Category: AUDIENCE

Facebook Says People Want Relevant Ads. These Researchers Beg To Differ

“We find consistently that people are wary of marketers tracking them, don’t understand the complexities of data mining, and don’t like to be discriminated against based on information that companies have about them and others. They may therefore see personalization as a double-edge sword. Personalization can provide them with material they like, but it just as well could be used to shape their behavior or beliefs, or even cause them to lose out on discounts to more desirable consumers.” – The New York Times

Provocation: Was Modernism Intended To Exclude The Masses?

“If more and more working people were reading the classics, if they were closing the cultural gap between themselves and the middle classes, how could intellectuals preserve their elite status as arbiters of taste and custodians of rare knowledge? They had to create a new body of modernist literature which was deliberately made so difficult and obscure that the average reader did not understand it.” – JSTOR Daily

Your TV Is Now A Computer – And You’ve Lost Control Of It

Analysts estimate that smart TVs now make up about 70 percent of all new TV sales. The television is no longer a mere display​​​​​​, but a full-fledged computer, for good and for ill. And what is a computer now? On the one hand, it’s something companies sell to consumers for money. But after you’ve purchased an internet-connected device of any kind, it begins to generate information that the company can use itself or sell to third parties.  – The Atlantic

Ambitious New Classical Music Radio Station Launches, Aimed At Young Listeners

“The launch of a new classical entertainment station aimed at younger listeners is based on more than a hunch. Research found that a new generation of listeners was switching on to classical music through different sources, with 48% of under-35s exposed to it through classical versions of popular songs, such as the Brooklyn Duo version of Taylor Swift’s Blank. And 74% of people in the same age group had experienced classical music via a live orchestral performance at a film screening, according to analysts at Insight working for Bauer Media, owner of the new station.” – The Guardian

A Rising Chorus Urges Journalists To Get Off Social Media. Jeff Jarvis Dissents

“When journalists delete, dismiss, or disengage from Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or Instagram or Reddit or blogs, they turn their backs on the people who finally — like the journalists — have a printing press to call their own. For too long — since Habermas’ alleged birth of the public sphere in the coffee houses and salons of London and Paris — that sphere has excluded too many people, whom social media finally can include. Listen to them.” – Medium

Unsealed Docs: Facebook Created Kids Game That Caused Them To Spend Millions

“Facebook created a system that allowed children to spend tens of millions of dollars through their parents’ credit cards and Paypal accounts on games and other goods without their parents’ knowledge and, despite concerns raised by game developers and solutions suggested by internal analysts, did nothing to fix the issue, according to a trove of documents unsealed from a 2012 class action lawsuit.” – Variety