Bernstein, Michael S., Monroy-Hernandez, Andres. Harry, Drew. Andre, Paul. Panovich, Katrina. Vargas, Greg.  “4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity
and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community”

Donath, Judith S. “Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community.” Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community, smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html.

Summary

The study that is outlined in “Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community” illustrates differences in identity within online communities.  The researchers found that people identify themselves with account ID, and individual voice.  Most of the time people are truthful about who they are online, but there are some exceptions.  Trolls, impersonators, identity concealers, and catfish all lie about their identities on the internet.

The paper “4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Emphemerality in a Large Online Community” discusses the often ambiguous and anonymous users of the website 4chan and how their culture shapes the whole of the internet.  The researchers studied data scraped from the “random” forum board on 4chan, one of its most popular pages, and found that since “random” is constantly being updated and old posts are constantly being deleted, that it cultivates a quickly changing community that is constantly experimenting with new ideas and memes.  Other sites such as twitter and facebook lack anonymity, which can lead to a different type of internet community with different social interactions.  They found that 90% of all posts in this forum were completely anonymous, leading to a unique culture that permeates throughout the internet.

Reflection

The first paper intrigued me mostly because I really love the MTV show “Catfish” which is an exploration into people’s online romances and how usually one person in the relationship is lying about their identity for one reason or another.  This is interesting in how it relates to the above study because it happens almost everywhere on the internet,  Facebook, Twitter, Tinder, etc. even though most of the users of these websites do not lie about who they are.

I was initially interested by the second paper because I barely knew anything about 4chan.  I knew that it has a lot of outside influence on internet culture in general, and now that I’ve read this research I know part of the reason why 4chan has so much influence on internet culture in general.

I would like to know how these findings would change if the research were to be up to date.  I know that 4chan had a lot of influence on the internet when this study took place, in 2010, but it could be different now that the internet landscape has changed in the past 7 years.  As for the other paper, I think the findings are still accurate in the current internet landscape.

Questions

• How has deception on the internet changed since this paper was written?
  • I know it is a lot harder to impersonate people on the internet nowadays
• Do other websites have some of the same characteristics of 4chan?
• How has anonymity changed since this paper was written?
• Has writing style and voice changed since these papers were written?
• Are there any websites that have consequences for lying about identity?
• What websites are easiest to fake an identity on? Which are hardest?

Read More

Summary:

In the paper “Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community” the author, Judith S. Donath, addresses the points of how modern culture has come to establish identity and use the ambiguous nature of virtual communities to create a community where identity amongst the virtual world is deceiving. The author focuses around a study of the virtual community Usenet, where users can post about news and events they find to be relevant and worth discussing. This online community provides users with a username, signature, email link, and unique writing style that can help other users track and know who an individual users is. This creates a sense of community because the anonymousness of each user is slightly taken away. Now the author shows how that even in a community where users accounts mean something and throwing away an account is an action with consequences, there are still those who abuse the system and deceive other users. Trolling is a major issue, where trolls create fake accounts and use them to spread lies or just be annoyances to others for their own enjoyment. Other users go as far as they can to conceal their identities in the hopes that they can post controversial ideas or incite issues where none are just for fun. The main point was to show that even very open and identify communities can be breached and trolls can hurt the communities sense of security.

The second paper “4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community” focuses much more heavily on the side of the virtual world that rejoices in the anonymousness that all the users can have. 4chan is a site created so that users can post ideas, topics, and pictures using the identity of “anonymous” if they so should please. This is exactly what most of the users choose to do with over 90% of all posts for the entire site being posted as anonymous. 4chan works under the system that posts, when posted, are pushed to the top of the first page of topics but can only remain there or even remain active if other users comment and add to the post. This creates a system where the most “popular” posts are kept alive and near the top of the topic thread. This system was made to allow people to freely express opinions and ideas without any fear of backlash and retaliation in the hopes that new ideas and conversations would arise. This has worked some but has also allowed users to post very horrible topics and pictures that do not help anyone or incite any useful conversations.

Reflection:

I found the two articles to be very insightful in showing that the virtual space that we all flock to so regularly can be a breading ground for deceit and nastiness if we let it be. Its good that certain communities are trying their best to give people an identifiable username and person because that way people feel less free to go off on a whim and do or say things that they wouldn’t do/say normally. After reading both of these articles and from my own experience I feel that anonymity can be a very important and useful tool for people and I in no way feel that there shouldn’t be a place where people can go to get that true anonymous experience. It can have benefits for people in areas that aren’t friendly to their beliefs or rights. But I also feel that there should be areas of the virtual space that impose upon its users a more strict user face so that people feel the same social pressure they feel when they speak using their own mouths. Anonymity can be a very useful tool and a way for people in need to escape and be safe but I feel that it also needs its checks and balances. Creating a virtual space where every sector is anonymous would not be good for the virtual community that we are all a part of.

Questions:

• Are there any effective ways of controlling trolling or identity concealing?
• How much anonymity is good for people/ when does it go too far?
• What do people who abuse anonymity hope to gain from their actions?
• Would linking user accounts from virtual communities to much larger social communities(i.e. Facebook) have a positive impact on those communities?
• Is it healthy for us as virtual citizens for places such as 4chan to exist and flourish?

Read More

Summary

In “Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community,” Judith Donath describes how identity is established in virtual communities, and how identity can be ambiguous due to deception. Donath uses a study on Usenet, a newsgroup in which users can post about specified topics. Key indications of identification include account name, email domain, identity in writing style (voice/language), and signature. Although users are assumed to be who they say they are, these forms of identification can easily be easily faked and used to deceive other users. Categories of deception include trolls, impersonation, and identity concealment. Additionally, the balance between privacy, credibility, and self-expression has still not been “perfected,” such that a community can feel secure about the information they post (or read).

“4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community” details the effects of anonymity and ephemerality in online communities, in particular 4chan’s /b/ discussion board. On 4chan, posts get pushed off the first page by newer posts, and remain on the top of the first page if the post is popular (has users actively replying). It was found that most posts have short lifespans – 3.9 minutes on average – which displays the fast pace of the /b/ board. 90% of users on /b/ were found to be anonymous, which is suggested to be because it allows for more intimate and open conversation, and new ideas.

Reflection

In the first paper, I found it particularly interesting that email domain was an indication of credibility. Since I typically don’t use websites that rely on the email domain for a user account, I never considered that it would be something that users look at to determine if someone is a reliable source of information. This reminded me of checking top-level domains of websites (.org, .com, .net) when checking sources for research or essays, which is something I and many other students do more often. In this section, Donath uses various examples of prejudice based on email domain – being a “loser” for having an AOL domain, not having “BIG $$$” because of a specific neighborhood/location – which made me think about social media sites that are popular today and why they don’t have usernames based on email.

In “4chan” it was intriguing to me how ephemerality is even a concept because, like email domain, it wasn’t something I ever considered even though it is apparent in social media that I use often (Snapchat, Twitter, etc.). It was interesting especially how ephemerality is affected by time of day, and that threads lasted the longest between 9-10am EST and lasted the shortest between 5-7pm EST due to activity by North American users after work/school. This reminded me of a discussion I had with a friend a year (more or less) ago about when the best time to post a photo on Instagram. This was when Instagram still displayed posts chronologically, and the best time apparently also was around 5-8pm EST since users were getting off from work/school.

Questions

• Will there ever be a balance between privacy, credibility, and self-expression?
• What do people think they gain from harmful forms of deception (catfishing/impersonation, trolling)?
• Why do recent/popular social media sites use username rather than email?
• Does using email as a form of identification on Usenet have more benefits (e.g. allows for credibility) than disadvantages (e.g. bullying)?
• Can current writing styles be categorized to determine reliability?
• Why do websites like Tumblr/Ask.fm still allow anonymity when asking questions?
• Do people enjoy the ephemerality of 4chan and other sites? Why?

Read More

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?

Read More

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?

Read More

Summary

In the paper “Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community”, researchers take a look at Usenet newsgroups and how the users interact with one another. Since the newsgroups are in a virtual world, it can be more difficult to assess how competent a user is and if they are being honest or even correct in their responses. They discuss the implications of assessment signals vs conventional signals and how they relate to a virtual space. There are many ways to establish who a person is such as through their “voice”, the language they use in their messages, the signatures, the email address they use etc. However, even with these indicators some people, known as “trolls”, can still deceive people. They incite arguments and controversy. Some people ignore the trolls, others argue with them. On Usenet, users are able to block certain users’ posts to prevent seeing material from trolls using a killfile and in some groups moderators can remove a troll.

 

In the paper “4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community”, they looked at the 4chan. 4chan is a website where users post images and other users can reply to the posts. The catch is that depending on the amount of posts and the popularity of a post, the posts can be deleted in a short amount of time. The researchers found that posts rarely last longer than 4 minutes before they are deleted forever. Users also have the option of having a username or being anonymous however 90% of users chose to be anonymous.

 

Reflection

The study done on Usenet is pretty outdated given that it’s about 20 years old. It would be interesting to see a similar study done on Reddit which sounds somewhat similar to Usenet to see if anything has changed since the late 1990s. It’s amazing how much power anonymity gives to a user since there are few to no repercussions for what is said. The lack of rejection and the ability to be whoever you want to be is an interesting social concept brought about by the anonymity found online. It’s also quite dangerous as some people take what is said online for face value and don’t fact check. People can be taken advantage of or do ill-advised things as a result of trolling. When it gets to that point, I start to wonder if there should be a more severe punishment when the intent is to do harm to someone.

 

Questions

• How do trolls impact someone’s social interactions outside of the web? Do they become more cynical?
• What motivates a troll to post inflammatory things when it only brings them negative attention?
• Do people fact check people online the same way they do people in real life?
• Should there be more severe consequences for “trolling” in order to help prevent it? Where do we draw the line?

Read More

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” the authors look to understand the usage and connections amongst a set of users of twitter that range all around the world. They took a sample of 76,177 users from all around the world during the time frame of  April, 1st 2007 to May, 30th 2007. They want to look at the correlations of users between users that are closer to one another as opposed to farther apart. They also want to look at the behaviors of users that fall into the categories of “Information Source, Friend, or Information Seeker”. Information Source’s tend to have more followers but possibly not as many people they are following. They hold a sense of power because their words and posts reach a large group of people. Friends are users that use Twitter to keep up with their friends lives and their friends follow them back for similar reasons. Lastly Information Seekers tend to have fewer followers themselves but follow a large amount of users, seeking to know about a great many other users. The article also found that users posts fall into categories themselves, “Daily Chatter, Conversations, Sharing Information, and Reporting News”. Of these categories “Daily Chatter” by far outweighed the others in terms of post pertaining to it. Overall this article gives the reader a sense that Twitter users tend to follow other users closer to them and majority follow to learn about others lives. They will reciprocate and tell others about their lives as well.

In the paper “Is it really about me? Message Content in Social Awareness Streams” the authors set out to look at and understand the main subject that twitter users tend to talk about with their posts. They split these subjects up into multiple categories that range from Information sharing to Anecdote(both for yourself and others). Specifically these categories look at if the information in the tweet is about yourself or others. Do you tend to share about yourself, your feelings, your life, your opinions. Or do you share information about others, events, world news, things that inform others about events that do not revolve around yourself. Through the observations and data analysis that the authors did they found that overwhelmingly most users tend to share things about themselves. Twitter users are predominately sharing events about their own lives. But this also shows that the few users that share about the events of the rest of the world tend to have more followers in total because they share information that a larger base of users want to hear about.

Reflection

I thoroughly enjoyed both of these articles because they both bring forward the large glaring detail that people love to share their own lives. The largest category of user of twitter from both articles is the friend user. The friend user is someone who follows their close set of friends and wants to keep track of their lives and whats going on but more importantly they want to share their life and the events that have happened to them with the people they care about. It really brings to light just how much of a social creature humans are. We crave to share our lives, feelings, opinions, and beliefs with others. We also want to know, know about the people we care about and keep track of what is going on in the world so that we can contribute to conversations amongst those people. This thirst for knowledge, be it intellectual or just plain gossip, is one of the key wants for humans as a whole. Through this exercise I have come to an interesting question, do humans crave this thirst for knowledge and to share their own lives out of a want to help others or simply fulfill a need we all feel? It is glaringly apparent from the data that twitter users are very focused on themselves. Sharing details about their own lives and opinions instead of sharing about the world as a whole. Does this mean that these microblogs could be encouraging people to focus solely on themselves and the image they present to others? Or are they helping the spread of information and making people more aware of the big picture?

Questions

• Do humans crave this thirst for knowledge and to share their own lives out of a want to help others or simply fulfill a need we all feel?
• Are microblogs encouraging people to focus more solely on themselves and the image they present to others?
• Are they helping the spread of information and making people more aware of the big picture?
• How much effect do the large twitter accounts with the most followers truly have?
• How much are cross cultural and continental connections affect cultures around the world through Twitter?
• Is this amount of information sharing too much? Could it be damaging to users instead of helping?

Read More

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 29 Aug. 2017.

Akshay Java, Xiaodan Song, Tim Finin, Belle Tseng. “Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities”. http://aisl.umbc.edu/resources/369.pdf. Accessed 29 Aug. 2017.

Summary

“Is It Really About Me?” is an analytical research paper attempting to determine classifications of Twitter users. The classifications found were “Informers”, users who share a lot of non-personal information, and “Meformers”, users who share a lot of personal information. The researchers were able to cluster users into these groups with strong statistical significance. They did this by first breaking down user posts into different categories (Information Sharing, Me Now, Opinions / Complaints, Random Thoughts, etc.) and then clustering users based on number of occurrences of those categories of posts.

“Why We Twitter” is another analytical research paper with a broader goal of observing some topological and geographical aspects of Twitter as an example of microblogging. They showed special interest in the content shared by different communities and the inter/intra-community  connections and patterns. They found that North America (followed by other industrialized continents) is responsible for most Twitter activity. The also found that the content of posts changed through the week, with “school” and “work” being drowned out by “party” and “friends” approaching and during the weekend. The researchers found categories of user posts including: Daily Chatter, Conversations, Sharing Information, Reporting News. These resulted in classifications of users including: Information Source, Friends, and Information Seeker.

Reflection

It is interesting to note the similarities in analysis results and interpretation between the two studies, despite the difference and intentions and methods. Specifically, the categorization of posts leading to the classification of users. Both studies ended up picking out a similar “informer” class; “friends” and “meformers” seem to have largely the same posting habits; “Why We Twitter” put special emphasis on users who did not create much if any original content. It is fascinating to look at these studies and the patterns that they detected. Twitter is a great source of digital data produced by the living organisms that it is about.

Questions

• How else could user posts be categorized?
• Does the intention of a study have a strong effect on the interpretation of the data?
• What would the results of blind machine learning look like if it were also to categorize posts and classify users?

Read More

Akshay Java, Xiaodan Song, Tim Finin, Belle Tseng. “Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities”. http://aisl.umbc.edu/resources/369.pdf. Accessed 31 Aug. 2017.

Summary

In “Why we Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities”, the researchers explore microblogging sites, focusing on twitter in particular. They collected data on hubs and authorities, the impact of the geographical locations of users, and the relationships users form with other users. They looked at the motivation behind why people post. They researched who people followed based on their geographical location.

Overall they made some general conclusions. The people who communicate across the globe typically speak with other people who speak the same language. They found that there were 3 categories of relationships: information sharing, information seeking, and friendship. They found that the main reason people use Twitter is to post about their daily life activities.

 

Reflection

As someone who is not familiar with twitter I thought it was interesting that the most common thing people do is posting about the trivial things they do on a daily basis. I was also unaware that it’s used for information sharing. I find it surprising that people seek knowledge on microblogging websites where the user is so limited in how much they can write.

I wish the researchers had expanded a little more on their conclusion. They mention briefly at the end about how twitter should create more specific communities for family or co-workers but I think it would’ve been interesting to learn more about the relationships between the users in the different categories they established. Like why people feel the need to follow so many people when the relationship isn’t being reciprocated and how these relationships affect the user outside of twitter. For instance, do the people the user follows have an effect on the user’s own posts?

 

Questions

• What are the main types of information being shared in microblogging (i.e. gaming was mentioned)?
• What makes Twitter different than other microblogging websites?
• Other than a common language, are there other factors that determine friends/followers based on geographical location?
• Would doing a similar analysis on a non-microblogging website such as Facebook reveal drastically different results in terms of motivation for posting and relationships?
• What makes a user keep using Twitter once they start?

Read More

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

This article examines the premise behind why we use Twitter, but more broadly microblogging. It starts by defining the microblogging nature of Twitter and how it entices users with short posts that they feel they can create multiple times a day. This article also looks to understand the intentions of microblogging users and how relationships are built between them. It looks at the three main user intentions of users of Twitter (“information sharing, information seeking, and friendship-wise relationship”). These intentions differ for each user but are an important part of that user’s experience. This article proceeds to go into detail about the communities that can form from these microblogging applications. Interestingly enough, it examines how users with similar interests will share more about their “personal feeling and daily experience” with other users they have connected with who have similar interests. Along with this, we also examine the main user intentions on Twitter, such as daily chatter or reporting news, and why they may be appealing to different users.

 

Reflection

I greatly enjoyed the breadth of this article and how it started from the basics of microblogging and then dove into more intensive topics. This article discussed how users feel more inclined to post when using microblogging. I would definitely agree with this, as I have seen many people post simple sentences several times a day just to let their followers know what they are doing. This post could be as simple as saying they had just made it to work, but they desire to let their followers know about this. One thing I wish this article had expanded on more would be the “information seeking” user base of Twitter and the social implications of this user base. It would be very interesting to know more about the different users that populate the three user intention groups. Another thing this article has made me think about is the future of microblogging. We know that many years ago the social structure of how people communicated was much different than it is today. This begs the question of what the future of communication will look like as technology increases.

 

Questions

What causes some users to post numerous times a day on Twitter?

What causes some users to never post on Twitter, but simply browse?

Is there a correlation between number of posts and follower base?

Do users with more followers post differently than those with less?

Is microblogging too long for the future of communication?

 

Read More