Announcements

See the calendar on the right for upcoming meeting times and topics. (Click on dates in bold to see what's happening.)

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Twitter's long tail

A new study coming out of the Harvard Business School concludes that very few Twitter users send messages using the service, suggesting that it is used more like a broadcast medium than a peer-to-peer communication network. Specifically, the authors found that although about 4 in 5 (80%) Twitter users are followed by at least one other person, "the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets." These conclusions are drawn based on analysis of the activities of a sample of 300,000 Tweeter users in May 2009.

See: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8089508.stm

OSU CATS at AEJMC 2009

We are very excited that CATS members have received important awards for their outstanding papers at the AEJMC 2009.

Dr. Dongyoung Sohn's paper "Anatomy of interaction experience: Distinguishing sensory, semantic, and behavioral dimensions of interactivity" has won the first place in the communication technology (CTEC) division - Faculty Paper Competition of AEJMC.

Also, a paper co-authored by four students (two of them, Michael Beam and Nick Geidner, are CATS members) has won the Top Three Student Paper Award in the CTEC division of AEJMC. Their paper title is "Gatekeeping and YouTube: News Filters and the Intermedia Dynamic in the Age of User-Generated Content."

The AEJMC 2009 convention takes place on August 5-8, Boston, Massachusetts.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Data.gov goes live

There's a new website sponsored by the federal government designed to facilitate access to a vast assortment of government-collected data. The index/archive is still relatively small, but it is expected to grow over the coming months and years. Take a look for yourself:


From the site
"The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a limited portion of the rich variety of Federal datasets presently available, we invite you to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements to provide seamless access and use of your Federal data. Visit today with us, but come back often. With your help, Data.gov will continue to grow and change in the weeks, months, and years ahead."