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Gillmor Recommends Harvard Survey on Digg and Other Social News Sites

bayosphere.com — Journalist Dan Gillmor recommends that we fill out a survey on Digg and other social news sites conducted by Hsing Wei, a graduate student at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. The survey is eighteen questions and took me about ten minutes to fill out. (Link to Dan Gillmor's blog, where a link to SurveyMonkey survey appears.)

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sbwms 2 years 175 days ago, made popular 2 years 175 days ago

658 diggs
digg it

scottwills, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13The person who created the survey submitted it to digg last week and only 6 people dug it. Here's the link to the original digg:

http://digg.com/technology/Survey:_Participate_in_Study_on_Digg_and_Collaborative_News_Models
- sbwms, on 10/12/2007, -13/+6Hey, sorry for the dupe! I did look first!
- Prophet, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4Yeah, that sort of thing is annoying, when a dupe gets more diggs then the original.
- mcduckov, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6People would rather digg the friggin blog than a direct link to the survey.
- shawnanigans, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Call down dupe gestapo, sometimes a better title and description will get a lot more diggs.
- giloron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Is it possible to digg the original to the front page even if it is old?
absmith1, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9They contacted me and I participated. Definitely interesting to have some academic attention paid to the collaborative news phenomenon.
leadingzero, on 10/12/2007, -15/+7why?
supernova17, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Oh come on, let's help her out.

Except that she would have to process thousands of answers. Mwahaha.
- hammydude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8"A professional subscription is only $19.95 USD/month (or only $200.00 USD/year), and includes up to 1000 responses per month. If you exceed 1000 survey responses in any given month, there is an additional charge of $0.05 USD per survey response."
  
  Ha, if everyone goes there this is gonna be one EXPENSIVE survery!
- ea2973929, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Except that she only has to read as many as she want to base her results on.
hahnemann, on 10/12/2007, -14/+0yeah yeah yeah!
Bloc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5question 6 is totally confusing.
- absoluteczech, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1i hear you
  
  call me stupid if you like ;-)
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3its actually simple, but poorly worded. just rate each aspect in the order of importance, from 1 to 7 (or from 1 to however many you rate)
victorycig, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2This is really interesting. I'm starting some sociological research on digg and related services. Research problem: how can these services be adapted to help foster community around social justice issues?
- mcduckov, on 10/12/2007, -7/+8I have come to the conclusion that Americans don't care about social justice. In fact, Americans don't really seem to care about much of anything. I attribute this to a massive shift upward of the "bell curve of suffering". What is called poverty today would have been called extremely wealthy 150 years ago. Very few Americans actually physically suffer deprivation. This leads to a situation where all slights are emotional ones. Everything is slipstreamed into the consciousness without a consequence on the actual physical state of the being.
  
  This is in contrast to the days when social justice would have revolved around policies that were actually starving people, or leaving them homeless, or other things that actually impacted the physical being in a measurably negative way. That clear Rosetta stone of a physical imperative creating a nexus with the political imperative is gone. In its place is every petty want and desire that man can dredge up from the primal pits of the reptile brain.
  
  Hope this helps.
- jollyllama, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5mcduckov, how in the world can you say that? The US Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 600,000 people sleep on the streets in America every night (and under a Republican administration that isn't going to be a generous estimate), and thirty seven percent of these people are families with children. Further, the Department of Agriculture estimates that only 88 percent of Americans have "food security," meaning that 12 percent of the country (approx 36 million people) are at risk of not having enough money to purchase the next meal for their families. Of this 12 percent, 4 percent (12 million people) had experienced conditions of hunger (and no, I'm not talking about when you have to sit through a long meeting without a snack) in the last year. Your ignorance to the suffering of those outside your immediate experience is appalling.
- yish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I posted an item about consumer action against yahoo, on account of its part in the imprisonment of two Chinese activists. It got 3 diggs. (http://digg.com/technology/yahoo_done_wrong,_yahoo_must_pay).
  
  Just a single data point, could be I haven't mastered the art of digg-titling, could be people don't think yahoo did anything wrong, could be only 3 people found this newsworthy.
- degree, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2jolly...600,000 is a drop in the ocean when compared to the total number of americans.
- mcduckov, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Someone said it already but even if I accept your figure of 600,000 that is .2% of the population (for the math challenged, not 2% but .2% which is 2 tenths of one percent). That is considerably smaller than the market share of Opera and we know how much the world cares about Opera users.
  
  In any case, my point about the shifting of the bell curve of suffering stands. You are referring to the group that is 3 standard deviations out. If you reverse 200 years and then go 3 SDs out the landscape would be much much worse than people who shuttle from shelter to shelter and eat at "soup kitchens".
  
  I'm not really heartless by the way, I'm just looking at the situation dispassionately.
coheedcollapse, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4I'm all up for helping further research. Digg this if only to help out the guy. :D
fudgebrown, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6i also completed this survey - it's quick and painless...
vanlandw, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7hopefully somebody will post a digg story with the results....good stuff though I took it at work and it only took about 5 mins
- ,,|,_, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I agree, I'd like to see the finished product.
obppr, on 10/12/2007, -13/+1The only true social site is http://www.MySpaceGrill.com
- Xiol, on 10/12/2007, -8/+5MySpace is for chumps.
Meshyf, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Took the survey and dugg it to help her out
ucbrave92, on 10/12/2007, -13/+2please i am not about to fill out a survey for free, please NO ONE digg this lame spam
- billyboobs34, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1the other day I filled out a survey for a free $85 item...
craigtheguru, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3I like to help and I like Dan Gillmor, so I'm digging for sure!

Dan's blog on his bayosphere project:
http://bayosphere.com/blog/dangillmor
- billyboobs34, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Who the hell is Dan Gillmor?
ucbrave92, on 10/12/2007, -10/+11what next, some random college student trying to get digg users to fill out a survey for their lame term paper, oh yeah, that is what this is, oh and HARVARD SUCKS
Xiol, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8From the SurveyMonkey website:

"A professional subscription is only $19.95 USD/month (or only $200.00 USD/year), and includes up to 1000 responses per month. If you exceed 1000 survey responses in any given month, there is an additional charge of $0.05 USD per survey response."

That's going to get pretty expensive for him (/her?), pretty fast.
- sbwms, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Presumably SurveyMonkey provides tools to manage the maximum number of responses for each survey. Wei appears to be a pretty experienced researcher. I'll bet she has already set the survey to stop accepting responses when she has enough to make the data statistically significant.
Seumas, on 10/12/2007, -10/+4How much do I get paid?

I mean, I'm certainly not expected to participate for free, am I?

I don't see how this would be any different than Best Buy asking me to fill out a survey for them. Or Time Magazine. Or any other entity that makes a profit in some way by what I help them with.

Not to mention, I refuse to participate in promoting blogs, flickr or any of this other "social networking" *****.
- mcduckov, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Harvard is a non-profit institution of Higher Learning. Basically, they are one of the Good Guys.
  
  However, I support a ban on any links to blogs on Digg so I can hardly disgree with your refusal to help.
- therumfoodle, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Once an institution has an endowment large enough to buy god, does "non-profit" really mean *****?
ezweave, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Interesting, although I think this serves to further illustrate the wedge between the educated and non-educated citizen/whatnot (and I am not just talking about college). I think people in this day in age who read news on a site like Digg or /. are more interested in what is actually going on. While only 10% of them may do something about it, the fact that arguments and debates will fill pages says something.

When news is on the web it also opens the avenue for quick debunking... merely because there are other ready sources. Of course just because it's on a website does not make it true, but it is much better than things were ten years ago.

The discrepancy I speak of is the chunk of the population that is happy with the news they get off of TV (which is largely edited for entertainment) and the rest who would rather learn more. The web is catalyst for the latter.

Basically, "I'm mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore!"
- ucbrave92, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3ezweave, what the hell are you talking about? you sound like a retarded kramer
- ezweave, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Once upon a time, before 24-news channels (and before Michael Richards), a film was made about 24-hour news channels coming to light and news being used for entertainment. It was a satire piece called "Network". One of the main characters, Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch), goes into a fevered speech and asks people everywhere to run to their windows and say "I'm mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore!" In reference to this kind of thing. There is a little more to it than that, but I suggest you watch the film.
  
  That was 1976 and that is what I was referring to.
  
  Another gem, "Television is not the truth. Television is a goddamned amusement park."
Quantic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Jesus you people are mean. I helped her, took hardly any time to fill it out.
- Seumas, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Why? None of the questions seem relevant to anything except "marketing".
- Rio517, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I work in advertising and most of these questions wouldn't be minimally useful for "marketing." Without a doubt, a marketer would have asked you about your income.
  
  I actually thought the survey was a little retarded in the way it seeks to understand a users participation/interaction with the website of choice. The survey asked, in a number of ways, how your online community motivates you to engage other communities members or social causes offline. I'm guessing this survey has a lot more to do with understanding how being a involved in online social communities alters or elevates your participation in offline activities. Either that or maybe ucbrave92 was right.
TugsMcgroin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3From an academic perspective, this survey is poorly written with ambiguous questions. It fluctuates between 'the website' to 'each website'. Good idea for research though!
- mcbean, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Irrelevant really, since you only select the website you frequent the most when beginning the survey. Some of it could have been worded better sure, but it was straightforward enough.
v0id, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2man... dam trools in the comments! if you dont want to fill it out, dont! you dont have to cry about not getting something for 5 min. cheap basterds.
no7special, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2doesn't posting a survey of what social news networks people use on one of those social news networks skew the results?
- theantidote, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I don't think so because the survey is for people who use social networking sites. This just helps the results, although it could skew it towards people selecting Digg as a site they visit for the first question.
Xinareiaz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I want to see the results whatever the are...someone better spot it when they get released
eyrieowl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I can't see how this provides truly meaningful results. There is a fundamental flaw with any survey where the participants self-select. While the results may make for interesting reading, they won't say anything concrete about the users of any of the listed sites. I guess it just goes to show that a Harvard grad student does not necessarily a good researcher make. And what's up with forcing you to choose a single site? I'm sure that there are many users who a) use RSS feeds for the sites or b) check multiple sites for updates. How do you say which RSS feed you use more? I know I couldn't realistically say there is one site that I use "most" (sorry digg).
namgman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1....made me think

I recently read an article that was comparing different aggregating news sites. The article concluded that algorithm based sites (vs pure human discretion) would end up the winners.

I think the author of the article greatly mistook the true benefit of a pure user based news service. It is in my mind the fact that when users decide the news it takes the power to control the news away from large media corporations. And when that is accomplished then governments around the world as well lose the ability to control the media and effectively can not spin world issues in their favour. The consequence can only encourage people to recognize the reality of situations to the absolute best of our ability. To listen to all sides of a story and conclude then the "truth" for ourselves. To sum up my point, could a user based news service mean the end of propaganda? And not to get carried away with it, but would the end of propaganda not be a big step towards "world peace"?

Now I may sound leftist using terms like "world peace". But that's not what this is about. Left or right, dictator or democracy , governments of all shapes and sizes use their power to often serve the interests of few and at such a terrible cost. And all the meanwhile a nation rallies behind it all because "Super duper media corp" said all the right things and convinced enough people that it's the right thing to do.

Could there be anything more unfortunate?
GetInLine1, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2Who the ***** is this moron and why the ***** is this on the front page? You ***** were just bitching (as was I) about that damn survey KR submitted yesterday about the ads.. You make no sense
- fatlip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1if (you == brainless) { nick getinline1 }
  
  what are you 12? you need to curse between every other word to get your "point" across? and dont put down fellow readers, they MAY (will) look down upon you.
  
  grow up
- GetInLine1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What in the ***** is all this about? "if (you == brainless) { nick getinline1 }" was that some poorly executed attempt at humor?
thenomad, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1what's in it for me if I do the survey ? Absolutely nothing ? then why should I do it ? I am sure it will steal away 10-15 minutes of my life ?
tdiddy54, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2If your too busy or think your too good to help out with some research don't do it and move on. The time it took you to post in here to complain and read everyone else's links, you could have filled it out or done something else. Oh and about 90% of the time you don't get paid for filling out surveys. Plus this is research on social news sites that we are using right now. Why not help make them better by sharing why we like them....
kazem, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2It takes more than 5 minutes. More like 15. I stopped after the first page. Losers.
brandizzle, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Wow. If you don't want to do it then just don't do it. You don't need to complain about it.
Obviously a lot more people like it than dislike it. So deal. If you're going to be a retard and ask "omg why is this on the front page?!?!?11!?1?!" Stop & think. Because people like it.
rubescentman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is really good. I would like to see the results. Someone submit those when they arrive.
fluffyturtle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2They needed to add something to question 5:

5. What do you primarily use the website for?

They should put "Primary advertising space for my blog" and I guess "A place where I can spam apple news 24/7" works too.

Oh and I guess now that I have said it “A place to mod down any anti apple/blog posts”
- GetInLine1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Lol right on
diggmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I took five minutes to fill it out but was greeted with a "This survey is closed. Please contact the author."
- tangerine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I just filled it out with no problem.
  As a former market research tech, I can attest that the abundance of information that can be learned from this 5 minute survey would astound you.
  Now WHAT this information will be used for......question.
sancho7124, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I would be interested in seeing the results of the study. I am cynical. I figure that what the result of the study will be is that we (users of digg.com, et. al.) are uninformed. I think the opposite is true. The local media here is always at least a week behind these sites. This reminds me of those studies about violent video games making people more violent... like Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes), I just want to kill those guys.
tionanny, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I like how question 10 asked the readers to comment on why they don't comment.
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Gillmor Recommends Harvard Survey on Digg and Other Social News Sites

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