AR; of usability and civic engagement

Taking a quick break from credibility issues, let’s look now at an article from the New Media and Society about the usability of websites, and how that is related to civic engagement. (“Public life and the internet: if you build a better website, will citizens become engaged?” – and if you want a short answer, it’s “yes.”)

The authors linked uses and gratifications theory (assuming goal-oriented users, what motivates them to consume online media?) with Yankelovich’s theory of public opinion (a general model describing three general levels of civic engagement, and the way in which media organizations help or hinder people reaching these levels). Reflecting on the assumption that positive media experience somehow leads to increased civic activity, the main question of the study was how the usability of websites (“usability” being understood based on the users’ criteria) affects civic engagement.

Usability was operationalized as a 3-dimensional construct, comprising of “content,” “organization” and “presentation.” In this particular study, a website was created that got streamlined after heavy usability-testing, and its use was compared to that of the control site, a website dealing with the same topic (next year’s budget plans), which has not been tested or optimized for usability in any way.

The results?

AR; about informational gift-giving in online communities

Why do people bother to provide information and advice to complete strangers – hiding behind screen names – in virtual communities? This is the basic problem of the latest JCMC article I’d like to write about.

It’s quite an interesting piece, that starts from the proposition that altruism and traditionally accepted norms of reciprocity might not fully explain the phenomenon of online informational gift giving. Instead, it might have to do with the online status- and identity-building of members of these virtual communities.

The article then goes on to explore differences between the practical factors that affect status building IRL and online; and to discuss results of a survey, which found that status seeking (following various strategies) is indeed a highly important motivator for virtual community members. The authors also establish that formal, direct systems of status building and maintenance – such as the “rate-and-reputation” systems of websites – might eventually damage communities:

While status competition that results from such systems can increase participation by providing more tangible ego incentives, the same systems can also discourage [informational] gift giving by many who thus far have enjoyed the casual informality of online interaction.

Visualizing cultural patterns

"Evolution" on Wikipedia (History Flow)

I’m being very uningenious with the title of this entry, which I simply copied from Axel Bruns. In a quite interesting blogpost, he writes about the latest apparent trend in cultural studies: the analysis of cultural trends (all across the largely connected but also largely decentralised cultural – well – public spheres) through their visualization.

Computers are awesome in collecting data (data mining), and, what the idea is now, is to make them help making sense of all the data, through – you guessed it – visualizing them. Citing new media theorist Lev Manovich’s talk:

How, then, is it possible to develop a theory for specific aspects of this global digital culture with its billions of cultural objects, and hundreds of millions of contributors? Our normal, manual methods of talking about different areas of culture are no longer adequate for this task.

Enter data visualisation. What was once confined to the financial pages of newspapers and scientific applications is now entering the realm of popular culture and everyday digital tools; visualisation is becoming increasingly common across a widening range of environments, including the digital arts. Public visualisations of their history and performance at their headquarters have become as prestigious as their logos for some companies, in fact.

OK, so, visualization – but what does this mean in practice? A couple of examples: CultureVis, History Flow (dealing with the history of Wikipedia articles, see the accompanying picture), Visual Complexity; or think of the ways in which Digg tries to visualize all the frantic activity that’s taking place there to keep everything manageable.

At the moment, the baby steps are being taken for this discipline to become accepted and to realize its full potential. It’s going to be interesting to watch (quite literally) how this will develop.

AR – another take on blog credibility

Instead of trying to cope with strangely off-the-base articles, I will just return here briefly to the problem of blog credibility (looking at the pile of articles in the TO READ stack, this won’t be the last time, either).

In a 2008 article of the JCMC, the authors present a survey of blog readers, taken in the final stage of the 2004 US presidential elections. To sum it up very briefly, blogs were found moderately credible (credibility here has also been understood as a construct of believability, fairness, accuracy and depth), but as more credible than any other type of media. Blog reliance was found to be a strong predictor of perceived credibility. The authors also took a look on how various motivations for using blogs are related to perceptions of credibility, and they found that credibility was seen highest among those who were reading blogs often seeking political information, and lowest among those who mostly frequent blogs for entertainment.

A couple of quick notes, then.

Back in Finland

Well then – after taking a short break and travelling to Germany and The Netherlands – I’m back in Finland. On Tuesday I gave a little lecture on cultural shock (and how to survive in the great Finnish reality) to future exchange students participating some kind of preparatory language course. I try to get back into normal working rhythm as soon as possible. I’m wrestling at the moment with an article which didn’t, on the first look, seem to make much sense at all.