Summary

The paper, “Visualizing Email Content: Portraying Relationships from Conversational Histories”, discusses Themail, a visualization that portrays relationships based off interaction histories preserved in email archives. Through Themail, key words that characterize an individual’s correspondence with another are displayed and the user can view how these words change over time. Themail can display multiple layers of information, yearly words or monthly words. Yearly words are shown as large faint words and are the most used terms over an entire year while monthly words are shown in yellow and are the most used terms over a month. Themail was evaluated by sixteen participants and from the results there were two main interaction modes that were observed. These two modes are called “the haystack” and “the needle”. The “haystack” is a “big picture” look at the information while the “needle” is more detail-oriented approach. Most of the participants used “haystack” mode over “needle” mode.

Reflection

I found this article to be an interesting read. With how often we receive emails, it’s easy to forget how emails can contain a lot of information about how we interact with others. I think this tool would be great for reminiscing, like how Facebook has the feature where it reminds you of the yearly anniversary of your friendship with someone. However, since this article has been written, email has become less used as it used to be. Most people interact online through instant messaging. I personally use email for professional purposes such as for work or school while I would chat with my friends and family through instant messaging tools or apps like Facebook Messenger and Google Hangout. Thus, it would be great to see a visualization tool that could be used on instant messaging.

Questions

• How could this tool be updated to today’s social media?
• What could be changed so that Themail would be more likely to be used on a daily basis?

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Summary

The paper, “The Language that Gets People to Give: Phrases that Predict Success on Kickstarter”, discusses the types of phrases and the overall usage of language that can be found in successful crowdfunding project pitches. With a focus on Kickstarter, the authors conducted their research by scraping textual content from a collection of over 45,000 Kickstarter projects to gather over 20,000 common English phrases that were used in the project pitches and analyzed them with LIWC to categorize the phrases. From the data gathered, the authors found that the top 100 predictors of funded or not funded were all dependent on phrases. These predictors were found to exhibit various features of persuasion and were categorized into 6 groups: reciprocity, scarcity, social proof, social identity, liking, and authority.  At the end, all the predictive phrases found and the control variables were released a public dataset.

Reflection

This article was very interesting to read about as I never thought about how language could affect how successful a project could be. I have heard of crowdfunded projects and believed that the success of one was dependent on the idea that would be created but now I understand how the marketing of a product is just as important or more important than the actual idea. Furthermore, the correlation between certain phrases and factors of persuasion was eye opening. to learn how certain phrases could invoke factors of persuasion such as reciprocity and authority. As mentioned in the article, it would be interesting to examine how personal relevance could affect a project’s success. I believe the higher personal relevance, the more successful the project. Another possible direction for this project is to expand the research to other sites like Patreon, a subscription content service.

Questions

• Would the results be similar if this experiment was conducted using a different website?
• GoFundMe is another popular crowdfunding website but is focused more on getting funding for personal issues in comparison to Kickstarter, which is more geared towards professional projects. Would this difference have any effect on results of this research if it was performed on both sites?
• Were certain categories on the Kickstarter website more popular and successful than others?
• Are there cases where projects have been successful despite being an impractical idea due to well written pitches?

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Summary

In the article, “Antisocial Behavior in Online Discussion Communities”, the authors characterize antisocial behavior in online discussion communities by analyzing users who were banned from CNN.com, Breitbart.com, and IGN.com. Banned users were found to use controversial language and kept their posts in individual threads, which would get more replies than the average user. Additionally, banned users’ behavior worsen over time as communities became less forgiving and tolerant, resulting in increasing rate of the banned users’ posts being deleted. Using the data collected regarding banned users’ behavior, the authors were able to identify antisocial users based off their post history and certain habits. The data collected and analyzed in this article could assist in better understanding of antisocial behavior and help maintain better, more positive online communities.

Reflection

I found this article to be very interesting as I never thought that there would be a correlation between trolls and antisocial behavior. I especially was interested by the authors’ comment regarding the possibility that rejection from a community might feed a user’s negative antics. Users that purposely try to get attention through posting controversial statements would feel encouraged by the lack of response to try more to get the reaction they are looking for. It almost seems like they enjoy the attention and the fact that they caused other users to get riled up. Thus, I am curious to how the antisocial users would have a chance to redeem themselves as suggested in the article. It is possible that banning might encourage users to try again and make a new account to redo the same problematic behavior as they might see it as a challenge of not getting caught as long as possible.

Questions

• If ignoring a troll encourages more posting then what is the best way to react to one that would allow them an opportunity to redeem themselves?
• What do trolls gain from posting controversial posts?
• Does banning problematic users actually make a difference in regard to the online community’s environment?

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Summary

The article, “Social Translucence: An Approach to Designing Systems that Support Social Processes” discusses about the difficulties of digital communication and collaboration. As social creatures, people are sensitive to the actions and interactions of others, however, in the digital world there are no social cues to observe. To help solve this social blindness, the authors created a prototype digital environment that would be socially translucent called Babble. An important aspect of Babble is the social proxy, a minimalist graphical representation of users’ presence and activities. In the social proxy, the conversation is represented by a large circle and the participants are colored dots. Users involved in the current conversation are represented by having the dots be within the circle while users who are logged in but in different conversations are shown by dots that are outside of the circle. After two years of daily usage, Babble was found to be an effective environment for supporting informal group conversations on various topics.

The article, “The Chat Circles Series: Explorations in Designing Abstract Graphical Comm. Interfaces”, discusses about the development of a series of abstract graphical chat environments called Chat Circles. The series represents the projects’ growth to more legible and engaging social environments, with each new project having some different kind of feature or fulfilling a different purpose. The article not only talks about the various projects but also discusses the differences between the projects and how those differences affected the social communication. It was found that including group information, graphics, and online speech helped foster better communication and sociable atmosphere among users.

Reflection

I think both articles bring up a valid point about how, though, digital communication has made it easier for people to connect and talk, the lack of in person interaction can affect the conversation. A large feature that is missing in online conversation is tone of voice. The tone of someone’s voice can greatly affect how a message is conveyed and how someone could respond back. For example, if someone was asked a question in a harsh voice then that person is more likely to respond back angrily or defensively than if the question was asked in a calmer voice. This kind of situation can be easily seen online, where textual conversation can come off as impersonal and cold due to lack context and tone causing people to often misinterpret other people’s intentions as explained in the second article.

The prototype Babble that was created in the first article reminded me of how a lot of online chat applications now have a way to see if your message was sent and read by the other person. The first application I thought of was Facebook’s messenger. Whenever you send a message to someone using messenger, there is a small icon that appears next to the message sent. The icon can be either a clear circle, clear circle with a check mark, a blue filled in circle with a check mark, or a small circular version of the user’s profile picture. These 4 types of icons present the status of the message. A clear circle represents that the message is being sent while a clear circle with a check mark means that the message has been sent but the other person has not received it yet. A filled in circle with a check mark means that the message has been received but unread and the circular version of the user’s profile picture means it has been read. The usage of these icons like how Babble uses circles and dots, help users feel more involved and there is less of a sense of disconnect.

Questions

• With the increase usage and popularity of emojis, is it possible that in the future people will move away from text-based messages in favor of  graphic based messages?
• Would the usage of “likes” and comments be consider a way of social cues in a digital environment?
• Is it possible that the lack of context and emotion felt through online messaging be due to how people tend to write less in online messages?
• How can people tell a happy text-based message from a sad text-based message?

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Summary 

In the article, “Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community”, the author analyze how identity is established online and study the conditions and effects of identity deception by studying Usenet, an online community to share information. The author found that identity plays an important role on Usenet as it helps users establish a reputation and recognition of others as well as create a sense of community. However, while most users are truthful when creating their accounts, there are those who commit identity deception. These users can be categorized as trolls, impersonators, catfishers, and those who want to hide their identity. Thus, identity in the virtual world may help create a sense of unity but it can also be easily manipulated to fit one’s needs.

The article, “4chan and/b: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community”, focuses on two studies of online ephemerality and anonymity based on the discussion board /b/, a board known for its influential role in Internet culture, hosted on 4chan.org. The purpose of these two studies is to understand how /b/ succeeds by being anonymous and ephemeral, despite the assumption that user identity and data permanence are essential to online communities.  The first study utilizes a large dataset of posts to quantify ephemerality in /b/ and found that the average lifespan was short, about 3.9 minutes, with most of the threads having no replies. The second study analyzes identity signals on 4chan and the alternative methods /b/ have used to create status and interactions. It was found that 90% of the posts were posted using the default name “Anonymous” and that instead of building a reputation, status was conveyed through the usage of textual, linguistic, and visual cues.

Reflection 

In the virtual world, identity is essential yet untrustworthy. As seen in the first article, “Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community”, individuals can assume different personas with ease online. It is quite common for users on a site to create multiple accounts to serve as different roles. Additionally, some people see the internet as a place of opportunity to be who they can’t in reality; whether it’s as a different gender or a different personality. Furthermore, the flexibility of identity online can provide those who feel outcasted in reality a chance to fit in. In the second article,  “4chan and/b: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community”, the authors mention that despite /b/ being completely anonymous, a sense of status is created through usage of slang and images. While in real life where multiple aspects like physical appearance and social connections can affect how people are perceived, online people are usually judged by the content they provide and the manner in which they provide it. Thus, if someone wanted to fit in on /b/, they would mostly need to be familiar with the lingo and how the site works.

However, there is a downside of being able to create a new identity online, in that it can cause people to believe there are no consequences to their actions online. It is common to find rude and obscene comments on sites like Youtube due to people thinking what they say can’t come back to get them. This can be seen with the rise of cyber bullying as people can easily say cruel things that they wouldn’t normally say in real life. Moreover, the ability to hide behind a fake persona allows for people to easily manipulate others as discussed in the first article, whether it’s playing with someone’s romantic feelings or purposely posting  controversial things.

Questions 

• Are the people who deceive online the same in real life?
• Should people be truthful about who they are online or do they have the right to be whoever they want to be?
• Do people prefer to be anonymous or do they need a sense of identity when online?
• What are the characteristics of a long lasting thread?
• Could the short lifespan of threads represent how on average people only care about topics for a short amount of time?

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Akshay Java, Xiaodan Song, Tim Finin, Belle Tseng. “Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities”. http://aisl.umbc.edu/resources/369.pdf. Accessed 30 Aug. 2017.

Naaman, Mor, Jeffrey Boase, Chih-Hui Lai. “Is it really about me? Message Content in Social Awareness Streams.” ACM Digital Library, ACM, dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1718953. Accessed 30 Aug. 2017.

Summary

In the paper “Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities”, the authors observe the microblogging phenomena by studying the topological and geographical properties of Twitter to analyze the user intentions at a community level and show how relationships are formed over similar intentions. From their analysis, the authors found that there were 4 main types of user intentions; daily chatter, conversations, sharing information, and reporting news. Daily chatter was the most common type of user intention. Furthermore, they found that users play different roles in different communities. Additionally, 3 main categories of users were found: Information Source, Friends, and Information Seeker. Friends was the largest category. The paper concludes that a single user could have various roles depending on the community he or she is in; with most users using Twitter to discuss about their daily lives with others they have a relationship with.

In the paper “Is it Really About Me? Message Content in Social Awareness Streams”, the authors wanted to see what could be learned about user behavior on Twitter based off analysis of message content from Twitter users. To accomplish this, the authors gathered Twitter messages posted by a random sample of Twitter users and categorized the messages based off message content. There were 9 categories for the messages to fall under. Due to the short format and lack of context, messages were often assigned to more than just 1 category. The messages were also categorized based of the gender of the user and the type of application used to post the messages. From their coding, the authors split the studied users into two groups; “Informers” and “Meformers”. Informers are users, who post mainly information sharing based content, while Meformers are users, who post mainly about their current emotional state and recent activities. The authors suggest that Informers are more conversational than Meformers due to Informers posting more mentions and replies to other users as well as having more social contacts and social interaction.

Reflection

I do not have a Twitter account; however, I have been on the site before and am aware of the popularity of the site and the type of environment that is prevalent there. Both articles analyzed Twitter, although from different perspectives, they both found that most of users used Twitter to gain information, share information, or talk about themselves. Unsurprisingly, the largest category was users talking about themselves, whether it was about their day or how they are currently feeling. It was interesting how the second article, “Is it Really About Me?”, states that despite most users being Meformers, the Informers were more conversational. Usually, people post about themselves to get feedback or even validation from others, especially from people they would have relations with. However, it is possible that since Meformers are sharing personal information, they may be pickier about who can view this information while Informers are sharing more impersonal information and thus, may not care who views it as long as it’s being viewed. This also ties in with the results found in the first article, “Why We Twitter”, about how a single user may have multiple intentions or different roles in different communities.

Questions

• What aspects of Twitter makes it such a popular choice in comparison to other microblogging platforms?
• With the rise of digital journalism, would these information sharing Twitter accounts be considered reputable and would that be why information sharing and seeking are main user intentions?
• If users serve different roles depending on the community they are in, isn’t it possible that users would create multiple accounts for the various roles? If so, are those accounts seen as the same user or is each account is its own unique entity?
• Where public figures included in these experiments? Would they be considered as Informers or Meformers?
• What aspects does an Informer need to gain followers? Does frequency of posts and how active the account is affect the number of followers?

 

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