Session 4 Social capital and trust mechanisms

The experience of joining two online communities

Twitter and LibraryThing are the two online communities I join this week. I’m thinking of planning a trip either in Hawaii during the spring break or to Europe some day, so I need some “experts’ advice”. The reason to join the two online communities is that I learned that Twitter enables users to follow someone or some institutions based on their own interests, so I thought I might easily get the information, and that LibraryThing is an online database that people share the books they have read and want to read, so I thought I might get some references for my travel plan.

However, I had difficulty in finding out the information I need and interacting with the old online community members. Take LibraryThing for example, after I keyed in travel, Hawaii, only 4 out of 43 results had book reviews. The following is one of the examples. 

However, when I clicked the Reviews, there was nothing under it. See the screenshot below.

Another problem is that I did not know what the scale that Average rating and Beautiful use and how the rating is produced. I think the situation I faced is similar to what Paolo (2006) said that a user should be informed how recommendations are generated, so that the user can check whether the system introduces undesired biases.

Since I did not get much information I wanted when searching travel, Hawaii, I turned to keyed in another term travel, Europe. This time I got plenty references books (213 results). I clicked travel guideàItaly (Eyewitness Travel Guides)àReviewsà janepriceestrada (one of the members reviewed the book). After reading other members’ comments on her reviews, I decided to leave my comment by asking the author my question. See the screenshot below.

However, the author has not replied to me yet. So, that’s why I said I had difficulty in finding out the information I need and interacting with the old online community members. The problem also occurred when I was on Twitter. After Keying in travel, I followed TravelChannel and Tour of Europe. I found that the two websites use Twitter to propagate their latest news and activities more than communicate with their followers.

When browsing the websites of TravelChannel and Tour of Europe by hopping from their Twitter, I found that TravelChannel has no channel to interact with its users, and Tour of Europe has Contact us that enables its users to interact with the holder of the website, but not with other users.

How to improve social capital/trust mechanisms?

As for LibraryThing, just like what I mentioned, the users need to know how the rating is produced (i.e. who has the right to rate? Based on what criteria?), the meaning of the different scores that one book has, and the credibility of the rating. When I clicked the Average rating of the book Hawaii, only eight out of 107 members rated the book. In the sense, the 3.81 in the average rating was produced by 7% of the members. The credibility is questionable. To increase the credibility, I think the website can first confirm the members’ identity. As Paolo (2006) mentioned, an eBay user can enter credit card details and in this way, eBay can tie the pseudonym with that credit card so that it can be possible to find the person in the real world. Identity confirmation can reduce the possibility that some people use different pseudonyms to repeatedly rate the same book. In addition to identity confirmation, the website should clearly list the criteria of rating and the proportion of raters and non-raters. The listing of criteria of rating can facilitate members wanting to rate to know how to act properly, and members depending on others’ rating to better interpret the outcomes.

As for Twitter, since it has the function of following others, I think one of the ways to enhance social capital is to follow as many like-minded people’s twitters as possible. As Allen (2009) said forming relations with a friend of a friend requires the disclosure of his/her neighbors. It is easy to achieve because when we follow someone who has the same interest of us, we can also follow people who are followed by the person.

I only followed two website’s twitters, which turns out to be not very interactive. I think one of the solutions is to follow real persons. According to Ellison (2007), there are two types of social capital: bridging and bonding. Bridging means loose connections between individuals who may provide useful information or new perspectives for one another but typically not emotional support. Boding means the relationship between individuals is tightly-knit, emotionally close. As for my experience with following Travelchannel and Tour of Europe, I can get some useful information from them, but no emotional support. If I followed real persons’ twitters, the chances of interaction would be likely increased. No matter in which online community, I think as a new member a shortcut to get to know old members and interact with them is to be the Question Person (Gleave, 2009). Question people are important in an online community because they offer a chance for Answer people to show their expertise as well as get to know them. This is a starting point for a new member to increase his/her social capital.

References

Gleave, Eric, Howard T. Welser, Thomas M. Lento and Marc A. Smith (2009). A

Conceptual and Operational Definition of ÔSocial RoleÕ in Online Community. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.

Massa, Paolo (2006). A Survey of Trust Use and Modeling in Current Real Systems.

Trust in E-services: Technologies, Practices and Challenges. Idea Group.

Allen, Stuart M., Gualtiero Colombo, Roger M. Whitaker (2009). Forming Social

Networks of Trust to Incentivize Cooperation. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.

Ellison, N.B., C. Steinfield and C. Lampe (2007).  The Benefits of Facebook

"Friends:" Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4).

Conclusion

As for my final project, I intend to investigate how to make Laulima more like an online learning community. I would like to address the following issues:

1.      The patterns of participation in Laulima, take an online reading course for example

(1)   The types of students in the online reading course (i.e. Lurkers or veterans)

(2)   The kinds of topics which are more popular than others

2.      The differences of the online reading course and the face-to-face reading class

3.      The difference between Laulima and online learning communities

So far, I only know an online learning community Tapped In, so I would be happy to learn more online learning communities from my classmates. In addition, I’d like to know your comments and suggestions on this topic :)

Session 3 The dynamics of an online community

This week’s readings focus on online community users’ psychological factors and motivation on participating in the online community. Tedjiamulia (2005) and Java (2007) both addressed the amount and pattern of participation. People who seek information but rarely ask or answer questions are considered lurkers and people who provide information for other community members are considered veterans. Ling et al. (2005) proposed a concept social loafing, which can describe the phenomenon of lurkers. Java held that there is another type of people who aim at making friends or keeping friendship with other people. Tedjiamulia held that there is a type of people whose contributions are between lurkers and veterans. They asked questions as well as answer others’ questions. The salient difference between this type of people and veterans lies in the depth of the questions and answers.

Tedjiamulia also addressed the influence of efficacy on participation; namely self-efficacy, information efficacy, and technology efficacy. The concept of information efficacy is similar to what Ling et al. said that a person believing his contribution to the community is unique will contribute more. In addition, the concept of technology efficacy could explain what LaRose (2001) mentioned that novice internet users, because unfamiliar with technology, are easily stressed out. Tedjiamulia believed that a person who has higher self-efficacy tend to cooperate more. I think there might be a precondition that the goal one perceives needs to be considered a valuable and a little challenging one. For example, I have taken a writing course required by the university. For me, the student learning outcomes were quite easy and I knew that I would achieve them without difficulties. Therefore, I have to admit that I did not participate much in the class. Schrock (2009) did an interesting study on the relationship between psychological, affective, and behavioral factors and the use of technology. The findings show that a person with computer anxiety will less likely seek information online, but that a person with computer self-efficacy tends to seek information online. Take me for example, when I was a novice computer user, I did not know very well how to search the right information for my assignments, the more I searched, the more I got confused and felt that I was lost in the cyber sea. As a result, I felt anxious when doing assignments which required information search online. There were times that I had a feeling of anti-computers. However, with the help of my friends who knew computers better than me, I started feeling comfortable when using computers.

I am interested in the interaction of online learning courses, so I observe an online reading course of UH. The students, registering the online reading course, are assessed to need help for improving their reading abilities in order to deal with the high demands of academic reading. The online course focuses on the development of critical reading strategies and field-specific vocabulary. According to Gefen (2007), the participants in a virtual community share interests and frequent the online community. The students in the online course have common goals; however, the current My UH Portal does not allow students to continue using the online course site if the semester is over. In other words, the online reading course users intensively participate in the site only during one semester. Tedjiamulia said that if an online community wants its users continuously share knowledge, its users should participate in the community for a long period of time and engage in the online activities intensively. The restriction of short-term use for students may affect the sense of belonging to the online course and further affect their motivation and participation. In the sense, the online reading course may not 100% meet the standards of a so-called online community; however, there are four online reading courses open this semester, with 45 students enrolled. If all the current students, or even previous students, could gather and share the same online platform and use the facility offered by the online platform for good, I am curious about how the online community of these reading courses will end up with and what the students’ motivation will be.

What modes of participation are there?

There are 11 topics, 139 posts on this online reading course. The modes of participation are as below:

1.      The instructor posts questions and the students answer.

2.      Some students post questions and other students answer.

3.      The instructor responds to the students’ questions and answers.

Among 139 posts, 118 posts are contributed by the students and 21 by the instructor. The interaction mode of the online course does not follow the traditional classroom dynamics; that is, the teacher initiates the questions, the students respond to the questions, and the teacher evaluates the students’ answers. In this online course, students are able to initiate questions and evaluate other students’ answers. In this sense, the students in the online course are entitled more autonomy than those in the traditional classrooms. Compared to other types of online communities, the mode of participation in the online course is quite different. Given the term of use and the design of Laulima, the students in the course do not send messages to each other and friend people, but they do comment on others’ posts. Another difference is that participants in other online communities ask questions based on their own interests. The participants in the online reading course ask questions based on the instructor’s guidelines. For example, the instructor may ask the student discussion leader to put forward evaluation questions rather than literal questions for the weekly reading article to let other students answer the questions.

How is participation encouraged?

The instructor (or the “designer” of the online course) posts every week, giving students a variety of tasks to engage in. In the first week, the instructor asked the students to create a profile. This is the first step the instructor encourages the students to participate in the online course and get to know each other. This is quite similar to what the designers of other online communities do. The site members are always encouraged to post their own profiles to let other members know who they are. Week 2 and week 3 are the practice of reading circles. The student discussion leader needs to select an article and ask comprehension questions and discussion questions to help other students comprehend the article. Week 4 and week 5 are the practice asking different types of questions, such as literal, reorganization, inference, prediction, evaluation, and personal response. Each student has the chance of being a discussion leader and selecting a reading of her/his own interest. She/he posts questions and other students as well as the instructor respond to the questions. In addition, each student is in charge of creating her/his own vocabulary log and a vocabulary test based on the log. Based on my observation, the more autonomy students have in learning, the more contribution they give to the course, which accounts for 85% of the posts. The students from this online course have common and specific goals. It is similar to what Gefen said the members in a virtual community mostly focus on information exchange about specific topics.

Which types of content draw the most responses?

The most popular topic is the reading circles, accounting for 50 posts. The student discussion leader posts her/his questions based on the article of her/his selection and other students as well as the instructor participate in the discussion. The questions in reading circles include comprehension questions and discussion questions. Comprehension questions are the literal questions that the answers are easily found from the article. The discussion questions ask for students’ personal experience and making inferences form the article. The length of the responses to the discussion questions is obviously longer than that to the comprehension questions. The second popular topic is self-introduction. There are 36 posts about this topic. Many students posted more than once either telling more about themselves or responding to other students’ questions.

The purpose of participation in the online reading course is mainly for information sharing and friendship-wise relationship, if any (Java, 2007). No social support is founded. I wonder if the previous students are allowed to participate in the online course, how the classroom dynamics will be different.  

References

All of the articles for this week

Friendship on SNSs--Conclusion

When reviewing this week’s comments, I conclude four key points:

1.      Information search

2.      The line between the weak tie and the strong tie

3.      The reaction of old community members to new community members

4.      Productivity of social media

Information search and productivity

Information search, one of the most attractive features of social media, was the focal questions in many people’s posting. According to Licklider and Taylor (cited from Galston, 2000), online communication can boost the shared interests within the online community because people are capable of choosing the person to interact with based on common interests. The common interests are not the terminal goal of information search, but the jumping point to build precious interpersonal relationships, which in turn can benefit information search. The virtual interpersonal relationships are like two sides of the same coin. They can help exchange information, just like what Licklider and Taylor perceived. However, they can weaken a person’s link to the real world. As what Dr. Gazan pointed out, overreliance on the social support from the online community can get people’s social abilities regressed. The movie Train Man, I mentioned in my blog, was a box office success because it vividly captured a prevailing phenomenon in Japanese society—tons of millions of geeks who have difficulty communicating with people face-to-face, let alone dating girls. However, with the online social support, the train man, the projection of those geeks, dating a woman and having a happy ending at the end of the movie, really cheered up the geeks who were longing for love. I guess this is why the movie was a huge success at that time :). 

Another issue connected to information search is the productivity of SNSs. When reading other people’s blogs, I found that two people said that there was little interaction between them and the old online community members after they joined a new SNS. One person, joining a medical online community, questioned whether little interaction was due to the nature of this professional SNS. I think the answer could be “No” because the other person, joining a common SNS, also had the same problem. I guess little interaction may have nothing to do with professional or non-professional issues. It is more about the intimacy to the old community members and the nature of the question posted. One article I read in the first week pointed out that people are used to extreme expressions, which boosts the occurrence of extreme opinions online. I am not saying that the two students should post extreme questions. I just try to say maybe we can try to make the questions “attractive” enough to solicit other community members’ response.

The reaction of old community members to new community members

Based on the question mentioned above, I make a guess that the intimacy to the old community members can be one of the answers. According to Thomas Bender, a community should have affective ties and mutual obligation. However, a new community member is usually weak in the two aspects with the old members. Therefore, it takes time to enable the old members to know the new members. The two students only spent one week on the SNSs, which may be insufficient. Another student posted by saying he cared about privacy, so he would keep a place for “only friends allowed” online. I think it explains why new members need to spend more time interacting with old members in order to be in the circle of “only friends allowed.”

The line between the weak tie and the strong tie

Through posting a question on my Facebook and reading others’ blogs, I believe that the distinction between the weak tie and the strong tie is blurring. Online activities affect offline activities, vice versa.