Unit 7 - Rule Breakers

SITE RULES ON FACEBOOK

Finding how to vote on the new proposed rules governing Facebook was much easier than finding out what the actual current or proposed rules are. As I was looking for the rules, within a couple clicks, I discovered a Facebook blog page that I didn’t know existed. In addition to lots of great information that has nothing to do with the rules governing this site, at this URL http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54964476066 I found an invitation to comment on site governance issues:

As I scrolled down this page, I saw this link on the left side of the page:



Which led me nowhere productive! I tried several other links that looked like they would provide me with information about the rules of this site - actually I tried many links with no luck. Finally, after looking for a good 45 minutes to an hour, at the bottom of the homepage, I saw a tiny link called Terms, which got me to the rules of the site. Did everyone else but me know to click there immediately?

The set of rules that I found there is what Grimes (2008) calls the civil code. The civil code is determined by legal documents and policies which contain all of the written codified laws for a virtual world. These governing documents provide the framework for the community in the same way that Hawaii Administrative Rules and Hawaii Revised Statutes define the laws of our State in the off-line world. At URL http://www.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf , the civil code of Facebook can be found. There are guidelines about:

• Eligibility: (over 13 years of age, in college or high school if between 13 & 18, or over 18),


• Registration Data: provide accurate profile information, keep it updated and secure


• Proprietary Rights: all content belongs to Facebook. Neither the content nor the trademarks can be reproduced without permission.


• User Conduct (This is a huge section!): For example, the number one rule with lots of word space attributed to it is - don’t use the site for commercial use. In addition other highlights from the code of conduct include: don’t include any content that Facebook deems to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable; no videos allowed on this site that the user didn’t take, only register as yourself – no pseudonyms, use your correct age and affiliations, no groups or businesses; don’t solicit anything especially from anyone under 18, including anyone’s social security numbers, address, phone numbers, etc.; don’t send junk mail, spam, chain letters, etc.; don’t access anybody else’s site


• User Content: basically, you’re responsible to upload your own stuff (pictures, videos words) but Facebook has all rights to it and by using the site you agree to let the company use it anyway they want, forever and for no charge.


• Copyright: don’t infringe on anyone else’s copyright


• Repeat Infringer: following the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Facebook can kick you off their site if you violate copyrights, even once but certainly if you do it a lot


• Third Party Websites: Users can link to other sites and Facebook isn’t responsible for the content found there


• Information about specific pages: There are lots of paragraphs containing info about the uses of the various pages, basically explaining that the content put there is created by an individual, not Facebook


• User Disputes: basically, settle it among yourselves.


• Privacy: When you put anything on the Facebook site, you give permission for them to transfer information into servers within the United States.


• Disclaimers: I think they’re repeating all of the above information again here.


• Governance & Jurisdiction: The laws of Delaware apply to this site


• Indemnity: You can’t sue the company, any of its subsidiaries or anyone who ever before, currently or will ever work at Facebook, either now or in the future

The governing documents found on Facebook include all of the four types Grimes lists: software license agreements, terms of service or use agreements, privacy policies, and community standards and practices.

RULE BREAKERS:

OK, I’m going to admit it right off. I’m one example of a rule breaker. Because I’m concerned about security, I provided the wrong birth date on Facebook:

Well, I’m not too far off.

Would this qualify me as a rogue user? Using the loose definition of the term found in computer science literature as “individuals who are not full-fledged hackers but who have gained access to files or functions beyond their permission level” (Gazan, 2007) the answer would be, no, I sure don’t have the computer expertise to do that! Using the definition of rogue user defined by McNee et al. (in Gazan, 2007), as individuals who undermine the rating system in a collaborative filtering environment, I would again not fall under this definition. However, according to Gazan’s definition, a rogue user is an active participant in an online community who violates any of the community’s rules or spirit. Yikes, I did break a rule, I’m ‘fessing up to it – I am a rogue user! The reason why I posted an incorrect birth date is that I’m concerned that someone will use this in an inappropriate way, however, as Suler and Phillips (in Gazan, 2007) state, online participants seek the reward of recognition. Therefore, I didn’t change myself into an 18 year old or even a 37 year old, but kept my age within the 50ish range due to the recognition factor. Enough explaining and justifying – I’m guilty!

In this situation, I believe that there should be no action by the site administrator. In my opinion, it’s such a minor thing that no one would know, notice or care. There is no harm done to any of the other users on this site and I feel more secure knowing that no one can steal my identity by getting my real birthdate on Facebook. As for actions the other users should take, they should send me a birthday card around that date and they will get the card to me at just about the right time.

Another example of a violation of Facebook’s code of conduct is in the case of Akamai Coffee.

While Akamai makes the best coffee and chai that I have ever tasted anywhere, (no, they’re not paying me to say this!) they are using the name of their company as the first and last name of a person which is a violation of Facebook’s code of conduct. Not to give Mr. Coffee all the blame (or all the credit which ever it might be), the same technique was used by several other businesses such as Skyline Adventures and Maui BrewingCo so it must be a fairly common use of Facebook. However, the Facebook code of conduct (which, as you recall took me an inordinate amount of time to find) specifies that businesses can’t sign up – individuals have to sign up as themselves. Although I hope the site administrators don’t do anything about this as this is a tiny family owned business struggling to make ends meet, Facebook does put out a lot of warnings on their rules page about situations in which money might be made. I personally think it’s a good marketing tool, and in these tough economic times, small businesses need all the help the can get to stay afloat. I’m not a business person, so I’m not sure what, if any, ethical issues this may bring up as far as business practices go. Facebook administrators may feel that this issue may be somewhat like Kollock and Smith (1996) termed, the free-rider problem. Although I’m using the term in a very different way than Kollock and Smith intended it, Facebook administrators may not be willing for Mr. Coffee to get free advertising when other businesses pay them for it. To go along with Kollock and Smith’s logic, when ever a person cannot be excluded from the benefits that others provide (in this case, money other businesses paid to the Facebook company for advertising), each person is motivated not to contribute to the joint effort, but to free-ride. I know I’m stretching the analogy here and going in another direction than Kollock and Smith with this analysis. It just seemed that this article was the only one that I could remotely use to comment on this situation (rogue user again, huh?)

Looking

Searching

Continuing to look

Checking another profile

Pictures, picture albums?

Videos?

Looking at another profile - still nothing

Am I the only rogue user on Facebook?

Still looking

Following video links -copyright violation? No, drat.

Another profile again

Content on the message OK? yes

Continuing to look.....

Well, it’s almost four hours later now and I’m still looking for one other instance of violations of Facebook’s rules. As a site, among the friends or friends of friends that I’m able to access, the content seems to totally be within the guidelines of their code of conduct. I hate to admit it, but the only thing I could find is in the photo album of my own son (rogue user begets rogue user, I guess). Even though I’m not offended by this picture it’s the best (or I should say, the worst) that I can find. Buried somewhere in my son's 200+ pictures is one in which someone is making an obscene gesture, giving the finger to the camera:

Because it was so difficult to find violations of the Facebook code of conduct, Facebook has met what Cosley et al. describe as the key challenge – creating interfaces, algorithms and social structures that encourage users to provide high quality contributions. In the study by Cosley, they state that administrative or user oversight increased both the quantity and quality of contributions while reducing antisocial behavior. This appears to have been the case with Facebook. As recommended by Cosley, Facebook appears to have expert oversight by their company staff and they also invite users to contribute recommendations to the sites governance. This creates an online social network system in which users' behavior and the content they post to this site basically complies with the site rules.

Session 6: Online Identity

Question 1. How do we know online identity when we see it? Propose a working definition of online identity for a site that you’re studying and compare it with one or two definitions from those in the reading selections.

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines “identity” as the distinguishing character or personality of an individual. This encompasses the main idea that I would use when describing the term, identity. The working definition of online identity that I would use simply builds upon Merriam-Webster’s definition: online identity is the online distinguishing character or personality of an individual. One interesting idea unique to online identity is that it does not exist until the individual writes himself or herself into being. Philosophers may debate whether or not we do this with our offline identity, however, the consciousness with which we create our online identity may add different aspects of self-assessment, deliberation and self-creation that I believe is distinctive to our online personality.

Have you heard the old saying that in five years you will be what you eat and who your friends are? Since we probably can’t assess online identity from the user’s diet, we could obtain clues about the person’s identity by looking at the social interactions that occur. According to Huberman, Romero and Wu (2009), online identity could be determined from the user’s attention to and interactions with other people on the network. Who their friends are, in other words. Althought the structures of social networks provide a visualization of declared “friends”, this in itself does not give a clear picture of the closeness of the relationship or the significance among people. A more accurate analysis might be the study of the interaction patterns among friends. This interaction pattern could provide the researcher with clues about a user's identity.

Attention is a scarce commodity as the expectations of daily life and work commitments cause most people to have limited time to engage with others on the internet. In situations where the commodity of time is limited, people tend to default to interacting with those few that matter and that reciprocate their attention. Huberman, Romero and Wu determined that on a social network site, Twitter, individuals may declare a large group of friends but individualized attention occurred only within a subset of the friends and followers. One aspect of online identity could be assessed by evaluating how and how often the user interacts with other people on the network.

Liu (2007) brings up the idea that an individual’s identity can be gleaned from the person’s interests, which are typically posted on the online profile. What the person lists as interests – music, books, sports, movies, etc, can function to detect an aspect of their personality and identity. Since I think what we enjoy is a crucial part of our identity, I would add the information that the user chooses to list in the profile section is important to the working definition of online identity.


Question 2. Write two informal use scenarios based on your observations of existing users. Use scenarios are outlines of common interactions: how an individual with a predictable need enters your system, navigates through common decision points and options step by step, then (ideally) exits with what he or she came for. Include functional interactions (just user decision points relevant to the user's goal, you need not exhaustively list all options) and interpersonal interactions.

For this assignment, I will explore online identity for the social network site I am most familiar with at this point, Facebook. On the Facebook, site, users are real people, presenting themselves much as they would offline. Although it’s possible that the user may post fictional personas, made-up for some reason or the other, Facebook users don’t use easily recognizable pseudonyms as this would not be recognizable to other people already familiar with that person. On Facebook, the person’s online identity appears, on the surface, to be a relatively straightforward extension of their offline personality

On Facebook, there are many cues and signals that yield information about an individual's identity. Some, such as the photo and the self-description featured in the profile, can be readily perceived and easily evaluated. Some indications of the person’s identity, such as conventional signals (such as their interests) may be easily faked. Others, such as the network and communication patterns of the individual, provide a reliable and, if someone knows how to do it, a traceable evidence of the person’s interactions with others on the online network.

Informal Use Scenario #1
Tim, an acquaintance from high school, found my profile on Facebook within the first few days that I posted it. Tim sent me a friends request, along with a message indicating that as he started his Facebook account, my profile popped up on his home page because we graduated from the same high school in the same year. I accepted the friend request from Tim.

Figure 1: Denise and Tim Become Friends

As we began our online communication, Tim wrote daily on my wall, disclosing information about his job, telling me about changes in the area where we grew up, commenting on information that I provided to him and engaging in other general light social conversation. I asked Tim why he joined Facebook:

Figure 2: Denise writes on Tim’s Wall

Tim replied that he joined Facebook to make new friends and to reestablish older friendships - subtext – I think Tim’s real motivation is that he wanted to find a romantic relationship using Facebook. This need is only my assumption based upon Tim’s decision point to exit the communication loop after I posted family pictures:

Figure 3: My family Pictures Posted in January

After this date, Tim does not reply to any other messages from me but when I looked up information on his home page for this assignment, I noticed that he responds consistently on his wall to other females who listed their relationship status as single.


Informal Use Scenario #2:
Rebecca and I have been friends for about two years. We met at work and realized that we have many of the same interests. In addition to our other interests, Rebecca enjoys social networking for socialization opportunities and she uses this as her preferred recreation and leisure time activity. During an in person meeting in March, Rebecca let me know she is a member of Facebook as well as other online communities. We agreed to become friends on Facebook and she sent me a friend request a day or two later. In the month that Rebecca and I have been friends on Facebook, Rebecca has changed her profile picture at least twice weekly (here is the newest one). She has updated her profile every week and she provides comments on her wall at least once each day. These updates are broadcasted to each of her 203 friends every time she posts them. For example, the comment posted yesterday at 2:15 am was, “Rebecca has made reasonable progress on the lesson plan and is now going to bed”. Under each of these postings, there are from 2 – 5 comments back to her from friends, which are also broadcast to all of Rebecca’s friends. In addition, recent activity is updated daily as well, including information like that listed below which is incomprehensible to me:

Figure 5: Rebecca's Activities

Question 3. Using the scenarios, address this question: how are online identities shaped and expressed through online interactions in this community?

In the two scenarios described above, both Tim and Rebecca effectively use the scarce resource of attention in their online interactions, but they do it in very different ways. Since both Tim and Rebecca have other obligations, like working, they have limited time to engage in social network activities on Facebook. They each use different strategies to maximize the attention they pay to their Facebook friends. Tim focuses his attention on interacting individually with women who may potentially meet his goal of entering into a meaningful relationship (this is, of course my assumption of his goal from his online behavior). Rebecca maximizes her attention to her entire network of friends by posting messages on her wall at least once per day. As these are updated to each friend’s wall, everyone receives a daily update of Rebecca as well as postings from other people who comment about her post.

Social network research classifies ties as strong or weak, heterogeneous or homogeneous. In the scenarios described above, Rebecca’s daily comment strategy uses frequency of posting information to a large group of people to create stronger ties. Tim uses the strategy of selectively limiting his number of interactions to only those people who may meet his need for a meaningful relationship in order to create stronger ties with these individuals. Strong ties that both Rebecca and Tim are trying to establish and maintain are, or could become, close confidants, people relied upon in an emergency and with whom one is likely to share multiple interests. A close-knit network of strong ties can supply extensive support. Being a member of such a group requires a large commitment of time and attention. Both Rebecca and Time engage in frequent contact among the members of their respective group.

Compared to the small group of individuals that Tim corresponds with, Rebecca’s ties may be relatively weak. She corresponds daily with a large group of people, many of whom may be distant acquaintances, people known in a specific context and towards whom she feels less responsibility. Most of her friends do not know each other, for example, out of her 203 friends, she and I have only two (2) mutual friends. In this case, it is a sparsely connected network of weak but heterogeneous ties. As Donath (2007) reported, this provides access to a great variety of ideas and experiences. In Rebecca’s case, the use of her Facebook social network system makes establishing and sustaining large numbers of such ties very efficient.

How else can we analyze online identities? According to Donath (2007), one way is to analyze the interactions on a social network site through the use of signaling theory. Signaling theory assesses the way individuals signal interactions with each other and it analyzes why some signals are reliable and others are not. Signaling theory is based on the idea that everyday interactions are rife with divergent goals and small (or large) deceptions. People want to make the best possible impression, to appear important, creative, and popular, while others want to know if they really possess those qualities. When the costs of being deceived are low, people may not care if something is an exaggeration. However, when the costs are high, they may demand a more reliable signal.

One class of signals, termed assessment signals, is inherently reliable, because producing the signal requires possessing the indicated quality. Donath gives the illustration that lifting a 500-pound weight is a reliable signal of strength; a weaker person simply cannot do it. On Facebook the first assessment signal that is available is the user’s picture. Providing a photo is optional, so the participant can choose to use the default graphic or add their own photo. The photograph can provide a strong assessment signal. Does this person’s picture appear to match the information presented in their profile? Are they old, fat, young, pretty? Does the picture match the person I’m already familiar with? Do I want to connect with this person? The picture provides me with a strong assessment signal to determine whether or not I already know, or want to know this person. Regarding the identities for Rebecca and Tim, shortly after Tim and I became friends in January, he posted a picture which has remained the same over these past few months. It looked like someone of the age I would expect and I thought it could resemble the kid I knew in high school. Rebecca’s picture changes at least weekly. At times she uses her own image and at other times she uses a scene or, like the current image, a cartoon. Facebook friends can use the photos provided to assess the reliability of the identity of the person or to make assumptions about the person’s online identity based on how strong the photo acts as an assessment signal.

Are there any "Strategic" or "handicap" signals on Facebook? Strategic or handicap signals are assessment signals that suggest that a great deal of some scarce resource is available to the individual because they can afford to waste that resource. The idea is that only someone who has an excess of a given resource can afford to expend it for communicative display. Zahavi (in Donath, 2007) emphasized that these costly signals are only reliable in the domain of the cost. The owner of an expensive car may use it to signal both wealth and attractiveness, but its high price only guarantees that the owner is wealthy; it is an unreliable indicator of attractiveness. In the cases of Rebecca and Tim, both use attention to their friends as a strategic signal. By providing attention through personal messages, they indicate that they are willing to spend their resource (time) to establish or maintain a relationship with an individual. Rebecca uses the comment strategy to communicate with her entire network, broadening her impact to her entire network, while Tim communicates individually with a small number of friends.

In general, conventional signals, or self descriptions, are relatively reliable on Facebook. The user has the discretion to disclose as much or as little information as they choose. Conventional signals are kept honest on Facebook because the user needs some sort of accurate identifying information to engage other people known to them in the online social relationship. To ensure that people link only with those they truly know, one design approach is to increase the amount of knowledge about the other that potential linkers need to provide. Both Rebecca and Tim provided descriptors of themselves that seemed to me, on the surface, to match what I know about their offline personalities.

In summary, on Facebook, online identities are shaped through assessment signals such as photographs, conventional signals such as profile information and disclosing interests and patterns of interactions with friends, including method of contact and frequency of contact.

REFERENCE

Donath, Judith. (2007). Signals in Social Supernets. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(1). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/donath.html

Huberman, Bernardo, Daniel Romero and Fang Wu (2009). Social Networks That Matter: Twitter Under the Microscope" First Monday 14(1).
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2317/2063

Liu, H. (2007). Social Network Profiles as Taste Performances. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 13. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/liu.html

Online Social Question & Answer Sites & Traditional Learning in Schools

This week’s blog will discuss ways in which the forms of social and traditional knowledge production can inform each other. I will compare and contrast online social question and answer sites and information presented traditionally in brick and mortar schools. Three different aspects of information sharing will be discussed. First, I will talk about the tools that are utilized for information sharing, second, individuals who share information and third, the style of learning.

Tools for Learning:
The tools typically used for information sharing in K-12 schools include textbooks, fiction or non-fiction literature books, teacher made or purchased worksheets, and/or other hard copy documents chosen by and provided by the teacher. Students are encouraged to decode, comprehend, analyze and evaluate the written material, then are typically asked to demonstrate their understanding through output requirements such as tests, completing worksheets, writing papers, etc. One characteristic of the use of hard copy documents is that they are fixed at the point of publishing. Social media sites, such as question and answer sites are dynamic and constantly changing. Because this both a strength and a weakness for both types of learning tools, the use of traditional documents and online resources such as those is social media or question and answer sites can be utilized in tandem to better educate students.
How can these two types of learning tools inform each other?
According to Daguid (2006,) there is, at times, a need for information to remain static

He provides the example of the Constitution of the United States, making the point that it would not improve if it was changed at the whim of each citizen’s changing view of truth. Hard copy documents, like the U.S. Constitution, have significant built–in inertia maintaining the document’s integrity and the original intent of the author(s). Opportunities to look at original documents, like the U. S. Constitution can be facilitated through the use of social media sites, like Wikipedia. After only seconds, the learner can see a picture of the original document. Here’s a screenshot of the US Constitution fro Wikipedia. For a K-12 student, immediate access to the original document can be a powerful learning opportunity. Access through Wikipedia provides differentiated learning for students with various types of learning styles and it provides the visual representation for students with learning disabilities or limited English langauge proficiency. The use of social media tools such as Wikipedia can provide the teacher with more resources than are available through the school.

Should schools shift totally to online texts? Daguid (2006) discussed Project Gutenberg, one of the best known examples of networked peer production. Founded in 1971 by Michael Hart, volunteers have used this project to make “e-texts” available online for out–of–copyright works. With a “principal of minimal regulation,” the Project is predominantly self–organizing. If the Project accepts that a submitted text is free of copyright restrictions, volunteers do the rest, preparing the edition for the database, usually by scanning it in. Since 2000, the Distributed

Proofreading Project has provided quality assurance, distributing proofreading tasks among yet more volunteers. By 2006 Project Gutenberg had some 17,000 titles and two million monthly downloads. Though it has been described as a “large, well–organized” and “comprehensive scholarly” initiative (according to Roberts, 1999, quoted in Daguid, 2006), Hart insists that the Project is not only minimally regulated, but also minimally interested in the punctilios of scholarship. “We do not write,” Hart claims, “for the reader who cares whether a certain phrase in Shakespeare has a ‘:’ or a ‘;’ between its clauses. We put our sights on a goal to release e-texts that are 99.9% accurate in the eyes of the general reader.” The screenshot to the right shows the search mechanism of Project Gutenberg. This option can provide the teacher or the students with easy access to publications that would enhance the students' learning. Because the books on this site are so easily accessible, the teacher and students could access the resources with very little technical difficulties.

On the surface, the use of these online books seems perfect for school systems that are currently experiencing budget restrictions. The texts can be retrieved by students or teachers anywhere there is an internet connection, so they are easily accessible. They are free, so there is no initial or replacement costs to the district. Students can’t lose them – dogs can’t eat them! Teachers would no longer need to count them, check them out, check them in, look through for damage and run down the students who lost them. With all the advantages of free, easily accessible resources, educators may well turn to online resources such as Project Gutenberg to find a free and reliable copy of books.
However, according to Daguid (2006) texts on sites like Project Guternberg are more useful for the scholar, whose practiced eyes can discount the problems, than for the ordinary reader. He provides the example of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. In this case, when the volunteer scanned the text, the English words worked just fine, but there are some phrases in Greek, which the code did not compile. To solve the problem, the volunteer editor submitting the text decided to route around the problem by inserting a quick patch, a parentheses to indicate a change. That is a reasonable decision, but also a problematic one because other Gutenberg editors later used parentheses to route around different kinds of problems. As a result, the computer code makes adjustments according to the new patch code. The result can be changes in the text which cause challenging passages which the ordinary reader would consider incomprehensible. To use online resources like texts from Project Gutenberg, teachers and students would need to be aware of irregularities that may arise during the inputting process and be ready to analyze any changes this makes to the original material.

What about online information systems like Question and Answer sites as opportunities to provide information to students? Online Question and Answer sites are dynamic. The information is always changing and anyone can add information. Is this bad or good? According to Duguid (2006) Open Source software has shown that networked communication can build individual contributions into collective, synergistic projects without intervention from formal institutions or dependence on conventional expertise.

On the other side of this issue, Leibenluft cautions that one social question and answer site, Answers, “looks like a complete disaster as a traditional reference tool. It encourages bad research habits, rewards people who post things that aren't true, and frequently labels factual errors as correct information. It's every middle-school teacher's worst nightmare about the Web.”

Regarding information tools used in education, the best option could be for school staff to become aware that there are options of resources available online. There are advantages to continuing to use hard copies of some documents that by their nature need to remain static. There are other situations in which online resources would better keep the learner updated as to the newest developments in fast-growing fields. A decision that educators should make is whether the subject matter that they are teaching is best shared by the use of hard copy documents or if the information of the field is changing rapidly to require online resources. One advantage and disadvantage of peer production projects is that they constantly change. Duguid (2006) said, “what is flawed today may be flawless tomorrow”.

If the educator chooses to use online resources, how could the educator make the determination if the information presented online is valid and reliable? It is basically the same question Duguid (2006) asks, “What is it about peer production processes that assure quality?” He outlines two laws of quality that back up quality claims for peer production. The first is “Linus’s Law” which holds that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” This is the same idea as one of the common sayings associated with outrigger canoe paddling here in Hawaii: Many hands make the canoe light. The idea is that any problem is ultimately trivial when there is a large number of people contributing to a project. The more people involved increases the likelihood that someone will see the solution to a problem or catch an error. The second implied law of quality Duguid discussed comes from Paul Graham who claims that “The method of ensuring quality” in peer production is “Darwinian ... People just produce whatever they want; the good stuff spreads, and the bad gets ignored”. Together these “laws of quality” argue that more people making more changes only make things better. Larger numbers of contributors and time spent on the project work in favor of quality In some — even many — cases they may. In some they appear not to. Rather than taking the laws on faith, we need to ask in which cases the laws work, in which they do not, and if they do not, why not. As educators choose to access online resources as information tools for their students, they could look at the number of contributors to a topic

Another way to evaluate the quality of material found online is to assess the social annotations associated with the entries. According to Gazan (2008) just like notes in the margins of a hard copy textbook, social computing can operate in much the same way. Options such as links, tags, social bookmarks, comments or ratings provide users with the means to create, share and interact around content. Most instances operate from what Gazan calls “a model of aggregate peer authority.” He provides the example that no single expert categorizes photographs on a site like flickr.com (called tagging), but on this site tags are made by many users who, collectively, make a photograph accessible. Geisler and Burns (2008) appear to agree with Gazan and add that the potential value of social tagging is particularly strong for digital video resources because while the amount of online video content available to people is rapidly increasing, the visual and temporal nature of video raises well-known problems of classification and description (what he calls the "semantic gap"), making the capability to effectively catalog the growing stores of video resources a critical open problem. If educators, students, researchers and the public interact online around a digital item via social annotations all users would benefit from this critical analysis. Gazan states that an unobtrusive list of social annotations associated with digital library collection items would allow alternative views of digital content, and create a sense of collaborative endeavor. By utilizing this advantage of the web’s infrastructure and embracing a philosophy of releasing control of collection items would open the conversation to an even wider audience.

INDIVIDUALS PROVIDING THE INFORMATION:
In schools, the individual providing the information to the students is typically the classroom teacher. Teachers have expertise in the area of teaching which includes classroom management, communication with parents, and knowledge of the curriculum guidelines. The requirements of No Child Left Behind required that teachers become highly qualified in the subject matter they teach, mandating that the teachers have a baseline knowledge of the field.

Not too long ago I walked into a general education high school classroom to do an observation of a specific student. There were approximately 25 students in the classroom who were “listening” to the teacher do a stand-up-and-deliver type lecture on an area of science. Luckily, it appeared that only about 5 of the students appeared to be listening to the teacher and the other 20 or so were clearly doing something else. I say luckily because I knew for a fact that the information presented by the teacher was basically wrong. She had a rudimentary grasp of the topic, so there was some truth to the information she was presenting but there was more wrong information being put forth than there was right. I was glad that most of the students were not learning what the teacher was trying to convey on that day. What if they were all paying attention and were taking the misinformation as gospel truth. Shudder, shudder!!

While the example I gave above is certainly a rarity – certainly most of the instruction provided to our students is accurate – however, the amount of information needed to be conveyed to students is astonishing. In the area of science, a classroom teacher could not be expected to be an expert in all areas of the strands in the content and performance standards. Even scientists aren’t experts in all of these different fields, just in their own. For this reason, social question and answer sites can provide reliable information if the learner has some skills to help differentiate what is correct and what is not.

So who provides the information on social media sites? I imagine a group of scholarly old men, resembling ....Gandolf, maybe. To check my assumption with reality, I checked out the featured contributor on the Answer.com site. Hmmm....

According to Lerman (2007) social question and answer sites are a participatory medium in which users are actively creating, evaluating and distributing information. Rather than relying on the opinion of a few editors, like traditional textbooks, social media sites such as Wikipedia, Flickr and Digg, aggregate opinions of thousands of users. Answers found online in question and answer sites may range from those provided experts in field to the average Joe with an uninformed opinion. Content varies by expertise of person answering question. According to Gazan (2008) knowledge discovery and transfer is no longer restricted to a model of one expert creator to many consumers (as in the case of traditional teaching methods). Consumers are creators, who can add their voices to both expert and non-expert claims. This is an advantage to hard copy textbooks because users get the benefit of multiple perspectives. This provides the opportunity for learners to evaluate information in what Gazan calls “the best tradition of participative, critical inquiry”.

In onsite school situations and online, the student must access and learn to assess the qualifications of the individual providing information. Duguid (2006) quoted Benkler’s argument that peer production will lead to a “more critical and self–reflective culture”. To evaluate the information presented in either format, we must first become more reflective and able to analyze, evaluate and critically examine information provided. We need a better understanding of the connection between the means of production and the quality of the outcome, to be aware of the likely strengths and possible weaknesses of different approaches, to consider why a method works when it does, and to become constructively critical of systemic weaknesses when it does not.

STYLE OF LEARNING:
In schools the primarily method of instruction is still the lecture model, with the teacher talking and attempting to impart knowledge, assigning reading from a text book, possibly mixed in with some project learning. The model typically involves large group instruction from an “expert” at imparting the knowledge.

Online learning is typically achieved 1:1 with computer or other personal data device so that there is full engagement of the student throughout the learning process. Dempsey (2009) discusses how diffuse networking changes how we coordinate our resources to achieve goals, and in this situation, how learning in schools can become more individualized. Dempsey points out that with online resources our use of time and space changes. Time-shifting is routine as students may listen to or watch lectures in the gym or on the train. The use of space to support ad hoc rendezvous and social learning is becoming more important. As networking spreads, the use of web sites as the primary delivery mechanism of instruction could be expected to increase. As network infrastructure becomes more widespread, communications and computational capacity diffuses through more of our research, learning and consumer behaviors. We are not only looking at increasingly permanent connectivity, but connectivity through devices that have rapidly improving storage and processing capability.

School based learning can become informed about students’ need to be fully engaged in their own learning at a time they choose to access it, away from the constraints of space and time. Rather than searching for and passively consuming information users are not creating, evaluating and distributing information.

REFERENCES:
Duguid, Paul (2006). Limits of Self-Organization: Peer Production and "Laws of Quality”. First Monday 11(10). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1405/1323

Haythornthwaite, Caroline (2009). Crowds and Communities: Light and Heavyweight Models of Peer Production. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.

Geisler, Gary and Sam Burns (2008). Tagging Video: Conventions and Strategies of the YouTube Community. TCDL Bulletin 4(1). http://www.ieee-tcdl.org/Bulletin/v4n1/geisler/geisler.html

Lerman, Kristina (2007). Social Networks and Social Information Filtering on Digg. Proceedings of Int. Conf. on Weblogs and Social Media, Boulder, CO. http://arxiv.org/pdf/cs/0612046v1

Leibenluft, Jacob (2007). A Librarian's Worst Nightmare: Yahoo! Answers, where 120 million users can be wrong. Slate, 7 December 2007. http://www.slate.com/id/2179393/fr/rss/

Gazan, Rich (2008). Social Annotations in Digital Library Collections. D-Lib 14(11/12). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november08/gazan/11gazan.html

Dempsey, Lorcan (2009). Always On: Libraries in a World of Permanent Connectivity. First Monday 14(1). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2291/2070

Social Capital Explored

Social capital, "the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition" (Ellison et al, 2007) is the focus of this week’s experiences. Basically, I understood Ellison to say that social capital is the resources that we give to an online community and what we get out of it in return.

This week I wanted to select two social networks that represented both types of social capital, "bridging" and "bonding" described in the Williams (2006) article. Although bridging and bonding are not exclusive, I wanted to explore sites that seemed, at first glance, to be predominantly one type or the other. To make sure that I chose two sites with different social capital, I applied the Internet Social Capital Scales, or ISCS to several (actually many) sites before I was able to choose two that interested me and seemed to fit either one of the two types of social capital.

From my previous experiences with social networking sites, I’ve noticed that I tend to enjoy the “bonding” type of sites, where I interact with individuals I already know or friends of friends. According to Williams (2006), the individuals with bonding social capital have little diversity in their backgrounds but have stronger personal connections. The continued reciprocity found in bonding social capital provides strong emotional and substantive support and enables mobilization. My full immersion into the Facebook culture is an example of a “bonding” network with social capital being the emotional support that the friends provide for one another. Therefore, I expected to form an emotional attachment to the bonding social network community I joined and to be less interested in the bridging site. The new site I joined that appeared to foster bonding social capital was LinkedIn. Here is my profile on the LinkedIn site:

OK, the “working on understanding and improving educational technology…” statement was a suck up, but what the hey!!!!

According to Putnam, as described in Williams (2006), "bridging" social capital is inclusive. It occurs when individuals from different backgrounds make connections between social networks. These individuals often have only tentative relationships, but what they lack in depth they make up for in breadth. As a result, bridging may broaden social horizons or world views, or open up opportunities for information or new resources. On the down side, it provides little in the way of emotional support. The site that I joined that seemed to me to be a bridging social network site is a community formed around issues that interest me and a call to social activism, Care 2. Here is my profile page on the Care2 site:
Check out the age – do I really look 21??????

Putnam (in Williams, 2006) suggested that the social capital derived from bridging, which are typically weak-tie networks is "better for linkage to external assets and for information diffusion". This was certainly true in my experience in the Care 2 site. This site is high on information exchange and it links individuals by multiple opportunities to join causes. It provides some positive feedback reinforcement in the form of green stars or butterflies for contributions on the site that someone found valuable. Joining causes or contributing money can add either of these markers of appreciation.

Contrary to my expectation, I did not enjoy participating on the LinkedIn site at all. As you can see from the profile, I got stuck because I don’t have any network connections, which seem to be a prerequisite for meaningful exchanges on this site. On the Care2 site, I was able to participate in several discussions and I enjoyed reading people’s blogs on topics that interested me and also I enjoyed adding a comment when I had something to say.

One difficulty that I had on the Care2 site was locating any of my previous comments to get a screenshot of them. Although I could manufacture a comment to provide a screenshot, I really wanted to select an interesting discussion we had on junk mail. I wasn’t able to find this blog or our discussion comments again, after quite an extensive search. One helpful addition to this site would be a summary of the discussions that I participated in, kind of like the discussion history that I have with different individuals on Facebook.

Massa (2007) discusses the idea of trust to indicate different types of social relationships between two user, such as friendship, appreciation and interest. He says that these trust relationships are used by social network systems in order to infer some measure of importance about the different users and their visibility on the system. I certainly noticed this on the Care2 site. When I logged on to this site just a few minutes ago, I read an article written by Deepak Chopra. By my familiarity with his name, prior experience of reading books by him and my previous agreements with his point of view, I immediately trusted the information in his blog.

And, interestingly, isn’t it cool that Deepak wants me to add him as my friend on Care2? That was written sarcastically, by the way. It was surprising to me that I actually cued into this, as it doesn’t fit my definition of friend. I didn’t click add by the way…

While trust on a social network system is important individually, the idea of trusting information during an emergency situation is critical. This concept was explored by Erylimaz, Cochran & Kasemvilas (2009). Important to all situations, is their idea that trust is subjective because every individual makes his or her own decision to trust. In the subject of their paper, emergency response systems, trust is essential because professionals and volunteers rely on the information to make life-saving decisions.

While trust is not so critical on the social networking sites that I visit, I realize that I have a much higher trust of individuals that I already know offline – as in the Deepak Chopra example above. I did not accept any invitations to become friends with anyone who suggested it on either Care2 or LinkedIn because I had no previous off-line experience with these people. In the cases of the few people who sent friend requests on Care2, how do I know they are who they say they are?

On both of the sites that I explored this week, there is a system in place in which users evaluate the trustworthiness of the participants on the social network system. On Care2, users respond to the blog or provide the green stars or butterflies discussed above. On LinkedIn, the individual is expected to bring other individuals into the network and to ask known individuals for references. On both sites, there is a profile page where personal data is entered (to the extent that the individual wants to disclose information) which also shows a summary of the user’s activity on the system.

In addition to assessing bonding and bridging social capital, I considered my experiences on LinkedIn and Care2 using Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe’s (2007) concept of maintained social capital, which assesses the ability to stay connected with members of a previously inhabited community. With less than one weeks’ experience on either of these two sites, I only have a vague idea about my ability to stay connected with members of these communities. From my experiences this week, I don’t plan to continue to access LinkedIn beyond the requirements for this project. This site may be more appealing to businesspeople with products to sell but it did not provide an interesting experience for me. I may continue to access Care2 as the issues discussed are important to me, however, I will probably lurk more that I contribute.

Gleave, Welser, Lento and Smith’s (2009) discussion of social roles was very interesting to me. On sites such as AnswerBag, the social roles of Question People and Answer People are very clear based on the design of the site. I was able to identify some individual’s role on Care2 as Answer People as well. Before I read this article, I wasn’t aware of the role of administrators and arbitrators on sites like Wikipedia, although it makes sense that there would be people with long term commitments to this site who would invest their time and energy into maintaining the integrity of the information. I was interested in Gleave et al.’s identification of Substantive Experts Technical Editors. I wondered, do these people get paid for this or is this a hobby for them?

On Care2 and LinkedIn, I could identify individuals who took on the role of Discussion Catalyst (a role that I tried without success to step into on AnswerBag) and Discussion People. My role on Care2 could be best described as a Discussion Person as I participated in reciprocal exchanges of thoughts and information with other users but I didn’t yet begin any discussion by posting a blog. I may do this at some point and see how it goes. Honestly, my participation on LinkedIn was more of a lurker since I really didn’t enjoy this site too much.

An interesting idea proposed by Gleave et al. was the balance of roles within a site to maintain a healthy and vibrant site. At the simplest level, the Answer Person needs a Question Person and vice versa. Just as in our off-line life, we need a balance of all types of role groups, this seems true of online communities as well.

Possibilities for Final Project:
1) In my position with the Department of Education, I supervise our district’s autism team. As I’ve been exploring social networking systems, I’ve been wondering how social networking sites affecting teens with Aspergers’ Syndrome. This is one area that I’m thinking about researching for my final project. The question would be, “Do social networking sites help or hurt socialization for teenagers with high functioning autism, such as Aspergers’ Syndrome?” To answer this question, I could first Google key words in this question, then read research available on it. A quick Google completed just a few minutes ago yielded about 758,000 possible sites that could assist in gathering current literature on this topic. There must be quite a few scholarly articles to provide the literature review for this topic. Another method might be to initiate a social network site, such as Ning, for students in our district and conduct follow up interviews with students who were willing to participate after they joined this on line community for a month or so.
2) As a new user to social networking sites, and as a woman of “a certain age” as they say in the South, I’m interested in exploring motivation for joining social network systems in individuals over 50. Those of us in this age range were not born with “digital brains” and I think many of us do not access social networking sites. Possibly we may have some common characteristics which motivate us to join social network systems. The unit that most interested me in this class so far was last session’s information on motivation. A Google search of key words on this topic, provided about 8,000 possibilities, so this may also be a viable topic. One article that I just read titled Foggeys Flock to Facebook (URL http://www.mad.co.uk/Main/Home/Articlex/e62e1524cf9d43acb900cac973c3e3e8/Social-networking-and-the-50-plus.html seemed to have some potential. I could also simply ask people who are my age on sites like Facebook why they joined. The research question, if I use this topic would be “What motivates individuals over 50 years old to participate in social network systems?”

References:
Ellison, N.B., C. Steinfield and C. Lampe (2007). The Benefits of Facebook "Friends:" Social Capital and College Students' Use of Online Social Network Sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/ellison.html

Eryilmaz, Evren, Mitch Cochran and Sumonta Kasemvilas (2009). Establishing Trust Management in an Open Source Collaborative Information Repository: An Emergency Response Information System Case Study. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.


Gleave, Eric, Howard T. Welser, Thomas M. Lento and Marc A. Smith (2009). A Conceptual and Operational Definition of ‘Social Role’ in Online Community. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.

Massa, Paolo (2006). A Survey of Trust Use and Modeling in Current Real Systems. Trust in E-services: Technologies, Practices and Challenges. Idea Group.
http://www.gnuband.org/files/papers/survey_of_trust_use_and_modeling_in_current_real_systems_paolo_massa.pdf


Williams, D. (2006). On and Off the 'Net: Scales for Social Capital in an Online Era. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), article 11. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue2/williams.html

Session 3, Week 1: Motivating Content Contributions

As I began my activities on Answerbag, I related this assignment to the article by Ling et al. (2005), Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities. While the title is self explanatory, I saw that many motivation strategies in Dr. Gazan’s assignment were paralleled in this article. For example, both Dr. Gazan and Ling et al. had mechanisms in place to ensure that the participants believed that one's contributions are unique and that they benefit the group. Both had a rating system in place so the participant can see if their contribution helped others and both included persuasive messages or other manipulations (in Dr. Gazan’s case, a graded assignment) that would encourage participation. Ling et al. noted that participants who believe that their contributions are redundant with those of other group members find little reason to contribute, because their contributions have little likelihood of influencing the group. Conversely, if they think they are unique, they should be more motivated to contribute, because their contributions are more likely to influence the group. The Answerbag site had a control to eliminate duplicate questions, which should increase participation. By assigning the students in this class to act as participants we all believe we are similar in some ways with the rest of the group. Ling et al. stated that people will contribute more to online communities when they believe that they are similar rather than dissimilar to others in the group

Ling described Karau and Williams' (1993) collective-effort model, which claims that people work hard when they think their efforts will help them achieve outcomes they value. In the case of this assignment, the outcome that first motivated me was completing the assignment. In the beginning, I tried to mimic questions that were highly rated on the site and worked really hard to reach the specified level of performance created by Dr. Gazan. As I got more interested in this site my motivation changed. Soon, I realized that I was personally enriched by answers to the questions I posed and I began to put more value in the outcome of learning from other participants than by trying to “play the game”. Unfortunately for my grade in this class, this decreased the likelihood that I would reach the goal.
Besides doing it for an assignment, why do people join virtual communities? Ridings and Gefen (2004) stated that major reasons include both entertainment and searching for friendship as motivational forces. In their research study, they asked the question, “Why did you join?”, then categorized answers based upon the reasons suggested in the literature. Their study indicated that most sought either friendship or exchange of information, and a markedly lower percent sought social support or recreation. They also found that the reasons participants disclosed they joined a site were significantly dependent on the grouping of the communities into types. In all the community types, information exchange was the most popular reason for joining. Thereafter, however, the reason varied depending on community type. Social support was the second most popular reason for members in communities with health/wellness and professional/occupational topics, but friendship was the second most popular reason among members in communities dealing with personal interests/hobbies, pets, or recreation. My interest in Answerbag is consistent with the research cited in Ridings and Gefen’s (2004) article. The motivating feature for me was to quickly access information. Answerbag provided member generated content, which I liked, as opposed to other internet information which is typically provided by the site provider. Ridings and Gefen note that virtual communities must have compelling content, and that they might fail if they do not have good standards for this content. On Answerbag, there was a link that assisted participants in crafting a good answer and a disclaimer that was in essence, be discerning in analyzing the information you receive.
On Answerbag, there are multiple information categories, so that users self select areas that were of interest to them. The questions posed and answers provided are relatively short, and in this way, may be interpreted as a form of microblogging, as defined by Java et al. (2007). Microblogging, according to Java et al., typically involves short responses where the participants describe their current status in short posts. Answerbag’s participants may be considered microbloggers as there is a low time requirement and typically a low thought investment for content generation (although some answers provided are quite in-depth including references and website links, it appears that this is not the norm). In addition, Answerbag, provides the opportunity to post several questions and answers in each session. For me, the wide variations of topics available and the relatively quickness of posting questions and getting an answer in reply was reinforcing.
Ridings and Gefen (2004) reported that knowledge and information are, in general, a valuable currency and a social resource in virtual communities. This is certainly true from my experience on Answerbag. It was an ideal place to ask relative strangers about information. The focus was on specific topics generated by a participant with relationships among members established by information exchange about those topics. On Answerbag, the messages expressed views, requested and provided information, expressed feelings, and suggested solutions, consistent with information provided by Ridings and Gefen. This is consistent with two factors motivating participation described in the Java et al. (2007) research. On the Answerbag site sharing information is a major attraction of this site and it is also a good site for a participant interested in becoming an information source for others or information seekers.


In Java’s (2007) article, motivation for blogging was discussed and establishing or maintaining social relationships was the most frequent motivator. In AnswerBag, forming or maintaining social relationships would not be a major motivating factor, although it appears that some individuals who regularly participate in this site may form relationships with each other – when I was lurking, I stumbled upon a conversation where one participant offered the use of their condominium to another participant. Apparently they were socially connected in real life and through this site. Java summarized studies by Lento et al. who determined that a user’s retention and interest in blogging could be predicted by the comments received and continued relationship with other active members of the community. In my experience in AnswerBag, I received some very helpful answers from participants, ranging from the mundane “how can I clean coffee stains off of my enamel sink” (the answer worked really well by the way) to more thoughtful and philosophical discussions.
Schrock’s (2009) article looked at personality descriptors as predictors of the types of people who would engage in social networking sites. In examining my motivation to engage in AnswerBag and other social networking sites, I analyzed my own personality using Schrock’s parameters. First, he described extroverts, defined as sociable, lively, active, assertive, care–free, dominant, venturesome and sensation–seeking. Costa and McRae (1988) described extroverts as having, “needs for social contact, attention, and fun.” Extroverts are concerned with their appearance to the outside world and how others interpret them. Therefore, Schrock concludes, extroverts may be more likely to be interested in activities that involve interacting and being around others, such as social network sites, writing on a blog, and sharing digital pictures. The second parameter was self–disclosure, an act Schrock states is required by most interpersonal relationships, generally defined as “the act of revealing personal information to others.” I would rate myself high on both of these personality traits. In view of these two personality traits, Schrock’s research correctly predicted that I would enthusiastically engage in social networking sites. Two other areas discussed by Schrock include computer anxiety, defined as the negative, affective response of some individuals to computer technology ( from Barbeite and Weiss, 2004) and self–efficacy, a cognitive ability defined as the belief in one’s capability to organize and execute a particular course of action (from Bandura, 1997). Schrock stated that as it concerns the Internet, computer self–efficacy is defined as the “belief in one’s actions on the computer”. In other words, individuals who have a high degree of computer self–efficacy find computers to be useful to achieve their goals. Computer self–efficacy also has a negative correlation with computer anxiety. Barbeite and Weiss (2004) developed scales of self–efficacy and anxiety specifically for computer use, and found that computer self–efficacy measures were the best predictor of Internet use. For myself, I perceive myself to be high in self-efficacy yet rather inexperienced in using computers and as a participant in social networking sites. Since I perceive myself as efficacious, I jumped into this graduate level class with some trepidation, certainly, but with the expectation that if I worked hard enough, I could learn a lot and keep up with the content. As I gain experience exploring different social networking sites I am becoming more comfortable and my anxiety decreases daily.
Regarding my week’s experience with Answerbag, here is the URL from my profile: http://www.answerbag.com/profile/
For me, I had somewhat of a difficult time with the pseudonym. I didn’t really like being anonymous and didn’t want to take on another personality or persona, so I decided to sign on as OC1Paddler. The OC1 stands for an Outrigger Canoe that is paddled by one person. I have a really nice Hurricane OC1 racing canoe and enjoy paddling for recreation and racing. I’m out in the water at least 6 days a week now. It’s great fun! Among my friends here on Maui, most of us are outrigger canoe paddlers. When we’re not paddling, my friends and I are talking about paddling (or studying for a class in my case), so my first strategy was to attract other paddlers – this is Hawaii after all – and to engage in high point conversations about paddling. This didn’t work at all.
My next strategy was to engage other people about the other interests I have. I’m beginning to do some longer distance recreational bike riding (long for me anyway) so I wanted to talk with people about bicycle touring. Somehow this last week I got the notion in my head that my husband and I could do a month long bicycle tour and asked for suggestions for routes. I got almost no points for this but I did get some fabulous information about trips, so this was totally worth it. There is one, route verte, in Quebec Canada that we just may try out this summer.
Along the way I posed some questions that I thought might get some high ratings, but soon didn’t bother and instead focused on information sharing that was truly interesting to me. The topics varied; basically I asked whatever popped into my head. I was trying to decide what to make for dinner, so I asked, “What is your favorite vegetarian meal?” and got some good ideas. I got some great information on organic gardening, an activity that I’m just beginning. Currently, as I write this, I’m communicating with a woman (?) in New York who is giving me some ideas on why the bugs eat my tomatoes before the fruit gets ripe.
Some of the information was just too overwhelming for me to take in. I’m in a book club, so I decided to participate in information sharing about literature. I read suggestions on people’s favorite books and other book related questions and answers, but chose not to participate in these discussions – there was so much there already!
Interestingly, as I’ve tried to complete this assignment, I’ve checked on Answerbag several times. Each time I’ve gotten side-tracked by information coming or going so it’s taken me a ridiculous amount of time to complete this paper! In conclusion, then, in my experience, Answerbag was a very valuable site, one which I will continue to access even without going there as part of a class assignment.


RESOURCES:
Ridings, Catherine and David Gefen (2004). Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10(1). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue1/ridings_gefen.html

Ling, K., G. Beenen, P. Ludford, X. Wang, K. Chang, X. Li, D. Cosley, D. Frankowski, L. Terveen, A.M. Rashid, P. Resnick and R. Kraut (2005). Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(4), article 10. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/ling.html

Tedjamulia, Steven J.J., David R. Olsen, Douglas L. Dean, Conan C. Albrecht (2005). Motivating Content Contributions to Online Communities: Toward a More Comprehensive Theory. Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Schrock, Andrew (2009). Examining Social Media Usage: Technology Clusters and Social Network Site Membership. First Monday 14(1). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2242/2066

Java, Akshay, Xiaodan Song, Tim Finin and Belle Tseng (2007). Why We Twitter: Understanding the Microblogging Effect in User Intentions and Communities. Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop, 12 August 2007, San Jose, California.
http://workshops.socialnetworkanalysis.info/websnakdd2007/papers/submission_21.pdf

Posting 2, Part 2

This week, I joined two online communities, one – Facebook - under my own name and the other - 43 things - that I found in our weeks’ readings, under a pseudonym.

Facebook was immediately fun and intrinsically reinforcing for me. After I typed in my profile information, the face of my best friend from high school and the face of my best friend from college instantaneously popped up! As it turns out, we've all made unsuccessful attempts to reach each other over the years so access to this site has been really valuable to me. This is something that none of us have been able to accomplish off line. I've been having such a great time communicating with them over this week that, I'll admit it right now, I'm hooked!

In the Facebook community, I utilized information from our reading selections to create my profile, being conscious of what information I chose to disclose to ensure that it matched my comfort level. I also recalled information in our readings about some participants' quest to amass "friends" and considered my own feelings the first day or so when I had "no friends", then three, then five and now nine. For me, there is not a consumerism-type of mentality about numbers, however I did notice that over the week I have often thought of other people who I would like to reconnect with and have done several "friend searches" to find them. Not surprisingly, rather than finding my friends, I'm often able to connect with my friends' children. I was pleasantly surprised when they are willing to include me on their friend list. In our discussion, they express that I'm "cool" to have a Facebook account, unlike their own parents - isn't it amazing the simple things that make one "cool"? I was also surprised that my 21 year old son's roommate sent me a friend request, with the message, just in case I couldn't place him, "Kai's roommate." In speaking with my friends' children and my son's roommate, the relationship they have with my family and friends shapes my interactions with them. I'm careful about what I say and how I interact with them. It's almost like I'm speaking to them with the person who connects us in the same room.

One interaction I had on Facebook paralleled one of our reading selections. I saw a picture of my younger son’s girlfriend and sent her a friend request. When she replied, she let me know that my son broke up with her about three weeks ago, something that I had not known. Just as in our reading selection, there was some uncomfortable feelings around finding out information in this way.

On the Facebook site, I feel empowered and encouraged that people I knew years ago still remember me and that we remain concerned about each other, despite the time and distance that separates us. When I talk about what has been happening in my life, I value the comments by people who have known me a long time. I think this is a great site!

Interestingly, choosing the other online community was rather difficult for me. If you read my Blog entry in posting 2, you know that I find the idea of a joining a community as a fairly serious responsibility, an action which I consider carefully before joining. With this in mind, I agonized over the choice for a long time, then just said "*&@# it" and chose one. I ended up joining "43 things" for several reasons. First, a silly reason: because it was in our reading selections this week. Secondly, I'm in a period of my life where self improvement, making goals and accomplishing them is important to me. Third, another silly reason, it seemed as good as any other choice.

I couldn't get a screen shot of my 43 Things site to show up here, so here is the URL: http://www.43things.com/person/go_for_it


As you can see, on this site, each person identifies their dreams and goals (if you can’t think of any on your own, there is a bank of popular goals or some listed by category – how pitiful is that). After you list your goal, you can see how many other people have the same goal. You can click on a link and can read about people who have reached this goal and how they did it. You can also click on a link and read entries from people who did not meet their goal and learn why they gave up on it.

One part of this site that is supposed to be motivating is the “cheer” activity. You have 5 “cheers” daily and you can go on other people’s sites and “cheer” a goal on their list. When I saw the few cheers come up on my page, I tried to feel encouraged about it, but really, it didn’t make any difference to me at all.

This week, I’ve checked this site on a daily basis, however, admittedly, with no where near the enthusiasm I have for the Facebook site. On the 43 Things site, there is no one who I actually know, so there is very little draw for me. Even though we are connected through our common goals, I think I need an actual relationship with someone to want to share information with them.

The different nature of these two social computing environments that I chose shaped my interactions in very different ways. First, as I’ve alluded to above, on the Facebook site, I looked forward to logging on to Facebook each day and I was excited to see a new entry or a new friend. I did not fee that same kind of attachment to 43 Things. On Facebook, I enjoyed telling people about recent (or historical) events in my life, but I had no motivation to do this on 43 things. On Facebook, when the feeback came from someone I know, it was very meaningful for me. When I got a “cheer” on 43 Things, it had little, if any meaning.

After joining these two communities, I plan to continue participation on Facebook into the foreseeable future. I doubt if I’ll spend much time on 43 Things as it just did not connect up for me.

As a final thought, as I’ve talked about this assignment to my friends here on Maui, I have gotten some great suggestions about other online communities that they belong to that are cause or concept driven. I plan to check these out to see how they compare with the other two that I’ve joined. Regardless of whether or not I’ll stay connected to any of these sites, I’m certainly going to enjoy the exploration.

Posting 2

TOPIC: When you push normal human longing for interaction and self-expression through the wild infrastructure of social computing, what you get is...this session's readings…

CONNECTIONS
Gaston (1999) looks back at the 1950s front stoop society in Chicago and the changes that occurred after households all had televisions and air conditioners provides an important reminder that advances in technology change us and our society in ways that may be unexpected. This word picture was certainly something that I was able to connect to and understand. There were second- and third-level consequences to the technological advancements back in the 1950s, just as there will be changes in our society as we all become more consistent users of the new technological advances (such as social computing) available to us now. It’s interesting to imagine where this new technology and new way of gaining and maintaining social relationships will take us.
In my experience, Gaston’s assertion that there are two principal forces at work in the American culture: the high value attached to individual choice and the longing for community are two very powerful motivators behind our social behavior. With the recent affluence of our society and lack of constraints such as Depression Era expectations of working from sun-up to sun-down, people came to feel that questions of how to live and with whom to live were a matter of individual choice not predetermined or based on society’s expectations and norms. As a nation, we came to experience the bonds to marriage, family, children, job, community, and country as constraints that were no longer necessary. However, the longing for connectedness, being important to other people, engaging in reciprocal and meaningful social interaction is the second equally important force. Thus the idea of voluntarily joining a community as a choice, rather than based upon the confines of a physical location is an understandable outgrowth of both of these values.

Another connection for me was the idea that the whole range of human tendencies will be a part of the social relationships in online communities as well as in the physical world. When Thedora expressed frustration about her three year old, as described in the article by Weeks (2009), the responses encompassed a full array of human tendencies — constructive, destructive, pro-social, anti-social, conservative and risky expressed just as there are in any other arenas of social life.

The whole range of human tendencies includes depression. The article by LaRose, Eastin & Gregg (2001) provided a fascinating analysis of the correlation between internet use and depression. Stemming from an earlier study which found a causal link between internet use and depression, these authors studied the relationship between internet use, social support and depression. They used Bandura’s social cognitive theory as a framework and investigated the influence of self-efficacy, internet-related stress, and perceived social support on depression. Their research showed a link between internet use and depression, but one mediated by self-efficacy and the expectation of encountering stressful situations on the internet. They also found that internet use decreased depression through the use of e-mail exchanges with known associates to obtain social support and with increased experience and comfort with the internet. I thought that this was an interesting application of Bandura’s theories and a very well thought-out research project.

Hague’s (2006) article initially brought up the issue of mediocrity and the concept of flooding the “marketplace” with blogs. When Seth said “bloggers blog too much” and “they’re littering an attention commons” I wondered, too, are there too many blogs? From my very limited experience these past weeks in exploring online options, I wonder if many online sites are competing for consumers’ attention in the same way that strip malls compete for our dollars?

I loved Rosen’s analogy of online profiles, comparing them to portraits of wealthy or influential people in the past. She said, “Today, our self-portraits are democratic and digital; they are crafted from pixels rather than paints…Like painters constantly retouching their work, we alter, update, and tweak our online self-portraits; but as digital objects they are far more ephemeral than oil on canvas. Vital statistics, glimpses of bare flesh, lists of favorite bands and favorite poems all clamor for our attention—and it is the timeless human desire for attention that emerges as the dominant theme of these vast virtual galleries. There’s nothing I can add to that! What a great way of thinking about it!

MISMATCHES
One issue that was a mismatch for me, in terms of developing a rich online community experience, is the idea that online communities have low barriers to enter and low barriers to exit. While all groups and communities undergo a change in membership, Gaston (1999) notes that participants in online communities often exit the community rather than make an effort to alter the character of the existing organization. If we can easily set aside the bonds of community, “unfriend” our friends, why even bother in the first place? To me friendship and membership in a community involves commitment, looking out for the other person while they look out for you, willingly sharing your time and resources. Becoming part of a community means becoming interdependent. You’re there, for good, bad or ugly. Hopefully, over time you will be positively influenced by others and they will be positively influenced by you. You don’t opt out when your feathers get ruffled.

Another mismatch for me was the idea proposed by Weeks (2009) that online connections flatten relationships. Although I agree with BJ Fogg, director of Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab as quoted by Weeks, “text is an impoverished medium for communicating emotion, intent, real meaning”, it can provide the “speaker” an opportunity to think more deeply about an idea, review and revise it before it is sent to the recipient. The communicative partners can, if they’re willing, can enter into a very deep, meaningful and significant conversation which can strengthen and vitalize relationships.

Speaking of the Weeks’ article, another mismatch for me is the whole idea of the Twitter site. The description as a ditzy, microblogging sort of say-whatever-pops-in-your-head site does absolutely nothing to interest me in this sort of social computing. As Weeks points out, it is like thinking aloud in front of strangers. It is a marketing tool and a me-me-me medium. I do not understand its draw.

Albrechtslund (2008) did not convince me that surveillance is not a creepy thing. He argues that online social networking introduces a participatory approach to surveillance, which can empower, and not necessarily violate, the user. Simply using the term “surveillance” brings up negative connotations in every context I can think of. Even though most social networking sites ask their users to provide personal data in the profile, and participants willingly do that, using this information for any self serving reason, whether it is marketing, targeting, apprehending or other benign or nefarious reasons does not in any way create a positive spin on this. Albrechtslund’s article finishes with the thought that online social networking appears to be a “snoop’s dream”. It left me shaking my head.

For me, Bigge’s whole article was somewhat of a mismatch. It appeared to be a series of relatively unconnected quotes. The quotes, while thought provoking individually, I though that overall this article seemed disconnected, leaving me to wonder, “What is your point?” From this article I learned about the idea that Ludies, or conscious objectors, abstain from social network sites despite social pressures to participate. Apparently, Bigge believes that participants are conscripted to work to gain social credits while being mined by marketers.

A QUESTION THAT REMAINS UNANSWERED
As Rosen asks in Virtual Friendship and the new Narcissism, “Perhaps the question we should be asking isn’t how closely are we connected, but rather what kinds of communities and friendships are we creating?”

REFERENCES:
Galston, William A. (1999). Does the Internet Strengthen Community? In Elaine Ciulla Kamarck and Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (eds.), Democracy.com? Governance in a Networked World. Hollis, NH: Hollis Publishing Co.
http://www.puaf.umd.edu/IPPP/fall1999/internet_community.htm

Weeks, Linton (2009). Social Responsibility and the Web: A Drama Unfolds. 8 January 2009. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99094257

LaRose, R., M.S. Eastin and J. Gregg (2001). Reformulating the Internet Paradox: Social Cognitive Explanations of Internet Use and Depression. Journal of Online Behavior 1(2). http://www.behavior.net/JOB/v1n2/paradox.html

Hague, Umair (2006). Usefulness and The Banality of Business. (Bubblegeneration Strategy Lab blog post). http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2006/03/usefulness-and-banality-of-business.cfm

Albrechtslund, Anders (2008). Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance. First Monday 13(3). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2142/1949

Rosen, Christine (2007). Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism. The New Atlantis 17, 15-31. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/virtual-friendship-and-the-new-narcissism

Bigge, Ryan (2006). The Cost of (Anti-) Social Networks: Identity, Agency and Neo-Luddites" First Monday 11(12). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1421/1339