Coye Cheshire & Andrew Fiore November 15, 2015 // Computer-Mediated Communication Community, Science, and CMC

11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore1 Course business  Join the mailing list!   Instructions in the News section here:  Office hours Tue + Thu 2–3 p.m. in 305A South Hall (BUT TODAY ONLY IN ROOM 2)

Weekly reading task  What might encourage contribution?  What might discourage it? 11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore2 Medium Mailing list Forum Wiki Annotations on syllabus Annotations on document Something else… + ? ? ? ? ? ? – ? ? ? ? ? ?

11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore3

11/15/ Web 2.0, circa 1985? vs.

11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore5 Rheingold’s study: An early online community (Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link)  At this time, geography still played an important role because of BBSes (local telephone access)  Less use of pseudonyms (identity persistence)  Less initial distrust  Socioeconomic skew?

11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore6 What is an online/virtual community? Social Spaces Role-playing Professional Groups Work-related discussion groups Medical and Illness support groups Geographically related groups Tech/Software Support

11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore7 Virtual communities are 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 in cyberspace. Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community

Social networks  NOT the same as “social networking” sites!  Accumulate capital (Smith) …  Social capital  Knowledge capital  Communion  … through ties within the network. 11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore8

11/15/ Potential “to change our lives” Rheingold (1995) Political change (aggregate social level) Person-to-person interaction (interpersonal interaction level) Perception, thoughts, personalities (individual level) Macro Micro

But does CMC change lives?  That is, does technology change people?Change society?  What is this point of view called?  What’s the role of adaptation? 11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore10

11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore11 (Gay and Hembrooke 2004)

11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore12 (Gay and Hembrooke 2004)

11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore13 The Internet as “agora”?

11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore14 The Internet as Panopticon?

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11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore16 How do we know if the promise is being fulfilled? How is Internet use related to general social interaction? How does offline interaction relate to online interaction?

Does CMC change science?  Cyberpsychology — but what about:  Cybersociology  Cybereconomics  Cyberengineering…  Are these truly different? 11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore17

The Internet as virtual laboratory 11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore18 “Cyberspace as a scientifically legitimate social environment” Goals: — To understand human behavior in mediated channels, — To explain it, and — To predict it.

For Thursday  Erving Goffman. (1956) Chapter 1 from The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. (In reader.)  Judith Donath. (1998) Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. In Smith, M., and P. Kollock (Eds.) Communities in Cyberspace. London: Routledge. 11/15/2015 Computer-Mediated Communication — Cheshire & Fiore19