Week 6 F08
From INLS 490
Week 6
Contents |
[edit] Video
[edit] Week 6
- Notes
- Guest Lecture
- Vance Ricks to lecture October 6. Reading in "Week 7 Folder".
- Read Rosen "Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism"
- Video: Mark Vernon, "The Philosophy of Friendship"
- Podcast: Philosopher's Zone weekly podcast "Justify My Love"
- Guest Lecture
- Class Notes
- 10/6 Class consolidated with 10/13
- Focus on readings: Cummings, Ellison, Quan-Haase
- Class Notes
- Assignments Updates
- Due to guest lecture, "Your Use of Relational Technology" due 10/13
- Proposal/Outline due 10/20
- Digital Traces assignment cancelled
- Assignments Updates
- Reading
- Reminders
- Post to INLS 490 class network by noon
- Week 6 Lecture Slides
- Reminders
- This Week's Del.icio.us links
[edit] Prompt reading
- Prompt: apophenia: Facebook and Techcrunch: the costs of technological determinism and configuring users
[edit] Presentation
- Javier V.
[edit] Historical Perspectives, Internet Technologies
[edit] Theories of Internet Communication
[edit] Overview
- The internet defines CMC by providing the context for CMC applications
- LAN's, WAN's, ARPANET, Bitnet - the places for communication
- Areas of interest: Effects of the internet on language, communication, interpersonal relations, and on group dynamics, as well as the emergence of social structures and norms, macro-societal impacts of internet communication
- Modes of CMC
- Listservs
- Usenet
- split-screen talk protocols
- chat
- MUD's
- WWW
- audio- and video- based CMC
- Graphical virtual reality environments
- What would we add to this list?
- Show videos of the tech
[edit] CMC Characteristcs
- CMC Research
- CMC varies according to the technologies (modes) and its context of use
- For example, synchronous CMC differs systematically from asynch CMC (Chat vs. email)
- Aspects of difference: message length, complexity, formality, interactivity - due, in part, to temporal constaints on message production and processing
- Also influenced by the granularity of message transmission (mesg-by-mesg vs char-by-char), buffer size, availability of multiple channels, default settings regarding the quoting of the previous message
- CMC varies according to the technologies (modes) and its context of use
- CMC Contextual Factors
- difference in demographics - age, gender, race, education - can result in different communication styles and content, varying the effectiveness of a CMC setting
- Situational variables that influence communication include participant structure, public/private communication, purpose and topic, network density and language choice
- CMC Types for study
- CMC types can be identified on the basis of technical and contextual variables
- Synch vs. Asynch
- Recreational vs. Pedagogical
- Male vs. Female
- Combination of variables
- Research takes into account situation, context and mode
- Modes represent a technology, setting, culture and norms - i.e. IRC is diferent from MUD on the axes of mode
- CMC types can be identified on the basis of technical and contextual variables
[edit] CMC Modes
- Email history
- First email sent in 1972 - Ray Tomlinson's SNDMSG protocol test
- 1973 - email most popular use of the arpanet
- The First spam | [
- Email function
- Structure of email and addressing functions make it a non-anonymous form of CMC
- Asynchronous nature of email allows time for composition of messages; uses communication at temporal convenience
- More managed self-presentation/editing as compared to phone or F2F leads to email's widespread popularity.
- Listserv history
- Earliest listserv - MsgGroup - started in 1975 by ARPA personnel to share information about the development of messaging protocols
- Through the 70's and 80's listservs emerged around a wide range of communities of interest
- Listserv characteristics
- Textual, asynchronous, distributed by a listserver to participants, archives messages
- Moderated lists allow control over distribution of message, offering moderators a wide range of authority over the tone, language and content dimensions of the discussion
- Listserv research
- Discussions tens to focus on information exchange, debate, conversation, social management
- Group discussion can devolve - flame wars - attributed to the cue-deprived nature of the medium (early CMC approach), deindividuation, and gendered practices
- Group discussions are also useful sources of information, social support and can sustain virtual community
- Studies have focused on content, patterns, dynamics, netiquitte, lurking, gender and politeness
- Usenet
- Developed as an alternative to the ARPANET
- Developed in NC in collaboration between UNC and Duke grad students
- History of Usenet | Google's timeline of usenet
- USENET in action?
- Usenet reserch
- Usenet is an asynchronous bulletin board - email messages posted to public threads
- Threads take place within newsgroups, organized by topic hierarchy of increasing specificity
- Cross-postings bridge newsgroups
- Low social accountability, no monitoring of readers and posters, significant flaming
- Usenet gave rise to many of the archetypes of internet communication - Flaming, Trolls,
- Topics explored: Patterns of large-scale conversation, community formation, identity and deception, participation divide, language, hate speech
- Split-screen protocols: Talk, phone and ICQ
- What is a split screen - show image
- Earliest synchronous chat protocol was UNIX talk - 1970's
- Talk on VAX, Zephyr, etc - simple split-screen console chat
- SSP Research
- Differs from email due to character-by-character transmission, meaning you can see what the other person is typing (anyone ever used one of these?)
- Allows for the "anticipation" of word and sentence completion, allowing for more efficient communication
- Renders the need for turn-taking irrelevant; no logging makes chat more ephemeral
- Chat
- First IRC written in in 1988
- Later adapted by AOL, and many others; adapted into portals as well, etc.
- Protocol wars? OSCAR vs TOC?
- In chat, individuals join channels or rooms, group or 1 on 1 chat
- Users can scroll back, record chat, log, etc
- Chat appears chaotic, but through use maturity, threading, aliasing, etc - chat becomes less chaotic, users can develop a sense of the infomration space (SIP) that may lead to hyperpersonal relations
- Twitter as chat in 2008 - ability to screen out threads, etc
- Who used/uses IRC?
- Culture of chat
- Varies, but often sociable, playful, disinhibited; topics decay quickly, users adopt avatars
- Conducive to flirting, play and other activities free from social accountability
- Private Chat
- Subset of chat - person to person communication.
- Instant messaging, notifications, wide adoption, use of chat as backchannel
- Multi-user Dimensions (dungeons, etc) MUD/MOO
- First MUD designed in 1979/1980 - role playing adventure game
- MUD's are textual virtual reality shared with other users and object
- Popular MUD/MOO's - LambdaMOO, MediaMOO - Everquest and Ultima Online
- Users navigate virtual space through textual commands
- Users create, trade and sell objects created inside of the MUD/MOO
- Users accumulate goods, skills and status in the system
- Users develop a sense of community and identity in the environment
- WWW
- TimBL's internet, created in 1989, focused on hypertext
- First www page at ibiblio
- Development of the graphical browser in 1993 opened the web to wider audience
- Web superceded all other modes of CMC, as it integrated the modes
- TimBL's internet, created in 1989, focused on hypertext
- Studying of the web
- What is web communication? Authoring of a webpage? We study it now through the lens of SNS
- Key legislation re: the web - Telecom act, DMCA, DOPA, etc?
- What is web communication? Authoring of a webpage? We study it now through the lens of SNS
- Audio/Video
- CUSeeMe developed in 1995
- MSFT NetMeeting, iChats and Skype today
- IP Based telephone (Pulver - skype)
- We see these technologies fostering individual, group, collective, organization and community relations
- These technologies are rich - offering a different level of mediated communication
- Virtual Reality
- Early VR systems were graphical MUD/MOO's
- The Palace, 1994
- Avatars, community, games
- Second life
- Graphical worlds intensify the social richness of muds/moos
- CMC
- Use up-to-date CMC slides
