Week 5: The meaning of digital listening and conversation

In Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy, the author David Karpf talks about how media has changed and what the public, especially the activists, should do to adapt to the change. David Karpf provides an ample example and analysis of the current situation regarding politics, media, and the public.

He also introduced readers with interesting concepts, such as analytic activism, analytics floor and analytics frontier, culture of testing, and digital listening.

Karpf’s analysis was thorough and on point, so there was not much to criticize. Karpf, however, was not able to provide a proper solution for the problems he had listed.

In the book, for instance, Karpf argued that digital listening without conversation could be a problem because just listening would not drive participants enough to build a strong identity tie. Digital listening without conversation, therefore, fails to make a transformation. The observation Karpf made regarding digital listening and transformation is similar to our class discussion about whether the discussions on social media do make change in the real world or not. It is a phenomenon that anyone who is a user of social media can easily observe. Karpf, however, forgets to address two things about this observation: 1) how to develop digital listening into a conversation, and 2) what meanings does digital listening have if it cannot turn into a conversation. Karpf’s analysis would be more valuable if it had answered these points. Thus, I would like to conclude this essay by adding a few thoughts with my short knowledge.

Digital listening has its meaning in collecting big data. Consider each tweet or post as a drop of seawater. The tweets and posts all together create a vast ocean. When public opinion is divided and people argue on social media, the large waves swirls the sea of tweets and posts. However, it is hard to figure out the whole context when you are in the sea. One should be above the water to see the current. On the surface of sea, there is a boat. A person on the boat can look into the sea and catch what he/she wants. On the sea of tweets and posts, what the boatman reeled in is information from the tweets and posts. The information that brought above the surface of the sea can be an article that summarized opinions from social media or infographics. Crowdvoice.org or Change.org that provides a brief summary of social media activism trending around the world can be the example of such information. To have the conversation going, people need to escape from below the surface level. The person on the boat can be an ordinary opinion leader among the public, or a gatekeeper from an organization or a government. Organization or governmental gatekeeping, however, would cause trust issues like current traditional media have. It is also against the special characteristic of social media, which empowers individuals. Thus, it is significant to educate social media users to not just shoot ideas on social media, but to compile ideas, understand conflicts, and grasp the general flow. Also, active development of websites and apps that summarize and analyze social media contents will help educate social media users. Digital listening is a basic step. Digital listening provides social media users with ideas to observe, compile, and educate them. Digital convergence is at its developing stage. People need time to adapt to this new stage. As babies start from listening to talking, reading, and writing, the fact that digital listening has begun implies that social media users are beginning to grow. Conversation will happen only when we are fully adapted to digital listening.