flaming O'Sullivan & Flanagin

Patrick B. O’Sullivan & Andrew J. Flanagin (2003)

Reconceptualizing ‘flaming’ and other problematic messages

New media & society

Copyright © 2003 SAGE Publications

London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi

Vol5(1):67–00 [1461–4448(200305)5:1,67–00;030908]

Note: Remember to marry up the page numbers with the published articles if using direct quotes for the thesis.

Conceptualises flaming as a more extreme example of problematic interactions. P2 ‘ there is not a clear and consistent operational definition of flaming’

Introductory thoughts

From the perspective of communication.

P2. ‘ambiguity surrounding communicative behaviour that is perceieved as aggressive and hostile can result in a wide range of problems, possibly with substantial negative social and relational consequences. For example, interpersonal conflict may result from discrepant views of what constitutes antisocial behaviour.’

From the perspective of channel

ie is it unique to computer mediated communication? as might be concluded from the focus on filtered out cues etc theories ( link to Joinson notes). P2 ‘limiting the notion of flaminf behaviour to CMC suggests that interactions via computer-based communication are so distinctive from the rest of human communication that they have no linkage to other social phenomena. Furthermore, doing so neglects an accumulated body of knowledge on the nature of human interaction beyond mediated channels’ eg Mortensen (1997,p2) ‘ the subject of human understanding is after all by definition and of necessity, partial, incomplete and error prone’

Key point for thesis

Both lay press and academic scholarship conceptualise flaming as p3 ‘ an intentional act, premeditated insults’

Critique of current perspectives of flaming

(i) definitional ambiguity

definitions can be roughly classified as follows

• direct criticism or blunt disclosure ( but can be presented for caring reasons for example with the intent to strengthen the relationship)
• messages containing hostile language or profanity (but the view of the receiver may not match the intentions of the sender or take into account the communication skills of the sender)
• messages that are provocative or non conforming

(ii) reliance on message content

p4

‘ a corollary assumption ( point 1) is that message characteristics are in fact recognized by the interactants and can be reliably identified by an observer external to the situation’

‘ a third party’s interpretation , however, might be very different from that of the interactants ( Mortensen, 1997; Ogden & Richards, 1956) due to a lack of access to the wide array of contextual factors that are key to the interactants message interpretation: It is precisely this context that interactants draw upon to achieve some degree of shared understanding through the communication process’

related to this

‘many researchers have tended to ignore the influence of local group norms ……… i.e. outside of the social network, where different interactional norms dominate, the exact same language would likely hold for different, and more negative meanings, for both sender and receiever’

(iii) value judgements of flaming behaviour

p6

‘flaming is traditionally conceptualized as negative, anti-social and undesirable’

‘considering too early the issue of “what ought to happen” can intefere with a clear assessment of “what is happening” and can cause one to lose sight of the functions that such messages might serve’ note: compare value judgements of deception with flaming.

‘just as there may be anti-social motivations for hostile messages, there may be a number of pro-social motivations and outcomes associated with aggressive and hostile messages …… a criticism could be used to establish the senders’ credibility by demonstrating a willingness to offer critical comment and not just bland, agreeable feedback’

(iv) channels of flaming

‘ when experienced face to face we recognize such messages as displays of hostility, anger, impatience, or candidness instead of labeling them as flaming’ – KRO overarching view – what happens when this statement is unpicked?

P7

‘the focus of our framework is on individuals’ intentions and interpretations based on various levels of norms ….. interpretations that can be shaped by but not determined by channel characteristics’

‘channels that convey fewer cues to guide interpretation may contribute to higher incidences of misunderstanding’

note to get

‘the importance of individuals’ perceptions and choices that they may make as they select and use various channels for a particular interactional goal ( O’Sullivan 2000)

The Framework: An interactional-Normative Framework of Problematic Interactions

Aim of the framework

P7 ‘ a framework that provides more precision in determining what is flaming behaviour, based on recognizing variations in norms and expectations among individuals’

Some refs from communication literature

Putman & Paconowsky (1983) not enough attention has been focused on this relational aspect of meaning construction due to a traditionally ‘ functionalist’ view of communication processes’

( Cromer, Chen & Perace, 1998)

‘note that the communication process requires a complex co-ordination of efforts among interactants to determine message meanings’

Interactional norms

P8 ‘norms can be identified at a

• Cultural
• Local
• Group
• Relational

Level’

‘emerge over time’

get Brown & Levinson (1987) ‘classic analysis of politeness which examines in depth universal norms of language use to manage face in social discourse’

p9

at a relational level ‘ one of the central processes of early relationship development is learning and negotiating expected behaviours to increase one’s ability to predict others’ behaviours’

norm violation

‘one may violate norms to attract attention, to display opposition, or demonstrate independence’ i.e. violation is used as a resource. ‘ in pursuit of their interactional and relational goals’

‘norm violation cane be entirely unintentional’ – eg newcomers

‘socialisation ( or trial and error) is the means by which norm sets can become more accurately aligned’

The role of normative expectations in flaming

Cultural, local & relational norms may coexist as in DZX (KRO – also communicative style must play a part, related to norms bit also different)

Framework construction

Relational nature of communication

+

multi-level norms acting to guide interactants’ message formation and interpretation

+

consequences of norm violation and expectations

leads to

interactional norm cube to contextualise communication as it implicates flaming behaviours.

Using sender, receiver, and third party ( KRO what is the effect of the third part in the communication process other than researcher, mediator( legal , learning etc) – should it be considered on the same level) for combined appraisals

Suggests that only the combination where sender intends, receiver and third part interpret a violation is a true flame. However there are other types of problematic communications as described by each row of the table

P12

‘each of the 8 problematic interactions has distinctive consequences for personal, relational, and organizational outcomes of interactions’

p13

‘process of norm alignment overtime, various parties might learn to be more effective in their message construction and interpretation which may result in increased communicative competence’

‘what requires further examination is how norms regarding the interactional channels that we use can also contribute to problematic interactions’

Links to Joinson

This framework fits OK wilth Joinsons views on strategic choice and also deliberate choice to remain anonymous.

Table 1: Message Interpretation from Multiple Perspectives

Sender's Perspective	Recipient's Perspective	Third Party Perspective	Fig 1 Octant	Comments and Examples
Appropriate	Appropriate	Appropriate	A	Clearly constructed messages in accordance with widely-held, well-understood communication norms held by all parties
Appropriate	Appropriate	Transgression	B	Clearly constructed and well-understood messages within specific local or relational norms of interactants, yet violates norms of third party Examples might be sarcasm, joking, verbal "play"
Appropriate	Transgression	Appropriate	C	Sender's message viewed as inappropriate by receiver, perhaps due to misalignment of shared cultural, local, or relational norms, but is consistent with third party's norms Receiver misinterpretation or misalignment of norm set
Appropriate	Transgression	Transgression	D	Sender's message perceived to be inappropriate as judged by norms held by both recipient and outsider Instance could be due to sender's insensitivity to existing norms relevant for relationship and social system
Transgression	Appropriate	Appropriate	E	Sender's intent is to violate norms (to "flame") , but no one else views the message as a violation. Instance could be due to lack of understanding of relational or social system norms, too high a degree of subtlety, or communication incompetency A "failed flame"
Transgression	Appropriate	Transgression	F	Sender's intent is to violate norms but receiver does not perceive message as violation, even though a violation is apparent to third party. Instance could be due to receiver's misalignment of norm sets with others in social system or misinterpretation of message. A "missed flame"
Transgression	Transgression	Appropriate	G	Sender intent is to violate norms and receiver perceives that norms were violated but a violation is not apparent to "outsider" due to lack of shared local or relational norms with interactants Sender could carefully construct a message using relational knowledge to "flame" another but the message looks innocuous to an outsider so there are no consequences from social system. Could be called an "inside flame"
Transgression	Transgression	Transgression	H	Sender's intent is to violate norms, receiver and third party perceive the message as a violation. A true "flame"


 ‘

Cookies

Cookies are files that are saved on the users own hard drive by a web browser. The next time the person visits the website the server can read (and alter) the cookie)

Doctoral presentations

The role of tangible technologies in special education

Taciana Falcao

new ways of thinking about accessibility

• cognitive accessibility - concretise the abstract
• collaborative accessibility- inclusion

tangibles & meaning

meaning at two levels or from two aspects ,

• meaning of the object eg a tangible
• meaning of the practice.

'I drum therefore I am' ? A sociological study of the identities and learning of kit drummers

Gareth Smith ( Arts & hummanities)

• be aware of perspective - eg emic perspective
• identity realisation - passive ( a realisation ) & active ( to realise)
• Informal & formal learning - drumming a good example of very blurred edges between the two. Internet has contributed to the blurring e.g. Youtube for drummers.

Parkinson (2005)

Do Facial Movements Express Emotions ( KRO -Individual) or Communicate Motives (KRO – Social)?

Brian Parkinson (2005)

Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9 (4), 278-311

Reviews the argument of whether ‘faces express emotions or communicate motives and intentions’, p278.

3 conclusions

1. ‘many supposedly emotional facial movements cannot be explained simply in terms of emotions and display rules’ p278
2. ‘some apparent advantages of the alternative motive-communication (face as a tool) account are partly undermined by its under specification of the central concepts of social motive and audience attunement’ p279
3. ‘a fuller articulation of dynamic emotion processes in their interpersonal context may render many (but not all) of the distinctions between emotions and social motives redundant’p279

HISTORICAL

Darwin principles

note ‘ none of Darwin’s principles ( see underlined below) implies any intrinsic emotion-expression connection, because the movements originated from factors that happened to correlate with emotions rather than the emotions themselves……..In this sense, Darwin apparently did not believe that facial movements give direct and natural expression to an inner state’, p279-280. also Darwin considered expressions as vestiges presumably because he did not want to get into arguments about whether expression were windows to the soul

1. ‘associated serviceable habits’ - over time, the movements that required a response as an adaptation to an emotional situation became associated with related feelings. P279 ‘more generally, faces that had once served a practical function also came to occur in situations where this function no longer applied’

2. ‘antithesis’. Darwin was less secure about this principle but used submission versus state of fight as an example ‘movements that are in some way opposite to serviceable habits became associated with contrasting feeling states’, p279. ‘principle of action of the nervous system’

Parkinson, p280, ‘ setting aside Darwin’s unwarranted attempt to deny continuing functionality, he succeeded in identifying three general reasons why facial movements may be associated with emotions

1. direct practical action that they serve (or once served) in emotional actions
2. they provide (or once provided) information about the probability of emotional actions to other animals
3. they are side effects of some extrinsic aspect of emotional function’,

Parkinson reports how Izard, 1990 proposed a fourth reason ‘ facial movements play a direct role in emotion regulation and control (Izard, 1990)’ Others (e.g. Tomkins) ‘believe that facial movement contribute to the production of emotion rather than as a consequence of emotion’, p280.

Summary p282 ‘ expressions have become associated with emotions for largely extrinsic reasons’

Dewey & Pragmatic actions i.e. facial movements as constituents of action.

Dewey emphasised p280 ‘ Darwin’s ideas about the direct functional significance of some facial movements in carrying out actions’ i.e. ‘direct practical functions of facial movements are more important in explaining origins than any accidental association with emotion’ Meaning to action is given by observers of the action.

Summary p282 ‘ facial movements make a direct contribution to practical actions during emotional episodes’ – ‘part of the process of acting emotionally’

Mead & Communication

Mead ‘Extended Darwinian ideas of the function of gestures by explicitly considering their social impact i.e. expression as a social signifier – ‘permits the distinctly human characteristics of self conscious mental life’ i.e. ‘ postural and facial movements allow mutual coordination of an ongoing social act’ (used two dogs circling each other as an example). P uses the term ‘articulated action sequence’ p281. ‘For Mead (1934) actions attain true symbolic significance when they call out identical responses in both actors and observers’ therefore implies language ‘ whereas facial movements do not offer the same visual information to actors and observers’ so at a more implicit level. Mirror neuron work could be significant here.

P282 Perceptible social effects of any movement change its functional character and thus impact on its meaning’ uses Vgotsky’s description of a child pointing as an example.

Summary p282 ‘ facial movements part of the process of communicating emotion-related information’

Ekman (1972) Neocultural theory ( allowed for both nature ( through natural selection) and nurture)

P283 ‘ some movements may have evolved precisely to express emotion rather than to serve other purposes that happen to be associated with emotional experience’ (latter is a Darwin view)

‘activation of an emotion initiates a facial affect program that sends efferent impulses to the face’ sees each basic emotion as giving rise to a different yet typical facial expression. Allowed for cultural experience. ‘assumes that perceivers either learn or instinctively know what these expressions mean.’

Gave rise to a focus on which aspects of facial expression are biologically determined. For example p283 ‘ facial changes whilst regurgitating unpleasant-tasting food became associated with the anticipation of objects to be rejected, more generally allowing their use in conveying rejection to others’

‘disgust as an emotion arose at some point’

‘Ekman did not see the disgust face as simply part of a rejecting action ( Dewey) or the communication of rejection ( Mead) but as an involuntary response that is part of the emotion of disgust itself.’

P303 ‘ The emotion-expression account explicitly restricts itself to explaining a small subset of facial movements and makes relatively precise predictions about the circumstances under which these movements occur’ some of which are turning out to be false e.g. smiling and happiness ( KRO is happiness as a basic emotion underspecified have basic emotions evolved to something more sophisticated or complex’

Summary ‘ For E main point of many facial movements is the expression of emotion.

Fridlund (1994) Behavioral Ecology Theory ( Communication of emotional state is more important than the expression of emotion)

Differs from Ekman in two basic ways

(i) purpose of facial movement is communication rather than expression. P284 ‘ intrinsically other-directed messages rather than individual reactions’

(ii) ‘content of communication is not directly about emotion but rather concerns behavioural intentions or social motives;’

leads to a view that there is no one to one mapping of emotion to facial display. – any connection is a fortuitous connection

F ‘saw facial movements developing as ritualised displays therefore progressive exaggeration is beneficial’ co-evolution for sender & receiver.

e.g.

• Eyebrow raising as an attentive act
• White of eye as a contrast to pupil for person tracking

but

there is facial movement while solitary.

Response

• Mead – generalised other
• Fridlund – can sociality ever be totally absent from a situation ? imagined others.

Compared to the emotion-expression account of E p305 ‘ the only facial movements explicitly excluded from this account are facial reflexes and some paralanguage)’ ‘greater inclusiveness comes at a cost to precision’

Summary ‘For F main point of facial movement is interpersonal communication’

PARKINSON CURRENT REVIEW

Evidence for direct emotion-expression connections ( Ekman neocultural)

Cross cultural consistency

of attribution of basic emotional facial expression regardless of the amount of prior exposure although recognition of happiness substantially more accurate than the recognition of disgust. However p287 ‘ Yik & Russel (1999) showed that participants from Canada, Hong Kong and Japan were able to allocate expressions to corresponding social motives about as successfully as to Ekman’s (1972) predicted basic emotions

developmental evidence

p287 “Eibl-Eibesfelddt (1973) showed that children born both deaf and blind adopt facial expressions such as ‘anger’ faces ‘ surprise faces and smiles in circumstances that would be plausible’

neurological evidence

P implies that localisation of a brain area would be important evidence but raises the question as to how one might design a study that would distinguish between the competing theories of F and E. Refers to Rinn’s work and interpretation p289 ‘ that separate motor control systems underlie deliberate facial movement and spontaneous expression of emotion’

‘Fridlund (1994) argued that this is not the only possible reading of neuropathological and neuro-anatomical evidence . In particular, he pointed out that separate mechanisms for deliberate and automatic control also characterise muscular movements in parts of the body other than the face’

Interpersonal influences - motive communication – Fridlund behavioural ecology

E (1972) p289 ‘ did not believe that other people are necessarily implicated in the initiation of facial movements. Instead the presence of others may invoke display rules encouraging modulation of expressive impulses that have already been activated’

P292 P ‘ our sense is often that the expressive impulse comes from deep within whereas expressive control is imposed on this impulse from elsewhere’

P304 ‘ the emotional meanings of canocical expressions are routinely taught in early schooling and reinforced by appropriate pictures in story books and children’s movies’

Audience facilitation

Krout & Johnston (1979) - recorded smiles during games of ten pin bowling. When facing pins smiling 5% of occasions even after a good performance whereas smiling was much more common when facing friends irrespective of the relative success in the game. However a valid evaluative comment is that ‘ we do not know to what extent these scores were good or bad for the bowlers concerned’ . Also observers were not instructed to differentiate between Duchenne & non Duchenne smiles.

Other work Fernandex-Dols & Ruiz-Belda involved observation of winning athletes during the medals ceremony when they are presumably experiencing intense happiness. However, the authors reported that smiling was rare apart from when the competitors were actively interacting with others.

Developmental

Jones, Collins & Hong (1991)

More smiles to mother than toys when mother was attentive. When an alternative audience was provided smiles were directed to that person if the mother was inattentive. But question remains as to how to disentangle emotional from social in these contexts.

Facilitation by imagined audiences

Fridlund (1991b) movie watch led to p295 ‘ we direct private displays at imagined others and these others are more available in imagination when they are sharing a similar experience’

Moderation of audience effects – when rather than whether other people increase or reduce facial movements.

F ‘ facial displays are always other directed’ p296. However interaction with others involves complex factors which area rarely investigated or taken into account message content

Facial movement other than smiling eg wincing. Bavelas et al, 1986 staged dropping a monitor onbto already bandaged finger. Wincing more likely when full on face to face interaction. KRO – is wincing a basic emotion?

Message appropriateness

P298 ‘ message appropriateness is a function of both the recipients identity and message content’

P299 ‘ display rules, social motives and emotions do not always represent mutually exclusive categories of phenomena that can be manipulated independent of one another’

Emotions v Social motives

P301 ‘ neither social motives nor emotions should be seen purely as private mental states. Both help to motivate action and play themselves out in the course of unfolding trans actions There is overlap between them they should not be seen as competing explanations of facial movements’

P303 P concluded that ‘ happiness does not seem to be a necessary or sufficient condition for Duchenne smiling (AU6+AU12) and Duchenne smiling does not provide cohesive evidence that the smile is happy’ ? also how to define happy p 303 ‘ no definitive empirical support for Ekman’s basic assumption that some facial movements are direct and spontaneous expressions of emotion’

What do facial movements really mean?

P305 ‘ it may be that facial movements have their origins in various practical actions, but that does not necessarily mean that evolution, culture, or some combination of the two have not co-opted them for other uses, so that their action relevance loses its centrality’ recognises Ekman’s distinction between spontaneous and deliberate.

Some have argued that facial movement has a rhetorical purpose but P see this as overstretched.

p306 ‘ facial communication carries two advantages that make it particularly suitable for some emotional purposes’

(i) not dependant on turn taking – rather provides ‘ a continuous stream of action and information that is attuned ( or disattuned) to corresponding streams generated by other people. For this reason, they can respond to, and affect, others’ relational positions on a moment-by-moment basis’

(ii) ‘ the connection between faces and some of the actions that they perform is less arbitrary and more direct than between verbal signifiers and their referential objects’ ‘if someone else is looking intently in a certain direction our immediate impulse is to look there too’

Wikinomics summary

Wikinomics (2006)

Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams

Publisher: Portfolio

Peering and collaboration

current day web is full of participation ‘harness the new collaboration or perish’

set to drive innovation in business

wellbeing, futures etc need to prepare people for this world not just give them a glimpse

Amateurs disrupting many activities previously the provence of professionals

For example, p65 Wikipedia as peer production’ eg Wikipedia & London bombing super fast dissemination of uncensored accounts.

‘thousands of dispersed volunteers can create fast, fluid & innovative projects that outperform those of the lasgest and best financed enterprises’

p12

‘ a world where value creation will be fast, fluid, and persistently disruptive’

Four principles

P30

1. Openness
2. Peering
3. sharing
4. acting globally

does peering need modularity?

opportunity to self organise

p33

‘realignments of competitive advantage’

example p38

description of Flikr ‘Flikr provides the basic technology platform and free hosting for photos ( more sophisticated services are available by subscription). Users do everything else…… They create their own self organising classification system for the site. They even build most of the applications that members use to access, upload, manipulate and share their content. And increasingly users license their photos for non commercial use’

Influence of the Net Generation

Consider a different take on the Net generation by combining with the new web

New web + Net Gen p46 ‘ bring a new ethic of openness, participation and

interactiveness’…. ‘ a demographic engine of collaboration’

New web influences

Tag = metadata = data about data

P41 tagging collaboratively leads to folksonomy

P42 del.icio.us – a way to remember in public

p42 ‘ convergencies around tags naturally happen’

peer to peer opinion is the influence rather than mass media & marketing

p52 Net – gen ‘renegotiate the definitions of copyright and intellectual property’

‘ the ability to remix media, hack products, or otherwise tamper with consumer culture is their birthright’

273 ‘the 3 golden rules –

1. nobody owns it
2. everyone uses it,
3. anyone can add services to it

are what distinguish the internet from previous communication mediums’

Net generation influences

240 ‘as young people enter the workforce they bring high –technology adoption, creativity, social connectivity, fun and diversity to the companies they work for’

Wikis & Wikipedia

‘p72

‘wiki’ as a concept invented by Word Cunningham in March 1995’

Wiki can be an organisational memory

John Seely Brown – wikis as a bottom up phenomena. Allow a share in control (and therefore enable to trust), ease and efficient collaboration.

p255 evolve flexibly because ‘ at their most basic they are completely unstructured’

p256

Allows for point of time dependent granularity amongst contributors.

‘wikis compel teams to engage in a constant state of rapid prototyping’

Open source movement influences

P82

IBM supporting Linux and also Apache ‘ its partnering and collaboration skills and its specific knowledge of how to manage relationships with communities it does not directly control are strategic tools competitors have yet to master’

p278 ‘openness does up the ante it drives real value to the fore and forces every company to competeon a level playing field’

Prosumption ( Don, 1996) ‘gap between consumers and producers is blurring’

e.g. Second Life. Linden lab provides ? , users provide the rest and also content by coproducing. ( “Linden lab gets up to 23.000 hours of free development effort from eirts users each day’

P127

• Big impact with fewer resources, scales in a way that centrally designed systems cannot,
• benefits from feedback loops that are difficult for competitors to reverse
• innovates more rapidly
• engages stakeholders, loyal communities – because they have control

‘the new prosumers treat the world as a place for creation not consumption’

p128 ‘ by the modification that they make lead users serve as a beacon for where the mainstream market is headed’

p136

Apple (ipod) and Sony(Playstation) don’t encourage product hacking but for how long? As technology savy becomes the norm.

P143 Youtube ‘ millions of members relish the opportunity to heap praise on the clever videos whilst the less clever get seriously flamed.

P145 digg – news items that anyone can post to ‘news has become a social pastime’

Web mashups

P191 on mobile devices ‘the combination of maps and search technology (web mashup) will serve as a key linkage between physical and virtual worlds.’

P201 there is the potential to use mashups etc to get value from public information.

Impact on business and organisations

P236 ‘ companies with the capability to orchestrate collaboration on a global scale are still few in number’ – ‘there will be handsome rewards for those who learn the subtle art of weaving together the skills and competencies of disparate players to create globally integrated ecosystems for designing and making physical things’

240 ‘ increasingly employers are using blogs, wikis and other new tools to collaborate and form adhoc communities across departmental and organisational boundaries’ ‘ the result is number of deep, longterm transformations in the culture, structure, process and economics of work’

Geek squad example

Wear black & white including the VWs leads to ‘ branding and smart hiring aside, Stephens has learned to engage his agents in a continuous process of innovation & improvement that keeps the agents motivated to perform at the highest level’

Geek squad organiser Stephens had set up a wiki but found that geeks self-organised by playing Battlefield

P243 ‘instead of trying to set an agenda I’m going to try and discover their agenda and serve it’

Personal broadcasting

P251 ‘drilling holes through the hierarchy of an organisation can produce great results’

Consider that there are 5 work place functions -: teaming, time allocation, decision making, resource allocation , communications

Teams:

Amazon – 140,000 volunteer developers are building applications and businesses

Wikipedia – 16.000

Thousands on Linux

All three lots o teams are highly federated and highly flexible.

In contrast take a traditional model such as the US military. There are 150 members of a team as standard and considered optional for an operating unit

Time allocation;

Google give 20% time to ‘goof off” leads to personal projects that are not on the Google roadmap and these turn out to be the very projects that are actually adopted by Google

Good metaphors:

• work place of the past, a military band; workplace of the future , improvised jazz.
• To the Net generation computer is not a box but a doorway

p209’ when McEwen ( Goldcoys mining) released proprietary data on the Internet and challenged the world to do the prospecting, he transformed a lumbering exploration process into a modern distributed gold discovery machine.

p280 need to ‘devise control points and collaborative processes for weeding out poor contributions and assembling end products’

How can orgs and businesses get collaboration right

288

• make sure that all individuals can harvest some value; remember there will be diverse motivations so value will be diverse
• keep barriers to participation low
• abide by community norms ( Wikipedia set a good example here)
• let the process evolve

Interesting other

Lego example

p130

‘Lego uses mindstorms.lego.com to encourage tinkering with its software ‘ now consumer services extended to Lego bricks, Downloadable 3-D modelling program to allow the design of a virtual toy’

How to personalise health management?

SNPs ( singler nucleotide polymorphisms) landmarks posted at or near genes lead to catalogue of slight but important genetic variations lead to susceptibility/resilience. Knowledge of these can potentially lead to personalised health care/advice.

Useful stuff from Wikinomics

Usefuls

OCW.mit.edu for all MIT’s Open Course ware

Dannah Boyd – Berkeley – Blogs on the Net generation

Taking IT Global – Global UN of the Young – v. active SN site

p77

‘Wikis harnessed for profit’ eg wikihow, Shopwiki, Wikitravel.

Open source – Apache (server), Linux (OS), MySQL(database), Perl/PHP(programming language)

P88

Second wave of Open Source

‘How to integrate all the component bits of Open Source’ led to Spike source and ‘Automated test framework’ integrates and tests and produces something they call a stack

Innocentive – an ebay for searching or providing innovative solutions, can be used anonymously.

Yet2.com a place where companies can post underutilized assets.

p141

Creative Commons ( Launced 2002) www.creativecommons.org‘ offers content creators flexible licences for managing their creative rights’ ‘provides licences that allow you to protect your copyright ownership while allowing others to make derivative works’ can apply stipulations eg no commerce. Allows sharing text, pics, databases - anything

Ccmixter.org- mashup platform for remixing CC licensed content.

Webmasups e.g. combine houses for sale with google maps

Skype has been sold to ebay

Netscape became Firefox

Google maps is a software module

Amazon is a transaction engine

Socialtext – supply social computing technologies ( especially wikis ) to enterprises

World Community grid- donate spare computer power

Organisational spam

Parkinson 2008 emotions direct and indirect interaction

Parkinson, B. (2008)

Emotions in direct and remote social interaction:  Getting through the spaces between us

Computers in Human Behavior, 24, 1510-1529

 

Mostly a theoretical paper whose overall intention p1512 ‘to clarify the ways in which emotion interlock with other psychological and social processes in ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ distributed social arrangements’.

Authors’ s view of emotion –p1512 ‘ emotions are episodic modes of evaluative engagement with the social and practical world rather than simply responses to events’ As defined it differs from an attitude in the way that it lacks the durability of the latter.

 

(Parkinson, 2005) p1518 ‘emotion expressions achieve their communicative meaning in the dynamic context of their use and have no one to one correspondence to underlying emotional states’ and supports this by the following argument p1518 ‘ For example, faces thought to be direct expressions of one emotion may be interpreted as indications of another when presented in other contexts (Carroll & Russell, 1996) – KRO need to follow this up and question it

 

Phrases

P1510 ‘calibrating their presentation with other people’s responses’

P1511in online environments ‘ context-based interpretations may become miscalibrated and ineffective’

P1511 ‘ information loss opens up the opportunity for selective emphasis or concealment’ 

 

Theoretical background – Emotion as relational alignment

Relation-alignment perspective  (Parkinson, Fischer & Manstead (2005)– p1511 ‘which formulates emotions as modes of engagement with the social (and practical) world’   and has the underlying assumption ‘ many of our emotions are intrinsically attuned to the actual, anticipated, or imagined reactions of others’ rather than as an essentially private experience. Parkinson argues that the emotional experience gains meaning because of with interactions with others. P1515 ‘ emotions serve to influence others……. By inducing moment-by-moment adjustments in relational stances’ ‘ emotion exerts an effect because interactants know how the emotional episode is meant to unfold’

Uses anger as an example emotion ‘ the course of anger episodes depends on the dynamic availability of different kinds of interpersonal feedback’ but context is relevant ‘ real time anger episodes encourage direct non verbal adjustment whereas remote context rely on ‘shared and negotiable emotion scripts’

Sees development of emotion from the unconscious response to a triggers in childhood (prereflective) to one orientated to an emotional script as determined by society/culture (articulated).  In this way p1513 ‘ the implicit ( prereflective) and explicit (articulated) modes of anger often interpenetrate during adult interaction, but the balance between them varies’

 

Emotion reciprocation as part of relational alignment

P1514 ‘the other person’s interlocking role in the relational process also needs to be considered’ the other will adopt a relational position.  p1514 -1515 it may be that ‘interactants approach the emotion’s object from different angles and end up in discrepant emotional stances however there are also many circumstances in which interpersonal emotions converge to arrive at a shared mode of engagement’ e.g. social referencing between carer and child

 

P1515

‘one of the advantages of prereflective non verbal communication is that it is not always susceptible to the turn taking conventions of verbal dialogue.  Two or more people’s emotions may influence each other continually over time, rather than there being a back-and-forth exchange of emotional information’ – ‘ mediated communication may disallow this mode of operation’

 

Effect of mode of contact – channel constraints

 

Note: table on p1517 as an orientating framework

P1516 considers ‘ the emotional implications of signals and actions that are misinterpreted because differences in perspectives are not adequately factored in’

Influential factors include,

1. medium (modality availability, sequentiality, temporal resolution) note effects of uncertainty of reception, absence of immediate feedback
2. relational (calibration of contexts, relationship)
3. task

 

context  and illusions of transparency

Gilovich et al (1998) argue p1519 ‘ that people suffer from an illusion of transparency leading them to believe that there emotions are more detectable than they really are’ ‘ the illusion operates most strongly when there is increasing remoteness between the interactants’ therefore ‘ a general sense may develop that others are not appropriately acknowledging and responding to one’s own emotional state’ i.e. miscommunication or miscalibration due to the limitation on prereflective adjustment

 

Uses anger while driving to illustrate the points made in this paragraph

‘ the apparent intensification of anger presentations that take place when interactions take place between drivers arise partly because a remote medium of calibration and communication is treated as transparent and directly analogous to the kinds of face to face interactions that occur when people are in close proximity to each other’

 

Timing

Parkinson & Lea work on effects of timing lags.

P1522 ‘ Chartrand & Bargh (1999)  ‘demonstrated that mirroring another person’s movement results in smoother interaction and liking for the other person.  Furthermore precisely matching the timing of the other can contribute to the development of shared effect’ Bernieri & Law (1991) ‘have suggested that people engaged in face-to-face interaction may establish rapport by implicitly synchronising their gestures and expression with one another’

 

Channel constraints and compensating or even exploiting them for them

Constraints:

-  Reduction in social cues ( Rutter, 1987)

-  Perceptions of interpersonal contact (social presence) Short et al, 1976 leads to flaming -  Keisler et al, 84, Sroull & Keisler, 1986) p1523 ‘ it has been suggested that the omission of nonverbal cues that might otherwise disambiguate senders’ intentions may lead to misinterpretations and extreme reactions.’ 

 

Compensations:  disadvantage is not an inevitable consequence of reduced channels because what has gone missing for senders has also gone missing for receivers and p1524 ‘so might be exploited as an advantage’

‘ reworking articulated representations of how emotion is communicated in different communicative contexts helps to alleviate negative effects’

Parkinson suggests emoticons (‘an explicit signal to substitute for prereflective emotion’’ to disambiguate and therefore avoid miscalibration and therefore behaviours like flaming. KRO- but that assumes that it has the same influence which of course stems from his approach to emotion.

 

illusion of transparency   Satvitsky & Gilovich (2003) suggest raising awareness of this illusion in online contexts p1523 ‘ allowed them to appreciate the possibilities for concealing their anxieties from others’

 

also p1523 research from a social identity perspective suggests that a relative lack of social cues can also lead to more than less normative behaviour when the salience of personal identity is low (personally anonymous communication) but the salience of social identity ( group membership) is high ( Lea & Spears, 1991)’

 

Strategic presentation of emotion

 

P1525 ‘ is it real  (KRO – hasn’t really addressed what he means by real in this article )or simulated emotion that is being presented by the strategist?’ “One answer is that its dynamic attunement to other people’s responses may make it more real over time.  An idea supported by evidence from emotional labour research

 

Strategic presentation and emotional labour

Hochschild (1983) and effects on air craft crew ‘ If I pretend I’m feeling really up, sometimes I actually cheer up and feel friendly’ Instructing air hostesses to pretend that they are in their own living room p1525 ‘ in terms of relation alignment approach, this kind of emotion work means deliberately applying an articulated emotion-relevant script to a situation that would normally have other emotional implications’ Without  ‘real’ context and social cues it may be easier to reformulate our relations with others (imaginative projection)  and may explain how it is possible to be a debt collector or military person.