Session 7: Management and Conflict

I chose to analyze the rules of Facebook for this week’s assignment.  For the final project, I will compare the different features of Facebook with a similar, Korean social network site (Cyworld). The official rules governing Facebook can be found on the main page by clicking the “Terms” tab on the bottom; you are automatically linked to the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (http://www.facebook.com/terms.php) page, and this statement includes additional links to a detailed privacy policy (http://www.facebook.com/policy.php), safety policy, etc. Also, these rules can be found on the Help Center page (http://www.facebook.com/help/); this also provides a useful guide for Facebook users.

Broken Rules

 

1. This group of people created a group page to discuss their Anti-Israel thoughts; many of them used hate speech (using “F” words) towards Jews based on ethnicity, religion, or national origin. This violates the safety policy that “You will not post content that is hateful, threatening… or [that] contains … graphic or gratuitous violence”. Because there is a systemic feature, other users can report their hate speech or violent behavior. If I were an administrator, I would first let users leave feedback before removing the group for sharing inappropriate content. Answerbag, which also has a feedback system that allows users to flag content as spam or inappropriate for administrator review, uses a similar system (Gazan, 2009). However, if the plan of the group is terrorism or the collection of money to support threats, I would remove the group immediately; the security policy states that “Any credible threats to harm others will be removed. We may also remove support for violent organizations that intimidate or harass any user”. 

 

 

 

2. This user continuously posted pornographic content to their wall and promoted their adult video website with a link. This violates Facebook’s strict rule that “there is no nudity or pornography policy and any content that is inappropriately sexual will be removed”. Because there is a feature for other users to report the person for inappropriate wall posts or even to block the person, administrators can remove the pornographic content and suspend the account immediately after receiving feedback. As Gazan (2007) explains, many rogue behaviors are reported by site moderators by reviewing and monitoring users’ feedback. However, unlike Flickr or YouTube, which both have safety mode as the default setting, Facebook does not have a feature to filter content that is not suitable for minors. As such, I would create such a feature that supports the idea that administrators or designers should listen to users’ feedback and never stop creating a user-centered design (Grimes et al, 2008). 

 

 

3. There are several fake Facebook accounts or fan pages of Justin Bieber in the search results that violate the Registration and Account Security policy that “You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission … You will not post content or take any action on Facebook that infringes or violates someone else's rights or otherwise violates the law”.   

 

I heard there are fans that create fake accounts to promote their favorite celebrities. Even though there is already an official account, like the screenshot above, the user of the below screenshot uses almost the same images and structure to imitate Justin Bieber. What is worse is that there are some people who believe, because the name of the page includes the word “Official”, that it is real. Because impersonation is not allowed on Facebook, there is a feature that allows you to report the person by choosing the option, “This profile is impersonating someone or is fake".  However, in the real world, people can create multiple accounts using false information with different email accounts; as such, these fake accounts are not easily removed, since the process of verifying identities takes time and leads to privacy issues. However, in order to build trust between users, I would rather limit an IP address to creating only one account. Also, there are many groups that are created for reporting abuse and violation of Facebook. It is good that people gather and send feedback at the same time so that administrators can pay attention, “By working collectively, users have a much stronger ability to influence producers to make alterations. Functioning as a collective group in the form of a team or guild allows users the ability to exert more formidable pressure than they could ever accomplish individually” (Grimes et al, 2008). I also feel that there are so many similar groups that separate people into smaller groups; given this I would combine the groups into one under the heading “Feedback Center”, which I  would also build using updated documents of community standards and policies, “Oversight increased both the quantity and quality of contributions while reducing antisocial behavior, and peers were as effective at oversight as experts” (Cosley et al, 2005).

Finally, here are Five Unwritten Rules that I came up with for users:

1. Do not share personal information with anyone.
2. Use freedom of speech and expression, unless it violates the Facebook rules.
3. Be aware of the importance of diversity.
4. Always learn newly featured applications.
5. Act like you are in the real world; treat other users with respect and good faith.

References

Cosley, Dan, Dan Frankowski, Sara Kiesler, Loren Terveen, John Riedl (2005). How Oversight Improves Member-Maintained Communities. CHI 2005, April 2-7 2005, Portland, Oregon.

Grimes, Justin, Paul Jaeger and Kenneth Fleischmann (2008).  Obfuscatocracy: A stakeholder analysis of governing documents for virtual worlds. First Monday 13(9).

Gazan, Rich (2009).  When Online Communities Become Self-Aware. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.

Gazan, Rich (2007).  Understanding the Rogue User. In: Diane Nahl and Dania Bilal, eds.  Information & Emotion: The Emergent Affective Paradigm in Information Behavior Research and Theory. Medford, New Jersey: Information Today, 177-185.

Session 6: Online Identity and Interaction

For this assignment, I chose caloriesperhour.com, which provides weight loss tips (food calories calculator, weight loss calculator, etc.) and has a diet and weight loss forum where many people discuss weight loss (posting users’ own diet success and failure stories, sharing body images to get self-esteem, asking about medical issues, such as eating disorders, surgery, diet pills, and supplements).

Sunny Day, Scenario 1

·         A user is on a diet. She has lost a tremendous amount of weight. However, she hasn’t lost weight during past two weeks but has even gained a few pounds. Struggling, she is becoming exhausted and giving up the diet.

·         She posts her before and after body images to ask for suggestions.

·         Many users share their experiences dealing with struggles (changing types of exercise, food, etc.) and applaud her efforts.

·         Her self-esteem grows and, after a while, her diet is successful.

Sunny Day, Scenario 2

·         A user who has never tried a diet wants to lose weight.

·         Because he doesn’t have any knowledge of diet plans, he joins the forum to seek the successful diet plans other people have tried.

·         He reads threads and followed the diet plan with the largest view counts.

·         He succeeds with the diet.

Rainy Day Scenario

·         A user wants to lose weight by using diet pills.

·         She begins a post asking other forum users for recommendations.

·         Many people leave comments recommending a diet pill and telling of their successful outcomes.

·         She chooses a diet pill that has been recommended many times.

·         She takes the diet pill and suffers side effects (nausea, diarrhea, and dehydration); then she falls victim to depression.

    Users share knowledge of variety of diet pills and supplements.

                            

How is online identity shaped and expressed through interactions in this community?

Donath (2007) explains that the strong ties in networks can give support to members of the group and weak ties make people feel less responsibility but provide more access to a variety of information. Users of caloriesperhour have both strong and weak ties. They give emotional support to each other, even though they don’t meet offline, and they interact often by sending private messages. Weak ties are characterized by the fact that most people don’t know each other but share information that they can’t get offline freely because of the limits of time, place, or accessibility. 

Users give emotional support to each other.

                              

Like Bodyspace, caloriesperhour is a passion-centric social network site. “Social network sites connect people because of a shared passion, such as religion, pets, or specific hobbies” (Ploderer et al, 2008). I believe that there are common reasons for users joining and participating in these two communities. First, both communities help users to monitor their progress in the pursuit of their passion, Bodyspace users post their body images to get feedback, mostly applause, from the audience, as in a bodybuilding show; while caloriesperhour users post body image to get suggestions for diet plans. Second, I agree with Ploderer’s statement that “passion-centric social network sites connect mostly people with no previous offline connections”. I have observed that most users of caloriesperhour forum don’t meet offline but freely interact with each other online. Although I feel that there are more chances for bodybuilders to meet other forum users offline since they participate in competitions and work out together at the gym. “People form new relationships with others on social network sites. Thus, social network sites provide them with a community of like-minded people that extends their offline connections with peers, friends and coaches” (Ploderer et al.). Unlike Bodyspace users, who want to get information on how to prepare for bodybuilding competitions, users in caloriesperhour focus on searching for individual diet plans. “Comparing oneself with others is essential in any competitive sport including bodybuilding … they compare themselves with others who are in a worse position in order to enhance their self-esteem” (Ploderer et al.). In addition, most users in Bodyspace already have information about the sport—in other words, there are more experts—while caloriesperhour users are mostly amateurs and have more tendencies to struggle and share why they failed to lose weight.

According to Wellman (2003), networked individualism comes from changes in society (social changes, land use changes, and technological changes). The Internet has caused networks in society to expand from face-to-face groups to online groups, where people access the Internet using mobile phones and create online identities to interact with other people in social network sites. Donath emphasizes the importance of trust in users sharing reliable information. In caloriesperhours.com, users sometimes give and get false information. Not every user is trustworthy and sometimes represent themselves with unidentifiable information in their profiles (no avatars, no real name, etc.); nevertheless, strong ties are built because they have the same interest.

References

Wellman, Barry, Anabel Quan-Haase, Jeffrey Boase, Wenhong Chen, Keith Hampton, Isabel Isla de Diaz and Kakuko Miyata (2003).  The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 8(3). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol8/issue3/wellman.html

Donath, Judith. (2007). Signals in Social Supernets. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(1).  http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/donath.html

Ploderer, B., S. Howard & P. Thomas (2008). Being Online, Living Offline: The Influence of Social Ties Over the Appropriation of Social Network Sites. Proceedings of CSCW 2008.