Questions, Insights, Connections

Leave your question, insight, and/or connection for each class here. I don't expect this to be more than 4 to 6 sentences. Make sure it's unique to you. For example:

Here is my unique question (or insight or connection).... And it is signed. -Reagle (talk) 13:29, 6 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Be careful of overwriting others' edit or losing your own: always copy your text before saving in case you have to submit it again.

Sep 10 Tue - Persuasion

QIC 1: In chapter two of Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-based Social Design, Kraut et al. discuss numerous design claims in order to motivate members of an online community to engage and contribute to the community. According to design claim 12, people are more likely to fulfill a request, if others have also complied (Kratut et al., 2012). This relates to the other article we read, The Science of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. In this article, Cialdini describes six human tendencies that cause people to comply with a request. One of these tendencies is social validation (Cialdini, 2012). While I was reading this article, I was reminded of some other experiments from my psychology classes: the Asch conformity experiment and the elevator experiment. In the Asch conformity experiment, a participant is in a room with actors. They are presented with an image of four lines. The participant and actors had to say which line length matched the first line. When all of the actors gave the wrong answer, many participants also gave the wrong answer, even when they knew it was wrong. In the elevator experiment, a participant would enter an elevator, with three actors. The actors would face towards the back, and soon enough, so would the participant. These experiments highlight the power of conformity on people. Applying these principles to online communities are also likely to have a similar effect. --NortheasternFoley (talk) 13:08, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

NortheasternFoley, nice connections between readings and with Asch. -Reagle (talk) 16:30, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sep 13 Fri - Wikipedia and A/B testing

QIC 1- A "HiPPO", or the "highest-paid person's opinion" is rendered irrelevant by the power of data in A/B testing, as shown in The A/B Test: Inside the Technology That's Changing the Rules of Business by Brian Christian. Because businesses have the power to test all options and see which option their users prefer, the data decides for them. This ability to move the power from the authority role to the average person also ties in with the culture of Wikipedia. Wikipedians work in what Reagle calls "a good faith collaborative culture" in Chapter 1 of Good Faith Collaboration. In this type of culture, all users have the ability to contribute equally and know that their contribution will be taken as seriously as any other. This does not mean that they will immediately be seen as accurate and noteworthy, but it does mean that they will be treated fairly in the discussion and given the opportunity to defend their contribution. In this way, Wikipedia takes away any power from a "HiPPO" and redistributes it to the people. This makes sense, as the point of both A/B testing and Wikipedia is to democratize information. Rose Northeastern (talk) 15:40, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Rose_Northeastern, good specific in HiPPO and connection between readings. -Reagle (talk) 16:31, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sep 17 Tue - Gaming motivation

QIC 1: B.J. Fogg, creator of behavior design said: “you can’t get people to do something they don’t want to do,” this idea rings true in daily life and is a concept that pushes app creators and leaders of online communities to study what drives humans to return to a place or thing. The immediate difference I noticed in the Kraut et al. chapter versus the Ian Leslie article was that, in Kraut et al., the intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivators were largely focused around whether or not members of an online community would contribute to it or how users could utilize gaming tactics to obtain the reward incentives from sites. In contrast, Leslie’s article used elements of behavior design to determine the triggers or motivators that surround human usage of apps or websites. An example I noted was, we immediately check our phones when they buzz, or feel compelled to open an app when we see that red dot in the corner; this indicates something potentially exciting has happened in the app. These particular examples made me question whether or not these triggers have affected me; the answer was yes. I had Slack notifications coming into my computer while I was reading, and checked them every time simply to get rid of that red dot and make sure I had not missed anything.

The design alternatives that are posed in Kraut et al. chapter 2 reminded me of the Wikimedia Banner Testing (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Banner_testing) we discussed last class. This assessment utilized various design elements and persuasion techniques in order to test the level of motivation Wikipedia users had to donate. For example, the persuasion technique scarcity (“only 4 days left to make a tax deductible contribution…”) proved to be successful messaging in raising money as well as the message framed as “if everyone reading this donated $5 our fundraiser would be over today.” Although these messages were framed differently, the design alternatives “simple requests versus lengthy, complex requests” and “requests with deadlines” (p.69) both proved to have a positive effect on contribution. -MichelleBir. (talk) 00:32, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

MichelleBir., good specifics and connections -Reagle (talk) 16:27, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 1: BJ Skinner, a psychologist at Harvard was a proponent of a school of psychology called behaviorism. This is a field of psychology that says behavior is caused by incentives and rewards. BJ Fogg, a professor at Stanford has extended the principles of behaviorism to how people interact with computer programs, stating that programs can be designed to get people to want to use them because they feel good about what is happening to them when they interact with the program (getting likes in Facebook or an invitation to link to someone in LinkedIn. Many of Fogg's students have used his principles to become very successful as founders or employees at companies like Instagram or Google) Now some people, such as Natasha Dow Schull and Tristan Hare are questioning the ethical behavior of these successful people, stating that they have become too powerful at manipulating people by designing computer programs that get people to use them more than they would otherwise. An example is slot machines that are programmed to hook people into trying again or Netflix that automatically plays the next episode. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hrennen (talk • contribs) 01:26, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hrennen, good specifics; some typos around punctuation. Also, don't forget to number and sign your QICs.

QIC 2- Design Claim 21 from Kraut, which states that "comparative performance feedback can enhance motivation" clearly connects to our use of social media. All of our social media sites give us performance feedback on posts, either by likes or comments. In the article The Scientists who Make Apps Addictive by Ian Leslie, they point out that we become addicted to the rush that we get from social validation- such as those likes or comments. It is especially interesting how the Facebook algorithm knows to put a new profile picture higher in your friends' feeds so that it is easier to get the social validation that will enhance your motivation to return. Since a user can see the reactions, or feedback, to other users pictures and posts, they are able to compare. This can enhance the motivation to post something "more enticing" next time, in order to get better feedback. This may be why B.J. Fogg was so concerned that his research in Behavior Design was only allowing social media sites to make their users addicted to the validation they receive. Rose Northeastern (talk) 01:45, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Rose Northeastern, good specifics. -Reagle (talk) 16:37, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 1- The article regarding B.J. Fogg discussed many applications of behavior design that were unintended consequences of Fogg's theory. One application is the use of feedback and social stimulus to hook people into apps and technology, but I felt the article missed an opportunity to mention the other senses engaged through behavior design. Not only do comment/like/direct messaging features hook people, but physical senses are engaged through vibration when you type letters in your phone (which gives constant physical feedback noting your accomplishment), message tones that function to trigger you and pull your attention towards the app or technology, colored lights that indicate you missed a message, email, or notification, so on so forth. Not only are you mentally hooked, but we are quickly perfecting the use of physical stimuli (namely touch, sight, and sound) to train you to respond (think how easily one can tell the vibration difference between getting an email, a text, and a Facebook message and how it elicits different mindsets without ever looking at your phone). This plays on the segment from Kraut where they discussed one requirement for videogames is to constantly stimulate the player so it can continually hold attention. Our phones use a variety of types of stimulus to engage new senses and maintain the mastery of attention. I wonder if we can quantify the relative success of each sense that is engaged in drawing and holding a users attention (e.g., do colored lights distract users more easily than vibration patterns).

-Bcstanley1 (talk) 04:14, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bcstanley1, good extension/critique; for writing, start with something snappy and prefer authors to "the article." -Reagle (talk) 16:37, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sep 24 Tue - Kohn on motivation

QIC 2: Ever since I was little, I have loved reading- with the exception of my schoolbooks. That’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed some of them, but as Kohn mentions in Punished by Rewards, my intrinsic motivation to read has been completely dampened by the addition of extrinsic rewards. When I read for school, it is always under the extrinsic motivation that the readings will help me get good grades. Not for any intrinsic reasons, like for pleasure. Even when I end up liking a reading, my motivation to continue is low. Besides the promise of good grades, my intrinsic motivation is slashed by working on a deadline and being ordered to read certain things

Kohn presented several ways to minimize the damage of extrinsic rewards on motivation, such as reducing the salience of rewards and offering rewards after the fact. However, I wonder how we can, or if we can, apply these tactics to ourselves when we have no control over the extrinsic rewards? Doing the readings for a class is always going to have the extrinsic motivation of good grades, but how can we possibly flip this so intrinsic motivation isn’t smothered? - NortheasternFoley (talk) 22:15, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

NortheasternFoley, I've read that it helps to always frame it as a choice from which you benefit. That is, you choose to go to school, to do the reading, because you will benefit. You could also give yourself little treat/rewards 😄 -Reagle (talk) 16:33, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 1- Chad Whitacre, the founder of a crowdfunded reoccurring donation company called Gittip, wrote this blog post titled “Resentment” in 2013. In the article, he aims to address the problem that Gittip was having in fostering unresolved resentment through its selective monetary rewards and discusses his approach of “radical honesty” as a way to handle resentment. Whitacre defines “resentment” as an internalized anger at a wrong done to me and posits that Brad Blanton’s “radical honesty” is a productive approach. This method is as simple as directly communicating your resentment to the person or group that you believe wronged you, but making sure to do it in a way that is constructive and not simply inflammatory. As a Communication Major who has utilized this type of strategy in the workplace before, I know that it can result in eye opening conversations that lead to a deeper respect and understanding of one another. I want to note here that that aforementioned meeting in the workplace would have gone significantly worse if I went in there without a calm head. The article continues with the author making four suggestions for how to address resentment that “naturally arises” when money is involved. The first isn’t exactly a suggestion, but explains that the point of his company is to reward people who are fueled by internal motivation to do or create things rather than financially incentivizing people to do things. The second seems to be to turn down the emphasis on money in features like leaderboards and instead focusing on what Whitacre calls his “free labor.” The third one is a loose suggestion to focus less on being resentful and angry at external factors or people and instead channeling that resent into work or hobbies. The fourth suggestion is to utilize Gittip’s new feature called Teams, which allows you to group with other people and each individual takes a share of the money given to the group each week. This is where we get to the most interesting bit in the article, where the author discusses how people set their “takes” in a group; “What’s been fascinating to observe is how a person’s take turns out to be the expression of the balance point between their resentment for not making enough, and their guilt at taking too much. The social structure of the group emerges from the self-determination of the individual in a set of monetary numbers, rather than being imposed externally on the individual.” Honestly, this wasn’t the best-written article and comes across as a weak mixed attempt at improving public relations and generating promotional material. - Drewcherr327 (talk) 02:26, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Drewcherr327, good engagement with Whitacre, but be wary of avoiding the most substantive reading and monster paragraphs. -Reagle (talk) 16:33, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 2 - Kohn brings up a point of view on motivation that I have never really thought about. In chapter 5 he talks about "How rewards can change the way people feel about what they do." The examples he gives made me think back on my motivation throughout my time in school. The case where the student was not doing his summer reading until he was rewarded by baseball cards seemed like a perfect motivation to me. However, when he talks about how once the baseball cards run out the student will lose all motivation to read made me realize how devastating the effects of this type of motivation are on the young boy, it actually makes him less interested in completing the actual task of reading than he was before this promotion started. The other other example from this chapter that showed how people can be manipulated is the Old Man's Plan. By offering a big reward of $1, then dwindling it down to 1 cent, he was able to have the students stop harassing him. The catch is that the kids were harassing him for free before he implemented this tactic. This example taught me how people can be manipulated by offering a rewards for something they were otherwise doing just for the "fun" of it.

In chapter 6, Kohn focuses on the idea that kids are being praised to much. He talks about all of the literary work and "experts" who tell parents that positive feedback is the best way to treat your children. I have always agreed with this and can think back on many occasions when I was unsure of myself in school, but then was given positive feedback and felt good about myself. The case of the students in Israel proved his theory about how students do not always do better when given positive praise, actually the opposite. The students who were given so so feedback did better in future assignments because they were motivated to do better, while the students who were given positive feedback were not as motivated. Reading this experiment has changed the way I view the idea of positive praise for a small task. It is better to not have your work sugar coated and having real feedback, it will help you perform better work in the long run. Hrennen (talk) 03:14, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hrennen, excellent engagement with Kohn. Instead of beginning sentences, "In chapter 5 he talks about..." try "In chapter 5, Kohn writes that ..."

QIC 1 - Chad Whitacre writes a compelling piece about the dangers that come when you combine social capital with monetary rewards. His company, Gittip, is a donation platform that is solely reliant on crowdfunding. This company has operated on an open and transparent platform, which Whitacre went on to explain fostered a resentment within the community on it. The resentment he describes, "is a negative emotion, an internalized anger at a wrong done to me." The main problems that were being faced by Whitacre was the burgeoning effect that the companies main purposed turned into a popularity contest format that awarded the monetary prizes to people with the most clout, and in some cases that Whitacre addressed, privilege. This blog post is essentially what looks to be the CEO trying to calm down users in a, what I believe is an extremely superficial way. He emphasizes the technique of "radical honesty" which is a tactic I personally agree with, but not for leadership of a wide group of people. He writes "I try to communicate my resentment directly to the person (or company, etc.) from whom I perceive the wrong, sometimes even using a sentence of the form “I resent you for ….” Ideally this leads to a constructive conversation that surfaces truths that weren’t otherwise apparent" This seems like a poor idea considering the amount of users that this software would be dealing with. His arguments towards caring about the person by being upfront isn't necessarily legitament, and a lot of people can take that the wrong way. When I choose to use radical honestly in a tense situation, it's less about protecting the persons feelings and giving them a reality check. Over the internet, people have a barrier where they can respond to this kind of up front information in a million different ways. This approach can easily make people feel personally attacked if not done carefully. His conclusion is essentially to tell other users to be better and "take the jump" if the harbor resentment towards more successful users, when it actuality, success extremely often doesn't not work that way. Emsandell (talk) 03:52, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Emsandell, good engagement with Whitacre, but be wary of avoiding the most substantive reading and monster paragraphs. -Reagle (talk) 16:33, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 2- Praise is an especially dangerous game in the world of behaviorism. Kohn discusses many of the pitfalls of reward systems (such as the loss of intrinsic motivation, the stress on relationships that comes from competition (which mirrors Whitacre's discussion of resentment and leaderboards), and the decrease in quality of work), and he spends Chapter 6 extending that discussion to praise. Intentionally or not, Kohn appears to approach the issue of praise as a lesser but still present evil in the world of motivating behavior. He discusses the issues that come from praise in the context of rewards and punishments and how praise hooks children on feedback that may not be necessary. I would argue that praise is actually a more destructive force on motivation and general well-being than tangible rewards or punishments. While rewards and punishments most certainly seem to demotivate individuals with regard to certain tasks or hobbies (such as making one no longer enjoy playing the piano or performing worse on a paper written for a grade), praise has a stronger destructive impact upon an individual's sense of self-worth (which Kohn does touch upon). When teaching a child to behave well in exchange for praise, it trains children to replace internally derived self-esteem with an externally granted sense of self-worth. Not only does this give a disproportionate amount of power to whoever grants that self-worth, it will never be sufficient in the way internally derived self-esteem is. No one will ever be able to tell you you are smart enough times to make you truly believe it. You have to come to that conclusion yourself. Additionally, it ties your worth to your ability to accomplish (e.g., you are good because you did this thing well). That makes loss and failure so much more crippling because it does not simply mean you did that task poorly, but rather you are bad as a person because you failed at a task. This has the effect of training children into having extremely fragile senses of self that depend upon the insufficient positive feedback of outsiders and are easily cracked by small instances of failure or setbacks. As such, I think this is a far more dangerous consequence than the demotivation of individual tasks due to tangible rewards and punishments. I'm curious whether anyone has done research investigating the impact of rewards, punishment, and praise respectively on an individual's level of self-worth.

-Bcstanley1 (talk) 06:07, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bcstanley1, good engagement with Kohn; be wary of monster paragraphs. -Reagle (talk) 16:33, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 1: Chad Whitacre's article discusses the relationship between rewards, intrinsic motivation, and extrinsic motivation. He uses Gittip as a case study to argue that rewards (or lack of) feed resentment. This argument reminds me of hackathons: an intense "design-sprint" collaborative competition. When I participated in this hackathon, I was part of a team focused on re-designing the voting process. I noticed that, at least on my team, there was a balance of intrinsic motivation (the desire to design a feasible, yet desirable platform) and extrinsic motivation (cash reward). This experience brings me to agree with Whitacre's argument that resentment is a "you" problem because placing third didn't discourage us from feeling entitled to first place. Overall, his article wasn't the strongest because the examples he uses aren't impressive enough. However, I appreciate how he explored these ideas together. The connection of these ideas allowed me to think of other competitive dynamics and encouraged me to challenge his ideas. Sydneg (talk) 14:59, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sydneg, good engagement with Whitacre, but be wary of avoiding the most substantive reading and monster paragraphs. -Reagle (talk) 16:33, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 1- Chad Witacre penned a compelling read about resentment, and radical honesty. He speaks about how his company, a donation platform called Gittip, is "fatally flawed because it fosters resentment." Witacre responds that his intention with Gittip is an "economy characterized buy collaboration, trust, and love", and believes any unfettered resentment on the platform is certainly a problem. To combat this, Witacre responds by looking at what resentment really means, and looking at solutions to it- with what he believes is the answer- radical honesty. Witacre uses Brad Blanton's "radical honesty" approach to work through resentment- he tries to communicate his feelings of resentment directly to the entity that he is feeling resentful towards. Ideally, this leads to "constructive conversation that surfaces truths that weren't otherwise apparent...can lead to a deeper unity between people and a more humane society." I personally love the idea of radical honesty, and I certainly think it is something to strive for. I have many flaws, but I do think that communicating honestly is one of my strengths, specifically involving emotions in relationships with friends or acquaintances even. I've been able to see the fruits of this in terms of resolving conflict with people in my life over the years, as conflict will always end up coming, even in the most loving of relationships. Inevitably, I will hurt someone, or someone will hurt me. I really appreciate it when people communicate it to me that they are perhaps feeling resentful towards me for something I have done. Does it mean that I enjoy it or look forward to it? No, but I have been able to see that communicating directly about resentment most always leads to that constructive conversation that Blanton talked about and Whitacre follows. Hopefully one day radical honesty won't be seen as such a radical thing after all. Sariexley (talk) 15:09, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sariexley, good engagement with Whitacre, but be wary of avoiding the most substantive reading and monster paragraphs. -Reagle (talk) 16:33, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 2: “We plant the seeds of discontent by selective monetary rewards,” Chad Whitacre says in his article “Resentment.” I believe an important concept to remember, which Whitacre’s article discusses in relation to Gittip, is the potential for negative emotions like resentment to occur within an online community with the inclusion of rewards. Rewards, as shown in both Whitacre’s article and Alfie Kohn’s chapter “Cutting the Interest Rate: The Fifth Reason Rewards Fail” from Punished by Rewards, are an overrated way to motivate a group. Rewards can temporarily create motivation in adults or children, but the long term effects of extrinsic motivators such as money or praise can take a serious toll on the intrinsic motivation of a person. Both pieces discuss the use of money as a reward. Whitacre mentions the paper, “Effort for Payment,” which highlights that “introducing money into a relationship changes how we approach the relationship,” while Kohn uses the “Old Man’s Plan” joke to depict a decrease in intrinsic motivation in children as soon as money is introduced as a reward for behavior. Both of these examples exemplify the notion that there is much more strength in an intrinsic motivation/drive for a subject or activity rather than a drive to receive an extrinsic reward for such. The example that I associated with the most was Kohn’s example regarding reading, which Ellen also discussed. Children became less self-motivated to read when reward programs such as Pizza Hut’s “Food for Reading” reward program. This personally resonated with me and made me think about how, as soon as grades and other rewards such as honor societies or certain statuses were introduced into my personal school career, I lost a lot of intrinsic motivation I had to learn and explore new subjects. -MichelleBir. (talk) 16:01, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

MichelleBir., excellent connections between the readings and building on Ellen. Be wary of monster paragraphs. -Reagle (talk) 16:50, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 1: Similar to the indifference that people often have towards change, the impact that newcomers can have on communities -- both positive and negative -- as well as the process in which these newcomers become part of a community, is a matter of great significance. In his argument, Kohn describes the way in which newcomers serve as a source of innovation to communities, not only in terms of the ideas they generate, but also with regard to the diversity they inherently bring to established groups. On the contrary, newcomers are unfamiliar with the general practices, behaviors and expectations of group members, which can lead to disappointment in the amount of work that newcomers contribute, the quality of ideas they present and their overall motives in joining the group. In order to combat these issues, Kohn describes five key areas that groups must focus on in relation to newcomers: recruitment of members, selection whether self-selection or screening by existing group members, retention especially when newcomers initially join, socialization in relation to group values, and protection of the group itself. As mirrored by Chad Whitacre's Gittip platform, a balance between existing group members' and newcomers' contributions to a group is ideal for overall success -- that is, maintaining a mutual understanding of the aforementioned expectations, behaviors, goals and so forth of a given group, or as Kohn identifies as the key behaviors that group members and newcomers engage in -- investigation, socialization and maintenance. However, despite the existence of this balance in a group setting, especially in online communities, feelings of resentment among group members and newcomers may arise. The important factor with regard to resentment, as Whitacre exemplifies, is transforming these feelings into constructive action by communicating directly to the person whom the resentment is directed towards, and engaging in constructive conversation that surfaces truths such as unrealized feelings or mutual grounds. While I do agree with Whitacre's argument to some extent, I believe Kohn's claims provide a stronger framework for the most successful method of incorporating newcomers into an existing group. While Kohn's presentation of claims is based on studies, expertise from supplementary sources, and is ultimately empathetic to both group members and newcomers alike, Whitacre's argument seems entrenched in anger and suggests that competition will yield the best results for the group as a whole -- an argument which I strongly oppose. JessWeiss (talk) 16:43, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

JessWeiss, excellent connections between the readings and building on Ellen. Be wary of monster paragraphs. -Reagle (talk) 16:50, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sep 27 Fri - Relational commitment

QIC 2- In Chapter 3, Kraut et al. discussed the differences between identity-based affective commitment and bond-based affective commitment. Identity-based commitment is commitment to a group based on your connection to that community as a whole and how aligned you feel with the community’s mission. Bond-based commitment is commitment to the group based on specific feelings you may have towards individual members in the larger group. The authors highlight that these feelings may occur simultaneously within people, but that they come about for different reasons under different circumstances and each have their own pros and cons for success in encouraging commitment in online communities. One note I found really interesting in this chapter was when the authors discuss Milgram’s concept of a familiar stranger from 1977 which suggests that seeing other people in an online group repeatedly, even without directly communicating with them, may inevitably lead to forming a personal attachment with them. I found this to be true in my own experience on Twitter, as the site has gradually changed their home feed algorithms over the years to include more and more content from people you don’t follow. Now, the site shows you tweets that have been liked by people you follow, or tweets it may think you like, or plugs tweets from accounts that are followed by many of your followers. Over time, I have come to recognize the profiles of some accounts like that, and will often inevitably follow them if I appreciate their content, but also because there is now more familiarity on my side of things. This continues to increase my bond-based attachment to the site as a whole and increases my commitment to the online group, which is bad for my productivity but good for Twitter’s internal reporting. Drewcherr327 (talk) 01:21, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Drewcherr327, I try to limit the folks I follow so I don't spend too much time on Twitter, so I often have to correct Twitter and tell it to not show me follower's likes and followers. (BTW: could have a snappier start and avoid big mono-graph) -Reagle (talk) 16:34, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 3- Kraut brought up the idea that allowing a community to create a subgroup that is easily identified strengthens the members' commitment to the community as a whole. This design principle (#5) reminded me of Reddit in particular. Within Reddit, users can create subreddits that join a group with similar interests or demographics together. Then, when these users participate, or comment, in their subgroup, they feel a connection with the platform as a whole. As Reagle discusses in Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web, requiring users to comment with their real names can eliminate some of the trollish comments that were being received anonymously. Although Reddit users can create usernames that are not their real name, there is still a trail that connects all of their comments back to the same user. This may be why people feel more committed to their subgroup because they feel that their online presence is mildly connected to their real life.

I think this applies within Facebook groups as well. When a user has joined a specific group and has to tie their name to any comments left, they are more committed to maintaining their behavior- at the very least within that subgroup. And when simply scrolling through the News Feed, it seems as though users are less likely to read through comments, because they are less focused on things that the users have self-identified with. Rose Northeastern (talk) 02:51, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 3: Davie Winer makes an intriguing point in response to antagonists in the comment section of his blog, stating he "repeatedly considered disabling the comments," seeing them as nonessential. I wonder whether I agree with his assessment of comments as being non-essential. On one hand, the analysis throughout Reagle's book is clear in the negative cultures that can (though not always or exclusively) breed in commenting features, and comment sections on sites like YouTube quickly turn into cesspools. However, even if comment sections are not always used in the best manner, I think they provide an important pushback against pre-internet trends of one-way communication in mass media. Before, only letters to newspapers/news stations, op-eds, or viewer statistics allowed audiences to respond to media and content creation. With comment sections becoming nearly universal across news sites, social media, and blogs, a new era of two-way communication that allows audiences to respond and participate in content creation may be worth the cesspools that grow in comment sections.

Further, in Kraut et. al's writings on identity-based commitment, I found myself interested not only in how their design claims represent positive strategies of commitment building in pro-social groups (like breast cancer forums), but also reflect tactics on darker forums like Incel sites or areas of sites like 4chan and 8chan. Especially Design Claim 19 about how "participation under a pseudonym will increase self-disclosure... in communities where sensitive information is shared," the dark parallel can be seen. The use of usernames in favor of real names on Incels.co allows members to be more honest about their failures and embarrassing incidents in their romantic and social lives, and the pseudonyms likely make them feel more comfortable sharing vulgar and violent opinions about women and other groups due to the shelter of that anonymity. I wonder if Kraut et. al considered/discuss later in the book how these tactics help promote insular communities like the one discussed above move further in their extreme views and community bonding.

-Bcstanley1 (talk) 07:34, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bcstanley1, sadly, no, K&R is very staid social science. -Reagle (talk) 16:34, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 2:

Earlier this year, Beyonce's 'Beyhive' joined forces to spew hate over ^[1] an innocent interaction with Jay Z.'Beyhives' reacted to a picture of Nicole Curran leaning over Beyonce to speak to Jay Z during a Warriors basketball game, which resulted in a flood of hateful comments and death threats in Curran's Instagram account. These comments were a collective warning for Curran to respect their Queen (i.e., Beyonce) because they felt that Curran violated courtside etiquette.

This "toxic fandom"^[2] is an excellent example of how a seemingly unimportant social category (i.e., Beyonce) can influence groups to commit to a community (i.e., 'Beyhive'), and even a cause. As per Kraut, social identity theory can keep people in a group and go as far as instilling some form of commitment to that specific community. 'Beyhives' correctly adhere to design claim four: providing a collection of individuals with a name increases their identity-based commitment to the community.

What are Beyhives committed to? Their Queen. In this case, Beyhives intended on protecting their Queen by spewing hatred toward Nicole Curran via Instagram comments and DMs. So much so that Curran had to deactivate her Instagram account. This is an interesting outcome because 'Beyhives' characterize what Kraut mentions about group norms adding value to regulating misbehavior. However, misbehavior is encouraged in this case because Beyhives cyberbullied Curran thinking that they were protecting Beyonce. This observation also leads me to think about Reagle's ideas on comments. Comments were at the core of the Beyhive's diatribe toward Curran, which supports Reagle's' observation that comments are reactive and not always well-intended. Nonetheless, it's hard to ignore how this case is also an example of unity. Which leads me to wonder then, can spewing positivity engender this level of passionate unity? Sydneg (talk) 14:48, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 3: Marshal McLuhan’s idea that “we live invested in an electric information environment that is quite as imperceptible to us as water is to fish,” specifically stuck with me throughout the readings. I believe that we, as a society, do not take time to think about the “bottom half of the internet” until it becomes toxic. For example, I will read comments on an Instagram post or a Youtube video without noting their positive or negative connotations. Supportive, as well as negative, comments are part of the platform and the community. However, once comments are disabled or a Youtuber mentions in a video the negative comments they receive on a specific video or post users immediately become much more aware of the impact comments can have on both a single user’s experience in an online community or in the social media sphere as a whole. I think this connection was made very well when Sydney discussed the toxicity of Beyonce’s “Beyhive” directing hatred toward Nicole Curran through Instagram DMs and comments.

The concept of anonymity online is something that likely perpetuates negativity in commenting. As mentioned in Kohn’s chapter on commitment in online communities, people are much more likely to become a permanent member of a community once they associate their name and identity with other members of the community, as well as their comments and activity in such. With this, it is relevant to note that while commenting is an important aspect of online communities, the association of names with a comment can minimize the, as MG Siegler calls them, the “weak and poor” or “trollish nonsense” comments that are made when they are not associated with a person’s real name.

I believe that in order to foster a productive online community, there must be a level of respect in the commentary that occurs within it. Although there are measures that can be taken to control negativity and maliciousness in comments (as discussed in Reagle’s introductory chapter), people must be intrinsically motivated, to a certain extent, to produce rhetoric that will further the community in a constructive way. -MichelleBir. (talk) 16:01, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 3: Size matters. And in the case of Twitter, size was too much. In Reagle’s Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web, he mentions how early Twitter felt “edgy and intimate” and users went there for a sense of intimate serendipity. Members engaged in something Kraut et al called, in Building Successful Online Communities, bond-based commitment, meaning they felt close to individual members of their community. Early Twitter was a good place to foster and increase this commitment because members could engage in personal conversation and active self-disclose. However, at some point the Twitter community escalated beyond Dunbar’s number of 150 and became “filtered sludge”. With too many people, members lost the ability to engage in their bond-based commitment in the community. - NortheasternFoley (talk) 16:06, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

NortheasternFoley, good job! You managed a snappy start, lots of engagement with the authors and specifics in ~150 words! -Reagle (talk) 16:34, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 2. In the instant click of a reply button, an individual automatically has the power to influence others and even alter their behaviors. While Reagle presents reasonable evidence for us to view the power of commenting as potentially dangerous and rooted in malicious intention, we must ask whether having comments, regardless of their context or purpose is still better than having none at all? Comments have many functions, including the ability to inform, improve, manipulate and even shape opinion, as is evident in the form of gossiping. When community members gossip, others are inherently influenced by what is said; in fact, I would argue that it's almost impossible to not be impacted in some way, shape or form by what others say about a person, regardless of its legitimacy or truthfulness. In large groups especially, Reagle explains that we are more likely to experience internal competition, prompting grooming to occur wherein alliances are formed among group members.

As successful communities grow, this in turn creates a paradox of the community's success. According to Dunbar's limit of 150, humans can only properly maintain this many relationships, which explains why comment in general is often unsuccessful or unproductive in an online setting. Though Winer claims that comments are not essential to blogs if they "interfere with the natural expression of the unedited voice of an individual," he himself created blog comments. Because of this, I am led to believe that Winer's inability to prevent others' comments from influencing him or affecting him in some way led him to do away with comments altogether. Unfortunately, in the case of many online bullying and harassment cases, the impact that comments can have on an individual can be detrimental and permanently scarring. However, Winer's response to this problem seems drastic and ultimately ineffective. After all, online communities provide us with a special form of freedom of speech. Once we begin to allow the gossip and internal competition that Reagle speaks of to overwhelm the power each and every one of us has by clicking a reply button and contributing our own comments in return, we surrender to the "haters" and "manipulators," and forget that we are equally as powerful. JessWeiss (talk) 16:11, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

JessWeiss, I numbered your QIC for you; I think it's the second. -Reagle (talk) 16:34, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 2- In Chapter Three, Kraut et al discussed encouraging commitment in online communities. Something I was very interested in was the research that the chapter provided by social scientists into discovering the difference between commitment and flight. By discovering this, it has been able to bring more clarity into discovering why people remain committed members of online groups, versus leaving the group. The research showed that some factors leading to commitment to a group was based on feelings of closeness, strong identification, obligation, and/or the costs of leaving the community. Kraut discussed the three types of commitment that are applied to online communities- affective commitment, normative commitment, and need-based or continuance commitment. Affective commitment has to do with feelings towards members of the group, normative commitment details feelings of a sense of duty to the group, and need-based or continuance commitment is based on structure in the group.

Towards the end of the chapter, I was intrigued by the research shown about forces that undercut personal commitment. Kraut discussed how the larger the group is, the harder time members have maintaining interpersonal bonds, but it was noted that "larger community size and communication volume do not limit identity-based commitment in the same way. Identity based commitment does not depend on repeated communication or on personal ties with specific other members." I thought this was interesting because it showed that members need to feel like they have strong relationships with other members of the group, but it doesn't need to necessarily be frequent communication. I feel like research on online groups reflects my experience with relationships that are offline as well. Having too many people in a personal sphere is too hard to keep up with. However, having key interactions with people you feel you have a bond with is fulfilling. Sariexley (talk) 16:39, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oct 01 Tue - Needs-based and lock-in

QIC 4: Do we say goodbye to Facebook? According to Duncan’s So long social media: the kids are opting out of the online public square, young people are fleeing Facebook or, at the very least, not posting online anymore. The reasons that Duncan provides behind this are true; moms and grandmas are on Facebook, it’s a lot of work to keep up an image on Facebook (but then again, it’s the same on Instagram), and, of course, we shouldn’t even dare to post something that we don’t want our future boss to see. But with all that said, are we ever going to truly leave Facebook behind?

In their discussion of needs-based commitment, Kraut et al. mention how if the net benefits of an online community are positive, people will remain in the community. There may be a lot of stink around Facebook, but for the most part, it does what we want it to. We can watch cat videos to our endless delight. We can see what our cousins’ kids look like on their first day of school. We can connect to other apps too, like Spotify and Pinterest. And all of this comes at a relatively low cost. Just open Facebook and scroll. Harmless, really. Do we really need to see everything that I’ve just described? Probably not. But with Facebook being so ingrained in our lives and the cost of staying on Facebook low, I don’t think we’ll be seeing the last of Facebook for a very long time. --NortheasternFoley (talk) 16:32, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 4: Am I in a committed relationship with Facebook? No. In the discussion about needs-based commitment, Kraut says that one of the reasons that a person will decide to stay in a community is the alternatives presented to them. Like someone mentioned in class, many of the social media sites are beginning to offer the same options. I don't have to rely on Facebook as my main social media, because the Instagram stories are more functional since they include polling, and Snapchat's interactive filters are more advanced. In fact, I can go straight to someone's post on Instagram if they shared it directly to Facebook, and I'm more likely to interact with it there, at the original site of posting. So in this day where I have multiple social media sites, that share the same social circle, that offer me similar functionality- I don't feel a needs-based commitment to any one of them.

In addition, as Felicity Duncan points out in So long social media: the kids are opting out of the online public square, social media sites are increasingly monitored for professional opportunities. Because of this, many young people are choosing what to post and what to keep private (or at least to their close circle of friends). I can personally connect with this, as I often shudder when going back through old Facebook posts, and wish that I had never put that on the Internet. Although I still make stupid comments or send pictures that are not flattering, I now do it within a close circle. And because of that, my future interviewer will never have to ask me about something I posted on my Facebook back in 2016 (hopefully). Rose Northeastern (talk) 01:15, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 4: In Duncan's article on social media, there is a concern near the end of the article that as young people move off open social media and into private messaging systems, the issue of echo chambers may grow as we become increasingly isolated. I would push back against that concern and propose an alternative possibility. As it stands now, algorithms on major platforms like Facebook are increasingly designed to show users only opinions they agree with (as Duncan mentions indirectly) and the manner of content sharing encourages shallow discourse (only posting a short message with short comments). It is not designed for in-depth conversations, which I believe causes either total avoidance of contrary opinions or automatic gainsaying as opposed to true argumentation.

Additionally, as Kraut et. al discuss with regard to normative commitment to a community, the more you see someone commit to a norm, the stronger you are to feeling it. On open platforms like Facebook, it is common to see people actively pledging sole allegiance to a political party, cause, or issue perception, which can make you more single-minded in your own normative commitment to that cause.

I would argue that even though young people will encounter fewer people by using private messaging services, the format is far more conducive to genuine discourse and engagement with a political theory, which leads to a better theory/perception on political encounters than its open counterpart. While counterintuitive, I would guess (and would be interested in testing) that the more someone uses private messaging services to discuss politics than open ones, the more receptive they would actually be to engaging with countering opinion. I hope that as people grow less mob-like in their engagement with media platforms by splitting into smaller and more private and in-depth discourse communities, the concerning trend of polarization may be pushed back against just a little bit as discourse (ideally) improves.

-Bcstanley1 (talk) 22:52, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bcstanley1, we discussed similar concerns in my morning class about filter bubbles and echo chambers. -Reagle (talk) 17:02, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 3- Simply put, young people on traditional social media platforms no longer feel like the positives of staying in those online communities outweigh the negatives. In the textbook reading, Kraut et al. demonstrate that in a needs-based commitment, “people stay in a group only as long as they perceive the group and other members as being attractive and instrumental in fulfilling their personal goals.” The Conversation article demonstrates this concept well as it describes three reasons for why people 18-29 years old are switching to messenger apps like Snapchat and Whatsapp. Demographics on Facebook have shifted, and most people my age or younger know that our parents, aunts and uncles, teachers, and potentially even grandparents are on there as well. We have also been told from a very young age that future employers and potential educators will check our social medias and make judgments that will affect our real lives, which makes us inherently worried about what we post. These two negatives are tipping the scales away from having young people committed to the community. Similarly, it has been drilled into our heads that the things we post will be on those websites for the rest of our lives and we have increasingly seen the ramifications of old posts or pictures coming out. This presents more private messenger apps as more attractive mediums for communication, as it allows them to connect with their peers while not harming their long term personal goals.

I would also like to highlight another likely reason why young people are moving off of Facebook, one that the article glaringly points out several times without actually honing in on it. It is abundantly clear to people that apps like social media Facebook harvest the personal data you input and sell that to corporations that use that information against you in the form of targeted advertisements. For people who have grown up with technology and the ability to be online, we recognize how unsettling that is and have shifted away from those sites to ones that provide more security from those negative practices. This is just another example of the costs of utilizing this type of social media app being high and the relative benefits being low, given that you can get similar types of social support and companionship on other apps. Drewcherr327 (talk) 01:19, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 3: Designer Claim 34 in Kraut was relatable, he writes, “Making it difficult to export assets or transfer them to other members increases needs-based commitment.” He backs this claim up by writing about how a person will continue to play the upper levels of a game based on the time they have invested, even if it is not enjoyable any longer. When I saw this claim I immediately thought of my obsession with the game Candy Crush. This game was popular within my circle of friends in high school. There are over 1000 levels to the game and it gets increasingly difficult as you get higher. I remember continuing to play longer after my interest had ended for two reasons. The first was that it was sort of a competition with my friends, to see who could get to the highest level possible before burning out. The second was that I had been playing for so long, I felt that I owed it to myself to continue investing in it. Until reading this claim, I never had a literary work explain to me the exact claim I was feeling.

Felicity Duncan writes about the change in the types of social media that young people are using. She gives to reasons I related to on why people are leaving the sight. The first is that the content never leaves, She writes “Those pics are there forever!” It would be awful to post something malicious that could ruin your career. I definitely fall into the category of risk averse postings, my parents, high school teachers and college baseball advisers have instilled in me to double and triple check what I am posting online. The other reason is that future employers have their own team of staff that are dedicated to searching through all of the social media that potential employees have looking at something. I have seen to many instances of celebrities have their careers ruined by an out of touch.

It was interesting to see the two negatives of this mass exodus. The first is that kids are willing to create fake accounts where they think they can freely post and never be traced back to them. I have seen to many instances of this coming back to hurt somebody especially with “Finsta” accounts. The second problem is that young people leaving Facebook are becoming more out of touch with the growing amount of political debate and education that is being posted online. I am curious to see how we as young people combat this change to stay political aware. Hrennen (talk) 02:15, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 4: “I can’t ‘rinsta’ this!” Is a common phrase among teenagers and young adults used to refer to their “real” Instagram accounts, made for all of their followers to see, rather than a select few. This example highlights a point Felicity Duncan makes in her article discussing the decreased usage of Facebook among younger generations. Her point being, young people are afraid their pubic profiles will negatively impact them in their professional lives. Even I choose to communicate with my friends more directly through apps such as Snapchat, or sending them posts via Instagram DM.

Although usage may be decreasing, there is still a relevance to Facebook for younger people, for example, many campus groups will communicate via Facebook. Kraut et al. chapter 3 emphasizes that a way to increase bonds-based commitment is for members to have the opportunity to “engage in personal conversation.” While this can be done though Facebook, younger people who have been exposed to social media platforms that allow for stronger personal connections and conversations (such as messenger apps, Snapchat, or even Instagram) could prove to be a better fit.

I question Duncan’s statement that, as more young people leave the more public social medias, they will become less aware of important political movements and ideas. This is because Kraut et al. reminds us that, “diversity of members’ interests can reduce identity-based commitment.” So, even if younger generations leave Facebook, they likely use other online platforms that allow for more productive conversations surrounding politics and social issues. These platforms would likely have members with more aligned interests, with awareness of the issues remaining the same. -MichelleBir. (talk) 14:09, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 1: The Kraut excerpt presented a good overview of many of the reasons why users may be attracted to a particular online community, and more so their motivations for staying in them. The online article (theconversation.com) presented three reasons why young people might be choosing to leave Facebook (broadcast style), in favor of more intimate channels (narrowcast style). To tie these two readings together, I’d like to focus on an online community I’m an enthusiastic member of: the Dogspotting Society Facebook group.

In essence, the (closed, invite-only) group of 60,000 or so members is a forum in which users can post pictures of their dogs, and start a prompt related to their image for other members to respond to in the comments with a related picture of their dogs. Primarily, the group encourages needs-based commitment, as defined by Kraut. Dog-lovers from across the world can come together and share their love of dogs (also related to normative commitment; the purpose of dog appreciation), have their (normally politically-charged or otherwise negative) Facebook feeds littered instead with adorable animals, and receive validation that their own dogs are worthy of thousands of reactions and comments. An element of reciprocity also exists in that group, in that users may feel obligated to respond to others’ prompts after having received some on their own post. In this case, it would be indirect or generalized reciprocity—users pay forward the appreciation they received on their own post.

Now, every so often a user will leave the group and make a post in the group announcing why they have done so. The online article from theconversation.com mentions that one reasons teens often leave online communities is that, essentially, old people are doing it now. Similarly, in the Dogspotting group, people cite reasons related to negative comments coming from narrow-minded or elitist folks who chastise posters for one reason or another. While not exactly the same, it demonstrates that once broadcasting in a community is met with more negativity than personal benefit, a user will no longer be motivated to stay in the community. Allie.Mackenzie (talk) 15:47, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Allie.Mackenzie, why do people typically leave? We'll discuss exit near the end of the course, but I'm curious! 😄 -Reagle (talk) 17:02, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 3 - Commitment is the tell-tale sign of a community's future success. In Kraut's words, he defines a normative commitment as a "feeling that one has obligations to the community, to be loyal and act on its behalf." While many factors contribute to one's normative commitment to a community, commitment to the cause, others' normative commitment, and reciprocity serve as three key examples. Kraut explains that if a community makes its successes and accomplishments known to others, an example of commitment to the cause, members will feel more committed. Additionally, testimonials from other members also serve to strengthen members' commitment, which signifies the importance of others' normative commitment in relation to one's self. Lastly, if community members are aware of how they have benefitted from their community and acknowledge this presence of reciprocity, they are also likely to feel more committed. In relation to Kraut's explanation of normative commitment, Facebook user's recent shift towards messaging-central platforms exemplifies a lack of commitment to this online community, and potentially harmful implications of this shift.

In her article, Felicity Duncan analyzes the reasons why younger people have migrated away from Facebook use and instead have opted for more private forms of messaging, such as Snapchat. While there are pros and cons to both platforms, from a millennial's perspective there are three main reasons why Facebook is essentially moving towards becoming obsolete. Firstly, "48% of Facebook users are over the age of 65," which exemplifies a substantial shift in the general Facebook audience. Secondly, younger people are now aware of the permanence of Facebook after being told time and time again that "nothing posted on Facebook is every truly forgotten." Finally, the professional and personal risks associated with Facebook posts have arguably become the main deterrence in Facebook use among younger people; not only do future employers and university admissions offices use social media to gather important information about people, but other significant companies such as banks rely on this information as well.

Similar to the way in which Facebook use as well as messaging-central apps like Snapchat have benefits and drawbacks, so too does this increasing migration away from Facebook. From a corporate perspective, Facebook's gathering of data will suffer, in addition to its revenue, if people cease to "like" things on the platform, like they once did. From a parent's perspective, it is becoming more difficult to monitor children's online lives, which can be viewed as both a positive and negative thing. For example, if a child is being bullied online or struggling with mental health-related issues, parents might be very troubled by this shift. Additionally, if younger people are not exposing themselves to the diverse views and perspectives presented on a platform like Facebook and instead restricting themselves to messaging apps with friends who more often than not share similar viewpoints, they might fall into a filter bubble in which like-minded views form an echo chamber of doom. However, from a social media and scholarly perspective, the "shift is encouraging in that it supports calls for more reticence online." Ultimately, these varying perspectives present different ways of viewing the recent migration away from Facebook. Given that the political promise of social media was that it "would create a powerful and open public sphere" and considering the implications of this shift in Facebook use, we must ask ourselves the question, is our public sphere in permanent jeopardy? JessWeiss (talk) 16:02, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

JessWeiss, ~700 words are a bit big for this. 😄 -Reagle (talk) 17:02, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 2: The online article that we read focuses on the decline of certain passive social network platforms, while more interconenctive platforms are rising. The death of Facebook in the millennial generation is attributed to several things, but there is actual evidence as show in theconversation.com article. Not only does the conversation article pinpoint specific motivations that encourage younger people to stray away from Facebook, but Kraut also explains the motivation of attraction and motivation to stay in particular groups and continue engaging.

Both articles cite negative implications that arise from this change, explaining that it has a negative impact in specific areas of social interaction with one another. The Duncan article explains "This exodus of young people from publicly accessible social media to messaging that is restricted to smaller groups has a number of implications, both for the big businesses behind social media and for the public sphere more generally." while Kraut emphasizes that "people stay in a group only as long as they perceive the group and other members as being attractive and instrumental in fulfilling their personal goals.”

Focusing on Kraut's point, it is entirely accurate that people only want to engage if it is beneficial to their personal gain. In fact, social media is so successful because of that underlying motivation of validation from other people who wouldn't normally provide that in real life. But it negates the argument that Duncan is making that people are transitioning from publicly accessible social media. I think that right now this shift is in the goldilocks zone between those two points, we are gaining deeper validation from focusing on closer connections. I don't believe that this shift is damaging to big business and the public sphere, rather it's going to force companies to think outside the box on how to reach our generation in a more authentic and less "one and done" approach. I think the fact that direct connectivity is back in style is a little bit healthier for society in general and is going back to the roots of social media where it was developed as a connection device rather than an ego-booster device. Duncan has a very strong opinion that those wide platforms are being destroyed, but I argue the young people that use them are making it work for themselves while others meed to adjust Emsandell (talk) 16:15, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 3- Duncan's article on social media detailed how times are changing in terms of teen's use of social media platforms. Duncan described how teens are increasingly using platforms where they can share things with their closest friends, or update their friends on a moment by moment basis of their days. I agree with this moment by moment update. However, as a millennial, I was surprised to see that Messenger and Snapchat are increasing in use and being used more. In my opinion, I still feel like Snapchat is dying, especially once Instagram introduced their 'story' feature similar to Snapchat's. The idea of switching from "broadcast social media- like Facebook and Twitter-and switching to narrowcast tools- like Messenger or Snapchat" makes sense to me- however, I see this more in the case of Instagram, or just group chats on iMessage. However, as a 22-year old, perhaps I am just moving out of the sphere that they conducted these studies on.

Kraut et al discussed how members of an online community may be drawn to that community, and showed examples of different ways the communities may try to "supplement the psychological benefits members derive from being in the community with specific benefits for those who participate and contribute." I feel like this relates to Duncan's article by showing that people will gravitate towards platforms that they feel they benefit by being in, and the use of Snapchat and Messenger reflects that. For Snapchat specifically, the benefit of being able to have conversations disappear while also sending the messages very quickly is heavily advertised by the company as the biggest benefit of the app, and judging by the data Duncan presented, users certainly seem to be taking advantage of it. Sariexley (talk) 16:52, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oct 04 Fri - Ethics (interlude)

QIC 5- The line between experimentation and the normal course of business online is becoming increasingly blurred in my mind as I read more about reactions of user influence testing. In the "real world," the line seems rather clear. In experimentation, you have test subjects that you ask to engage with your study, take your results, and are done with it. In business, sometimes you change your product and people buy it more or less, but that does not fundamentally impact their lives due to your change (barring serious legal issues). However, the Wikipedia page on Facebook brings up a significant controversy of unregulated testing on human subjects online. When Facebook chooses to experiment on its users, they are not just testing a product. They are receiving back human data (such as their emotional states, political preferences, etc.) and influencing the communication and social networking of those people. In testing their product, they are also aggregating data on unknowing participants and changing their perceptions. The ongoing controversy of politically polarizing social media algorithms is a clear case of that.

Christian Rudder from OkCupid argues that it isn't that big of a deal that online platforms experiment by discussing some of the tests done by the application/website. However, he directly states that they influenced romantic matches by providing false evidence to users (even though they later told participants their real match scores). Platforms cannot be asked to simply stop testing their product, because every product needs to be able to change and grow. That said, given the potential and demonstrated power of influence that these platforms have, it is far from a bit concerning that while there are many regulations on outside users experimenting on online subjects (as Amy Bruckman discusses) there doesn't appear to be a strict regulatory system on what platforms can and cannot do when testing their product on unknowing users. -Bcstanley1 (talk) 04:43, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 5- Using the parameters set out by Amy Bruckman in Teaching Students to Study Online Communities Ethically, OKCupid clearly made an ethical faux pas. After analyzing the information in We Experiment on Human Beings!, it seems there was no informed consent given by the participants. In fact, in one of the experiments, the users were not even aware that the experiment was happening. Since these precautions weren't taken, it seems clear that OKCupid did not use a review board before deciding to run this experiment. It also did not consider the impact that it would have on the users. By giving the participants percentage matches that were inaccurate, they may have disrupted the original romantic path for those two users. Bruckman asks her students to try their best not to disrupt the normal activity of the site, as that can have adverse effects on the research and the users.

Although these experiments don't fit in with the ethical requirements that Bruckman wants students to follow, I am personally less concerned about these than the Facebook experiments documented in Facebook: User influence experiments. The OKCupid experiment that changed the percentage match was concerning to me, but their analysis of data that already existed, or removing photos seemed ethically harmless. The Facebook experiment, however, could have had a more serious impact on the mood of users who were shown negative posts more often. Facebook may have been a trigger for something, or made a bad situation worse in an unsuspecting user's life. Rose Northeastern (talk) 17:02, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 5- A/B testing or human experimentation? I agree with Brooke in saying that the line between testing a product and human experimentation can be a bit blurry. On one hand, the whole point of A/B testing and experiments in businesses is to improve the product and get your consumers to perform a particular action. On the other hand, it could be easy to go too far. I see the argument to call OkCupid's experiments ethical as Christian Rudder does. In its core, they were all run to improve the site's accuracy and usability. Changing the match percentages is really the only case I could see something being close to unethical.

I think my main issue with OkCupid is that they post their data from these experiments in articles like the one we read. In her article, Amy Bruckman mentions that academics can't publish anything about human experimentation without the review of an IRB prior to the experimentation. Why shouldn't businesses like Facebook have to go through the same process? While a lot of the graphs that Rudder publishes are pretty harmless, because you can't pick out individuals, what about the photos of the two women? A screenshot where you can see a woman's profile and username and the other a suggestive photo of a woman with only her eyes blacked out. Did he have permission to use those photos? Because if I was either of those women, even if I had posted them on OkCupid, I wouldn't want them to be broadcasted on a blog post about experiments.- NortheasternFoley (talk) 03:25, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

NortheasternFoley, in other posts he mentioned getting permission for photos; since these were old and/or not identifiable, I guess he wasn't concerned...? -Reagle (talk) 17:12, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 3 - The internet is an amazing case study on the science of ethics. I don't think this was at the top of every tech inventor's list when creating a groundbreaking and world-changing idea that would eventually end up shaping the functions of our society. On top of the mass amounts of research that have come out since the implementation of these social media platforms about mental health in conjunction with its users, these websites are now facing another difficult ethical dilemma. The concept of taking people's data and data protection is a fairly recent issue that has come to light more recently in the wake of the 2016 election. Turning every human being into a data point in something that can be extremely detrimental, yet companies embrace it and are actively working every day to find new ways they can use this data to enhance their platforms.

The OkCupid article is concerning to me from this standpoint. This website is supposed to be about human connection and bringing people together based on the special intimacy that only two humans connecting with one another in person can experience. It's frightening when they post a long article about the data behind all of this and that essentially, humans are just data guinea pigs. Similarly with Facebook and its user influence experiment that revolved around "manipulating the positive and negative messages by 689,000 Facebook users." Facebook also sees a benefit in turning complex human emotion into a black-or-white data chart to measure responses to something. To me this is unethical. But Amy Bruckman does a fantastic job breaking down how people can be more aware of ethically participating in these online communities. Although this is directed at the user and not so much the companies creating these issues, we now live in a world where people need to be aware of these ethical challenges we face every day within our online communities. Emsandell (talk) 15:20, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 4 - Because I can, therefore I will -- a reasoning too frequently used to justify studies, specifically conducted online. Through Bruckman's conceptual framework, the necessary considerations of studying online communities are exemplified. She explains the importance in participant observation, self-presentation, and choice of site among other things. While these concepts might seem like obvious considerations for any logical study, these factors are too often overlooked when they matter the most. For example, through Facebook's user influence experiments, it was evidenced that the company's actions were "illegal, immoral, and mood-altering," as users never consented to having their data used for research purposes. Not only were the ways in which the study was conducted undoubtedly questionable, but the study's findings also were criticized heavily. Instead of analyzing subjects' emotions as suggested by the study's claims of "emotional contagion," an app was used to detect the use of positive and negative words "in order to infer users' sentiments; this caused phrases such as "I'm not happy" to be considered positive simply because the word "happy" was mentioned. Needless to say, Facebook's experiment was heavily flawed, leading to the suggestion that unethical study conditions might even contribute to flawed study results.

In Rudder’s response to Facebook’s study, he mirrors this sentiment by claiming that “most ideas are bad” and “even good ideas could be better.” This concept reflects a significant consideration for companies and individuals studying online communities. However, it is also imperative that Internet users understand that simply using the Internet subjects them to be the focal point of countless experiments. By conducting three studies related to online dating apps, OkCupid was able to discover important information regarding the value in people’s pictures, the weight of one’s attractiveness in comparison to one’s personality, and the power of suggestion in forming successful “matches.” Through these studies, it is clear that significant value can be drawn from studying online communities, which might benefit both individuals and companies alike. However, the way in which these studies are conducted is paramount to the substance of what is found. JessWeiss (talk) 16:37, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 5: Is love really blind? Clearly not according to the results of OkCupid’s A/B testing, which utilized varied versions of scales and match percentages to evaluate user behavior on the site. While Christian Rudder states in the article that “if you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time,” I believe that without the appropriate steps being taken to evaluate the methods of such experiments (such as consulting an IRB), and proper disclosure to users, then any kind of testing is unethical.

Amy Bruckman outlines “key design decisions” to her students in creating ethically sound online research, one criterion being a description of potential risks of the research in the online consent form. To me, the OkCupid testing did not really include many “risks,” but still clearly interfered with human behavior on their site, lending to a lack of ethical testing methods. I am more concerned by the user influence experiments described on the Facebook Wikipedia page. By manipulating the positive and negative messaging that Facebook users saw on their feeds, the test was not only examining user behavior, but, as Rose mentioned, could have also potentially impacted users psychologically. The defense Facebook COO Sheryl Sandburg made, saying the research was “part of ongoing research companies do to test different products…” is not sufficient from an ethical standpoint. This is because not only was Facebook testing their “product,” they were testing on human subjects without proper consent or notification. -MichelleBir. (talk) 16:40, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 1: One of the most controversial issues with online studies has been the ethical standards. Most of the scholars believe that the majority of students who study online often lack the ethical standards to stay true to their course. Bruckman while reviewing the experiences from the Georgia Institute of Technology found out that the issue of using direct quotes was a challenge. In Facebook, for example, if a direct quote drawn from the free online site has been used in a public account, the search engine could reveal the original posting, therefore, washing away the confidentiality of whatever has been posted Indeed, all the sites used in online studies must be approved by the instructor to ensure that they have the required ethical standards. Niehkuan (talk) 16:51, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oct 08 Tue - Regulation and pro-social norms

QIC 4- Do not feed the trolls! Chapter 4 of Kraut et al’s textbook discusses how to limit the effects of bad behavior in online communities, how to preemptively stop the behavior itself, and how to encourage users to comply with community norms voluntarily. While it maintains its own unique issues, Reagle’s article on Wikipedia’s norms highlighted to me that the three golden rules of Wikipedia are not only followed voluntarily, but generally respected by their community members which establishes an understood set of normative behaviors accepted in the group. While there is less emphasis on the “community” as a whole, this then made me think of Twitter as an online community with almost no normative behaviors established.

Twitter has a published code of conduct that everyone is to follow, and allows users to report others who they believe violate these rules. These “reports” are then analyzed by Twitter’s team, who has the final decision on what happens to the tweet and the original poster. The issue arises here, however, when people’s tweets get reported or deleted for reasons that are not easily understandable when looking at the code of conduct. Furthermore, we see instances of people like President Trump repeatedly and consistently violating the rules Twitter espouses and people continue to report him to no avail. This reminded me of Design Claim 15 on page 145, in which they say, “Publicly displaying many examples of inappropriate behavior on the site leads members to believe such behavior is common and expected.” People on Twitter see the worst behavior routinely go unpunished, and understand that the site effectively has no concrete norms or at least no repercussions for those transgressions. This leads to a Wild West like atmosphere on the site and strongly discourages voluntary compliance with what little norms they do have.

Also, just a side note, am I the only person who thought Garrett Hardin’s excerpt on the “Tragedy of the Commons” read like a pointed critique of capitalism while also explaining the common pool resource problem? Drewcherr327 (talk) 00:37, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 6- Internet moderation is a remarkably tricky subject with good intentions often resulting in unintended consequences. Kraut et al. discuss several tactics for moderating online communities, but one of the more interesting parts of their discussion is the way many of these tactics result in worse behaviors than existed before attempts to moderate. One such example was near the beginning of Chapter 4 where the authors discussed how disemvoweling can reduce the number of readers exposed to a message thought to break community norms, but users that feel unfairly punished may then produce worse content than their original message in protest of their treatment. I wonder whether the type of community changes how likely users are to deliberately violate rules in protest of unfair treatment. On one hand, users committed to a community that feel they have been treated unfairly may be far more hurt by that treatment due to their personal ties to the community, which may result in increased negative activity in protest due to that personal hurt. On the other hand, users that are not committed to a community are unlikely to care about the negative impact of their protests, so even the smallest perceived slight may be considered justification for negative spamming.

One of the things I thought was intriguing about Wikipedia norm pages discussed in the "Be Nice" article was the prevalence of ironic, sarcastic, or deliberately humorous norm pages such as "Sarcasm is really helpful." In forums with explicitly serious communities (consider mental health support pages), I don't think this would be taken well. However, in more ambiguous or deliberately humorous pages (like Wikipedia or Reddit), I wonder if ironic norm pages actually increase the number of users that subscribe to the norm because it is far easier to swallow a rule that isn't authoritative. For users that stifle at authority (which I imagine are not uncommon in spaces like Reddit for 4chan), being explicitly told "Don't use sarcasm" may increase the odds of sarcastic speech to demonstrate the user is not controlled by anyone. However, if the rule is presented nonthreateningly (as is in the case of the Wikipedia norm page "Sarcasm is really helpful"), it still does the job of informing users about a norm, but avoids the trap of triggering such behavior in spite of authority.

-Bcstanley1 (talk) 02:00, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 4: In Chapter 4, Kraut writes about the effects that internet trolls have in online communities. In his opening he gives an example of how fake accounts can either post positive or negative reviews about on platforms like Trip Advisor and Yelp can be harmful to the user. When I read this it reminded me of a first hand instance of when I duped by false reviews on Yelp. I was in Lubbock, Texas and turned to Yelp for a review on a local barbecue restaurant that described it as "mouth watering good." When my friend and I journeyed there we could tell that it was barely visited and the food was worse than a day old sandwich from Mcdonalds. Later in this chapter, in design claim 5 Kraut writes about different tools that websites have used including writing algorithms to try and filter out what would be considered a troll. I am a fan of the approach that Instagram has taken in order to filter out trolls. Accounts with blue checks can choose to either limit the accounts that can comment to other's who are verified or to turn them off completely. I think they just came out with an update that allows all users to do this, but am not fully sure? This seems like the best approach because it gives the user full control over the content that is being posted on their page.

When I read design claim 15, which talks about how posting inappropriate content on social platforms makes it seem normal to the rest of the users, I thought of a few people that have definitely fallen into this category. The first person that came to mind was President Trump's use of twitter, how he constantly attacks his enemies, posts propaganda promoting his upcoming reelection bid and sends out grammatically incorrect tweets. I have seen his style make an impact on my fellow college students who justify the way act around others and their lack of respect online to the fact that their president does it. I see that Andrew had the same original reaction as I did when reading this claim. The other group I immediately thought of when reading this claim was the content that Barstool Sports posts on their Instagram page. I focused my User Motivation essay on this company and talked a bit about their "Saturdays are for the boys" motto. The actions of drunken stupidity that are celebrated and constantly pushed into the consumers face by the company have normalized people doing outrageous things. It has gotten so out of control that kids are actively competing with each other to perform that most ridiculous act. Hrennen (talk) 03:10, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QIC 6: “For a troll who is seeking to disrupt, sowing contention among other members is clearly a victory.” In this chapter, Kraut et al. discuss the importance of maintaining norms within an online community, how to regulate behavior within online communities, and, of course, how to combat online nuisances such as trolls. This chapter notes the importance of formal feedback and the use of specific guidelines can increase trust among users. The notion of constructive feedback was a key point highlighted in Joseph Reagle’s article, “Be Nice”: Wikipedia Norms for Supportive Communication along with how to manage contention among Wikipedia members.

Kraut et al. mention that stopping trolls is not a perfect system, and can sometimes minimize contributions from real people. They mention sites such as Facebook, which have implemented ways to combat trolls in their community through the use of text warnings. Although a trivial example, if any of us ever tried to post a “To Be Honest” or a “rate” on our 300 closet friends’ Facebook walls in seventh grade, it was likely that we received a very similar message from Facebook as would a troll who posted on too many walls with spam messaging. Even though telling your friends how you feel about them is not an activity with malicious intent, it still yields the troll response.

Something else I found rather interesting was the design claim that “redirecting inappropriate posts to other places creates less resistance than removing them.” I noted this because there are direct examples of this in social media today. More people, especially larger influencers, who post somewhat risqué or controversial materials on their Instagram feeds are becoming “shadowbanned.” This is done primarily to minimize inappropriate content from being shared on the platform. However, there is less frustration when a user is shadowbanned than if they were removed from Instagram completely. This practice is present in online communities such as Reddit and Facebook as well. -MichelleBir. (talk) 05:16, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding behavior regulation and encouraging pro-social norms in online communities, I honestly wish there were more Wiki-like guidelines in other parts of the internet. Of course, in communities like Wikipedia, the rules are a consensus among users to identify “non-normative behavior” as Kraut puts it, ultimately aimed at improving the common cause—but I think this approach is idealistic in other areas, specifically in unmoderated forums.

While it’s a pessimistic perspective, I don’t believe an approach like this would play out in any context that isn’t regulated as such. I’m thinking specifically about political debates in unmoderated and largely unregulated settings such as Facebook (and most offline political debates, too). Debaters will often come in to discussions with a certain point of view (“perspective-taking”), based on information they didn’t bother to verify, which is essentially the opposite of Wikipedia’s guidelines (Reagle). They become defensive, which shuts out any potential for understanding or meaningful debate (Reagle). Just as a Wiki user might think “that policy page is wrong, because it doesn’t describe what I do” (Wikipedia, 2007a), someone with a liberal perspective might often subconsciously think based on “that conservative belief is wrong, because it doesn’t describe what I do.”

Thus, you often find dogmatism within political debates, with contributors needing “to be right, wanting to win, and seeing his ideas as truths to be defended” (Reagle quoting Gibb), rather than using empathy to put themselves in their “opponents” perspective: “ideally not viewing them as an enemy anymore, but rather just an individual with different assumptions about the world” (Wikipedia, 2009d). There’s no sense of “Wiki-love”—moral judgements are made based on opposing beliefs, and others are categorized as either “good” or “bad” (Reagle). As a result, you have everyone using up the “public goods” of the pasture, as Kraut explains it, (the potential of public forms for constructive debate) in order to get attention for their own points of view (adding another sheep to the herd.) Allie.Mackenzie (talk) 16:11, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oct 11 Fri - Norm compliance and breaching

Oct 15 Tue - Community and collaboration

Oct 18 Fri - Reddit's challenges

Oct 22 Tue - Moderation

Oct 25 Fri - Governance and banning

Oct 29 Tue - Debrief: Social breaching

Nov 01 Fri - Newcomer gateways

Nov 05 Tue - Newcomer initiation

Nov 08 Fri - FOMO, growth hacking, and ethics

Nov 12 Tue - Gratitude

Nov 15 Fri - RTFM

Nov 19 Tue - Student Nominated Topic

Nov 22 Fri - Debrief: Wikipedia

Nov 26 Tue - Infocide

Nov 29 Fri - NO CLASS

Dec 03 Tue - Debrief: Newcomer campaign

[1] ttps://www.thecut.com/2019/06/nicole-curran-is-getting-death-threats-over-beyonce-video.html

[2] ttps://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-48556109

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