Graphing the Drivers and Barriers to Social Media.

I’m going to talk about Social Media in this post. I’m doing so because I want to share a very cool visual with you below that refers to it. Let me first clarify my use of the term social media — and I’ll do it by referring to this 8 minute presentation I recorded for a different purpose, but captures some of my thoughts on the topic.

In summary, I understand the term to refer to the sharing of information via a socially mediated channel (as opposed to mass-mediated channels such as TV, radio, or print). In many cases, the information shared is consumer-generated. However, professionally produced content shared via social channels also falls into the category of social media.

So here’s the very cool visual. It uses a software package called DebateGraph, which allows you to visualize debate arguments (and drill-down to sub-arguments) in a manner that allows for registered users to edit the arguments, add sources, weights, positions, etc. In other words — a visual wiki for debates.

This graph demonstrates the drivers and barriers to social media. If you don’t think it is complete, fix it. If you have something to add to the graph — please do. You can add your suggestions about the relative merits of an argument, or you can just browse through the current graph.

I’ve seen DebateGraph used to chart other debates too — mostly related to geo-political matters. As you may imagine, it’s only as good as the collective input. I’ve seen some graphs that were very illustrative and some that had very skewed views posted (and eventually edited by others). Nevertheless it’s pretty cool.

I find that this debate graph is more comprehensive than my list of barriers and drivers — but I too have some thoughts on this topic which I have summarized in this short 7 minute presentation. In this case, just focused on collaboration within the workplace. Although many of the same drivers and barriers apply.

I invite you to browse the DebateGraph and contribute to it. I also welcome your comments on my embedded presentations in this post. (Do you think that audio/ppt presentations make for good blog posts? Do you want to see more of these? Let me know, seriously.)

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Tagged as: barriers, collaboration, culture, drivers, presentation, social media, wiki