Summary

The article begins by describing email and the researchers’ past work with creating visualization for user’s email conversations. One particularly interesting part is how they mention that most people save all their emails, so this works great when doing research on the topic because there is plenty of data. The actual project they have created is called Themail, a visualization of a user’s email archive, they also performed research and found two prevalent themes among user reactions, the needle and the haystack.  Themail is set up as an interface that shows columns of words that are visually changed based on how much they are used as well as their distinctiveness in compared to other conversations, so bigger words are used often and uniquely in that particular conversation over time. Gaps between the columns indicate periods of time where no conversation occurred. The columns were also separated into two categories, yearly and monthly words.  Yearly words provided a broad overview of a relationship between two people over a large period of time, while monthly words indicate snapshots of events that occurred between those people. In the end it was found that the users they showed the application to, generally enjoyed using it and would like to have it integrated with their email client. Of the two modes, needle and haystack, many users liked to use the haystack mode. The haystack mode was the general use where you get to look at how your whole conversation with someone changed over time. A smaller number of people liked the needle mode, where you can look for specific words and find where they were said in that conversation. Overall, Themail was a successful experiment in the visualization of data.

Reflection

I think this was an interesting read because I like to read about how people go about implementing software. I also feel like it would be useful to have a piece of software that performs these functions. I especially would like to have the search feature, there have been a lot of times where I would need to find when a particular conversation happened. I don’t know how much use I would get out of the “haystack” portrait feature because most of my emails are for business or school and I don’t really have a lot of emotional emails to look back on, as that is what texting is for. The creators of the application definitely had a creative way to visualize the data though, as all the properties like word size and blank space are easily picked out from the visualization, and it is certainly clear what they represent. Visualization and user experience are fundamental when designing any kind of user application, this article represents that and also makes it more clear that our project needs to uphold these tenants in our design. However it is difficult to do this without user input, which is what the developers of Themail saw after users pointed out problems in the weight given to words in certain phrases.

Questions

• How could you go about visualizing people’s text message conversations? Would it be similar or significantly different?
• Why do you think more people enjoyed the “haystack” aspect of the program?
• Is there an alternative design for Themail that could be more effective?

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Summary

The journal article, The Language that Gets People to Give: Phrases that Predict Success on Kickstarter, focused on how language used in a Kickstarter project page effects its likelihood to get funded. Initially, we learn about what crowdfunding platforms are and how they are quickly growing more popular. People use crowdfunding to achieve goals that require money by acquiring the necessary funds from members of the public who believe in the project and want to see it become a success. The most popular crowdfunding platform is Kickstarter and is thus the focus of the study.  The researchers looked at 45,000 different projects and analyzed 20,000 phrases to get their data.  There were a few technologies used to acquire the data, Beautiful Soup, a Python web scraping library was used to scrape the content off of the site, which was then searched for stop words. Initially the researchers found over 9 million common phrases on all the project pages, but after sifting through and getting only the general ones, they were left with just twenty thousand phrases.  LIWC was another technology used after the phrases were acquired, it is a text analysis technique that uses a dictionary of words, placed into various categories associated with those words. This was used to better analyze the phrases. At the end, the researchers had a list of phrases and an associated score that could be positive or negative depending on whether the phrase is associated with the project being successfully funded. By analyzing this list the researchers found a few categories and explanations for why phrases had certain effects. For example, phrases that indicate reciprocity have a positive effect because the backer feels they will be rewarded. On the other hand, phrases that lack assurance of success, typically led to projects not getting funded.

Reflection

I found the article to be an interesting read, as it brings light to the fact that language is powerful and can either help or hinder you. That is why it is important to think carefully about things like word choice and diction, especially in the situation where you are asking the public for money. I think the positive phrases made sense to me and the article did an excellent job explaining why these positive phrases were successful. However, I was quite confused and surprised by some of the negative phrases. I understand why phrases like, “even a dollar” and “honorable mention” were negative because they imply that there is no reward for backing, which is bad when people expect reciprocity. On the other hand phrases like “underway” and “will soon” are also negative, even though they imply that progress has already begun or is about to begin, which I would think should inspire confidence in the potential backer.  I also liked seeing how powerful these language and parsing tools like LIWC and Google IT really are. They seem to be really effective and great for data analysis, which is good news, especially because my group intends to use LIWC in our project.  It also seems like there is a lot of potential to further study crowdfunding platforms, a lot of the projects I hear about on there usually turn out to be disasters even after they get funded, this leads to a lot of angry backers and warrants more research in trying to prevent this.

Questions

How do different crowdfunding platforms, like Indiegogo (which does not use the all or nothing model), work differently than Kickstarter? Do they have different communities? Different types of projects?

How susceptible are backers to word choice vs. reciprocity? In other words, would a backer still back a poorly written proposal if the rewards were good enough?

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Summary

In the article, Antisocial Behavior in Online Discussion Communities, the author began by discussing antisocial behavior and antisocial users. This included information on trolls, users who bait others into arguments and generally engage in “negatively marked online behavior”, as well as a classification of antisocial users into a category. This category is called being a Future-banned user (FBU), these are users who have been banned but whose previous posts are still visible. These FBU’s serve as the basis of the study because it was possible to analyze their behavior and identify why they were banned.  The author then explains that they chose to study the comments section of CNN, IGN, and Breitbart. The study brought forth a few findings. One such finding is that FBU’s posts are less similar to other posts in the same topic from users who were never banned, this indicates that they like to steer the discussion off topic.  FBU’s are also less likely to use positive words in their posts. It was also found that these users get more replies than typical users, implying they are successful at garnering attention. They also tend to post heavily in a narrow selection of threads that they participate in, because they like to keep the argument going. There was also evidence to suggest that FBU post quality deteriorates over time. This also could tie into the community getting more familiar with the troll and getting their posts deleted more often.

Analysis

I do think that this study was important to perform but I didn’t find the results too surprising. I have seen from personal experience how trolls operate on comment sections of most websites. So this study served to confirm those perceptions. It seems that most trolls or users who get banned like to stir up arguments, but I did like how the article mentioned that some people downvote and report others just because the other user has a differing opinion. People who are not offensive but believe strongly in a different opinion should not be banned or censored. I think that is why having a human moderator check quality of posts is important to avoid people getting wrongfully banned. I also thought it was interesting how the author mentioned giving the trolls a way to redeem themselves, I’m not too sure how well that would work.

Questions

• Would providing a way to promote good behavior and allow trolls to redeem themselves be successful?
• Would there be a way to automate the deletion of offensive posts effectively?
• Do trolls have the right to participate in their behavior, as it is a public board? Is there a line to be crossed?

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Summary

The article, Social Translucence: An Approach to Designing Systems that Support Social Processes, as the title implies is about designing systems with social translucence in mind. Designing a system for social translucence essentially means designing it for communication and collaboration.  One overarching example used in the reading was an opaque door in a building. This door creates a problem because when people try to open this door, if they do it quickly they can hurt people on the other side. One poor solution does not take social translucence into account, this would simply be sticking a sign on it saying “Please open slowly”. A better solution involves placing a glass window into the door so people can see when there are others on the opposite side. This utilizes translucence because we use our social cues to communicate with others across the door. The main point the author makes is that the online world is built up with walls rather than windows, because we don’t usually see who we are communicating with online, so this greatly affects how we interact with others. The online environment is not built up to utilize social norms and mechanisms that exists in real-world interactions.

The other article, The Chat Circles Series: Explorations in Designing Abstract Graphical Comm. Interfaces, is about trying to create a non-textual, graphical chat program. Similar to the other article, there is a lot lost in pure-text conversations, so the researchers took a crack at designing one that could circumvent that problem. There were 5 different projects made. First “Chat Circles”, was built using a very simple design where users were represented by a basic, colored circle. This first design represented proximity, as users could move their circle around to get closer to others and participate in different conversations. The next rendition, “Chat Circles 2”, added two main features, background pictures that provoke conversations, and history so users can see where people have walked. “Talking in Circles” was the next update, this one had audio capability where people could actually talk now, circles were still used for representation and they grow bigger or smaller with the volume of the speaker’s voice. Next came “Chatscape”, the big addition here was that people now had greater customization of their avatars for more individuality. Lastly came, “Tele-direction”, this was different because users were now trying to direct a live actor to perform various actions. All of these chat environments were created to accommodate needs that arose from previous renditions, showing how important different aspects of conversation are.

Analysis

I definitely agree with the points made in the Social Translucence: An Approach to Designing Systems that Support Social Processes, article. I think we do lose a lot in online conversation, not physically seeing who you talk to or hear their voice can make conversing more difficult. I have personally noticed that it can be difficult to fully understand what someone means in a text without seeing the emotion in their face or hearing the tone of their voice. I do think that emoji’s have helped significantly with this though. They do help a lot in detecting sarcasm or understanding someone else’s tone with their message. That is one way that we have added windows to our technological interactions.

I found, The Chat Circles Series: Explorations in Designing Abstract Graphical Comm. Interfaces, interesting because it took a deep look at online conversation. However, I do think that there are some online games out there that actually do a lot of this stuff already(avatars moving with speech, proximity, etc.) So it would be interesting to study one of those and see it how it compares. I also thought the concept of seeing “lurkers” was also pretty unique. As sites like Twitter and Reddit do not represent the users who are just there to listen and do not participate in discussion.

Questions

• What is the next step beyond emoji’s for “widening the window” in the digital world?
• Is there any way to estimate the damage that has been dealt by the limitations of communicating in a virtual environment?
• How important is personalization of an avatar or other representation of yourself in a digital environment?

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Summary

In Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community, the author starts by discussing the concept of identity and how it is very loose on the internet. They then talk briefly about Usenet. Usenet is essentially an online bulletin board that is commonly used for information exchange. However sometimes people post things under a false identity giving them creditability that they do not actually have, which can be quite dangerous when getting information about certain matters. Later the author breaks down all the elements of a Usenet post and the general culture of the site. Finally, they begin to discuss the presence of deception on Usenet. One example of this comes in the form of trolls who try to start fights and assume fake identities in order to manipulate people. Some people even go as far as to pretend to be other users and tarnish their reputation. This behavior on Usenet signals how some online boards can generate toxic communities.

In 4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community, the author begins to explain the basics of 4chan and /b/ board. 4chan is an image board that people can post on to discuss and socialize, they have many different sections but this study focuses on /b/ which is the board built on randomness. Some unique characteristics are that all posts are completely anonymous and posted content gets deleted as new content is posted. These facts then led them to discuss various elements of culture and statistics on 4chan. For example some users make use of special methods like tripcodes to partially circumvent anonymity, while others will archive and bump posts to do the same for the ephemerality.

Reflection

I found the article, Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community, very reflective of behavior I have seen on the internet. However, I had never considered the ramifications of someone giving bad advice before, especially in a situation that could get someone hurt. I believe that getting bad advice from someone in the real world is different because you know just who that person is and they cannot fake their credentials. It is also easier to hold them accountable if something goes wrong. Honestly I think the best bet when reading opinions on the internet would be to take everything with a grain of salt and make sure you research what is said before you take action.

While the content on 4chan isn’t clean or even respectable I do find the concept and resultant culture quite interesting. On sites like Reddit there is a degree of anonymity in the sense that it would take a bit of work to track the actual user down, but posts are made with accounts that have reputations which can be affected by posts. There also is the whole culture of downvotes and upvotes where upvotes posts are shot up to the top and downvoted ones are hidden. 4chan seems to directly contradict this. While this does seem to have generated a cesspool I am sure there is some decent communication happening there due to people having complete anonymity. That way more controversial topics will be discussed instead of hidden away like they would be on Reddit. People will just generally be a more unhinged.

Questions

• What encourages people to troll others?
• Is there anyway to create an anonymous community that doesn’t degrade to producing offensive content? Or would that naturally happen when people are not held accountable?
• What benefits does ephemerality bring to an online community? What negatives?

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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.

Summary

In the article, “Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities”, the author starts by explaining what micro-blogging is. Micro-blogging is “a form of blogging that lets you write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters) about your life on the go and send them to friends and interested observers via text messaging, instant messaging (IM), email or the web.”, Twitter is explained to be the most common way to micro-blog. Next, the author begins to discuss their research on the Twitter user’s intention in using the site. They begin by describing the origin of their data set. This data set comes from the public timelines of over 76,000 users. The next discussed topic is an analysis of Twitter itself. We get to see how while the growth of new users of the site has slowed, the number of posts has been increasing at a consistent rate. The users of Twitter are mainly concentrated in North America but there are also significant populations in Europe and Asia. Finally, the author gets to share the findings of their research. The data was shown to suggest that the main intentions of a Twitter user are as follows, daily chatter, conversations, sharing info/URLs, and reporting news. The main categories of a user are, information source, friends, or information seeker.

Reflection

In the beginning, I found it interesting that other micro-blogging sites existed, like Jaiku, and Pownce. I wonder what the difference in users is and why it is that Twitter became such a phenomenon as opposed to these other services. With how big Twitter has become I do see the value in researching it. The ability to instantly have access to the thoughts and opinions of millions of people all over the world is especially powerful, and brings with it unknown social ramifications, as well as opportunities for commerce and advertising. From what I have seen, having access to these highly visible opinions gets people angry and stirs up plenty of arguments, which is something humans weren’t exposed to as much before, until now. Twitter also could help companies perform market research in an easier way. I think more research these areas would have been a bit more interesting, as the results from studying the intentions of users pretty much turned out to be unsurprising. I expected to see all of those uses as that is how Twitter advertises its platform. However, I don’t think the creators of Twitter would have originally planned for it to be used as a news source, so that is nice to see confirmed by this study.  I did like to see the initial analysis of Twitter and its users, hopefully their further research brings out more information about micro-blogging.

Questions

• Why are people so interested in reading about the daily routines and aspects of daily life of others? Or is it just that people are more interested in sharing their day than they are in reading about other people’s days?
• What about Twitter makes it a good platform to get news as opposed to traditional sources?
• Has the adoption of Twitter around the world (and partial regional isolation), created a social media culture gap, where people use the platform in different ways in other parts of the world?

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