Week 6
From INLS 490
Week 6
Contents |
[edit] Video
[edit] Week 6
- Notes
- Presentation dates
- Goffman C. 7 Optional
- Read Lampe, Ellison and Steinfeld (in Recommended)
- Other news
- This Week's Del.icio.us links
[edit] Research/Pilot Study
- Outline of the study
- The logic of the survey:
- IV: Experience/Maturity/Accultration
- MED: Intensity/Saturation/Privacy
- DV: Disclosure/Regulation
- Your feedback
- Fix the scales
- Logouts
- Clarify application question (what is an app/ever or all time?)
- Greek status/relationship status?
- Findings
[edit] Lampe et. al.
- How do people use FB? Social searching vs. social browsing
- Social searching: People who want to learn more about an offline contact
- Social browsing: People who want to use the site to find people to connect to offline
- Resnick's "peripheral awareness" - social surveillance in social software.
- Survey: Population survey of Freshman class, 2005.
- Questions - Validity? How would you improve this study?
- How do site users negotiate the stranger/non-stranger issues as they expand their social networks?
- Trial and error methods of learning - how do we figure these rules out?
- How have new networks and entrants affected FB ca. 2005
[edit] Signaling and the Art of Impression
[edit] Goffman's Lens
- In the presence of others, we seek information/cues about these individuals
- We glean cues from aspects of appearance and correlate them to what we know
- Crucial facts lie beyond the appearance - we can only discover these indirectly
- Identity as performance
- The expression one gives
- The expression one gives off
- Can we explain the distinction between the two?
- "Calculated" identity
- It is in our interest to "control the conduct of others" through impressions
- Sometimes our presentation evokes presentations, sometimes it belies us
- Categories of impressions
- Impressions that are easy to create (statements, etc)
- Unstated signals (expressions, gestures)
- We compare the two as a validity check
- Other validity checks - engineered disruption - practical jokes, decontextualized stories
- We compare the two as a validity check
[edit] Signaling Theory
- Communications Theory: Sender and Receiver
- In communications, senders and receivers seek to achieve mutually agreeable understanding of the message.
- Signals are a very important part of this sense-making process
- Signals: characteristics
- Has a definite form
- Refers to something other than itself
- Can be recognized as a sign
- Assessment of Signals: two types
- Assessment Signals: Requires a sense of validity in the signal - lifting heavy objects, a stag's horns
- Conventional Signals: Sender doesn't necessarily possess the signal's traits - wearing a t-shirt, etc.
- Validity in signals
- Cost of production: Many assessment signals difficult to produce
- Punishment for deception: How communities respond to non-normative behaviors
[edit] Donath
Ref: Signaling Theory
- Signals in Supernets - How do we receive, verify and make meaning of signals in CMC?
- Voice and Language
- One can write "I am female", how sustainable (expressions given off)
- Is "playing" a gender an assessment signal?
- Is understanding norms in CMC an assessment signal? (i.e. Noobs vs. Vets)
- Language as identity signal - voice becomes known over time.
- Voice and Language
- Signals, costs and identity
- The friend network as signal
- Fashion as signal
- "Dangerous behavior" as signal
- Deception
- Trolling, Impersonation
- Any consequences of deception in SNS?
- The Supernet - what are some of the assumptions
- Do we stay in one net? Are we part of many nets?
- How can our signals change over time?
- How can we "widely" groom if there are many networks?
- Questions
- How do supernets create a global culture of fashion and information?
- How can we design sites to leverage signaling theory to be more reliable and trustworthy (LinkedIn, ASmallWorld)
- How do we balance the costs and benefits?
[edit] Donath and boyd
Ref: Signaling Theory
- Q: Are friendship links in SNS an assessment signal?
- Public display of connection is a signal of the reliability of identity claims
- Dating vs. SNS
- Low cost to misrepresent in pseudononymous dating world
- High cost to misrepresent when the profile is directly tied to identity
- Power of a social group is reputation -> Not the conversation with the subject, but the conversation around the subject.
- Dating vs. SNS
- Many SNS have discussion groups - participants seen in context, SNS provides accountability - do you agree? Does having discussion in a SNS change the nature of the interaction? How?
- Feld's Foci
- We structure social experiences around a "foci" which we often think of as context -
- A social net structure around the office, or a social net structured around our block, for example.
- Social nets bring these foci together - sometimes with negative implications.
[edit] Class Exercise
4 Groups, explore the following questions:
- How do you "read" a Social Network (Facebook, Myspace, etc) profile?
- How do you assess a signals' validity in a SNS?
[edit] Presentations
- Matt A.
- Carrie B.
