Summary
The article “Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community” constructs and analyzes ideas about anonymity and ephemerality on social networks such as 4chan to see what type of community develops with these characteristics. 4chan is a website that threads expire after being at the bottom of the 15th page, and item is moved up when someone replies or comments on it to the first page keeping employing the survival of the fittest strategy to social media. There are no user accounts, but there are mechanisms in place to verify an identity if necessary such as tripcode, but they find that most users do not use any of these mechanisms. Most users stay anonymous but they have found ways to acknowledge their ranking within their system. The main conclusion from this study were that when given the opportunity to be anonymous most users take the options, and more participating due to removal of fear of being rejected by a community.
The next article, “Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community” also analyzes the identity within a similar virtual community, however, this article goes into depth on how exactly identify is formed and how identity deception plays out in an online community. This article covers concepts of identity such as shown in account name/id, signatures authors provide for themselves and credentials. These forms of identity are how members find trolls and user’s who have the purpose in mind to deceive others. An interesting topic this article brings up is about voice and language, something I wouldn’t have initially thought of when I think about online identity. This is about verbiage usage in the community, which can be an indicator to individuals if a user is being deceptive. For example, if a user claims to be an “expert at construction”, but then doesn’t seem to know the difference between a nut and a bolt, this is how identity can be challenged by voice and language in an online community.
Reflection
Both of these articles brings up the topic about identity in a different way. The first is about how identities are handled in an online community without constructive identities and the second is about identity within a community that does encourage constructive identities. I found it particularly interesting that within the community 4chan there was a way to identify yourself and your ranking within the community to gain credibility. To me this shows an interesting trait of humans, the need for an identity, to be credibly, and our inherent mistrust of others or trust in others. Additionally, they mentioned interesting trends in how a user acts when anonymous. It seemed to lend it self that users are more willing to post when they don’t have an identity associated with it because there is less fear of rejection. I find this interesting because personally if I had posted anonymously and everyone hated my post, it would still hurt my feelings, but I would still be more willing to post it. Additionally, the article mentioned that even when given a way to verify their identity, users’ did user this as creating an identity, but they had other forms of credibility that the site designers did not create for them, but the community did.
The second article about deception, I found a bit less intriguing, however the main topic I found interesting was what exactly how members found other members that were being deceptive.
Questions
Do online communities that ensure verification of identities including skill set lead users to trust other users more?
How does an individual’s language change when they are responsible for the answers?
How does an individual’s creativity and participation change when they are anonymous vs when they are not?
What indicators do members in a community notice of a fraudulent user and which indicators to they tend to miss more often?
