2_7offsuit

Aside from information overload which occurs because _everything_ is saved on WebCT.

Two more problems are formality and technical limitations.

Discussion boards effects sharing of information. It makes it very formal, which (I think) makes messages more verbose and conservative. Another result of formality is less dialogue. You rarely see replies saying "are you sure?" and little back and forth conversation. There is the assumption that since someone posted it, they thought it out and thus their post is "final". This makes it hard to influence people.. because the perception of "strength" and ridigity. "She wrote it, so she must mean it."

Another thing is the technical limitations. To share information you need to type it.. and boards don't let you format things very well. So you have others making PDFs and Excel charts. While nice, I still think scribbles on paper would convey information better.

There is a pattern on the content of the dialogue in each of these groups.

1. An "introduction thread", where everyone shares their personal information.
2. A "candidate thread", where people post their candidate information and their views on the candidates.
3. A "planning thread", where people take care of administration (i.e. setting up meeting times).
4. A "strategy thread", where people post decision strategies (i.e. how do we weight the traits, do we go with best out of three, etc..).

As of now, none of the groups have actually decided on anything, yet a lot has been recorded.

I would estimate no less than half of the messages is introduction and planning. In other words, more than half of the effort has no direct impact on the actual decision. However, I don't think this is any different than f2f. In-line with the article about "awareness in CSCW", a lot of transmitted information within groups is to give a "context".

In f2f, we have multiple avenues to transmit information. On WebCT, there is only text. All the "context signals" are funneled into text. Everything is made explicit and written down on webCT. On webCT, everything becomes a record. This is bad, because it leads to information overload. You get too much "noise" (transitory records) mixed in with the "signal" (decision and rationale).

This is inherent with text communication. I'm digressing... but this is a huge problem in the government. So many people archive their emails messages of lunch invites and mailing list letters.. if only they realize they can throw it away. I guess this is the thing about "electronic" data, once it's in electronic format, it's automatically a "record". So naturally, we store and file our records. You hear psychologist talk about our "stone age brains" being obsolete for this century.. well maybe our "Industrial Era" --record storing brains are obsolete for this "information age" :p

I took a new sample from the population and redone my statistics. The changes are reflected in the updated essay.

What I did to get my previous stats was guess peoples ages (since AA allows you to keep your age private). The result, I realize, was estimates, and not statistics per se.

This time, I only used profiles with photos and disclosed age. This gives me some assurance that I'm sampling active members.

Here's the data

(Based on sample of members whom display a photo and disclosed an age.)

N = 30
Mean age = 18.4
Median age = 17.5
SD age = 4.4
Range age = 13 - 31

Age, Sex, Continent
19, F, NA
21, F, NA
21, M, NA
23, M, NA
26, M, NA
15, M, AU
20, M, NA
14, F, NA
31, F, NA
14, F, NA
28, M, NA
16, F, NA
18, F, NA
14,F, NA
15,F, NA
18,F, NA
17,F, NA
16,M, NA
15,M, NA
22,M, NA
13,F, NA
16,M, NA
13,F, NA
20,F, NA
22,M, NA
16,F, NA
18,F, NA

Through my time on AA, I also found people much older than in my sample and of non-asian decent. These are not included in the statistics. I am sticking strickly to what the sample has.

I will continue working on edits until the deadline, including adding an appendix.

Everything will be posted to here:

http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/sociowiki/minhs.cfm?wpid=239830

I stole a page from snarasim and did a questionnaire.. albeit mine is much shorter.

I requested a PM session with random people who were in the chat. I got a responce rate of less than 50%. Some people had no time, others were not interested in helping.

My name is alpha_fob.. I put XX to protect identities

Here is some examples of replies...

I started all conversations with "Hi, I'm doing a study on groupness in online communities. I just want to how people feel about being part of an online group. Can you answer some questions for my study? All information is kept confidential. There is only 5 short questions."


--

29, male, short story / poem personal page


XX says: sure
alpha_fob says: thank you!
alpha_fob says: Do you feel a part of the AA community? (Yes, No, Sort of)
Is there anyone from your friends list that you only met online?
Would you use alternate means to keep in contact with your friends if AA shutdown?
Are you happy when your "online" friends make accomplishments?
Does being "AA friends" strenghten your real life friendships?
Do you trust others you meet on AA?
XX says: 1. yes
XX says: 2. yes
XX says: 3. yes
XX says: 4. no
XX says: 5 sort of
alpha_fob says: thank you very much, that was very helpful
XX says: no prob

-----

21, male, pp, blog

XX says: d
XX says: sure
alpha_fob says: thanks
alpha_fob says: Do you feel a part of the AA community? (Yes, No, Sort of)
Is there anyone from your friends list that you only met online?
Would you use alternate means to keep in contact with your friends if AA shutdown?
Are you happy when your "online" friends make accomplishments?
Does being "AA friends" strenghten your real life friendships?
Do you trust others you meet on AA?
XX says: sort of, yes, yes, sort of, no, sort of
alpha_fob says: thank you very much!
alpha_fob says: have a nice day [img id=em-3]


---
n/a, female,

XX says: i dont know
alpha_fob says: I'll let you see the questions.. then you can decide
XX says: ok
alpha_fob says: Do you feel a part of the AA community? (Yes, No, Sort of)
Is there anyone from your friends list that you only met online?
Would you use alternate means to keep in contact with your friends if AA shutdown?
Are you happy when your "online" friends make accomplishments?
Does being "AA friends" strenghten your real life friendships?
Do you trust others you meet on AA?
XX says: nope
alpha_fob says: no to the questionnaire?
XX says: yes
alpha_fob says: ok thanks for your time, sorry to bother


-----
17, male, pp, bio

XX says: [b]aite[/b]
alpha_fob says: Do you feel a part of the AA community? (Yes, No, Sort of)
Is there anyone from your friends list that you only met online?
Would you use alternate means to keep in contact with your friends if AA shutdown?
Are you happy when your "online" friends make accomplishments?
Does being "AA friends" strenghten your real life friendships?
Do you trust others you meet on AA?
XX says: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
alpha_fob says: thank you, have a nice day [img id=em-3]


----

14 female, pp, bio


XX says: umm
XX says: ok
alpha_fob says: ok thank you
alpha_fob says: Do you feel a part of the AA community? (Yes, No, Sort of)
Is there anyone from your friends list that you only met online?
Would you use alternate means to keep in contact with your friends if AA shutdown?
Are you happy when your "online" friends make accomplishments?
Does being "AA friends" strenghten your real life friendships?
Do you trust others you meet on AA?
XX says: yes; yes; yes; yes; no; no
alpha_fob says: ok thank you, have a nice day
alpha_fob says: :
alpha_fob says: [img id=em-3]
XX says: ok

-----

16 male, no pp

XX says: sure
alpha_fob says: Do you feel a part of the AA community? (Yes, No, Sort of)
Is there anyone from your friends list that you only met online?
Would you use alternate means to keep in contact with your friends if AA shutdown?
Are you happy when your "online" friends make accomplishments?
Does being "AA friends" strenghten your real life friendships?
Do you trust others you meet on AA?
XX says: no thees' no one on my friends list that i met on AA
XX says: i would not use an alternate means of contact if AA shut
XX says: sure I'm happy for my "online" friends who made accomplishments
XX says: AA frineds proabaly do stregnthen my friend relationship
XX says: i do not trust my firends on AA, well not enough to give them my address and stuff
alpha_fob says: ok thank you very much
alpha_fob says: have a nice day [img id=em-3]

-----

I continue to struggle with the idea of a seperate online and offline self personality/persona/self. The concept that is muddying the waters the most for me is the idea of social identity and online groups. Does your "brain" know how to seperate your "real" groups from your "online" groups? Should there even be a distinction? You may be able to keep you online personality distinct from your offline one.. but can you do the same for your social identity? And if social identity is integral to our whole identity, then maybe are online and offline identities can't be that different.

Two posts from classmates have lead me to this question. One, from carley_401 who talked about disinhibition. On the one hand, yes, we do things online that we don't otherwise. But on the other hand, how is the internet any different from other physical spaces that cause disinhibition? For example, I act very different at work, school and home.. but you seldom hear about the "home disinhibition effect". We don't really talk about a "work self" and a "home self".. so why do we have no problem referring to an "online self" ?

The second post was from smdolansky, who is asking what's the deal with SNS popularity. She hinted that is may be an avenue to socialize for shy people. I don't see it that way at all. I think shy people would be _just as shy_ online than offline. Their shyness would just be manifest in a different way. Suler talked about psychoanalytics in the online context. I think his questions were interesting. I don't know if anyone researched the answers.

At present, my thought is focused on the blur between online and offline personality.. in addition, there is the concept of groupness, which trancends time and place. I wonder if identity has the same trancendal property. The more I think about it, the less I am able to distinguish online from offline.

Notes to follow...

Having added my picture to my profile, I think I'll get better reception. I will need it too because I've sent unsoliticed "can I be your friend" type messages to a handful of members who have an interest in "psychology".

This week I decided to focus on personal pages. AA gives each member one page which they can do whatever they want with. And ... this freedom is not lost on its member.

Here's some descriptions of what I've seen: (names have been truncated)

NekoJ's page (female, ~16);
-contains every shade of pink contained in the web-colors pallette.
-titled "Are you Gloomy"; under it is a picture of a pink cartoon bear who has a nose bleed
-font is size 6 (or less)
-has pictures of anime, water paints and nude asian models (pg-13)
-is basically a collage of her interests

C-LICKSU (female, 24);
-a blog style page, latest updated jan 2005! (she explains she uses Xanga now, so her most recent stuff is there)
-her most interesting entry is where they explains she is _not_ a "slut". That said, her nickname is C-LICKSU, go figure.
-pictures point to broken links

mBlond (female, 14);
-a picture collection
-mostly of her friends and her music band
-one very disturbing animated picture of a young boy, reminiscent of the girl under the table from the Sixth Sense... *shudder*

ckJ (male, ~25);
-a blog style, very recent updated, dates back to 2001
-minimalistic design
-a "What I yesterday" type blog; in other words, not very interesting :p

DL (male, 21);
-minimal design page
-lays out his life phisolophy, mostly relating to how to a business and become indepently wealthy (he's self-employed) to why he's meeting people online
-it's very well done and I like the message he sends

MEL (female, 27);
-minimal design, nicely done
-an long "about me" type page, but has a lot more polish and thought put into it than most others

Nik (female, 21);
-major color clash between background and foreground
-the message on the page is very somber, she lost her boyfriend (it reads like he died, but I can't be certain)
-apparently she will never date again; an obviously very personal aspect of her life she is sharing

About 75% of members have set up a personal page.
About 90% of those pages are no more than "biography" pages or photo collages.
The other 10% are more thoughtfully put together (examples are noted above).

The chat is no different this week, although the teen chat is a lot more subdued (I must have caught them at a bad time last week). Even though it's a public chat, the conversations were very much 1 to 1 (that is, you usually have two people talking back and forth on a given subject). Subject range today was: sports, weather, vacation spots and homework. Despite, 20-40 in a chat room, I suspect most are just idling.

Despite 1000 concurrent users, the chat only has about 50 users.

About 20 in the "College" room.
About 20 in the "Working Professionals" room.
About 10 in the "Teens" room.
Insignificant numbers in other rooms.

"College" room has lively chat
- talking about relationships, family, vacations
- friendly chat, lots of different conversations, many people joining in
- I asked to talk in private chat with a member. I told them I was new to AA. They didn't believe me and said that's the usual "pick up line" used here.
- most members of the "College" room also are logged in the "Working Professionals" room.
- ages varied from 17 - 30 and the chat topic seemed to reflect it.

"Working Professionals" room has lively chat also
- talking mostly about sports, specifically soccer
- although close to 20 people in chat, only 2 are talking
- the members are same age range as "College" room. Most of the members are logged in both rooms, which explains the same age range.

"Teen" room has lots of fighting
- one is not being very nice to another (to put it midly)
- language is dirty
- chat here is more flirtatious (bordering sexist)
- age is 14-18
- language shows of less maturity

Initial thoughts are there are definitely positiveness and negativeness of interactions.

... more to follow

I've refined my topic to address social identity and how it relates to online experiences. I'll be looking at how in-group and out-group "position" determine positive or negative outcomes of online interactions.

The background for this topic comes from Nezlek & Smith (2005) who showed that interactions with in-group members are more positive than interactions with out-group members.

The interesting twist here is how does this apply in the online context?

For starters, what does it mean to have an "online" social identity?

Given we have the freedom to create any persona (even those opposite of our true selves), can interaction through a persona have personal significance? Prima facie, it seems so. The same jokes are funny to me regardless of my avatar or profile.

This brings up another question, how much influence does your persona play in the makeup of your social identify?

Can you be aware of your social identity over a network? I believe studies have already shown that you can. This is not so suprising given research on minimal groups.

One unique aspect of AA is that is it an all asian community. So you would think out-groups would be non-existant, but this just isn't the case.

... more to follow

I stumbled across Tagworld.com . It looks like a next generation SNS. By that, I mean it integrates what previous generation SNS's have done into a new package. It's definitely worth a look. It has just about everything you could want from an SNS.

Most interesting, Tagworld.com makes no reservations about being a Web 2.0 product. Their heading is "Building the Social Web". I'm impressed by thier boldness.

This is my first post...