Stakeholders (e.g. activist groups, unions, competitors, corporations, environment groups, political lobbies) are increasingly creating a “stakeholder media”, where content is created for the purpose of influencing public opinion and/or the opinions of particular actors in favour of pre-determined issues. Social media is a tool that stakeholders are able to use to set out their agenda, often in competition with dominant media corporations, and as such have the potential to provide a powerful alternative to the dominant and current public agendas as well as to promote the interests of powerful stakeholders. Stakeholders with expert power and substantial means can be very influential through the use of social media channels (i.e. through user-created content).
Whilst the mainstream media is focussed on current issues of interest to the general public, presented with (supposed) neutrality, stakeholder run social media tends to focus on solutions to problems which are of interest to target communities, and even though subjective, [...]

In our book Intimacy , Andrew and I found that advances in IT can facilitate greater intimacy of relationships among colleagues. However, this does not necessarily seem to be the case for non-colleague spouses and partners. This week I came across this recent survey from Sheraton hotels which found that 35% of respondents would pick their Blackberry over their partner.
Now, I know that sometimes a Blackberry may compete with a spouse for attention, but I think that 35% of people choosing the device over the person is endemic of the BlackBerry addiction and technology addiction more generally I’ve found in my research. If someone chooses his BlackBerry over his spouse, and brings it into the bedroom (87% of respondents), and admits he ‘loves’ it (62%) (findings that echo my own research), then clearly this person needs to reexamine his priorities.

Today T-Mobile and Google launched a new mobile phone that promises to integrate with one’s personal email in the same way that a BlackBerry integrates with one’s work email. I wonder if having one’s personal email easily at hand will lead to addictive behaviours like those I found in a study related to BlackBerry addiction that I did with David Vance of Rutgers earlier this year.
In that study, we found that a third of BlackBerry users show signs of addiction similar to alcoholics. Having these devices can create productive time out of travel and waiting time, but the BlackBerry also makes people work longer, increases stress and interrupts personal time.
Now, easily accessible personal email on mobile phones, like on the new T-Mobile G1 or Apple’s iPhone, could also be a distraction, but it’s more likely that people will [...]