My first blog was about the Arizona shootings that occurred on January 8, this attack resulted in multiple injuries and several deaths, including a nine year old victim and of course the highly publicized injuries of Arizona's United States Representative, Gabrielle Giffords who was shot in the head.
The shooter, Jared Lee Loughner was said to be suffering from deteriorating mental capacity as was evident in his behavior and also through his personal social networking site, in which he bid farewell to friends. Whether a call for help or whether something could have been done to prevent his violent actions is unclear- but an interesting factor to be considered is the aspects of social computing, the change in human behavior, questionable responsibility of such sites and its followers, and the evolution social networking may be causing in our behavior and thought process.
Basically... what can we believe? What ethic, moral and/ or legal responsibility do readers/followers and host sites have? Legal ramifications for the involved parties (writer, follower, host site, law enforcement)? Why the need to blog!? Whats with all this sharing?
In my blog I am going to touch on my own experiences with texts and SNSs and examine why society is sharing more information about themselves than ever before.
What to believe?
One of our assigned readings, Social Responsibility and the Web: A Drama Unfolds examines a case recently in which a Twitter message from a mother asks, "If I smother my three year old , who will not go to sleep, is it really a crime?"
This simple tweet, probably done in a moment of "heat" resulted in a myriad of responses, from outrage to sympathy while gaining abundant public interest. According to David C. Evans, founder of the social media research company Psychster Inc., we should expect "the full array of human tendencies- constructive, destructive, pro-social, anti-social, conservative and risky to be expressed in social media, as they are in any other areas of social life."
In this case, I believe it was "better to be safe than sorry" and that a visit by police officers was a minor discomfort for the mother- it brings to my mind how often what we write about online or text and often be misconstrued. I can't tell you how many times I have had to "dissect" a text to try to decipher what what meant.. even reviewing the texts with others!
As BJ Fogg, director of Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab says, "We are connecting two people largely through text. Text is an impoverished medium for communicating emotion, intent, real meaning..the weakness of text to express emotion and the shallowness of many online relationships can result in dicey situations."
I find that texting or online communications lesson the validity or may create more confusion between people, its communicating without fully engaging- lacking human expression and often resulting in incomplete and easily misconstrued information...
"What did he mean by that?"
"Was he serious?"
"Whats that suppose to mean, with the wink face?"
Sometimes I truly miss the days before texting and SNSs... sometimes I just wanna hear a voice!! Yet, I am guilty of sending many texts in a day.. its a confusing state to be in... its a hate/love relationship!
Sharing of Info.. online communities
According to one of our readings, Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance by Anders Albrechtslund, "The practice of online social networking can be seen as empowering, as it is a way to voluntarily engage with other people and constuct identities...to participate in online social networking is also about the act of sharing yourself- or your constructed identity with others."
The idea of "constructing" an identity is attractive to many based upon the millions of people that use social networking sites. How often have I enjoyed a friend's Facebook because of their clever remarks and pictures? There are "friends" that I barely communicate with but maintain "friendship" with based on their Facebook profile.. I wouldint want to miss out on their clever jokes and travel pictures!I suppose this would give agreement to Albrechtslund's article that social networking sites are in fact a way of surveillance- a way of knowing what friends are doing when they want to share things.. that the use of social networking sites can be empowering in many ways. Where else can you construct what others see?
This concept has also been written about In Christine Rosen's article, Virtual Friendship and the New Narcism, "...our self-portraits are democratic and digital; they are crafted from pixels rather than paints. On social networking websites like MySpace and Facebook, our modern self-portraits feature background music, carefully manipulated photographs, stream-of-consciousness musings, and lists of our hobbies and friends. They are interactive, inviting viewers not merely to look at, but also to respond to, the life portrayed online. We create them to find friendship, love, and that ambiguous modern thing called connection. Like painters constantly retouching their work, we alter, update, and tweak our online self-portraits; but as digital objects they are far more ephemeral than oil on canvas."
According to another one of our readings, Why we Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities, "...findings indicate that blogs are used as a tool to share daily experiences, opinions and commentary...a user's retention and interest in blogging could be predicted by the comments received and continued relationship with other active members of the community."
While it is clear that social network sites offer users a fun way to get across whatever message they want, it can also be a positive medium towards improving professional networking and opportunity, as stated in our readings Motivating Content Contributions to Online Communities: Toward a more Comprehensive Theory, " the Internet has enabled its users to connect to an ever increasing amount of information and has allowed users to extend their professional and social networks through participation in online communities."
What it is:
The internet and Social networking sites have no doubt changed the world; we are in a constant state of evolving with technology- through our interactions with others, our behavior and the world as we know it. Kinda scary!
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Sources:
Weeks, Linton (2009). Social Responsibility and the Web: A Drama Unfolds. 8 January 2009. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99094257
Albrechtslund, Anders (2008). Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance. First Monday 13(3). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2142/1949
Rosen, Christine (2007). Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism. The New Atlantis 17, 15-31. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/virtual-friendship-and-the-new-narcissism
Java, Akshay. Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities. https://laulima.hawaii.edu/access/content/group/MAN.88616.201130/Session%203%3A%20Motivation%20for%20participation/java-why-we-twitter.pdf
Tedjamulia, Steven (2005). https://laulima.hawaii.edu/access/content/group/MAN.88616.201130/Session%203%3A%20Motivation%20for%20participation/tedjamulia-motivating-content-contributions.pdf
Yeah, I know what you mean about the love/hate relationship with texting! I used to text all the time when I lived abroad, but that's because all my friends there had chosen this as a major form of communication, over phone calls. In that country we had package plans where phone calls were charged by the minute (expensive), with like 500 free/reduced-cost text messages/month, so it created this texting "culture" among my friends and I. Phone calls between us, when they did take place, would be cut short abruptly, in favor of continuing the conversation by text or in person (cheaper that way :P). I did find it frustrating as well sometimes, when all I wanted was a good old-fashioned phone conversation!
ReplyDelete"Whats with all this sharing?" That is so true!! Why do people do that, my motto is if I can not say it out loud, I do not say it in a tweet/text/FB message. If you ever feel like wasting time, just go on Twitter and to a search on the word "drunk" or "regret" or the word that means female dog or the word that sounds like smut but the there's and "L" not an "m"....some of the things people disclose are just plain outrageous. I mean you kiss your mother with that mouth!?!
ReplyDeleteAlso, I agree about the surveillance thing. FB is a great way to keep tabs on people.
There seems to be a common trend among many posts so far in this class that communication is more difficult when done through text (SMS, Facebook ...) Yet there is a contrast when evaluating these practices with the effectiveness of communicating to a lot of people all at once, something we could not do when communication was limited to voice only. I wonder where communication brakes down. Is it when we write the text message or the status update? Is it when we read it with out the other people knowing how we are interpreting it? Is it when we think about 20 mins later? I do not intend to put blame on teachers but I wonder if there is a stronger emphasis in primary/secondary school on writing and effective communication through writing. Something I never really needed to deal with until I was in college. Maybe the issue deals more with retention and comprehension? If so is Facebook making us smarter as we are now "reading" more then we did 10-15 years ago.
ReplyDeleteThese are just some questions I had while reading your post. Your writing made me think a lot about some of these issues.
You're definitely not the only one who sometimes misses the days before texting and online communities :) Yet at the same time it's hard to imagine life now without the information wealth of the internet, and to me social networks are part of that. It makes staying in touch and connecting with people who share one's interests so much easier. And although I agree that the lack of verbal clues in text is sometimes confusing, I also think this becomes less of a problem the better we know the person that we're communicating with. And it doesn't even have to be a real life connection... after being online friends with a person for years, you just become used to their style of writing and expressing themselves. Occasional confusion can still happen of course, but then the same could probably be said for conversations in real life.
ReplyDelete"texting or online communications lesson the validity or may create more confusion between people", I totally agree with your point of view. There can be huge differences between words saying with and without a smile, or a joking tone, and sometimes can cause "serious results."
ReplyDeleteAnother kind of confusion can be made by delay of the system, or error in techniques, that will also cause misapprehension as well. And I agree with Julia that if these kinds of confusions are happening between long-time friends or friends who know each other offline, it can be cleared up easier, but problem is there are too many friend or acquaintances we have in SNSs that we are not that familiar with, and hence set off confusions or problems.
I also have a love/hate relationship with texting. There are times where I appreciate the convenience and brevity, but there are times where I wish it didn't exist. It's very useful for simple communication, but when what you're saying gets complicated, the conversation gets 3x as long as everyone attempts to clarify what the speaker really means. I had one friend for whom I'd need to constantly get clarification about what he was trying to say, to the point where I'd often have to call him up to figure it out (after which, he'd then hang up and continue texting me). Texting has its uses, but it's certainly not the end-all that a lot of people make it out to be.
ReplyDeleteI agree there is high possibility of misassumption with ‘text’ communication. I have seen many posts in online communities that read ‘No! I didn’t mean it. Please don’t get me wrong!’ There seems to always be unnecessary arguments, caused by misunderstanding in these online communities.
ReplyDeleteI think maybe that is why we use ‘icons’ and ‘emoticons’. What if someone sends out message like “I wanna kill myself!!!” but with a smiling winking face icon, would we take that message as seriously as if it had been sent without that icon?
But after reading you say “Whats that suppose to mean, with the wink face?” – I realized that even icons don’t always help to deliver a message clearly or maybe it can even cause more confusion. Misconception happens not only with tweets, blogs, and online communities. Sometimes my mom has been angry with what I wrote on MSN messenger, and I had no idea why. We are using webcam chatting now – less misunderstanding.
Little is understood about the human brain, but we do know it has a fairly narrow range of processing capacity. When we're overloaded with information, we filter things out, and when we're presented with too little information--as in text communication--we examine what little information we do have very closely and make guesses.
ReplyDeleteIf your question for this assignment was "what to believe?" you may be interested in the rich literature of how people make relevance and quality judgments online. For some people, information that confirms what they already know is most believable, for others, it's whatever is most outside their expectation that gets attention (i.e. shock value). I wasn't clear on how (or whether) you intended to address this question in the Yahoo roseacea group in your other post, but that too gets to the question of relative authority and believability--a physician or a person who has the condition themselves?