Genius and Citations

Citations are necessary in any academic work. Online, they’re one of the few ways of verifying a fact or claim. As such, citations serve an integral role in Genius annotations. Although they serve different roles in onsite and offsite annotations, both are an essential, though often underrated part of Genius.

Anyone can annotate texts on Genius. This means that anyone can add their own interpretation of a song, or reference outside interviews and sources. In this sort of setup, citations are really the only way that other users can verify another users claims. Without them, an editor has no way of knowing if an interview or article even exists, much less whether it has been interpreted correctly, unless they do the same research. This produces a lot of redundant research- citations make sure that any reader is using the same starting information when they look at a text.

Another way of making better annotations is to link an individual line of a song to a larger concept or issue. For example, if a song alludes to homelessness, a really good annotation not only comments on the importance of that within the song, but can also provide information or statistics about homelessness and its causes. These types of annotations, where indirect references are expanded into concrete knowledge about a field, not only make for interesting annotations, but have an educational purpose in their own right. For these annotations citations are even more necessary because you are references facts unrelated to the text. For the annotation to have any factual legitimacy it needs citations.

Onsite citations also provide convenience and legitimacy to annotations. Not only do they provide additional information that has been verified by other sources, but they also put that additional information at your fingertips. This encourages more research and investigation on the part of the reader, as well as making sure that the writers of annotations fully research their annotations.

The role of citations changes for off-site annotations. Although all of the above factors still apply to the writing of annotations, the role of the annotation itself has shifted. Where before an annotation would analyze the lyrics of a song and then provide a link to an article about the song, off-site annotations can annotate that article directly. Especially for news articles, this introduces the possibility of using annotations are a fact-checking vehicle. If an article or politician make a claim in a speech or an article, Genius annotations can serve as an immediate way of connecting claims to the relevant facts or pointing out inaccuracies. In an online world where information if becoming increasingly confused among thousands or sources, this provides a needed way to add clarity and facts to public discussion.

As always, view my annotations (complete with citations), here.

The Educational Value Inherent in Genius

My interest in Genius as a platform for education is twofold: First, how can it be applied to the existing educational framework of literary texts and standardized testing? This would include annotated Common Core texts, test prep materials using Genius’s platform, or classroom annotation projects. Second, and perhaps more interesting, is Genius’ ability to be educational when it’s not trying to be. What value does Genius have as an educational tool for things that aren’t related to education at all?

To what degree does Genius and the act of annotating serve as something educational even when it is not part of a conventionally educational setting? In this case I am defining conventionally educational to include ordinary school work, but also annotations on texts widely considered to be “intellectual” or “literary.” Conversely, I would consider most music annotations to be outside of a conventionally educational setting. However, I would argue Genius annotations in these settings are educational, both for consumers of such annotations and for the people contributing them.

Genius annotations are educational for the people reading them because they serve to increase the reader’s knowledge of historical and cultural facts. Something as simple as giving a concrete explanation of common religious allusions serves to increase the reader’s knowledge base. Although it does not increase knowledge in a regimented or comprehensive manner, it serves both to transmit knowledge and to train readers to view texts in an analytical way.

As someone who writes Genius annotations, the writing process is very educational. Making a good annotation is a combination of research, creative writing, and literary analysis. Good annotations encourage the writer to learn new facts, and teaches elementary research practices. It also encourages in-depth analysis of written texts, especially in their imagery, allusions, and tone. Because so many of Genius’s users, especially in Rap Genius, are male high school students- a group often considered to be least interested in things like research or literary analysis, Genius provides a vital way to make these types of academic practices interesting and appealing to students.

As always, the annotated version of this post can be found here.

Crowdsourcing: Why I’m Not Getting Paid for This

Everyone knows the Wikipedia debate- is it a reliable, factual, source if all of the information is contributed by ordinary people? Whatever its academic veracity, Wikipedia is notable for the breadth and scope of its information- all contributed by unpaid volunteers. Rarely organizations are able to so effectively convince individuals to contribute their time and effort- entirely unpaid- to something with little direct personal benefit.

Genius operates under a similar system- except for the surprisingly small number of staff, all of the annotations are contributed by unpaid volunteers. This raises one very important question: How do you convince people to become high-volume contributors?

The answer to the first is hard to specifically define. At some level it is the dilemma faced by anything online- how do we convince people to visit our website, and then come back again later. For Genius, the answer is all in the community. Once you spend a lot of time on the site, you develop friendships and a network of people who will comment on and contribute to your work. While most of this is spontaneous, a lot of the way Genius is set up is designed to promote this. The most obvious examples are Genius chat, the forums, and the practice of coaching new users, but this can also be found in the many ways users interact around annotations- upvotes, sharing annotations, replies, and suggestions. All of these encourage people to interact, but also subtly maintain the quality of annotations.

The other way that Genius encourages contributors to make a high volume of annotations is the IQ system. Each annotation gives the author IQ- Genius’s version of meaningless internet points. The more you write, the more points you get, and the results are posted in leaderboards throughout the site. There are genre-wide leaderboards, but also lists for the top scholars on every artist and album. This sort of video game mentality is the sort of motivation that should be meaningless, but has a remarkably effective way of encouraging people to increase their contributions to the site.

So- what’s the point of all this? Basically, crowdsourcing is a really effective means of convincing a lot of people to work for you without having to pay them. From the user’s perspective, it’s a subtle manipulation of our emotions, but, since we’re all still here, it’s obviously worth it.

As always, the annotated version of this post can be found here.

/theinternet

Genius.com, at it’s core, is based on the idea of annotating. When it existed as RapGenius, it focused entirely on annotating rap lyrics. When it underwent its expansion to Genius.com, texts expanded from just music lyrics to any written work. This means that contributors could upload any written work, within copyright law, and annotate it. Currently, under the banners of Lit Genius, News Genius, and History Genius, this includes poetry, excerpts of novels, speeches, and historical documents..

Now, however, Genius aims to take their expansion one step further. Their next expansion, genius.com/theinternet, will let users annotate anything on the web. This includes online news articles, websites, and basically anything written on the internet. The only current exceptions are things behind paywalls or accounts, and online pdfs. This will let genius annotations serve a variety of functions. Annotations can be used to provide immediately visible fact-checking for speeches and news articles. They can also let experts comment on political documents and speeches. For example, after Benjamin Netanyahu gave his controversial speech to congress, the full text of the speech appeared on MSNBC, annotated by experts in Middle Eastern policy.

While /theinternet has not been officially released, there is a beta testing version available. Visit http://genius.com/beta to sign up for an account, and happy annotating!

As always, the annotated version of this post can be found here, complete with links to each of of the articles and examples mentioned: http://genius.it/elizabethposs.blogspot.com .