa, and the utility of digital activism and fundraising for awareness campaigns in the United States.

Today we hear from four guests:

Rosebell Kagumire, a Ugandan journalist, about where Joseph Kony is now, and how Ugandans are responding to the new attention

Gilad Lotan, a network researcher, about what he found when he dug into the data on how the Kony2012 meme spread

Ethan Zuckerman, a founder of Global Voices, on whether simple narratives can ever help solve complex issues

and Amanda Taub, a blogger and human rights expert, on what Invisible Children could have done differently.

More, including our up-to-date list of the most thoughtful posts on Kony, Uganda, Central Africa, Invisible Children, and digital activism, here: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkman/2012/03/23/rb-195-can-100-million-viewers-save-a-child/

This week at Radio Berkman we tried something new.

During our recent interview with Berkman Fellow Justin Reich about his report The State of Wiki Usage in U.S. K-12 Schools: Leveraging Web 2.0 Data Warehouses to Assess Quality and Equity in Online Learning Environments, we learned that only one percent of educational wikis succeed in creating the kind of multimedia, collaborative learning environment we have come to associate with open educational resources like PBWikis and Wikispaces.

Justin’s findings, and their implications, are so intriguing that we decided it was time to go into the field and do some investigative work of our own. Radio Berkman wanted to know: Who is making those successful wikis and how?

Producer Frances Harlow spent a day at Thayer Academy in Braintree, Massachusetts sitting in on professional development sessions and interviewing instructors, including

Director of Studies and History Department Head (and classroom wiki “missionary”) Matt Dunne

Veteran History teacher Norma Atkinson

Listen to what she found and be sure to let us know what you think of this Radio Berkman experiment!

This week we tear apart the difference between Truth, Fact, and Evidence, and the quiet, but irreplaceable, role of the humble factchecker in our media with:

-Author/factchecker Jim Fingal on the Lifespan of a Fact

-Former GQ intern and factchecker Gillian Brassil

-Veteran Atlantic Monthly factchecking department head Yvonne Rolzhausen

-David Weinberger, author of the recent book Too Big To Know

From February 4th, 2009

A first glimpse into the challenges and opportunities the Berkman Center faces in 2009, with the Center’s new Executive Director, Urs Gasser.

CC-licensed music this week:

Brad Sucks – “Gasoline”

Greg Williams – “Teagarden Blues and Rain”