"Social computing is an umbrella term for technologies and virtual spaces that allow users to create, describe, and share content and for the communities that arise around them" - Professor Gazan
Challenge: after completing our reading I believe that social computing is the above, and more. I find the impact of RL on the online environment and vice versa fascinating. Social computing is a tool that allows users to support exisiting offline social networks, as mentioned in the articles "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship" and "Blogging as Social Activity, or, Would You Let 900 Million People Read Your Diary." (Which, incidentally, I most emphatically would not!) Social computing is also a tool for expanding one's social network by providing access to other people one would most likely never have had an opportunity to meet offline until the Internet became more than a place to find information, but a place to find and interact with people. This is addressed to varying degrees in each reading.
A little introduction to my perspective: this class is my second deliberate foray into "social computing." The first, as I mention a little later, was within a localized "intranet" designed to support an existing offline community. My sisters, however, are relatively active social computers, using AIM, MySpace, Facebook, and other online and mobile forums to enhance and expand their social networks. They are eight and twelve years younger than I. I am also among the last of my own peer group to really get in on the online social ride.
The concept of the Internet as a social environment as opposed to a repository of information leads to the dilemmas discussed in "Online Databases - Web 2.0: Our Cultural Downfall?" I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Keen in that the social aspects of computing can create a potentially devastating failure of the Internet as a place to find reliable, trustworthy, and accurate information. My youngest sister and her peers are only fifteen and sixteen and yet they are already utterly cynical when it comes to finding information online.
That cynicism is, in fact, one of my reasons for continuing my education with an MLIS program. I think it is vital that we learn to identify good sources, to distinguish between the trustworthy content and the untrustworhty, and that we teach others to do so. Our readings "Blogging as Social Activity," "Bridging the Gap," and Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0" all indicate that there are some really exciting elements to sharing information online. K-logs, while shown to be a relatively low percentage in the sample researched in "Bridging the Gap," are great forums for sharing ideas and knowledge in and among businesses and institutions. In my position with a large health care organization we used a blog to link everyone in the organization in a fast-paced energetic and ultimately highly useful discussion surrounding the need for and developement of an electronic health record. The blog allowed the IS team, leadership, clinicians, consultants, and support staff to communicate, with ideas and suggestions coming from some surprising directions. Wikis, too, are great places for knowledge to be shared and revised, especially in areas that are growing and changing too quickly for conventional information sharing methods to effectively keep up. Several of our readings lamented the existence of this time lag.
My biggest fears regarding the online social reality are identified in the Library Journal article by Carol Tenopir and in "A Rape in Cyberspace." In the first article the writer shows that there are multiple instances of organizations and individuals deliberately manipulating online perceptions to further their own agendas. The second exposes the problems with effectively preventing and/or punishing an individual or group who uses an online persona to cause harm. This is also illustrated with the recent MySpace Suicide case. How do we classify online misrepresentation and abuse? The line between RL and VR can be thin, and for some it is non-existent. How can we possibly predict how someone will react to a VR situation as an RL person? How do we identify the truth among the real? The information, feelings, and opinions posted in the online social environment are all real. They may not be true, but they are real.
In conclusion, I cannot yet verbalize my own definition of social computing but will continue to think on it. I think the thumbnail definition provided by Professor Gazan is excellent, and sufficient for the most part, but I'd like to put in something about the relationship between online and offline social interactions and how they are linked and impacted by social computing. Our need to communicate with existing offline networks and to reach out to the world at large is facilitated by the online environment. Humans are, after all, physical and social creatures.
LTH 01/18/2009
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I don't have a lot of experience with research specifically focused on how teenagers use the Internet--the usual portrayal is that they'll dive enthusiastically and uncritically into whatever is new, but your post ascribes some cynicism to them regarding finding information online--what did you mean by that? That they can't find what they want, or that what they find is never to be trusted? On other folks' blogs I've mentioned 'cyber-bullying' as the catch-all term for cases like the MySpace suicide case--I'm afraid the "Rape in Cyberspace" article was only one of the earliest reports of what has become an increasing stream of cases of virtual brutality. If a virtual attack affects your real life, is that the yardstick for prosecution?
ReplyDeleteMy sisters and their peer groups (high school and college age groups) do typically "dive enthusiastically...into whatever is new", but I wouldn't say that they do so uncritically. They are constantly debating the merits of sites in comparison to others, the prime example right now being an ongoing debate about the relative value of MySpace vs Facebook. I do know that in trying to help them with homework they tend to be reluctant to use the internet as a reliable source of information. I am not sure whether it is that they can't find what they want or need or if it is that they do not trust it. It may be a combination of both. I am also not sure how much their teachers and professors encourage and educate them to use or learn to use the internet as a resource. I know I did not receive any formal training in research techniques as applied online; mostly I learned to adapt RL research skills to the online environment while doing research for various undergrad and personal projects.
ReplyDeleteHi, Linnea. You and I share another course this semester, LIS 670 with Donna. You were talking about this class this past Thursday and my ears perked. I'm Jo Ann. Hi!
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate the questions you posed in your response. A friend and I debated the idea about how victims of any kind of crime are chosen. We wondered too about the behaviors of online users and how they become targets of cyber-bullies. Are cyber-bullies bullies in real life? My likely answer is that we mirror our existing RL personalities online. I think we have more options as to the amount of information we reveal or we can elaborate a little more....
It seems that the prevailing question that comes from Professor Gazan is about how we prosecute online crime. At the high school I work, there was a time when our administrators monitored online activities to assure safety at our school. YouTube was a favorite of kids who published fights among the different groups of kids. Admin came down heavily on some of the participants and owners of the accounts. There, VR and RL became one in the same. Some teenagers have a difficult time delineating between the two, or choose not to.
What a great research project that'd be...teens and cyberspace.
I thought your comment about adding to the definition something about the "relationship between online and offline social interactions and how they are linked and impacted by social computing" was very interesting. I had never thought about it in those terms. With the various cases of teens who have been negatively impacted over online communities as well as the positive impacts it has on "offline life" adding that to the definition seems only appropriate. How we interact online and offline affects the other. I was a high school teacher and it was always interesting to see how the students integrated those two worlds.
ReplyDeleteThere was a blog post I came across discussing the prediction of nobel prize winners based on google pageranks (http://arxivblog.com/?p=1123). The author was suggesting that patterns form in citations across published papers that can be used to identify future winners with some probability.
ReplyDeleteI understand Keen's reasoning suggesting the decreasing quality of information as a result of Web 2.0 but his points are one sided and don't provide an assessment of the advantages. As technology has eased the burdens of content availability and content creation (quality aside), the same technology has also created mechanisms that allow users to assess the quality of available information and then allow these assessments to be aggregated and made available to provide some assurance of usefulness. This could be direct or indirect (as with the google pagerank example).
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ReplyDelete(Sorry, deleted post had an error.)
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you say that the teenagers you know are "cynical" - that points backward from the common thread I heard in college that students were using non-scholarly internet sources more or less continually. I think it points to the importance of information literacy as a whole, because there are great sources on the internet if you know how to properly judge the authenticity of information. Being able to critically judge any source is important, both online and offline.
I think the Web broke down an Ivory Tower where only those with some sort of power (news media, famous persons, etc) could profess their opinions and views of events. That power can be localized too - they were just talking about on the Daily Show how those in the Middle East see a different viewpoint of Israeli-Palestinian conflicts (with more bloody footage) than those of the US do. But now we can go online and find that information and those pictures if we wish. The negative part of this information freedom is that wrong and biased footage is everywhere.
"My youngest sister and her peers are only fifteen and sixteen and yet they are already utterly cynical when it comes to finding information online."
ReplyDeleteWhat were you specifically referring to in that statement? That they can't find the information that they need online?.. or that they don't trust what they find? Naively, I just assumed any teenager who surfs the Internet will trust whatever they find, and that any link or image is automatically fact, and it's more important that they pass this information to others rather than consider its validity. The fact that they would question "authority" (not in a teenage rebelling way, but in doubting the truth of a statement) is something I had not considered.
I think social computing does need to be more than just bringing our offline world online, as you described how you do research. Education, even at the high school level, would help many people benefit from using online systems. An example in your MySpace/Facebook debate, these (or any) SNSs have helped people contact and stay in touch with many friends who they would not normally speak to. From an egocentric perspective, you would obviously stay in touch with your close friends and family if SNSs didn't exist, but how many of your "weaker" friends would you hear from on a regular basis?
For the past week, I had time to reflect upon my own definition of social computing. I tend to agree with you that the thumbnail definition provided by Professor Gazan was good for a overall general description. Although I tweaked the definition a little, I think I was a little premature in offering up a new definition, as I too have had difficulty in verbalizing it.
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