Thursday, July 22, 2010
Commenting and Cognitive Surplus
At Newswise, we’re especially interested in commenting, a basic concept of social media. We plan to introduce commenting on articles in late July. We’re introducing this in collaboration with Newswise contributing institutions. (See New@Newswise blog). We’ve already introduced a sharing module, another basic component of social media participation.
I encourage people who are concerned about commenting to read author Clay Shirky. Shirky is a leading prophet, analyst, and cultural anthropologist of what is happening in the social media. He has insights based on his review of history and current social sciences to understand what is happening in the new social media world.
I’m currently reading Clay Shirky’s newest book, Cognitive Surplus, on my iPad.
Commenting is one expression of cognitive surplus. Commenting is a way people/users/readers participate in the life cycle of a news story. And commenting on news releases is just another way to expand the natural history of news releases.
In a Time magazine interview Shirky says, “… now more people are producing and sharing… The structuring of the media environment—so that the professionals do all the producing and the amateurs do all the consuming—has shifted, but it’s certainly not shifted in the direction of a total reversal or even a 50-50 split.” Shirky sees the divide between professional and amateur communicators evolving into a gradient of quality.
Shirky urges us to embrace the cognitive surplus of amateurs and create communities with opportunity and cultural norms, including governance, for collective problem solving.
Please join Clay Shirky and your professional colleagues in reading and discussing his newest book Cognitive Surplus. Clay has accepted my invitation to join us in an online book group, which I’m beginning on PRwise on LinkedIn. Clay will join the discussion in late August. In the meantime, start your reading, and we can begin the discussion and build our questions in anticipation of Clay’s participation.
Roger S. Johnson, PhD
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