Comm 245 Red

Bonus Blog: Predictions for the Future

2007-12-07T16:00:00.000-05:00

After learning about the Psychology of Social Computing this past semester, it is evident that many of the theories/phenomena we discussed will remain relevant in years to come while others will need to be altered as rapid changes in technology occur.

The Media Richness Theory is one theory that I think will hold true. According to the Media Richness Theory, people use richer media (FTF) for more equivocal tasks and leaner media for less equivocal tasks (CMC). I think that this theory will remain true because in time, the focus on efficiency has increased. If you think about society today people rarely use the phone anymore (a richer media) for quick questions. Instead, there is text messaging and even blackberries have made it possible to send quick emails. In time, I predict the focus on efficiency will only increase and CMC communication will be utilized even more often for unequivocal tasks.

The phenomena of online social networks will also hold true. Haythornwaite explains that online communities are like one big in-group. Gemeinschaft or a community is based on strong interpersonal ties, shared focus or purpose and common language identity. I think as technology increases, online communities will become even stronger and greater. People will be able to connect with similar others despite location differences. Especially with our generation and the use of facebook, keeping in touch with people from the same school is now possible as a result of CMC. Even moving out of the transfer center sophomore year, I was able to stay in touch with many of my friends and make plans to see them face to face through social networking. As more people log online and more online networks are created, I think that technology will play a large role in connecting people of similar interests around the world. I think social support groups will also increase in time as more people become familiar with the internet.

My prediction is that as our society becomes more technologically advanced, the hyperpersonal model will not be as relevant. The hyperpersonal model predicts that after an initial interaction in CMC, a person will rate their CMC partner on fewer characteristics and these ratings will be more intense or exaggerated. As skpe, youtube and other video sites become more popular, I think chatrooms, instant messages, facebook will begin to apply this technology and as a result the difference between FTF and CMC impression formation will decrease. The basis behind the hyperpersonal model is that there are “limited social and interpersonal cues” in CMC. However, if real-time video use increases, social and interpersonal cues will be more recognizable over CMC. Selective self presentation will be more difficult because now you will be able to see the person and the ability to mask your negative traits and nonverbal cues will not be as easy.

I also think that the use of CMC for digital deception will change as a result of an increase in technology. People use CMC for digital deception because there are less cues, users can take more time and edit remarks before sending. I think that message and identity deception will decrease because using CMC will become more similar to interacting FTF. As I explained before, the use of video will make deception more difficult. I also predict that the use of the internet will become more synchronous in all respects. Instant feedback has become a necessity in society and this makes it harder to deceive another online.

The use of video technology will need to be addressed. When it is appropriate to have an online FTF interaction and when is it not necessary is certainly an issue. I could see instant messaging in the future turning into some kind of FTF video interaction but I do not think this may be necessary for changing email or facebook. Also, as CMC is used more often, an issue that must be addressed is assuring FTF interaction does not decline. As kids spend more and more time on the internet instant messaging and playing games, society needs to make sure this does not take away from everyday social activities.

I thoroughly enjoyed COMM245 and I think that what we learned about is very relevant to society today. Currently, I am writing a thesis on the use of facebook and social network sites by employers and I would be interested to know the extent that these sites are being used to find out more information about potential and current employees. Overall, thanks for a great semester!

Bonus Blog: The Future of Psychology of Social Computing

2007-12-07T00:25:00.000-05:00

With the rapid rate at which technology is growing and changing today, it is hard to predict what will happen in the future. Although, it seems like most of the aspects of the hyperpersonal model will continue to hold. This model has been consistently referred to in our Comm 245 class. The hyperpersonal model utilizes the technological aspect of computer-mediated communication to assist in forming relationships and impression management. One aspect from the hyperpersonal model that will be continually used in the future is selective self-presentation. Individuals will intentionally select positive and desirable cues to present while minimizing physical and behavioral cues. This makes sense because people strive to be liked so we want to present positive features about ourselves rather than negative ones. In addition, the Media Richness Theory will continue to exist since people will seek to find the optimal match between equivocality of a communication task and the richness of the medium. Although there may be some exceptional cases, in general, lean media is good for unequivocal tasks. Media richness theory says that sometimes lean media, where there are reduced cues, is better in certain situations and in other situations, a richer media is better. Depending on what we aim to accomplish, we will use certain media over others.

In the future, I think the use of videoconferencing and audio chatting will become more popular and our technological (CMC) world will be more and more similar to our FtF world. The lack of visual cues and vocal cues that CMC has today will be greatly reduced. With this in mind, I think that CFO is one of the theories that will cease to exist in the future. We have continually come across examples that disprove the cues-filtered-out perspective in class. CFO says that the reduction of social cues produces negative outcomes but we have found examples where people have developed positive, intimate relationships. In addition, I think one of the dimensions of psychological spaces, anonymity, will be reduced with the increase in social networking sites and the possible increase of videoconferencing and audio chatting. In class, we learned that anonymity is the degree to which the space reveals participant identities with sub-dimensions, which include visibility, audibility, and self-expression. In the past 20 years, we have already developed many ways to reduce the anonymity dimension online, such as social networking sites, and it only seems reasonable to assume that it will be continually reduced with more advanced technology that can allow for more social interaction.

I think that as technology continues to rapidly increase, we will have more cases of problematic internet usage. When I looked for articles about internet addictions, I found the following describing the current issues with Internet usage. “More psychologists are plunging into Internet addiction research, fascinated by its emotional, psychological and social implications. In their work, they are finding a subset of people who spend so much time online, especially in sexual encounters, that they report problems in their marriages, families and work.” People’s internet lives are greatly affecting their FtF lives and their relationships with others. This may become more of a problem in the future.

In addition, issues regarding social network websites like Facebook will need to be addressed as it is becoming more popular. Employers have already developed ways to look at interviewees’ (college students) profiles and their backgrounds. However, students do not create their Facebook profiles knowing their potential employer will see it but for other students to see.

One issue that I think should be discussed in Comm 245 is illegal downloading of music, movies, tv shows, etc. Among Cornell students, it is very frequent for students to go to DC++ to download songs they want or a new episode of some tv show they like to watch. In addition, it would be interesting in the future to talk about the growing popularity of iPhones and Blackberry and how they affect social interaction and relationships.

Article quoted: http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr00/addiction.html

12: The Decline of Anonymity

2007-12-04T22:03:00.001-05:00

Eight years after Patricia Wallace’s book, The Psychology of the Internet, was first published, the students of COMM245 considered Wallace’s ideas as we studied the psychology of social computing throughout this semester. Since the Internet is a rapidly changing space, we found that some of Wallace’s ideas were no longer as relevant (e.g. emphasizing MUDs) and there were other Internet spaces that she did not anticipate (e.g. social networking sites). Similarly, as our use of the Internet continues to change, certain theories and phenomena we have learned about will hold true while others will need to be altered.

Anonymity, or the degree to which the space reveals participant identities, is an important dimension of various spaces on the Internet. This dimension can be influenced by visibility, audibility, and self-expression. I believe that CMC will become less and less anonymous over time. Perhaps the use of video conferencing and audio chat will become more widely utilized as CMC becomes a primary means of communication rather than a compliment or prerequisite to other mediums. I’ve recently noticed some small changes that show hints of individuals opening up online, such as adding a picture of themselves as their buddy icon. Maybe in the future it will become more acceptable to align face-to-face and CMC even more—and therefore have less emphasis on anonymity. As the Internet becomes less anonymous, various communication theories that relate to anonymity (SIDE, etc.) will need to be adapted.

Aside from how we are visibly seen and audibly heard through CMC, I believe our identities will be kept less anonymous on the Internet due to the increasing amount of information becoming available online. One of McKenna’s (2007) relationship facilitation factors referred to as “getting the goods” discusses the ability to get information about others online through areas such as Google, Facebook, etc. prior to meeting face-to-face. The more information that individuals are able to find out about others—the less control individuals will have over how they present themselves while communicating online.

Selective self-representation, an attribute of Walther’s (1996) Hyperpersonal Model entails that various spaces on the Internet allow individuals to control which of their personal characteristics are expressed to others and have the ability to emphasize their desirable characteristics while hiding others. Selective self-presentation may become less applicable in the future since we may people will be able to find out a great deal about us through the Internet. This aspect can be tied into theories relating to online attraction, digital deception, and social associations.

I believe that in the future there will be more emphasis on synchronicity online, leading individuals to be expected to interact in real time and therefore have less time to carefully craft their representations—further mimicking face-to-face interactions. I believe technology will keep changing to further replicate the face-to-face environment, eventually leading theories such as the Social Information Processing Theory to fade out, since individuals will truly be getting to know someone online in the same way as they would face-to-face.

In addition to revising theories as our use of the Internet changes, there will be new topics that will need to be addressed. As PDAs become even more widely used, I believe this technology will need to be addressed in COMM245. It would be interesting to apply the concept of Internet addiction to this area. Another important aspect to look at would be the consumption of various forms of news and information online. What sort of news or other information do individuals seek online rather than other mediums, and why? Furthermore, with the constant customization of websites to individual’s own tastes it would be interesting to look at social computing from a company’s perspective. What sort of tactics do they use to ensure that individuals will continue going back to their site?

Although I can’t be sure that any of my predictions will hold to be true in the future, I am sure of one thing—the social computing theories that I’ve learned in COMM245 will definitely change my view of my personal experiences using the Internet in the present and the future.

Extra Blog

2007-12-04T10:51:00.000-05:00

Learning more and more about CMC communication and online interactions it is becoming more and interesting to me to see how people are using the technology we have today because it is so much more vast an area than I ever thought. This makes be a little scared for the future, however. Seeing how technology is changing and growing in leaps and bound makes me fearful of a world where face to face interactions are at a minimum and your avatar interacts with more people than you do on a daily basis.
There are many theories that we learned about in 245 that I think will hold true in the future. This is because even as CMC technology changes it will not change the way people think or interact. Human nature will not be changing any time soon. Impression management will always be applicable because people will always desire to make themselves appear the way they want to appear and make the best impression possible. In the future there will probably be even more ways to selectively self present yourself. For example, not so long ago the idea of online dating profiles and avatars were unheard of let alone common. I believe that digital deception will still be a part of CMC because it is human nature to lie and the increase in the amount of communicating we do via CMC and the inevitable new ways will only make digital deception easier to pull off.
Media richness theory I believe will also still be applicable in the future because we ill never stop wanting to find the best, most efficient, and face saving means of communicating our message. It was probable even become more and more prevalent because efficiency becomes so much more important to us it seems as we find newer more efficient medium. For example, text messaging has increased the efficiency with which I communicate so much that I feel I am even becoming spoiled, wanting even more efficient media. Maybe telepathy will go mainstream soon, who knows.
I also think that the hyperpersonal model will continue to hold true. I think that as more and more people use online communication there will be a greater likelihood in your mind that you are talking to a normal person just like you and not a pedophile or thirty year old in his parents’ basement. Not only will it be human nature to make immediate judgments, the decrease in skepticism will cause more over attribution in those judgments.
I think that the CFO theory will probably become obsolete. CFO states that CMC communication leads to poor and negative impressions because of fewer cues. However, as we use CMC more and more a new set of cues will be emerging that our generation and future generations will be able to pick up as easily and with as much accuracy as we do in FtF interactions. Even take emoticons for example. Emoticons are relatively new but are already easily recognized and universally understood.
I believe that there will be a huge increase in technology and the amount that people communicate using CMC as well as more ways in which to do so. Being in the same place at the same time will most likely become less and less necessary. Businesses will surely find ways of using technology to their advantage. For example video conferencing is just one thing that is widely used now but not so long ago seemed like something out of the Jetson’s. Education will surely find new ways to utilize technology. I for one never thought that I would be doing homework assignments and posting them on an online blog for everyone to read. This course has made me curious as to how people will continue to communicate in the future and how we will use technology to make our lives easier.

12: The Future

2007-12-04T03:37:00.000-05:00

This course has shown me that the communication mediums and the internet are constantly evolving. The theories, psychological spaces, and systems set up today, will most likely be different in the future. Many of the thoeries we've learned throughout this semester will apply and adapt to the new mediums that we will have. However, there will also be some that I can not see lasting very long.

As long as there are channels which limit the amount of non-verbal cues, I believe that the Social Information Processing theory will hold true. The idea that over time, non-verbal cues will be adapted into the verbal channel can really be applied to any leaner medium in my opinion. Also, there will always be some forms of selective self presentation. I also feel that SIDE will still be able to be applied in many areas. However, visual anonymity will be a lot rarer in the future. As social presence theory states, greater bandwith allows for more cues. Since bandwith can only go up from here, and it is already getting quite large, visual anonymity will play less importance into a lot of things. Many of the communication theories that existed before CMC was a part of this area of study will come back into play simply because the amount of cues available through CMC in the future will be drastically larger. This will also render the hyperpersonal model less effective, since this increase in non-verbal cues available in CMC will result in an increased breadth of our CMC partners. I feel that we will still form our impressions with increased intensity, but over time, as SIP states, this will sort itself out. The amount of time this takes will be much smaller as well with the richer forms of CMC that will be available in the future.

I predict instant messaging will evolve into almost the equivalent of FtF, and computers will become even more widely used in the future. Online social spaces. As such, I also believe that from a very young age people will start to be more accustomed with a computer-mediated form of communication with a large number of non-verbal cues. This will make deception harder, and CMC will most likely be close to as commonly used as FtF. The feature-based model of deception should still hold true, but will have to be adapted since the mediums will evolve.

As technology advances, I believe that more portable forms of computers will become available, making CMC something possible from any location. This will infuse it into our daily lives, and need to be taken into account in this field of study.

This was an interesting course that was a great introduction into the psychology of social computing. I feel that this field will become more and more prevalent as computers continue to evolve and become an everyday part of our lives. This course did a great job of exploring many theories/research, both old and new. However, I feel that it would have been nice to explore the application of many of these theories in the business world. There is undoubtly a large use of these studies by corporations and companies to try to achieve success. Also, I believe that as this blog is asking us to do, some class discussions on the future of CMC would also have been very beneficial. As phones become more and more advanced, I wonder if they will finally become as advanced as our desktop PCs. With the release of the iPhone, and google's new Android platform, they're already well on their way. I feel that this means of being connected with the internet wherever you go will have to be addressed in Comm245 in the future. Overall, the class did a great job of introducing us to this area of study, but as computers and CMC continually evolve, so will the subjects discussed in this course be forced to.

12 EXTRA BLOG

2007-12-04T01:12:00.000-05:00

During this semester in COMM 245, we have discussed numerous theories, some that I predict will hold in the future and some that I predict will change in the future. The Hyperpersonal Theory states that in CMC there is a reduction in breadth (rate a CMC partner on fewer characteristics) and an increase in intensity (more intense/exaggerated ratings of a CMC partner). In the future, people will talk more and more through CMC and become better at judging the person on the other computer. Therefore, people will not over-attribute others or give really intense ratings of a CMC partner; in the future, people will know better. Using the reasoning that people will talk more and more online and learn how to better judge a CMC partner, the Social Information Processing Theory will change as well. The Media Richness Theory states that communication media differ in the richness of the information processed, and efficiency equals the optimal match between equivocality of a communication task and the richness of the medium. I predict that the Media Richness Theory will hold true in the future and expand to new communication technologies. I predict that some theories we discussed in class will completely hold in the future. For example, the Social Distance Theory (which states that lying is uncomfortable and people use the most socially distant, or leanest, media to lie in, will remain unchanged in the future. This theory deals with human nature, and no matter what technologies are invented or what other theories are invented; this quality of people will remain unchanged and cause this theory to remain unchanged. In the future, gender signals during CMC will remain unchanged as well. Once again, these are human traits that will never change in the future. I also believe that the Caplan Model will become even more intense in the future. With new and more addicting technologies being created, people who have social problems in FtF communication will become more and more addicted to CMC with the creation of more addicting technologies.

There are a few new technologies that will need to be addressed in the future. The first one being Internet on your phone. Having Internet on your phone is like having Internet everywhere you go, and Internet on your phone is wireless. Another technology that goes along with this is instant message on your phone, such as Blackberry Messaging. I also think video-conferencing is another form of technology that needs to be addressed. For example, one of my lectures at Cornell had two professors. One of the professors lectured in the classroom, while the other one lectured through videoconferencing. He lived in New York City. Essentially, a professor who was not on the Cornell campus, but hundreds of miles away, was lecturing to the class.

COMM 245 did a wonderful job of teaching us how we communicate using different CMC technologies compared to FtF communication. The class allowed us to participate in what we were learning about by blogging online for our weekly assignments. I would have liked to learn more about the start of Internet. I also would have liked to know how the Internet has affected the economy; such as which jobs were lost because of the Internet and which jobs were gained. In conclusion, COMM 245 was a very interesting and informative class!

12 - Bloggerama

2007-12-04T00:21:00.000-05:00

What is it that we really like about blogs? It is because we finally get that chance to be that newspaper columnist that everyone listens to for advice? On the other hand, maybe it is because we finally get a chance to share our true feelings with hopes that someone will listen. Whatever the reason, it all comes back to the fact that bloggers want to be heard. Therefore, what is the future of blogs? It’s simple, as technology grows, so will the aspects of blogs including how we express our feelings or opinions online. With more pictures and simpler ways to make blogs and change the fonts and colors, blogs will become more personalized to the writer. Just look at how our class blog has tremendously expanded throughout the course in a span of only 4 months. Can you imagine what the future holds?

As a result, this will have an immense impact on some of the aspects of the theories that hold true today. For instance, the Social Presence Theory and Reduced Social Context Theory both address that CMC predominantly causes poorly developed, impoverished and even negative impression formation. However, with increased fonts and pictures, blogs will say more about the person than ever, making the impressions less impoverished than they are now. Whether or not the impressions are negative will vary, but more clues can do as much good as bad, telling more about the person and speeding up the slower impression formation in CMC that the SIP theory states.

As a result, this class will have to start teaching new ways to evaluate and get to know people online. For example, what the font size or color says not only about their gender or age, but also about their personality. Just like how people can read body language and tell a lot about a person’s character by their handwriting, a new book of decoding will have to be written for blogs. Currently, the class teaches about how a person’s language in emails can give clues to their gender, but what will be discovered about the visual clues in blogs revealing personality clues are limitless and fascinating.

Nevertheless, the aspect of anonymity is undeniably one of the most attractive incentives of the Internet. Therefore, there will always have to be a cap as to how much a blog really will tell about a person. Things might still develop slower than they will in FtF, but the future holds cooler blogs than ever, which means we will just have to become just as cool and step up to the plate to tackle the blogs of our future.

Bonus Blog Assignment: Show Me The Money

2007-12-03T21:40:00.000-05:00

As much as technology and social norms change, the theories we have learned will stay pretty much how they are. These same theories and phenomena might be applied differently as the Internet changes and grows, but they’re fundamental ideas and concepts will remain the same. This is because the basics of Internet interaction will never change drastically.

For instance, the CFO perspective, the Hyperpersonal model, and SIDE all deal with impression formation and relationship development. These concepts will always be relevant in their current forms because there will always be Internet users meeting new people. No matter what new technologies arise, or what new uses for the internet develop, people will always be interacting on the web. Thus, such theories will still apply.

Likewise, people will always need social support, there will always be two genders, and there will always be internet users who take their relationships and interactions offline, into reality. Most, if not all, of the theories we learned are broad enough, commenting on the entire Internet or general psychological spaces, that these elements of human nature, and thus the net, will continue to exist and be important.

One aspect of the Internet that will be explored heavily in coming years, and that this class did not cover, is commerce. There are so many people buying, selling, promoting, and researching on the Internet that it would be unwise for communication researchers to ignore this area of the Internet. How do people make financial decisions on the Internet, and is the process different that at physical stores? There is such a variety of commercial activity on the Internet that the opportunities for research and observation are almost limitless. Not only are new companies establishing themselves on the net, but also reputable businesses are expanding to include websites. Some companies use the Internet simply to promote their products and services, while others offer ways to make actual purchases.

Internet promotion takes many forms on the Internet. Vendors send emails to promote sales and new products, film studios release trailers on YouTube and similar sites, and small advertisements cover web pages of almost every kind.
The issue of Internet commerce, whether it differs from traditional purchasing activities, and if so, how, will become increasingly important in the years and decades to come. As the Internet, along with its number of users, grows, more will be possible on the Internet, especially in this area. This Internet space will be the subject of much future research.

Comments:

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/12/12-decline-of-anonymity.html

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/12/extra-blog.html

Bonus: Change by New Technology

2007-12-03T19:52:00.000-05:00

One of the theories that we learned in class that will always hold is the Media Richness Theory. Daft and Lengel (‘84) state that efficiency of communication will dictate which media people will use. With this fast pace society where productivity and work load have been increasing, efficiency is a huge part of life. Therefore, people will want to get that optimal match between equivocality and communication and will want to be efficient with their time. Furthermore, with new media of communications increasing to pop up in our society, such as the Blackberry and the iPhone, people will be able to even more efficient.

However, with the introduction of new software and technology, we will have to alter some theories as well. Some of these theories that will need to be changed are the CFO perspective, the Hyperpersonal model and the SIP theory. All these theories deal with impression management over CMC and the ambiguousness of the internet. However, with tools such as Facebook, Youtube and video chat/conferencing, where people are able to perceive Ftf cues, many of these theories will need to be changed. The CFO theory which predicts that communication over CMC will lead to poor and negative impressions will be negated with the introduction of new cues into the internet. Furthermore, the slow impression formation over the CMC that the SIP theory states, will also have to changed since all the impressions will form faster due to more cues. Finally, regarding the Hyperpersonal model, the breath of impression formation will increase due to more cues and, therefore, the intensity of the impressions will decrease over CMC.

Technologies that I mentioned above are revolutionizing not only the work place, but also the academic society. Now due to video conferencing, students in Qatar can listen to a Psych 101 lecture held in Bailey Hall. Now due to the blackberries and the iPhones, businessmen can work on deals any time and any where. New graduates just entering the work field are greeted with Blackberries and laptops so that the companies can be more efficient and productive. Issues such as these are very interesting and it would be great to learn how people are dealing with this fast pace environment.

Moreover, with this addition of new technology come issues such as Problematic Internet Use and internet addiction. More and more people are getting addicted to online games and sites such as Second Life. Being a premed major, it would be really interesting to learn new treatments or drugs that are provided for these new types of disabilities.

All in all, this class gave a great insight into the psychology of the internet and how people are getting affected by it. The social theories and guidelines that were taught were fascinating to learn about. It would have been great if we studied more about digital deception and the new threats out there in this field. Furthermore, I would have loved to learn more about how the advancement of new internet technology has affected our behaviors and attitudes online.

12: Predicting the Future

2007-12-03T17:51:00.001-05:00

The theories we studied will always be evolving and new theories will be developed as technology affects our interactions. However, impression formation and impression management are a phenomena that will always be studied because it is how we first act when we put ourselves online and how we react to others online. In particular, the Hyperpersonal Model has been applied in the beginning when people were simply chatting online through text to now, as people, along with online chatting, use profiles to interact through social network sites. Although we do not hear much about online social support in the news, its success in helping others has proven that it will probably be around for awhile. The internet’s characteristics, including 24/7 access, anonymity, social distance, and interaction management, allow people to self-disclose more and truly receive the help they cannot get in an FtF environment. Digital deception has been a particularly interesting topic that will also always hold because it deals with human behavior when presented with various media to lie in. Since lying is something we do on a daily bases, the Social Distance Theory and Media Richness Theory will always be applied to these situations.

I think the theories relating to leaving virtuality will change as more relationships incorporate mixed modality in their interaction. Some of the theories do not entirely relate for relationships that went from talking online, to talking on the phone, to talking in person. Predictions were mostly negative for relationships that went strictly from CMC to FtF, but when other media are involved, it helps each party to validate and redistribute their impressions so that the FtF meeting is more “natural”.

New issues regarding privacy and rights will need to be addressed as internet offenses increase. Many of the news articles we heard about in lecture were dealing with whether people should be accounted for the wrongs they perform online and how they should be punished. However, there is also the issue of whether it would be considered as invading privacy because what they do in CMC is their business. Will it be necessary to have some for of online law enforcement to monitor virtuality? I noticed from our blogs about the virtual self that most people were not impressed with Second Life. It would be interesting to study why our generation was indifferent to Second Life; yet, large companies are investing so much in it and its popularity is growing worldwide.

Predictions from the KRYSTAL Ball

2007-12-01T16:03:00.000-05:00

Based on the theories and phenomenon we learned about this semester I think that although the technological world has changed so dramatically throughout the years, there are still several theories and phenomenon that will continue to apply in the future based on pure human nature. I do not think that people will stop trying to impress others by shaping how others perceive them, thus the impression management model will always hold. Because of people’s desire to be perceived favorably by others, I also think that people will continue choosing a medium that best matches their intentions and gives them the best opportunity for selective self-presentation (Media Richness Theory). They will also continue to choose an appealing virtual self-identity or avatar online whether or not it actually resembles their true selves. Additionally, I think that people will continue trying to immediately form judgments of others by quickly coming to conclusions and thus holding the Hyperpersonal model, CFO perspective, and SIDE theory constant.

On the other hand, I do think that many theories and phenomenon will change based on society’s push for using technology for nearly everything. I do think that with many organizations going global these days and with the costs associated with flying executives into a central location for meetings, technology use for business transactions will increase. I think that businesses will use technology, such as a live virtual environment, to try and keep business transactions similar to FtF interactions. Thus parts of the Media Richness Theory will change as the amount of rich information processed and the associated costs will determine the medium at which transactions may occur. The richest medium companies may end up using could be a live virtual environment to actually see their employees instead of FtF versus using a lean medium like a program similar to IBM’s Second Life where there are avatars. I assume that there will be a bigger push for virtual classroom technologies in the near future.

Overall, I enjoyed this course. However, I wished that we were able to relate the class theories to having the internet accessible in certain organizations based on how it affects worker productivity. I think it would have been beneficial if we applied the class theories to organizations by discussing options companies could take in restricting or allowing internet use by providing some example case studies. This correlation would have directly related to my ILR major and would have significantly increased my interest in the course. I also enjoyed learning how to blog as this was an online technology that I was very unfamiliar with.

11: Strange But True

2007-11-28T21:13:00.000-05:00

Something that happened to a stranger a week or so ago is a good example of online-to-FTF interaction.

I was waiting for the TCAT bus at about 8:00PM last week when a girl approached me and asked if I had any money. I thought this was quite strange, and I asked her why she needed it. She began to tell me about an interaction that occurred between her and a student at Cornell. She told me that she was from Michigan and she met a kid on MySpace, and he sent her a bus ticket to come visit him at school. She went on to say that she met him at his frat, but he kicked her out when she refused to have sex with him. She needed money because now she didn't have a way back to Michigan, but unfortunately I was unable to help her, and directed her to the campus police.

This was a very unfortunate occurrence for the girl, but I think she could have used better judgment than to visit a complete stranger hundreds of miles away. She may have felt she knew him better than she did, and that is what led her to believe she could trust him. This goes along with Ramirez and Wang's view that switching from CMC to FTF can result in negative views and disappointment. The male at Cornell obviously had different expectations, and they were clearly violated. The girl's expectations were also violated, as she didn't expect the relationship to be sexual. Ramirez and Wang's ideas were upheld in this situation.

Comment
Comment

11. O ... Crap

2007-11-28T03:44:00.001-05:00

This semester I met a guy in one of my classes while trying to form a group for our final project. I had one person in my group already and just needed one more person. I got emails from a couple of dudes who still needed a partner for the project but I chose this one dude in particular because he was senior computer science major and the project was a CS project. I corresponded with him very briefly over the course of two days and then we met as a group to discuss the project. I must admit that I was slightly disappointed when I met him. The determining factor for me choosing him to be in my group was that he said he was a senior CS major. A former CS major myself, I know the rigorous workload that professors demand of their CS students. I figured that our project would be a piece of cake for him, a break from his real CS work. I thought he would be a “super-programmer”, someone we could just throw heavy problems at and who would be able to solve them with no problem. After or initial meeting and following work sessions, I realized that he was no more capable to write code and problem solve than anyone else in the group.

I think my reaction could best be described by SIDE. Even though I had never met him, I associated him with the highly intelligent CS majors I have met in the past. This made me build him up to be some sort of programming genius before I met him. I over attributed him as a overly intelligent guy since the only thing I knew about him was that he belonged to that group of smart CS majors.

This contradicts the long-term vs. short-term factor discussed in the Ramirez & Wang paper. The paper predicted that with a short time in CMC only a few expectations could be made so the corresponding FTF would be about “filling in the blanks”, while a long time in CMC would allow for many expectations to be made the corresponding FTF would be disappointing since many of the expectation would probably not be met. The only characteristic that interested me was his programming skills and when they weren’t above average I was disappointed. The theory did not take into account that in certain contexts only a few characteristics would be of importance and even the few expectations that were made could lead to a negative experience.

11 Take me down to disappointment city

2007-11-27T09:31:00.000-05:00

For this assignment I decided to look back on an online relationship I formed before coming to Cornell. Like many students in the Facebook-era, I friended various students a few weeks before leaving for orientation that were coming to Cornell from my area, or who would be living in my dorm, or, as in this case, had very similar interests as myself. After we exchanged a few messages, poked each other, and wrote on walls, we had established somewhat of a relationship. And honestly, I liked him. I was really looking forward to this cool, funny guy that had a pretty good taste in movies. A few weeks after I came to Cornell and got settled in, we decided to meet up at Appel for dinner. I was amazed at how different a person can appear online compared to face-to-face. He wasn’t especially awkward or anything, he just had this quality about him that I absolutely can’t stand – he thought he was really funny when he wasn’t. He laughed at his own jokes, which we were constant, and bad at that. On top of that, the couple of favorite movies that we shared, was pretty much it. He hadn’t even heard of The Office, which is pretty much unforgivable in my book. Overall, I was disappointed with our face-to-face meeting based on our online interactions.

I would say that my experience makes a lot of sense in terms of the hyperpersonal model. During our computer-mediated conversations, visual and sound cues are eliminated; thus, I never had to undergo his excessive laughing at his own jokes. Also, he is able to spend more time choosing his words and could steer the conversation away from topics he didn’t know much about, which again affected my opinion of him. I only saw the best of him, resulting in an exaggerated opinion of him. I’m sure I came off similarly to him, and I don’t know if I was as much of a disappointment, but we haven’t really spoken since besides an awkward hello every now and then.

The timing of our relationship played a definite role in the modality switch. I would classify our relationship online as long-term, especially when compared to the brevity of our face-to-face relationship. This makes sense according to Ramirez and Wang’s research results. This study showed that “[p]articipants evaluated the social information more positively and uncertainty-reducing following short-term on-line associations but more negatively and uncertainty-provoking following long-term ones compared to remaining online.” In other words, I spent so long talking to this boy that I formed grossly positive opinions of him. I was almost bound for disappointment, but don’t worry, I haven’t turned my back on Facebook yet.

Comment 1 and Comment 2

11 Playing the Middle Man to Make People Happy

2007-11-27T09:12:00.001-05:00

I had a hand to play in helping a relationship leave the CMC world into the FtF world. My friend, whom we shall call Jane, met my other friend, whom we shall call James, through instant messaging before meeting in real life. When Jane was sitting at my computer, I received an instant message from James. Jane thought she would be funny and started talking to James while I was distracted with other things. I returned to my computer to discover that I was now in a homosexual relationship with James. I told Jane to talk to him under her own identity. Afterwards, she Facebooked him and proceeded to communicate with him over her own instant messaging name. Eventually, over the summer break, I organized a get together for James and Jane. When they met, it seemed like a positive experience.

The uncertainty reduction theory predicted this outcome. According to the theory, more information prior to meeting the person FtF leads to more positive outcomes. James and Jane both had access to each other's information through Facebook. They saw their common friends, tagged pictures, and interests. This led to the establishment of common ground and expectations prior to meeting FtF. SIDE theory did not play a role on this occasion due to the lack of desire to keep individualizing characteristics hidden. Both Jane and James put up more personal (less group related) information on their Facebook profiles, maintaining openness in their individual images. The Hyperpersonal model also did not affect the transition of the relationship from online to real life. Since I knew both James and Jane, I corrected any exaggerated images one party might perceive of the other. For example, when Jane noted that James appeared tall in his pics, I explained that he was in fact relatively short. By moderating their impressions, the exaggerated preconception due to online interaction was avoided.

When switching from CMC to FtF, the expectations were not violated. This is contrary to Ramirez and Wang's proposal that the transition may cause unmet expectations that result in a negative outcome. The time between meeting FtF and meeting in CMC was about 7 months, a considerably long term relationship. According to Ramirez and Wang, this long term relationship would have led to a more negative outcome, but James and Jane both had a positive outcome.

Assignment 11: First GF

2007-11-27T09:05:00.001-05:00

For this blog I've chosen to discuss my first girlfriend, whom I first interacted with online. It all started when I joined a community based around a fantasy series novel.

I was hanging out in the community's IRC channel and talking random internet small talk with a nice girl on there. After a while we figured out that not only were we both living in the same town, we were also going to the same high school. At this point we had been chatting via the fantasy community for a good 4 months or so and were starting to feel more and more comfortable with each other. From then on the relationship escalated into a more FtF prone relationship.

When the relationship switched from being primarily CMC to primarily FtF, there were not many problems. We met and started dating regularly. Our first FtF meeting was really not very awkward at all. We were well acquainted with one another at that point.

According to Walther’s Social Information Processing(SIP) Theory, the non-verbal cues that are lacking in CMC will be adapted into the verbal channel over time. I believe it is safe to say this is what happened here. As the months passed online, we developed the same types of impressions of one another as we would have FtF, it just happened over an extended period of time as explained in SIP. In fact, several of the ways in which we had used emoticons/actions within the IRC setting translated quite easily in a FtF setting. For example, in IRC using /me [action] makes it appear as though you are performing an action in the channel/query. We had a long tradition of greeting each other with /me tacklehuggleglomps and so on type of string within CMC and when we finally met FtF, it began with a form of “tacklehug.”

In conclusion, as predicted by SIP the switch between CMC and FtF that occurred with my first girlfriend had no adverse effects on our relationship. This is because of the adaptation of non-verbal cues over the verbal channel that occurred over our extended period of CMC. It is interesting to note, however, that at first we did not know that we were communicating with someone whom lived nearby. This could have caused for more use of selective self-presentation, or deception. However, there were no negative effects from this, and we had a very happy few years of high school after the initial FtF meeting.

Comment1

Comment2

Assignment 11: From Facebook to Dating

2007-11-27T06:06:00.000-05:00

An example of a relationship that started online and left virtuality is the story of my friend we will call Nancy who began interacting with a person we will call John prior to transferring to Cornell. As I described in Assignment #5, before I transferred, I too joined a facebook group entitled “2005 transfers.” The group was a way to see who else would be living in the transfer center, where people were transferring from, etc. John was also a person transferring to Cornell and their interaction started with the traditional facebook friend request, then led to instant messaging. When John and Nancy arrived at Cornell, they were friends for a few weeks and then started dating.

Nancy and John’s interaction supports Berger and Calabrese’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory. Berger and Calabrese predict a positive outcome for leaving virtuality. According to them, the more information that is disclosed, the greater liking and intimacy. This is true in the case of Nancy and John. Nancy explained to me that when she first talked to John online she thought that he was a nice person but never thought that they would end up dating once arriving at school. As she got to know him better and John disclosed more, she realized that they share a lot in common and once meeting face to face their friendship strengthened and later turned into dating. Clearly their progression shows that as they disclosed more about one another and got to know each other better, attraction and intimacy increased.

Nancy and John’s interaction fits with the factors discussed in the Ramirez & Wang’s paper. While Nancy and John began instant messaging at the end of the summer, their CMC communication would be considered short term. When meeting face to face, Nancy’s expectations were violated in a positive way. Talking to John online she thought he was nice and would be a good friend but thought that their interests did not align to the point that she would consider dating him. When they met face to face, she realized that they both had a very sarcastic and funny sense of humor that did not shine through online. Interacting face to face, she was able to find out more details about John’s life and realized there was more to John than visible through their CMC communication.

11 cmc leads down a 2 year road

2007-11-27T03:30:00.000-05:00

My good buddy in high school started going out with a girl and the relationship started online. It's a pretty convoluted story, but basically the girl was going out with another guy in our high school, and she had seen my buddy from afar, and thought he was "adorable." Those are her words, not mine, and we still give my buddy crap for it to this day. Either way, when she and her then boyfriend broke up, she got my buddy's aim screenname and initiated a relationship that way. There had never been any face to face interaction before, and he actually had no idea who she was before they started interacting on aim. They kept up this aim interaction for a little over a month, and then finally at the beginning of the summer they decided to meet up. In their online interactions they had exchanged pictures of each other (these were the pre-facebook days)and gotten to know each other pretty well, mostly through talking about mutual friends and music. I remember him telling me that when he talked to the girl online, she seemed very funny and sarcastic, and he was also shocked at how she would not use typical short hand IM slang and spelling like wut up or lol, but instead made a point of typing very eloquently. When they met in person, she obviously had a very extensive vocabulary, and was a very smart girl, but didn't come off as pompous and full of herself as he thought she would. Apparently, they hit it off great because they ended up dating for 2 years.

I think this goes against Ramirez and Wang's idea that switching from cmc to ftf can cause negative views of a person because expectations were violated. In this case, the long term interaction was not evaluated negatively, and actually a ftf meeting increased the level of attraction because she was not as pompous as he thought she would be. From everything I've heard, there was little awkwardness even from the beginning. I think this falls further in line with the Uncertainty Reduction Theory from Berger and Calabrese. When they interacted online, they disclosed enough information, and this increased the level of intimacy, which led to an increased level of attraction. The information and high degree of self disclosure online led to a positive interaction and high self disclosure in face to face. It also probably helped that there was not a high level of deception in their photos.

11: Getting a Friendship Out of CMC

2007-11-27T02:50:00.000-05:00

During my high school years, I played many computer games with my friends. One of the games was Starcraft, which I played almost every day. At one point, my high school friend introduced me to someone, Pat, who she met through Starcraft. When I first talked to Pat online, we found that we shared a lot in common, such as having similar cultural backgrounds and similar music tastes, and we started to talk to each other online everyday. After a several months, we talked about meeting in person. Then about a year after we first talked online, we decided to move our relationship offline and meet FtF. At first, it felt slightly awkward but within minutes that we started talking to each other, we felt it was the same as talking online.

Our long-term CMC association contradicts Ramirez and Wang’s claim that expectations of someone can be violated by switching from a CMC to FtF setting, causing a negative view of the person. They claim that a long-term association via CMC will be “(a) evaluated more negatively and (b) uncertainty-provoking relative to interacting via CMC.” Although when we first met, it might have felt quite awkward, we were able to pass that feeling when we started to talk to each other. I realized he was the same FtF as he was online and he felt the same way about meeting me. Our awkwardness quickly disappeared and we felt comfortable around each other. I found that meeting in person just verified my impression of Pat that I developed from talking to him online. I did not develop any negative view of him at all, contrary to the results of Ramirez and Wang. In addition, I did not find it hard to move our friendship offline. When we talked online, we did not have a problem self-disclosing information about one another and we grew very comfortable with each other.

Our relationship supports Berger & Calabrese’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory. It predicts a positive outcome when relationships leave virtuality. Pat and I self-disclosed a lot about ourselves online, which led to greater intimacy in our friendship. We developed a strong social attraction with each another and it allowed us to have less uncertainty when we finally met in person. We were able to remove any doubts we may have had about each other by meeting in person. Also, we had visual cues FtF to learn more about how we act and behave.

Comment 1
Comment 2

11. I don't know who woulda thought of it, but ultimate frisbee and SIP kinda go together

2007-11-27T02:23:00.000-05:00

New Note 10

Ahoy.

For this post, I think I'll talk about a friend of mine that I first talked to while I was a senior in high school looking for colleges to apply to. My friend referred me to a friend on the ultimate frisbee team at Tufts because I was curious about what it was like for them. Our communication at first was entirely through email. I made the first contact, sending him a message where I basically introduced myself, telling him about how things were going in high school and what ultimate was like at our school.

At this point, I was very self-conscious of myself and everything I was saying because after all, I was talking to someone 4 years ahead of my in life and I was supposed to be seen as a delusional, overenthusiastic kid in high school at the budding apex of his life where he gets to see what college is really (supposedly) like.

Definitely felt the hyperpersonal theory kicking in, with some potential behavioral confirmation too. I immediately made a bunch of judgemental prejudices about myself and the person that I was talking too, long before I would even receive a reply from him. I thought I was going to be perceived as a weird little kid with no real understanding of what college was like, I was talking to a senior, ripe with almost 4 years of experience at the college level. Contrary to behavioral confirmation, I fought against this and tried to sound as down-to-earth and level-headed as I could.

When he replied, I learned that he was really chill and nonjudgmental. A lot of the perceptions that I feared and tried to fight against beforehand seemed silly at that point. I think this could be considered as a fast-paced SIP reaction. After communicating together a few times, I learned that this other kid wasn't as negative as I thought he could be (CFO too, almost). Our relationship grew more relaxed and I quickly forgot all those stupid predictions that I made. I started acting a little more naturally because I wasn't that worried anymore. This is similar to SIP theory in a way, because I felt coldness towards him at first and then this coldness eventually thawed, or defrosted or something.

When we finally met, our communication through email definitely proved to make things a little closer. We were brought together by ultimate and knowing a little bit about each other beforehand didn't hurt either. We tossed a few times with each other and it was great. I suppose this is a continuation of SIP theory because it was yet another occasion of communicating with each other, this time face to face, and every successive time, it grew friendlier and friendlier. Though we never met to talk too much, our relationship definitely evolved through phases of hyperpersonal and SIP effects.

11: eHarmony and URT

2007-11-27T01:19:00.000-05:00

My neighbor, David, and his wife, Amanda, are a good example of a relationship that started online and then left virtual reality. After David got divorced he decided to move to New Jersey, in the house next to mine. He was 32 years old at this time and wanted to start a new life. However, with his new job, he did not have time to meet other women so he decided to join eHarmony.com. After months of searching for the perfect someone, he finally found Amanda’s profile and decided to contact her. They communicated via email for about 2 weeks and then started IM chatting regularly for another 4 weeks. After 6 weeks of this CMC communication, they both decided to meet each other and go on a real date. David was a little hesitant at first since Amanda was a mother of three children, but because he had made such a good connection with her, David decided to stay with her. Finally, after two good years of dating, they decided to take the plunge and marry each other. It has been another two years since they have been married and the couple is happy as ever. They were even asked by eHarmony to be on one of their commercials.

The story of David and Amanda leaving virtuality and becoming closer in reality fits well with Berger and Calabrese’s (1975) Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT). URT predicts that “the uncertainty reduction process leads to affinity or attraction.” Therefore, when couples who meet online and then meet in reality disclose more information about each other, they will show greater liking and intimacy. In David and Amanda’s case, when they both able to see each other and find out more about themselves, they started liking each other more and were able to stay together for a long time. For example, when Amanda told David about her three kids online he was a little scared. However, after meeting Amanda and her kids in person, he was more comfortable and started liking Amanda more. He had always wanted to be a father and Amanda’s kids were a perfect start. Therefore, the more information disclosed by David and Amanda in reality, they were able to understand each other more and were able to form a tight bond.

David and Amanda’s relationship’s positive outcome after leaving virtual reality truly exemplified the URT and the advantage of CMC technology.

Assignment 11

2007-11-27T00:59:00.000-05:00

I too was once a pre-frosh checking out the “Class Of 2009” discussion board. However, I was late jumping on that bandwagon so the interactions that I had with a few of the other ‘09-ers could only be categorized as short term. I chatted on the discussion board and briefly in a few instant messenger conversations with some of the students coming from my area. Our conversations were mostly about basic personal information and interests and how excited or nervous we were about starting school. When I met the people I had talked to, most were by coincidence and not a planned meeting. This was actually very positive and the CMC interactions served as an ice breaker and a sort of pre-formed bond that made the face to face encounter more exciting and positive than it may have otherwise been. Being that the CMC interactions that I had with these people were short term, I did not have as much time to build up expectations or get to know them on a deeper level that would possibly have over a longer period of time. I didn’t feel like there was a lot riding on the first meeting and the coincidence factor helped because there was not time to be nervous or think about what they might be like or form expectations.

My experience fit with the factors Ramirez and Wang discussed. The short term contact I had with these students via CMC preceding our face to face interaction lead to a positive evaluation. Most interactions proved to have violated expectations that, in accordance with Ramirez and Wang’s results, were positive violations. For example, one of these students, who is still a good friend, was very nice when we talked online and after our CMC encounter I expected her to be very nice but not much more in person. My expectations of her being a relatively “vanilla” person were violated, in a positive way, when I met her face to face and found that she was extremely funny and animated, a trait that did not translate in CMC. Meeting these students I was able to form reliable impressions based on a greater number of verbal and non verbal cues and make evaluations not tainted by idealized or over attributed expectations. Some of those face to face interactions were so positive that they lead to many subsequent meetings and happily, lasting friendships.

11. This Will Be, An Everlasting Love...in a crack house

2007-11-27T00:06:00.000-05:00

Everyone knows the risks with online dating. They know that people can lie and turn out to be the complete opposite of what they expected them to be, but still the hopes that their soul mate is online looking for them is too tempting to turn down. So what happens when you do meet that person that turns out to be that person with a couple of loose screws that everyone warns you about meeting online? Just ask Kman.

Kman saw a woman’s profile and corresponded with her on the phone and Internet for weeks until they finally set a date. Regardless of the danger signs, which now seem obvious to him, like her avoidance of her divorce, how she always sounded drunk on the phone, and her insistence on him spending the night before they even went out, he decided to give her a chance. When he showed up for his date, she, her ten-year-old son, her mom, and her husband’s brother promptly greeted him. But wait, it gets better. They then proceeded to have a photo shoot where everyone got a chance to get a picture with him. Needless to say, the rest of the night did not get any better, after he learned that, yes, she was still married, but her husband was in jail for robbing a bank, twice, for crack money. Lets just say that the date ended early while she made one last attempted by appealing to his… manhood.

Kman should’ve have stuck by the three strikes your out rule. I want to look at the warning signs Kman noticed in relation to some theories. First, the Social Presence Theory and Reduced Social Context theories together state that CMC will lead to impoverished, often negative impression formation. In this case, the limited cues Kman picked up on like how she always sounded drunk and wanted to get to know each other at a tavern turned out to be red flags after all. These were factors that she did not do a good job at hiding from him which leads me to the Hyperpersonal Theory which states that we rate people based on fewer characteristics (breadth) with more intensity. When they finally left the virtual world, these characteristics and warnings were loud and clear. Even though these theories say that we get limited cues in CMC, Kman’s nightmare definitely proved that these limited cues can be all you need to throw someone in the loony bin.

Read his story for a good laugh: http://onlinedatingnightmares.com/datingstories/index.php?PHPSESSID=ba10e45498439976f2c0956690f86c4a&topic=4.0

Assignment 11: FtF Letdown

2007-11-26T23:43:00.000-05:00

For this assignment I decided to write about an online relationship that left virtuality that was in the media. I found a website that was all about stories from people who had tried starting a relationship online; some worked out and some did not. http://www.internetdatingstories.com/stories/index.php?id=128&category=3 is the website.

According to Anne, who posted the story, the man she met online contacted her by e-mail, and after a few exchanges they began talking on AIM and the phone, where they clicked, so they arranged to meet. When the man came to pick up Anne, he sped and turned up his ska music way too loud to avoid conversation. The only thing he did say was that ska was the only kind of music that mattered, even though Anne was a music major and he told her that he loved Vivaldi and classic rock as well. The rest of the date when downhill, as he was very rude, which came as a shock to Anne since he spoke so eloquently before they met.

Anne’s experience is similar to what would be predicted by the hyperpersonal model. Based on the eloquent emails this man sent to her and his supposed love of Vivaldi, she probably thought he was very sophisticated and shared her passion for music. When she met him, however, this did not prove to be the case and he turned out to be rude only liked bad music. Although in Anne’s story she didn’t give the exact amount of time they had been talking before meeting FtF, I got the impression that it was in the short-term. For this reason, she was only a little disappointed that this man turned out to be a jerk; she was not heartbroken or anything, and she came to the smart conclusion, "if it seems to good to be true...it probably is."

11 JDate

2007-11-26T21:40:00.000-05:00

The only relationship that I personally know of that began online and then eventually met in person (i.e., the relationship left virtuality) is that of my cousin and her husband. My cousin and her husband first communicated online through JDate. JDate is the most popular online Jewish dating community, and to join JDate, all one has to do is post a profile. Once one has a profile, one has the ability to share photos, email, chat, and IM with thousands of single Jews. After communicated through JDate for a week, my cousin and her future husband left the virtual world and met in real life. A year and a half later, they got married and have been married for two years.

In comparing my cousin’s and her husband’s relationship to theories we have studied in class, we find that this relationship is inconsistent with some theories and inconsistent with others. For example, their relationship is inconsistent with the Hyperpersonal Theory. There are five distinct parts of the Hyperpersonal Theory: over-attribution process, developmental aspect, selective self-presentation, re-allocation of cognitive resources, and behavioral confirmation. After an initial interaction, there is a reduction in the breadth (rate a CMC partner on fewer characteristics), but there is an increase in intensity (more intense/exaggerated ratings of the CMC partner). We can more directly see how the Hyperpersonal Theory is inconsistent with my cousin’s and her husband’s relationship. For example, the hyperpersonal model predicts negative outcomes for leaving virtuality (for my cousin this is untrue). The Hyperpersonal Theory states that CMC factors lead to inflated perceptions of partners (over-attribution). Also, the hyperpersonal model state that since one is online, the only information of the other person is what that person chooses to tell the other person, which are only positive traits (selective self-presentation). Connecting the above statements, one over-attributes the only (good) characteristics one knows of the other person. When the two people meet in real life, both parties are disappointed at what the other person is really like. In conclusion, this is a negative outcome. My cousin’s and her husband’s relationship is completely inconsistent with the Hyperpersonal Theory because neither were disappointed when they met in real life and eventually married.

Modality switch, or a shift from online communication to FtF interaction, reveals in some instances relationship-enhancing and in other instances relationship-dampening. In my cousin’s relationship, the modality switch lead to a relationship-enhancing situation.

Ramirez and Wang make the hypothesis: modality switch following a long-term association via CMC will provide social information that will be (a) evaluated more negatively and (b) uncertainty-provoking relative to interaction via CMC. Ramirez and Wang also make the hypothesis: modality switch following a short-term association via CMC will provide social information that will be (a) evaluated more positively and (b) uncertainty-reducing than interaction via CMC. These hypotheses held true when tested. These hypotheses also held true in my cousin’s and her husband’s relationship. They only communicated online for a week before they actually met. Their short-term association via CMC led to a modality switch that was relationship-enhancing.

11: Who's Ani Difranco?

2007-11-26T21:38:00.000-05:00

Like many incoming freshman, my friend “Kate” set up her Facebook account the day she accepted to Cornell in December. So excited about her upcoming year, Kate instantly started to search other Cornellians. After carefully reading someone’s profile, she would choose to friend them if they seemed “cool” and enjoyed some of the same things she liked. One of the freshman guys she friended, “Chris,” really caught her eye based on the attractiveness of his profile picture, his favorite music and movies, and that he was on the football team. A few days after Chris accepted her friendship, he apparently found her to be quite interesting too because he instant messaged Kate the next time she was on AIM. Kate did not tell me about her conversations until May when she explained how awesome Facebook was and how she was so excited to meet Chris. After many months of chatting online and with move-in day quickly approaching, Chris and Kate decided to meet when they both got to campus. They exchanged cell phone numbers online but left their interactions strictly text-based when they were figuring out a time and place to meet. They finally met FtF for (a very short) dinner in Appel before classes started. This was the last time Kate would ever meet up with Chris as she was absolutely shocked when physical reality was brought into their relationship. He looked nothing like his attractive Facebook picture and could not carry on a conversation about their shared favorite music (i.e. Ani Difranco).

As Kate and Chris were in contact for about eight months, they had plenty of time to get to know each other past what was listed in their Facebook profiles. With their consistent contacting and increased self-disclosure, Kate began to feel very attracted to Chris. This example most closely aligns with Berger and Calabrese’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT) because with the more information she learned about Chris, the more she liked him. Naturally, she was expecting a positive outcome for her FtF meeting after leaving virtuality (as URT predicts) but was unfortunately let down. Based on the amount of information they exchanged about Ani Difranco online and how little Chris was actually able to talk about it in person led Kate to believe that he used search engines to his advantage. Thus, Kate fell victim to the costs of meeting and interacting with a random person online. According to Ramirez and Wang, “The combination of the increased control over message design provided by CMC, opportunity for selective self-presentation, and receiver susceptibility for overattributing characteristics maximize the likelihood of developing heightened expectations and idealized impressions over time.”

Since that one dinner-date freshman year, Kate (now a junior) has been able to successfully avoid Chris in public but she occasionally sees him around campus or at parties.

Comment 1
Comment 2

11 Freshman FtF

2007-11-26T20:13:00.001-05:00

The obvious choice for a discussion on modality-switching in interactions and long- and short-term assessments is that of the interaction with one’s freshman-year roommate before actually arriving on campus. So that’s what I did. When I received my roommate assignment in the mail over two years ago, the first thing I did was look up Andrew on Facebook and friend him, without any hesitation. As it turned out, he wasn’t very big on the whole Facebook phenomenon and so our CMC interaction was somewhat limited, but we did talk enough for me to generate what I felt was an appropriate evaluation of Andrew as a person.

I would estimate that Andrew and I spent about two months prior to freshman year interacting sparsely in the CMC environments of Facebook and, even rarer, instant messaging. Based on this interaction, I had an idea of Andrew as a funny, sarcastic, and for the most part quiet person with the traditional Bostonian passion for the Red Sox. When we finally got to school and had a chance to really get to know each other in person, it turned out that my assessment had been pretty on target, with a few exceptions. He was in fact funny and sarcastic, and he did indeed have Red Sox fever, but what I got completely wrong was how he functioned in a social setting. He was very outgoing, and, despite his occasionally-off sense of humor, made friends very easily. Always eager to strike up a conversation about even the most inane of topics, he was very social and not at all quiet and shy like I had interpreted from our interactions in CMC.

I feel that my assessment’s inaccuracy represents a similar effect to what Ramirez & Wang found. Specifically, it fits with their finding that short-term online associations, when switched to the FtF modality, lead to a more positive evaluation of the social information available. Where before I found my future roommate quiet and somewhat apprehensive/apathetic in a CMC environment, I after found him to be outgoing and energetic, a much more positive evaluation of the social information I had to work with. My uncertainty about what it would be like to live with Andrew was also reduced as per Ramirez & Wang because I had much more reliable information about his personality and behavior from FtF interactions, rather than CMC ones.

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-take-me-down-to-disappointment-city.html

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-whos-ani-difranco.html

11: Hyper Expectations

2007-11-26T16:04:00.000-05:00

Way back in September, for my blog post on McKenna’s relationship factors and Wallace’s attraction factors, I detailed an online relationship with a girl named “Jane”. In my first freshman semester at Cornell, we encountered each other through Facebook (similar music/movie tastes) and started a prolonged (two month long) series of instant-message conversations without ever meeting each other. When we finally had our first FtF encounter, a “date” which consisted of dinner and movie, the experience was pretty much quiet, subdued, and awkward. In my September 25^th blog entry, I attributed this to lack of a romantic “spark” and—to quote my former self—“The Hyperpersonal aspect of each others lives was removed and I guess we just seemed less interesting to one another”. As it turns out, this relationship certainly did follow Walther’s Hyperpersonal model, and additionally, as it was a long-term relationship (two months is longer than Ramirez & Wang’s definition as a period of four-weeks), a disappointment effect was certainly carried out.

The Hyperpersonal element of the relationship existed from the beginning. By Jane’s decision to contact me based on my Facebook profile, she was judging me solely on limited CMC cues—in particular, my carefully selected “Favorite Movies” and “Favorite Music”. This limited perception based on conventional signals which I could potentially embellish and lie about (but I would never, of course…) must have led to an exaggerated, positive view of me. After initial IM contact, I must admit I was guilty of the same Hyperpersonal view. Seeing Jane’s relatable interests and (selectively self-chosen) attractive profile picture—this was before the days of photos on Facebook—I immediately had incentive to reciprocate IM contact.

As we continued to exchange IMs, Hyperpersonal effects increased as we got along very well; disclosing more and more about ourselves. However, as stated above, things were certainly different when we left virtuality. There was no obvious disappointment; but it just seemed that we were not as compatible or as interesting as we were when we chatted through IM. Obviously, I can only provide my side of the story, but Jane was much quieter and she seemed to act in a much more inhibited manner than that of her online self and I’m sure I did not live up to expectations either—via IM, we all have time to be witty and calculating in our interaction. Also, because we were chatting for so long without seeing each other FtF, our expectations were likely too high and so the disappointment factor was increased—just as Ramirez & Wang predicted via their third hypothesis.

Comment 1

Comment 2

11: From Facebook to Face-to-Face

2007-11-26T15:52:00.001-05:00

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that about 2 ½ years ago, I was one of the anxious Cornell pre-frosh who tried to make some new friends a little early on—online that is. In one particular instance, I decided to send a guy “Joe” a Facebook message since it seemed like we had very similar taste in music based on our profiles. Through ongoing messages we spoke about the Dave Matthews Band concerts that we were planning on attending that summer and other music related topics. Although we planned on meeting up at Cornell, our relationship never ended up leaving virtuality until 8 months later—the day before I left to go home for the summer. I went to go say goodbye to a friend, and sitting in her room was a guy that looked strangely familiar. Sure enough, I was introduced to Joe “from the football team.” Although it was clear that we both recognized each other, we both pretended like we never shared our online interactions. In a weird way, I was disappointed by our face-to-face encounter since my online perception of Joe was that he was more interested in music than sports and meanwhile my friend chose to classify him as a football player.

Walther’s (1997) Hyperpersonal Model could be applied to my situation in order to explain why I had a negative face-to-face experience after leaving the virtual world. The Hyperpersonal Model explains how certain aspects of CMC lead us to form exaggerated perceptions of those who we interact with. Within this model, selective self-representation refers to the idea that in CMC individuals are in control over what characteristics they make available to others. Joe’s “favorite music” took up most of his profile, leading me to believe that he had a passion for music and it was one of the main things that defined him as a person. He chose to leave out other aspects of himself, such as his passion for football and his status as a member of a varsity team at Cornell. Furthermore, the over-attribution process refers to the idea that in CMC individuals may form an exaggerated impression of others based on the few things they know about the other individual. The music that Joe listed on his profile and the Facebook groups he decided to join was what lead me to form my impression of Joe: a laid back, friendly, concert enthusiast.

Online, Joe and I were able to carefully choose what we wanted to say to one another and spoke about the music we knew we were both interested in. However, face-to-face we had little to say to one another as two Cornell students who never crossed paths throughout our whole freshman year—especially since the Joe I had anticipated was hidden behind a football jersey.

Comment 1

Comment 2

#11: How I met your mother

2007-11-26T09:03:00.000-05:00

One relationship I can recall that started online and left virtuality is about a friend’s youth pastor. This youth pastor was very into the blogging site xanga.com and would like any another person, click on blogs of friends of friends who commented on each other’s posts. Somewhere down the line he came across his future wife’s xanga site (though he did not know it at the time). He thought her entries were very well written, amusing, and interesting. The youth pastor decided to comment on her post and that was the start of their online relationship. They would frequently read each other’s posts and comment. As time went on, they also started to use other types of CMC such as email and AIM which have more cues. I am not sure how long this online relationship lasted, but it was a significant amount of time. They finally decided to meet FTF after they felt that they had gotten to know each other fairly well. When they met in person, they got along very well and were attracted to each other. Long story short, they ended up getting married and are as of now, living happily ever after.

For this story, I would say that the Uncertainty Reduction Theory applies well. The URT states that the uncertainty reduction process leads to affinity or attraction and predicts positive outcome for leaving virtuality. I do not think there can be a dispute that getting married to a person you met online and ended up marrying that person is not a positive outcome. The couple definitely had plenty of time to exchange information as well as interact through chatting and emails which led to greater intimacy with one another through CMC. When they finally did meet, they felt the attraction just by the sheer fact that they knew so much about each other. They spent a lot of “time” with one another online as well as got to know how the other thought by reading each other’s xanga posts which are essentially journal entries. Because of this, I also believe that SIP could be applied to this relationship though the findings may suggest that SIP is not a good predictor of leaving virtuality. Nevertheless in the above case, SIP did in fact accurately predict that there would be a positive outcome from the online relationship that this married couple had.

Comments:

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-o-crap.html

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-playing-middle-man-to-make-people.html

Assignment #11: From MySpace to Marriage

2007-11-26T02:04:00.000-05:00

One of my older friends, who has since graduated from college, met his wife on MySpace. Because I have never used MySpace, I am not quite sure of all of its different features nor am I exactly sure on the details of their first acquaintance. My friend Ryan did, however, keep me very informed and updated after his budding online relationship with Jess got underway. After their initial interaction, Ryan and Jess began to speak online several times a week. Several times a week turned into at least every other day; and eventually, they spoke to each other daily. Ryan discovered that Jess shared many of his same interests. They not only liked similar movies and music, they also had a shared undying love for dogs and warm, sunny weather.

As their online relationship continued, Ryan would tell me how close he felt to Jess and how special she was to him. Yet Ryan also shared with me his doubts and minor fear that this woman he had never met was not actually who she said she was. After three months of communicating via the online world, Ryan asked Jess if she wanted to meet in person. Many of Ryan’s suspicions were confirmed when he met Jess for coffee and she brought her yellow labrador—she was indeed the dog-lover she claimed to be online. All of the other uncertainties that Ryan had held prior to his face-to-face encounter with Jess also slowly vanished the more they spoke and continued seeing each other outside of virtuality.

Ryan and Jess’ mixed mode relationship fits very well with Berger and Calabrese’s (1975) Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT), which is a process that leads to affinity and attraction. This theory goes on to say that once you meet a person, you will like him or her more because then you have more information about that person. Therefore, increased information about a partner will lead to greater liking and intimacy. Ryan and Jess knew a great deal about each other prior to meeting, but I know that Ryan, if not Jess as well, held some uncertainties about whether or not all that information was true. After leaving virtuality, Ryan and Jess gained additional information about each other which was positively confirming and only strengthened their already forming intimate bond. Just as URT predicts, Ryan and Jess’ relationship had a positive outcome for leaving virtuality—two years after their first MySpace encounter they got married.

Comments:
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-11-from-facebook-to-dating.html
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-this-will-be-everlasting-lovein.html

Assignment 11: Rare Success

2007-11-25T12:05:00.000-05:00

My friend, “Jane,” started talking to someone she met on myspace based on her group associations and interests. After over a year of talking through CMC, Jane finally met her myspace friend FtF. They spoke everyday online and were able to successfully move their relationship offline. Contrary to the results discussed in Ramirez & Wang, their long-term association via CMC did not produce uncertainty nor did it negatively affect their relationship when they moved to FtF interaction.

One reason their modality switch did not follow Ramirez & Wang’s results is due to what the article refers to as the “turning point,” the threshold at which the expectancy violations produced are evaluated negatively or positively when meeting FtF. This point has the potential to alter the future path (continuance or end) of the relationship. Initially, Jane said that the first meeting was slightly awkward, but once they began talking, they realized that they were exactly as they had portrayed themselves to be in CMC, so conversing became much more relaxed and Jane found her partner to be just as interesting offline as she was online. Their modality switch was a success because, as noted in Ramirez & Wang, when they met FtF, the violations that were congruent with their past information reduced uncertainty between them.

After a long enough period of time of self-disclosure online, they had formed a close relationship so moving their relationship to FtF did not impact the expectancies of each other. Also, Ramirez & Wang defined their long-term association to be six weeks, while Jane had spoken to her partner for over a year. Jane notes that she doesn’t think it would have made a difference whether they spoke for three months or six months online before meeting because from their long-term associations, the impression formation of each other was not going to vary much.

Since her myspace friend specified in group characteristics in her profile, this led Jane to have a strong social attraction towards her, but she only knew her based on the shared interests they discussed online, so when they met FtF, the uncertainty about her myspace friend’s personality was reduced. Thus, as Jane discovered other similarities in her friend’s humor, mannerisms, behavior, etc., she liked her more. This confirms the positive outcome for leaving virtuality stated in the Uncertainty Reduction Theory, where the uncertainty reduction process leads to an affinity or attraction.

comment1

comment2

Assignment 11: Too Much of a Good CMC...

2007-11-24T20:28:00.000-05:00

As an incoming freshman at Cornell University, in the spring of 2006, I spent most afternoons perusing classof2010.cornell.edu. It’s a social network of message boards and profiles that allows all of the students in the class of 2010 to meet one another in CMC before they arrive at the Ithaca campus.

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I did meet many of my current, close friends on that website first. But, my current, close friends were people with whom I only briefly discussed topics like my excitement for Cornell, where I was from, what I would be studying, etc. But, there was one particular person who I talked to everyday. In fact, my best friend who was also going to Cornell and I spoke with him everyday.

For the purpose of this blog I’ll call him John. My best friend and I thought John was so cool; we all liked the same music, movies and TV shows. John would make us laugh hysterically and he was one of the main reasons I was so excited to get to Cornell. I thought I was going to meet so many incredibly fun people like John. For months before arriving at Cornell I talked to John, for hours on some nights, and when orientation week finally rolled around, my best friend and I could not wait to meet John.

The third or so night of orientation I invited John to dinner with my roommate and I, as well as another boy my roommate knew from a summer program she had done. When I met all of my other class of 2010 friends in person, it wasn’t a big deal, but when I met John, I could not have been more nervous. Dinner at Appel that night was awful. Every IM I had shared with John was hilarious and exciting. The dinner I shared with John was awkward and uncomfortable. Online John seemed suave and quick with his words, in person he was borderline speech incapable.

I ran into John a few more times after that dinner, but our friendship outside of virtuality was nonexistent. As for all of the other people I met briefly on class of 2010, I’m pretty close with nearly all of them. Hypotheses 3 and 4 of the Ramirez and Wang paper hit this situation right on the nose. I clearly evaluated my long-term CMC association much more negatively than my short-term CMC associations. Length of association appeared to have a lot to do with how positively or negatively I reacted to my CMC friendships when they left virtuality.

Assignment 11: Back To Reality

2007-11-24T16:46:00.000-05:00

When I signed up for Facebook, I experienced the barrage of friend requests that all soon-to-be Cornellians received in the months before school started. While I did not make much contact with most of these people beyond the initial friend request, there were a few who I exchanged a number of wall posts with. Within that group, there were some people who I began talking to through IM.

I remember one girl who I talked to often. We spoke about making plans in the future and how much we would hang out once we were at Cornell. Thus we spent the first few months of our relationship, getting to know each other and talking about a future friendship, online.

For whatever reason, neither of us made a huge effort to meet once we got on campus and it was a week or so before I ran into her unexpectedly. Our encounter was brief and we haven’t spoken since.

I think this brings another variable into account that Ramirez and Wang failed to address: time between last online contact and first face-to-face encounter. They did mention time between modality switch (if I read correctly there was a week between the online task and the face-to-face task), but they did not test it as a variable.

I wonder what effect that time gap had on the relationship between my Facebook friend and me. If we had been talking online the night before we left for school, and then planned to meet up the next day, would we have remained close? If there had been even more time in between our mode switch, would we have had more to talk about in our first FtF encounter? We could have lamented about how we had failed to keep in touch, and told each other about the start of the semester.

Regardless of this ignored variable, I think my experience was in line with Ramirez and Wang’s findings. There was more of violation of expectancy since we had known each other online for four or five months. When we talked online it was just us two, but when we met at school for the first time we were with friends and couldn’t just stop and talk to each other. This violated what we expected our relationship to be, and I think ultimately caused the rapid decline of our relationship. It seems quite apparent that modality switches can really impact a relationship.

Comments:

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-playing-middle-man-to-make-people.html

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-11-first-gf.html

10 To be pretty, or not to be...

2007-11-13T09:46:00.000-05:00

For this assignment I decided to create an avatar in the virtual environment known as Second Life. I’m pretty unfamiliar with online video games such as this. The closest I’ve come to playing games like this was The Sims, but I never played online with other characters and such. I decided to use Second Life based on my limited knowledge of the game from an episode of The Office that I saw this year. In the episode, Dwight was going through a breakup and turned to Second Life to detach himself from reality, creating a world within the game called Second Second Life. Since I knew that Second Life was the most logical transition from my limited gaming experience with the Sims, I decided to create an avatar within this virtual environment.

I decided to create an avatar that significantly different than my appearance in real life. I am actually a 19-year-old girl, 5’4”, with curly auburn hair, but my avatar was a 5’8”, balding, overweight man. I wanted to create an avatar that could possibly impact my degree of socialization. I thought that if I decided to be a man within Second Life, I may be more dominant and aggressive within the social environment, but if I made myself less traditionally attractive, my confidence would diminish. During my limited time playing Second Life, it was amazing to me how life-like the virtual environment really is. There were so many design options when creating an avatar, and so many choices as to what to do inside the world.

It was interesting playing in Second Life under this avatar, and I can safely say my behavior was affected, much more than I thought it would. Most notably, while I was in a club scene, I was one of the least attractive avatars in the environment. Not only did this make me less confident to initiate conversation, but people were not exactly clamoring to start talking to me either. According to Yee & Bailenson, “the Proteus Effect may impact behavior on the community level.” In other words, this social club scene made perfect sense. Gather a bunch of attractive avatars and the scene should be buzzing. I definitely felt like the odd man out. Yee & Bailenson go on to state, “As graphical avatars become the dominant mode of self-representation in virtual environments, the Proteus Effect may play a substantial role in encouraging hyperpersonal interaction.” My perceptions of the other avatars were extremely exaggerated positively in comparison to the extreme self-consciousness I felt about my own avatar. After playing under an unattractive avatar, it’s easy to see for me why I was one of the few who decided to look less than stellar.

Comment 1 and Comment 2

10. Second Life or something like it

2007-11-13T09:32:00.000-05:00

For this assignment I decided to give second life a try. I had heard of the program before and knew that many people were addicted to the program so I figured it would be fun to see what it is all about.

I first created my account and made my avtar “the girl next door.” The other avtar images seemed to be very odd and the “girl next door” was the most basic and looked like a character in real life. After creating my avtar I entered the second life site in search of someone to talk to. I was approached by another avtar from Sweden who clearly had altered her physical features because she was wearing a very stylish outfit, different from the basic options. Being a newbie and still looking like the basic “girl next door” I felt strange initiating conversation and did not know what to say. Usually in an instant message you know the other person you are talking to but with Second Life it took me a while to understand there are real people behind the characters.

Speaking to the Swedish avtar made me realize that I could alter my appearance too. I change my outfit and moved away from the basic “girl next door “ option. Reading through the different features I felt that I had a better understanding of what I was doing. I went back in search of other avtars more confident about using second life. I was able to talk to several people and kept initiating conversation. I even found myself lost at one point and some other guy avtar in a car offered to drive me. Although I was able to become a more active participant in the end, I do not think I would ever be able to play and chat to strangers for hours on end. I would much rather talk to people in person.

Yee & Bailenson hypothesize that “an individual’s behavior conforms to their digital self-representation independent of how other perceive them.” This process is the Proteus Effect. In their first experiment they measure attractiveness of avtars in relation to self-disclosure. In their second experiment, they found taller avtars were more confident.

My experience in second life aligns with the work of Yee & Bailenson in experiment 1. As I explained earlier, when I was new to the program and was the basic “girl next door,” I did not have much to say to the Swedish avtar that approached me. After looking at her stylish outfit, I thought I was definitely behind as a Second Life player and after my simple question of “Whats up?” I did not have much else to disclose. However, once I altered my appearance and changed my avtar from the basic girl, I talked to more people and felt more comfortable about making conversation in this online space. Whereas Yee & Bailenson predict that an individual that has a more attractive avtar will act more friendly toward others, I found that the reason I became more friendly is because I looked as if I fit in. As the basic “girl next door” it was evident that I was new to program but after altering my clothes, I appeared as a second life vetern. I think that my action can be attributed to deindividuation. Yee & Ballenson explain in their paper “factors that lead to deinidivudation, such as anonymity, might thus reinforce group salience and conformity to group norms.” By changing to a more advanced avtar, I felt that I stood out less and therefore fit in better as a second life player. I was more anonymous by changing my appearance and conforming to the world of second life.

Their second experiment about taller avtars behaving more confidently did not apply to my avtar. Almost all people that I interacted with in second life were the same height. If anything, my confidence increased as I began to understand the game more. I think the reason that my interaction in second life was not as aligned to the studies of Yee & Bailenson is because I was so new to the program. Second Life has so many features that the first half hour I spent trying to understand all that I could do on the site. Also, as far as attractiveness is concerned, besides clothing difference all of the avtars are attractive in shape and facial features. I think that their studies would prove affective on people that play the game more often and also I think that observing people’s self- concept in real life is important to consider. If a person is short/unattractive and has a tall/attractive avtar does that make a difference in their interaction FTF compared to in the CMC space? Observing offline behavior would make the CMC studies more interesting.

10 Identity Crisis of a Miner

2007-11-13T09:28:00.001-05:00

Recently, my friend has been trying to get me to play RF Online with him. For those who don't know, it's a MMORPG with a sci-fi setting. I named my character “hotrod4” and I proceeded to choose my avatar's appearance. I choose the Accretia faction and the specialist class. However I soon realized the error of my ways.

When choosing my appearance, there were not much differentiating options for avatars within my class and faction. It seemed like the only way to differentiate my avatar from the others was the color of my singular eye. The test of my individuality continued. Upon entering the game and passing the newbie tutorial, I was greeted by a NPC that told me my job was to mine for minerals. I guess I had to accept that if I was to be a specialist. After entering the mining area, I joined the mass of specialists mining like robots (albeit my faction was basically a robotic race). Soon after, I discovered my clone mining right next to me. After acquiring a couple of ores, I went to hunt some monsters. I began my journey with a pistol, but by the time I returned from grinding, I had obtained a shotgun and new armor. Just as I thought I had proven my individuality, a clone walked by me.

According to Yee and Bailenson's Proteus Effect, my behavior was expected to follow the stereotypical image of my character. When I started mining, I soon realized that all the specialists mined in the same exact spot. I was indeed acting like my role defined in the game space. After my first experience with mining, I decided to try to prove Yee and Bailenson wrong. I was going to hunt and kill instead of mine. Even while hunting and killing, I realized that my actions were akin to the stereotype associated with my avatar. After acquiring a shotgun, I spent 30 minutes doing nothing but killing lower level creatures to show off my overpowering gun. I was behaving more like the commanding image given off by my avatar. Realizing this, I decided to do something different. I returned to mining. I had forgotten that my purpose was to break out of my mining role. Hard as I tried to gain a sense of individuality, I subconsciously returned to conformity. Sigh.

Comment 1
Comment 2

Assignment 10: First Time in Second Life

2007-11-13T09:15:00.000-05:00

Before taking this class, I had never even heard of Second Life. Finally having the motive to explore, I decided now was as good a time as any to see what all the hype was about.
I found that the avatar I created resembled and exaggerated many of my features in real life. My avatar was tall and blond, though I think I added a bit more to my height, just for fun. It took a bit of patience to get everything started, but once it began I had lots of help from others when I was able to socialize.
In the beginning I felt very confident. I had no hesitations talking to other people and even talking about myself, although I did not reveal that I was experimenting for a class. After a while, I began to wonder whether my height made a difference in the way I acted and presented myself online. I shrank my height to see if the Proteus Effect would have an impact on the way I talked in Second Life. Although the change was not significant, I noticed a bit more hesitation. In real life I am so used to being able to at least be eye level with most of my friends that looking up created a forfeiture of some of my confidence. My results did in fact represent the study of Yee & Bailenson

10: WoW

2007-11-13T09:14:00.001-05:00

For this assignment I chose to play the extremely popular MMORPG World of Warcraft(WoW). I used a 10 day free trial account for the game to try it out, since regularily I would have to purchase and buy a subscription to play. Due to the game's massive popularity, I was quite excited to give it a try.

The World of Warcraft gamespace takes place in the world of Azeroth, a large virtual environment with several continents and even further sectioned zones within each continent. Before entering the world I was able to choose from several races and classes as well as various appearance options for my avatar. These races and classes were further split into two sides, the Horde and the Alliance. Whichever side I chose decided the continent and zone I would start on, as well as which group I would become a part of. There are amazingly intense intergroup dynamics within a WoW server, especially on the PVP(player v. player) type of server. PvP means players from both sides are allowed to attack each other anywhere in Azeroth. This causes a very strongly salient group identity, and much intergroup conflict.

My avatar in WoW was a Tauren Shaman. He is not the most attractive of characters, indeed his physique resembles that of a walking bull. After asking some people a few questions about how to get started, I was on my way to exploring the Azeroth. I started out killing boars and trying to gain a few levels doing the starter quests. A little while later I was in a zone called The Crossroads, when the Alliance attacked. A large group of Alliance players “raided” the crossroads and killed off both players and NPCs(non-player characters).

Yee & Bailenson studied something they call The Proteus Effect. The Proteus Effect states that “an individual’s behavior conforms to their digital self-representation independent of how others perceive them.” My actions agree in some ways to their studies. First off, I was immediately enraged at the Alliance for attacking The Crossroads, and wanted nothing more than to ensure their demise. Based on my short time playing, my unattractive avatar did possibly not allow as much self-disclosure and interpersonal distance as a more attractive one might have. However, the Horde side has only 1 race, which was added in the expansion, that can be considered attractive. This said, I believe that on the Horde side, attractive avatars are of less importance to the amount of self-disclosure. I also witnessed a direct contradiction to the second study which stated that those with taller avatars behaved more confidently in a negotiation task than those with shorter avatars. I saw a gnome character on the Alliance side with a much more aggressive attitude than the tall humans and night elves around him. I couldn’t understand the Alliance’s stupid language, however he was screaming in CAPs throughout the entire raid on our Crossroads.

Assignment 10: Second Life

2007-11-13T09:01:00.001-05:00

To be perfectly honest, I had a hard time figuring out Second Life. I had never used it before, or anything else where you could make your own avatar. I couldn’t figure out how to change my avatar besides the initial one we could choose, so I’m not sure how my interactions in Second Life would have been different had I been able to figure it out. Also, my computer was going ridiculously slow when I had Second Life open, so I was getting really frustrated when I tried to do something and it happened about an hour later. However, I thought the avatar I initially chose was pretty attractive, (the girl next door) but most of my interactions were not in line with what Yee and Bailenson (2007) found in their study.
Yee and Bailenson found that if you had a more attractive avatar, you were more likely to approach others and there was more self-disclosure between attractive avatars. First of all, I didn’t approach anyone because I trying to figure out what I was doing, but a couple of male avatars approached me. However, because I was getting really frustrated with my computer and with Second Life, I was not in the mood for very much self-disclosing, and wasn’t as friendly as Yee and Bailenson would have predicted, and the Proteus Effect and Behavioral Conformation did not affect how I acted.
Although in my case, I didn’t see any evidence of the Proteus Effect or Behavioral Confirmation, I realize this was largely due the fact that I had no idea what I was doing. My confusion and frustration overrode any desire I might have had to be friendly. I wouldn’t be surprised if people who had experience using Second Life or other online video games had results that were more along the lines of what Yee and Bailenson found.

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/10-my-second-life.html

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-10-i-like-my-first-life.html

10. Hit and Run

2007-11-13T07:59:00.000-05:00

For this assignment, I decided to play World of Warcraft for a couple of hours (for my first time). When I logged in, I entered a world that I shared with thousands of other users. This vast land varied greatly from physical features to level of difficulty just to survive. While I played, I completed a couple of quests, bought some new items and abilities and discovered some new areas. I had let a friend know that I was going to play for the first time, so he logged in and we played together, completing quests and adventuring as a team. With each new ability attained, each new area discovered and each higher level achieved, I found myself wanting to just continue playing, even after I had been playing for a couple hours already. Even after my friend logged off, I continued to play and found a fellow warlock who helped me discover things about my abilities as a warlock.

I had trouble deciding on the degree at which the Proteus Effect described by Yee & Bailenson (2007) determined how I interacted among the other players with whom I shared my meta-world. The Proteus Effect is the idea that an individual’s behavior conforms to their digital self-representation independent of how others perceive them. The Proteus Effect seems to predict that one will behave in manner that is stereotypical of their avatar. I do not believe this to be so when I played World of Warcraft. As a new player, I had idea how any other player would expect me, a level 1 warlock, to act. I believe that the way I behaved as a warlock conformed to my abilities as a warlock. As a warlock, I had strong spells that could be shot from a distance and little defense to physical attack. For these two reasons, I avoided hand to hand combat and weakened opponents from afar. If they got too close and my health was down, I used a spell to force them to run in the opposite direction for a couple of seconds so that I could make my get away. As a warlock, I found that I played as a bit of a coward, someone who just hits and runs away. There was really no “honor” in playing as a warlock (but it was still really fun.) I did not act like a coward because I thought that the other player would think that I would act like a coward. I acted like a coward because I was new and it was my best chance at survival given my current set of abilities.

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7102678997917330260&postID=2434181772379688532

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7102678997917330260&postID=6932509651783448157

#10: My Second Life

2007-11-13T07:06:00.000-05:00

Just to start off with, I am pretty unfamiliar to the whole world of virtual spaces and video games. I have always heard friends here and there talking about WOW and such, but never myself participated in those types of games. Surprisingly, I had heard of Second Life before from my communications research adviser. She is actually teaching a graduate class about second life, on second life. It seemed pretty interesting when she was explaining it, so I thought doing this blog would be a great way to try Second Life out.

I am not great with video games in general, so I was a little intimidated at first to try out Second Life. I did not realize how much detail and options the game gave me with choosing my avatar. At first I was so conflicted and indecisive with how I wanted my avatar to look. I had so many options from gender, height, attractiveness, the list goes on. I thought I would try going to the opposite of what I am in real life. Since I am a 5ft. petite female, I thought it would be fun to try being a 6ft. alpha male type. Going along with that whole theme, I chose a name that I thought would fit the character, Brad. Playing in Second Life was an interesting experience where I felt myself acting very outgoing and approaching other avatars with self-confidence. I portrayed myself or "Brad" as the life of the party or typical jock varsity sports player type that is more aggressive and so on. Normally I am relatively shy around people and just say "hello" with a smile and that is pretty much it. In Second Life I felt a lot more confident because I was supposed to be this big manly guy named Brad.

This brings up concepts from the readings by Yee & Bailenson. I definitely think that I "conform[ed] to the behavior that [I] believe[d] others would expect [me] to have", which is as they define, the Proteus Effect. Without even making a conscious decision to act in the manner of the avatar "Brad" I did it because I thought that is what Brad would act like. Reflecting back on my thought process however, I felt that my impression of "Brad" was very stereotypical and that I felt the general opinion of other's about how Brad is supposed to act, is how I acted in Second Life.

Just to briefly address the other points Yee & Bailenson make, I did consider "Brad" to be attractive and did find myself in a closer proximity with other avatars. Yet for the idea of self-disclosure, I did not find a correlation with my avatar and disclosing more information. This however could be due to the fact that I have not been playing in Second Life for a long time and perhaps if I were to continue being "Brad" I might end up disclosing more information. Overall however I felt that my reaction to the game Second Life was very accurate and went according to Yee & Bailenson's findings.

Comments:

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/10-was-juice-worth-squeeze.html

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-10-i-like-my-first-life.html

Assignment 10: WoW

2007-11-13T05:13:00.000-05:00

First of all, I would like to say that this assignment (if you really want to call it that) is great. I’ve had much experience playing online computer games throughout my childhood and high school years due to my older brother. I remember when I used to play Warcraft, then Starcraft, then came Counter-Strike and for this assignment, I decided to play World of Warcraft, which has changed a lot over the years from the original Warcraft I played as a teenager.

In World of Warcraft, a player can choose to be one of many races; I decided to be an Orc, whose race is considered to be one of the most prolific. As described by the World of Warcraft site, “the Orcs stand ready to fight not for the sake of conquest, but for their right to survive in their adopted world.” My goal is to fight for survival and in addition, to gain levels in order to become a stronger warrior. Also, players are allowed to team up to help each other get stronger faster and to benefit from other players’ special skills.

Although in the game I am a nonrealistic creature, I found that in some ways the game does parallel real life. Like I mentioned earlier, my purpose is to survive where I would have to continually make sure that my race is not being killed by opposing races. I If I get killed in battle, I lose money (gold in this case) and am forced to work for that gold back. This is similar to real life, although I am not getting killed, where I may come across situations where I may experience some kind of hardship and I might lose something (or things) along the way.

My character has green skin and has fang-like teeth. He carries a big axe in each hand and has a skill to fight up close. In addition, he has shoulder pads with spikes coming out of them. His character is pretty simple to use with his attacks quick and interesting to watch.

In the World of Warcraft, there are certain norms that are meant to be followed. In this game, there are variations of appearance due the different races. However, the class of a player’s character affects a player’s behavior more than their appearance. The character’s class determines their roles, race, and the gear they have on. In the game, players are expected to play the purpose of their roles. Yee & Bailenson’s study don’t really apply to the World of Warcraft since appearance is not a key factor in this game, but class is. Appearance did not affect my behavior as much but class, which includes a player’s race was significant and had a major influence on my behavior. Hence, the attraction factors that Yee and Bailenson discussed are not that important in this online game.

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/10-hit-and-run.html
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-10-second-life.html

Assignment 10: Avatars and Plasticity

2007-11-13T03:01:00.001-05:00

Yee and Bailenson’s 2007 article, “The Proteus Effect: the Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior” analyzes the plasticity of self-representations in online game spaces. Examining self-representation in CMC environments, Yee and Bailenson claim that there is a wealth of evidence that supports the claim that avatars change the way individuals interact with one another. In support of this hypothesis, Yee and Bailenson claim that both behavior confirmation and self-perception theory offer valuable insight. Defining behavior confirmation as “the process whereby the expectations of one person (typically referred to as the perceiver) cause another person (typically referred to as the target) to behave in ways that confirm the perceiver’s expectation” Yee and Bailenson state that the perceiver’s behavior causes a change in the target’s behavior. Additionally, Yee and Bailenson note that, in accordance with the self-perception theory and deindividuation theory, it is possible for avatars to change how individuals behave, independent of how others perceive them. Daryl Bem’s Self-Perception Theory (1972) claims that individuals develop attitudes by observing their behavior and concluding what attitudes must have caused them. Similarly, Yee and Bailenson, in what they call the Proteus Effect, posit that individuals conform to the behavior that they believe others would expect them to have. Additionally, Yee and Bailenson outline the similarities and differences between the Proteus Effect and the SIDE model. Significantly, in distinction from the SIDE model, Yee and Bailenson claim that the Proteus Effect “operates” when the user is alone because the “self-perception theory is not predicated on the actual presence of other people but simply that a person evaluates him or herself from a third-person perspective.”
In assessing the validity of the Proteus Effect, specifically, examining whether the avatar of my choice affected the way I behaved in the game, I initially decided to play Second Life. After many failed attempts at running the Second Life application, however, I decided to experiment with Everquest. Unfortunately, I was also unable to download the application for Everquest. Despite my inability to play an online multi-player game, having read the literature regarding gender in online spaces, I feel that the choice of an avatar does play some role in the way one plays an online game. Though Yee and Bailenson claim that their Proteus Effect operates even when the user is alone, I feel that individuals will change in accordance with their avatar only in the presence of other individuals.

10: Diminished Fantasy

2007-11-13T02:30:00.000-05:00

My first and only experience with MMORPGs was when I played Final Fantasy XI for several months towards the end of my junior year of high school. As I actually detailed in my first blog entry, I eventually stopped playing the game because it felt like I had to make the choice between a social life and a virtual life due to the amount of hours required to make decent progress. For this assignment I stepped back into the shoes of a small, magical, child-like “Tarutaru” (see the portrait above - adorable, no?) named Munk.

Unfortunately, I did not have the pleasure of crafting a new avatar for research’s sake (it would have been interesting to be one of the members of the sexy, cat-woman race called the “Mithra”), as this costs extra money, so I allowed myself to get reacquainted with good ol’ Munk for my hour in the world of Vana’diel. The first thing I noticed about the gamespace was that it was starkly deserted. All the hustle and bustle from my game-playing days three years ago seems to have vanished. The environment consists of usually crowded cities and sparsely populated fields (for combat with monsters)—even in the cities it was hard to find players—and when I did find them, most were Japanese-speaking, as the majority of the users are in Japan. When I was involved, the population was 500,000 users but now it is roughly around 100,000; most must have moved on to World of Warcraft or Second Life—or just got fed up with MMOs like me.

When I did manage to track English-speaking players down to socialize, I found that they were extremely task-focused. I tried some humor and conversation about personal information with several players, but all seemed to either ignore me altogether if there was mission we were collaboratively working on or just bluntly type instructions or demands if were fighting monsters or looking for artifacts. I attribute this to external factors. Essentially, FFXI is inferior to WoW, so all players looking for a socially collaborative MMORPG are there, and Second Life is for non-gamers; thus I believe that the users of FFXI are fans of the Final Fantasy franchise—which is predominantly single player.

Relating to Yee & Bailenson (2007), I certainly was in a position to experience behavioral confirmation and the Proteus Effect, as I was, well, tiny (reaching as high up as the waists of other, more human-like avatars). I did feel, to some degree, that others were treating me differently because of my size: larger beings would shout commands and instructions at me, even when I clearly knew what I was doing. However, I believe this is largely due to the task-focused atmosphere; thus there is less emphasis on appearance and more emphasis on what appearance means (the Tarutaru are good at magic so people were commanding me to help them perform magic). Perhaps it was because I haven’t played in a while and felt removed, but I did not feel a diminished presence because of my small stature and intense cuteness. Maybe if the focus of the game was to socialize (like it is in Second Life), I would have experienced Yee & Bailenson’s suggested behavioral differences, but this was not the case.

Comment 1
Comment 2

Assignment 10: I like my first life better

2007-11-13T01:03:00.001-05:00

I had absolutely no idea what Second Life was when starting this assignment. The concept of virtual worlds is completely foreign to me and honestly I find it to be a little ridiculous. I am not one for spending much unnecessary time on the computer despite its apparently endless opportunities. Interacting with real people appeals to me much more. That being said, I reluctantly began the extremely long process of downloading and installing Second Life on my computer and getting started.

I spent most of my time making my avatar, realizing just how extensive my options were. I altered just about every aspect that I could, playing around with ridiculous extremes, until I finally landed on a quite normal, attractive female. I assumed that the fact that I perceived my avatar to be attractive would affect how I acted in the game, but I was wrong. As it turns out I could not get used to this virtual world. It seemed crazy to me how much time and effort was invested by the users into something that isn’t even real.

It took me so long to get started because I didn’t fully understand how everything worked or what I was supposed to do. Being in Second Life as an attractive avatar I assumed I would feel more eager and comfortable being extroverted. However, I soon realized the complete opposite. I was overwhelmed by complexity of the game and became extremely disinterested quickly. The experience of going to the fake store or a fake party as a computerized girl who walks like the tin man seemed less than thrilling. I tried to go up and talk to people but was crippled by the fact that I perceived the entire situation to be awkward and strange and could not stop thinking about the fact that there was a real person at a computer controlling that avatar. This does not support Yee and Bailenson’s findings. Despite my attractiveness I was not outgoing or willing to approach strangers. Therefore I also did not disclose more or intimate information. The attractiveness of my avatar had nothing to do with the way I behaved, probably because I assumed that most people made their avatars attractive or the way they wished they looked and are aware that others must do the same. Therefore, the way others perceived me “physically” seemed irrelevant. I assume that this does support the Proteus effect however in that people choose the way that they are represented by their avatar and usually behave in accordance with how they believe that they are perceived. Most would choose an avatar that is representative of how they wished they looked and then be able to act the way they wish they could act in social situations.

10 - If Second Life Were Real Life, I'd End It All

2007-11-13T00:27:00.000-05:00

Let it be stated I am not a fan of online video games. For whatever reason, the idea of playing a video game in front of a computer, no matter how cool an idea or game might be, has always seemed like a waste of time. I guess regular console games just seem more social to me, I don't know. Either way, for this assignment I decided to check out this Second Life world everyone speaks so highly of. Again, it seems like a really interesting and interactive idea, but an hour of this was quite painful.

I chose the boy next door avatar because I was in the mood to be wholesome. Also, I figured this would be a good way to test out the Proteus effect and see if I conformed to what I believe are the standards of the boy next door. Seeing as how I'd never played before, I needed to go through the orientation, and found it to be both informative and tedious. Once I got to the welcome area, that's where the interactions took off. In my first interactions I very politely asked some basic questions like how to change my appearance, etc, as well as try to find out some stuff about the other players. I don't know if it was because I was new to the game and felt it best to not step on any toes, or because I was conforming to my impression of the polite boy next door that I found myself being overly polite. I feel this was probably a result of the Proteus effect, and I felt the need to act like the polite boy next door.

I figured I would test out Yee's and Bailenson's ideas about people being friendlier to more attractive avatars. While I initially made myself a traditionally attractive boy next door, people were fairly nice and very helpful when I first jumped on. I thought they were just being nice and helpful to the new guy, and I also think this would only happen in a game like Second Life, which seems far less competitive than say World of Warcraft. In a more competitive atmosphere, I don't think the people would have been as hospitable. Anyway, after a few minutes of walking around polite and attractive, I decided to mix it up a bit and make myself unattractive. Seeing as how I was still a boy next door, I felt I should act as such and continue to be someone nice you can bring home to mom. Even though I was unattractive, the other characters continued to be nice and helpful and interactive. I conformed to the social cues of the boy next door, but others did not act more negatively towards me as my attraction level went down. I don't know if it was because an hour is not enough time to get the proper reaction, but either way their hospitality did not make the hour go by any easier. Let's just say I'm very grateful for my first life.

10 - Plastic People in a Plastic World

2007-11-13T00:12:00.000-05:00

François Duc de La Rochefoucauld said, “We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.” This I feel is the most attractive quality of computer-based multi-player games in a virtual space offer: a way to escape from yourself and be someone else. If you remember my first post on this blog, when I was a little girl, I used to tell strangers my name was Becky and I always dreamed of having long, brown straight hair. In second life, my childhood dreams finally came true. Second life describes itself as being all about personal expression and having the opportunity to create an avatar which is “the most personal expression of all because it “is your persona in the virtual world” (secondlife.com/whatis). It gives people the chance to finally have that perfect nose, that six pack, or maybe finally become 6 inches taller.

Unfortunately, this plasticity of self-representation works both ways. Yee and Bailenson (2007) reflect on a number of great points and observations in their article. For instance, their comments about how computer-mediated communication lacks social cues and presence making the social environment an impoverished one. They also point out how relationships develop slower online and that people take part in behavioral confirmation and react to the expectations other people have for them. However, it was their conclusions regarding how our avatars affect our behavior and makes up for these poor environments that are particularly interesting. Their findings supported the Proteus effect, which said that our self-representations shape our behaviors. For instance, the more attractive the avatar, the more likely they were to approach people of the opposite gender, just like the taller the person, the more dominant the person acted.

Yet, what I found from my experience was that even though these avatars reveal an identity cue in this environment that has never existed before, its effect on behavioral confirmation and the rate of relationship formation is biased on the physical appearance of the avatar. This is obvious just by looking at the fact that you can change everything about your avatar at any time, even what kind of underwear it’s wearing. Why would they go to so much trouble allowing you to change every little thing about something that was not so important? Also, I found that relationships did not necessarily form faster in general, they just moved faster in particular directions than they would have. For instance, the prettier girl was more likely to be more physically revealing and act more sexually just like the guy going up to the pretty girl is going to act more charming and charismatic.

Overall, what we don’t realize is that you can’t separate it. You don’t want to become your avatar without keeping who you are, and the fact of the matter is that you can’t have it both ways. These virtual lives aren’t about substance, they are worlds on a plastic screen, and therefore, are only plastic at best.

10. The Online Gaming World

2007-11-12T23:49:00.000-05:00

For the first time in my life, I played a computer-based multi-player videogame. The game I played was Second Life. Yee and Bailenson describe Second Life as a social world “using over 150 unique sliders, they can change everything from their foot size to their eye color to the cut of their shirt” (p. 272). When my character was first created, it appeared as a skinny girl with brown hair. After asking numerous other avatars how to change my appearance, one lady gave me specific directions as to how to change my features. I also learned how to fly and gain inventory. The Second Life online space was very difficult to navigate through, especially for a first-timer. If it was not for this assignment, I do not think I would have ever entered into a computer-based multi-player videogame. Now that I have entered a computer-based multi-player videogame, like Second Life, I might re-enter (if I am every really bored).

In Yee’s and Bailenson’s article they discuss the implications of the Proteus Effect with regards to social interactions in online environments. The Proteus Effect is when one conforms to the behavior that they believe others would expect them to have. The Proteus Effect emphasizes conformity to individual identity cues, such as becoming friendlier in an attractive avatar. Yee and Bailenson believe that our avatars change how we interact with others. They state, “In an online environment, a perceiver interacting with a target who is using an attractive avatar may cause the target to behave in a more friendly and charming manner” (p. 272). When I was an avatar in Second Life, the attractiveness of my avatar did not change how I interacted with others. My features went from unattractive and fat to attractive and skinny, but my interactions with others remained constant. However, I was more likely to start talking to a more attractive avatar rather than a less attractive one. In my head, I thought more attractive avatars were nicer.

10: Looking into my Second Life

2007-11-12T23:40:00.000-05:00

The computer based videogame that I decided to play was Second Life. Researching a lot about this MUD through last week’s assignment on PIU, I was really excited to do this activity. My excitement did not stay for long as I realized that I was actually bored of being on Second Life. However, to have good results for this assignment, I decided to interact with others on Second Life first and then read the Yee & Bailenson (2007) study. After reading the study, I noticed that only some of my experiences on Second Life matched this paper.

As soon as I registered and got on Second Life, I had to select an avatar and get a name. I choose to be “the boy next door” and named myself Sabbar Sang. Yee states in their paper that, “users in online environment may conform to expectations and stereotypes of the idedntity of their avatars.” Following this Proteus Effect and being the Boy next door I should have been a little shy, but due to this assignment I started chatting with everyone out there. Therefore, I did not observe myself acting like the boy next door but I did meet other people who were trying to act like their avatars. I met various people just starting their time on Second Life and many of these people had already started acting like their avatar. One of these avatars was a “party boy” and he kept making comments that he thought were cool such as, “yo, wanna hang out” etc. I could notice that he was acting and trying to be cool by acting like his “party boy” avatar and keeping up the personality of his character. Therefore, the Proteus effect and behavioral conformations were definitely seen on Second Life.

In addition to checking for these two factors I also assessed how well some of the conclusions of Yee and Balienson worked out on my experience with Second Life. One of these conclusions was that, “the attractiveness of the avatars impacted how intimate participants were willing to be with a stranger.” I experienced a little bit of this when I noticed myself approaching more to avatars. This behavior goes hand in hand with Yee’s first experiment where they found that, “participants in the attractive condition walked significantly closer to confederate than participants in the unattractive condition”. I felt that I had an attractive avatar and due to my real identity being anonymous, I was more confident to approach someone. Moreover, I observed myself having longer conversations with avatars that were girls and were better looking. Another conclusion of Yee stated that, “the heights of the avatars impacted how confident participants became.” I did not notice this behavior to be present because even while talking to other avatars that looked bigger than me, I did not feel like they were overpowering or more dominant.

10.Avatars and personalities

2007-11-12T22:32:00.001-05:00

New Note 8

For this assignment, I borrowed my friend's computer to play World of Warcraft for a few hours. The experiment went horribly wrong when I realized that I had no idea what to do at all, yet I hung in there and managed to figure a few things out.

I had a great time when I created my character. I chose to be a gnome mage because it sounded like the most benevolent. Most of the others sounded either annoying, stupid or malevolent and I didn't feel much like being malicious. I also chose the Expansive Mind trait because it stated that it increased intelligence and I liked the symbolic value of the idea.

At this point, I had to stop and consider that my case in regard to the Yee & Bailenson article, that it wasn't my choice of avatar that influenced how I played. It was more that I chose my avatar because of the way that I was going to play the game. I realize looking back that I was in a really strongly emotional state at the time and that I couldn't really break out of it by will of choice.

So I opted to instead create a different character with different traits. This time, I created an orc warrior with blood fury in order to contrast with my first one. While creating it, I decided to myself that it was considerably different when compared to the gnome mage that I had before.

And oddly, I started playing the game somewhat differently. I used my character for more aggressive ends than when I used my first. Was it because of this new avatar that I chose? I suppose it was, because there was no purpose to the game in my opinion in using the character for the way that I would have preferred to use it.

Nevertheless, I had no interest in it. I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about playing with the gnome mage that I created, but I absolutely hated playing with the orc warrior because of the image that it created. I abruptly dropped the task for a few hours and then came back and resumed with my first character. The experience was just as unfulfilling, but at least it didn't repulse me in the way that the orc warrior did.

So where does this leave Yee and Bailenson? Well, I figure that yes, the avatar did change the way that I played, but more importantly, it changed the way I felt about the game. This is what changed the way I played, but the effect was so strong on me that I had to stop and go back to using the gnome mage. I found that when using the mage, I could play a game that was more simple and humble whereas using the orc was exceedingly lavish, aggressive and destructive.

So my final conclusion is that the avatar did change my gameplay because it changed who I played as. Ultimately, it seems that the images that we create of ourselves (whether symbolically or materially) can have an extremely profound effect on the way we view ourselves.

10 Hancock As Enabler

2007-11-12T21:09:00.000-05:00

This Sunday, I did something that I swore two years ago to never do ever again. For one hour, I stepped into the World of Warcraft (WoW) for the assignment. If this does not demonstrate my willingness to sacrifice for Comm 245, I do not know what will.

My last interaction with this six-million-player phenomenon ended in April, 2005, my senior year in high school. After wasting about five months of my life, I swore off the game altogether upon the realization that I was paying money to accomplish…nothing. So for me to re-enter this domain was quite the experience.

This Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) takes place in a multi-continent world with 8 races and an equal variety of specialty “classes” that one can customize to create a character more inclined to physical combat or to magic use. A player creates a unique character and explores the massive world, meeting people, completing “quests”, collecting items, and learning their character and its abilities. All this is done in the name of getting your character to the highest level possible and completing more difficult quests, perhaps for no other reason than because everyone else seems to be doing it.

My experience with the one hour I limited myself to for self-respect’s sake was pretty much the same as I remembered from my game time back in 2005. My time was spent running around the virtual world completing trivial tasks and occasionally interacting with fellow newly-created characters. After reading over the Yee & Bailensen (2007) article, I found that my avatar, a small male gnome, did not have any effects on my personality relative to FtF interactions. I believe this lack of difference in my general affect can be attributed to my previous experience with online virtual environments, and specifically with WoW. I furthermore think that my apprehension about engaging in an activity that had previously wasted a chunk of my life resulted in my detaching myself from the experience more than others might have, whether conscious or not. It could just be that I don’t buy into the whole behavioral confirmation phenomenon. In the end, I survived my brief jaunt into a world I’d hoped to have left far behind, and while I don’t plan to go back any time soon, I now have a new way to view any interactions I might have within that space.

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/10-adjust-shirt-wrinkles.html

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/10-if-second-life-were-real-life-id-end.html

10: Beauty Lies in the Eye of the Beholder

2007-11-12T20:56:00.000-05:00

I have never played online videogames before so this was an interesting experience for me. I decided to try Second Life to see what was so addictive about it. The game requires quite a bit of vested interest because you have to go through orientation and get used to how things operate, but other players were very friendly and willing to help. Once you finish orientation, you are teleported to the “welcome area,” which is where you meet/socialize with other players. I found this to be the most interactive part of the game because there was so much conversing and even in different languages (French, Spanish, etc.). There was a lot of diversity in the players and I met people from all over the world (Chile, Czech Republic, Lebanon, etc.) who happen to be online the same time as me. The 24/7 access and synchronicity help in the success of the game because there will always be other players online to interact with. Generally, since gender was apparent, people would begin conversations by asking age and location. I would follow the conversation by asking how they started playing the game. Ironically, the first person I met said they were also playing for a class. (I thought they were from Cornell, but they were from LSU)

The most interesting part of the game for me was changing my avatar’s appearance. I noticed that the majority of the players chose attractive avatars. Although users are permitted to make their avatars misshapen/not human, very seldom did I come across an odd looking/unattractive character. To better understand the issues in Yee & Bailenson’s article, I first made an attractive character and then made it ugly to see if I would experience the Proteus Effect, in which my behavior conforms to my digital self-representation independent of how others perceive me. In particular, when I was the attractive character, I found that it was much easier to talk to people. This may have been caused by the anonymity and my wanting to explore the game more so I was more extraverted or it may have been an increase in self-confidence and players responding more to attractive characters. I compared my experience using behavioral confirmation, where one behaves in ways that confirm the perceiver’s expectations, and the self-perception theory, where I observe my own behavior to understand what caused them. As the attractive avatar, my experience confirmed the first hypothesis because I exhibited higher self-disclosure and more information about myself than in the unattractive state because fewer people confronted me as the unattractive avatar. I did not, however, experience the first hypothesis of walking closer to people in the attractive condition. Being the unattractive avatar was viewed by others mostly as a joke, and I did not feel that I was perceived as unattractive. Independent of how others perceived me, I did not feel that my behavior was altered (i.e. – I was still as extraverted as I was before). Thus, my experience did not entirely verify the results declared in Yee & Bailenson.

comment1
comment2

10: Was the Juice Worth the Squeeze?

2007-11-12T20:21:00.000-05:00

I chose to use Second Life. The girl next door was an easy choice. First of all, she was definitely the best looking. Second of all, The Girl Next Door is one of my favorite movies, and my avatar resembled Elisha Cuthbert. Getting used to this virtual reality was no easy task. I had trouble with the tutorials that taught you how to speak, move, interact, and change your appearance. I was excited to really get into this assignment, and use my self-presentational skills in order to act like my avatar. However, that never really happened for two reasons.

Firstly, I was really taken aback by the extensiveness of the rules of the virtual reality that is second life. It was clear to me that there was more to the Leviathan in this environment than just a mere raised eyebrow. Things that college kids may consider humorous could easily get you kicked off second life, and that deterred me from acting as outlandish as I was planning. Second, because I had never played an online video game with other people, I was shocked and amazed at how close the interactions were to real life. Now, of course there are some major differences (for one I can not see the person I am interacting with which creates anonymity, and for another, I never have to interact with these people again), but overall I felt myself struggling with the same social dilemmas I do on a day-to-day basis. I felt awkward initiating conversations, I was shy, unsure, and overanalyzed each syllable I wrote in the chat box before shouting it to the second life environment. These qualities stem from my own personality, not that of my avatar (Elisha Cuthbert). What began as a journey to free myself from self imposed social constraints became a typical interaction while wearing a pretty mask. While the social norms are not the same on second life as they are in the real world, they are similar, and as such, anonymity can only go so far in terms of encouraging someone to act more aggressively and confidently. This experience is a clear departure from the article by Yee and Bailenson, and does not support their 'Proteus Effect’

The Proteus Effect asserts that individuals act how they believe others would expect them to. Thus, my gorgeous girl next door should not have been unsure, awkward, and out of place as I acted during my experience. I am sure that If I had spent more time in second life, and become more well versed in the environment, that such confidence would carry over to my behavior and I would begin acting more like my avatar. However, in just an hour it is difficult for one to shed their own insecurities and present a more dominant strong willed version of ourselves. Throughout my experience on second life, I felt like the identity that would be associated with my avatar was a facade that I could not substantiate through conversations with others. Despite picking an avatar that looked nothing like myself, my girl next door was unable to conjure the dominant, provocative, and risk taking persona that Elisha displayed in the movie The Girl Next Door.

10: Adjust Shirt Wrinkles

2007-11-11T22:51:00.000-05:00

As I have not played any online games ever (including simple ones like solitaire), I was astounded with IBM’s Second Life program. The complexity of each step of the set-up was impressive. As I was going through each set-up step, I found it very interesting to how real Second Life actually is to the “real world,” or non-CMC environments. There were “Community Standards” that I had to read and agree to before proceeding in the process. “The goals of the Community Standards are simple: treat each other with respect and without harassment, adhere to local standards as indicated by simulator ratings, and refrain from any hate activity which slurs a real-world individual or real-world community.” Then there is an in-depth description about the “Big Six:” intolerance, harassment, assault, disclosure, indecency, and disturbing the peace. After reading through these, they sounded a lot like the unwritten rules of moral conduct in the United States. “Committing” to these standards by checking the “I agree” box and then signing up for a particular account (free or costly) can definitely affect a person’s development of problematic internet usage (PIU).

I decided to pick the avatar named “girl night club.” To go along with her seductive look, I chose—what I thought to be—an equally seductive name. I then spent the majority of my time in Second Life altering her appearance. My amazement and even addiction to the program continued when I saw that I could alter anything from her body shape to the amount of wrinkles on her shirt. When I was not altering the appearance by changing her skin tone, clothing colors, eye color, etc., I was trying my best to navigate the program. I found it very hard to pick up at first despite the helping box in the upper left corner of the screen. There were many times when I had to go back to the same spot to re-read helpful hints on how to use the program and to figure out what features were available to me. I only chatted with a few men (who were the majority of avatars I came across) after first being typed to.

After I participated in the program and read the article by Yee and Bailenson, I realized that my experience cannot support their research. I did find myself choosing a sexy avatar and altering her name and appearance to best “fit the part.” However, my motives behind my choice and the alterations were not based on how attractive I wanted my avatar to appear but how amazed I was by the program’s capabilities. As I spent very little time actually interacting with other users, my avatar did not affect my behavior in significant or instantaneous ways. Being a very inexperienced gamer in such an advanced program, my choice of an avatar was not based on using self-representation in a virtual environment which caused no change in my behavior.

Comment 1
Comment 2

10: Avatar Attractiveness

2007-11-11T21:45:00.000-05:00

Plastic surgery aside, in real-life individuals can alter their appearance through a new hair style, makeup choices, clothing selection, and a variety of other superficial means. However, in the virtual space Second Life, individuals can easily alter the appearance of their avatar (their digital representation) in more ways than I ever expected possible. Yee and Bailenson’s (2007) study analyzes how self-representation can impact an individual’s behavior in these spaces.

When I first signed up for Second Life, I chose to be represented by one of the standard avatars, referred to as “Girl Next Door.” Shortly after being dropped off on Orientation Island, another newbie approached me and we began chatting. His avatar was very good looking, and I became self-conscious since this standard avatar wasn’t necessarily how I wanted to present myself. Since we were both fairly unsure of how to maneuver our way through this virtual world, we helped each other out as we learned our basic skills—how to communicate, how to search, how to move, and most importantly how to alter your appearance.

After completing my orientation, I opted to be transported to Help Island, where I spent a great deal of time altering my avatar’s appearance. Who knew that eye spacing, earlobe attachment, nostril division, lip ratio, jaw shape, and neck thickness were aspects that would be considered in forming our digital self-representations? After creating an avatar that I believed was very attractive, I enhanced the look I was going for by altering her clothing to make her appear more confident with her body. I achieved this by changing her jeans into super-short jean shorts, changing the long-sleeve shirt into a tank top, and revealing some cleavage.

According to Yee and Bailenson (2007), the Proteus Effect states that “in line with self-perception theory, [individuals] conform to the behavior that they believe others would expect them to have” (p. 274). This means that individuals evaluate themselves from a third-person perspective and behave consistently with how they are represented. After altering my avatar’s appearance, I had the feeling that others would expect me to be outgoing and confident simply based on my avatar’s attractiveness and her clothing.

I signed onto Second Life again later in the day with my new appearance perfected. My first Second Life friend that I met on Orientation Island initiated a chat conversation with me although we were on different islands. Following through with his request to meet up, I transported him to the island I was currently exploring. Once he saw my avatar’s new look, he suddenly acted more intimate than he did during our initial meeting—greeting me with “Hey Hottie.”

In Yee and Bailenson’s (2007) study, they found that the attractiveness of an individual’s avatar impacts how intimate they are willing to be with a stranger. In particular, the results showed that participants who had attractive avatars exhibited increased self-disclosure and were more likely to stand closer to others. My Second Life interaction supports Yee and Bailenson’s (2007) observations. Prior to my appearance alteration, the male avatar and my avatar were standing a reasonable distance away from each other and we chatted strictly about how to use Second Life. However, after I altered my avatar's appearance and we met up again, we stood fairly close to each other and I felt comfortable sharing a great deal of personal information about myself with this stranger. Since I felt that others would interpret my avatar as being attractive and confident, I acted consistently with these beliefs.

In addition to how I perceived my avatar, the way the male I was interacting with viewed my avatar led the relationship to become more intimate. Yee and Bailenson’s (2007) study intentionally excluded the effect of behavioral confirmation (the idea that individuals behave in ways that confirm the other’s expectations) in order to focus on the effect of changing an individual’s self-representation. In their experiment the confederate was blind to the attractiveness of the participant’s avatar, therefore removing the effects of behavioral confirmation. However, while interacting in Second Life, the male I was interacting with clearly expressed that he found my avatar attractive and therefore behavioral confirmation probably contributed to how I acted in addition to my own perception of my avatar’s attractiveness. Ultimately, although our self-representations can affect how we behave in Second Life or any other virtual environment, I believe it is unrealistic to ignore behavioral confirmation since this plays a huge role in interaction.

Comment 1

Comment 2

Assignment 10: Get A (second) Life

2007-11-11T11:49:00.000-05:00

The Second Life game space was a little hard to get used to. I think there is a big learning curve. While there is so much to do, and so many options, because of the limitlessness of the playing style, it’s hard to grow familiar with the game. There were so many options for what I could do, where I could go, what I could look like, etc. that I didn’t know where to start and thus I was bored. I completed the orientation tutorials to learn the game. Other than that, I talked to a few people and I walked (sometimes flew) around. It got old fast. Additionally, my movement was very slow and choppy. Whether this was my computer, the program, or a mix, I don’t know. But it diminished my enjoyment of Second Life.

The appearance of my avatar did not have much influence on how I behaved. My findings differ from those discussed in the Yee and Bailenson reading for two reasons. First of all, it was hard to judge where my avatar fell in terms of attractiveness, height, or other factors, relative to other avatars in the virtual space. Not only did I not see my avatars face much, due to the default view of the game, but even when I was able to see my avatar I couldn’t know how other users perceived my avatar. Thus, the attractiveness of my avatar did not affect me.

Likewise, I did not come across enough other users to get a sense of how tall or short my avatar was. I was not in a real, physical space, and so I couldn’t tell how tall I was compared to the environment. Therefore, it was difficult to judge if I was tall or short.

The second major reason that my observations deviated from Yee and Bailenson’s is that I was not using Second Life for recreation or as the participant in an experiment. I was testing it out for this assignment. Thus, I quickly accepted whatever avatar I was given, made a few quick changes to see how that feature worked, and that was it. I didn’t really identify with my avatar. People who spend time with Second Life or other virtual games usually feel more in touch with their avatar and take it more seriously. I felt detached from my avatar. I regarded my avatar as an analysis tool for the assignment, not an extension or virtual form of myself. This, I think, is the main reason why my experience did no yield the same results as Yee and Bailenson.

While Yee and Bailenson found that height and attractiveness of avatars influenced how people behaved, I did not. This was because I couldn’t tell how attractive or tall my avatar was, and because I did not feel attached to my avatar.

Comments:

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-10-i-like-my-first-life.html

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/10-wow.html

Assignment #10: Second Life and the Proteus Effect

2007-11-11T10:21:00.001-05:00

I’ve never participated in any computer-based multi-player videogames, so my experience in Second Life was definitely an interesting one. I selected one of the basic female avatars with the “Nightclub” label. After naming her “Monica,” I did not make any other alterations or upgrades to improve her appearance. Before I downloaded Second Life, I had intended on making many adjustments in my avatar’s appearance in order to make her as attractive as possible. However, once I was given the initial basic selections I realized that I only had the option of choosing tall, skinny, pretty female avatars. They each may not have conformed to my personal ideas of beauty, but they were all uniquely attractive. It was clear to me that Second Life gave me really no choice but to choose a “youthful, in shape, and attractive” avatar, as Yee and Bailenson (2007, pg. 287) point out in their article on the Proteus Effect.

According to Yee and Bailenson (2007), the Proteus Effect is the process in which an individual’s behavior conforms to their digital self-representation independent of how others perceive them. In their study, Yee and Bailenson discovered that participants in a virtual reality environment walked closer to confederates if they believed themselves to be attractive avatars. Participants also exhibited more self-disclosure and intimacy if they believed their avatars were attractive. Lastly, participants who believed they were taller avatars behaved more confidently in a negotiation task. These changes in behavior due to the Proteus Effect occurred even without the effects of behavioral confirmation because the confederates with whom the participants spoke were always blind to the attractiveness and height experimental conditions.

When I was in the online social world of Second Life, I tried to determine whether my selection of attractive “Nightclub Monica” had any affect on my behavior in the videogame space as Yee and Bailenson found. As a tall, young, attractive female avatar, I guess I could say that I walked closer to other avatars in the Second Life environment. There were only a few avatars that I actually spoke to, but with those few I did end up sharing a lot of information about myself. Most of that information was made up, but nevertheless I was showing increased self-disclosure. I also exhibited increased confidence in the way that I just began conversations with the other avatars with much more self-assurance than I would have in a face to face interaction.

While I know that I showed changes in my behavior that were consistent with Yee and Bailenson’s findings, I think that I really only made such drastic confidence changes because I had read their article and was aware of their findings prior to my experience in Second Life. When I interacted with other avatars, I constantly had the thought in the back of my mind that “I was a tall, young, pretty avatar and that I should not be afraid to approach other avatars.” As I look back and analyze what influenced my avatar’s behavior, I do accept the fact that my attractiveness may have indeed influenced my behavior more than I think it did. However, I think that a third party perspective watching the interaction is really necessary to properly determine the Proteus Effect.

Comments:
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-10-second-life.html
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/10-hit-and-run.html

Assignment 10: Why are Avatars All Ano?

2007-11-10T15:35:00.000-05:00

I’m really not one to play videogames of any kind. But, after taking this course and INFO 515 and hearing all the talk about Second Life, I was interested to try it out. I chose to play Second Life and there was a good amount I learned from this experience.

I chose one of the basic avatars, the City Chic girl, and I didn’t alter anything about her. I found it really interesting that of the first 12 avatars one could choose from, they were all thin and tall. They were pretty versions of several cultural types. There were no short, fat avatars to start out with, only pretty, skinny, black, white, Latino and Asian avatars. From the start of my Second Life experience, the options were affecting how I was going to interact in the space. It’s as if they were forcing me to be more attractive in Second Life to facilitate more interaction. I felt as though the creators of Second Life expect lonely, non-social people to use their game, and so they help them along by initially giving them a sexy or really pretty avatar.

Since the avatars are all good looking and tall—the specific characteristic Lee and Bailenson (2007) studied, there were definitely similarities between “The Proteus Effect” study and my experience. I definitely walked closer to the other avatars and I definitely wanted to facilitate conversation, but I don’t think I took those actions solely because I had a good-looking avatar, I think because I was in Second Life for an assignment, and not for free enjoyment, I also was doing those things. Additionally, I didn’t have the option to have a short, fat avatar (I didn’t explore the options to alter my avatar within the different world, so this is strictly based on the initial avatar choices) so, it’s possible that if my avatar wasn’t as good-looking I would have acted differently within Second Life.

As the Lee and Bailenson say, the term the Proteus Effect means “an individual’s behavior to conform to their digital self-representation independent of how others perceive them.” Without the option for avatars with different body types, which in my opinion is what leads to lower self-esteem and less confidence, there’s no way to tell if I would or wouldn’t have conformed to my digital self-representation in Second Life.

Below is a picture of three examples of girl avatars in Second Life, just so you can fully understand what I mean.

Just Google it!

2007-11-06T09:26:00.000-05:00

Google.com is the answer to all my problems. What else do you need? When I'm having trouble remembering that econ equation during my problem set, I google it. I don't even bother looking through my text book; that would take too much time and effort. When I can't remember the name of the song I heard on the radio and have been meaning to download, I google it. What's the weather going to be like today? Google has all the answers, not to mention my homepage and a spot on my favorites.
Caplan (2004) defines Problematic Internet Use as resulting in "maladaptive cognitions and behaviors." It creates a burden on your outside life and evolves into excessive and compulsive use. Caplan provided three components of his theory that result in a cycle of problematic internet use.
1. Individuals with psychosocial problems hold negative perceptions about their social competence.
2. These individuals prefer online interactions because it is less threatening.
3. Preference for online interactions leads to excessive and compulsive online interaction.

Google.com is an easy way to get pulled into this cycle because of its amazingly diverse realm of information. Even when I'm trying to get to Google Scholar to do research for a paper, I find myself getting distracted by other options like the videos and photos.

Assignment 9: Away Messages

2007-11-06T09:23:00.000-05:00

AIM can be a virtual quick sand for some unfortunate users. For this reason you will rarely if ever find me signed on to AIM but if you do you can bet that I am checking everyone of my buddies away messages incessantly until my paper is due in the next hour and I have successfully written only the first sentence. AIM is a great tool for many to stay in touch with family and friends, multi-task, talk to several people at once and just stay connected in general. But for some AIM, particularly incessant away message stalking, can lead to problematic internet use (PIU), especially interfering with productivity and academics.

Wallace (1999) attributes certain properties of the internet to increased PIU. In the case of away message checking operant conditioning and maintenance of virtual presence are most relevant. Operant conditioning describes when a behavior is rewarded with a variable schedule, the behavior is more difficult to extinguish. One of the most addictive factors of AIM away messages is the possibility of constant change and update. Even if you have already checked everyone’s away message twice over there is always the possibility of being rewarded with a new status or quote to read in an updated away message. This possibility perpetuates the desire to stalk away messages and makes it seem as though wasting all that time was worthwhile. In addition, maintenance of virtual presence plays a big role in the PIU associated with away message checking. Because AIM is interactive and stalkers are also able to put up away messages and presumably change them often. With the idea that others will be checking their updated status with as much dedication as they would be themselves, changing their away message serves as another rewarding experience.

The online cognition scale from Davis et al predicts PIU on certain dimensions of an individual. In the case of away message stalking distraction and procrastination may be the most prominent. For most, myself included, problematic internet use occurs most when there are other, less exciting tasks in front of us that we do not want to do. Away messages are incredibly distracting especially because of their property of operant conditioning and especially in those that are prone to procrastinate. Who hasn’t claimed that they’ll just look once at some away messages and then be able to continue on with that paper? In addition, diminished impulse control plays a role in away message stalking. I have found myself unable to not click on a buddy if a little box in the corner of my screen has appeared telling me they are away. The ease and the quickness of checking makes impulses that much more difficult to deny. Finally loneliness and social comfort are factors of an individual that affect away message stalking. Those that feel lonely are more likely to check away messages and most likely perpetuate that feeling and a feeling of social comfort is also provided by the fact that individuals can know what people are doing and feel somewhat connected without having to step outside of a comfort zone and engage in synchronous chat or face to face encounter.

Caplan describes problematic internet use as maladaptive cognitions and behaviors involving internet use that result in negative academic, professional, and social consequences. Behavior relating to excessive use, spending too much time online, and compulsive use, an inability to control the amount of time spent online often accompanied by guilt, are indicators of PIU. AIM away messages can certainly perpetuate these behaviors in many individuals. Inordinate amounts of time are spent compulsively checking for updates often with feelings of “why did I do this” if no reward is received in the form of a new away message. The affordances of internet interaction that are described that are factors in away message stalking are greater anonymity and less perceived social risk. The idea that a certain person does not know that you have checked his or her away message ten times in the last five minutes spurs the behavior to reoccur. This same idea comes into play in less perceived social risk. Knowing that people are not aware of your behavior in addition to feeling like you have a better idea of what they are doing significantly increases the feeling of comfort in continuing the away message checking. Being able to mediate online interactions with the help of away messages and the information that they can sometimes provide can diminish the perceived social risk that one may feel in communicating through another medium.

For some individuals away message stalking can become problematic and interfere with academic life or stunt social encounters but it is a combination of both the factors and affordances of the internet/ AIM and the individuals factors and partiality to online mediated communication that can push this behavior from innocent amusement to problematic behavior.

9 Celebrity Gossip Blogs

2007-11-06T09:18:00.001-05:00

For this assignment I decided to analyze how celebrity gossip blogs can easily lead to Problematic Internet Use (PIU). PIU, according to Caplan, is maladaptive cognitions and behaviors involving Internet use that result in negative academic, professional, and social consequences. Checking celebrity gossip blogs is something that I personally do everyday, and is an activity that, if abused or done by a person with certain social predispositions, can lead to PIU. Sites such as Perez Hilton and Just Jared offer users a 24/7 glimpse into the latest celebrity news. These sites often provide humorous commentary and are updated throughout the day. Much like other blogs, they allow viewers to comment on the entry, usually with no type of censorship. These features of celebrity gossip blogs make the potential for PIU great among its users. This constant access and updating can cause people to check the site much more than necessary. Additionally, the commenting feature allows people to attempt to boost their social competence, sometimes unsuccessfully.

Caplan’s model of Problematic Internet Use highlights two main factors that may lead someone to excessive use – psychosocial problems and Internet affordances. These factors certainly apply to the dangers of celebrity blogs. As mentioned earlier, someone with low social competence and other psychosocial problems can turn to the anonymity of the Internet to try do deal with those problems. You can see this on the comment walls of celebrity blogs when there are vulgar and sometimes even threatening messages posted back and forth between users. Also, the affordances of Internet interaction are important to consider. For example, there is a greater control over self-presentation, there is less perceived social risk, and less social responsibility. These affordances can help lead someone who reads celebrity gossip blogs to PIU. Specifically, someone may use these affordances to justify not going to the grocery store and picking up the latest magazine. Checking the blogs may overtake someone’s real-life social interactions, causing them to use the Internet excessively.

The main unique property of celebrity gossip blogs is that they are constantly being updated throughout the day. Users can check the site several times and find something new every time. This can easily to excessive use by the viewer. Another unique property is the commenting feature. This allows the user to actually influence what is on the site, and make a personal contribution. This feature can cause a person to constantly make an imprint upon the site in order to boost social competence, leading to PIU.

Comment 1 and Comment 2

9. Blogging

2007-11-06T09:06:00.000-05:00

Problematic Internet Use (PIU) is defined as problematic behavior related to too much time online. One online activity that I find can be associated with PIU is blogging. I decided to use this internet space as my example after observing Google group members last week. Not all bloggers are problematic internet users, but as observed in several groups, some people constantly post and respond to comments. The reason that these blogs can lead to PIU is due to both the affordance of the online space and psychosocial issues.

Wallace explains that operant conditioning and maintenance of virtual presence are two key attributes of the internet that can lead to PIU. Operant conditioning is when a behavior is rewarded with a variable schedule it is more difficult to extinguish. This is true with blogging because once you post, you never know when someone else will respond to your message (the reward). Maintenance of virtual presence is the idea that in this online space, the more time you spend, the more people know you and therefore the more you become part of the group. The more time you spend in your blog posting about to other people’s thoughts and relating to them, the more you will get to know the other members. Davis et al. predicted individual differences such as loneliness/depression, social comfort, and distraction/procrastination promote PIU. In the case of blogs, sometimes people may turn to posting their thoughts online as opposed to any other way due their loneliness or inability to talk to people FTF. Social comfort is also relevant because with these blogs often individuals are not comfortable in a FTF social setting and therefore turn online. For example, there are blogs about feeling shy, depressed, sad. etc. People on the blog we observed explained they do not feel easy about talking to people FTF and sought advice online. Finally distraction/procrastination from a stressful event is another reason people blog.

Caplan’s model can also apply to bloggers. According to Caplan’s model, individuals with psychosocial problems hold negative perceptions about their social competence and therefore prefer online interaction. This preference leads to excessive and compulsive use, worsening the problem. In the case of bloggers, as I said before, not all bloggers classify as problematic internet users. The key is blogging excessively (quantity that exceed normal use) and compulsively (inability to control one’s online activity) can lead to PIU. One reason that a person may feel more comfortable blogging is because you can remain anonymous. In a blog, some people do reveal their names, while others use fake names to stay unknown. Also, online, there is removal of gating features. In other words, any physical or social flaw they may feel uneasy about FTF is not apparent in a blog. Sometimes blogs are actually for the purposes of helping individuals cope with these anxieties.

A unique feature of a blog compared to other spaces is that blogs are themed with certain topics. Sometimes these topics are individuals dealing with depression, shyness, etc. When people post excessively or compulsively on these types of blogs, it is easy to recognize how Caplan’s model is relevant.

9: Facebook

2007-11-06T08:01:00.001-05:00

I've decided to go ahead and tackle the ultimate CMC experience, which could be used for practicallly every blog assignment so far. That's right, I'm here to talk about facebook! It's widely used by college students today on a large scale. There are a plethora of features and things to keep people interested, and it's well known that there are many who sit on facebook for gargantuan periods of time for a variety of reasons. The vast social possibilities, and tempting areas for selective self-presentation draw people in, and keep them there. What can be said for certain is that facebook can lead to very Problematic Internet Usage(PIU from now on).

Problematic Internet Usage occurs when a person spends enough time on the computer for it to be called an addiction. The internet usage starts to effect other parts of their life in a negative way. This type of obsession easily takes place with many users on facebook. They get drawn into the medium of being able to post pictures, write on walls, poke, grab new applications, write notes, change their status, send messages, and lose touch with reality. You will often find people spending grossly larger amounts of time using facebook than they had originally planned, or stay on hoping something will change for hours at a time due to their addictions.

Caplan’s(2004) model on problematic internet usage states that those who have psychosocial problems will have more negative perceptions about their ability to socialize in real life. This, in turn, causes them to prefer a more mediated form of communication like CMC due to its lack of non-verbal cues, and unthreatening nature. This leads to some of the internet addiction and problematic usage we see today including some on facebook. There is many a lonely stalker on facebook, too scared to try FTF interaction, but still able to poke/message/application random people who they may not have had much contact with before. However, due to the extremely social nature of facebook as a medium, it can be assumed that this theory does not always apply to the problematic usage we see on facebook regularly.

Youtube

2007-11-06T01:57:00.001-05:00

As Caplan defines Problematic Internet Use to be “maladaptive cognitions and behaviors involving Internet use that result in negative academic, professional, and social consequences,” it is evident that there are many online activities that fit this definition. Caplan, whose research followed the conclusion that individual differences seem to play an important role in Problematic Internet Use, as reached by Davis, Flett, Besser (2002), understands Problematic Internet Use to be a combination of both individual dispositions that may influence individuals toward problematic Internet activities, and the affordances provided by Internet interaction. In Caplan’s “Theory of Problematic Internet Use and Psychosocial Well-Being,” he claims that individuals with psychosocial problems perceive themselves to have low social competence, which leads to preferences for Internet action, which subsequently results in further psychosocial problems. This model, which implements many of the concepts put forth by Wallace, such as Locus of Control and Maintenance of Virtual Presence ultimately establishes the affordances of Internet interaction for individuals with perceived weak social skills. In light of the research put forth by Davis (2002) and Caplan (2004), it is evident that there exist problematic Internet use activities that are due to both psychosocial issues and the affordances of online psychological spaces. One activity that is associated with Problematic Internet Use is definitely youtube browsing.
In light of the more serious Problematic Internet Uses, such as gambling and pornography, which may present far more serious real-life consequences than does youtube browsing, youtube browsing nonetheless is a good example of a Problematic Internet activity. Individuals who procrastinate on Youtube definitely create negative consequences for themselves in their academic, work, and social settings. Given that both individual traits and the affordances provided by Youtube account for its problematic nature, elements of Wallace’s, Davis’s, and Caplan’s work apply. According to Wallace’s locus of control, which is the degree to which one believes he or she has control over his or her circumstances, and Davis’s diminished impulse control and procrastination, it is clear that an individual’s respective ability to avoid procrastination on youtube greatly affects his or her vulnerability to problematic internet use. Additionally, according to Davis’s study on Problematic Internet Use, social comfort is an indicator of problematic Internet use. The fact that many individuals find great comfort in youtube contributes to its problematic nature. Central to the notion of Problematic Internet Use is the distinction of excessive use and compulsive use, which Caplan does in his 2004 study. Defining excessive use to be the quantity of use considered by participants to exceed normal, usual, planned amount of time online, and compulsive use to be the inability to control one’s online activity along with guilt about lack of control, it is clear that either definition represents problematic internet use. Though compulsive use is more classically associated with various addictions, excessive Internet use on youtube will definitely create negative real-life consequences. Also, though loneliness and depression play a considerable role in Caplan’s Theory of Problematic Internet Use and Psychosocial Well-Being, which considers the psychological factors that contribute to a preference for mediated interaction, loneliness and depression seem to play a less significant role in youtube browsing.

9. Crackberries with a Side of Rehab

2007-11-06T00:34:00.000-05:00

I remember it precisely: driving up to Nantucket two summers ago and actually having to pull over on the side of the road so my dad could check his blackberry. I remember my frustration that not only were we wasting time, but I had to sit there in silence, no radio, no talking, no nothing while he checked his precious email that could not wait.

Today, it seems that every one of all ages is practically walking around with their blackberries attached to their fingertips. These devices combine the most addicting ingredients: the Internet and the phone, producing an unhealthy combination for the user. A study conducted by New Jersey's Rutgers University School says “the Blackberry is fuelling a rise in email and internet addiction, with sufferers able to survive only a few minutes without checking for new mail.” Although the blackberry was one praised as a way for the demanding businessmen to be able to check his email anytime and anywhere, Sinead McIntyre notes that it has come to the point where “blackberry email devices can be so addictive that owners may need to be weaned off them with treatment similar to that given to drug users, experts warned today.” The bottom line is that these “crackberries” are becoming a danger to our mental health.

The addiction of these blackberries lies in the addiction that stems from the Internet itself. To begin with, the Internet’s initial attraction is how it allows people to escape the reality of life and be whomever they want. However, it is more than just mere attraction, the addiction to the Internet comes from its specific properties including the idea of operant conditioning and the maintenance of virtual presence is why these people fasten their blackberries to their hands. These include synchronous chat, variable rewards and behaviors, as well as the desire to be constantly in touch. With the new uses for the Internet including dating, it is creating a dependency taking us away from our reality and into an alternate, hazardous one.

In some ways, Caplan’s model does relate to this addiction. Those individuals who do possess more psychosocial problems will prefer online communication and interaction because it is less threatening and, therefore, will ultimately take part in excessive compulsive online interaction. This continuous cycle can be applied to their addiction to blackberries where this less ominous environment can consume their lives, however, another important part of the addiction of these blackberries is because people become addicted to their work. Today, the consultant or professor is becoming the doctor, always on call, always connected in case of an “emergency.”

All I know is that when I went to visit my sister this weekend and see her cool new life in New York City, I noticed that this chic life did not come without a handy-dandy blackberry attached to her newly manicured fingers. Does growing up mean becoming an excessive, compulsive blackberry addict? And will there be “crackberry” rehab centers in our future?

9: Online Shopping Gone Bad...

2007-11-06T00:24:00.001-05:00

Due to convenience and ease, the act of online shopping has become very popular. If you can think it, you’ll find it online. With online shopping you can immediately find out if your items are available and sometimes you can be offered free shipping with a minimum purchase. Online shopping includes activities such as clothing purchases, movie rentals, etc. Even for Cornell students, online shopping is useful for purchasing cheap textbooks that the Cornell store overprices or making an late night order when you become to lazy to make a phone call. As a result, online shopping can lead to problematic internet use, since it can be conveniently shipped to your door step.

Caplan’s theory of problematic internet use is described as a person having problematic behavior related to spending too much time online. First of all, he stated that individuals with psychosocial problems hold negative perceptions about their social competence (although it might not be true, they think believe it). For example, a person suffering anxiety might find it hard to leave their homes and face others. They constantly fear that other individuals may be looking or talking about them when they really aren’t. As a result, people with that problem are more likely to stay at home and potentially find online shopping useful to avoid leaving their homes. They can order everything they need to their door instead of having to interact with other people face to face. Caplan also claims that individuals with psychosocial problems prefer online interaction because it’s less threatening and they feel more efficacious. Once again, this supports what I mentioned earlier. An individual suffering from anxiety would find online shopping as less threatening than going out to shop for what they need. Online shopping doesn’t involve a salesperson and doesn’t involve others customers but just you and the company you’re trying to purchase something from. Only the companies know what you purchased but their intentions are just to make money from you, not what you purchase. When you make purchases in person, this is different because while you wait in line to pay, other customers will most likely look at what you’re purchasing because they’re bored waiting online. Finally, Caplan talks about a preference for online interaction will lead to excessive and compulsive online interaction which then worsens their problems at school, home, and work. As an individual with psychosocial problems realize the convenience of online shopping and the relief from interacting with others, they may increasingly shop online to the point they have a problem. The process is simple, you find what you want, provide your billing information, and then you wait for your shipment. The addiction becomes a cycle where people with psychosocial problems develop more severe psychosocial problems due to excessive, compulsive internet use (in this case, online shopping). It is especially harmful to online shop because individuals tend to lose track of online transactions with credit cards (so beware!).

Online shopping has unique features. Individuals can look for anything they want to purchase without stepping out of their homes or leaving their computer. In the previous sentence, it is important to recognize two features, purchasing ANYTHING and the fact that you won’t have to leave your home. Especially around holidays, many items you are looking for become out of stock in stores so the internet becomes very useful to find those items. In addition, the internet is always accessible and the websites are most likely always available (except under maintenance), so individuals can shop online any time of day. When I’m sick of doing work or I’m bored, I tend to “window shop” online, looking for things I want without making any purchases (just to make sure I don’t go broke). Also, many sites online include shopping guides where individuals can list what kinds of things they are looking for and the site gives results based on your preferences. Moreover, they can also compare the different items.

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/just-google-it.html

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/9-celebrity-gossip-blogs.html

9: Saving the World Through Wikipedia?

2007-11-06T00:07:00.001-05:00

While browsing through random articles on Wikipedia, do you ever find yourself wondering “who the hell sits down and writes this stuff?” While I certainly feel that wasting countless hours browsing through this online encyclopedia is an example of problematic internet use (when virtually infinite information is at your fingertips, why ever leave your computer?), I believe that a much more severe instance of PIU is the addictive behavior of contributing to Wikipedia.

When a user contributes to Wikipedia, he or she can create articles, edit articles, or upload files (images, music clips) to help add to the collective knowledge of the database. One can do this anonymously with only the computer’s IP address being logged, or the user can use a free, registered account (with a username, password, and profile page) to make an unlimited amount of contributions.

The simplest definition of Problematic Internet Use is the activity of spending too much time online, leading to negative consequences in the user’s life. Most users I know make an edit here or there if they see something incorrect, but the bulk of the content comes from a small portion of the contributing population (these users make thousands to hundreds of thousands of edits!).

Those who actively write and edit Wikipedia articles this much are certainly spending massive amounts of hours interacting with the site—enough time to negatively impact their “real” lives. Now I can’t go and interview the top editors to see if they are lonely and depressed people (Caplan’s model suggests they are), but I am going to make the assumption that because they contribute so much edits (and time), their social lives are probably not too active. These people will definitely favor the online action of becoming the author or editor of encyclopedia articles—this role provides the user with a boosted sense of competence and efficacious action—all while preserving the internet affordances of FtF anonymity and control over self-presentation.

As an obsessive Wikipedia editor contributes more and more, he or she will enjoy this sense of accomplishment and start to view other contributors and the task at hand in a hyperpersonal manner. Thus, the editing behavior will seem increasingly important (often Wikipedians believe that creating a free, infinite knowledge pool will save the world), and it will become excessive and compulsive. Because there is no reward or end-result to contributing beyond knowledge-based philanthropy and self-gratification, a user can complete Caplan’s suggested cycle again and again. Excessive amounts of time dedicated to editing should cause the user to retract solely into his or her online existence and feel even more dedicated to Wikipedia.

However, as addicted to editing as some people may be, I still personally love and support Wikipedia. I just feel (very idealistically) that it will become a more accurate and useful tool if less people obsessively edit; and instead, the world population contributes equally.

Comment 1
Comment 2

Assignment 9: Online Shopping

2007-11-05T23:55:00.000-05:00

Online shopping is an activity that can definitely lead to problematic internet use (trust me, I know). There are millions of items people can buy now without ever having to leave their homes. Websites have also made it easier to search for your favorite items and make the online shopping experience more pleasant. There are also tons of websites geared completely toward bargain shopping, making online shopping an option to almost everyone.

In the case of online shopping, I would have to disagree with Caplan’s (2004) theory that leads to problematic internet use. This is because when you shop online, you’re not really interacting with anyone else, and the things you buy will be seen by people in the real world, not online. I think the four dimensions that Davis, Flett, and Besser (2002) came up with to predict problematic internet use are more applicable to online shopping. One of these dimensions is diminished impulse control, which can be costly when combined with retail stores online. People who are lonely, another dimension, might turn to online shopping because they are looking for material things to fill in for that loneliness. The third dimension is social comfort, and this can apply to online shopping if people feel that having the latest trends and gadgets will help them fit in. And finally, online shopping is a great source of distraction and procrastination, the fourth and final dimension, even if you don’t buy anything.

I also don’t see the affordances of Internet interaction coming into play for online shopping. This is because again, you are not interacting with anyone else, there are no other people making you feel like you are a better person online than in the real world. Online shopping is one instance in which I think the Internet properties are more important than the individual ones. People can browse millions of items for as long as they like, which is not possible when shopping offline, and there are many more places online to find cheap or sale items, making it affordable to more people. Take it from a person who has bought one too many pairs of shoes online in an attempt to put off doing homework, if left unchecked, online shopping can lead to problematic internet use.

Assignment 9. Gambling.

2007-11-05T23:52:00.000-05:00

An online activity that can lead to Problematic Internet Use is gambling. A few examples of different games one can play online are: card games, bingo, and horse racing. If someone wants to participate in one of these online games, assuming they are of twenty-one years of age, they create an account directly connected to one of their credit cards. If one wins playing one of these online games, their winnings typically come in the mail in the form of a check. My father and my grandmother once a week participate in gambling online. They opened an account on a horse racing website, where they place their bets online and watch the race live on the television. The account is directly connected to my father’s credit card and once in awhile a check comes in the mail.

Although my dad and my grandmother bet the horses online, their form of online gambling is different from most other forms of online gambling. Since my father and grandmother bet on live races, there is no 24/7 access. One can play card games or bingo any time of any day they want to. This feature of online gambling can lead to Problematic Internet Use. Another characteristic of the online gambling psychological space that leads to PUI is that physical money is not changing hands. Since, money is being withdrawn from your credit card connected to your account, losing money is happening invisibly.

Caplan’s model states that individuals with psychosocial problems hold negative perceptions about their social competence. Caplan states that this leads to these individuals preferring online interaction because it is less threatening and they feel more efficacious. Preference for online interaction leads to excessive and compulsive online interaction, which worsens their problems. The cycle continues and becomes more and more detrimental. This could apply to online gambling but applies much more intensely to other online activities, specifically areas where there is direct interaction with other individuals. Online gambling does not center upon interacting with others online, therefore Caplan’s model applies but not so intensely.

There is one very unique property about online gambling. Although all the online gambling spaces require that people are twenty-one years of age, many people lie and gamble illegally underage. Twenty-one is the legal age for gambling for a reason, people under twenty-one are more likely to not know when to stop gambling. Younger people cannot control themselves with the temptation of winning millions of dollars even though that is very, very improbable. People under twenty-one who gamble online are more likely to have Problematic Internet Use because they get “addicted” to the thought of possibly winning a large amount of money.

9 Why talk about it if you can blog about it?

2007-11-05T22:58:00.000-05:00

Consider the effects of writing a blog and reading blogs. In order to participate in those two activities, some time is required. In those 10 minutes spent reading a post and then forming a comment, you could easily have made yourself a sandwich or skimmed over a section in a textbook. Unfortunately, when someone doesn't have this time and continues to participate, negative consequences can result. This is characteristic of Caplan's definition of problematic Internet use as resulting in negative academic, professional, and social consequences.

Caplan describes excessive use as use exceeding normal, planned time online. If an individual plans to spend a certain amount of time catching up on a blog or writing a new blog entry, it is very easy to exceed the allotted time. It's true that many blogging front ends allow saving of a draft copy and you can always bookmark an entry to read later. However, it is often easier to blog a little longer in order to complete the train of thought. During the course of blog writing, the user may proceed into a rant. A common result is continuous ranting without considering elapsed time. Similarly, when a user is reading a blog, he or she may become absorbed in an entry and exceed their original planned time. This excessive use is also characteristic of compulsive use, the inability for one to control one's online activity, along with guilt for lack of control. When an individual is too involved in reading or writing blog entries, the realization of excessive time spent online leads to guilt over the overdevotion to blogging. Excessive use and compulsive use are both characteristic of problematic internet usage.

In Caplan's model, individuals with psychosocial problems view themselves as more socially inept. This causes increased propensity for internet usage due to less threatening characteristics. Consequently, this leads to more actual internet usage, which further complicates the original psychological problems. For blog writers, blogging offers a venue to express themselves anonymously and more intimately with greater control over self-presentation. A blogger can present personal details without ever revealing his identity if he is posting to a blog under a pseudo-identity. These traits of blogging are affordances that Caplan believed lead to increased preference for internet usage. However, individuals may choose to blog in lieu of expressing their opinions in face to face social context. That decision leads to decreased self-disclosure in physical social interactions and negative social traits. For blog readers, blogging allows them to gain knowledge of social experiences via posts concerning events in the social lives of others. Due to the ease of self-publishing, devout blog readers can become engrossed in the opinions and experiences of random individuals. This leads to less personal experience and thus has a negative social impact.

Blogging can be considered an example of problematic internet use, but in the case of COMM 245, if we do not blog, it will hurt us academically. Therefore, there is no need to panic if you feel doing the weekly blog posts is becoming a chore. It isn't exactly problematic internet usage. Posts also force us to state our thoughts on topics discussed in class with the hope of bringing up similar discussion points in real life. However, if blogging allows expression of opinion in a computer mediated context, a drop in real life expression is expected. In this way, blogging can be examined both positively and negatively.

Comment 1
Comment 2

9. Youtube

2007-11-05T21:51:00.000-05:00

Ahoy

For this assignment, I decided to consider excessive procrastination on youtube. I don't think this is one of the most problematic overuses of the internet, but it's one that probably does cause some problematic use of the internet. We often use youtube for things like procrastination when there's too much work to do. In fact, I think that youtube is more addicting than even facebook, although everyone has his or her own opinion.

Why is youtube more problematic than facebook? I think youtube functions almost like a support system in the model proposed by Walther and Boyd. It's similar to the way TV is more popular than hanging out with friends. Youtube is always there - it's your friend 24/7 and it never has prelims to study for or classes to wake up for or essays to write. In other words, it's very accessible, which is one of the characteristics of online support. Also, you can watch whatever you want comment on anything anonymously. And another significant fact about facebook is that it offers content on absolutely any subject for free, meaning that it scores higher in the social distance category.

Does this mean that youtube can be seen as a source as support for us when we're down? On those nights where nobody is around, or when you're feeling down cause you have way too much work to do (only making the situation worse, because you're going to procrastinate more on it), youtube feels like the only way we can relieve our stress. It's a sort of emotional support in my opinion, though not in the conventional sense.

And naturally, when we depend on something like youtube for emotional sustenance, there's always a chance that PIU develops as proposed by Caplan. The first time we use youtube, it's there to relieve our stress and we're grateful for it, and after a while we continue on our way. Then another night comes when we have a lot more work, and we depend on it a little more. Then before you know it, we regularly rely on youtube to distract us from our work.

How is this similar to Caplan's model? Well first, we have burdensome problems that we need to take care of (part 1). Then we go to some CMC source for relief (part 2). And then we find how useful and helpful this diversion can be, so we rely on it more (part 3). This leads to a cascade effect similar to the one proposed by Caplan. Our real-world problems cause greater emotional needs that we feed more and more through these reliable CMC sources.

And if we woke up the next morning and found that youtube wasn't there anymore, it would probably not cause a terrible psychological epidemic, but we would definitely find it harder to get through those long nights of work.

(Like tonight)

peace out.

ashish

7: Addiction to Second Life

2007-11-05T21:39:00.000-05:00

One online activity that can lead to Problematic Internet Use is participating in an online phenomena known as Second Life. Second Life, created by a small boutique company in San Francisco has elements that can make it an addictive online space that can be problematic for some people. It is basically an online world where people can create avatars of themselves and hold a “second” life online. According to an internet blog about Second Life addiction, “you simply roam around, chat with people, play games, buy land, build homes, create objects you may want to sell for the local currency (Linden Dollars) and so on.” Caplan (2004) describes problematic internet use as being excessive, where people exceed their planned amount of time online, and compulsive, where people cannot control their online activity and have guilt about their lack of control. Certain people display both of these factors when they are on Second Life, qualifying it to be a problematic use of Internet.

One of the factors that makes Second Life to be addictive is that a user has to be online at all times to play the game and interact with others. Wallace explains this property of the internet as being maintenance of virtual presence, where one has to be in the virtual space to control characters or support other team members. I saw an example of this being problematic when one of my friend explained to me how his neighbor would not take care of her kids because and ignored her kid various times just to play this game. Also, I found another example of this on a Second Life blog which stated, “My wife has been staying up all night on SL. Worse, she has started lying about it…Recently she missed work to sleep all day because she was on SL all night.”

Other aspects that would make Second Life problematic is explained by Davis et. al. (2002)’s individual factors such as social comfort and diminished impulse control. Social comfort is when one uses Internet as a tool to increase one’s social network. One of the features on Second Life that exhibits this is how you can have people over and play games with them. Furthermore, diminished impulse control can be seen when some people blow off their children and jobs to spend more time on this “fantasy life”.

Caplan (2004)’s model, “suggests that lonely and depressed individuals may develop a preference for online social interaction, which, in turn, leads to negative outcomes associated with their Internet use.” (pg 625) This does hold true for Second Life as it gives individuals chance to create their own characters, displaying greater control over self presentation, and through CMC chat they can have more anonymity. If one is depressed and lonely they will hold negative perception about their social competence and Second Life gives them a chance to present themselves in an anonymous way. Moreover, this interaction can lead to a viscous cycle and present a problematic internet usage which will affect their school, life and work environment. And by reading the blog examples given above we do know that interactions on Second Life do affect real life for some people.

All in all, Second Life is a very fun but addictive tool where one can get absorbed and forget their real life. A unique property of this space is how closely it resembles real life, since people can have jobs, houses and even friends on this space. As one blogger puts it, “In the past few days, my character has bought land, designed and built a home, had guests over, gone to a strip club, gone to a dance club, bid for new land in an auction, participated in movie trivia games for Linden Dollars, and much more.” What a life!

The web address for the blog used above is:

http://elliptic.typepad.com/elliptic_blog/2004/01/second_life_add.html

9: Fantasy Football

2007-11-05T19:13:00.001-05:00

Sunday morning is always the most stressful time. You’ve scoured all the stats: power rankings, the spread, home vs. away records, strength of schedule, injury updates, individual match-ups, est. Once the game turns on, it’s hard to concentrate. Rooting for your favorite team takes a backseat to flipping through the channels to catch glimpses of your fantasy studs dominating their respective games. You jump every time the live coverage segway into Boomer and Shannon announcing a ‘gamebreak.’ Every commercial you run up to the computer to get the live score updates. Fantasy football is an addiction.

Fantasy football is a phenomenon that has gripped the sports world practically since the creation of the Internet. The concept is that you get to pick your own ‘fantasy team’ from all the players in the league in a draft format against your competitors. Every week, you decide which players are going to start and which are going to sit out. These players get points based on their performance. Touchdowns, yards, and field goals are good for your team while interceptions, fumbles, and sacks are bad. Fantasy football is tied directly to the Internet. Sites like Yahoo keep track of the statistics and tabulate the scores. Yahoo even offers software that gives you life updates, which allows the ‘owners’ to know exactly how many points they need their last wide receiver to get in order for them to win their weekly match up. Other sites charge people for ‘inside’ tips on who to play each week.

Problematic Internet Use(PIU) is defined as “Maladaptive Cognitions and behaviors involving internet use that result in negative academic, professional, and social consequences”(Caplan 2004). Fantasy football is an online space that fosters such an obsession in individuals. For the devoted fantasy footballer, there is an infinite amount of resources available. Sunday has always been a source of tension in relationships. For guys, and some girls, it’s a holiday every time their team takes the field. Fantasy football perpetuates this feeling. It gives the individual more of an emotional (and sometimes economical) investment in the sport. Often times, people would rather stay hovered over their computer and TV than go outside and enjoy some good old-fashioned sunshine. This can lead to dire social consequences. When money is involved, it is a form of online gambling, and provides a forum that is primed to take advantage of individuals with impulsive and addictive personalities. Caplan predicts that those that compulsively check an online Internet space will form a negative opinion about FTF communication. While this is partly true, as people are in leagues with complete strangers and trash talk on their discussion boards in a way that they would not normally in FTF interactions, often the best fantasy leagues are the ones that include a group of tight knit friends or work associates in which most of the trash talking occurs outside of the online arena.

Wallace’s Operant Conditioning causes players to hover over their computers while constantly clicking the ‘refresh page’ button in order to get up to date statistics. From the NFL website or ESPN. Because of the delay from live action to online updates, people will continue to constantly refresh their page, each time thinking that the next will be when they find out if their running back ran it in on fourth down from the one yard line.

COMMENTS
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7102678997917330260&postID=4310485694378380811
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7102678997917330260&postID=1985696296616542174

Assignment #9: Away Message Stalking

2007-11-05T18:28:00.001-05:00

Away message stalking allows people to check what their “buddies” are doing throughout the day. A person’s buddy list can include many different people—including those who are our closest friends to those who we only used to be friends with in middle school to those who we do not really even know. Some people change their away message status frequently, while other people leave the same message up all day, apparently still “sleeping” from the night before. Away message stalking can be associated with problematic internet use (PIU) in some instances, but all stalkers do not necessarily have PIU. There are aspects of the internet associated with away message stalking that exist for everyone, but I think that there are individual differences between all stalkers that lead some people to develop PIU while others do not.

According to Wallace, there are certain properties of away message stalking that are related to the internet, such as operant conditioning and maintenance of virtual presence. Operant conditioning regards the rewarding of behavior with a variable schedule. With such an inconsistent reward schedule, the behavior is more difficult to extinguish. Finding an updated away message is the great reward for those who stalk down their buddy list. Because people post new away messages at different and unpredictable times throughout the day, away message stalkers are even more so drawn to continually check their buddy lists. The maintenance of virtual presence is also an associated factor of the internet that involves away messages. As opposed to just standing on the sideline while watching and checking status changes, away message stalkers are able to produce behavior and be apart of it as well. Away message stalkers have the ability to update their own away messages to keep others informed of their activities in the virtual AIM environment. These internet properties are present for all AIM users, but they seem to me to only have an especially problematic impact for those with individual differences that are associated with PIU. As maintained my Davis, Flett, and Besser (2002), PIU is predicted on the basis of four dimensions—diminished impulse control, loneliness/depression, social comfort, and distraction/procrastination—which I think can all be related to away message stalkers. The urge to check away messages can be especially common if a person is feeling lonely or is looking for a distraction from his responsibilities. Also, if a person is lacking in social comfort he will be more at ease if he can use AIM away messages as an online space to observe people instead of facing the fear of direct contact in face to face interaction.

In regards to Caplan’s model of problematic internet behavior, away message stalking is problematic for those who do so in excess, spending longer checking their buddies’ status than they had planned. The behavior is also problematic when stalkers compulsively check AIM away messages and their stalking obsessions later cause feelings of guilt. Caplan’s model theorizes that individuals with psychosocial problems and low social competence prefer less threatening interactions via internet as opposed to face to face, which in turn leads to compulsive use of the internet which connects again to psychosocial problems. This however, is a mediated connection because one must be low on social competence and have a preference for the internet in order for it to lead to problematic, excessive use. Thus I do not believe that all away message stalkers have issues with PIU, such as people who just have a preference for using AIM and the internet. It is people with individual differences specifically related to PIU, like low social competence and loneliness, that also have a preference for AIM as a means of social interaction, who will come to excessively stalk away messages.

Comments:
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/9-facebook.html
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/9-celebrity-gossip-blogs.html

9 Because One Private Jet Just Isn't Enough...

2007-11-05T17:57:00.000-05:00

The term Problematic Internet Usage (PIU), as Caplan describes it, encompasses, “maladaptive cognitions and behaviors involving Internet use that result in negative academic, professional, and social consequences.” While for the most part this seems to indicate an addiction of sorts, I believe that Internet usage can be problematic in more than just the immediate way (compulsive behavior, psychological need, etc.). A form of Internet usage that has been causing more and more problems for people that engage in it is Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing and so-called “illegal” downloading. These phenomena and their negative consequences are becoming more relevant at Cornell, as 16 students were served lawsuits for illegal file sharing activity.

Now, I personally do not believe that file sharing should be illegal, instead I think it really helps bands that don’t have the mass-market resources of big record companies and established acts, and that this free advertising is what truly scares the industry. However, for the present and the foreseeable future, the activity is going to remain classified as against the law. Because of this illegality and because of the increasing aggressiveness of the RIAA in pursuing even the odd infrequent downloader who just happened to be unlucky enough to import the wrong Metallica file, file sharing comes into Caplan’s definition of PIU through the “social consequences” part. No, we do not see people losing relationships and academic performance to the Internet with this phenomenon, as we do in online gaming or perhaps Facebook addiction. This online activity does, however, have a much different pull than gambling and Facebook. Namely, it offers us a chance to exercise some consumer muscle and only select tracks we might want to hear as opposed to buying an entire CD for just a few songs, combined with a lack of iTunes’ pesky Digital Rights Management software all for the low, low price of FREE. The opportunity to get something for nothing, while for the most part facing little exposure to real consequences (thanks to the perceived anonymity of the Internet) proves far too tempting for most casual users of file-sharing services. However, the damage being done to society by this heavily controversial issue is both tangible and intangible, and in both cases very real.

The students above each had the option to “settle” for the flat rate of $3,000 or face charges of $750 per song if they were sued and lost. For many, if not most, college students, this represents a rather daunting sum, when considered into the $160,000 we are already paying for the privilege of learning at Cornell. So file sharing, even when used very casually, can have very negative fiscal consequences and leave its user holding a very intimidating bag. Furthermore, the RIAA adopts a seemingly random policy of legal action, pursuing those users it can, oftentimes ignoring the bigger fish for the smaller ones just to prove a point. This hurts smaller, underexposed bands as explained earlier, and also fosters a sense of distrust between the consumer base and the artistry itself. How can we believe that a band is “all about the music” if they are so preoccupied with losing money to “illegal” downloading?

The issues around copyright infringement and file sharing are still the subject of much debate in the world right now and I encourage all of you to do more than just participate in it. Get involved. Become aware of both your rights and risks.

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/9-harmless-or-harmful-look-at-online.html

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-9-neverending-hunt.html

#9: WOW!

2007-11-05T17:40:00.000-05:00

WOW! That is the online activity that I believe has taken over and ruined a many lives. I feel that the World of Warcraft can possibly lead to problematic internet use. I personally have never played WOW, but know several friends that are obsessed with this game. A couple of incidences that come to mind about WOW that leads me to believe it could lead to PIU are partly funny and partly worrisome. One such incident is when a friend wanted to finally beat a level of WOW he had been working on for several weeks, but the problem was that the next day he had his SATs. He stayed up all night to beat the level, fell asleep, overslept and missed the test. Another friend that played WOW on a regular basis was in college at the time and slowly started to miss more and more classes and stayed in his dorm room playing WOW. He finally got a wake up call about how WOW was consuming his life when he failed several of his classes.

Generally speaking, gamers who play WOW are stereotypically seen as pale nerdy guys who never leave their rooms and have no social skills because all they do all day is play WOW on the computer with their friends. Though I know some friends that play WOW in moderation and would not lead to problematic internet use, there are numerous incidences where it does lead to PIU.

As Caplan (2004) stated, PIU is “maladaptive cognitions and behaviors involving Internet use that result in negative academic, professional, and social consequences.” In the case of WOW, I believe that being on the computer playing for hours and hours definitely leads to negative academic consequences as the example of my friend failing classes above. Also, depending on the person’s age, I believe it can interfere with their professional career as well as strain social relationships. Many people that play WOW are guilty of excessive use. Some people are so dedicated to the game that they develop teams of people that do not even know each other and set “practice times” online to better their skills and abilities in the game.

One way that WOW could lead to PIU also deals with the personality type of the person playing WOW. If they feel loneliness in their lives, they are going to be more susceptible to the game because they will find comfort and a sense of belonging from his/her fellow WOW players. As we discussed in earlier lectures, the idea of being identified as part of a group is very strong. Being part of the in-group boosts an individual’s self confidence and therefore is a dangerous characteristic of WOW for at least the reason that being part of a group requires the individual to put in heavy time constraints and commitment.

Therefore, in general the game WOW can be a fun and enjoyable past time for individuals as long as it played in moderation and do not start to effect the academic, professional and social lives of the individuals.

COMMENTS:

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-9-away-messages.html

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/9-facebook.html

Assignment 9: The Never-Ending Hunt

2007-11-04T23:43:00.000-05:00

The examples of possible online activities that lead to Problematic Internet Use that were listed on the description of Assignment 9 (porn, gambling, away message stalking) all have a negative connotation even when done in moderation. These are not the only problematic activities, though. We have all heard the saying “Too much of a good thing.” While people generally regard a thirst for knowledge as something to commend, the search for information on the Internet can certainly lead to PIU.

With the linkability of the Internet, especially on web sites such as Wikipedia where words in the description of one thing appear as links to their own pages, the ability to go from source to source is limitless.

When you need information for a specific purpose, you need to find the exact intelligence or statistics that will solve your problem. The catch is that you don’t know what site, page, or other source will give you the facts you need. This is where Wallace’s concept of Operant Conditioning comes into play. It’s possible that we’ll find our answer on the first website we look at it. It’s possible that that first site will have a link to the right site. It’s also possible that we will find what we’re looking for three hours and 30 web sites after our search began. But we don’t know which it will be. We keep searching and searching, thinking that just one more click will take us to our destination, and it’s hard to give up when the right answer could be around the corner. This is how a planned ten-minute information search can last for hours.

Sometimes, we look for information just for fun. This can be a problem too because we don’t know when something will pique our interest. Each page we visit could have a new, interesting link. This too can lead to knowledge gathering sessions that last hours.

Searching for information on the Internet can certainly lead to Caplan’s (2004) problematic behavior related to too much time online. People use the information search space of the Internet to excess when they spend longer than normal, or look for facts longer than they thought they would have to. Likewise, compulsive use is when people can’t control their search methods, and are unable to stop looking for a specific piece of data until they find it, or feel bad later when they realize how much time they wasted trying to find one little piece of information.

While porn, gambling, and Facebook can all cause problems online, part of what’s so dangerous about the internet’s addictive quality, is that it can cause issues in areas that are normally good for people, such as knowledge search.

Comments:

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/9-celebrity-gossip-blogs.html

http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/youtube.html

9: Harmless or harmful? A look at online porn.

2007-11-04T17:02:00.000-05:00

With the increase in internet popularity and internet users throughout the years, came an increase in the accessibility of online pornography. The ease of posting and watching a variety of videos for free, at any age, without having to walk into a store and risk being seen by someone, has greatly influenced the online-pornography trend. In our current society, the media portrays that people who partake in pornographic actions online are “bad” and are thus associated with Problematic Internet Use (PIU), or behaviors related to the amount of time spent on the internet. Infrequent internet users use information they receive from sensationalized news stories of dramatic incidents on the net to form strong impressions and attitudes towards a bigger picture, known as the availability heuristic principle.

Wallace attributes the anonymity, physical distance, and perceived lack of accountability in cyberspace to differences in the nature of pornography use and its effects on behavior. The individual factor of locus of control, and the internet factors of operant conditioning, maintenance on virtual presence, and newbie disease also contribute to the development of PIU with online pornography. The degree to which someone believes that they have control over a circumstance is known as locus of control. Davis et al. focused on this individual difference and formed an online cognition scale (OCS) that found that PIU is in fact influenced by a person’s diminished impulse control, amount of loneliness/depression, feelings of interpersonal social comfort, and desired distraction/procrastination. Internet pop-ups containing links and pictures of pornographic websites are related to operant conditioning because by clicking on one website, the reward of a link to another pornographic website appears. Web-cams used for pornography filming provide maintenance of virtual presence for users as they are accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Lastly, the amount of pornographic pop-ups and web-cam invitations received during a given time affect the fluctuation of this online activity especially after a first encounter, or newbie disease.

Caplan expanded the definition of PIU to maladaptive cognitions and behaviors involving internet use that result in negative academic, professional, and social consequences. If a person excessively and compulsively uses an online activity, they are considered to have adhered to the theory of PIU and psychosocial well-being. Those who suffer from psychosocial distress (i.e. Davis et al.’s four factors within the OCS) hold negative views about their FtF social competence and thus prefer online interaction because it is less threatening (i.e. do not risk running into someone while having pornography in their possession). This reinforced preference for online interaction contributes to excessive and compulsive use of the online activity thus worsening their psychosocial problems.

Mixed views of pornography use are definitely a unique property to this online activity. Some social scientists believe that the use of sexually explicit material is harmless because it can be a functional, healthy, and liberating way to provide education, erotic enhancement, an outlet for exploration, and entertainment. Pornography has also been used in some therapeutic treatment programs for sexual dysfunctions. On the other hand, many focus on the ethical and moral issues involved in pornography, especially those relating to the exploitation and objectification of women based on the notion that males are the principal users of this online activity. Should internet pornography be associated with PIU? I’ll let you be the judge.

Comment 1
Comment 2

9: Myspace Addict

2007-11-04T01:02:00.000-04:00

Apparently not everyone is addicted to facebook. I noticed over the summer, that my single young coworkers preferred myspace (maybe we’re the facebook generation?). Granted, the employees maintained professionalism and never accessed the site at work, but one coworker in particular, “Bob,” always talked about it – whether it be the new people he met online, or what his friends were saying – to the point that it sounded like a real place where he was meeting people.

According to Wallace, myspace has the properties of the internet and individual differences mentioned in chapter 9. Operant conditioning, where a behavior is rewarded with a variable schedule, occurs on myspace when Bob checks his profile and sees that he has a new message. Maintenance of virtual presence is used when he displays selective characteristics of himself on his profile that he wants people to see. One, especially important aspect of myspace that he values most is locus of control, the degree to which he believes he has control over his circumstances. Since Bob is entering his late thirties and hasn’t been successful in finding a companion in the face to face realm, he has turned to myspace for help. According to Davis et al. (2002), Bob’s myspace use falls under loneliness and social comfort. Since Bob is shy, and fears rejection, he uses the internet as a tool to increase his social network, but this does not necessarily predict his internet use as problematic. Granted, he doesn’t compulsively check myspace, but based on Caplan’s theory, he has the potential to let is become problematic because he has negative perceptions about his social competence and prefers the less threatening characteristics of the internet. However, he has not allowed his online interaction to become an excessive and compulsive habit, which is where he breaks the cycle and prevents the negative outcomes from PIU.

The affordances of myspace are what mainly attract Bob to prefer online interaction. As discussed in the Hyperpersonal Model, in general, the internet offers greater anonymity, greater control, and more self-disclosure. For Bob, less social risk is probably the most important affordance that myspace has to offer because it relieves his psychosocial problem of social competence. With respect to myspace, it can be addictive because you can see peoples’ profiles, friend’s comments, view their friends, and see when was the last time they logged in to determine if they saw your message and if they did, why they did/didn’t reply. These aspects are open to all users, but not all of them have PIU, so for myspace to become an “addiction,” there are probably more inherent psychosocial problems in the individual that bring about the compulsive use.

comment1

comment2

9: It’s okay to look…or is it?

2007-11-03T21:18:00.001-04:00

Online dating has become a fairly common means by which individuals interact and form relationships. Through various sites, such as Match.com, individuals can meet others with similar interests and potentially fall in love. Although online dating may lead individuals to find their soul mate, it may also lead to problematic Internet use (PIU).

Caplan (2003) describes problematic Internet use (PIU) as problematic behavior relating to spending too much time online. When it comes to online dating, individuals may use the services excessively by spending exceeding normal amounts of time on these sites. They may even visit these sites compulsively, with an inability to control their online activity. Various properties of the Internet as well as users’ characteristics can lead to PIU.

Online dating sites provide individuals with a sense of anonymity, enabling them to interact while their computer screens and the World Wide Web are used as a barrier. Individuals who are self-conscious or have a low self-esteem may be more apt to self-disclose in this environment, allowing them to form relationships with others. The asynchronous nature of online dating sites provides a space where individuals can selectively self-present themselves in their profile, constantly making changes when need be. Since the Internet is easily accessible, individuals are able to sit online browsing users’ profiles for hours searching for the perfect match. Furthermore, these sites allow for interaction and ultimately relationship formation through sending messages to one another. A particularly unique property of Match.com is that it allows users to see when the other user reads their message. This feature may encourage PIU by leading the sender to check back constantly until the receiver has read it.

Wallace (1999) further elaborates on potentially problematic Internet characteristics by applying the concept of operant conditioning to explain why individuals may become addicted to certain online behaviors. Operant conditioning refers to individuals’ likelihood to stick with a behavior when it is rewarded with a variable schedule. Through online dating sites, whenever an individual receives a favorable message from another user they may feel as though they are being rewarded. In order to maximize rewards, individuals will continue working to perfect their profile and continue browsing for potential matches. Wallace (1999) also mentions that maintenance of virtual presence also may lead to PIU. Individuals using online dating websites may feel obligated to constantly check to see if they have new messages and update their profile in order to let people know that they are still a member of this virtual space and still actively searching for a companion.

In addition to Internet qualities, various personal characteristics could make individuals more prone to PIU. Wallace (1999) mentions the locus of control or the degree to which one believes they have control over their circumstances as another characteristic contributing to PIU. Match.com seems to recognize this desired sense of control by stating on its information page, “Match.com lets our members take their romantic destiny into their own hands.” Individuals can actively create and edit their profiles and search for others who fit the mold they are looking for.

Furthermore, individuals who are single may feel a sense of loneliness and enter online dating sites in order to fill this gap. Caplan (2003) found that “lonely individuals are somewhat more likely to feel they can better express their real selves with others on the Internet than they can with those they know online” (p.628). This preference for online interaction leads to excessive and compulsive online interaction which ultimately leads to negative consequences. As an ongoing cycle, this excessive use can then cause more psychosocial problems.

If individuals use these dating sites excessively, they may become more dependent on the ability to “hide” during their interactions. In the case of PIU, online dating can get in the way of other aspects of their life. Perhaps instead of going out and socializing in hopes of meeting someone at a bar, they may choose to stay home browsing Match.com—missing out on face-to-face relationship opportunities. So remember, “It’s okay to look” but PIU may lead you to never stop looking.

Comment 1

Comment 2

Assignment 8: I'm a Blog Addict

2007-11-02T20:30:00.000-04:00

Some might consider reading up on topics of interest to be a good thing, others might consider constantly reading up on topics of interest via blogs to be a form of Problematic Internet Use. I personally think reading blogs could potentially lead to PIU.

I am personally obsessed with music. I could, and in fact I do, spend hours on the Internet reading the latest music news. I once heard that enough science research is written in one day than can be read in one lifetime. I think music writing is catching up. I personally love to read BrooklynVegan and Idolator. Since I access these sites on my own, and I read them at my leisure, in my mind I believe I have a locus of control. But truthfully, I don’t just stop reading after one article or 15 minutes, I have to soak in every last word that is written before I can move on to the next thing I need to do. Also, there is an operant conditioning that occurs with sites like these. I constantly click on them in between writing a paragraph in an essay, or browsing other websites, but only on a variable schedule am I rewarded with a new post. Since there’s no telling when I may next see a new post, I constantly click and re-click until a new post arrives. These two major factors (lack of locus of control and operant conditioning) make me a believer that sometimes too much of a good thing, like reading about something I love, can possibly lead to PIU.

On the other hand, I don’t think this form of Internet use really qualifies as psychosocial use, like Caplan may lead one to believe. I don’t read these blogs out of loneliness or a discomfort in interacting in face to face situations, nor do I think the other readers of these blogs do so for those reasons. I think it is strictly interest in music that draws the readers to these posts. These blogs fulfill more of a pleasure affordance than any social discomfort.

Lastly, I’m not so sure there are any unique properties or affordances to these specific music blogs. They follow the typical blog setup: posts, comments, links to other sites that you might find interesting, even a search box, but nothing more that Caplan, Wallace, or any other person studying Internet Addiction would be too interested in.

8: Computer Addiction

2007-10-30T09:18:00.000-04:00

Katelyn McClellan (Red)
Saurin Sanghvi (Red)

Considering the theme of the class, and after learning about that man who was addicted to second life, we decided to make computer addiction our google group topic. We were able to find two separate threads about computer addiction. The first thread started with a woman who found her boyfriend was addicted to the computer and was not making enough time for their relationship. Several people responded, some in support and others explaining why he could possibly be on the computer so often. Our second thread started with a person that claimed fewer people are addicted to computers than people who are addicted to drugs. Most group members responded by disagreeing with the author’s message and contended that there are many people today addicted to computers.

The summary of our findings is listed below:

Our findings were somewhat different than Braithwaite. Whereas Braithwaite found in his study of support groups for the disabled that most messages were coded emotional (40%), informational (31%) and esteem (18 %) our messages were mainly informational with few coded as esteem or emotional. One reason our messages were coded less for emotional and esteem support is that many respondents were disagreeing with the original author. In the first thread, many of the responses to the woman with the computer addicted boyfriend were that he was not addicted, it is just their relationship or that his actions were normal and she was incorrect. This type of response does not provided emotional support because they are not supporting or sympathizing with her. Nor is there esteem support because they are not complimenting or validating her. The same type of responses occurred in thread 2 when many respondents disagreed about computer addiction.

Another reason for this difference is mostly likely the topic of the support groups. Braithwaite explains “information support is most useful and prominent when the recipient can control the situation and put the information to use. Perhaps it was because heath problems and disabilities are not fully under the control of the members of the Support Network that emotional support was so prominent.” For our topic of computer addiction, this is something that people can control. Not to mention, many do not consider it a real addiction. As Braithwaite explained, disabilities cannot be controlled and that could be why emotional support was used often in his study.

There were also similarities in our studies. Braithwaite “found humor to be a staple.” We also found humor to be present in many of our messages, especially sarcastic humor. Braithwaite also explained that on overall messages the two coders agreed approximately 80% of the time. Out inter-rater reliability was .825. Our major points of contention were emotional support. We had a difficult time agreeing on what constituted emotional support; especially with the constant sarcasm in the messages. Braithwaite’s study was similar in that the coders only agreed 55% of the time on emotional support messages. Similar to our study, Braithwaite explained that coders found the category to be too broad.

After comparing our findings to Braithwaite, we also Walter’s four dimension of attraction to online social support. The dimensions are social distance, anonymity, interaction management and access. Social distance is appreciation of the greater expertise available in the online network. This feature was apparent in our first thread where the woman explained she turned to the group for help and plans to print their responses to show to her boyfriend about his computer addiction. Anonymity was questionable in our study. Many of the members had fake names such as Sea Wasp, yet others used what appeared to be real names such as Erik Francis. It is difficult to tell if this name is the person’s true identity. Interaction management is the ability to craft messages carefully and read at their own convenience. This was apparent especially in the longer messages with lots of information. It was clear the respondent had to look up certain facts in order to craft such detailed message. Finally access was extremely relevant considering some messages were posted at 3 am, clearly not following the normal daily schedule.

Thread 1:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.depression/browse_thread/thread/abcd0ab423db8a6d
Thread 2: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.science/browse_thread/thread/e204d0f3a2bca138/2d7948842972a63c?lnk=st&q=addicted+warcraft#2d7948842972a63c

2007-10-30T08:29:00.000-04:00

% inter-rater reliability
0.9666667

frequency
% of msgs
Information

20
1
Tangible assistance
0
0
Esteem support

10
0.5
Network support

4
0.2
Emotional support
6
0.3
Humor

1
0.05

For this blog we analyzed Dear Abby’s responses to reader questions and our results were slightly different than Braithwaite’s. The information category appeared most frequently in the messages we analyzed, while emotional support appeared most frequently in Braithwaite’s. These differences might be able to be explained because Braithwaite studied people in online support groups for people with disabilities, while we studied Dear Abby’s responses to readers’ questions, which covered a broad range of categories. Dear Abby also probably tried to be a little bit more objective when answering questions, which would explain why there was more information than emotional support in our data. There was also more esteem support because Dear Abby did a lot of “You’re right to feel this way…” and so on.

In reading a lot of the letters to Dear Abby, we noticed that a lot of people wrote to her expecting her to give nice, supportive replies, which is in line with the Social Distance Theory. A lot of time she did give supportive answers, but when she needed to she was a little harsh with some people, and was sarcastic in one reply (our one instance of humor). A lot of her replies also had links to websites her readers could go on for more information, or phone numbers they could call for help. This differences between our results and Braithwaite’s can also be due to the fact that Dear Abby’s responses, though meant to be helpful and supportive most of the time, were ultimately intended to be published in a newspaper, not an online forum.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/03/25/LI2005032502583.html

Anne Luck (red) and Brittanie Thompson (purple)

8: Relationship Support

2007-10-30T06:23:00.000-04:00

For this assignment, I (I worked alone since I had trouble finding a partner) decided to look at two threads on pretty much the same topic, relationship trouble. One thread was written by a male who was wondering how he could make his female friend more than just a friend and the other was about a wife who was having trouble communicating with her husband on the issue of masturbation. While most of the messages related to the original post, some of the messages were responses to responses to the original message. While I ciphered through the messages to code, I made sure to choose ones that related to the original post in some way.

% inter-rater reliability	0.9916667
	frequency	% of msgs
Information	13	0.65
Tangible assistance	0	0
Esteem support	4	0.2
Network support	4	0.2
Emotional support	2	0.1
Humor	10	0.5

When compared to the results obtained by Braithwaite, they are very different on the surface. Braithwaite found that out of the messages coded, the largest percentage could be classified as lending informational, esteem support and emotional support. My findings were that the largest percentage of the coded messages was lending informational support. The next largest percentages were those related to esteem support and network support. I find these differences in our findings to be very understandable. One of the factors that could have lead to the difference in our percentages as they related to emotional support was my inability to quantify emotional support. As I read through the responses, I found it difficult to classify any of them as lending emotional support as I defined it. I associate emotional support with feelings of sympathy and empathy for the most part. In many of the posts, there was a sense of humor displayed and I found it hard to see these jokes as forms of sympathy or empathy. Another reason for the difference in the percentages is the nature of the posts and the subject matter of the threads. Braithwaite got his results from a disability social support group, while I got mine from support groups on how to deal with the relationship of the opposite gender. I imagine that the majority of the posts that Braithwaite coded were about dealing with and coping with their current situation. It makes sense that the posts would lend much emotional and esteem support. The posts that I coded had to do with someone trying to find out how to change a current situation, though. Most of the posts contained advice on how to make the situation better or simple different and not how to cope with what was happening. It makes sense the majority of theses most lent informational support. Esteem or emotional support seems as though they would facilitate the continuation of the bad habits that made these situations happen in the first place..

I found that the posts I coded supported Walther’s dimensions of attraction to online social support. The subject matter of the threads that I read included intimate details of relationships, especially the one about a wife talking about her husband’s masturbation. I cannot imagine that this person would talk about something so taboo in the presence of her friends and family who would probably know her husband as well. It makes sense that she would spare herself and her husband the embarrassment of divulging their marital problems. Walter’s anonymity and social distance would spare them this embarrassment.

Assignment 8: Addictions

2007-10-30T02:03:00.000-04:00

Linda Chu (Yellow Blog) and Selina Lok (Red Blog)

Using Google Groups, we chose to analyze a support group for addiction. We coded the first 20 messages that were of substantial length. Because some threads and messages were short, we looked at seven different threads. Topics of addiction ranged from drugs and alcohol to constant fantasizing to loving unavailable women. Across all cases of addiction, we found similar results for each code. (see the table below)

This coding scheme is based on the Braithwaite study. Information includes support through facts: advice, referral, situation appraisal, and teaching. Tangible assistance includes physical support: loans, performing direct/indirect task, active participation, and expressing willingness.

Esteem support includes compliments, validation, relief of blame. Network support includes helping the person find other resources: access, presence, and companions. Emotional support includes relationship, physical affection, confidentiality, sympathy, understanding, empathy, encouragement, and prayer. Humor lightens the mood with comedy.

In comparison to the Braithwaite study, our study had:

· significantly higher percentage of information,

· similar percentage of tangible assistance,

· similar percentage of esteem support,

· significantly higher percentage of network support,

· and same percentage of emotional support.

The reason for discrepancies is the different study subjects. The Braithwaite study looked at disability support groups, while we looked at addiction support groups. The nature of disability support groups is to help the other people cope with being disabled. This is best accomplished by offering emotional support. A third of the messages contain information because a small portion of the support group will be looking for it. While newly disabled people will likely need information about their disability, the majority of disabled people are those who already have this information. This is true on a smaller scale as well for network support. The nature of an addiction support group is to help other people understand and get over addictions. This is best accomplished by offering information and resources, so more than a third (Braithwaite) of messages contain these topics. (See more results of our study below).

For our study, a large majority of thread responses offer information and a little less than half offer network and emotional support. The least common codes were esteem support and humor. There results make sense when considering the nature of addiction support groups. People in these support groups are looking for help to understand and then get over the addition. Responders know this so they naturally offer:

· helpful resources about the addiction (network support),

· share their knowledge of the addiction (information),

· encourage the person to get over the addiction (emotional support),

· and empathize by sharing their similar addiction experiences (information / emotional support).

The goal of each of these responses is to help the person who posted originally understand the addiction, feel able to get over the addiction, and know way to getting over the addiction.

Our inter-rater reliability was relatively high at .775. Most of our disagreements came from our judgment of emotional support. According to Braithwaite, "Coders found the definition of this category (emotional support) to be too broad." Emotional support, which includes relationship, physical affect, sympathy, etc., is subjective to the coder and some people may categorize a message as sympathetic, while others may disagree.

Wallace’s helping and number factors states that increased numbers online reduce helping behavior due to responsibility and decreases “noticeability.” In our analysis, we did not find support for Wallace’s number factors but found evidence that supports Walther’s ideas about online social support.

In his study, Walther considered factors other than numbers and developed four dimensions of attraction to online social support, social distance, anonymity, interaction management, and access. Social distance gives the availability of greater expertise in the larger online social network. In one of the threads, “sytech” was dissatisfied with his current AA recovery group and was seeking to find another recovery group to join. In the replies, many people who lived in the general region offered alternative locations. Although this example only involves people in a generally close area, the online community can actually create a social network worldwide offering much expertise. Also, Walther’s anonymity dimension plays an important role in support groups because in many cases, people want to remain anonymous about their addictions. In the same thread about recovery groups, there are nicknames that include “sytech,” “Blue Moon,” and “Moon Raker.” Individuals within the social support group could give advice, sympathized, and joked around without the fear of their identities being revealed like it would be FtF. In addition, interaction management is important in online support groups. Members want to be able to craft messages carefully, especially when advising others or trying to express similar experiences about addictions. Lastly, the online community offers 24/7 access to online support systems , where members are free to use the support group whenever they want to or need to, as opposed to typical daily schedules.

Assignment 8: Increasing Anorexics Appetites with Marijuana?!

2007-10-30T01:01:00.001-04:00

Marli Sussman (Brown Blog), Megan Frink (Red Blog), & Justine Fields (Red Blog)

Marijuana and Anorexia Thread

The thread our group examined was a google group that dealt with anorexia and marijuana. The people on the thread discussed how smoking marijuana increases appetite and how that could possibly cause anorexics to eat more and gain weight. The three people in our group are all girls, are all between the ages of 19 and 20, are all studying either psychology or communication, and are all in sororities. As you can see, all three of us lead very similar lives and as a result had very similar interpretations of the 20 messages we read in this thread.

The cutoff for an acceptable reliability score is .7. Our inter-rater reliability score was roughly .81, making our score more than acceptable. But, Braithwaite’s coding scheme percentages are quite a bit different than some of our coding scheme percentages. The schemes with the biggest differences were information, network support, and emotional support. Braithwaite found that information had a 31.3% presence, while we found it to have a 70% presence in the messages. Braithwaite found a 7.1% presence for network support, while we didn’t find any presence of network support in the messages. Lastly, Braithwaite found a 40.0% presence of emotional support and we only found a 2% emotional support presence. The schemes with the most similarities were tangible assistance and esteem support. Braithwaite found a 2.7% presence for tangible assistance and we found a 3% presence. Braithwaite also found an 18.6% presence of esteem support, and we found a 15% presence. Although two of the percentages were extremely similar, three of the percentages were extremely different.

We believe that our percentages vary from Braithwaite’s because the forum we observed and studied diverges from originally supporting the person who started the discussion to moving more towards being concerned with the accuracy of the content of anorexia on the thread. This shift in topic made our percentages shift in relation to Braithwaite.

Walther & Boyd’s theory of interaction management could also have affected the shift in discussion on this thread. People can spend much time editing what they write before posting and because of that, what they originally intend to say gets reconstructed over the course of their editing. Also, as there are more and more posts on a thread, people don’t keep referring to all of the posts before theirs, they really just look one or two people above to make a new point. Lastly, because the conversation on a thread is a asynchronous, people don’t follow the conversation as coherently as it would be in face to face. Completely new subtopics, related to the overall theme of a thread can be mentioned, and that is acceptable. Due to these characteristics of forums, our results vary slightly in some categories from Braithwaite’s. But, ultimately, the similarity of our group members allowed us to all interpret the messages in the same way.

Assignment 8 - Divorce Support

2007-10-30T00:26:00.001-04:00

Our group decided to read messages from a single thread on Google Groups’ alt.support.divorce. The initial post was by a man in a troubled relationship. He and his wife, who told him she thought she was falling for another man at work, were discussing divorce and trial separation. He was concerned about his wife’s actions, the future of the relationship, and what would happen to his son if he and his wife separated.

Our inter-rater reliability was above the conventional standard of .7. We had a reliability .77. With a frequency of 18 (90%), information was the most prevalent type of support in this sequence of messages. This was because a lot of the members of the group had been through similar situations with their significant others. Thus, they were able to give first hand accounts, and alert the man as to what might be coming next. We included the messages posted by the initial user, who was asking for help, because we thought it would be interesting to see if those asking for help, also offered it as well. Therefore, since his few posts were very much about describing his situation, they contained information, and little of anything else. Also very frequent, emotional support had a percentage of .65.

The only type of support to have a frequency of 0 was tangible assistance. This makes sense because these people were communicating via the internet. It is more difficult to offer or give tangible support when the one you wish to help lives miles and miles away, or in these cases, when you don’t know where the person lives.

Our results are relatively similar to Braithwaite’s. She found emotional support to be most frequent, with information as a close second. We found information to be most prevalent, with emotional support as a close second. Both our study and Braithwaite’s observed tangible assistance the least. While network support was at the lower end of the frequency scale in both studies, Braithwaite found that esteem support was more in the middle of the road, whereas we observed esteem support to be as infrequent as network support. We found it very interesting that messages related to disability yielded similar results to messages offering advice about divorce and relationships.

Online support, no matter what the reason, seems to be conducive to particular types of support and not to others. The physical distance between users of the internet prevents much tangible assistance, while increased social distance and lack of visual anonymity lend themselves toward more emotional disclosure.

Kathryn Dewey – Blue
Eric Dial - Green

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.divorce/browse_thread/thread/16aad3dbeaa13738/475ded9c55b2263d?lnk=raot#475ded9c55b2263d

8: Her Stuff and His Porn

2007-10-29T23:45:00.000-04:00

My partner and I choose twenty different messages from two different treads within the marriage support group—“I need some advice – His and Her Stuff” and “Pornography Addiction.” While looking for threads in support groups, we noticed that some replies were difficult to understand because of poor English and typing skills. Also many of the replies were simply advertisements not at all related to the marriage support thread.

Wallace found that increased numbers online reduced helping behavior because of decreased “noticeability,” the use of other people to interpret the environment, and a diffusion of responsibility. However, Wallace only focuses on the effect of numbers in helping behavior. Walther and Boyd suggest that it is more than numbers that influence helping behavior in online settings because when a person is online, they do not know exactly how many observers and responders are present. Walther and Boyd (2003) incorporate four dimensions of attraction to online social support: social distance; anonymity; interaction management; and access. Social distance states that there is an appreciation of the greater expertise available in the larger online social network. Perceived and real anonymity increases the ability to avoid embarrassment, thus increasing confidence in providing support. The interaction management dimension states that users appreciate the ability to craft messages carefully when providing support and to read at their own convenience when receiving support. In addition, CMC gives users unlimited access to online support systems outside of typical daily set schedules.

Another study regarding online social support is Braithwaite et al (1999), in which messages in a disability social support group were coded based on information (i.e, advice, referral, and situation appraisal), tangible assistance (i.e. loan, active participation, and expression of willingness), esteem support (i.e. compliments, validation, and relief of blame), network support (i.e. access, presence, and companions), and emotional support (i.e. sympathy, empathy, and encouragement). Aside from these primary coding schemes, humor was discussed.

Our findings primarily supported the Walther and Boyd study because the number of responses to a particular thread did not depend on the actual number of individuals present in the online community. We believe that people were more willing to participate and provide online support due to Walther and Boyd’s four dimensions because users are global (social distance); participants most likely do not know one another, provoking them to provide support (anonymity); online users are able to carefully create messages (interaction management); and online threads allow users to respond, provide, and receive support at their earliest convenience (access).

Our findings did not fully align with the findings of Braithwaite, et al. because we had the ability to choose what support group and threads were investigated and coded. We found that 85% of our messages (the majority) were coded as information because most responses gave advice, provided websites, and steps for coping. Our next highest was coded as esteem support, at 75%. This was apparent in the pornography addiction thread, as this involves a significant amount of self-disclosure. Responders replied without judgment and some even provided personal validation by stating their personal experiences. At a close third, there was a high amount of emotional support in the first thread concerning spousal differences (70%). People were more willing to respond to this topic with empathy and sympathy based on user’s spousal experiences. In the pornography addiction thread, there was a great deal of encouragement to quit the addiction (or make money by producing their own pornography!). We also noticed that a great deal of humor was used within both threads (45%).

This experiment supports the idea that online social support can be very beneficial for all people coping with any type of issue. For instance, we learned a very valuable lesson from this assignment: make your pornography addiction monetarily beneficial by creating your own porn!

% inter-rater reliability	0.8833333
	frequency	% of msgs
Information	17	0.85
Tangible assistance	1	0.05
Esteem support	15	0.75
Network support	3	0.15
Emotional support	14	0.70
Humor	9	0.45

Partner: Josh Navarro (purple)
Thread #1
Thread #2

8 Maladjusted People With Internet Connections

2007-10-29T22:54:00.000-04:00

Spencer Dorcik (Red)
Eden Mayle (Red)
Emily Wellikoff (Brown)

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.shyness/browse_thread/thread/62f1a7bdadc4ecd1/d47a91b5a32dce7a?lnk=gst&q=dating+advice+phy#d47a91b5a32dce7a

Our group selected a dating support group found within Google Groups for our examination of support messages. The starting thread was asking, amusingly enough, why a man’s mother’s advice on dating and women seems to be “misleading” and why this seemed to be the case a lot of the time. The support the original poster received ranged from supportive and informative to self-centered and incredibly sexist and derogatory towards women. After analyzing the first 20 responses to the original post, we plugged in our coding decisions and ended up with some interesting and relevant data. Out of the 20 messages, 11 (55%) were coded for informational support while only 4 each (20%) were coded for emotional support and humor. None of the other support modalities received any consensus coding. Our inter-rater reliability was 66%. One of the intriguing aspects of our end statistics was that only 3 messages were coded for more than one characteristic. Most messages only offered information, or only emotional support, or only humor, or nothing at all.

These results compliment the findings of Braithwaite and Waldron (1999), who coded messages in an online support group for the disabled. The largest percentage of their messages consisted of informational and emotional support, while network support and tangible assistance were encountered least frequently. Our results closely mirror these findings, though information was much more prevalent than emotional support in our message corpus. In this respect, our results are more consistent with those of Cutrona and Suhr (1992), who also found informational support most frequently. The similarity of our findings may stem from our examination of a relatively non-emotional group of messages, much like the messages studied by Cutrona and Suhr. In addition, we found support for the optimal matching model which predicts that less emotional support will be found in contexts in which the message recipients can control their situation. On a dating message board, many users are seeking information in the hopes of improving their circumstances, while users in a disability support group might be more inclined to seek sympathy about a situation they cannot change. We also found humor to be as frequent as emotional support in our messages. Some users offered self-deprecating comments, perhaps to convey empathy, while others demonstrated a more lighthearted sense of humor. It seems that humor plays a large role in maintaining the supportive atmosphere found in these online communities. Finally, our inter-rater reliability (66%) fell below the inter-rater reliability demonstrated by Braithwaite and Waldron (80%). This could be because we received less training in identifying details that indicate the presence of various forms of support.

Our results showing that social support within this group was predominantly concerned with relaying informational and, less frequently, emotional support can be rationalized with Walther’s dimensions of support. These dimensions include social distance, anonymity, interaction management, and access. For instance, the Internet provides a distance that allows for people to feel disconnected from others and less vulnerable to judgment, resulting in emotional support that often involves personal disclosure. Also, this distance provides for a much larger audience than face to face interactions. If you tell a friend a problem, you will just get social support from that friend, whereas if you post that problem online, you can get informational support from many people, even including experts. Additionally, the Internet allows for anonymity which again increases personal divulgence in the form of emotional support, and increases confidence to provide informational support. Moreover, the Internet allows for interaction management, meaning people can construct messages carefully and with more time, resulting in support that is both informative and sympathetic. Finally, the Internet gives those seeking social support, access that is simply unavailable from other media; thus, information is literally at a person’s fingertips whenever they need it. Walther’s dimensions of attraction are integral to understanding why online social support is mainly informational and emotional.

8: Perusing Support Groups

2007-10-29T21:23:00.001-04:00

My partner and I chose twenty different messages from various google support groups. Our results generally followed Braithewaite et al., but accuracy may have been lost since we coded fewer messages than they did.

Just as in Braithewaite et al.’s results, we too seemed to have the most conflict in deciding which messages were emotional because of the broadness of the category. When we first began searching for messages, it was easy to find responses, but as we continued, we noticed that many of the messages were simply links to articles and usually people did not respond to them. Similar to Wallace’s numbers phenomenon, – where in ftf, more people mean less helping and in CMC, there is more assistance since it’s harder to see how many people are present, so you don’t rely on other people’s reaction to the aid – the groups that had more people had more discussion/responses to questions, as opposed to the groups with few people had little or no discussion. Another interesting factor that played in finding messages with more discussion was anonymity and social distance. This not only allowed for wider range expertise available from people all over the network, but it allowed the member to self-disclose more, which provided a greater number of responses that were more interesting and personal.

I found it interesting that we actually had a few messages without information because I thought that almost all messages would provide some sort of information or advice, but that was not necessarily the case. Some messages were solely emotional in providing sympathy, or some were reactions to an anecdote. Unlike Braithewaite et al., where most of their messages were from people with physical disabilities, most of our messages consisted of members with mental disabilities (i.e. – grief, depression, loneliness), which may account for the discrepancy in the percentages of message types.

After reviewing the messages, we found our inter-rater reliability to be 90%, which is 10% higher than Braithewaite’s et al.’s reiliability. This higher reliability may be accounted for because of the lower number of messages analyzed. Our results ranked information first (75% of the messages), emotional support second (50%), esteem support third (40%), humor fourth (20%), and tangible assistance and network support tied for fifth (5%). Whereas, Braithewaite et al had emotional support first (40.0% of the messages), information second (31.3%), esteem support third (18.6%), network support fourth (7.1%), and tangible assistance fifth (2.7%). Not included in their results, was the analysis of humor in messages. We found that there were a significant amount of humor, more so than tangible assistance and network support combined, and most of them were ones that did not have emotional support in them because it is more difficult to show empathy and be humorous at the same time.

Partner - Will Hui (Blue Blog)

Message1 Message2 Message3 Message4 Message5
Message6 Message7 Message8 Message9 Message10
Message11 Message12 Message13 Message14 Message15
Message16 Message17 Message18 Message19 Message20

8: Thinspiration

2007-10-29T16:51:00.000-04:00

Following Braithwaite’s study on the types of messages exchanged in online support groups, we decided to code messages found in a “pro-anorexia” Google group. Although one would typically think of a support group as a place where individuals turn to others as a means to work through an illness or disability, this message board was in fact the exact opposite. Instead of providing encouragement or advice on how to defeat anorexia, members of this social group supported others on how to remain thin by any means possible:

“I kinda feel like the whole "pro-ana" scene has really gotten away from whats important. Losing weight at all costs! I feel like people has gone from 'do whatever it takes' to 'its ok to be a little chunky'. It's not ok! It's SO not ok, and I don't want to let myself slip into that mentality."

Braithwaite used Cutrona and Suhr’s (1992) category system of supratypes and subtypes to code messages as containing information support, tangible assistance, network support, esteem support, and emotional support. Since Braithwaite also frequently found humor in messages, this was an additional category we took into account.

Messages that included emotional support involve relationships, physical affection, confidentiality, sympathy, understanding, encouragement, and prayer (Braithwaite, 1999). In Braithwaite’s study, she found that emotional support messages appeared most frequently in support groups, making up 40% of the messages that were coded. In our study, we found that 85% of the messages included emotional support--twice the percentage of Braithwaite's findings. This may be a result of the fewer number of messages we coded for our study. Moreover, since the nature of this forum leads individuals to push others to stick with an anorexic “lifestyle,” encouragement is inherent in the group we analyzed.

Information support includes advice, referrals to experts, situation appraisal, and teaching messages (Braithwaite, 1999). Information support was found in 31.7% of the messages in Braithwaite’s sample. Although our percentage was much higher, at 95% of the messages coded, this could be due to our inclination to selectively choose threads that seemed extremely content based. We were quick to disregard those threads that had few words and little support or advice. Had our research methods been more systematic, our percentage may have more accurately reflected Braithwaite’s results. This too could be due to the nature of the forum, since group members were eager to pass on their own personal tips and suggestions. A great example includes the thread title “Thinspiration,” an idea by one member to each give a different tip on remaining thin--the most extreme post involving “The Ana Commandments."

Messages containing esteem support includes compliments, validation, and relief from blame (Braithwaite, 1999). We too found esteem support messages to rank third in terms of frequency. Validation, in particular, was found very frequently in our discussion group, as members who were posting were supporting an illness that is not traditionally accepted as a positive behavior that should be encouraged. In contrast, Braithwaite was probably more inclined to find esteem support involving relief of blame or complimenting individuals on the way they overcome their disabilities.

Tangible assistance encompasses performing a direct task, active participation, and expressing willingness (Braithwaite, 1999). Network support involves messages that give Information specifically about networks, including access, presence, and companions (Braithwaite, 1999). Both our study and Braithwaite's study found tangible assistance and network support to appear the least frequently. However, in contrast to Braithwaite, we found more tangible assistance than network support, perhaps due to human error in coding. Perhaps the lack of network support is a result of the rarity of the "pro-ana" support network. The members already contributing to the group feel that they and the other contributors are the few that truly understand this way of life and have no need to connect them to others outside of the group. Additionally, tangible assistance in this case was difficult to find most likely because acts of support were more text-based recommendations rather than a means of physical assistance.

After individually coding messages, we discussed our viewpoints before coming to a consensus. Since there were three of us viewing these messages, whenever one had a different viewpoint then another, it led to disagreement and further discussion. Our inter-rater reliability was 90.83% indicating an extremely high level of consistency. Braithwaite similarly found high inter-rater reliability at 80%. Since training and experience both lead to higher inter-rater reliability, our high result may be attributed to previously learning how to accurately classify messages and already doing a practice coding exercise together in class.

Our results can be further analyzed by applying Walther & Boyd’s (2003) four factors: social distance, anonymity, interaction management, and access. Social distance would encourage socializing online due to the fact that the Internet is a medium in which individuals could be separated by large distances. The Internet provides a wide space for individuals to find “experts” to interact with and seek support from without geographic boundaries. Anonymity allows individuals to feel more comfortable providing revealing information or seeking help. Since the “pro-ana” messages have a stigma associated with them, anonymity helps reduce the fear of sharing this information as compared to sharing this information face to face with close friends and family. Interaction management involves selective self-presentation, in that the asynchronous environment allows people to carefully pick and choose how they would like to be perceived. This is particularly important in the support group we analyzed since members may be especially self-conscious and have low self-esteems. Access refers to the idea that no matter what time of day or where you are, support can be found on the Internet through already posted material or in a later response to your own request for help. Individuals who encourage anorexia can search to find others who have similar needs.

Authors: Alyssa Ehrlich (red), Randi Pochtar (purple), and Lauren Burrick (yellow)

Support Group: http://groups.google.com/group/pro-ana/

Threads Used: Thread 1, Thread 2, Thread 3, Thread 4