Computer-Mediated Communication

Computer-Mediated Communication Online Communities September 2016

More Final Project Examples! Cheshire & King — Computer-Mediated Communication

A few examples of project types: • Design, prototype (maybe build) a novel CMC system • Experiment using a CMC system • Analyze or visualize interaction in a CMC system • Research a specific CMC system or domain of systems and collect empirical data (interviews, small survey, etc). …to address some type of problem Importantly, everyone should: (1) build on a well-articulated problem (2) use this foundation to justify the solution Cheshire & King — Computer-Mediated Communication

Brief History of Online Community (Also, What Constitutes ‘Community’ Anyway?)

The Beginnings of Online Community… The first large-scale online communities were Usenet discussion groups and forums • Developed around 1979 • No official structure

http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~atf/images/treemap_all.gifhttp://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~atf/images/treemap_all.gif

The Early Beginnings of Computer-Mediated Communication: The Virtual Community Computer-Mediated Communication

Computer-Mediated Communication

Web 2.0, circa 1985? vs. Computer-Mediated Communication

Rheingold’s study: A very early online community (Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link) • At this time, geography still played an important role because of BBSes (local telephone access) • Much less use of pseudonyms (identity persistence) • Less initial distrust • A great deal of emphasis on making the point that you can even have community through a computer. Computer-Mediated Communication

Rheingold’s Online Community • Rheingold:“social aggregations that emerge from the net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships.” • A great deal of early emphasis was the point that you can even have community through a computer. • Dystopian and utopian views on online community

Rheingold – Power and Control • “The technology that makes virtual communities possible has the potential to bring enormous leverage to ordinary citizens at relatively little cost--intellectual leverage, social leverage, commercial leverage, and most important, political leverage. But the technology will not in itself fulfill that potential; this latent technical power must be used intelligently and deliberately by an informed population. More people must learn about that leverage and learn to use it, while we still have the freedom to do so, if it is to live up to its potential. The odds are always good that big power and big money will find a way to control access to virtual communities; big power and big money always found ways to control new communications media when they emerged in the past. The Net is still out of control in fundamental ways, but it might not stay that way for long.What we know and do now is important because it is still possible for people around the world to make sure this new sphere of vital human discourse remains open to the citizens of the planet before the political and economic big boys seize it, censor it, meter it, and sell it back to us.”

What aspects define a community? Network ties? Symbols? Affect-ladenrelationships? Poster to post ratio?

Onlinecommunities are neither built nor do they just emerge, they evolve organically and change over time. Developers cannot control online community development but they can influence it. Jenny Preece

Rheingold – Community through CMC changes lives • From 1-to-1 to many to many: “Those of us who are brought into contact with each other by means of CMC technology find ourselves challenged by this many-to-many capability--challenged to consider whether it is possible for us to build some kind of community together.” • Political: “The political significance of CMC lies in its capacity to challenge the existing political hierarchy's monopoly on powerful communications media, and perhaps thus revitalize citizen-based democracy.” Image credit: http://blog.socious.com/

Community Contributions • How do we “get” people to contribute to online communities? • Design goals • Persuasion • Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation

Design Goals • No one likes an empty message board • selection, sorting, highlighting • framing • feedback/rewards • content, tasks, activities • community structure

Selection, Sorting, Highlighting • make list of needed contributions easily visible (e.g., wikipedia watchlist) • provide easy to use tools for finding/tracking work (volunteerism) • ask people to perform tasks that interest them

Framing, a.k.a. “Persuasion” • General guidelines: • ask specific people vs. general broadcasts • simple requests lead to more compliance that do complex ones for decisions that members don’t feel strongly about • messages stressing benefits of contribution have more effect on people who care about the domain of the contribution • fear campaigns lead members to increase contributions in response to persuasive appeals but also cause people to evaluate the quality of these appeals

Cialdini’s influential work on persuasion • Core research areas: authority, liking, social proof, commitment, reciprocity • requests from high status members lead to more contribution • people are more likely to comply the more they know the requester • people are more likely to comply if requests come from people more familiar to them, similar to them, are attractive, high status, or otherwise socially desirable. • compliance is higher when others see that other people have also complied • providing specific and highly challenging goals increases contribution • coupling goals with deadlines increases contributions • goals have greater effects when people receive feedback on performance

Intrinsic Motivations • 4 primary types: social contact, optimal challenge, mastery, competition • Secondary: romance, idealism, family • Tasks: fun, interesting, challenging, or activities people perform w/o external incentives, such as altruistic concern for welfare, compliance with social norms, civic virtue

Extrinsic Motivators • External rewards do motivate, but…larger rewards do not (necessarily) produce higher effort

Incentives • Extrinsic rewards induce fraud, especially those contingent on task completion not quality • Rewards that are task contingent but not performance contingent lead members to game the system by performing tasks with low effort • Status and privileges are less likely to lead people who are not invested in a community to game a system than are tangible rewards

Intrinsic or extrinsic? http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010OQB832?keywords=marble%20run&qid=1453933555&ref_=sr_1_2&s=toys-and-games&sr=1-2

Group motivations • commitment to an online community group increases willingness to contribute • people will contribute more if they think their contributions make a difference • size matters, more contributions in smaller groups • uniqueness principle - people are more willing to contribute when they think they are unique • valuable group outcomes (not lost causes), via social proof • contingent commitments

Computer-Mediated Communication