Looking first to Clay Shirky who is generally very positive about the benefits of internet technology, particularly about unexpected benefits through peoples behaviour and the need for communication rather than systems being designed with these outcomes in mind. He is also generally in praise of the amateur and the part they play in creating content.

Shirky C. (2008) Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Penguin Books, London UK

“Human beings are social creatures – not occasionally or by accident, but always. Sociability is one of our core capabilities and it shows up in almost every aspect of our lives as both cause and effect”p14

From sociability comes communities. – Thinking about group work and how it is important to value all the others who have an opportunity to affect learning – although not working on group projects, instead the dynamics of having a learning community, where the group is beneficial to the individual. Through working towards common goals groups help each other to achieve. Being a student is a collaboration with friends, teachers and internet based strangers and yet I often forget this aspect of learning.

“We are so natively good at group effort that we often factor groups out of our thinking about the world.”p16

A teaching and learning group is people working together towards common goals as well as individual ones and new technology expands a group beyond traditional boundaries.

“When we change the way we communicate we change society” p17

“We are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to co-operate with one another and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations”.p20-21

Chapter: Publish then Filter – discusses open technologies for self-publication of content by amateurs, relevant for Pinterest as this can be seen as a filtering system, allowing people to build personalised libraries. That the act of filtering is a creative act.

Also that Pinterest allows access to multiple amateur content that has not gone through a process of being sanctioned as ‘good quality’ research resources, as books in the library have.

“Mass amateurization of publishing makes mass amateurization of filtering a forced move.”p98 – To gather meaningful resources we have to do the filtering and curating ourselves, or rely on others to do it for us, as otherwise this content ends up being inaccessible.

“We are living in the middle of the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race.”p106

“Every new user is a potential creator, and consumer, and audience whose members can cooperate directly with one another, many to many, as a former audience.”p106

Shirky C. (2010) Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, Allen Lane: Penguin Books, London UK.

People look for things to do to fill their time and society has a surplus of ‘free time’, this is time that we have previously filled with watching TV and other one-way forms of media. However, this surplus of time can be used to do something that requires more action and thought. Social media allows the surplus of time to become ‘cumulative thought’ and people can work together. Shirky uses the example of Wikipedia.

“One thing that makes the current age remarkable is that we can now treat free time as a general social asset that can be harnessed for large, communally created projects, rather that a set of individual minutes to be whiled away one person at a time.”p10

“Young populations with access to fast interactive media are shifting their behaviour away from media that presupposes pure consumption”p11

“Participants are different. To participate is to act as if your presence matters, as if, when you see something or hear something, your response is part of the event.”p21

He uses an example he calls “Milkshake mistakes” p12-14 to make a point about how to study a topic, that you should not focus on the tools/products and instead look at behaviour i.e. how people use and shape the tools to fit their needs. Meaning he advocates an ethnographic approach to study.

“The social uses of our new media tools have been a big surprise, in part because the possibility of these uses wasn’t implicit in the tools themselves. A whole generation had grown up with personal technology, from the portable radio through the pC, so it was natural to expect them to put the new media tools to personal use as well. But the use of a social technology is much less determined by the tool itself; when we use a network the most important asset we get is access to one another.”

“Our cognitive surplus is only potential it doesn’t mean anything or do anything by itself”p27

People need: Means, Motive and Opportunity i.e. how, why and when/where/with whom.

Thinking about engagement:

Fostering engagement with Pinterest to enable students to engage deeper with their learning has  been a key aim for me.

Shirky makes reference to engagement throughout a discussion about the transition of amateur hobbies from being hidden and under-appreciated before social media to visible and valued. Because the amount of amateur-made content (as well as professionally-made) is vast due to the simplicity of the system for self-publication and the need for self-expression

“The flow of amateur production and organization far from stabilizing, continues to increase, because the social media rewards our intrinsic desires for membership and sharing  as well”p88 (links to his thoughts on people being naturally social)

“personal motivations and social ones amplify each other in a feedback loop”p88

“Indulgence in feelings of membership and sharing can increase our desire for more connectedness, which increases its expression, and so on.”p88

Projects do not happen in isolation the group have influence over the outcomes:

“We create opportunities for one another that we wouldn’t otherwise have. By treating each other well (fairly, if not always nicely), we can create an environment where the group can do more than the individuals could do on their own.”p98

“If a tool is useful, people will use it”p100

“Every surprising bit of new behaviour described here has two common elements: people had the opportunity to behave in a way that rewarded some intrinsic motivation, and those opportunities were enabled by technology but created by human beings. Those bits of new behaviour, though are extensions of, rather than replacements for, much older patterns of our lives as social creatures.”p101

“A sense of membership, of belonging, to a group that is animated by a shared vision or project, can spark a feedback loop in which autonomy and competence improve as well. People who are part of a network where they become better at something they love tend to stay.”p103 In other words: if students can see real benefits to their knowledge and creative outcomes (and are rewarded for this) should become further engaged with the system.

“The hothouse environment of a collaborative circle can make the ideas and achievements of the participants develop faster than if the participants were all pursuing the identical goals without sharing.”p103

Leadbeater C. (2008) We Think, Profile Books, London UK

Leadbeater looks at the collaborative nature of internet technology and generally sees it as a creative and democratizing technology. One definition used for the Internet is that “it is just a tool to do what we have always done but it allows us to do it more quickly and to reach a larger audience”pxxv

Like Shirky, Leadbeater uses examples of amateur publication that are only possible through utilising internet (and specifically social media) technology. However, he uses the metaphor of Boulders vs Pebbles, where old media industries are the boulders (large, cumbersome and not easy moved) and the new media users are the pebbles (small, multiple and movable), where “A bewildering array of pebbles are being laid down the whole time, in no particular order, as people feel like it” pxx

That before the internet objects had to go through a process of review by gatekeepers who would add their judgements of quality and taste before the object could be placed in the public domain. Internet based technology means that objects can bypass this system through self-publication and therefore this means that I and my students have access to many more images than before from many amateurs as well as professional image makers. This requires a process of ordering and sorting so that these images are more than just a ‘bewildering array’, and this is where Pinterest comes in.

Leadbeater considers some of the debates surrounding internet technology and suggests that our exposure to “more frequent, hyper-accelerated and hyper-connected”, pxxv media, means there are more opportunities to question issues but less time to think about them. Pinterest may give more opportunities to view and organise images, however this may mean there is less time to analyse them.

“Critics worry the web is uprooting the authority of experts, professionals and institutions, which help us to sort truth from falsehood, knowledge from supposition, fact from gossip. Instead the web is licensing a cacophonous mass in which it is increasingly difficult to discern the truth as experts themselves are drowned out by low grade amateurs”pxxvii It is not to be underestimated students must be taught to question the media that they experience in a more analytical way, rather than just teaching them to analyse the meaning of the image, to also think about the process of mediation, which is not part of my current curriculum. There were obvious positives about the old publishing system as it was built on a system of trust, i.e. we were led to believe that the choice to place an image in a book was that it was ‘worthy’ of our consideration and the people who placed it there held positions of authority based on their credentials.

“The boulders may have been cumbersome but they filtered the good from the bad before it was published. In web world things get published first and then filtered afterwards depending on people’s notions of them”pxxvii

Pinterest allows students access to multiple images from multiple sources and therefore, their understanding of ‘good and bad’ has the possibility of being widened. Although these images may be plentiful they are not necessarily ‘trustworthy’, their knowledge may be gained through a set of falsehoods. Images out of context (wrong size, poor colour, poor resolution, cropped etc), images with incorrect information (names, tags and definitions are wrong) and how they have been indexed may add another dimension of mediation, (what other images are they placed next to, what name does the set have, who is the ‘pinner’ and what was their intention for placing the image there), therefore the benefits of the technology must be assessed alongside other issues.

“The web provides more opportunities for participation, critical thinking and searching that say sitting in front of a television or simply copying facts from a blackboard. Far from losing a sense of identity younger generations growing up with the web seem both more individualistic and more collaborative than their elders”pxxviii

You are what you share – many of us turn to the web for news, information, entertainment, and conversation, for example we turn away from newspapers, television, film, libraries, bookshops. That may liberate us from the control of a cultural elite -editors and publishers, critics and commentators who used to oversee what we read and thought. Yet the orgy of user-created content the web has attracted might also rob us of high quality journalism and literature, film and music as the institutions that train and employ professionals find their economic foundations eaten away. P2/3

We may come to rue the YouTube cultural revolution if it banishes the gatekeepers of quality and culture to the digital wastelands.p3

Working together creatively on the web will spread democracy, promote freedom, alleviate inequality. If not then it might lead to anarchy, where ideas and technologies that were once in the hands of professionals get into the hands of people who cannot be trusted.

What we share is as important as what we own.p6
In the economy of ideas you are what you share -who you are linked to, who you network with and which ideas, pictures, videos, links or comments you share. P6
At root most creativity is collaborative; it is not, usually the product of a lone individuals flash of insight. The web gives new ways to organise and expand this collaborative activity. P7

For the generations growing up with social networking sites, multiplayer computer games, free software and virtual worlds, the reflexes learned on the web will shape the rest of their lives: they will look for information themselves and expect and welcome opportunities to participate, collaborate, share and work with their peers.p7/8

Leadbeater is enthusiastic about the web being a meritocracy, he is positive about quality that comes from professionals and academics or where the group is working towards something worthy, however is not quite so positive about amateurs or those who are working towards projects that aren’t for the greater good of society. Regularly using these descriptive words : cacophony, chaos, and anarchy
Places those who contribute new things above those who just recirculate, however re circulation creates order and he is keen on order.  “The web is rich but messy”p36
Saying “the web will work best for us when the power of mass collaboration orders the chaos of mass-self expression.”p36

Collage and pastiche, recombining ingredients provided by others, were central not just to Situationism but to futurism, cubism, Dadaism and pop art. P45/46

Creativity emerges when people with different vantage points, skills and know how combine to produce something new.
It is changing how we share ideas and so how we think. P19

Creativity is invariably a collaborative activity that thrives when people share and mix ideas allowing them to cross pollinate. P20

However,
More often than not they produce a deafening babble or a deadening consensus, vicious disagreement or resounding reinforcement of already entrenched positions. P20

He suggests that innovation comes from an intellectual commons

The social approach to creativity encouraged by the web is reviving one of creativity’s oldest forms – folk – by empowering a mass of amateurs to create and share content. P56
Over the next few years we are likely to witness the growth of an enormous, collaborative, digitally enabled vernacular culture that will be both democratic and creative than what preceded it but also more raucous and out of control.p56/7 Sounds like he is keen on the opportunities of the technology but not the quality of the outcomes

I am teaching the students to look outwards for their ideas, to respond to the work of others and am starting to break down the hierarchy of quality by encouraging them to look beyond the traditional gatekeepers of culture. However it is still important to attribute where these ideas have come from, and the pinterest page serves as this evidence.
We think is important as it mixes the old with the new

Of course the individual is still central as the exposure alone does not lead to the outcomes.

He places a hierarchy into the type of collaborative systems and situation, describing these on a scale from No We Think. To Full We Think. Pinterest would sit as medium we think as it encourages participation and connections but there is little collaborative activity.
Collaborative filtering, reviews and social tagging through which people find interesting material on the web fit into this category. P86

I choose Pinterest to use in the classroom based around how I wanted students to use it and because I hoped that they would gain certain benefits from its use. Therefore, some investigation into audience theories and specifically ‘Uses and Gratifications’ (U&G) seems like an appropriate area of study.

Ruggiero T. (2000) Uses and Gratifications in the 21st Century, Mass Communication and Society 3(1), 3-37.  http://www4.ncsu.edu/~amgutsch/Ruggiero.pdf

“The emergence of computer-mediated communication has revived the significance of uses and gratifications”p3

The first part of this paper details a history of U&G research, saying that “an approach was developed to study the gratifications that attract and hold audiences to the kinds of media and types of content that satisfy their social and psychological needs” p3, when I first introduced Pinterest I gave specific tasks that required non-voluntary use of Pinterest with the hope that they would be attracted enough by its benefits that they would come back to it voluntarily and become regular users of the service.

Ruggiero seems generally critical about the rigour of early studies, as “early U&G studies were primarily descriptive, seeking to classify the responses of audience members into meaningful categories” p4

He links theories of active audiences to U&G, saying that variable levels and types of activity should be taken into account in any study.

Dependency Theory – “Media influence is determined by the interrelations between the media, its audience  and society. The individual’s desire for information from the media is the primary variable in explaining why media messages have cognitive, affective, or variable effects. Media dependency is high when an individual’s goal satisfaction relies on information from the media system” My hope was that because the students would be using Pinterest to gain information for the purposes of research (a key part of the curriculum), they might become more dependent on the system than any previous systems of research.

This also helps to give reason for variable levels of engagement over time, “Variability of involvement suggests that the motivation to use any mass medium is also affected by how much an individual relies on it and how well it satisfies his or her need”. p10

Interactivity – “Ha and James (1998) (must look them up) cited five dimensions of interactivity: playfulness, choice, connectedness, information collection, and reciprocal communication. Ha and James suggested that for “self-indulgers” and “Web surfers,” the playfulness and choice dimensions of interactivity fulfill self-communication and entertainment needs. For task-oriented users, the connectedness dimension fulfills information needs. For expressive users, the information collection and reciprocal communication dimensions allow them to initiate communication with others of common online interests. Ha and James assessed dimensions such as information collection and reciprocal communication as higher levels of interactivity. Playfulness, choice, and connectedness were viewed as lower levels of interactivity.”p15 Links here to Gamification and a suggestion that it is the information collection that may be more important to engagement than fun.

Demassification – (interesting term – more research needed) Defined as the ability of the media user to select from a wide choice and gain some control over the medium, “the individual media user is able, through newer technologies, to pick from a large selection of media, previously shared only with other individuals as mass media. Unlike traditional mass media, new media like the Internet provide selectivity characteristics that allow individuals to tailor messages to their needs.”p15 Students are able to select from sources that are not ‘published’ in a traditional sense. They can choose from a wider variety that in a traditional library and get broader results than from a ‘Google image search’, without this search feeling overwhelming, or too complex.

The Internet – “other scholars have insisted that the traditional audience concept must be modified because of the interpersonal potential of the Internet”p21

“This concept of ‘personalness’, social presence or the degree of salience in interpersonal relationships is being explored increasingly by U&G researchers, particularly in relation to interactivity”p21

Flexibility of approach is needed when studying computer-mediated communication as it “permeates every aspect of our individual and social lives” p28. A small number of students have expanded their use of Pinterest into their social lives and all students have the ability to access it via mobile technology, and/or their home computers, meaning it has the ability to seek into uses outside of my curriculum.

Defining ‘classroom’, as I had used this word when first describing my project. Therefore, the following texts have been accessed for research.

Grabinger, R., & Dunlap, J. (2011). Rich environments for active learning: a definition. Research In Learning Technology, 3(2). doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v3i2.9606 Accessed 30/03/15

Grabinger, R. & Dunlap, J, use the acronym REAL’s (Rich Environments for Active Learning) rather than the term classroom or learning environment. As they suggest that “the phrase learning environment is broadly and carelessly used in educational literature to describe everything from schools to classrooms to computer microworlds to learning activities to air conditioning and furniture” p11

Defined as ‘comprehensive instructional systems that evolve from and are consistent with constructivist philosophies and theories’p5

“A REAL is not limited to any specific media , but instead an assortment of methods and ideas that help create an environment that promotes and encourages active learning.”.p11 Pinterest itself is not a learning environment, however when implemented within a wider scheme of work it can help to cultivate a ‘Rich Environment for Active Learning’

REAL’s

1. promote study and investigation within authentic contexts; They identify that “Conventional instruction often utilizes simplified, decontextualized examples and problems, leading to inadequate understanding of and ability to apply the knowledge aquired. Students are not exposed to problems that make knowledge relevant to them.”p7 Pinterest offers links outside of a traditional library and allows them to see work by a multitude of professionals and amateurs. This is a real-world platform that operates external to the VLE and therefore is not necessarily seen as a ‘learning’ technology by the students. However, this means it is subject to external forces and can not be ‘controlled’ in the same way as a VLE, leaving students with links that have not been through a process of rigour.
2. encourage the growth of student responsibility, initiative, decision making and intentional learning; One of their solutions is to “establish new goals for learning” p9 to develop “independent thinkers and learners who engage in life-long learning”p9 One of my goals when first introducing Pinterest was that students extend their learning into a deeper personal interest in the creative arts, that they would want to cultivate themselves rather than seeing research as compartmentalised within certain college based projects.
3. cultivate collaboration among students and teachers; A learning environment should encourage collaboration, where “students learn not solely from experts and teachers, but also from each other.” Pinterest allows students to follow each others activity, and I have witnessed them showing each other pins when discussing their ideas together. Pinterest is a system, open to anyone who wants to join, meaning that my learning community is open to many others to have access and influence.
4. utilize dynamic, interdisciplinary, generative learning activities that promote higher-order thinking processes to help students develop rich and complex knowledge structures; That “effective problem-solving and thinking are not based solely on motivation and knowledge of thinking strategies, but also on well-organized and indexed content knowledge” p9 this suggests that using Pinterest for curating research encourages problem solving. Another of my goals for utilising Pinterest was that I wanted the students to understand the subjective nature of the visual arts, meaning that they should not look to me for the answers instead seeking numerous solutions to the same problem by engaging with a very wide breadth of references.
5. assess student progress in content and learning-to-learn within authentic contexts using realistic tasks and performances. The hope is that students will engage with visual information from the creative industries, start to cultivate an online identity based on preferences of of taste, as well as see the importance of display and self-promotion. I would then be able to know them better, Pinterest allows me to see where their ideas are coming from, to guide their choices and have visual springboards for face-to-face discussion.

Constructivism: “that we learn through a continual process of building, interpreting and modifying our own representations of reality based upon our experiences with reality”p12

http://edtechteacher.org/classroom-future-now-douglas-kiang-kicks-off-day-2-ettipad/ Accessed 30/03/15

Curriculum, Classrooms and Community. (a synopsis)

The curriculum of the future is – that allows students to be creators rather than just followers, celebrating individual strengths and giving them maps to guide towards building things that matter.

Where students of contemporary education structures are part of a DIY generation – choosing their own way to learn through various technology and networks.

That students need maps (e.g. Gantt charts) to guide them  managing their learning rather than a linear syllabus – where maps give us comfort and guidance. Allowing them to adapt and improvise.

The classrooms of the future – a hybrid of physical and digital extending the learning context and empowering individual voices, bringing the outside in and creating spaces for play.

The community of the future – the suggestion is that this should be a ‘web’, rather than a ‘wheel’ (where the teacher is in the centre), allowing students to build relationships, collaborate and negotiate. Creating a shared values through a self sustaining community that reinforces trust among individuals that rewards social behaviour. Students should be encouraged to own their successes and setbacks through the creation of safe spaces for failure.

However, teachers still hold a key position as they bring the tools to facilitate the collaboration. Their job is to understand and empower students by building relationships, providing the map and being the catalyst to create change and learning together.

Katz E. (1957) The Two-Step Flow of Communication: An Up-To-Date Report on a Hypothesis. Political Opinion Quarterly, 21 (1), 61-78 http://dx.doi.org/10/1086/266687 accessed 2/3/2015

Teaching is a natural dichotic leader/follower relationship, and this has lead me to consider the two-step flow theory within the backdrop of Pinterest.

The ‘Two Step Flow of Communication’ hypothesis states that “ideas flow from radio and print to opinion leaders and from these to the less active sections of the population” This means that rather than the whole audience gaining influence from the media in equal amounts, the audience can be seen in multiple levels of exposure to the mass media, where those who have the most exposure pass on their understanding of the media to other members of an audience through a system of networks.

How is this relevant to Pinterest? –

The hypothesis suggested that “people were still most successfully persuaded by give-and-take with other people”, and that the audience was “networks of interconnected individuals through which mass communications are channeled.”,  As a social media Pinterest works through individuals and businesses wanting to store and share visual information. Networks of users ‘follow’ other users in a complicated web of influence.

The original hypothesis was based around a voting study in 1940 in America. The study had three findings, so how can these relate to Pinterest and using Pinterest in the FE classroom

1. Personal influence has an impact on peoples opinions– rather than just an impact from the mass media. A teacher aims to have a significant impact on their students, guiding them through re-presenting information in the context of a learning journey.
2. The personal influence flows from certain members of the audience (“opinion leaders”) who were more connected to the mass media to those who are not. Teachers at FE level generally have more experience of their subject matter than the students, and a repertoire of sources for research from diverse areas of the mass media.
3. The relationship between opinion leaders and the mass media is more extensive than that of the rest of the population. FE students have, through their level of learning and their age, a smaller cultural capital. From my experience, even those who are interested in the media and the arts do not have a deep enough knowledge of the subject area to know where to start their research or how to turn this research into anything meaningful.

Using Pinterest allows me to be a self-designated opinion leader with my students being just some of my ‘followers’ by actively linking to my ‘board’. Katz, observes that opinion leaders are “influential at certain times and with respect to certain substantive areas by virtue of the fact that he is ’empowered’ to be so by other members of his group”, making me think about how teaching is empowered by students, that is is a symbiotic relationship.

In studying how doctors decide to adopt new drugs into their medical practice Katz, reports that the study focused on  “(1) a specific item, (2) diffusion over time (3) through the social structure of an entire community.” for me the item is Pinterest, the time frame is Sept 2014 – May 2015 and the community is my learning community.

Katz states it is important to consider not only at the main relationships within the group, also the “entire web of potentially relevant relationships”. For a study to be successful Katz suggests an investigation into “why integration is related to innovation”, concluding that a deeper integration into the wider relevant community (for me – the art, design and media community) allowed the opinion leaders to be “more in touch and more up to date” and therefore “feel more secure when facing the risks of innovation”. This is personally interesting as I have already identified that one of the reasons I like to use Pinterest is to keep up with trends and changes in the wider industry.

Katz, considers “The Various Roles of the Media”, and concludes that there is a distinction between “media that ‘inform’ and media that ‘legitimate’ decisions. I would speculate that Pinterest has more of an informing role for the students and a legitimising function for me. Where Pinterest is a primary media for many of the students, as they have not seen the visual ‘pin’ in any other location, whereas I am using Pinterest more as a secondary media to legitimise information through curating a collection to communicate a direction for their research.

Through consideration of the two-step flow communication model, within an ethnographic study there are a few objectives that could be considered =

• Explore the relationship between myself and my students, perhaps classifying them into specific groups based on behaviour patterns.
• Explore how these relationships might differ compared to those between myself and non student followers.
• Explore how the online Pinterest relationship transfers into a classroom based, teacher/student relationship.
• Explore the online relationship students have with me compared to others that they might ‘follow’ as other opinion leaders. Particularly as many of them follow each other.
• Explore how the position of opinion leader might affect my performance as a teacher.

One potential negative identified by Katz is that “interpersonal relations are also sources of pressure to conform to the group’s way of thinking and acting as well as sources of social support”, therefore, it is important to consider the negative aspects of using this technology in the classroom as well as the perceived benefits.

Dudenhoffer, C. (2012) “Pin it! Pinterest as a library marketing and information literacy tool.” College and Research Libraries News, 73 (6), 328-332.crln.acrl.org/content/73/6/328.full Accessed 23/02/15

As the title suggests Pinterest is defined as an “information literacy tool”p328 later as a “collection of visual images’ p330

The purpose for using Pinterest was:

For “reaching out to non-traditional learners in an accessible and appealing way”p328 (what they mean by ‘non-traditional’ is not specifically defined although later mentioned are “different kinds of learners and learning styles, such as visual, auditory, etc.”p331

Endevoring to “make information literacy interesting and applicable to all students”p330

Other features and benefits

• Sorting and categorising of diverse material
• Sharing information, (it is publicly viewable)
• A research portal
• The visual representations allow for quick retrieval thanks to notation and tagging, p329
• for collecting material relevant to curricula to create classroom resources
• The interface allows for an “easy juxtaposition of ideas”p331

The main conclusions were that the introduction of Pinterest led to students developing “both traditional information literacy skills and visual literacy skills”p331 and that the juxtaposition of ideas and “ease of of accessing Pinterest as a visual aid provide excellent opportunities for critical thinking and discussion.”p331

Hall C and Zarro M (2012) Pinterest: Social Collecting for #linking #using #sharing, JCDL’12 Proceedings of the 12th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital Libraries p417-418 ACM New York, USA doi 10.1145/2232817.2232919 accessed 01/03/15
Defining Pinterest as a “Social collecting website” that allows users to “annotate digital objects in their own personal collections”p417 through “collection, categorisation and representation of a digital object in a system that is accessible via the web”p417

That Pinterest in personal and public. Personal because collections are maintained using ‘idiosyncratic methods’ and public because these collections can be viewed by anyone (do you have to be a member to view??)

To explore what “social collecting”, they compare the features of Pinterest to more traditional library services because, “social collecting is indicative information organisation, use and sharing in a social web environment”p418

With a “user-centred perspective of organising or describing information resources in a digital library or website”p417

A system that allows users to “create and annotate surrogates of digital objects” p417 making it “easy to reuse and share images”p417, linking back to a source but not necessarily the original “as images may be used and reused several times on the web.”p417

It offers a demonstration of preference through; choice, inclusion, following, liking content and sending content to other members.

Through a system of indexing and abstracting, the process of choice is highlighted: “The Pinterest User is choosing an extremely small subset of objects from the Worldwide Web to collect, and some discrimination necessarily occurs”p418 These objects are then re-framed within a new context and a given a new narrative. Demonstrating a creative process.

These small sub-sets get re-pined by other Pinterest users and therefore they are choosing from an even smaller subset of objects, shrinking the pool of choice. Whereas those who pin from source are widening the pool.

All information chosen and then reframed by the user within a new context.

“The act of pinning is analogous to indexing and abstracting. The image is the surrogate the user chooses to represent her concept or object. Creating a pinboard and assigning it to a top-level category is analogous to defining a category in a hierarchy and placing items in it.”p418

Hall, C. and Zarro, M. (2012), Social curation on the website Pinterest.com. Proc. Am. Soc. Info. Sci. Tech., 49: 1–9. doi: 10.1002/meet.14504901189 accessed 01/03/15

A “social curation website” that combines ” social features and collecting capabilities”, (ibid) Pinterest communicates the metaphor of a being a pin board,  to ‘pin’ visual links to web content in one place, for retrieval at a later date. Alongside the facility for this pinboard to be shared with and viewed by an online audience.

Participatory web – “Where users actively create, evaluate and distribute information” – leading to a “great increase in the quantity and variety of social annotation and user-generated meta data.”

Linder R, Snodgrass C, & Kerne A. (2014) Everyday Ideation: All of my ideas are on Pinterest. CHI 2014, April 26-May 01 2014, Toronto, ON, Canada. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145.25556288.2557273 accessed 05/04/15

a visual medium of rich bookmarks used as a system for assemblage and appropriation, where objects are organised in a flow layout with objects aligned contiguously into columns.

Pinterest is a platform for everyday ideation, where ‘digital curators perceive themselves to be finding and and keeping information to form ideas.” p2411 Ideation is defined as “the creative process for generating ideas and exploring possibilities”p2411

“By everyday ideation, we mean an ongoing process in which curators look for, find, organize and return to meaningful information as a means of provoking and forming ideas that address practical and emotional needs.”p2411

Their participants reported using Pinterest to learn and combine ideas.

they identify curation as “an inherently creative activity.”p2412, and claim that the process of encountering new facts, concepts and ideas progressively increases one’s potential for realising creativity”p2411 That Pinterest allows creativity to be turned into an ‘everyday’ activity.

“Furthering engaging in learning and synthesis can transform everyday forms of creativity into more eminent ones”p2412

“Exercising creativity increases self-esteem and helps one learn to self-actualise”p2412 and “extrinsic motivation can foster creativity. For example, when a consequence is perceived as a bonus rather than a penalty, creativity may be positively impacted. the re-pin mechanism works as a consequential bonus to Pinterest users. It does not create a feeling of impending evaluation.”p2413 “re-pining accounts for 4 out of 5 pins”p2413

They observed that participants did not feel scrutinised as they pin and are more interested in the Pins themselves rather than where they came from”. p2416

“We argue that continued exposure to diverse content pinned by others perceived as ‘like me’ to a user encourages them to approach unfamiliar interests and try new things.”p2413

“We found that participants apply information-based ideation and creative thinking skills in seeking, collecting, analyzing and testing ideas from Pins”p2414

“The effects of social proof strongly influence a person’s perception, making unfamiliar activities seem achievable. In trying new things, people gain skills and expertise, key components for creativity”p2419

They observed that participants used the word ‘idea’ to describe the Pins they collected, meaning that “forming and presenting ideas is essential to how everyday ideators use Pinterest as a social medium of curation.” p2414 providing rich representations of many different ideas.

“The meaning and utility of these found objects change as people exercise creativity and invoke their ideas. Social perceptions of Pinterest help motivate everyday ideators, increasing their expertise and creativity.”p2417

“Repeated exposure to others Pins constitutes tacit social proof, making new goals and personally untested ideas appear achievable. p2416

“Participants used curation as a means to discover and articulate tastes and interests.”p2417 “People appropriate information to address life’s needs and use curation to plan, motivate and expand their interests.”p2418

“Pins posess visceral and informational value. For most participants a Pin’s image is most important. Images convey implicit information that is immediately understandable. p2419

“Participants reported taking fewer than five seconds to decide on what to pin. they rely on fast visual cognition when choosing and refinding.”p2419

Mittal S, Gupta N, Dewan P & Kumaraguru P. (2014) Pinned it! A Large Scale Study of the Pinterest Network CoDs’14 Proceedings of the 1^st IKDD Conference on Data Sciences , pp1-10 http://precog.iiitd.edu.in/Publications_files/Pinterest-IKDD.pdf Accessed 21/05/15
Image based social bookmarking media, a promising conduit for the promotion of commercial activities.
Image based social network, interesting due to its rapid growth. Which they attribute to the imaged based nature of the service.
A service that is popular with commercial and non-commercial users

Interested in who uses it, and trying to predict gender through analysing user names. And privacy and security

Design was one of the most popular topics across users
5% of pins are uploaded by users as new images, 95% are pins from pre-existing web sources.

Zarro et al talked about how digital libraries and other organisations could take advantage of pinterest to create personal collections, incorporating their content, in their next piece of work they found that pinterest serves as infrastructure for repository building that supports discovery, collection, collaboration and publishing of content, especially for professionals.

Structure
User – identifiable by an avatar, user name, which is chosen by the user and can be anonymous and a optional description.
Board – collections of pins, named and organised by the user, arranged in a visual grid under the user information, identified by a name, a cover image and thumbnail images of the last few pins added by the user to that board.
Pins – the basic building blocks of the service, a pin is an image based digital object with a text based annotation attached, this annotation is editable by the user. Groups of pins are viewable through the grouping function of the board. Each pin also contains a link to the web source, from which is was taken, a pin it button, encouraging rep inning, a send button, so you can share this with another user, and a like button, to express interest without adding it to your Own pins.links to other boards from other users, that this pin features on, and recommendations to drive you into searching for similar objects. Plus a comments box

Social ties -follower /followee similar to twitter, repin share comment or like, similar to