As a health conscious person, I came across a calorie counting website that gives breakdowns, nutrition facts, and grades (ranging from A to F) on foods. Ideally, this site is used mostly by people who are trying to improve their lifestyle or are trying to lose weight. I first used the site primarily for the factual information, but found that there was a lot more to it, including a community where users contribute by posting advice and problems on forums about various topics. In order to make a post or comment in any forum, a username must be created and terms of agreement must be accepted. The terms of agreement lay out the policies and rights of the users. Wallace refers to these “specialty signs,” which explain the rules and purpose of the forums to the users before they are allowed to enter. In this instance, the site administration provides the prerequisite behavioral guidelines, which are what Wallace refers to as “the signs on the door.”
Most users accept the site’s social norms of being encouraging and motivating in their comments to help others to continue their pursuit of a healthy lifestyle. Besides the terms of agreement, where comments will be removed if they do not abide by the terms, people inherently know to socially conform to this polite conduct because it is the purpose of the site – to provide positive feedback to other users. Also, the presence of social influence plays an important role because the members influence one another’s attitudes and opinions. To protect the site, when old users see that someone has posted a rude comment, they will politely let the author of the comment know and defend the author of the discussion so they will not feel discouraged. Since members relate to each other through overcoming weight issues and are willing to defend one another, they have a strong group identity. Therefore, the salient group and visually anonymous members lead to conformity to norms and social influence. This follows the SIDE (social identity deindividuation effect) Theory in which people relate self to others based on membership and there is a loss of self-awareness through visual anonymity and crowd behavior.
On the site, the Leviathan monitors the contributions made by users to ensure orderliness amongst the discussions. For each topic (i.e. – weight loss, health and support, fitness, etc.), there is a list of moderators, consisting of volunteer users, that maintain the objectives of the website. According to Wallace, they would be considered the Leviathan because they are the presence of authority so that other users will feel safe to post comments without the risk of feeling ridiculed. Their intent is not to “kill” anyone’s discussion contributions, but more to ensure a clear and orderly environment. They will either edit posts to clarify discussions, move posts to different topics, or remove posts where potential flame wars may be present. So that users do not feel that they have lost control over the posts, the moderator will specify why the post was edited. Users conform to the conventions set by the Leviathan, or in this case, the moderators, by relinquishing their freedoms in order to preserve the online group environment.
Comments:
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/10/6-option-1-haha-hehe-lol.html
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/10/assignment-6-two-faced-leviathan.html
1 comment:
Sara,
It's very interesting to read how the website had put specific rules and guidelines for users to follow in order to have a positive and encouraging environment. Even more interesting and surprising is how the group belonging to the site has conformed and followed these rules. From your post it really seems that the users adapted the rules as norms. As you pointed out, when a new user makes a negative comment, the other more "veteran" users comment asking explaining to the new user that comments like that are not appropriate for their site.
Would you consider these older users of the site as part of the Leviathan? I guess the reason I ask is that they are basically helping the site manage inappropriate comments as well as virtually "raising their eyebrows" at the new user's comments by posting in response to it as well as encouraging the author of the post that was negatively commented on.
I guess though the site set up a formal Leviathan, what came out of it was also an informal one (the users themselves) by establishing strong norms within the site.
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