Houston..we have a problem with relationships. HELP.

Results/Summary:

We coded support messages from http://www.problem-relationships.com/. All messages offered ‘Informational Support’, but since these bloggers seek help/advice, this wasn’t a surprise. Most people feel compelled to share their stories to prevent others from experiencing their same problems. The site is anonymous, costless, and had no verbal bashing so there was no fear of full disclosure. However, no messages offered ‘Tangible Assistance’ (i.e. no-one was willing to offer physical help), which can be explained by the fact that these posts discussed emotional or psychological problems (not diseases or disabilities which are more life-threatening). A decreased truth bias is also apparent, exacerbated by the lack of nonverbal cues, communication with strangers, unexpected F2F meeting, and the uncertainty present due to the open and unsecured access granted to members, which can explain why most members don’t wish to get more involved. ‘Esteem Support’ was the second highest provided (90%) ­. As a support network people wish to help, but not everyone has the social skills and sensitivity to compliment and validate, which explains why it is not present 100%. Some might not like the circumstances surrounding the posted problem, but wish to provide information to help them anyways, focusing more on the solution. The messages with most esteem were usually between people that blogged each other repeatedly. ‘Network Support’ was the second least provided (5%) due to similar reasons to ‘Tangible Assit.’, but in addition, people would have to disclose personal information such as locations or others’ names, breaking the safety of anonymity. ‘Emotional Support’ was the 3rd highest (45%). Those that replied to each other frequently displayed more emotion. Strangers stayed more informative, simple, and concise. Interestingly people of faith expressed more emotions wishing others “love & light” or “prayers.” Finally ‘Humor’ was at 10%. Some humor was evident, but because the topics were of emotional nature and were discussed between strangers, people did not feel comfortable to be playful.
Compare/Contrast:

My results differ from Braithwaites’ partially since Emotional Support was in third place. Perhaps people felt less compelled to, due to a decreased truth bias and the relative lower degree of seriousness of the topics (compared to serious illness or disability). People in this network had a less common identity with weak ties, and instead of relating to each other on equal levels, they had a more mentor/pupil relationship. The other types of support were provided in the same ranking as in Braithwaite’s network, especially since this one also facilitated mobility, communication, and socialization. Many of these people seek help, and can’t find it in the physical world. Some may even suffer from abuse/trauma and don’t have the means/skills to ask for help directly, so they find refuge in this online network.
Theories discussed in class:

The theory of Walther et al. further explains why online groups are attractive. Online inquirers appreciate that they can receive others’ expertise without fearing confrontation and with anonymity. For example, a man confessed he had a small penis, and a woman admitted being on the brink of having an affair; both came to the site seeking answers because they feared asking people personally and even though millions can read their confession, their identity is concealed. This expert-sharing and anonymity further explains why Information and Esteem were most present. Third, interaction management (because of its editability and asynchronicity) attracts people. Finally, the 24/7 access provides flexibility to one’s schedule and a chance for people across the globe to help. Traditional psychology as stated by Wallace would argue that a greater number of people would decrease helping behavior, but is that really the case online? It may be true in tangible and network assistance, but the high levels of information, esteem, and emotional support show that numbers do increase help online.

Community in Team

One of the communities I am a part of is the Cornell Squash team.  The team is made up of about fifteen players. We are all good friends and spend a lot of time together. We see each other at practice, which is five or six days a week, for a couple hours a day.  We also spend traveling time together on the bus going to matches on the weekends and overnight hotel stays.  All of this time together creates strong bonds and ties between all the players.  Because of this most of us are in the same social circles as well and spend even more time together when out socially at night. 

I call the squash team as a community based on the social properties it retains.  There is an obvious social network present, a definite web of relationships and occurrence of bonding.  Common ground is found in our commitment to the team and its success.  Showing up to practice, working hard, and not partying, are a few of all the commitments we make in striving for a common goal.  There is a legacy to uphold. A record of past teams, who they were and their success. Within this network there is a social hierarchy.  Out of the fifteen kids on the team, only nine travel and actually play in matches.  Those nine players are ranked on a team ladder.  The rankings are decided based on the outcome of weekly challenge matches amongst teammates.  Also, out of those nine players are elected two team captains.  And then there is the coach. Within the network there is competition, friendship, conflict, and cliques, an array of bonding properties.

CMC exists in the form of emails sent out by the captains and coaches regarding team relevant details via a private listserve.  However this listserve is also used by all of us to communicate about social matters as well, i.e. “inside jokes” and personal stories. There is a sense of trust among teammates.  We are also all friends on Facebook and communicate via Facebook frequently.

To me it is clear that the squash team is a tightly knit community with strong ties that communicates a lot, both face to face and via CMC.  

http://www.cornellbigred.com/index.asp?path=msquash&tab=mens

 

The Stereotypical Community: Garrett County, Maryland

To determine the importance of a specific community-membership to an individual, simply ask them how they define themselves. A person who fires off about being a Cornell student, for example, regards belonging to that group (the university’s undergraduate body) highly. For me, I often define myself by where I’m from: a tiny little triangle snuggled amongst West Virginia and Pennsylvania, a isolated place known as Garrett County, Maryland. Garrett County epitomizes the term “community” in every sense of the word. Not only is it your typical rural small-town (complete with Amish buggies, front porches, and 13 stoplights), it also possesses many of the features of online communities that we learned about in class.
First, according to lecture slides, we could consider Garrett County a community because it has a web of affect-laden relationships that encompass a group of individuals and a measure of commitment to shared values, morals, meanings and a shared historical identity. Most people in Garrett County are related to each other and as a result, there are many affect-laden relationships: no, no incest, but many people marry others from Garrett County, thereby further strengthening the interconnectedness. Also, most people in Garrett County have an ingrained sense of what’s right and wrong and support these ideals by attending church regularly every Sunday, for example. Garrett County residents also share mutual trust (leave doors unlocked), common identity (clear when tourists come to the lake every summer), common norms and conventions (“do anything for anybody”), shared history, shared language (ya’ll, wershed, crik), common interests (everyone’s a registered Republican, we never have any Democratic candidates for county elections), and social support . . . among others.
Obviously, our small-town encompasses many of the aspects of online communities. But the real question is how do these online communities affect Garrett County? Well, considering that most Garrett Countyians live “too far out” in the middle-of-nowhere to even receive Internet, I would argue very little. This community has been built around old school standards and philosophies and has yet to be visably affected by CMC. We put election signs in our front yards, gossip at the supermarket, and meet our future husbands and wives in church. CMC has yet to be integrated seamlessly into our community. However, it’s interesting to note that CMC has impacted our community subtly. For example, due to the Internet, more people know about Garrett County as a tourist destination. So now we have increased traffic, which has changed the small-town dynamics. There are many other unique instances of CMC starting to shake things up (local businesses going online, banks creating accounts for online banking—which actually ended up in having my account number stolen), but I have yet to see a significant change.

Fraternal Community

For this assignment I chose to examine a community that exists almost exclusively offline, but in recent years has extended its network to include online interactions. My fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE), has been around for almost 140 years here at Cornell. As a result, the vast majority of interacting in this social network occurs FtF as opposed to through CMC channels. However, the recent creation of a house list serve has enabled brothers, no matter where they may be so long as they have internet access, to stay current on house-related news and events through email.

The fraternity definitely falls in line with the idea of “Gemeinschaft (community)” proposed by Tonnies in 1887. The brothers forge strong interpersonal ties with each other primarily through FtF bonding that occurs during the pledging process, social events, working on house improvements, and many other instances that arise when you are living and spending time with other people. We develop the “shared focus and common purpose, language and identity” that Haythornthwaite (2007) discusses in her chapter on social networks. Although these shared values and attitudes are generally what draw us to the same fraternity in the first place, the pledging process takes it to a whole new level with the conformity we are expected to develop. Geographic co-location is another important factor as we are brought even closer than simply living on the same campus by now living under the same roof.

Looking at the fraternity through the social network perspective helps to uncover more ways that it provides a strong, tight-knit community. The only way for any of us to complete pledging and successfully become a brother is to exchange information and ideas, share our knowledge, and provide social/emotional support all in an effort to reach our common goals. We must learn to not only trust ourselves and our fellow pledges, but to also trust the brothers and the house as a whole which is something that alumni say is not lost even forty years later. Our social network relies on the bonds (ties) between the brothers (the actors) who support each other with advice and camaraderie through our friendships (relations). It is expected of each brother to provide assistance to someone who needs it (as we all received help from brothers at some point ourselves) and those who do not offer such help are pushed to the “outskirts” of the community by violating this norm of reciprocity.

The main area where we see the benefit of an offline/online synergy in our fraternity is when there is a lack of physical proximity. This can be as minimal as notifying a brother, who is not living in the house but is in Ithaca, via email that he needs to come by on Sunday to help with a house clean-up. Or it can be as significant as coordinating a funeral ceremony for our highly devoted alumni chairman with brothers still in the house to those in retirement homes, and some even living on different continents. In the context of this social network the community is clearly based offline but the features of online communication serve to preserve the strong bonds in our community when offline just is not enough.

Here is the link to our chapter's website which is maintained by our alumni

Facebook: Social Networking from Abstract to Concrete

For this assignment, I decided to do evaluate Facebook, which is an online community in itself, consisting of a number of smaller communities within, and both extremely strong as well as extremely weak ties. The complexity of Facebook as a network makes it very interesting to investigate.
The first major SNA attribute is the common ground shared by members on Facebook, especially during its earlier years. When Facebook was first created, it was a social network only for students at the Ivy League universities, which eventually expanded to the rest of the colleges and universities. In this way, Facebook users shared the common ground of being college students pursuing further education. This differentiates them not only from people beyond college age or children, but also their same-age peers who were unable or chose not to go to college or university. As is said by Etzioni & Etzioni, 1999, “Second, a community requires a measure of commitment to a set of shared values, mores, meanings and a shared historical identity – in short, a culture.” This commitment to secondary education and the university culture clearly translates to CMC networking through Facebook. Facebook has since expanded high school, work groups, and eventually even regions, making it as available, although not as customizable, as Myspace, resulting in a backlash from users who valued its common ground appeal. The individual networks on Facebook, such as a specific university or work company, or even special interest groups or clubs on the network, provide even further common ground appeal, as these groups are more exclusive and would only include, for example, members of the Cornell community.
Another major SNA attribute is reciprocity on Facebook, the way in which Facebook interactions and relationships reinforce one another, or promote bonding. When members network, or “friend” each other on the site, they are able to view the friends of all of their friends as well, possibly connecting to people they had met or had a history with but had not spoken to in a while. This feature makes social networks more visible, and different groups of friends emerge obviously, by having pictures tagged together to sharing the same mutual friends to belonging to the same groups. This provides the opportunity for the weakest of the weak links as well as the strongest of the strong links to emerge. Facebook links, as a result of Facebook’s essential mission of friend requesting and privacy, is to allow FtF relationships to carry over to the online network. This means that people that we have met once, as well as our best friends, can have a relationship with us on the online network. Clearly, better friends emerge as more involved online, as they are offline, and it is not common for weak ties in real life to become friends on Facebook, and have no further activity after the finalization of the friend request. I don’t see Facebook as a place to meet new people, but instead where everyone that one has a relationship with can come together in the same place.
In conclusion, Facebook’s main effect, in my opinion, simply makes social networks in real life more “visible”, making the normally abstract idea of a social network an actually concrete system, and as a result Facebook users are more socially aware, perhaps even too socially aware.

The Net Supports Your Needs

Chris and I coded 5 support messages from each of 4 different support forums on the following sites: www.ofear.com, www.mayoclinic.com, www.enotalone.com, and www.healthyplace.com involving issues of dealing with anxiety, quitting smoking, infidelity of spouses, and physically abusive relationships, respectively. We went through each site and picked out messages that responded to other people. This technique was intended to vary the topic so that the results were not skewed based on the topic of the support network as well as eliminate coding of messages that tell of a personal experience only and are not in response to anyone else.

Our inter-rater reliability was very high at 95%. This is most likely because we went over the categories ahead of time to make sure we interpreted them the same way. In particular, we went over the subtle differences between understanding in emotional support and validation in esteem support. We also had experience with it through class and reading the article so that we would agree more often than in the study which had an inter-rater reliability of 80%. Tangible assistance and network support were clearly the least common categories at 0% and 10% which is mostly consistent with Braithwaite et al.’s study where the frequencies were about 3% and 7%. This is because the set up of the forums were not conducive to maintaining connections or meeting in order to physically help someone. The other three categories were definitely much more common. In our study, information was in 85% of the messages, esteem support in 40%, and emotional support in 65%. These numbers are all much higher than Braithwaite’s frequencies which were measured to be 31%, 18% and 40% respectively. This could be due to the fact that we only coded 20 messages to the study’s 1472 messages. We simply had fewer messages to average out the frequencies. Another reason for a high frequency of information in messages over emotional support could be the fact that information is overwhelming prominent in topics where people have control over their situations. Quitting smoking, anxiety, and getting out of destructive relationships all contain a large amount of personal control, so this is most likely due to our choice of topics. Also, our larger frequencies could be due to the fact that Braithwaite was studying a developed support group with people who replied back and forth for a long period of time. The forums we studied had people posting once or twice, so the posts were more to the point and would therefore have more support content in them per message. We also coded that 15% of the messages had humor in them, which is lower than expected probably because of the seriousness of the topics, for example no humor was detected in any messages in the infidelity or physical abuse topics.

All of the topics we chose to study are clearly connected to different dimensions of online social support. In specific, the topic of anxiety clearly had more esteem support and humor than the average. Many of the messages were validating and making light of this behavior caused by the person themselves. Information about this issue was light and not very helpful, so people suffering from anxiety could be looking for the information through social distance and weak ties that are readily available online.

People trying to quit smoking definitely want to connect with others that share this burden. Because of cravings, access to the internet is important for these people as they might need support from others going through it at different times of day. It is not surprising that the messages in this topic were heavy on encouragement and advice as members tried to mutually support each other.

Infidelity and physical abuse are more similar in that they are about the behavior of others affecting victims. These people look to internet support for anonymity because of the touchiness of the subject and receive a lot of emotional and esteem support for that reason. The messages were highly informative as many people thought these victims should take control to leave their spouses. Social distance and constant access are both critical aspects of online support for people in physically abusive relationships to keep it secret from their significant others.

In summary, some topics may lean on the informative side of social distance which would produce more information in messages, while others rely on the anonymity to talk about taboo subjects with others who share the same load, containing a high frequency of validation in messages. Topics that involve the person taking control of their own behavior may need mutual support through messages of encouragement and prayer, while issues around the behavior of others need anonymity and messages of understanding and advice. In this mini experiment, we were able to see the connection between why people with certain issues look to the internet and what kind of support they receive.

The BSA

For this assignment i decided to look at the largest community to which i belong to: The Boy Scouts of America. As most people know, the BSA is a nationwide organization of boys ranging from 11 to 18 years of age who work towards the common goal of attaining developing leadership, specialized skills, and lifelong connections. Also, while accomplishing these goals, participants in the BSA work towards attaining the prestigious rank of Eagle Scout. The BSA organization is broken down into many different section. Listed from largest to smallest (to the best of my ability) those sections are as follows:

National
Regional
State
Council
District
Troop (composed of Scouts and Leaders)

Because the BSA organization is so large, most of the ties involved are weak ties. These weak ties occur between the different stages of the organization (ex. between troops and districts). Even though i have been in the program for about 7 years, I do not have many links to eaither district or council. However, the ties that I do have with members of District and Council are fairly weak, yet are strong enough that my name and abilities are known to a few key members who plan and coordinate activities. Furthermore, because i attained the rank of Eagle Scout last December, I now have a weak, invisible tie to every other eagle scout alive. This weak tie gives me a slight advantage over other people when it comes to applying to college and for jobs because fellow Eagle Scouts know the commitment and hard work that it takes to become and Eagle Scout and recognize that I must be a very hard and determined worker. Although most of the ties in the BSA organization are weak ties, there are also many very strong ties. These ties occur mainly at the troop level. My troop, which is located in my home town, consists of under thirty members, all of which are on a first name basis and are friends. Furthermore, the scouts of about the same age have very strong ties to eachother and some of my best friends are fellow scouts. In fact, when i was awarded my Eagle rank at my Eagle Court of Honor, three of my friends were also there being awarded the rank. Furthermore, many of the activites that the troop organizes, such as camping and hiking trips, are geared towards not only developing outdoor skills but also strengthening the bonds between scouts.
Although most of the interactions within the BSA organization, such as weekly troop meeting, Board of Reviews (the place where scouts go to be reviewed for advancement to the next rank), Court of Honors (the special meeting in which awards are given out to scouts), and meetings with merit badge counselors, take place face-to-face, there are many aspects of the program that take place via CMC. Some of the CMC aspects of the BSA organization and individual troops are the use of email to make announcements about upcoming meetings and events. Also, the BSA publishes many online documets that are geared towards helping scouts and their parents. One of these documents that i use frequently was located at meritbadge.org but has since been moved. This document contains a link to merit badge pamphlets fro every merit badge curently available to be earned. Merit badge pamphlets are essentially worksheets that are very useful for organizing information and meeting the requirements of merit badges.
The BSA also encourages people to seek support with any type of problem that scouts may have either at home, at work, or in school. They emphasize that Scout leaders are there to help resolve problems and give andvice and encourage scouts to not only speak with them but also with their peers in the program. If the problem cannot or should not be solved by a scout leader then the leaders are capable of referring scouts to other people that can help, both within the BSA and from outside organizations.