In Finland, as elsewhere, educators argue passionately about the quality of learning materials. When old-school teachers contrast textbooks with electronic resources, they see print materials as having higher quality—as if the publishing method determines the value. Antti Ekonoja’s doctoral dissertation brings a calming breeze to the discussion. He compares the ways that people work with materials in print and in electronic formats. According to Ekonoja, in some cases electronic materials are simply the digital form of a hard-copy book. At the other end of the spectrum are rich online learning environments with e-tools. Ekonoja studied courses in information and communications technology. Each class worked first with traditional textbooks, and later with electronic materials. All four teachers and 85% of the students preferred the e-materials to the printed textbooks. The most frequently cited advantages of e-learning materials include media elements, interactivity, and accessibility. In Ekonoja’s opinion, a shift toward electronic learning materials is the right move. Next, we need coherent, integrated packages, so that teachers do not have to to comb through multiple resources on their own.

ProCom has just launched Antifragile Communication, the first book in a new series, with a goal of connecting communication research to practice. Editor Vilma Luoma-aho calls for speedy communication: an organization need to anticipate its customers’ expectations. To do so, the organization must focus on asking and listening instead of pushing its own objectives.Tuula-Riitta Välikoski also encourages listening, but reminds us that this means more than just hearing. Interactive listening involves not only information processing but also appropriate follow-up behavior. Laura Olkkonen writes in her article that two-way communication helps to manage stakeholder expectations. It’s not possible any more to control publicity, because people discuss and react to organizations in so many arenas. Janne Matikainen agrees: influence in social media breaks down across constantly diverging networks. When an organization opens a social media space, it should be ready for a wide range of conversation paths. In the final article, Erkki Karvonen states that the first prescription for improving communication is dialogue. This means that organizations may have to start asking questions and forget about giving direction. Social media is definitely up to the dialogue challenge that the Antifragile Communication presents.

Open Finland 2014 was a pleasant surprise. The speeches were concise, the discussions content-rich, and the arrangements excellent. Prime Minister Alexander Stubb‘s opening gave firm political support for transparency, and immediately afterward keynote speaker Beth Simone Noveck delivered strong arguments for open government. According to Noveck, the data collected with tax money should be available to taxpayers. Open, transparent governance is more accountable, because people can more easily monitor the acts of decision-makers. Citizens are not merely the recipients of what officials decide; government should enable and encourage them to collect data and analyze it for themselves. One practical example of how citizens themselves can produce knowledge is LakeWiki. As Matti Lindholm explained, this wiki’s goal is a page for nearly every lake in Finland. Anyone can contribute details about a lake’s condition, temperature, ice situation, or discuss related issues. The Helsinki Central Library case was presented as an example of participatory planning. During the design process, the city used campaigns, workshops and participatory budgeting to gather and analyze residents’ ideas and wishes concerning their ideal library. One question heard repeatedly during the seminar was: How do you get citizens to actively participate? Beth Novack replied that the people take part when they are offered enough opportunities for participation. People were certainly very willing to attend Open Finland 2014—more of them, in fact, than the event venue could accommodate.

How do you assess what you read? The writer’s personality, the forum, and style can affect your attitude at least as much as the content. The media’s kerfuffle of the week was instigated by Riku Rantala of the “Madventures” TV program, who showed up at the Treasury of Finland with a bag of money—to insure the continuation of the welfare state. Matti Apunen, director of the business policy forum EVA, fiercely criticized this stunt. In return, rhetoric professor Severi Hämäri wrote in his blog that Apunen was guilty of an ad hominem mistake, dismissing Rantala’s views based on his hipster personality. The public figures in this case are arguing directly with each other. Much more often, attitude is hidden in the text. We seem to use direct or indirect quotation, based on our attitude or supposed fame of the one being quoted. Authors feel they increase the value of their own work by mentioning figures they themselves approve of. If the same ideas have only been expressed by someone they dislike, writers will incorporate those ideas without any citation. The same situation lurks in all forms of communication, from academic writing to newspaper articles to Twitter and Facebook updates.

I have often recommended Juhana Torkki’s speaking skill guides in my courses, so I eagerly picked up The Power of the Story, which came out this year. Even though the topic interests me and my opinion of his work was positive, rarely have I read anything so tedious. The book felt onerous because of its verbose style and its overload of metaphors (no more campfires, tribes, or cavemen, please). His overlong examples of storytellers seemed trite (Jobs), pretentious (Obama) and smarmy (Saarinen). A general lifestyle-guide tone tends to drag down even the good sections such as a recap of Barthes‘ narrative components: nuclei form a plot, catalysts describe, indexes deepen human characters, informants create the illusion of reality. One interesting discovery was the propaganda theorist Georg Klaus, who reversed the relation of jargon and comprehensible talk: just by simplifying, you are able to fool the audience. I’ll sum up my review by citing Johnson: “The book is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.” The same could apply, of course, to this review.

Last week at Åbo Akademi University, I listened to Volker Eisenlauer’s views on Facebook’s automated updates. The service adds updates under your name to the timelines of your friends—but you yourself can’t see these updates. Eisenlauer gave an example: Catelyn’s husband dies in an accident. When she later changes her marital status on Facebook, an automatic message, “Catelyn is now single”, appears on Mike’s wall. Mike interprets this to mean that Catelyn now wants to date, and he clicks ”like”. This example illustrates how a message’s automatic wording and placement in a new context changes how it’s interpreted. Similar updates from Facebook’s location service may indicate not only your location but the whereabouts of the people you’re with, again without their knowledge. Other unpleasant surprises:if you’ve ever liked a company, Facebook’s “social advertising” can attach your name to an ad for its product without asking you. If you’ve liked a store’s page, your name can appear in ads for TVs or appliances the store is selling. Such ads may persist for years, even after your death. According to Eisenlauer, this reduction of the user’s control over his own writings and profile means that we need special Facebook literacy.

Parody is a difficult genre even for professional writers. Nothing prevents someone from starting a parody account in Twitter, but balancing style and humor poses a real challenge. Niku Hooli, who’s written a master’s thesis on such accounts in Finnish, states that success depends on the reader recognizing that the account is a parody. The heart of parody is skillful imitation of the target’s style, accompanied by a trampling of expectations and carrying ideas to amusing extremes. Hooli has found 24 Finnish parody accounts, for example @KKammola and @MannerheimCGE. Typically, these Finnish accounts have a few hundred tweets and a modest audience; the most popular, @KKammola, has nearly 12,000 followers. Popular parody accounts in English, like @TheTweetOfGod and @Queen_UK, have over a million followers. One characteristic of successful parodies is that the content reflects not only the “authors” being parodied but also the ideas or issues they represent. Take the @notzuckerberg account, which lampoons not only the guy in the hoodie but his online empire. A tweet from last week: “I apologize that Facebook went down for thirty minutes this morning and that all of you were forced to spend that half hour meaningfully.”

The Word of the week column will be on vacation in July and returns in August. Have a beautiful summer!

I happened to read two stimulating columns last week. Tiina Raevaara’s ”List Journalism for Recent Grads” amused me in the sense that I too am weary of “Five Ways to Avoid X” and “Six Keys to Win Y”—even though I have used this formula myself. Taking things to the extreme, one fitness magazine featured lists in every single article for an entire year. Apparently we would not on our own come up with “Six Ways to Enhance Your Workout” (like “if someone’s using the equipment you want, move on to something else”). Textbooks and manuals often include random items arrayed in lists; Raevaara states that by using lists writers don’t need to explain why they’ve included the items chosen. I’ve been browsing some textbooks that are based completely on lists—the connection between topics is left to the reader to deduce for himself. Even web-writers are encouraged to list things to make the content easier to skim, and certain sites sometimes consist only of bullets. However, lists improve readability only if the items are brief and the list itself is short.

The second interesting column was written by Jarkko Tontti, who said the world is incomprehensible and tangled. People make sense of it by arranging facts in ways that please them. Lists are one way to control chaotic material—or at least to create the feeling of control.

I happened to read two stimulating columns last week. Tiina Raevaara’s ”List Journalism for Recent Grads” amused me in the sense that I too am weary of “Five Ways to Avoid X” and “Six Keys to Win Y”—even though I have used this formula myself. Taking things to the extreme, one fitness magazine featured lists in every single article for an entire year. Apparently we would not on our own come up with “Six Ways to Enhance Your Workout” (like “if someone’s using the equipment you want, move on to something else”). Textbooks and manuals often include random items arrayed in lists; Raevaara states that by using lists writers don’t need to explain why they’ve included the items chosen. I’ve been browsing some textbooks that are based completely on lists—the connection between topics is left to the reader to deduce for himself. Even web-writers are encouraged to list things to make the content easier to skim, and certain sites sometimes consist only of bullets. However, lists improve readability only if the items are brief and the list itself is short.

The second interesting column was written by Jarkko Tontti, who said the world is incomprehensible and tangled. People make sense of it by arranging facts in ways that please them. Lists are one way to control chaotic material—or at least to create the feeling of control.

I recently watched a video of a consultant working in my own field. It felt like being in the twilight zone or seeing myself giving a presentation. Not only was the topic familiar; so was her choice of words. I recalled a customer’s comment that he had once heard a duplicate of my presentation. But what does “a duplicate” mean? I’m just now reading a book which talks about how the setting, the target audience, and the genre affect performance. Given focused content, homogeneous groups, and consultants with similar backgrounds, it’s hardly surprising that even the jokes are the same. I have personal experience with how the genre shapes the presentation; language columns and textbooks are often earnestly straightforward and predictable. So, as a consultant, how can you diversify the presentations you make? I apply genre analysis and look for ways to slip out of the constraints.