WORKPLACE GOSSIP AND RUMOR. THE INFORMATION ETHICS PERSPECTIVE

1. ETHICOMP 2008 University of Pavia, Mantua, ItalyWednesday 24 September to Friday 26 September 2008 WORKPLACE GOSSIP AND RUMOR. THE INFORMATION ETHICS PERSPECTIVE Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic & Margaryta AnokhinaSchool of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Mälardalen University Sweden http://www.idt.mdh.se/personal/gdcmaa05002@student.mdh.se

2. Gossip is an informal way of communication characteristic of different human groups including working organizations. {Just so that you know: men gossip as much as women!Research has shown that the alleged fact that female gossip more than male is not empirically well founded. (It is just a rumor!)} [Michelson & Mouly, 2004)]

3. The continuous growth of online communications calls thus for careful analysis of their mechanisms and consequences. Information Communication Technology (ICT) contributes very effectively to spreading of all sorts of information, including rumors and gossip, which moreover stay stored for the future retrieval on diverse servers and in data networks, and are difficult to call back even if they may be shown as false and ungrounded.

4. Kurland and Pelled (2000) define gossip as an informal and evaluative talk about a person who is not present. Ethical aspects of gossip are often related to questions of power and privacy, but also to deontological concerns of duty and respect as well as good will.

5. Gossip seems to be a well known phenomenon in all societies, both historical and contemporary ones. It seems to fulfill certain psychological and social functions such as increased social cohesion through shared information. In the case of neutral talk about other people it is evident that information of all about everybody else (even if not all contribute with information about themselves) may be beneficial for the group.

6. Evolutionary Programming of Communication Skills Gossip also gives an opportunity to observe life of others which reveals a “winner” and “looser” strategies. Rumors are public communications infused with private hypotheses about how the world works or making sense to help us cope with our anxieties and uncertainties (Rosnow, 1988, 1991 2001). More than rumor, gossip tends to have an "inner-circleness" about it, in that it is customarily passed between people who have a common history or shared interests.” Rosnow and Foster (2005)

7. [Richerson and Boyd, 1999] describe the evolution of communicating complex societies into an informational superorganism. [Barkow, 1992] suggests that rumors and gossips are kind of memes, by using Dawkins [1976] suggestion that culture, like biology, evolves through the processes of variation, selection, and replication, building on an analogy between ideas competing for survival and biological genes.

8. Suppressed taking Revenge on the Powerful and Privileged? Gossiping as a Tool of Workplace Bullying Gossip, Trust and Reputation

9. The Informational Analysis of Moral Dynamics Luciano Floridi’s Information Ethics (IE) is the theoretical foundation of applied Computer Ethics. According to Floridi, IE is an expansion of environmental ethics towards: - a less anthropocentric concept of agent, which now includes also non-human (artificial) and non-individual (distributed) entities; and - a less biologically biased concept of patient as a ‘centre of ethical worth’, which now includes not only human life or simply life, but any form of existence. - a conception of environment that includes both natural and artificial (synthetic, man-made) eco-systems.

10. Luciano Floridi: the Role of Information in Ethics A info-product info-target info-resource infosphere A info-product info-target info-resource infosphere Infosphere (from “biosphere”) denotes the whole informational environment constituted by all informational entities (thus including informational agents as well), their properties, interactions, processes and mutual relations. The agent is informationally embodied and informationally embedded in the infosphere. Where is the patient? http://research.microsoft.com/ero/phd/2006SummerSchool/Luciano%20Floridi.ppt

11. The informational Model of Moral Action (Set of) 1./2. Objects (Agent - Patient) 4. Shell (Subjective Info-frame encapsulation) 4 activates affects information process A P 1 2 5 5 3 6 7 5. Factual information 7. Infosphere 3. Message 6. Envelope (Moral Situation) http://research.microsoft.com/ero/phd/2006SummerSchool/Luciano%20Floridi.ppt

12. Given IE framework, gossips and rumors are examples of informational phenomena very suitable to analyze and model. Gossips and rumorsspread via computer-aided communications obviously add a number of new problems to the existing ones. Online gossip, social networking sites, and blogs are often used to tell stories about people.

13. According to a British anthropologist and evolutionary biologist, Robin Dunbar about 150 (Dunbar’s number) is a measure of the "cognitive limit of the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships". However, new information communication technologies make possible to communicate with huge number of individuals simultaneously, even though one may wonder in what sort of relationship. Here computer networks act as the extension and enhancement of human cognitive capabilities.

14. [Magnani and Bardone, 2008] present an interesting study of the distributed morality enabled by externalizing ethical knowledge in technological artifacts. They analyze the cognitive features and constrains of moral reasoning and look at new research in epistemology, cognitive science, and computational philosophy which all can help in getting an interdisciplinary understanding of the ICT enhanced moral decision-making. • A recent development in understanding of gossip, trust and reputation are studies of - behavior of artificial agents and simulation of intelligent agent networks [Danielson, 1992] [Floridi and Sanders, 2004]. • trust in multi-agent systems and simulated organizational societies [Ramchurn, Huynh and Jennings, 2004] and [ Lomi and Larsen, 2000] • advice, trust, and gossip among artificial agents [Prietula, 2000]

15. Based on the results from the social sciences [Lik Mui, 2002] proposes a mathematical framework for modeling trust and reputation. This framework makes explicit the importance of social information (indirect channels of inference) in helping members of a social network choose whom they want to interact with or whom to avoid. Rating systems they employ by using indirect channels of inference are necessarily dependent on the individual context of the rater. This framework is subsequently extended to address evolution of cooperation, which is a fundamental problem of social science and biology. [Lik Mui, 2002] research results show that provided an indirect inference mechanism for propagation of trust and reputation, cooperation among selfish agents can be explained for a set of game theoretic simulations. Combined with the above insights gained from explicit modeling, Information Ethics may be developed into a powerful tool of analysis of the wide range of phenomena, among them gossip and rumor and their role in different informational environments.

16. Conclusion We need to re-think what public space such as working place means in terms of relationships with different degrees of closeness, how interpersonal relationships are configured and implemented and how their architecture shapes their functions and meanings. We need more work in this under-researched area to gain an interdisciplinary understanding of gossip and rumor and to be able to form a common understanding of those old human practices as they appear in our ICT age. Conclusion We need to re-think what public space such as working place means in terms of relationships with different degrees of closeness, how interpersonal relationships are configured and implemented and how their architecture shapes their functions and meanings. We need more work in this under-researched area to gain an interdisciplinary understanding of gossip and rumor and to be able to form a common understanding of those old human practices as they appear in our ICT age.