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.

"I Understand"

Every weekend, I work in a Pediatrician’s office. One patient, a seventeen-year-old girl, has a rare genetic disorder, cystic fibrosis (CF), that causes her to have life threatening chronic lung infections. She realizes that her life expectancy is only about 30 years without a lung transplant. She recently told my boss, I’m going to refer to her as Dr. H, of a helpful online support group. This seemed an ideal support group to evaluate their message board. When I mentioned this assignment to Dr. H, she expressed an interest in reading and evaluating these posts as well and agreed to work as my partner. This association worked well because I needed the medical terms defined and Dr. H said she learned more about how adults deal with the disease.

http://dailystrength.org/c/Cystic_Fibrosis/forum/

I specifically chose posts made within the last month by people who have cystic fibrosis (the youngest was 17), however, the responses to the posts, a.k.a. the messages that we analyzed, generated from individuals, who included not only fellow cystic fibrosis patients, but also relatives and spouses. I taught Dr. H the six categories of social support introduced in the Braithwaite article. Many messages offered information support in which specific advice about lung transplants and medicine recommendations was shared. Often the advice was based on personal experiences which were freely disclosed. Tangible assistance offers direct and indirect support in the form of providing resources and aid and some endorsed future contact. We also coded responses that have esteem support in the form of compliments, relieving the person of blame, and giving feelings of worth such as: “I went through something similar, it is difficult,” or “I completely understand, it was hard for me, too.” We analyzed responses that offered network support that recommended specific sites, doctors and insurance companies that the person should contact. Messages offered emotional support by way of sympathy, understanding, encouragement, and prayer such as offering luck, hugs and kisses. There were only two instances of humor, probably because the topics were often serious or technical. After coding, Dr. H and I agreed 89.27 percent of the time (inter-rater reliability). Moreover, our data showed the same pattern as the Braithwaite, Waldron, and Finn research. Because each message typically had more than one form of social support, our data showed 70 percent of the messages used emotional support, 60 percent used information, 50 percent used esteem support, 25 percent used network support, 20 percent used tangible assistance, and 10 percent used humor. I suspect this similarity in results has to do with the overall function of the two groups. The group tested in the Braithwaite study used a support group for people with disabilities. The group I studied, in spite of the fact that it contained family members and relatives, was mainly a support group for people with a chronic debilitating illness. As the Braithwaite article states on page 142, these results support the optimal matching model (Cutrona and Suhr, 1992) that reports, “Emotional support is more likely to be given when the recipient is experiencing distressful circumstances that are not subject to his or her control.” This model also states that information can be helpful when the recipient can control the situation and can put the information to use, which explains the prevalence of information support.

In the messages I read, the network spanned the globe incorporating comments that originated anywhere from New Zealand to the United States. The disorder is so rare that the participants appreciated the wealth of information that was available to them even at a large distance, which compared to Walther and Boyd results in which people had an appreciation of the “greater expertise available” from the larger online network that spans a large social distance. I feel that their relatively anonymous computer link increased the confidence of the teenagers to voice their opinions. The majority of the posts were not concentrated at any specific time allowing the messengers to post at their leisure. This is also consistent with Walther and Boyd results that users appreciate the ability to craft messages carefully and to read posts at their own convenience. This falls under the category of interaction management and access. This was an incredibly informative experience, as well as a heartwarming one. This forum is just a wonderful way for CF patients to exchange the newest and greatest advancements and share practical tips to ease their daily pain. Their willingness to help definitely contradicts Wallace’s Helping and Number Factors.

Because I became emotionally involved, I actually read many more than 20 messages. There appeared to be a central core of individuals who have been corresponding for two years, who are familiar with the details of the other’s lives because their screen name is hyperlinked to a personal diary. When they responded to a posting, they definitely interacted with each other and not just to the person who posted. For example, one seventeen year old accidentally posted her response three times and then wrote how she was embarrassed. Another member made a joke about it, made reference to a previous communication and never addressed the original posting. Moreover, their sense of community was evident in the way many members greeted new participants. “You’ll like us.” “We welcome you.” This social network community has strong bonding emotional (homophilic sp) ties stemming from their common goals and identity, with a wealth of social capital. They share skills (of new treatments), knowledge (by their experiences), resources (insurances and medical facilities), a common language of slang medical terms (for example Tobi means an inhaled antibiotic)and have a history of reciprocating emotional support through the trying times. They discussed unique outside information (such as a cousin using a new machine for distributing medication) and debated the usefulness of these weak ties. Their strong group attraction is consistent with Social Identity Deindividuation theory because they have such a strong social identity and anonymity. This group represents the quintessential caring online community.

Support for something as common as speaking

I decided to use Google groups to find a support group for this assignment. I randomly came upon this group created by a man who came to the United States and found learning to speak the English language very difficult and wanted to create an atmosphere where English learners all over the world can freely learn to speak the language without feeling embarrassed or ashamed. My roommate and I coded 20 messages using Braithwaite's scheme and the results were as followed:

Our inter-rater reliability equaled 85% which meant that we had a pretty high agreement level and that our coding was accurate.

Information Support: 65%

• This was the biggest category that we found and considering the nature of the support group, this makes sense. Most of the information in the messages contained links to websites that helped with an aspect of the English language such as grammar.
  

Tangible assistance: 10%

• We were surprised to find such a large percentage of tangible assistance in these messages considering that this support group is global and participants are located all over the word. However this didn't stop the offers of books, willingness to help in anyway and in one case, even money.
  

Esteem Support: 60%

• This was also a very large category just as in Braithwaite's results. In the messages that contained this category we found others being very sympathetic about the difficult associated with learning the English language and lots of compliments on their improvements.
  

Network Support: 35%

• I was not surprised to find such a large percentage of support in this category, contrary to Braithwaite's findings because everyone in this group seemed to be so friendly and always willing to help. They also post to the discussions very frequently. The creator even creates a question of the week every week in which he allows for participants to improve their English reading and writing abilities and encourages them to comment every week even if it may be short.
  

Emotional Support: 45%

• This category was about the same as Braithwaite's results. A large percentage of the messages contained some sort of encouragement and understanding since they are all in the process of trying to learn the language. One person wrote, "What help me a lot in order to understand grammar in a good way is 'read' and 'write' I read every messages on this group, the discussion news message and try to reply all, so I can improve read and write without feel shame for mistakes. (People here are very friendly)"
  

Humor: 30%

• We also found a great deal of humor in these messages which was different from previous findings, probable because the participants in this group try a great deal to make everyone feel comfortable and welcomed and used humor as a way to do so.
  

 

Our findings differed from Braithwaite's in the numbers but not in the sense that our biggest categories were also information, esteem, and emotional support. Our result's also supported Walther's dimensions of attractions to online support in the sense that this support group is global and the participants have access to it 24/7 which is probably why it is so widely used by such a large number of people; that, and the fact that the participants in this group are so overwhelmingly friendly. It's nice to see what good the Internet can be used for.

Social Support in Several Online Communities

For this assignment Beth and I decided to code 20 social support messages, using groups of 5 from 4 different online support groups – anxiety (www.ofear.com), smoking (www.mayoclinic.com), relationship (in particular, infidelity) (www.enotalone.com), and physical abuse (www.healthyplace.com) – so as to get a more representative sample of the internet as a whole. Prior to the experiment we took some time to agree on the definitions of the social support categories to improve our inter-rater reliability. Ultimately we had results of

% inter-rater reliability: 95
Frequency % of messages
Information 17 .85
Tangible assistance 0 0
Esteem support 8 .4
Network support 2 .1
Emotional support 13 .65
Humor 3 .15

Our data revealed a significant amount of information, esteem support, and emotional support. We would expect these high amounts from Walther's four dimensions. The social distance and anonymity aspects suggest that users will be more comfortable responding intimately to people they don't already know, particularly because they can avoid embarrassment, and thus will be more likely to honestly discuss previous experience and provide relevant advice and emotional support. The lack of cues means respondents needn't worry about negative facial expressions or reactions to their openness at the forefront. Additionally, the social distance aspect predicts that the large user base of the internet would lead to available support even in the fairly specific situations we considered, which we found. Finally, the interaction management and access aspects refer to the respondents' ability to take time in reading and responding, and to do so at their own convenience. Thus, we would expect responses to be, in general, more thought-out, relevant and supportive.

Our results partially support the “numbers” theory that the large user base of the internet will lead to decreased noticeability and consequently support. In the smoking group we looked at, there was a huge number of posts, reflecting the prevalence of the issue, and because of this, many posts were left buried and unanswered. However, our other support groups were generally quite responsive – the remaining three topics we looked at were fairly specific in nature, and the community was likely of a smaller size, providing users the ability to command attention and avoid the negative effects of this theory.

Regarding differences compared to Braithwaite, one likely cause for disagreement was simply the nature of the groups considered. Their study considered posts from one support group over the course of one month. Both throughout that month and in the previous time, it is likely that the community and relationships within it developed as people got to know one another – thus we would expect posts that did not serve a “purpose” of containing one or more of these social support concepts. In our case, however, the threads were typically small and the respondents simply responded once, giving a bit of support which generally related to personal experience. Through their experience, respondents typically gained knowledge regarding how to address the issue at hand and were equipped to provide advice, while also being able to relate on an emotional level, explaining our higher results in information, emotional, and esteem support.

The aforementioned nature of the responses also explains our lack of tangible assistance – having never met before, and in most cases not interested in pursuing further conversation (our network support was also very small for this reason) we would not expect respondents to offer tangible favors. This seems like something that would come after time, with more developed relationships - by this argument, the stronger community of the original study could explain their nonzero level of tangible assistance.

The Braithwaite study mentions an idea known as the “optimal matching model,” which could in particular explain our high level of emotional support. The model suggests that emotional support is more likely to be given “when the recipient is experiencing distressful circumstances that are not subject to his or her control.” In our results, the frequency of responses containing emotional support in the infidelity and abuse threads was extremely high, and in both of these cases the original poster was the victim of another's actions, and thus did not have control over the situation, supporting this model.

Humor, though nothing to compare to, was also reasonably small, all things considered. This is likely due to the more serious subject matter of our support groups – only in the case of bizarre social anxieties does it seem jokes might be appropriate, and this was in fact where we found most of our humor.

As a final note, from a statistical standpoint, it is reasonable to also consider the small sample size as a potential reason for discrepancy. While our results may in fact represent true values for support as a whole, which we could justify with the above reasoning, we would need many more messages to have a firm idea of the true percentages (the Braithwaite experiment had almost 1200 messages) which might in fact be closer to their results.

Journal Communities & Asking For Help

I once again returned to the Livejournal environment to complete this assignment, taking another look at the 'communities' that I mentioned last time. As a reminder - Livejournal is a blog service much like Blogger, with the additional feature that they allow group accounts - referred to as communities, where members are able to join and post. As a user, you can 'friend' (this is the equivalent of subscribing) to other journals and communities, and whatever entries that are posted by your friends shows up on your 'friends' page, like a RSS feed.

Communities on Livejournal usually have a common theme. They are built up on one specific common ground - an interest in something. For example, there are communities for fans of a TV show, and from that, there are even communities that branch off for fans that like specific characters of that TV show, for fans that only want to hear about new episodes and not about other discussion, for fans that want to share related pictures, etc. There are, as a result, many communities for many levels of common ground that users share. The community I looked at was a community for users of a digital art program, called openCanvas.

The members of this community were the 'actors', and on the community, they posted their work for critiques, or requests for assistance on how to work the program, asking for tips, feedback, or any other topic that related to the program, which serve as the basis for relations in the network. In a task-oriented community like the one I am describing, where all discussion occurs over the topic of a specific action a member wants to accomplish, most of the ties are weak between the actors. It is uncommon that people refer to each other by name rather than username, even if they have communicated before. Speech is usually relatively formal and to-the-point, and though lurkers exist, generally people give help when they can, and requests for help are usually answered.

(However, there are other communities that focus on different things, where members create very strong ties over time, after discussing their common interest, and they not only communicate via the community, but across their own personal journals as well.)

I think the fact that it is online helps the efficiency of this task-oriented community. There is no need for pleasantries or other conversation that a face-to-face request for help may require. In addition, asking for help is sometimes somewhat embarrassing, especially when you think it's something that you should already know, so the online medium may help relieve some of that stress (as we discussed, when the valence is negative and the focus is on the self, people prefer CMC communication.) For the purpose for which it's created, I think the online environment suits this community well.

An online gaming community

For this assignment I decided to look into an online gaming community that I’m part of. In World of Warcraft people can form “guilds” which are large groups of people that play together in order to do the tougher parts of the game that might require up to 25 people at the same time. I’ve been playing with the same group of people for about 2 years, though the guild has changed its name a couple of times and people have come and gone. The actors in this community are all online gamers. The guild consists of more than 100 individual members. The types of ties in this community are mostly weak ties considering that few people interact with one another in more ways than just playing together for a few hours. I have mostly weak ties with people in the guild since I don’t play the game as much, maybe 1-2 times a week as compared to what I used to play before. However, strong ties do exist, I know a couple of guys who I have talked to for about 2 years and I have also interacted with them via voice chat. The extended interaction with these players has developed into a friendship and I have become closer to these people than others in the guild. There is also a group of players in the guild that consists of the most experienced players and guild managers who know each other face to face. They hold annual meetings at one of the member’s house where people can get to know each other. This group of members, I believe, has the strongest ties, because they all know each other well and you can easily tell this from the way they interact with each other.
Most of the actors in this community have a long shared history. The guild’s main focus is to organize “raids” which are groups of up to 25 people that go into a dungeon to kill bosses that drop better armor and weapons. These raids take place multiple times throughout the week and they usually last for about 3-4 hrs. Most of these raids require a lot of coordination and skill to get them done right and therefore, the guild spends a large amount of time getting to know each other and a boss fight might take many attempts before the guild succeeds. Thus, the actors in this community have a long shared history and in achieving their common goals they become a lot closer to each other than before. As the guild becomes more successful, players trust each other more and more. All guilds in WoW have names, which are displayed underneath each player’s nickname, this way they can all be identified. All the actors in this community speak the same language, which is the language of the game. I have witnessed a few cases of emotional support while I’ve been part of this guild. Once there was a guild member who was feeling depressed and decided to tell everyone in the guild. Some guild members responded by giving him support, and encouraging him to feel better about himself. Though, this type is support is not as common as in other communities, it is still there.
As I have described this community is a social network consisting of mostly weak ties, but with a few strong ties. This is a social network because it truly is a web of relationships where all the members in the guild know other members and interact in different levels with each other. These people bond with each other by accomplishing hard tasks that can only be done with cooperation and very good communication. Everyone has a common ground, which is to play the game and explore it’s more challenging areas. All the actors speak a common language and the guild itself has its own set of rules and norms, like showing up 5 minutes before raids and being prepared with items, etc. Through accomplishing these tasks people develop a history with each other, which is important in establishing strong ties. There is also reciprocity in this community, many members who don’t follow the rules and norms are not chosen to do raids, and therefore in order for the guild to help you, you must first gain their trust. All of these things result in a community with social capital. The social capital here consists of people in the game that you can trust. There are many players in WoW and usually you tend to rely and do more things with the people in your guild, because you know they are good and they also help you because they know that by helping you, it will help them because you will be a better asset when it comes time for a raid. Overall, I think this is a very interesting community that surprisingly contains many of the SNA attributes and properties we have discussed in class.
There are many youtube videos about raiding and guilds. Here is one for example where you can also see how people interact via voice chat. For more you can just search WoW guilds or raids in youtube.

8.31.2008

An online community that I’m very active with is nikeplus. This is one of my favorite examples of two unique companies collaborating to provide an original and useful product while creating a utopic online community. In 2006 Apple and Nike created Nike+. It’s a little chip that you put in your shoe that wirelessly connects to an ipod Nano. This records your run on your ipod and when it’s plugged into the computer your run is transferred to the nikeplus web page. This is where the community resides. Instantly nike+ gives you a world wide running group.
I believe that this community can be categorized as gemeinschaft because there is a singular common purpose. Members only join this community because they want to identify, support and be supported by other runners. The ties created within nikeplus are not as strong as maybe those created on myspace and facebook, but they are very purposeful. Members join and remain active because the interpersonal ties created on the web page are not duplicated in any other platform, including ftf.
Within this community you can share your run, challenge your friends, train for races as a group, run to support a charity or political campaign, the possibilities are endless. The reason is that the overarching common ground is running but within that umbrella smaller networks form. This is where social capital gets rich.
The community allows members to create challenges that are public, meaning that anyone can join. The challenge can be based on time, or distance, and be individual or team. Below is an example of a current challenge I’m in. It’s Democrats vs. Republicans, most miles until the election.
The social web for this challenge is rather large, as it’s now links 4286 runners together. This provides two areas of common ground, running and a political affiliation. Those runners can comment to each other adding support for their team or egg on the other team thus building reciprocity.
What I commend Nike and Apple for is how they’ve created this community that is CMC based but are driving users in a circular patter of FtF and back to CMC again. An example of this is the Human Race that’s happening on August 31, 2008. The race is a 10k that you can run anywhere in the world and then just plug your ipod in to record your run. It’s creating a common goal and anticipated history by running on the day that the world is running and recording it online! In major cities there are training runs happening all summer and events on the day of the races. It’s giving relationships a chance to grow in both FtF and CMC.

Creating events like this that are happening worldwide can really shape the way we perceive community in the future. If I wore my Human Race t-shirt in a city in another country I might run into someone with the same shirt and have an instant bond and common experience. Yes we share the common experience of running but without the SNA resource I would not be able to identify that person. Running is one small niche of hobbies that people worldwide are active in, but I think other organizations can use this model as a base for very active CMC communities.

Anonymity on Facebook? Don't need it!

Stephanie and I worked on coding a Facebook group that dealt specifically with Eating Disorders (ED) specifically in Princeton, NJ. As you know, Facebook, while leaving you some anonymity generally reveals you, your interests, friends, etc. depending on how much information you wish to post. At the very least, a name is necessary and an email address is needed to sign up to Facebook. Therefore, a support group on this online social network reveals a person. However, this fact did not seem to phase the respondents in the least. Most were patients of this specific treatment center and were willing and able to share insights of being a patient.

After tallying our data, the results showed that some of the percentages were similar to Braithwaite, but others weren’t. Information and emotional support did indeed rank highest in our coding. This was probably due to the shared experiences of the people in the support group so they were able to give advice and provide encouragement as well as show understanding for those still suffering from the disorder. Our data was similar also to Braithwaite where the esteem support was somewhat high as well. Again, this was probably due to the fact that the people responding understand and remember how it felt to be on the other end of the spectrum and was much more aware of giving out praises and encouragement than others might have thought to.

The difference lies in our coding for tangible assistance. Perhaps this was because we perceived the definition of tangible assistance, as something similar to what we thought was esteem support. Our coding had the same percentage for both tangible assistance and esteem support. In our definition, we thought tangible assistance meant active participation and express willingness to help. By that definition, we thought that being there to talk and share experiences was apparent in the responses so many times we would have a ‘yes’ for that section. Therefore, our data for that section may be somewhat skewed.

Finally, our lowest percentage was network support, which, while falls in line with Braithwaite, does not follow in line with how low that percentage should be. This difference could possibly be that this support group is specific about a place they share in common, and, as I’ve mentioned earlier, having Facebook be less anonymous with responses, allowed for people to open up their network to the people who seemed to need it in the group. However, even so, many were still not as willing to share their network support with the person they are responding to.

Overall, our data supported Braithwaite’s analysis of social support groups in CMC. The only discrepancy we had was mostly due to our misinterpretation of the meaning of ‘tangible assistance’ and the difference between Facebook support groups versus other social network support groups. I guess not all CMC support groups have to have anonymity in order for it to be truly helpful for those in need.

Extremely Common Ground

For our coding experiment, Kelly and I decided to code messages from a Facebook group called "Princeton Medical Center EDU (Eating Disorder Unit)!" I knew about this group because the hospital is in my town, and my mom works as a psychiatrist on the unit. The link to the group is "www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3107600550." This group is a very specific type of support group, and is meant for anyone who has been to the specific eating disorder's unit in Princeton. Therefore, everyone has an extremely high degree of common ground. A former patient of the unit started the group, which currently has a total of 95 members. Kelly and I scanned the wall posts from the group and coded the 20 most recent messages that were replies to concerns/questions. 

Our results were similar to the study in the Braithwaite article in that our interrater reliability was 78.3%, and the article's was 80%. Our data regarding % of total messages per category differed, but since our interrater reliability is so similar, we can speculate that the differences are based on factors such as the type of support group, rather than our own faulty coding. The actual differences between our results and the article's are that 1) our % of total messages per category are much higher in all categories, and 2) our results showed that the highest % of total messages was the "information" category, while the article's results showed that the highest % of total messages was the "emotional support" category.

There are a lot of possible explanations for these differences. Our results might have had higher total %'s overall because unlike the support group in the article which had the broad topic of disabilities, the support group that we analyzed had a very specific and focused topic. The members of the group felt a very close connection to one another since they had such similar experiences on the unit, and therefore, offered more support in their responses. They might have also felt even closer to one another than average support groups because they disclosed their full names, and some one them knew each other from their stay on the unit. Another reason for the high %'s overall in our results could be that eating disorders are generally female dominated, and according to Wallace: "The situation in which women may be more likely to help on the Internet are...in the support groups in which people are sharing personal problems." (p.200) The female dominated group will be more willing to offer specific and personal support. All 20 of the messages that we coded were from females, and there was not a single post from a male. This also adds to the common ground of the support group; the members were related through their eating disorder, the fact that they had been on the Princeton unit, and that they were all female. This also adds to the argument by Braithwaite, Waldron, & Finn that the members of the support group are "all in the same boat," and therefore, would be more willing to share personal information and support each other. 

A reason to explain why our results showed that the most % of total messages was for "information" as opposed to "emotional support" (2nd highest) category, which was the reverse result of the Braithwaite experiment, is that according to the article's model, "information support is most useful and prominent when the recipient can control the situation and put the information to use." (p.142) The majority of the members of the support group in the article all suffered from disabilities that they couldn't control, but eating disorders can be controlled to a certain degree, especially with support.

Humor, which was not an official category but was very prominent in the results from the article, was only present in 5% of the interactions that we coded. A possibility explaining why it was so scarce is that eating disorders are a serious issue, and the females posting the supportive messages were truly trying to get through to their recipients, and were trying to be serious. This is because the illness is psychological, and if it is taken lightly, those with the disorder won't believe that it is fatal.

XBox Live etiquette

My neighbor Ed’s loves Halo3, which is a “first person shooter” game in an alien world. He virtually interacts with hundreds of players through a mediated space online and can talk to them via headphones; strangers mostly, and with no intention of meeting F2F. Ed’s experiences are aligned with the Hyperpersonal model in which he generates extreme impressions of other gamers. He either likes a person very much and possibly tries to play with them more, or dislikes them and avoids their presence. Members are visually anonymous, yet identify themselves through their common membership, which agrees with the SIDE theory of increased group salience since gamers have a whole culture and set of norms they abide.
The other day Ed refused to end his game prematurely since it was “rude” to leave after the grace period. Not only is it impolite to leave your fellow gamers hanging, but you can be penalized by the program by reducing your rank. Furthermore, in society, like any poor team player, he/she can be marked for their actions and become ostracized. Online, quitters can be marked by public feedback warn others that a player is uncommitted or uses inappropriate language, behavior, poor skill, etc. Another way to enforce a norm is through the “raising of the brow” via verbal confrontation, in which all members of a group can hear and reply to each other. And to more extreme cases, sometimes party leaders can kick out unwanted players.
Finally, the strongest way to enforce rules are through meta-bodies that have the maximum power/resources to solve disputes such as a government. Evolutionary psychology and Hobbes concept of the Leviathan would explain that people are willing to give up certain freedoms to empower a higher authority in order to preserve order. In this CmC medium, the code of conduct is enforced by Microsoft, which can choose to terminate or restrict your account, which reassures Ed.
Wallace further dwells on effects of conformity such as polarization. Ed for example loves playing different levels, but when he interacts with the same group members several rounds, he chooses to ignore his desire to switch to another level. This is probably due to the construction of a more cohesive group identity. People like to be liked by others, just like they like to be with similar people; add in a common goal, and a greater bond is formed between perfect strangers, generating conformative decisions. Polarization can also encourage online bullying. Ed’s profile name is “Vakanongo”, and a member was not able to pronounce it and thus baptized him as “Vagina” once. This was an active speaker within the group, and thus it was only a matter of time before the rest joined the alpha. Ed wasn’t too happy at first, but due to the repeated team successes and tighter bond, he conformed and even tried to think it was funny too.
I asked Ed if he had any problems trusting team players because they were anonymous. He explained that actually there IS an immediate sense of trust since you have the predisposed idea that people will do their best to win, if not why else would they be there? This was the first time I witnessed a high trust-bias within a CmC. Just as Evolutionary psychology explains that people need to trust community members to survive, the same applies in this environment. But I realized also that due to verbal/audio contact, more nonverbal and social cues were transmittable, not to mention that the feedback is immediate due to its synchronous nature. People could apologize, encourage or compliment others which strengthens ties of trust and builds a clearer venue of communication since transparency is important for trust in relationships.

Sneak Geeks

For this assignment, I decided to do evaluate the asynchronous forum I brought up in class today, NikeTalk, dedicated to fans of Nike sneakers. Its heading declares itself as “The Ultimate Online Sneaker Community”, and I chose this forum because it is a very tight-knit community as far as online communities go, with a clear focus, unique and well-defined norms, and many sub-topics available for discussion within the site, including miscellaneous. My friend has been a longtime member (“regular”), and has recently gotten me to join the site. Although I’m not a sneaker-head like him, the general sub forum dedicated to miscellaneous discussion I find appealing, so I post in there often, and that will be the focus of my analysis. Over time, I have learned a lot through experience in this forum, and am not an outsider there due to my lack of interest in sneakers (sneaker-heads are just normal people after all, with a very unique interst).
Conformity on the forum is subtle, but certainly existent. The norms that are most prevalent on NT are what topics one can bring up and the slang used on the forum. In terms of topics, there are a number of threads that are clearly no-no’s, not in the view of the moderators or the rules, but the regulars who attempt to coerce them out of existence. Some examples include girl/boy-problem threads (everyone could post more than one of those, and they get old quickly), homework assignment help, and excessive rants. These threads, while technically “legal”, are immediately flamed by the regulars who have seen their type far too many times, and the poster knows not to do it again (learning the norms through experience). Additionally, NT has its own slang. In fact, I have subconsciously started using NT to refer to NikeTalk, as this is the most common shorthand notation for the site, and it is rare to find someone posting past day one that types out the full name. This is an excellent example of slang also learned through experience.
Additionally, there is a “sign on the door feature” on NT, namely a stick-ied (made permanently visible on front page) topic dedicated to the rules, which it says its members should “ignore at their own risk” of a ban. The rules are relatively general and consist solely of reminding users not to post offensive material or attack one another. The moderators, which are prevalent and active on NT, serve as the “Leviathan” in this case. If is save to assume that at any given time of day, there is at least one moderator active on each sub forum of NT, and it is highly unlikely that something you say will not come under review. Due to the younger, urban-culture that surrounds sneakers, flame wars and offensive posts are very commonplace, and as a means of being efficient, moderators regularly lock threads and ban members without much debate. However, as Wallace points out, the norms of the forum are primarily maintained by the conscientious effort of the people, who, by following the rules (which is sometimes very difficult given argumentative circumstances) form part of the Leviathan themselves.
The most outstanding themes discussed by Wallace that apply to NT are group polarization and finding others of like mind. As can be expected, finding others with an affinity for Nike sneakers would be near impossible in person, but this ability is afforded by the Internet. Such a niche culture and interest such as this can only really find its place on the Internet, where the few people who share it can actually connect. Additionally, since it is such a small, focused community, there is a great deal of group polarization, and NT members are quick to stick up for their lifestyle and favorite kicks (although disdain for the Jordan brand seems to be widespread). Overall, NT is a tremendous source of insight into an online-only group that focuses on a truly obscure, niche interest.

Connected Across Continents

Just a couple weeks ago I was participating in a long distance relationship with my boyfriend while he was on a training ship around the world for his school. During the two months he was gone, our only form of communication was through email (except for a few brief conversations from frustrating foreign pay phones). It’s crazy how excited I could get to check my inbox and find an email from someone who is so far away. It seems very old school romance even though email is a fairly recent development.

Since we have known each other for 12 years or so and had an established face to face relationship prior to this time, physical attractiveness was not a factor for us online. We already knew we liked how the other looked, although we did send a couple pictures over email just to make sure! Similarly, because of the length of time we have known each other, and the fact that we met participating in a common interest, we have already established what common ground we share. This factor did allow us to make our emails more interesting to each other and perhaps connect better, but we were not finding those shared interests using online communication.

Proximity definitely had relevance to our CMC relationship because our emails made us feel closer even though we were continents away. Luckily for us, proximity in online communication does not have to be geographical distance, but it can be the amount of times we email and how much I hear from him. When we emailed more often, I felt more connected to him than when we missed a day of emailing.

Another reason that emailing more made us feel more connected is definitely due to self disclosure. Sometimes our emails told of everyday life. To stay connected, I wanted to know what he was doing and what his day was like. Other times the emails were exciting stories or big events that happened. The best ones, though, told of how much we thought of each other or planned what we couldn’t wait to do when we reunited. Those were the more personal emails that kept us connected and in love even if we couldn’t hear or see each other. Being apart makes you realize what that person means to you and makes you reflect on the relationship more. I think this is a big advantage to email communication in long distance relationships. You are able to think about what this person means to you and have the time to write it out eloquently for the other person and this makes the relationship stronger. This could be partly due to the nature of email writing which is more like a letter than other kinds of CMC. It is also in part due to the disinhibited effects of CMC. Since we did have time to write out our feelings, it was easier to say something that we might have been too nervous to say face to face.

Since we have already met and been together for a long time, the time we were forced to communicate only by email was spent continuing and strengthening our developing relationship.

Lack of a Leviathan?

For my project, I decided to examine a psychological space designed to have no Leviathan. Juicy Campus is an online forum where visitors (college students) can post anonymously on a variety of threads. The forum is not moderated—visitors can only eliminate their own posts and, therefore, discussion runs rampant in whatever direction the visitors chose. As a result, it seems practically impossible for a true Leviathan to emerge.
The results from this forum closely parallel the LamdaMOO experiment discussed in Chapter 4. When creators chose a laissex-faire approach, allowing visitors to control content at their own will, it caused chaos—and even a shocking cyberrape. Similarly, at its peak, Juicy Campus was known for mean-spirited comments, rumors, and other offensive content. Because there was no one to filter out the content, visitors could say whatever they wanted with no punishment: calling their peer an “ugly donkey,” or accusing them of being particularly promiscuous. As Catalina aptly stated in class, much of the content became sexual in nature, as is the tendency of college students. As the site started to both grow and grow out of control, people began to take notice. Some simply joined in the toxic discussion while others started to call for reform. Juicy Campus was becoming an unhealthy, and increasingly visible member of the campus community.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much anyone could do about the website’s existence. As a result, people decided to boycott usage and as quickly as Juicy Campus had risen to notoriety, it fell. As Chapter 4 says, “the earthly authority that most people want and need must come, for the most part, from within—through popular consent and voluntary conformity to whatever rules and conventions emerge within each community.” Since Juicy Campus did not necessarily allow for any Leviathan to be present in its realm (because of its unique features) visitors found authority by voluntarily consenting to stop visiting the website. It is unique that such conformity emerged even in the absence of a true Leviathan.
However, one could argue, that those rebels actually became the Leviathan: that a sort of power vacuum emerged in the absence of a defined Leviathan. Also, you could argue that the creators of the website could also act as a Leviathan—even though they took a very “hands-off” role in this setting. Lastly, a Leviathan could arise in the actual government. With the increasing opposition to Juicy Campus, people may start bringing their concerns to court. Therefore, the government will become a Leviathan as well.

Old Buddies In a Short Time

In middle school I was involved in an online, long distance relationship with this boy Soren who lived in Denmark.  I would like to note it was a completely platonic relationship, I don’t swing that way, I digress… To make a long story short, the kid was a star tennis player over there, and was coming to the US and was going to stay at my house while he was here playing in his tournament. 

The relationship was completely text based via Emails and Instant Messages.  For three weeks we would email back and forth occasionally and chat whenever we were both on AOL.  We actually came to know one another very well after only three weeks, or at least I felt like I knew him very well and he knew me just as well.

I actually remember thinking about it, how it was strange I felt so comfortable with and would discuss private matters with this person who I had not known for very long, and had never even seen or met in person. This phenomenon I realized can be explained by Mckenna’s “identifiably” relationship facilitation factor, which states that both anonymity and identifiably will lead to increased self disclosure and in the end increased relationship development.  In my case the anonymity of this kid led to increased self-disclosure on my part.  I remember talking about personal issues I was having at school with this kid; these conversations were certainly a catalyst to our relationship development.

Another facilitation factor discussed by Mckenna was involved too.  Mckenna explains how the removal of gating features in CMC eases and increases relationship development.  Gates are things like physical attractiveness, master status cues, shyness, and social anxiety, things that impede relationship development.  For example in FtF communication, the gates would be open to an attractive person, and closed to an ugly person.  In CMC this gate is removed and relationship development is allowed to progress.

As I said this definitely played a role in my relationship with Soren.   In middle school I was a socially anxious kid, and didn’t make new friends easily.  Had we met in person as opposed to online my social anxiety might have gotten the better of me and sabotaged the relationship.  But instead, I felt no anxiety talking to him via email, and IM’s and our relationship blossomed quickly. 

When he arrived in the US it was almost as if we were old buddies.   I still talk to him frequently, he’s playing tennis professionally now and we are good friends. 

Simple Human Decency in a Structured Gaming Forum

At the end of my sophomore year me and my friends purchased a new video game. After playing through the entire game and exhausting all possibilities of having fun in the game itself we decided to begin to play it online against other people. We began to go to gaming websites to try to find other people to play against and my friend found a new web forum dedicated to the game itself. We decided to join the forum and play against the other members. Originally, the forum was virtually un-moderated with the online authority figure being the creator of the forum itself. However, as the forum gained new members the Leviathan began to grow. Eventually the Leviathan of the forum took on this structure (ranked in order of power):

1.Head Admin
2.Admins
3.Global Moderators
4.Moderators
5.Members (broken down into Devoted members, members, and new members)

With this structure, in conjunction with member input, the admins created a series of rules for the forum, most of which pertained to simple decency and relevancy in posting. Some of the rules that were set up were: no flaming or cursing, no racist of stereotypical remarks, no bias remarks, no double posting, and no posting irrelevant information. Virtually all of the rules created by the admins were very simple, clear, and un-arguably necessary. In addition to posting a complete list of the forum rules, the admins also posted a list of the punishments for violating the rules. The punishments were designed to fit the crime and ranged from warnings, to removal of privileges, and to bans (temporary and permanent). After the rules had been established, the admins and moderated closely monitored the forum's threads in order to make sure that they were obeyed. The threads were monitored so closely that even i got warned for making a bias remark about the PS3 even though i had no intention of offending anyone with my statements. A few months after getting my warning, i witnessed a much more substantial event in which one of the members, who i believe was a moderator at the time, became fed up with how the forum was being managed and began flaming and attacking the administrators, other moderators, and even members such as myself. Shortly after the initial incident, that member was permanently banned and all of his posts, except some of the very important ones pertaining to his time as a moderator, were deleted.

Many of the factors that Wallace discusses influenced the creation, expansion, and survival of the forum. It was created with the intent to unite people who had a common interest: playing a game online. Then, after its creation, the members of the forum conformed to a set of rules that were put in place to protect them from harassment and make their time spent of the forum as enjoyable as possible. Not only did the forum provide an initial warning to new members by telling them to visit the site's Rules section, but it also constantly reminded individuals of the rule by "pinning" the Rules section so that you could link to it from any thread on the site. Also, the members of the forum developed a common language and way of speaking that revolved around the game itself and the many other smaller threads that were part of the site. In addition to being united by a common interest, the members of the group became so tight knit that intruders from other sites and heretics from the site itself were united against and banned from ever coming to the site again. The members are now so close, with some of them being around since the beginning of the site itself, that many of them are on a first name or login name basis with each other and are very happy to see people return to the site after a long absence. For example, when i returned to the site after months of inactivity i was promptly greeted by many of the older members who had known me when the site was first created.

Link to the forum rules section:
http://opl.ipbfree.com/index.php?s=&act=idx

Interesting Article

Hi everyone,
I found this article today and I thought it might be of interest to the class. Kind of an applicable example of the theories at their best and worst. Click on the link for the full article.



Fast Company 10 Web 2.0 Ideas That Failed
Even Shy People Would Rather Go Out
MingleNow promoted itself as a virtual nightclub meant to help wallflowers feel a little more at ease and socialize online. Founded by BlueLithium in 2005, and later bought by Yahoo!, the community enabled users to connect with others who frequented the same venues. Social networks, however, have never truly been Yahoo!'s strong suit. The company previously dismissed another social network, Mixd, realizing it was time to start letting go of dead weight.

Lesson Learned: Yahoo! doesn't have the wherewithal to focus on another social network -- it already has enough. Besides it acquired BlueLithium for its advertising network.

Football Flaming

For the past several years now, I have participated in an online fantasy football league with some of my friends back home in DC. We have all known each other for at least a few years and we have strong, close relationships that started offline and have slowly moved to more online interactions. The fantasy football website allows participants to post messages on a board for those in the league to view as well as include a sort of slogan to be attached to your team name. As a result of our comfort in joking around with each other, it has become the norm for the majority of the posts and slogans to center around trash talking which is usually geared towards specific people. The barbs are often quite vulgar and any outside observer would be inclined to think that there is a lot of animosity between members. However, we have come to understand that the insults are meant to be funny and entertain, and only in the rarest of occasions has someone felt offended by a remark.

Initially the posts focused on league-activity and mainly concerned football related topics such as injuries or impressive performances. People might brag about their team doing very well one week and then lament their team’s sub par showing the next. Gradually, the boasting turned into taunting, which proceeded to lead to derogatory remarks directed back at the bragger. The posts stopped focusing so much on the football aspects and began to simply launch insults at the other party in an attempt to get the last laugh. At first, there were only a few of us who were trading the taunts back and forth, but others praised the particularly humorous and elaborate jokes, and before long everyone was involved.

In this case the leviathan was primarily the league members (my friends and I) and to a lesser extent the commissioner. Each year we had to select one of us to be commissioner, a position that gave one the power to edit or delete posts among a host of other things. There have a few instances where the commissioner deleted a post, probably because it made fun of him, but for the most part he would leave up even the posts directed at himself. As a group of friends who would see each other pretty much everyday when we were still in high school together, we would often comment on some of the wall posts in face-to-face situations. We confirmed the norm of teasing one another online by assuring that we meant no harm and continuing to hang out together in offline settings. Essentially our offline interactions reaffirmed the online standards of communication we were using.

As Wallace discusses, conformity played a big role in our online exchanges. We quickly conformed to the standard of verbally, albeit playfully, abusing each other and it is most likely because of our previous ties that we adjusted without much fanfare. We would actually “arch our brows” when one of us would question the norm of flaming saying something along the lines of can’t we all just be nice to each other. The dissenter would soon return to form by retaliating and derogating against those who reproached him, thus restoring the conformity.

The dumbest post threads

For this assignment I decided to look at a forum that I have been a part of for a very long time. I am a soccer fan and since soccer isn’t as popular in the States as in other countries, it is hard to get the information you want or discuss certain events. Around 2003 I joined a forum called BigSoccer, which had many discussion boards organized into continents, countries, etc. There I found a good place to talk about the sport and at the same time keep informed of the latest occurrences.

When I first joined, there was a surprising amount of flaming, mainly racist and offensive posts all over the boards. These were mostly attributed to a couple of people who were known trolls. Over time people began to take more and more offense to the racist posts and as the website grew in popularity it was obvious something had to be done. There was a “World Rivalries” sub-forum in which a lot of this behavior occurred. The moderators of the website decided to do a better job at cleaning up the forums and starting enforcing new rules. They were able to delete a lot of the offensive posts and they now respond quickly to posts that are offensive in nature. They allowed the “World Rivalries” forum to survive, and people might find offensive content in this sub-forum even today, but it is not as bad as it was before. This sub-forum also has a description of “home of the dumbest post threads” and a special set of rules which can be found here: http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=414356.

When people join the forum, they are presented with the terms of service which clearly states “By clicking the Agree button, you warrant that you will not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, sexually-orientated, hateful, threatening, or otherwise violative of any laws.” Violators of this rule will sometimes be given a yellow card, which like in soccer serves as a warning. Everyone in the forum can see who has a yellow card, though they might not know the exact reason for it. After a yellow card comes a red card which means that the user has been banned from the website. The moderators serve as the leviathan in this case. There are many moderators in BigSoccer, each controlling a set of sub-forums, for example each country in South America has their own moderator. The moderators are in charge of enforcing these rules, but from what I’ve seen rules aren’t enforced equally across all sub-forums. For example, a comment that might be deleted immediately in a US sub-forum because of racism, might not be deleted in a sub-forum of some Latin American or European countries. This might be because each sub-forum has it’s own community who might be more tolerant of racism, and also because a post might contain both English and another language which the less tolerant people might not be able to understand.

We can see that many communities have formed in the BigSoccer website due to the concept of groupness that Wallace talks about. She mentions information seeking as one of the causes of groupness and also a common interest. Everyone at BigSoccer has soccer as their common interest and is seeking information about the sport, there are also other things like nationality and language that people can group by. This has resulted in different communities forming which might enforce the rules of the website in different ways. We can also see conformity in BigSoccer, at first the forum was filled with racist posts, but as the website grew, people decided to not tolerate it anymore. The website changed drastically and now anyone who is a known racist is usually looked down upon. If the behavior continues the person will be penalized by the moderators. Both of these are examples of the “arched brow” that Wallace talks about, where members of the community take action against rule breakers. Finally, we can also observe many “signs on the door” which are the rules you see before you enter a space online. For example, we see that the website has a Terms of Service agreement and also posting rules. Furthermore, the description of the World Rivalries forum and its special rules serve as a warning to people who decide to look through them.

Shooting for Democracy

Wallace continually references video gaming environments in terms of the life-encompassing fantasy MUDs, but online gaming is much more broad and mainstream; for instance, online shooters are played casually by many, including myself. SOCOM, one particular game I enjoyed playing, was a typical shooter that pitted "Navy Seals" against "Terrorists." I will address how the game maintained the convention of fair, enjoyable gameplay.

The Leviathan refers to the system that has the power to maintain order, and to which people willing give up freedoms in order to maintain this order. In this game, the Leviathan was a combination of a supreme power to regulate cheating, and a democratic system to maintain the overall experience.

The supreme power was the company itself, which theoretically had the power to do anything, but generally stayed out of the online community. The company did, however, handle the convention that cheating via console modifications was not fair to users and thus was not allowed. Before logging in to the server, the online system would check your console for any such enhancements, and would simply throw you offline and not allow you to play if you had a modified system. Thus, people learned this rule the hard way – if you tried to cheat, you couldn't play at all.

Most players didn't try to cheat, however, and the real question became how to maintain a positive, ordered environment. The answer was brilliantly simple - the game enacted a system where, in every game, players could cast a single vote against other players on their team, and if a majority of the team voted against a particular teammate, he was ejected from the game and not allowed to return. As time progressed, many logical conventions were informally established: team-killing, abusing the microphone (singing, excessive cursing, making racist comments, not allowing others to talk), and leaving your console during the game, as examples, all resulted in a universally negative gaming experience, and thus offenders were simply voted out. Reproaches via a verbal warning were used in the case of minor offenses, but anyone guilty of an intentional team-kill, for instance, was immediately voted out of the game. Similar to the Wallace example, nothing in the game prevented players from doing any of these negative actions – but nearly everyone willingly conformed to the emergent norm of cooperation and general order to keep an enjoyable experience.

The most interesting aspect of this system is that there were no official rules posted anywhere regarding these conventions, and every game consisted of new players who, in general, hadn't ever met before – thus, theoretically each game could have had its own set of rules and conventions. However, this was not the case. Every single game followed these conventions, simply because they provided the best online experience, which users learned and passed on through experience. While there was no "sign on the door," another interesting factor about this particular game was that it was, in fact, possible for new users to observe other experienced players to learn how to behave, similar to the French restaurant example in the text. This is uncommon and impossible in many online settings, such as message boards. Players were given the option of “spectating” games, in which they could watch every player and listen in on conversations. Even better, the statistics of each player (ie, how well they were playing) were always displayed, so expertise was made quite salient, and new users immediately knew who to watch / listen to and thus could easily learn what conventions to follow in terms of a maintaining a positive gameplay experience. For those who didn't choose this option, they simply learned the conventions the hard way - if they violated any, they were kicked out.

Also interesting is that while the "laissez-faire" approach to the Leviathan failed horribly in the MUD example in the text, it succeeded very well in this setting. One key reason for this is that there is little room for any sort of group polarization which could prevent the majority vote system from working. The MUD example describes players who often fell into opposing groups regarding new laws and gameplay elements, and were further polarized due to the highly communicative nature of the MUD. In the case of SOCOM, however, these issues did not arise – very few people actually believed the “outlawed” conventions created a positive experience. Additionally, a lack of communication (conversation was very task-oriented and brief within the short rounds) meant that anyone who did feel this way was unlikely to gain much of a following in the short timespan of an individual game.

As a final point, it's also noteworthy that players are first assigned to the two teams, which consist of characters with similar weapons and uniforms, and players can only make decisions (ie, vote) regarding players on their own team. By the group effect, players should immediately like and identify with their own teammates, which may have also contributed to the success of the democratic system – instinctive positive feelings toward one another would likely encourage fair and responsible use of the system.

Rebellious Phase Sweetheart

During my sophomore year of high school, I was pretty much going through a "rebellious" stage in which I felt like I knew it all and could care less about anything my mother was saying. I feel like all teenagers go through it at some point. Maybe it was because I hated living in New Jersey and my mother knew that but refused to care about my opinion in moving there from my hometown. At any rate, as part of my "oh-so-rebellious-behavior" I would frequently join an AOL chat room during late hours of the night and try to find individuals willing to chat in a Brooklyn-themed chat room (my original home town). The second I would log on, I would get about three different message pop-ups reading "ASL?". The messages were always from males around the ages of 18-20 since it was obvious from my screen name at the time that I was a female. I guess this become a social norm over the internet that the first piece of information that you'd acquire from an individual in a chat room is their age, sex and location.

At first, I would talk to whoever popped up on my screen until I lost interest and found that we had nothing in common, which on average was about ten minutes. After about the second night, I met someone who was not as interested in "hooking up", as most of the others that I met, as he was interested in just finding someone to casually talk to. As time went on, this became habitual and we met in the same chat room and spoke every night.

    Although I am normally a shy person when talking to people in person, I found it a lot easier to talk to this person online. According to McKenna's idea of the removal of gating features, my shyness was no longer an issue and I found that signing in to this chat room every night and having someone with whom I shared how I utterly hated where I lived and how much I missed Brooklyn with allowed us to develop a very close relationship. I guess Brooklyn became our common ground, what attracted us to each other—one of Wallace's attraction factors. Brooklyn was what we both loved and what made conversations with this person so different from the others that barely lasted. We had so much to talk about even though we were in two different states.

This went on for months and we began to not only talk about the place we loved so much but ended up learning a great deal about each other and having a lot more personal conversations. As time went on, it seemed as if there was nothing that we didn't tell each other (McKenna's disinhibition effects), as if we were dating or in a relationship online.

For those of you who want to know how it turned out, we did end up meeting each other FtF when I moved back to Brooklyn a year later, but our friendship online and offline kind of died down as we got older and started hanging out with different people.