Summary:

“Visualizing Email Content” is a continuation of research based upon how we use emails in everyday life, and what those emails, when analyzed, show. Their previous research was based on patterns in the time where users created emails. This is based in the patterns of communication these emails create over time, especially between two users. They then go into a very lengthy literature review, followed by a description of their new research “Themail”. Themail is a way to visualize your email content and what you say regularly, both to a specific person or overall. It also works based on either a month by month or yearly basis. They say the basis for monthly and yearly is because yearly shows what is essentially a summary of your communications, whereas monthly varies much more due to select events occurring in a given month (they cite things like weddings or holidays). Then they go into detail on how their process works. First, they get an email archive, filter out everything that isn’t useful, such as spam, then calculate the key words from the email archive, reporting them back in their UI. They then talk about their two different modes of searching that were created after user feedback, the needle and haystack modes. Haystack provided a long-term view of the overall relationship with someone, where the needle mode showed very specific details of emails.

 

Reflection:

I like that they start with a large amount of literature review. It’s a really good example of what we need to be doing for our final reports. As well it just gives a lot more information than most if we’re interested in the topic. Their application of using monthly keywords to actually search for emails from that month is ingenious, and it’s something I didn’t even think about until they said it. I will admit, looking at their UI, it seems extremely cluttered. The grey words on the background make everything else very hard to read. Their way to filter out emails that aren’t useful to the analysis is very interesting though, and might be something for my group to consider when it comes to finding fake news articles. Perhaps checking if a user has used a site before? That seems a bit dangerous though. Their word scoring could also be useful, although time is not a variable in our analysis. The differences in the needle and haystack modes were interesting, although I wish they had been a bit better explained, I had some difficulty figuring out how they majorly differed (or at least what the needle mode was supposed to be doing, the haystack mode sounded like the original idea for their project).

 

Questions:

The researchers describe emails as “abstractly sterile”. Is there a better way to communicate in a way like email, but more akin to face to face speaking?

What do you think your emails show overall? How might an email set with a close friend differ from one with someone else like an employer?

How interested would you be in seeing an overview of something like your texts from a few years ago?

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Summary:

“The Language that Gets People to Give” is a paper written on what kinds of language and its use make for successful crowdfunded ideas. It begins with examples of both successful and unsuccessful ideas on Kickstarter, namely “Pebble” and “Ninja Baseball” and then attempts to figure out why one was successful, and the other not. Then it goes into depth on previous research in the field, and most importantly, why it is different or how it improves on the previous work. Then it goes over the different variables used and how the analysis was done. It then goes over the things that were found as the most important, pretty much all phrases, and shows a list of the phrases it found to be important. Finally it goes over other ideas that may help drive crowdfunding, such as giving out extra products as a reward for donating a certain amount, or giving out personal thanks.

Response:

This paper very quickly goes into detail about its analysis, and it’s actually quite understandable, especially compared to some of the stuff we’ve read before. This is good because language analysis can be difficult, and I know it’s something my group wants to do some work with. The fact that about half of projects get funded, where half obviously do not, is interesting. It’s just odd that it ends up being an almost perfect 50/50 split. The controlling for genre or category specific ideas and phrases is incredibly important to me. As a group working on figuring out false news articles it is integral that we be able to pull out things that aren’t necessarily part of the article, or phrases that are just used in the subject. Because of this, it’s something we’ll need to think about quite a bit. The statistics on adding the controls and phrases to the model is also incredible, 2.4% error is insanely low for almost any model. The table of phrases as well as the public data set may end up being very useful to our project as well. Even if they won’t be the same, because they won’t ours is dealing with news and informative articles not crowdfunding, the ideas are very similar. So the detail on the analysis should prove extremely useful. It’s also good to know that our teacher understands language analysis, I’ll be asking you more questions soon. Finally some of the alternative reasons for success could be useful to think about on the news standpoint. Each of them translates at least slightly, and if nothing else are things we should bear in mind and start thinking of things which pertain specifically to our subject (such as what sources an article cites, or what type of articles it cites).

 

Questions:

What other than language might determine how successful a crowdfunded idea is?

Have you ever participated in a crowdfunding? What was it for? Do you think it was a good idea to support it?

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Summary

‘Antisocial Behavior in Online Communities’ should perhaps be titled ‘Negatively Social Behavior in Online Discussion Communities’ (although this may just be me not understanding the terminology perfectly). It focuses primarily on primarily attempting to figure out why people do things which are meant to purposely hurt or instigate others in online communities. This study also sets out to differentiate itself as a quantitative study, where most studies on the subject have been qualitative. They used CNN, IGN, and Breitbart as their sources, mostly because they had large enough obtainable datasets.  Then they go over various predictions for antisocial behavior, such as how they write, how they write over time, and whether or not their writing changes significantly should they be censored. They then spend quite some time reiterating some ideas that they honestly have already gone over. Finally ending with a discussion on how to identify the future banned users.

Reflection

It’s interesting that frequently banned users tend to post completely differently than others, that is in small antagonistic focused quantities. It is also a bit odd that people who usually post this type of material worsen over time. This may suggest that accepting them in to the community might help the antisocial behavior. CNN bans more users than Breitbart, but deletes significantly less posts, especially when compared to the number of posts reported to be inflammatory. Some of the research isn’t particularly surprisingly from a logical standpoint. It turns out people who are there to be antagonistic don’t use much non-definitive language, they’re much more likely to curse, and much less likely to talk in a positive fashion. Angry people also don’t write as well. As well should someone have a post ‘unfairly’ censored, they are more likely to write poorly in the future. So there may be some link between post quality and general outrage at the site. A lot of the information isn’t overall very surprising. Much of it makes perfect sense when you think about it (mind you, most information does once it is presented to you). Some of the research is important though. The fact that users who will be banned in the future use much angrier or hostile language makes basic sense. They are often trying to inflame others. That said, the fact that users who will be banned in the future have their writing deteriorate at a faster rate over time than normal users is interesting.

 

Questions

-Do you think that acceptance or rejection either would or do play a role in antagonistic user’s postings?

-What line do you think must be crossed for a user to have their posts deleted? Is deleting or censoring a user ever okay?

-Why do you think a large portion of “Antisocial Users” exists? To purposely inflame others, or because they actually have major differing opinions?

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Summary

The “Chat Circle Series” is about how to design chat interfaces, and what people like about them. It mentions an interesting point in the idea that in purely text based discussion, a listener plays no part. You have to participate in order to influence the conversation in any way. The “Chat Circle Series” references a series of iterations of a chat room the researchers have been working on, with the idea that it starts as a simple set of “chat circles” and they add features as they believe those features enrich the chat experience. Users in the circles must move around in order to speak to other circles of people, meant to simulate you being a part of a conversation. As well, without being in a circle the user cannot read those messages being sent. They then go on to explain how each given element that they chose to look at, listed below, relates to the overall whole. They found for example, that pretty bright colors n a black background for each circle worked quite well, but only if the site had a large number of people using it at any given time. When a small number of people were using it, the background went from a good contrast to sparse and bleak. They then talk about a project called TeleDirection  and finally conclude the paper with a blurb about further study topics.

Reflection

The idea of involving listeners in conversation online is useful, albeit difficult one. Twitter or Pinterest are perhaps at the very least decent examples of sites which manage this. You can re-tweet or pin something which you like, meaning it becomes more heavily disseminated into the world. Its important that the researchers started with a long list of different areas to focus on in their work. They chose Environment, the Communication Channel, the Individuals Representation, History, Movement, and Context as their categories for focus. The movement category also proved interesting. The big question was how you can make something which is fairly static, just text and messages with a few pictures mixed in, feel alive and moving. As well I found it odd that people’s ideas of personal space actually translated into the circle chats. Not that I don’t believe them, just that its interesting that your views on how close is too close, or how far away is uncaring translate to a bunch of circles you chat in.

Questions

When designing a Social Media site or addon, what are some of the important focus areas? What do you think were the focus areas of some of the more major ones, Facebook or Twitter for example?

How might you create a chat function that better emulated real conversation than basic messaging?

How does what you use to represent you online (avatars or photos) change other’s opinions of you?

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Reading Response September 5th                                                                            James Brothers

Summary

The paper “Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community” begins by waxing very philosophical, mostly on whether or not you are you, or if by having multiple online personas you can become something different. The paper is primarily a study into ‘Usenets’ and why or how people use them, and specifically how identify plays a role in their use or communities. The paper then dives into just how you can use various clues to help identify people based on what they say online, and to see if it lends them a measure of credibility. A user who has an obviously free email may be suspect, while someone who has a domain belonging to their business is much more likely to be asking questions or qualified to be answering questions related to their business. Other ways to identify someone can also be their style of writing, the words they use, or the content of their message. Someone talking about their fish hobby, who writes both well and eloquently, is probably not a 9-year-old who got his parent’s computer to mess with people on the internet. However, deception is rife on the internet, as many of us know. The paper talks about various forms of online deception and its uses, many of which are a part of our common knowledge or vernacular today (Trolling for example).

 

Reflection

It is interesting that Identity plays an inherent role in whether or not we believe things people say or write. The article mentions that articles from the Wall Street Journal are seen as inherently more believable than a tabloid. That said, its something we don’t often give much thought to. How many pictures of “facts” online have you seen and believed? How many “quotes” do you see or hear on a regular basis? We give incredible scrutiny to these aspects in some cases, but not in others. It is perhaps telling that I already recognize and understand a fair amount of what the paper is talking about, as these issues have become a regular part of much of what we do on computers. Trolling, the assumption that I should take everything online with a grain of salt, etc. These are all things I understand and unconsciously do on a daily basis. There are extremely few things I look at online and assume they’re true, I suppose mostly online profiles which involve detailed storied pasts and a large number of pictures. Even so, people have been faking things like Facebook profiles for quite some time. Some form of easy identification (such as Twitter’s verified accounts) is important these days.

 

Questions

-What “signals” (assessment or conventional) do you see or use in everyday social media?

-What information could we glean from an analysis of various social medias’s writing styles? Moreover, what does your say about you?

-Have new forms of deception arisen since this paper was written, or what new forms of online identity deception exist now?

-Have any of you ever had issues with deception in online media? What did you do after you realized this? What could you do again in the future to combat it?

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Summary

The article begins by talking about both what microblogging is, and what a few platforms for it are. It focuses primarily, in either an impressive guess or incredible foresight, on Twitter. At the time it was one of the largest microblogging platforms at less than 100,000 users. It explains The general idea of what microblogging is, that is small short posts which can be about anything, and why this is in and of itself a successful idea. Large blogs require more time to write and are more complex, where small short posts, like Twitter’s 140 characters, can be written quickly and give you an easy way to communicate small things. This in turn makes it appealing to people looking for a social quick fix. They then continue to detail what their research was, in essence attempting to learn something of what microblogging is all about, as well as the social connections created by it. It also attempts to analyze some factors which make social media, or at least Twitter, more attractive. It found for example that people living in large busy cities, such as Tokyo or New York, were a larger portion of early Twitter users. Various other trends also present themselves in their research. People who belong to a given ‘community’ on Twitter tend to either share hobbies, such as gaming or podcasting, or know each other in real life. As well, they have divided Twitter into people who are either part of a community, someone who gives out information, or someone who is looking for information. Most posts are also divided into a few categories such as conversations or just talking about your daily routine. Finally, they looked into the most likely things to be posted about, which is a list far too long to summarize well here. It is largely based around everyday life, with more specialized communities dealing with those topics are a more regular basis. For example, they talk about a Twitter user named Scobleizer who also runs a Tech Blog. Their Twitter is primarily used for more Tech based information.

Reflection

The article presents a lot of information, some of it seems like common sense to us now ten years later, but it was important thoughts at the time. Things like the fact that users may belong to multiple communities, or the fact that a user is far more likely to be friends with someone who they actually know, seems to make sense. That said, some of it might not have been necessarily known, if the service was adopted by a large number of people who often frequented online forums then perhaps they wouldn’t have necessarily known a large portion of their friends list. It is perhaps almost unfortunate that they didn’t delve more into the philosophy or design of why people want to microblog, as that would have been useful information in developing a project on Social Media, since the design is such a major portion of it. That said the information that people use something more with a sense of community, as well as generally like to talk about either what they like to do, or what they just do on a regular basis is extremely handy and is useful for thinking of a project. These, to be fair, aren’t necessarily surprising, but its important to have actual sources to back you up when This information becomes necessary. Overall a useful, though not particularly surprising article .

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