In research and design my focus is more on creating affordances than outcomes. This allows for the creation of different outcomes by different people, in different contexts. It's also, I think, a better basis for the study of media. This paper offers a good example. It examines how the affordances offered by Twitter influenced leadership and activism in Occupy Wall Street. The authors found that "the core actors used Twitter to resolve ambiguity more often than reducing uncertainty." For example, "retweeting resolves ambiguity by filtering noise, spam, and misinformation by adding credibility to a piece of information." This makes sense to me. In a turbulent and chaotic environment, the world is awash with information. Merely creating more information does not add value. Creating interpretation, context and connection - that creates value.
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