[IxDA Discuss] Living in a User Generated World

Wed Feb 14 07:34:43 PST 2007

Happy to give you that reference, Marijke!

And thank you for your thoughts. I think you're right, about the dying
community that needs a critical mass. I've managed a private listserv for 6
years that spun off from another after 9/11, in what was 10 years ago a
vital interactive online community focused on a central reason for being,
but all with intelligent women, so its topics ranged all over the map, and
were often of a meaty length. Now we are all sort of drifted to distance,
but still using the listserv to stay in regular "howdy" with the whole group
of our very good friends. I could go on on this topic (and I did, in a
dissertation), but I think we're on the same page. Strength of weak ties and
all that stuff.

The gendered participation percentage and other sociolinguistic studies in
computer-mediated communication comes from Susan Herring, a wonderful
scholar now I think at Indiana University. If you Google her, or check
Google Scholar, you should pull up the whole passel of stuff she did in the
1990s with some terrific listserv data. Every one of her articles addresses
some variant of these things, but I also cite the ones I find most valuable
in my dissertation bib, so let me grab those too... (she's done a good bit
more since this... this is current from my diss in 1998):

Herring, S. (1996). Posting in a Different Voice: Gender and Ethics in CMC.
*Philosophical Perspectives on Computer-Mediated Communication*. C. Ess.
Albany, NY, SUNY Press: 115-145.

Herring, S. (forthcoming). Politeness in computer culture: Why women thank
and men flame. Communicating In, Through,and Across Cultures: Proceedings of
the Third Berkeley Women and Language Conference, Berkley Women and Language
Group.

Herring, S., D. Johnson, et al. (1992). Participation in electronic
discourse in a "feminist" field. Locating Power: Proceedings of the Second
Berkeley Women and Language Conference, Berkeley, Berkeley Women and
Language Group.

Herring, S. C. (1992). Gender and Participation in Computer-Mediated
Linguistic Discourse, ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics
(October).

Herring, S. C. (1993). "Gender and Democracy in Computer-Mediated
Communication." *Computer-Mediated Communication. Special issue of the
Electronic Journal of Communication/la revue electronique de communication*
*3*(2): 1-16.

She's also a very nice lady, and would likely enjoy corresponding with you
about these topics.

Chris

On 2/14/07, Marijke Rijsberman <marijke at interfacility.com> wrote:
>
> Christine,
>
> >> But think instead about realms where people every day every day sit
> around
> >> and try to think of ways to encourage participation, not of "users,"
> but
> of
> >> students. I'm talking about classroom teachers.
>
> Very interesting post. Thanks.
>
> It seems to me that in an unmoderated user-generated world, measures of
> success must necessarily change. On a continuum from quality to quantity,
> they probably invariably slide over in the direction of quantity, because
> quantity of discussion becomes a sine qua non. Communities die with a
> contribution now and again, even if it absolutely fabulous. In other
> words,
> quantity of discussion becomes a necessary condition for quality of
> discussion. (This apart from whatever business model drives the community,
> which is likely agnostic about quality and highly interested in quantity.)
>
> On the other hand, the more drivel there is, the lower the incentive to
> make
> an investment in a well-thought-out contribution. Conundrum.
>
> I'd love to get the references to the listserv research that found that
> men
> protested female participation when it got above 21%.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Marijke
>
> Marijke Rijsberman
> Interfacility
> 650-868-3432
> www.interfacility.com
>
>
>
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>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com
> [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of
> Christine Boese
> Sent: Monday, February 12, 2007 2:13 PM
> To: discuss at ixda.org
> Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Living in a User Generated World
>
> What a great question, and nearly a rhetorical one, since it may be
> something that will always be with us, and perhaps remain unanswerable.
>
> I'd like to come at it from left field, from an area that might be
> instructive, even if it is outside the discipline as it is conventionally
> considered.
>
> Leading horses to water, but being unable to make them drink is one thing,
> and the blogsophere and social media as a force at all are evidence that
> quite a lot of horses are drinking, even with oppressive mass media
> conditioning for passive media consumption, going back decades.
>
> But think instead about realms where people every day every day sit around
> and try to think of ways to encourage participation, not of "users," but
> of
> students. I'm talking about classroom teachers.
>
> Understand, there are different kinds of classroom teachers, and the
> stereotypes for those different types abound, from "professor yellow-note"
> droning in the front of a big lecture hall (classic "sage on the stage")
> to
> your ever popular worked-to-death freshman composition teacher, or any
> teacher whose main job is to teach "skills" or a craft, like a one-on-one
> music teacher who gives lessons, a master carpenter working with an
> apprentice, or yes, the writing teacher whose primary job is not simply to
> bleed red on papers to punish you after the fact, but rather, to be a
> writing coach who has to teach something even more nebulous which must
> preceed good writing: critical and creating THINKING.
>
> You might say, yes, but teachers have a captive audience. The threat of
> the
> grade hangs over the heads of those who insist on attending a discussion-
> or
> skill-based classroom and merely filling a chair with a warm body. Yeah,
> right.
>
> Good teachers, good teachers who are trying to gently lead students to
> take
> greater initiative, to hold them to high standards of logic and reasoning,
> they don't BOSS a class, they act as a catalyst. The best classes happen
> when an open environment for discussion takes off on its own, and students
> start teaching each other, with the teacher as coach, or "guide on the
> side."
>
> Besides, that grade threat is non-existent in these days of rampant grade
> inflation and helicopter parents who think their precious darling is
> really
> attending some variant of gym class, where you get an A for just showing
> up.
> Especially in skills classes with little quantitative testing, because
> authoritarian garbage-in/garbage-out is antithetical to the very idea of
> the
> independent critical thinking values the class is trying to instill.
> According to helicopter parents, that means the class is "subjective," and
> everyone should get an A just for trying.
>
> So teachers can play the authoritarian heavy and stifle discussion by
> scaring students into cowering in their seats, or they can spend hours at
> conferences and inservice workshops, learning tricks to increase classroom
> participation and ACTIVE learning, the bits of sourdough starter that
> ferment a discussion and lead it to be of an intellectual quality that
> goes
> beyond, "Like, did Anna Nicole Smith O-D, or what?"
>
> So what have those teachers learned that participatory social media (and
> people who study computer-mediated communication, as well as the regular
> old
> face-to-face interpersonal communication) will want to know?
>
> One: men dominate discussions, online and off. Women are very often
> silenced
> by social forces. Back in the 1990s, some very good research into listserv
> discussions found men in the groups studied pitched fits and complained
> the
> "feminazis" were taking over whenever the participation of women started
> to
> go above 21%, a similar stat that's found in small group face-to-face
> communication as well.
>
> Two: silences should be honored as well as activity. It could be a matter
> of
> the squeaky wheel getting the grease, but even elementary school teachers
> will tell you that boys get called on more than girls, and demand more
> attention (and need more help with certain kinds of classes). Some argue
> this is a good reason for all-girls and all-boys schools, not because we
> believe separate but equal is anything remotely equal, but to give girls a
> chance to learn without having to turn into little Lady Macbeths and unsex
> themselves to get called on in the classroom.
>
> Silence, or thought and reflection, has value. Try that idea on in the
> fast-paced synchronous communication of a chat room If everyone is
> talking,
> who is listening?
>
> Or, alternately, all participation is not created equal. Classroom use of
> chatrooms (and I've analyzed these texts) can fill line after line with
> drivel and inane banter, but in a heady discussion in these spaces (and
> I've
> been in those also), different actors develop varying ethos through their
> speech acts, so that someone who talks and talks, but rarely says anything
> of value becomes just noise, while a thoughtful writer can utter a few
> lines
> with such clear reasoning as to persuade everyone else in an entire space,
> face-to-face or virtual, and turn a discussion in a more fruitful
> direction
> altogether. And such a person can also be shouted down, or  buried in the
> din. (see also, trolls, right?)
>
> So do you just want more participation, as in numbers of people spouting
> drivel? More cat blogs started and abandoned? Or do you want to encourage
> real and rich communities to develop, with members paying close attention
> to
> each others' words, creating dialogues that enrich and instruct, dialogues
> that advance our communal sense of understanding and knowledge in the
> world?
>
> Is the model for comments fields, blogs, and social media the Commons,
> with
> plenty of monster shouters standing on soapboxes, or is it Plato's
> Academy,
> with people walking around, trying out ideas, rigorously testing and
> weighing them, paying attention, listening, and participating?
>
> It's kind of a macro/micro thing. Numbers will never reveal the true
> quality
> of the participation/interaction. When we talk about "Many-to-Many," we
> can't fall into the mass media trap of over-generalization about
> demographic
> groups and name that as "interactivity." From 30,000 feet, it may look
> like
> "Many-to-Many," but when you get closer, it has to look like "One-to-One,"
> and never "One-to-Many," or, I would argue, it is not really
> interactivity,
> and is something else entirely.
>
> Chris
>
> On 2/12/07, Dan Williams <dgwillia at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I was recently reading a book about Modern Day Phobias and it got me
> > thinking, so I thought I would post a few questions to the group and see
> > what you guys thought....
> >
> > How do you get people to contribute in a User Generated World who are
> not
> > prone to contributing? How do you get people to blog, comment on your
> > site,
> > add video to youtube, join social networks etc etc?
> >
> > In the physical world I have been to a lot of meetings which have been
> > dominated by the extroverts within the group. How do we as designers
> > encourage everyone to contribute online even those who may initially not
> > feel comfortable doing so?
> >
> > Or do we actually even care about those that are not comfortable
> > contributing?
> >
> > I feel there must be design principles that can help to encourage
> > contribution. For instance developing an environment where all feedback
> is
> > valued, allow people to post anonymously etc etc. Any ideas?
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > Dan
> > ________________________________________________________________
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