Health Journalists on Twitter: Not Entirely Well, Thank You
I’m going to be hosting a webinar on how health journalists use social media soon.
So I thought I’d check out the health reporters on Muckrack.com, a website that aggregates Tweets of our nation’s journalistic corps.
It can be fascinating to see what sort of brain-lint the media produce minute-by-minute on the world’s tiniest news platform.
As I began writing this entry, for instance, there were dozens of Tweets not so much reporting, but wondering aloud what was up with, the “fact” that Gov. Sarah Palin seemed to be resigning, or at least not running for re-election, or something.
It was an enlightening moment in journalistic pop anthropology. You could see the complex thoughts of inside-the-Beltway sophisticates taking shape right before your eyes.
Tweeted Howie Kurtz of the Washington Post: “Something must be up, I guess. Kind of weird.”
Talk about your first rough draft of history.
The Health Journalist Twitterers
But anyway, I was there to [...] Continue Reading…
Dataviz of the Week: Show, Don’t Tell
This is the most remarkable resume I’ve ever seen.
Michael Anderson's Resume: The Medium is the Message
Talk about the-medium-is-the-message. Marshal McLuhan should be thrumming happily in his grave like a turbine.
Note how this compares to the home page of reigning datavisualist demi-god Edward Tufte, whose bio appears about three screens down, stacked below several sedimentary layers of seminar promotion. Granted Tufte is a demi-god whose acolytes follow him around like Photoshop Deadheads, so doesn’t need to work that hard to sell himself. But still.
I often yammer about how infographics can convey more information–can tell a story–better than prose.
Compare Anderson’s self-presentation to a conventional resume’s gray blocks of letters that most of his peers depend on. It’s clear which document makes a better argument for hiring Michael Anderson.
Maybe before you hire Edward Tufte?
Update: I poked around Anderson’s site and found his old-school PDF resume. It sucks. Sucks [...] Continue Reading…
Bing’s $4.47 Investment in Google AdWords
As you may have heard, our very good friends at Microsoft are spending $100 million to promote Bing.com, a new search engine.
The search engine is designed not to much to “compete with Google,” Microsoft officials swear, but to build a business around a search experience that enables consumer decisions in travel, shopping, health and local stuff.
Yeah, whatever.
In any case, it turns out that some of that $100 million promotional spend by Microsoft is going directly to… Brother Google.
Do a Google Search on “search engine.” Now, take a look at the right-hand column!
Bing.com is willing to pay Google to get traffic.
See the third item down?
Search Engine
Get More Info With Less Digging. A
Decision Engine Makes Search Easy!
www.Bing.com
Yes, it’s true. Microsoft’s advertising department has determined that the way to build traffic to Bing.com is to advertise on Google. Hey, fish where the fish are, as they [...] Continue Reading…
SEO, Twitter and the Road to Hell
Why didn’t I see this one coming?
The moment Twitter content became searchable, the seeds of its ruination were planted, watered and topped with Miracle Gro.
This is due to the unbending truth of the First Law of CyberDynamics: That which is searchable will be optimized for said search.
Regrettable corollary 1: Optimized content becomes visible without regard to its quality.
Regrettable corollary 2: Unworthy content becomes the lowest-hanging fruit in the InfoOrchard, unwittingly gobbled up by hundreds of millions of undiscriminating users daily.
[Note: Ungainly botanical metaphor ends here.]
Which is to say: Add to the current list of lifeforce-draining Twitter phenomena–childish follower-hoarding, strategic lurkery, tactical “messaging” and [this is now literal] prostitution–the Tweet designed to show up high on Google [and presumably other Twitter search tool] search results.
I learned this recently after I read an article on Twitter SEO on the website Mashable. I Tweeted thusly:
And so it has come to [...] Continue Reading…
Declaration of Health Data Rights: Aux Barricades!
And so it has come to this: A declaration of human rights about . . .health information technology.
A group of thinkers, leaders and potentates in the patient-centric wing of the Health 2.0 movement, gathered under the banner HealthDataRights.org, has hammered out the following declaration:
Declaration of Health Data Rights
In an era when technology is allowing personal health information to be more easily stored, updated, accessed and exchanged, the following rights should be self-evident and inalienable. All people:
Have the right to their own health data.
Have the right to know the source of each health data element.
Have the right to take possession of a complete copy of their individual health data, without delay, at minimal or no cost. If data exist in computable form, they must be made available in that form, without delay, at minimal or no cost.
Have the right to share their health data with others as they see fit.
These [...] Continue Reading…
#Neda, Still Outside the Mainstream
It may appear that #Neda–the young woman whose death on the streets of Tehran was captured on a staggering amateur video–has “gone mainstream.”
Which is to say, that Big Media has recognized the role the image may be playing in driving political opinion, and is exploring it as a way to interpret the continuing protests and political activities. [I blogged on this topic yesterday.]
But no.
Where credit is due: Last night CNN repeatedly ran a version of the 37-second video, with proper warnings about its graphic content. The hosts and guests talked about the video’s potential–and apparent–role in galvanizing the protest movement both inside and outside Iran.
The fact that it has done so is beyond dispute.
But CNN stands nearly alone among U.S. mainstream media in its acknowledgment of the role the Neda video is playing in Tehran.
To check this out, I did on-site searches of three major print-heritage MSM news sites. [...] Continue Reading…
