1. Computer-Mediated Communication
Online Communities
September 2016

2. More Final Project Examples!
Glitter: Live-tweeting during Glee broadcasts (e.g., how does the act of communicating through twitter affect the ‘community’ aspect of watching TV by oneself?) Did some interviews, collected some tweets and analyzed them.
Yelpful: re-thinking the review system to account for trustworthiness, reputation, and especially the concept of a “local expert” or a type of personalized concierge.
9/12/2018
Cheshire & King — Computer-Mediated Communication

3. 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
9/12/2018
Cheshire & King — Computer-Mediated Communication

4. Brief History of Online Community
(Also, What Constitutes ‘Community’ Anyway?)
Sociologists such as Barry Wellman argue that community has to do with the “sociability, social support, and social capital” in online networks and connections.

5. The Beginnings of Online Community…
The first large-scale online communities were Usenet discussion groups and forums
Developed around 1979
No official structure
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6. Many levels of community, explicit in this hierarchy: the “usenet” community, the alt.binaries community, the alt.binaries.sounds.mp3 community, the rec.arts community, etc.
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7. Computer-Mediated Communication
The Early Beginnings of Computer-Mediated Communication: The Virtual Community
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Computer-Mediated Communication

8. Computer-Mediated Communication
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Computer-Mediated Communication

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

10. 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.
9/12/2018
Computer-Mediated Communication

11. 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
No agreement on definition
Two big Qs: are online groups communities, and do they enhance or detract from offline connections (are they good or bad?)
Definition of community itself is not agreed on, more an ideal than objectively describing a form of human organization. One study on community in 1955 came up with 94 distinct definitions of the concept.
Some components that come up in discussions:
Agreed on: sufficient time to form relationships among members, develop shared culture and norms, and give a sense of shared history to group members.
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12. 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

13. What aspects define a community?
Network ties?
Symbols?
Affect-laden relationships?
Poster to post ratio?
How can we reconcile these different definitions of community?
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14. 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
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15. 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.”
Easy to take this ‘for granted’: the ability to go online, put a few search terms in a browser, and find like-minded people who are into whatever crazy thing you are too.
Image credit:
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17. Community Contributions
How do we “get” people to contribute to online communities?
Design goals
Persuasion
Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation
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18. Design Goals No one likes an empty message board
selection, sorting, highlighting
framing
feedback/rewards
content, tasks, activities
community structure
Quick anecdote about populating message boards on Productopia
Also, bring up Twitter W/R/T how design may influence conversation
9/6/16

19. 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
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20. 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
Think about fund raising appeals – how much modern fundraising employs many of these tools
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21. 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
Focus on social proof – ask them for examples (namely FB)
Also discuss testimonials
9/6/16

22. 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
Examples: fitness challenges, games, others?
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23. Extrinsic Motivators
External rewards do motivate, but…larger rewards do not (necessarily) produce higher effort
Foursquare badges!
Getting paid for grades
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24. 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
Ebay example…feedback gaming (class examples?) Yahoo Answers
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25. Intrinsic or extrinsic?
Several of the most recent reviews on this page were tagged with a similar disclaimer
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26. 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
Examples of group motivated tasks other than Wikipedia?
Where are people motivated more by group outcomes than individual outcomes?
Digital version of giving blood – SeeClickFix?
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