Corporate Social (Ir)Responsibility in Media and Communication Industries

Microsoft is the most socially responsible company in the world, followed by Google on rank 2 and The Walt Disney Company on rank 3 – at least according to the perceptions of 47,000 people from 15 countries that participated in a survey conducted by the consultancy firm Reputation Institute. In this paper I take a critical look at Corporate Social Responsibility in media and communication industries. Within the debate on CSR media are often only discussed in regard to their role of raising awareness and enabling public debate about corporate social responsibility. What is missing are theoretical and empirical studies about the corporate social (ir)responsibility of media and communication companies themselves. This paper contributes to overcoming this blind spot. First I systematically describe four different ways of relating profit goals and social goals of media and communication companies. I argue for a dialectical perspective that considers how profit interests and social responsibilities mutually shape each other. Such a perspective can draw on a critical political economy of media and communication. Based on this approach I take a closer look at Microsoft, Google and The Walt Disney Company and show that their actual practices do not correspond to their reputation. This analysis points at flaws in the concept CSR. I argue that despite these limitations CSR still contains a rational element that can however only be realised by going beyond CSR. I therefore suggest a new concept that turns CSR off its head and places it upon its feet

Analysis and Forecasting of Trending Topics in Online Media Streams

Among the vast information available on the web, social media streams capture what people currently pay attention to and how they feel about certain topics. Awareness of such trending topics plays a crucial role in multimedia systems such as trend aware recommendation and automatic vocabulary selection for video concept detection systems. Correctly utilizing trending topics requires a better understanding of their various characteristics in different social media streams. To this end, we present the first comprehensive study across three major online and social media streams, Twitter, Google, and Wikipedia, covering thousands of trending topics during an observation period of an entire year. Our results indicate that depending on one's requirements one does not necessarily have to turn to Twitter for information about current events and that some media streams strongly emphasize content of specific categories. As our second key contribution, we further present a novel approach for the challenging task of forecasting the life cycle of trending topics in the very moment they emerge. Our fully automated approach is based on a nearest neighbor forecasting technique exploiting our assumption that semantically similar topics exhibit similar behavior. We demonstrate on a large-scale dataset of Wikipedia page view statistics that forecasts by the proposed approach are about 9-48k views closer to the actual viewing statistics compared to baseline methods and achieve a mean average percentage error of 45-19% for time periods of up to 14 days.Comment: ACM Multimedia 201

THE EVOLUTION OF ADVERTISING MARKET WHERE IS ADVERTISING NOW, AND WHERE IS IT GOING?

Advertising is more complicated than it used to be. In the innocent days of the 70’s and 80’s you could easily reach large audiences, both locally and nationally, through traditional advertising. Those days are long gone and an examination of the advertising playing field looks like a big pile of incomprehensible choice. In Romania, advertising has mushroomed over the past 10 years. With the emergence of large international companies and the budgets allocated to them in advertising, advertisers have appeared, only present in major cities of Romania. After 2000, there were several media institutions with very large budget and big plans for the advertising market in Romania. Are some media groups and advertising agencies in Germany, France and the U.S. have invested in Romania, managing big budgets and companies are promoting. Advertising market had grown very large, especially in the period 2004-2008, when all the big companies big budget on advertising. After 2008, the advertising market was heavily affected by global financial crisis, and this has led companies to invest almost half of the regular budget for advertising. I will present the current situation on the advertising market and some estimates for the next period, from media groups and individuals specializing in the field.advertising market, strategy, budgets, forecasts

Recombination in the Open-Ended Value Landscape of Digital Innovation

Digital innovation introduces a new open-ended value landscape to anyone seeking to generate or capture new value. To understand this landscape, we distinguish between design recombination and use recombination, explore how they play out together, and redirect the attention from products and services toward digital resources. Digital resources serve as building-blocks in digital innovation, and they hold the potential to simultaneously be part of multiple value paths, offered through design recombination and assembled through use recombination. Building on this perspective, we offer the value spaces framework as a tool for better understanding value creation and capture in digital innovation. We illustrate the framework and offer the early contours of a research agenda for information systems researchers

Privacy in Gaming

Video game platforms and business models are increasingly built on collection, use, and sharing of personal information for purposes of both functionality and revenue. This paper examines privacy issues and explores data practices, technical specifications, and policy statements of the most popular games and gaming platforms to provide an overview of the current privacy legal landscape for mobile gaming, console gaming, and virtual reality devices. The research observes how modern gaming aligns with information privacy notions and norms and how data practices and technologies specific to gaming may affect users and, in particular, child gamers. After objectively selecting and analyzing major players in gaming, the research notes the many different ways that game companies collect data from users, including through cameras, sensors, microphones, and other hardware, through platform features for social interaction and user-generated content, and by means of tracking technologies like cookies and beacons. The paper also notes how location and biometric data are collected routinely through game platforms and explores issues specific to mobile gaming and pairing with smartphones and other external hardware devices. The paper concludes that transparency as to gaming companies’ data practices could be much improved, especially regarding sharing with third party affiliates. In addition, the research considers how children’s privacy may be particularly affected while gaming, determining that special attention should be paid to user control mechanisms and privacy settings within games and platforms, that social media and other interactive features create unique privacy and safety concerns for children which require gamer and parent education, and that privacy policy language is often incongruent with age ratings advertised to children and parents. To contribute additional research value and resources, the paper attaches a comprehensive set of appendices, on which the research conclusions are in part based, detailing the technical specifications and privacy policy statements of popular games and gaming platforms for mobile gaming, console gaming, and virtual reality devices

Delivering open access: from promise to practice

An anniversary issue of Ariadne commissioned articles to predict the landscape ten years ahead. This contribution concludes that Open Access is a battleground where a ragamuffin band of academics and librarians are challenging the imperial pomp of billion dollar global companies. In those terms the contest is both unequal and unwinnable, since too much inertia is built into the system. However, as the article tries to show there are powerful drivers and change agents in place - technology; the nature of research; Google; national interest - which coupled with the sheer bloody-mindedness and persistence of the proponents of open access will lead to its growth as the dominant form of scholarly discourse. Whether that scholarly discourse will still include the journal article as we know it is a much more difficult question

Executive Blogging: Indian Corporate Heads in the Blogosphere

This study analyzes the content, usability, interactivity and connectivity of Indian executive blogs. Results indicate that among the Indian CEOs and top executives who blog, most are associated with the Information Technology and Internet sectors. A content analysis of the blogs shows that popular blogging topics include industry outlook, technology trends and tips, current affairs and insights on the economy. Executives working with privately-held companies blog more about their personal lives and topics such as entrepreneurship, marketing and advertising, and entertainment than those with public companies. The blog posts of these executives are often in the nature of individual opinions. The executives also provide actionable tips on various topics and products on their blog. While the blogs score high in the interactivity category and do reasonably well in the usability category, most suffer from poor connectivity in terms of providing links to other blogs and websites in the blogroll. Indian executive bloggers need to break out of their isolation and get better exposure by improving connectivity.

The Mobile Generation: Global Transformations at the Cellular Level

Every year we see a new dimension of the ongoing Digital Revolution, which is enabling an abundance of information to move faster, cheaper, in more intelligible forms, in more directions, and across borders of every kind. The exciting new dimension on which the Aspen Institute focused its 2006 Roundtable on Information Technology was mobility, which is making the Digital Revolution ubiquitous. As of this writing, there are over two billion wireless subscribers worldwide and that number is growing rapidly. People are constantly innovating in the use of mobile technologies to allow them to be more interconnected. Almost a half century ago, Ralph Lee Smith conjured up "The Wired Nation," foretelling a world of interactive communication to and from the home that seems commonplace in developed countries today. Now we have a "Wireless World" of communications potentially connecting two billion people to each other with interactive personal communications devices. Widespead adoption of wireless handsets, the increasing use of wireless internet, and the new, on-the-go content that characterizes the new generation of users are changing behaviors in social, political and economic spheres. The devices are easy to use, pervasive and personal. The affordable cell phone has the potential to break down the barriers of poverty and accessibility previously posed by other communications devices. An entire generation that is dependant on ubiquitous mobile technologies is changing the way it works, plays and thinks. Businesses, governments, educational institutions, religious and other organizations in turn are adapting to reach out to this mobile generation via wireless technologies -- from SMS-enabled vending machines in Finland to tech-savvy priests in India willing to conduct prayers transmitted via cell phones. Cellular devices are providing developing economies with opportunities unlike any others previously available. By opening the lines of communication, previously disenfranchised groups can have access to information relating to markets, economic opportunities, jobs, and weather to name just a few. When poor village farmers from Bangladesh can auction their crops on a craigslist-type service over the mobile phone, or government officials gain instantaneous information on contagious diseases via text message, the miracles of mobile connectivity move us from luxury to necessity. And we are only in the early stages of what the mobile electronic communications will mean for mankind. We are now "The Mobile Generation." Aspen Institute Roundtable on Information Technology. To explore the implications of these phenomena, the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program convened 27 leaders from business, academia, government and the non-profit sector to engage in three days of dialogue on related topics. Some are experts in information and communications technologies, others are leaders in the broader society affected by these innovations. Together, they examined the profound changes ahead as a result of the convergence of wireless technologies and the Internet. In the following report of the Roundtable meeting held August 1-4, 2006, J. D. Lasica, author of Darknet and co-founder of Ourmedia.org, deftly sets up, contextualizes, and captures the dialogue on the impact of the new mobility on economic models for businesses and governments, social services, economic development, and personal identity

Humor in Corporate Work Place Interactions: It\u27s Not What You Can Do for Humor, but What Humor Can Do for You

This review examines the role of humor in work place interactions through the social constructionist perspective (Hatch 1997). That is, this review explores the ways in which people construct their interactions through humor, and the effects that has on their performance in the work place. However, according to Robinson, “any attempt to analyze humor risks taking all the fun out of the subject,” but this review is going to do just that (2001:123). Humor is often defined as being in the eye of the beholder. However, there are a few theories as to what constitutes humor. Humor is generally known as a verbal or written incongruity, or inconsistency with a societal norm, and communicated with the intention of being amusing (O’Quin 1981). This review focuses on that humor which is intended to be humorous, regardless of the outcome. Humor is a diverse and complex creature that has been scrutinized by some of the most learned scholars over the years, as shown in this review, which has sources dating back to 1951. The wealth of knowledge gathered on humor over the years shows that humor can be used in just about any way imaginable. Humor can be used to alienate people (Emerson 1969; Fine and De Soucey 2005; Robinson and Smith-Lovin 2001; Stephenson 1951), to create conflict (Hatch 1997; Stephenson 1951), to ease conflict (Rose 2007; Romero and Cruthirds 2006; Stephenson 1951), to broach taboo topics (Emerson 1969; Sanford and Elder 1984; Stephenson 1951), or even to explore one’s own identity (Rose 2007; Sanford and Elder 1984). This review will briefly touch on all of these things, but the main focus of this review is the use of humor in the workplace, and how it is used to the benefit of the company and its employees. The review explores how and why humor builds group cohesion, facilitates communication, relieves stress, and (spark) sparks creativity (Romero and Cruthirds 2006; Romero and Pescosolido 2008). Managers and employees who use humor in a productive manner can create an atmosphere that stimulates many desirable aspects of the corporate workplace. However, humor is not entirely a bag full of chuckles, as there are some serious implications that are associated with humor (Emerson 1969). Humor can be used in a variety of unpleasant ways(;), both intentionally and unintentionally, such as to create boundaries between people, and can cause hurt feelings. This is important because it is entirely counterproductive to humor that enhances work place productivity. Productivity in the work place is essential, especially to managers, as this generation of employees increasingly expect work to be fun (Romero and Pescosolido 2008). This is highly relevant in this day and age, as employers must look for innovative ways to motivate their employees