Inspired by O’reilly’s Four Short Links, here are some of the things I’ve seen, read, or watched recently.
Clicks are an “unreliable seismograph” for a news article’s value — here’s new research to back it up
This is a summary of a report on user behavior on the web. It found a few things that aren’t super surprising:
- Relevance is the paramount driver of news consumption. People find those stories most relevant that affect their personal lives, as they impinge on members of their family, the place where they work, their leisure activities, and their local community.
- Relevance is tied to sociability. It often originates in the belief that family and friends might take an interest in the story. This is often coupled with shareability – a wish to share and tag a friend on social media.
- People frequently click on stories that are amusing, trivial, or weird, with no obvious civic focus. But they maintain a clear sense of what is trivial and what matters. On the whole people want to stay informed about what goes on around them, at the local, national, and international levels.
- News audiences make their own meanings, in ways that spring naturally from people’s life experience. The same news story can be read by different people as an ‘international’ story, a ‘technology’ story, or a ‘financial’ story; sometimes a trivial or titillating story is appreciated for its civic implications.
- News is a cross-media phenomenon characterised by high redundancy. Living in a newssaturated culture, people often feel sufficiently informed about major ongoing news stories; just reading the headline can be enough to bring people up to date about the latest events.
- News avoidance, especially avoidance of political news, often originates in a cynical attitude towards politicians (‘They break rules all the time and get away with it!’), coupled with a modest civic literacy and lack of knowledge about politics.
Jasper Johns: Recent Paintings and Works on Paper
Jasper Johns continues to callback to previous works while introducing new motifs and styles. The 88 year old artist shows off why he is the living artist who’s works sell for the most. This show is on view at Matthew Marks Gallary (522 West 22nd Street) until April 6.
Building a Culture of Safety
Josepha identifies the importance of creating safety when it comes to leadership and identifies what safety is, namely physical, psychological, social, and moral safety. I’ve been really enjoying her writings around leadership lately and has definitely helped me think about how I can apply the ideas to my leadership style.
Spectacle: ReactJS based presentation library
I’ve started researching presentation libraries to see what has changed in the last year. Spectacle was available last I looked, but it seems like it has come a long way and I’m thinking it might be time that I give it a try.
Four Short Things is a series where I post a small collection of links to art, news, articles, videos and other things that are