ComScore Data Mine

comScore, a leading source of digital market intelligence and most preferred measurement service, has the goods when it comes to internet usage trends. But like Nielsen, comScore data is proprietary. Both release valuable “crumbs” to the public—more general less client-centered data in the form of reports and posts. The place to find such data for comScore is their Data Mine site that boasts "colorful, bite-sized graphical representations of the best discoveries we unearth from our data."

Recent and/or popular topics include: Smartphone Penetration by Age, Visitor Demographics to Facebook.com, Twitter.com Top 10 Global Markets, Share of Global Internet Audience by Region, Top 10 Ad Networks in U.S., and Orkut, Facebook and Twitter Growth in Brazil. These aren't really articles or reports but rather abstract length summations that usually include graph and pie chart data, just the sort of info you can't find when you need it. Notice these releases aren't limited to the US market.

The site is divided into these categories so far: Advertising, Africa/Middle East, Asia/Pacific, Banking/Finance, Coupon, E-Commerce, Engagement, Europe, Latin America, Mobile, North America, Online Video, Search, Social Networking, and U.S.

You can sign up for email updates or RSS feeds. Or just bookmark the site for future consult.

Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010

From the FCC's October 8 press release on the signing of the 21^ST CENTURY COMMUNICATIONS AND VIDEO ACCESSIBILITY ACT:

“The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act is the most significant disability law in two decades. The law’s provisions were endorsed in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan. They will bring communication laws into the 21st Century, providing people with disabilities access to new broadband technologies and promoting new opportunities for innovation.

“Most importantly, the new law will ensure that people with disabilities are not left behind and can share fully in the economic and social benefits of broadband. The law will enable people with disabilities to participate in our 21^st century economy.

“It is thanks to the bipartisan efforts of the legislation’s sponsors Representative Markey and Senator Pryor and the bipartisan commitment of Chairmen Representative Waxman and Senator Rockefeller and ranking members Representative Barton and Senator Hutchison that this update to our nation’s disability laws has become a reality. Subcommittee Chairmen Representative Boucher and Senator Kerry and ranking members Representative Stearns and Senator Ensign are also to be commended for their tireless work."

See the Act and related materials here.

International Encyclopedia of Public Health

From the Penn Libraries New & Noteworthy:

---

International Encyclopedia of Public Health, a new reference work from ScienceDirect, is now available to Penn readers through the Penn Library Web. IEPH presents lengthy articles, with recommendations on further reading, on:

• Diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, emerging and reemerging diseases, diet and obesity, infectious diseases, malnutrition and poverty, neurological disorders, reproductive health, and tobacco, alcohol, and drugs.
• Health processes, including aging, at-risk populations, child health, health systems, violence, and policy.
• Disciplinary contributions to public health, such as anthropology and sociology, economics and finance, occupational health, legal issues, and measurement and modeling.

IEPH is intended to be an "international" reference work: a concerted effort was made to draw examples from different countries and regions and to discuss health systems of countries worldwide. Contributing authors came from 39 countries.

The print version of International Encyclopedia of Public Health (6 volumes, Academic Press, 2008) is available to Penn readers in the Van Pelt Library Reference collection, call number RA423 .I58 2008

The Latinos and Media Project (LAMP)

The Latinos and Media Project (LAMP) is a web-centered organization seeking to serve as a hub of information and resources pertaining to Latinos and the media in the United States, Latin America, and other parts of the world. The site features a modest database of annotated bibliographies of reports, magazine and academic articles, theses and dissertations, and other items. Under Resources you can find a list of links to other related sites and organizations, also links to other academics working in this area. It's a nice looking site but it looks like it could use more input, and in fact asks: "bring to our attention materials that could be added, including other web sites that should be linked, to some section of the LAMP web site."

Another website along these lines to check out is the Center for Spanish Language Media Website at the University of North Texas. It's actually a little more robust with resources and boasts the Journal of Spanish Language Media (in its third year) and State of Spanish Language Media 2009 Annual Report (a 39-page pdf).

BBC Archive: The Gay Rights Movement in the UK

From BBC press release:

The BBC Archive has today released a new collection of material charting the emergence of the gay rights movement in the UK.

This collection, released through the BBC Archive website, brings together TV and radio programmes from news bulletins, documentaries and current affairs programmes, which chart the political and social change in attitudes to homosexuality over the past 50 years. The programmes in the collection feature noted gay rights campaigners including Sir Ian McKellen, Angela Mason of equality charity Stonewall, Peter Tatchell, founder of Outrage! and MEP and former EastEnders actor, Michael Cashman.

The launch of the collection coincides with the release of BBC research findings into the portrayal of lesbian, gay and bisexual people across the BBC's services.

Programmes include a press conference from 1957 about the Wolfenden Report, which first recommended the decriminalisation of homosexuality, and a Today interview on Radio 4 with MP Leo Abse, whose 1967 bill led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales. Two editions from the ground-breaking documentary series Man Alive look at the lives of gay men and women in the late Sixties, while experts debate the pros and cons of the programmes in a follow-up panel discussion, Late Night Line Up.

Other programmes in the collection cover the struggle of coming out, the age of consent, civil partnerships and the protests against Section 28 – the controversial government bill that banned councils from being able to "promote homosexuality" through schools.

Also, see this very detailed report in one of these forms:

Portrayal of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual People on the BBC Complete Report (226 pages; PDF)

Summary Report: (37 pages; PDF)

Consultation Report (63 pages; PDF)

Special 100th Issue of Health Communication

A special double issue of Health Communication celebrates its 100th issue (Volume 25, Issue 6-7, September 2010). It's chock full of reflective articles on the state of the health communication field, looking back and into the future. The issue is available online from the ASC homepage. Articles include:

• Accomplishing the Goals of Health Communication Research: Predictions, Accomplishments, and Continued Efforts
• Commentary on “Mapping Health Communication Scholarship: Breadth, Depth, and Agenda of Published Research in Health Communication”: Implications for Reaching Practitioners With Communication Research
• What Is Normative in Health Communication Research on Norms? A Review and Recommendations for Future Scholarship
• The Emerging Landscape of Health Communication in Asia: Theoretical Contributions, Methodological Questions, and Applied Collaborations
• On the Need for a Life-Span Approach to Health Campaign Evaluation
• Media Research Contributes to the Battle Against Childhood Obesity

Other highlights in the issue include a tribute piece to our own Martin Fishbein, who passed away almost a year ago, by Marco Yzer:

• The Impact of the Work of Martin Fishbein on Health Issues in the World

and:

A Journal-Level Analysis of Health Communication

Authors: Thomas Hugh Feeley; Rachel A. Smith; Shin-Il Moon; Ashley E. Anker

Abstract

Citation data from 2006 through 2008 were used to examine the journal citation network of Health Communication in comparison to 26 related journals indexed by Journal Citation Reports, a database published by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Knowledge. A recently advanced journal relatedness factor based on out-degree (i.e., cited journals) and in-degree (i.e., citing journals) citations was used to determine the network of peer journals. Results indicate Health Communication serves to link communication and health-related journals. Data were also reported on journal impact and 5-year journal impact factors. When compared to ISI-indexed communication journals, Health Communication is consistently ranked in the top 25% across impact factors and citations to the journal are consistent over the 7 years of analysis from 2002 through 2008. Methods of increasing the impact of Health Communication among journals in social sciences are discussed.

October CommQuote

Malcolm Gladwell writes provocatively on social networks and activism in the October 4 issue of The New Yorker ("Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted"). He acknowledges the power of Facebook and Twitter to mobilize large groups of people to engage in causes but he makes a distinction between weak and strong tie connections in relation to risky (often bodily) activism, such as the Greensboro lunch counter protests in 1960, and safer Facebook-orchestrated activism. The article has received a fair amount of pushback in the blogosphere, all the more reason to check it out.

"...But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.

In a new book called “The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change,” the business consultant Andy Smith and the Stanford Business School professor Jennifer Aaker tell the story of Sameer Bhatia, a young Silicon Valley entrepreneur who came down with acute myelogenous leukemia. It’s a perfect illustration of social media’s strengths. Bhatia needed a bone-marrow transplant, but he could not find a match among his relatives and friends. The odds were best with a donor of his ethnicity, and there were few South Asians in the national bone-marrow database. So Bhatia’s business partner sent out an e-mail explaining Bhatia’s plight to more than four hundred of their acquaintances, who forwarded the e-mail to their personal contacts; Facebook pages and YouTube videos were devoted to the Help Sameer campaign. Eventually, nearly twenty-five thousand new people were registered in the bone-marrow database, and Bhatia found a match.

But how did the campaign get so many people to sign up? By not asking too much of them. That’s the only way you can get someone you don’t really know to do something on your behalf. You can get thousands of people to sign up for a donor registry, because doing so is pretty easy. You have to send in a cheek swab and—in the highly unlikely event that your bone marrow is a good match for someone in need—spend a few hours at the hospital. Donating bone marrow isn’t a trivial matter. But it doesn’t involve financial or personal risk; it doesn’t mean spending a summer being chased by armed men in pickup trucks. It doesn’t require that you confront socially entrenched norms and practices. In fact, it’s the kind of commitment that will bring only social acknowledgment and praise.

The evangelists of social media don’t understand this distinction; they seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960. “Social networks are particularly effective at increasing motivation,” Aaker and Smith write. But that’s not true. Social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires. The Facebook page of the Save Darfur Coalition has 1,282,339 members, who have donated an average of nine cents apiece. The next biggest Darfur charity on Facebook has 22,073 members, who have donated an average of thirty-five cents. Help Save Darfur has 2,797 members, who have given, on average, fifteen cents. A spokesperson for the Save Darfur Coalition told Newsweek, “We wouldn’t necessarily gauge someone’s value to the advocacy movement based on what they’ve given. This is a powerful mechanism to engage this critical population. They inform their community, attend events, volunteer. It’s not something you can measure by looking at a ledger.” In other words, Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice. We are a long way from the lunch counters of Greensboro."

--Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker, October 4, 2010