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.

Friendship on SNSs--Online interactions

Friendship on SNSs

For this week’s readings, I first read Weeks’ Social Responsibility and the Web: A Drama Unfolds. The author highlighted the influence of social media on our life by saying that, “Although social media may change how we interact with others, it's unlikely to change core human concepts of friendship and community.” I agree to it. Regarding my experience of using Facebook, the SNS connects me with my friends, whom I know in different social organizations, such as schools and workplace, and with the friends of my friends. Through the SNS, I can easily make new friends and keep in touch with my old friends without time-and-space limitation. Weeks’ opinion also corresponds to what Galston (2002) said, “Contemporary American cultural value is about individual choice and longing for community.” In my mind, the value of individual choice is a good example of how social media change the way we used to communicate. In Weeks’ article, Fogg held that the text-based communication of social media is unfavorable to expressing emotion and deepening online relationships. Therefore, a question that I have been asking myself came up again—why do people want to friend someone whom they don’t know? If you receive the request, will you add those people as your friends? After posting the question on my Facebook, I got many insightful answers. One said, “I will accept their requests. It is nice to talk to someone who is fun. However, if the new friend is boring or odd, I can choose not to talk to them anymore. The right of choice is one of the values that the social network site brings to us.”

In Galston’s article, the meaning of online community is an interesting issue for me. According to Licklider and Taylor, online communication facilitates the growth of shared interests. Snyder said that people in a community should have greater things in common than a fascination with a narrowly defined topic. These points are in line with the example of Ayelet Waldman’s call for help in Weeks’ article (2009) and with what LaRose et al (2001) said that social support for major life crises might be more forthcoming from online discussion groups organized around major life crises (e.g., cancer support groups) than from e-mail with known associates. I think that the power of online community should never be downplayed because the social support from online community can empower a person. Several years ago, there was a very popular Japanese movie Train Man, adapted from a true story happening in a Japanese SNS. A 20-something man protected several women from a drunk man’s harassment on a train, and because of that he had a chance to date one of the women. However, in the subsequent dates, he encountered trouble and frustration, and started questioning whether he was right for the woman. He posted his question online and got many Net pals’ positive feedback. Thank to the Net pals’ encouragement, he started to have faith in the relationship.

Although Thomas Bender believed that a community should have a sense of mutual obligation, Ryan (2006) pointed out the commodification of social relationships, which reveals the possible dark side of the online relationships among the community. As I posted my question on Facebook, several people commented that they are cautious about accepting the requests from strangers because they want to keep their privacy and doubt that those requests can be the spam. Despite the doubts from SNSs’ users, some SNSs do make use of the commodification of social relationships, such as what FriendFlood.com does, as mentioned in Rosen (2007). Rosen and LaRose have different viewpoints to the online relationships. LaRose pointed out the possibility that the superficial, weak online relationships will diminish the meaningful, strong real-life relationships, reduce social support and increase depression. However, Rosen held that the weak ties can be more useful in passing out certain types of information than the strong ties. In my mind, the two viewpoints are both right depending on who uses the relationships for what purposes. Many people addicted to virtual worlds have trouble in real life. They withdraw from social events and are only comfortable in talking through texts. By contrast, a socializing person with many virtual friends can make use of the large online social networks to get and exchange information to fulfill his / her real-life needs. One of the respondents on my Facebook said that she treated the SNS as a place to accumulate social capital, so she is willing to be a friend of someone whom she doesn’t know before.

By sharing ideas with my respondents, I learned that people are using SNSs to systematically deal with their friendship. They sort their friends by actively deciding whether to accept the request of adding someone as a friend. They want to be someone’s friend due to a bunch of reasons. The top reason is how much I know the person. In addition, some of them care to know more people, so they are open to accepting the request from a stranger. After having many friends, the next step that technology can do is to help us collect, manage, and rank the people we know, as mentioned by Rosen (2007). All of these are very precious experience that we can do better online than offline.

Social computing

    Two references are cited about the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords: (a) Shootings prompt debate on tenor of political discourse; (b) Guns, anger, politics: A dangerous mix? (Links are offered at the bottom). The trigger of the tragedy is still inconclusive but a majority of people believe it happened due to the murderer’s ill mentality (See the video entitled What was Loughner’s state of mind as shown in the second reference). Before committing the crime, Loughner, the murderer, had posted many strange opinions on an online gaming forum. Those postings showed he resented his life, faced rejection, and searched for purposes. According to Nardi, Schiano, and Gumbrecht (2004), people engage in online activities because of certain purposes. In the case of Loughner, it seems that he attempted to release emotional tension through writing some startling opinions. When he was expressing those unpleasant thoughts, he might be seeking for others’ feedback in the meantime. Regarding what mentioned above, social media, the online gaming forum for example, bridge an individual and others in the society and make communication happen. However, it did not happen in the case. No one has taken serious action to treat his opinions and stopped the tragedy from happening. Krishnamurthy (2002, as cited in Herring, Scheidt, Bonus, and Wright, 2004) held that people were usually attracted by most insightful or controversial posts and commented on them. Loughner’s posts were extremely controversial, but why his posts did not get too much attention? 

    The situation probably could be explained in terms of the purpose of using social media. On the basis of Boyd and Ellison’s study (2007), people used social network sites (SNSs) more for keeping contact with someone they had already known than for interacting with strangers. Loughner, described as an isolated person, might not be a friend of other users in that online forum; therefore, those people did not seriously care about his deranged opinions because they cared more about what their friends said. After the tragedy happened, the public has intensively debating on what caused the whole thing to happen and what should the Americans do in the next step (See the first reference). In brief, there are four main concerns raised in the debate.

1.      The medical system of taking care of the mentally ill should be reexamined. Reportedly, Loughner had mental problems while he was in the college and was asked to get a mental health evaluation to prove he was not dangerous. However, it is a common but inefficient solution.

2.      The gun laws should be reexamined. It is dangerous that mentally-ill people, like Loughner, could easily purchase a gun. A foreign journalist even questioned whether the “surplus” freedom an American possesses boosts the prevalence of gun possession (See the video entitled Journalist questions US gun laws as shown in the second reference).

3.      Someone’s opinion influences others through social media. Some people thought that politicians and celebrities should be careful when expressing their opinions, especially in the social media-booming age. Sarah Palin’s “Don't retreat, reload” to her followers and Sheriff Dupnik and his opponents’ debate are all the evidence. Moreover, their opinions when broadcasted through media will be somehow “inauthentic”, which means messages will be delivered in a certain way to satisfy certain purposes or needs, so what the audience receives may be different from the speaker’s original intention to a certain degree. Carol (2007) warned the fine line between facts and fictions when the news is something else in disguise. The politicians’ and celebrities’ opinions, after delivered by media, have different interpretations in the audience’s mind, which can be dangerous to the mentally ill. They are incapable of differentiating dreams and reality; as a result, they could be affected by the somehow inauthentic news and take violent action to it.

In my mind, social computing is a behavior of engaging in online activities for purposes. Among a variety of purposes, maintaining the relationship between an individual and people who he knows is essential. It can be a good tool for people to release their emotions and get feedback from their friends and to easily get together and discuss some important social issues. Nonetheless, it can be harmful if someone manipulates the tool to spread destructive opinions and unfortunately some fragile minds get screwed.

References:

1.      Shootings prompt debate on tenor of political discourse http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/10/arizona.shooting.views/index.html?iref=allsearch

2.      Guns, anger, politics: A dangerous mix? http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/14/mann.giffords/index.html?iref=allsearch