Session 4: Social Role, Capital and Trust

This session asks us to observe two online communities; and to gain a better understanding of its social role, capital and trust issues that may occur.

Although very different in types of online communities, I chose to observe Pinterest and Sephora, believing that they are similar in the fact that contributors are eager to share experience and insight into products or things they have found helpful and enjoyable in their lives. Sephora focusing on beauty topics and products while Pinterest offers contributors the opportunity to "Pin" things of interest to them; whether it is quotes, clothes, destination, food. Both have the capacity to introduce other community members to products and offer a positive impact by supplementing rather than supplanting human communication (Williams).

In Pinterest, contributors "pin" things of interest to them, and may "repin" things from other contributors- almost offering a type of collaboration ( Allen)or emotional support as items that are "repinned" may signify an agreement of ideas or draw upon these resources (Ellison).

Below is a screen shot of Pinterest.

The second image allows users to "repin" other pins and also click on the contributors name to access their Pinterest page possibly finding a fellow user with common interests.

The next OC site I observed and have used a couple of times in the past is Sephora. This site, is a retail site but also also Beauty advice and the opportunity for users to contribute ideas, advice and product reviews.

The next image, shows contribution frequency, beauty focus, beauty advice, product reviews and even a link to blogs.

Both sites offer users an opportunity to make connections, broaden social horizons while also offering a sense of collaboration and community (Williams).

According to one of our readings,Establishing Trust Management in an Open Source Collaborative Information Repository: An Emergency Response Information System Case
Study "This paper views trust as a dynamic domain specific belief or attitude held by an individual concerning confidence in the accuracy of collaboratively created and updated content". and I would think that both sites have established trust by not limiting nor editing contributions unless deemed offensive by the online community. Sephora allows negative and positive reviews which may impact sales in either a negative or positive manner, while Pinterest allows "pins" of all sorts including some with offensive language.

Joining Pinterest allowed me to "pin" other ideas and create a page of my own Pinterest. By pinning other peoples items it makes my own page accessible (although being new to the site, I have a rather empty page) In Sephora, my questions regarding products could be answered by clicking on the item and reading reviews or going into the beauty advice area and seeking specific topics.

Although not a regular participant in any online community, I really did enjoy Pinterest as the site was visual and full of cute and catchy items that I found myself repinning to my own page. Unfortunately the site is somewhat difficult to navigate and I am still trying to learn how to move around.

Sephora along with other sites that offer product reviews by users has changed the way that I shop. I will read reviews before purchasing any costly item.

I believe that both sites are beneficial to users, while Sephora offers users the ability to do product research and advice; the other site Pinterest is enjoyable and has often been something that has made me laugh and pass on to others as a way of sharing a smile or two.

The debate over the effects of OC, is still ongoing and from our readings and news events it looks like the debate will continue. I believe, like many other things, online communities can be both beneficial and detrimental. Online communities used in moderation and in the extent of individual usefulness and enjoyment without negatively impacting work or homelife lead to another opportunity to enhance ones life.

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Session 3: Motivation For Participation

Our session 3 readings, examined the many reasons why people join online communities(OC), by offering different theories and research results. Some readings also offered possible ways to improve participation through the exploration of the different types of OC participants.

I believe the session 3 readings had similar conclusions into the primary reasons of OC participation, such as the seeking of information, friendship and/or social support, although at what capacity differ greatly depending on individual needs, participation, and goals.

According to Motivating Content Contributions to Online Communities: Toward a More Comprehensive Theory , the most common users are called "lurkers" and their participation is minimal if not nonexistant. While the most valuable participants tend to be those that are intrinsically motivated.

In my observations, as a "lurker", I joined an online community of dog lovers at www.mydogspace.com and found that there were regular contributors although many more viewers in every posting. The number of comments compared to the number of views was astronomical, as I will show in some screen shots below. This substantiates the propostion that most OC members simply find the information they need without getting invloved while the "regular" participants had a sense of intrinsic motivation to provide information or feedback to questions and/or topics.

One area in our readings that I had a difficult time agreeing with was the concept that OC participants with a higher self-efficacy would contibute more than those with low self-efficacy.. (Tedjamulia) Efficacy being efficient- wouldint it be also efficient for the lesser participant to get the information that they needed and then carry out the suggestions instead of relaying inofrmation back and forth through the online community? But, of course our readings were more focused on just the study of OC participants and ways to improve participation and as somebody that does not actively belong to any such OC group I found it offensive to be considered less efficient.. for example, in the OC I joined of doglovers- if a user had a question regarding the dog's health and many people suggested seeing a vet- would it be efficient to keep up the "back and forth" postings or get the dog to the vet and then possibly return later and share the outcome?

MY OBSERVATIONS
I found the site www.mydogspace.com

The modes of participation of this site included such standards as Twitter and FaceBook, posts, rate posts, flagging posts, users rating, and fun things such as those listed below to encourage user participation:
Dog Fun and games:like guessing the breed, battle for cuteness, pet tails and pictures. Users could send in pictures/videos of pets and also vote on cutest dogs, etc. Dogs received "bark" votes and users frequency of votes was also noted. Pet Tails:Dogs dressed as super heros, polls, pet and animal news, pet health and tips, adoptions and rescue. Dog Info:dog breeds, dog and puppy health, puppy advice, special pet interests

Site also had blog and forum links:

The blogs has various links to user blogs that may or may not have anything to do with dogs, such as sending bark greeting or wedding presents.

The forum area is where I did my observations:

The five topics that received the most posts had something to do with the dog's health, behavior issues or the owner considering giving her dog away because of behavior problems. From the screen shot below, you can see the amount of comments compared to views is quite staggering!

For example, an URGENT post with the headline "My dog bit someone" had 13 response posts but an amazing amount of over 1500 views.

Although I did not go into the archives, from current pages I could see the other four types of content were on topics such as:
~gentle leader (a type of training leash) with 49 posts and 3402 views
~Potty training related posts appeared at least 25 times, garnering 61
views and some 6400 views
~Dog walking issues was also a repeat posting topic, showing up around 20
times with about 42 responses and some 4000 views
~Training issues also a repeat posting topic. I noticed numerous postings
of about 18 with 61 reponses and 5100 views

CONCLUSIONS
The site offered OC participants the opportunity to exchange information and/or gain social support while also offering entertainment value (Ridings, Catherine)such as games, voting opportunities, and user ratings. Unfortunately, this site also had an overwhelming amount of users who could be classified as "lurkers" for their lack of participation and/or motivation (Tedjamulia, Steven) which may have an impact on whether the site will continue to exist or garner financial sponsors (Ling, KG).

I myself enjoyed the opportunity to see cute dog pictures and videos and I suppose if I was to become a dog owner, I may one day utilize such a site to gain information or perhaps may look for a local dog lovers group in hopes of building friendships and networking. It did surpise me how the participation level in this site was rather low (based upon posts compared to views) but I suppose for the corporate sponsors the amount of users may still hold some value.

From our readings and my observations I can see the need for information, the need for social support, the various types of and interest levels of users and also the financial opportunities that such a site may have for business (clear by the dog food ads that consistently run on the sides). But the lack of active participants did surprise me, especially because these are all dog owners/lovers and Im still not sure what could be done to improve upon that as the site utilized games, flagging, user ratings and such.

Overall, I believe the growth and use of online communities will continue to steadily increase although what sites will enjoy success or longevity rely on its ability to gain and maintain continuued interest and participation.

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Reference:
Ling, KG. Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities.

Ridings, Catherine. Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online

Tedjamulia, Steven. Motivating Content Contributions to Online Communities: Toward a More Comprehensive Theory.

Session 2: Online community

Although not a normal follower of social networking sites, I was already a member of the Yahoo Rosacea group. Its a great little place where people can get support or have their questions answered regarding skin issues. There is also a monthly newsletter that comes out done by one of the site "managers" that lists and links new and upcoming pharmaceuticals or news articles relating to rosacea. Below is a sample of the newsletter.

Rosacea News December 2010
http://rosacea-support.org/2010/12

1. Lupin Pharmaceuticals also files ANDA for Generic Oracea

The battle to make generic Oracea available to the public is heating up.
Recently filed documents in Delaware show that Lupin Pharmaceuticals, which
are based in India have filed for ...

http://rosacea-support.org/lupin-pharmaceuticals-also-files-anda-for-generic-oracea.html

2. Laser still the best for Spider Veins on the Face (WSJ)

An article today in the Wall Street Journal’s Health Aches & Claims section
discusses treatments that are available to remove spider veins that can
develop on the face. The author quotes Dr. David Goldberg who is well know
to rosacea sufferers as a director of Skin Laser & Surgery Specialists of
New York and New Jersey and a clinical professor of dermatology and director
...

http://rosacea-support.org/laser-still-the-best-for-spider-veins-on-the-face-wsj.html

3. Rosaclear from Obagi as an Integrated Rosacea Treatment Regime

The idea of using an American Academy of Dermatology Poster session paper to
introduce research around a new product is nothing new. Getting a poster
session approved is easier than a full ...

http://rosacea-support.org/rosaclear-from-obagi-as-an-integrated-rosacea-treatment-regime.html

Session 2 : Social aspects of social computing

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