Social Computing Session 4: Social Role, Capital, and Trust

There was a lot of material in these readings...to discuss I will be comparing and contrasting features from the two sites I chose, Citizendium (http://en.citizendium.org), hereafter refered to as CZ, and Care2 (http://www.care2.com).

The first concept discussed in our readings is that of "social role," in A Conceptual and Operational Definition of 'Social Role' in Online Community. People play many roles in their lives, different roles for different environments, situations, purposes. I found the discussion of structure and culture very interesting in this reading. There are roles that cross cultures, that are identifiable wherever one goes. I found the idea of roles in the online community intriguing as I hadn't really thought about roles online much as I base most of my social conceptions on real world interactions. I did find, however, that some sites have very clearly defined roles, while in others the structure is less identifiable. Take CZ as an example of the former. CZ is a reference site similar to the well known Wikipedia. One notable difference is that CZ requires that members be approved before they can begin to contribute to the site rather than being an end-user and the site has three very clearly defined roles. The authors are the majority of registered users, and are the people responsible for proposing and creating content. Editors are authority figures responsible for maintaining consistency and performing other editorial functions on the work of the authors. There is a second authoritarian role in CZ, the Constabulary (see screenshot above). These individuals oversee site policies and are a behavioral rather then editorial authority. In Care2, roles are less well-defined and more social-based, though one can proclaim one's activist status in terms such as "rabid" or "casual" in one's profile. One would assume that ones's actions would then need to back up that proclamation if one expects to gain and maintain social capital on the site.

Social capital...this concept is fascinating in that I found it astonishing that this could be measured to any satisfying degree. Color me surprised. I also found that the article, On and Off the 'Net: Scales for Social Capital in an Online Era, did a good job of identifying the positive and negative perspectives and also in labeling "bridging" and "bonding" as distinct types of social capital. It seems to me that both CZ and Care2 are both primarily involved in "bridging" in that they bring together people from all over to contribute and communicate about a particular topic or interest. Care2 offers some "bonding" characteristics in that I know my use of the site was instigated a little over a year ago in support of a petition put together by friends. There is also a singles area, where the site may act in part as a dating service, I don't know for sure because I am not registered with the singles area, but the description seems to indicate that it is a place to meet people whose values mesh, possibly leading to romantic relationships.

Trust is a big deal to me, especially when online, so I found these readings extremely valuable. Paolo Massa defines trust as "the explicit opinion expressed by a user about another user regarding the perceived quality of a certain characteristic of this user." The emergency management article didn't quite strike a chord for me, but the third trust related article, Forming Social Networks of Trust to Incentivize Cooperation certainly did. In particular I found the idea of reputation satisfying. CZ clearly attempts to build trust with it's users from the get-go, by insisting that producers of content use their real names and be approved by the site before they can contribute. The use of real names draws a clear connection between reputation in the virtual world and the real world. CZ also has clear avenues of enforcement of value and behavior in it's two authoritarian roles, the Editors and Constables. Care2 has multiple incentive mechanisms to build trust and reputation. These include "green stars," "butterflies," "testimonials," and "golden notes." These are all incentives posted to one's profile, either by fellow individual users (green stars, testimonials), the community (golden notes), or the site itself (butterflies - a record of one's activity on the site). The user and community generated incentives have clear social capital and trust worth, indicating that others in the community recognize and approve of a particular user. The butterflies, as automatically generated records of one's actions in particular areas within the site, are a true representation of a user's actions. Interestingly, the stars and butterflies are recorded in total permanently, but the icons actually "disappear" from a profile after a month. I found this an ingenious device for driving continued participation! By collecting stars and butterflies, testimonials and golden notes, a Care2 user has several incentive based tools to stay active and build a reputation on the site.

Overall I found this session enlightening and may include concepts discussed here in the final project. I am particularly interested in young (teen/college age) users and their perceptions of privacy and trust in their use of online resources.