Transcript slides - Courses

Computer-Mediated
Communication
Online Communities
Coye Cheshire & Jen King
//
September 2016
More Final Project Examples!
4/12/2017
Cheshire & King — Computer-Mediated Communication
1
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
4/12/2017
Cheshire & King — Computer-Mediated Communication
2
Brief History of Online Community
(Also, What Constitutes ‘Community’ Anyway?)
Coye Cheshire & Jen King
//
The Beginnings of Online Community…
The first large-scale online
communities were Usenet
discussion groups and
forums
- Developed around 1979
- No official structure
4/12/2017
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~atf/images/treemap_all.gif
4/12/2017
The Early Beginnings of Computer-Mediated
Communication: The Virtual Community
4/12/2017
Computer-Mediated Communication
6
4/12/2017
Computer-Mediated Communication
7
Web 2.0, circa 1985?
vs.
4/12/2017
Computer-Mediated Communication
8
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.
4/12/2017
Computer-Mediated Communication
9
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
4/12/2017
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.”
1/28/16
What aspects define a community?
Network ties?
Symbols?
Poster to post ratio?
4/12/2017
Affect-laden
relationships?
Online communities 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
4/12/2017
Rheingold – Community through
CMC changes lives
1. 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.”
2. 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/
9/6/16
9/6/16
Community Contributions
 How do we “get” people
to contribute to online
communities?
 Design goals
 Persuasion
 Intrinsic vs. extrinsic
motivation
9/6/16
Design Goals
 No one likes an empty
message board
 selection, sorting,
highlighting
 framing
 feedback/rewards
 content, tasks, activities
 community structure
9/6/16
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
9/6/16
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
9/6/16
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
9/6/16
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
9/6/16
Extrinsic Motivators
 External rewards do
motivate, but…larger
rewards do not
(necessarily) produce
higher effort
9/6/16
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
9/6/16
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
9/6/16
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
9/6/16
9/6/16