I am a fairly private person and I don’t really have the desire to share my personal beliefs with others over the computer. As a result, in order to make myself anonymous, I have taken part in a lot of deceptive behavior. I have made fake names, fake profiles and asked fake questions in hopes of seducing various responses. It is not enjoyable and makes me feel like a borderline stalker. I am not sure if I am supposed to feel as though I am being manipulative, but that’s how I see it. Psychology and social science are scary tools.
Ridings maintains that members become attached to the communities and visit them often, sometimes becoming addicted. There is no real data as to what makes a person an active participant; however, it Ridings does indicate that it requires persistent interaction. This type of interaction allows members to feel like they are part of a larger social group.
Why do people join these types of groups? Well, according to Ridings, humans have a need to belong and it also allows them acquire information and achieve various goals. Ridings maintains that the research shows that exchange of information is among the central reasons why people join and remain in an “online community”. However, according to Ridings, others have asserted there are other possible reasons. As a result, Riding maintains that people are turning the Internet into a social entity. I tend to agree to a certain extent with Ridings conclusion; however, I am not too sure on how these implications play out. I can see the positives and the negatives of the Internet being turned into a social entity, but I am in no position to make a judgment call on this issue.
Ling looks at various experiments. Experiment 1 looks at motivating conversational contributions through group homogeneity and individual uniqueness. Ling points to social loafing as people working less hard when they are working jointly with others when they are working by themselves. This is quite interesting, especially as it relates to our experiences in ICS 691. It seems as though in 691, we are working both independently, as well as on a group basis of sorts. I have no doubt in my mind that this has caused me lots of confusion. Well, this combined with the fact that I have recently found out that my technological skills are lacking. Along with the fact that I sometimes have no idea what some of the computer science students are talking about (way way over my head). To me these are all de-motivating factors to contributing to online communities.
Tedjamulia, et. al, in their article proposed a model to help explain ways to motivate members making contributions to online communities. They assert that to make this type of contribution, members must incur costs, which include reputation and risks, as well as loss of time. Members drop out of communities because of poor participating and undersupply. I am not sure if I can accept the costs incurred, whether it be taking risks or saying things that may impact my reputation. I see that others in ICS 691 are willing to take risks and as a result, it seems that they have gotten good responses to their blogs and seem to have a firm grasp on these issues. As for myself, however, I still find it difficult to say exactly what is on my mind for the fear of retribution sometime down the line.
Tedjemulia, et. al, have argued that some online communities have introduced reward programs to induce meaningful contributions. Too few contributors, leads to less interaction and the interest of members dwindles. I would tend to agree with this. This is why getting a good marketing base and group of advertisers is sometimes very important to online communities, but then again, Craigslist has done quite well in its own respect without having fancy advertising.
Tedjamulia indicates that having trust can increase a persons desire to share. I think that this is where I have problems posting on my blog. I don’t really have trust because anyone can view anything I write. Tedjamulia, himself, could search google for his name and wind up on my blog. I don’t have trust that what I say will be taken with a grain of salt. Sharing in an online community is much more different than interacting in an academic classroom.
They continue that those who are intrinsically motivated will work harder, are more committed and are motivated by the act of participating. They ties this to something being interesting or enjoyable. I think this has a lot of truth to it, especially as it applies to my online community experience, including ICS 691. It is quite difficult to participate when you find the task to be difficult and nearly unmanageable in a reasonable amount of time. You need to enjoy something to want to contribute to it. You also need to weigh the costs to determine if it is worth it to you.
The quality and quantity of contributions to online communities definitely depends on whether you have an interest in it and/or enjoy it. I used to post on a local MMA website. I had over 400 posts. I was motivated to provide information and clarify various aspects of MMA. I even made enough posts to where I was rewarded with a T-shirt; however, I declined because I wanted to retain my anonymity. That experience has been very different from my recent online community experiences. I am still trying to figure out what my problem is.
They also propose that online community members “who are more intrinsically motivated will be more committed to the community and will contribute and participate more frequently than members with low intrinsic motivation.” I would agree with this based on the discussion above.
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I too am not a risk taker. My questions in Answerbag were pretty mundane. As I lurked around, there didn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to why folks answered certain questions and ignored others. It never occurred to me to throw out a loaded question to see if it exploded. I am very conscious of how I am perceived. The only other place I regularly post is in facebook. I feel motivated by that community because we all grew up together at school and everyone is happy to hear about what is going on in your life. Everyone I connect to in facebook is a friend from the "real" world and I am comfortable with that. I don't think I could share as much with someone I only knew online. That last statement is not written in stone. I have found that it is best to keep an open mind about the internet.
ReplyDeleteI found a connection to the Shrock reading because of the different personality traits discussed: "extroversion, self–disclosure, computer anxiety and self–efficacy." I have delved deeply into my personality over the years through therapy, workshops, and group work and I think I have an honest understanding of what motivates me. I agree with Shrock in that your perceived level of self-efficacy in computer matters affects whether you will be an active member of an online community. I can see an example of that everyday with a classmate of mine that cannot learn to get his email-- even with repeated teachings. He is satisfied with looking over my shoulder as I peruse my facebook profile. I can safely say he will never be a member of an online community. I am also on the extroverted side (I've taken personality tests) and I am willing to disclose information about myself, to a certain degree.
Even though I am an extrovert, I can understand how uncomfortable you might feel as an intensely private person having to put yourself out there to fulfill an assignment. This is just the kind of thing my Sociology teacher did to us to learn about social norms by breaking them. Talk about uncomfortable!
Do you think your technological skills lacking when compared to ICS students or the community at large? ;) (I assuming you're LIS here, forgive me if I'm wrong...!) I think as LIS students we just have a different skill set than the ICS students. I'm lucky, I guess, that both my previous skill set and my job make me overlap with some parts of ICS. But I think it's definitely important to get your feet wet in this sort of social community business, because even if you aren't going to be participating in it your patrons probably are. Even if you're working in special libraries, a lot of them have started to establish online presences and I heard a talk recently by a librarian whose job has moved 100% to Second Life.
ReplyDeleteI'd also be interested in hearing more about how you feel we're working in both a group and individual basis in the class.
I agree with you though in terms of privacy - even though the questions and answers I gave were pretty representative of my feelings, I definitely held back and didn't answer a few things because I knew that people from this class would receive my answers. It's quite probable that no one from this class will end up reading my profile, but I still didn't want to. We're moving to a culture, though, where Too Much Information on the Internet is becoming standard and many students feel like prospective employers shouldn't be Googling them. (I'm lucky since a ton of people on the mainland with my first and last name combination and only about 5% of such results are actually me.) It's odd, though, because even though I'm an extrovert there is a line with me about how much information I'd be willing to share over the internet.
I have to agree with you that I definitely hold back during online posts. I think I have read most of the posts in this class, but have deleted most of my responses. I think that self-censorship is a very admirable quality. Goes along with the old saying if you cant think of anything positive to say, don't say anything at all. I have also found that it is quite a human trait to shoot the messenger. I didn't see a definition of MMA, so I am wondering what that is.
ReplyDeleteI totally understand your situation. I am also very reluctant to join online communities and share my profiles with people who don’t know me offline. I think this is very natural because we can get information without revealing our own identity. Also, there are many internet related crimes in these days such as cyber stalking, and phishing. Maybe you want to talk about the evil side of technology? Seems like it would be a good choice for the final project:)
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