Handbook of Research on Social Interaction Technologies and Collaboration Software: Concepts and Trends

Handbook of Research on Social Interaction Technologies and Collaboration Software: Concepts and Trends Tatyana Dumova Montclair State University, USA Richard Fiordo University of North Dakota, USA

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Handbook of research on social interaction technologies and collaboration software : concepts and trends / Tatyana Dumova and Richard Fiordo, editors. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: "This book explores the origin, structure, purpose, and function of socially interactive technologies known as social software"--Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-1-60566-368-5 (hbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-60566-369-2 (ebook) 1. Information technology--Social aspects. 2. Online social networks. 3. Internet--Social aspects. 4. Groupware (Computer software)--Social aspects. I. Dumova, Tatyana, 1962- II. Fiordo, Richard, 1945HM851.H3486 2009 303.48'33--dc22 2008054205

British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. All work contributed to this book is new, previously-unpublished material. The views expressed in this book are those of the authors, but not necessarily of the publisher.

Editorial Advisory Board Guo-Ming Chen, University of Rhode Island, USA Harald F. O. von Kortzfleisch, University Koblenz-Landau, Campus Koblenz, Germany Paul Licker, Strategy and Leadership Research Group, School of Business Administration, Oakland University, USA J. Michael Sproule, San Jose University, USA Yonghua Zhang, Shanghai University, China

List of Reviewers June Abbas, University of Oklahoma, USA Joshua Azriel, Kennesaw State University, USA Lemi Baruh, Kadir Has University, Turkey Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, University of Haifa, Israel Stefan Bitzer, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany Oliver Bohl, University of Kassel, Germany Christos J. Bouras, University of Patras, Greece Ruth E. Brown, University of Nebraska at Kearney, USA Joseph E. Burns, Southeastern Louisiana University, USA Stacy L. Carter, Texas Tech University, USA Thorsten Caus, Georg August University of, Germany Scott L. Crabill, Oakland University, USA Andrea Crampton, Charles Sturt University, Australia Kevin Curran, University of Ulster, UK Helen Donelan, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK Edward Downes, Boston University, USA Judith Gelernter, Rutgers University, USA Rosanna E. Guadagno, University of Alabama, USA Sirkku Kristiina Hellsten, University of Helsinki, Finland Jiehua Huang, Guangzhou University, China Lee Humphreys, Cornell University, USA Yasmin Ibrahim, University of Brighton, UK Lorraine D. Jackson, California Polytechnic State University, USA Pankaj Kamthan, Concordia University, Canada Todd Kelshaw, Montclair State University, USA

Hak-Lae Kim, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland Hong-Gee Kim, Seoul National University, South Korea Elizabeth Koh, National University of Singapore, Singapore James M. Laffey, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA Christine A. Lemesianou, Montclair State University, USA Morgan Luck, Charles Sturt University, Australia Ronald Marsh, University of North Dakota, USA Catherine McLoughlin, Australian Catholic University, Australia Marcus Messner, Virginia Commonwealth University, USA Junghoon Moon, Information and Communications University, South Korea Dhrubodhi Mukherjee, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, USA Susan O’Donnell, University of New Brunswick, Canada Bradley M. Okdie, University of Alabama, USA Kenneth Owen, Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Canada Joowon Park, Information and Communications University, South Korea Robyn Parker, Kent State University, USA Sarah Pedersen, The Robert Gordon University, UK Lina Pelliccione, Curtin University of Technology, Australia Beth Perry, Athabasca University, Canada Isabella Peters, Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany Heather D. Pfeiffer, New Mexico State University, USA Narissra Punyanunt-Carter, Texas Tech University, USA Angela T. Ragusa, Charles Sturt University, Australia Alan Rea, Western Michigan University, USA James Robinson, University of Dayton, USA Noemi Maria Sadowska, Regents Business School, Regent’s College, UK Francesco Sofo, University of Canberra, Australia Robert D. Sprague, University of Wyoming, USA Wolfgang G. Stock, Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany Tami K. Tomasello, East Carolina University, USA Ane Tröger, Aston University, UK Lorna Uden, Staffordshire University, UK Cheng-Yen Wang, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan Richard D. Waters, North Carolina State University, USA Katrin Weller, Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany Gunilla Widen-Wulff, Åbo Akademi University, Finland Robert Willis, Vancouver Island University, Canada Melda N. Yildiz, William Paterson University, USA Zuopeng (Justin) Zhang, Eastern New Mexico University, USA

List of Contributors

Aaltio, Iiris / University of Jyväskylä, Finland .................................................................................. 257 Abbas, June / University of Oklahoma, USA..................................................................................... 451 Agarwal, Nitin / Arizona State University, USA................................................................................ 661 Agne, Robert / Auburn University, USA ............................................................................................ 302 Amelung, Christopher J. / Yale University, USA.............................................................................. 170 Azriel, Joshua / Kennesaw State University, USA ............................................................................. 363 Baruh, Lemi / Kadir Has University, Turkey............................................................................... 33, 392 Ben-Ze’ev, Aaron / University of Haifa, Israel ................................................................................. 327 Berzins, Michelle / University of Canberra, Australia ...................................................................... 561 Bitzer, Stefan / Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany ....................................................... 147 Bohl, Oliver / Accenture, Munich, Germany........................................................................................ 91 Bouras, Christos J. / University of Patras, Greece ........................................................................... 417 Breslin, John G. / National University of Galway, Ireland ............................................................... 519 Brown, Ruth E. / University of Nebraska—Lincoln, USA .......................................................... 45, 462 Burns, Joseph E. / Southeastern Louisiana University, USA ...................................................... 56, 383 Caus, Thorsten / Georg August University of Göttingen, Germany.................................................... 11 Christmann, Stefan / Georg August University of Göttingen, Germany ............................................ 11 Crabill, Scott L. / Oakland University, USA ..................................................................................... 315 da Rimini, Francesca / University of Technology, Sydney, Australia ............................................... 601 Decker, Stefan / National University of Galway, Ireland .................................................................. 519 Donelan, Helen / The Open University, UK....................................................................................... 270 Eardley, Alan / Staffordshire University, UK .................................................................................... 574 Eno, Cassie A. / University of Alabama, USA.................................................................................... 292 Gelernter, Judith / Carnegie Mellon University, USA ...................................................................... 439 Gibson, Kerri / National Research Council, Canada........................................................................ 528 Grimes, Joe / California Polytechnic State University, USA ............................................................. 220 Guadagno, Rosanna E. / University of Alabama, USA..................................................................... 292 Hagenhoff, Svenja / Georg August University of Göttingen, Germany .............................................. 11 Hellsten, Sirkku Kristiina / University of Helsinki, Finland.............................................................. 80 Herman, Clem / The Open University, UK ....................................................................................... 270 Herrington, Anthony / University of Wollongong, Australia............................................................ 685 Huang, Jiehua / Guangzhou University, China and Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland ........................................................................................................................................... 257

Humphreys, Lee / Cornell University, USA ........................................................................................ 22 Isikdag, Umit / IT Consultant, Ankara, Turkey ................................................................................. 372 Jackson, Lorraine D. / California Polytechnic State University, USA ............................................. 220 Jo, Sooran / Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea ............................. 486 Kamthan, Pankaj / Concordia University, Canada .......................................................................... 542 Kear, Karen / The Open University, UK............................................................................................ 270 Kelshaw, Todd / Montclair State University, USA............................................................................. 404 Kervin, Lisa / University of Wollongong, Australia .......................................................................... 685 Kim, Hak-Lae / National University of Galway, Ireland .................................................................. 519 Kim, Hong-Gee / Seoul National University, South Korea ............................................................... 519 Kirkup, Gill / The Open University, UK............................................................................................ 270 Koh, Elizabeth / National University of Singapore, Singapore......................................................... 209 Laffey, James M. / University of Missouri-Columbia, USA.............................................................. 170 Lee, Mark J. W. / Charles Sturt University, Australia ...................................................................... 194 Lemesianou, Christine A. / Montclair State University, USA .......................................................... 404 Lim, John / National University of Singapore, Singapore ................................................................ 209 Liu, Huan / Arizona State University, USA........................................................................................ 661 Manouchehri, Shakib / University of Kassel, Germany ..................................................................... 91 Mantei, Jessica / University of Wollongong, Australia...................................................................... 685 Marsh, Ronald / John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Science, University of North Dakota, USA ................................................................................................................................................ 428 McLoughlin, Catherine / Australian Catholic University, Australia ............................................... 194 Molyneaux, Heather / National Research Council, Canada ........................................................... 528 Moon, Junghoon / Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea................... 486 Mukherjee, Dhrubodhi / Southern Illinois University Carbondale, USA ........................................ 110 Mulvany, Julie / Swinburne University of Technology, Australia ..................................................... 233 Nandhakumar, Joe / University of Warwick, UK .............................................................................. 639 Nerur, S. / University of Texas at Arlington, USA .............................................................................. 586 Nicosia, Laura M. / Montclair State University, USA ....................................................................... 623 O’Donnell, Susan / National Research Council, Canada ................................................................. 528 Okdie, Bradley M. / University of Alabama, USA ............................................................................ 292 Owen, Kenneth / Lakehead University, Canada ............................................................................... 509 Park, Joowon / Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea ........................ 486 Pedersen, Sarah / The Aberdeen Business School, The Robert Gordon University, UK .................. 281 Pelliccione, Lina / Curtin University of Technology, Australia ......................................................... 233 Peters, Isabella / Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany ............................................. 132 Pfeiffer, Heather D. / New Mexico State University, USA................................................................. 158 Pocknee, Catherine / Swinburne University of Technology, Australia ............................................. 233 Poulopoulos, Vassilis / University of Patras, Greece ....................................................................... 417 Ragusa, Angela T. / Charles Sturt University, Australia ................................................................... 181 Rea, Alan / Western Michigan University, USA ................................................................................. 336 Robinson, James D. / University of Dayton, USA ............................................................................. 302 Sachdev, V. / Middle Tennessee State University, USA ...................................................................... 586 Sadowska, Noemi Maria / Regents Business School, Regent’s College, UK.................................... 245

Schumann, Matthias / Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany .......................................... 147 Sofo, Francesco / University of Canberra, Australia ........................................................................ 121 Soysal, Levent / Kadir Has University, Turkey.................................................................................. 392 Sprague, Robert D. / University of Wyoming, USA........................................................................... 351 Stock, Wolfgang G. / Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany ...................................... 132 Tai, Zixue / University of Kentucky, USA............................................................................................. 67 Teng, J. T. C. / University of Texas at Arlington, USA....................................................................... 586 Thoroe, Lars / Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany ....................................................... 147 Tomasello, Tami K. / East Carolina University, USA ........................................................................... 1 Tonkin, Emma L. / University of Bath, UK ...................................................................................... 158 Tötterman, Anna-Karin / Åbo Akademi University, Finland ........................................................... 101 Tsogkas, Vassilis / University of Patras, Greece ............................................................................... 417 Uden, Lorna / Staffordshire University, UK ...................................................................................... 574 Uluç, Güliz / Ege University, Turkey.................................................................................................. 372 Waters, Richard D. / North Carolina State University, USA ............................................................ 473 Weller, Katrin / Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany ............................................... 132 Widén-Wulff, Gunilla / Åbo Akademi University, Finland............................................................... 101 Willis, Robert / Vancouver Island University, Canada...................................................................... 509 Xu, Susanna Xin / National University of Ireland–Galway, Ireland ................................................ 639 Yilmaz, Mehmet / Ege University, Turkey......................................................................................... 372 Zhang, Jianping / MITRE Corporation, USA ................................................................................... 661 Zhang, Zuopeng (Justin) / State University of New York at Plattsburgh, USA ................................ 496

Table of Contents

Preface ..........................................................................................................................................xxxviii Preface ................................................................................................................................................... xl Acknowledgment .............................................................................................................................xlvii

Volume 1 Section 1 Background and Development Chapter 1 J.C.R. Licklider and the Rise of Interactive and Networked Computing ............................................... 1 Tami K. Tomasello, East Carolina University, USA Chapter 2 Mobile Social Web: Opportunities and Drawbacks .............................................................................. 11 Thorsten Caus, Georg August University of Göttingen, Germany Stefan Christmann, Georg August University of Göttingen, Germany Svenja Hagenhoff, Georg August University of Göttingen, Germany Chapter 3 Mobile Social Networks and Services .................................................................................................. 22 Lee Humphreys, Cornell University, USA Chapter 4 Social Media Marketing: Web X.0 of Opportunities ............................................................................ 33 Lemi Baruh, Kadir Has University, Turkey Chapter 5 Citizen Marketing ................................................................................................................................. 45 Ruth E. Brown, The University of Nebraska—Lincoln, USA Chapter 6 The Past, Present, and Future of Podcasting ......................................................................................... 56 Joseph E. Burns, Southeastern Louisiana University, USA

Chapter 7 The Rise of the Chinese Blogosphere ................................................................................................... 67 Zixue Tai, University of Kentucky, USA Chapter 8 E-Government: A Case Study of East African Community Initiative .................................................. 80 Sirkku Kristiina Hellsten, University of Helsinki, Finland Chapter 9 Corporate Added Value in the Context of Web 2.0 ............................................................................... 91 Oliver Bohl, Accenture, Munich, Germany Shakib Manouchehri, University of Kassel, Germany Chapter 10 A Social Capital Perspective on Collaboration and Web 2.0 .............................................................. 101 Gunilla Widén-Wulff, Åbo Akademi University, Finland Anna-Karin Tötterman, Åbo Akademi University, Finland Chapter 11 Social Capital, Social Networks, and the Social Web: The Case of Virtual Volunteering .................. 110 Dhrubodhi Mukherjee, Southern Illinois University, USA Chapter 12 From Software to Team Ware: Virtual Teams and Online Learning Culture ...................................... 121 Francesco Sofo, University of Canberra, Australia

Section 2 Concepts, Contexts, and Applications Chapter 13 Folksonomy: The Collaborative Knowledge Organization System ................................................... 132 Katrin Weller, Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany Isabella Peters, Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany Wolfgang G. Stock, Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany Chapter 14 Folksonomy: Creating Metadata through Collaborative Tagging....................................................... 147 Stefan Bitzer, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany Lars Thoroe, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany Matthias Schumann, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany

Chapter 15 E-Tagging in Context: Information Management across Community Networks ............................... 158 Heather D. Pfeiffer, New Mexico State University, USA Emma L. Tonkin, University of Bath, UK Chapter 16 Using Notification Systems to Create Social Places for Online Learning .......................................... 170 James M. Laffey, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA Christopher J. Amelung, Yale University, USA Chapter 17 Peer Learning and Social Interactions in an Asynchronous Learning Environment .......................... 181 Angela T. Ragusa, Charles Sturt University, Australia Chapter 18 Educational Podcasting: A Taxonomy of Pedagogical Applications .................................................. 194 Catherine McLoughlin, Australian Catholic University, Australia Mark J. W. Lee, Charles Sturt University, Australia Chapter 19 Wiki Use in Higher Education: Implications for Group Size and Task Complexity .......................... 209 Elizabeth Koh, National University of Singapore, Singapore John Lim, National University of Singapore, Singapore Chapter 20 The Hybrid Course: Facilitating Learning through Social Interaction Technologies ......................... 220 Lorraine D. Jackson, California Polytechnic State University, USA Joe Grimes, California Polytechnic State University, USA Chapter 21 The Use of Social Interaction Technologies in E-Portfolios............................................................... 233 Lina Pelliccione, Curtin University of Technology, Australia Catherine Pocknee, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia Julie Mulvany, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia Chapter 22 Commerce and Gender: Generating Interactive Spaces for Female Online Users ............................. 245 Noemi Maria Sadowska, Regents Business School, Regent’s College, UK Chapter 23 Social Interaction Technologies: A Case Study of Guanxi and Women Managers’ Careers in Information Technology in China ...................................................................................... 257 Jiehua Huang, Guangzhou University, China and Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland Iiris Aaltio, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Chapter 24 Online Participation: Shaping the Networks of Professional Women................................................. 270 Helen Donelan, The Open University, UK Clem Herman, The Open University, UK Karen Kear, The Open University, UK Gill Kirkup, The Open University, UK Chapter 25 Women Bloggers Seeking Validation and Financial Recompense in the Blogosphere....................... 281 Sarah Pedersen, The Aberdeen Business School, The Robert Gordon University, UK Chapter 26 Personal Blogging: Individual Differences and Motivations............................................................... 292 Rosanna E. Guadagno, University of Alabama, USA Cassie A. Eno, University of Alabama, USA Bradley M. Okdie, University of Alabama, USA Chapter 27 Audience Replies to Character Blogs as Parasocial Relationships...................................................... 302 James D. Robinson, University of Dayton, USA Robert Agne, Auburn University, USA Chapter 28 Situating Social Identity through Language Convergence in Online Groups...................................... 315 Scott L. Crabill, Oakland University, USA Chapter 29 Online Relationships and the Realm of Romantic Possibilities........................................................... 327 Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, University of Haifa, Israel Chapter 30 The Virtual Social Continuum Expressed: Interaction and Community Formation in MMORPGs.................................................................................................................... 336 Alan Rea, Western Michigan University, USA

Section 3 Issues, Viewpoints, and Perspectives Chapter 31 Legal Issues Associated with Emerging Social Interaction Technologies........................................... 351 Robert D. Sprague, University of Wyoming, USA

Chapter 32 Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act: How ISPs and Users are Legally Exempted from Offensive Materials ................................................................................................... 363 Joshua Azriel, Kennesaw State University, USA Chapter 33 Blogs and Forums in a Presidential Election Process in Turkey ........................................................ 372 Güliz Uluç, Ege University, Turkey Mehmet Yilmaz, Ege University, Turkey Umit Isikdag, IT Consultant, Ankara, Turkey Chapter 34 Wiki Journalism .................................................................................................................................. 383 Joseph E. Burns, Southeastern Louisiana University, USA Chapter 35 Public Intimacy and the New Face (Book) of Surveillance: The Role of Social Media in Shaping Contemporary Dataveillance ................................................................................. 392 Lemi Baruh, Kadir Has University, Turkey Levent Soysal, Kadir Has University, Turkey

Volume 2 Chapter 36 Emerging Online Democracy: The Dynamics of Formal and Informal Control in Digitally Mediated Social Structures................................................................................. 404 Todd Kelshaw, Montclair State University, USA Christine A. Lemesianou, Montclair State University, USA Chapter 37 Squeak Etoys: Interactive and Collaborative Learning Environments ............................................... 417 Christos J. Bouras, University of Patras, Greece Vassilis Poulopoulos, University of Patras, Greece Vassilis Tsogkas, University of Patras, Greece Chapter 38 The Sun Earth Moon System: Connecting Science and Informal Learning ....................................... 428 Ronald Marsh, John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Science, University of North Dakota, USA Chapter 39 Neogeography ..................................................................................................................................... 439 Judith Gelernter, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Chapter 40 Social Software Use in Public Libraries ............................................................................................. 451 June Abbas, University of Oklahoma, USA Chapter 41 Marketing for Children Using Social Interaction Technologies ......................................................... 462 Ruth E. Brown, University of Nebraska—Lincoln, USA Chapter 42 The Use of Social Media by Nonprofit Organizations: An Examination from the Diffusion of Innovations Perspective .................................................................................................................. 473 Richard D. Waters, North Carolina State University, USA Chapter 43 Towards Understanding the Successful Adoption of Blog-Based Knowledge Management Systems: A Socio-Psychological Approach .................................................................. 486 Joowon Park, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea Sooran Jo, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea Junghoon Moon, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea Chapter 44 Social Software for Customer Knowledge Management.................................................................... 496 Zuopeng (Justin) Zhang, State University of New York at Plattsburgh, USA Chapter 45 Critical Success Factors in the Development of Folksonomy-Based Knowledge Management Tools .............................................................................................................................. 509 Kenneth Owen, Lakehead University, Canada Robert Willis, Vancouver Island University, Canada Chapter 46 Representing and Sharing Tagging Data Using the Social Semantic Cloud of Tags .......................... 519 Hak-Lae Kim, National University of Galway, Ireland John G. Breslin, National University of Galway, Ireland Stefan Decker, National University of Galway, Ireland Hong-Gee Kim, Seoul National University, South Korea Chapter 47 A Framework for Analyzing Social Interaction Using Broadband Visual Communication Technologies............................................................................................................. 528 Susan O’Donnell, National Research Council, Canada Heather Molyneaux, National Research Council, Canada Kerri Gibson, National Research Council, Canada

Chapter 48 Using the Social Web for Collaboration in Software Engineering Education .................................... 542 Pankaj Kamthan, Concordia University, Canada Chapter 49 Online Scams: Case Studies from Australia ....................................................................................... 561 Michelle Berzins, University of Canberra, Australia Chapter 50 The Usability of Social Software ........................................................................................................ 574 Lorna Uden, Staffordshire University, UK Alan Eardley, Staffordshire University, UK

Section 4 Selected Readings Chapter 51 Interactivity Redefined for the Social Web ......................................................................................... 586 V. Sachdev, Middle Tennessee State University, USA S. Nerur, University of Texas at Arlington, USA J. T. C. Teng, University of Texas at Arlington, USA Chapter 52 Social Technologies and the Digital Commons .................................................................................. 601 Francesca da Rimini, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia Chapter 53 Virtual Constructivism: Avatars in Action .......................................................................................... 623 Laura M. Nicosia, Montclair State University, USA Chapter 54 Managing E-Relationships in a Supply Network................................................................................ 639 Susanna Xin Xu, National University of Ireland–Galway, Ireland Joe Nandhakumar, University of Warwick, UK Chapter 55 A Study of Friendship Networks and Blogosphere............................................................................. 661 Nitin Agarwal, Arizona State University, USA Huan Liu, Arizona State University, USA Jianping Zhang, MITRE Corporation, USA

Chapter 56 Blogs as a Social Networking Tool to Build Community ................................................................... 685 Lisa Kervin, University of Wollongong, Australia Jessica Mantei, University of Wollongong, Australia Anthony Herrington, University of Wollongong, Australia

Compilation of References ............................................................................................................... 701

Detailed Table of Contents

Preface ..........................................................................................................................................xxxviii Preface .................................................................................................................................................. xl Acknowledgment .............................................................................................................................xlvii

Volume 1 Section 1 Background and Development This section addresses general issues related to the origin and development of social interaction technologies (SIT) as a driving force behind the diverse (inter)faces of Web 2.0 and the technological frontier of the new millennium. As a tribute to the visionaries of the Internet and the World Wide Web, the section opens with a chapter on the legacy of J.C.R. Licklider. In 1960, Licklider authored a seminal paper, “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” that forever changed the history of computing and earned him a place in the Internet Hall of Fame. The remaining contributions discuss the growth of advanced web-based interaction technologies and their economic, social, political, and cultural implications for a variety of areas and activities ranging from Web 2.0 business and advertising models, to e-government, citizen marketing, mobile social networks, blogging, podcasting, virtual volunteering, and virtual teams. Chapter 1 J.C.R. Licklider and the Rise of Interactive and Networked Computing ............................................... 1 Tami K. Tomasello, East Carolina University, USA This chapter examines J.C.R. Licklider’s legacy as a contributor to the development of modern networked computing. In 1960 Licklider published his seminal “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” the first of three articles that attempted to redefine the human-computer interaction. Licklider outlined a vision for interactive, networked computing and, ultimately, the Internet that we experience today. Providing an overview of Licklider’s role as a visionary of the computerized communication networks of today, this chapter pays particular attention to the main ideas conveyed in “Man-Computer Symbiosis” and the influence of these ideas on academic and professional researchers during the following decades.

Chapter 2 Mobile Social Web: Opportunities and Drawbacks .............................................................................. 11 Thorsten Caus, Georg August University of Göttingen, Germany Stefan Christmann, Georg August University of Göttingen, Germany Svenja Hagenhoff, Georg August University of Göttingen, Germany As mobile Internet usage continues to grow, the phenomenon of accessing online communities through mobile devices draws researchers’ attention. Statistics show that close to 60 percent of all mobile Internet traffic worldwide is related to the use of mobile social networks. In this chapter, the mobile social web is defined, categories of mobile communities explained, and success factors and drawbacks discussed from the technical, social, and economic perspectives. Challenges, including low transmission rates, changes in usage patterns, search for new revenue sources, as well as the need for development of original mobile web content and applications are addressed. The technical requirements for the mobile use of online communities are identified. The chapter closes with a summary of potential economic and social prospects of the emerging mobile social web. Chapter 3 Mobile Social Networks and Services .................................................................................................. 22 Lee Humphreys, Cornell University, USA Mobile social networks allow users to connect with each other, share information, and create technologically enabled mobile communities. With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the public dream of the likelihood of mobile computing was realized. This chapter reviews mobile social networks ranging from early examples to current services; and, it identifies and categorizes them according to a specific media type, mode, and code. The challenges of categorization in light of technology convergence are discussed. Issues of privacy, compatibility, and pricing are presented as they relate to mobile social networks. Potential strategies are suggested for dealing with these challenges. Finally, future trends of mobile social services are identified. Chapter 4 Social Media Marketing: Web X.0 of Opportunities ............................................................................ 33 Lemi Baruh, Kadir Has University, Turkey In recent years social media applications, which enable consumers to contribute to the world of online content, have grown in popularity. However, this growth is yet to be transformed into a sustainable commercial model. Starting with a brief overview of existing online advertising models, this chapter discusses the opportunities available for advertisers trying to reach consumers through social media. The chapter focuses on viral marketing as a viable option for marketers, reviews recent viral marketing campaigns, and offers recommendations for a successful implementation of social media marketing. In conclusion, the author examines future trends regarding the utilization of the emerging Semantic Web in marketing online.

Chapter 5 Citizen Marketing.................................................................................................................................. 45 Ruth E. Brown, The University of Nebraska—Lincoln, USA This chapter explores citizen marketing, which refers to consumers voluntarily posting product information based on their knowledge and experience. The product information may take the form of opinions, reviews, videos, ads, or entire websites; it is persuasive in that it meets a consumer need for credible peer review of products. Research into information spread by word-of-mouth provides the theoretical foundation for citizen marketing. Because it is found on the Internet where word spreads quickly, citizen marketing empowers individuals to bring change in the form of product design or price. The chapter examines how mainstream marketers are trying to channel citizen marketing through various means, including unfiltered peer-to-peer interaction on product websites. Chapter 6 The Past, Present, and Future of Podcasting.......................................................................................... 56 Joseph E. Burns, Southeastern Louisiana University, USA Thanks to the friendship of an XML programmer and an ex-MTV video jock, the first podcast took place in July of 2003 by automatically streaming a single audio file half way around the world. Four months later Apple Computer, Inc. proved that its personal listening device, the iPod, could synch with a new program called iTunes and download files using the same technology. Since then podcasting has grown at a remarkable rate. In 2007, over 65 million people had used an RSS feed to download a podcast. Literally, millions of podcasts are currently available covering every topic imaginable. The broadcast media have begun to use podcasting as a method of time shifting programming. Educators are using podcasting for reaching out to students. Businesses are using podcasting as a marketing tool. Music artists are using the format to promote themselves and sell their records. The commercial future of podcasting appears to be in the area of advertising and broadcasting. Chapter 7 The Rise of the Chinese Blogosphere.................................................................................................... 67 Zixue Tai, University of Kentucky, USA In comparison with the USA and Europe, the Chinese blogosphere was off to a later start; however, it has experienced phenomenal growth since its formal birth in 2002. Now China boasts by far the largest blogging community in the world, surpassing the blogger population in the United States and Europe combined. Chinese bloggers are among the first globally to both actively engage in blog writing and reading. Although the Chinese blogosphere has closely followed the global path of technological innovation and ingenuity, it has taken many of its own unique twists and turns in terms of its creative uses and impact on the social, political and cultural contexts of Chinese society. Focusing on the popularization of blogs, mainstreaming, and commercialization of the global cyber culture in China, this chapter paints a portrait of a Chinese blogger. Due to the omnipresent state control of cyberspace and heavy-handed state censoring of online information, most Chinese bloggers have shied away from politically sensitive and subversive issues and topics. The most popular blogging topics include the documentation of personal experiences and the expression of individual viewpoints on a wide range of topics; these topics are followed by hobbies, entertainment, and amusement.

Chapter 8 E-Government: A Case Study of East African Community Initiative .................................................. 80 Sirkku Kristiina Hellsten, University of Helsinki, Finland E-government and other applications of information technologies can provide powerful means for global, national and local justice, increased democracy, decentralized decision-making, and more efficient service delivery. In general, e-government initiatives are aimed at modernizing governmental agencies in their dealings with the public and extending services into online environments. In various African countries, e-government initiatives have begun; they have allowed citizens easy access to public services and lobbying opportunities at policy level decision-making. This chapter identifies prospects and challenges in e-government and e-governance in the East African region. The author sketches harmonizing strategies for the development of an ethical framework for their implementation and argues that the challenge of e-governance in developing countries resides in the challenge of “good governance” as well as issues of accessibility and user skills. Chapter 9 Corporate Added Value in the Context of Web 2.0 ............................................................................... 91 Oliver Bohl, Accenture, Munich, Germany Shakib Manouchehri, University of Kassel, Germany Firms have faced and explored the increased use of Web 2.0. Driven mainly by private users, Web 2.0 may also have significant implications for corporate actions and business models. By systematically scanning and verifying possible positive and negative effects on the value of their creation, firms might be able to formulate and establish well-grounded strategies for corporate Web 2.0 applications and services. To establish such a process in an effective and adequate manner, it is necessary to analyze the relationship between Web 2.0 and corporate added value. This chapter contributes to these efforts by demonstrating that the corporate use of Web 2.0 applications is reinforced by fundamental and long-term business trends. The discussion pertains to the possibilities emerging from the application of Web 2.0 paradigms to business models: the market model, the activity model, and the capital market model. The potentials, risks, mainsprings, and restrictions associated with the corporate use of Web 2.0 are evaluated. Chapter 10 A Social Capital Perspective on Collaboration and Web 2.0 .............................................................. 101 Gunilla Widén-Wulff, Åbo Akademi University, Finland Anna-Karin Tötterman, Åbo Akademi University, Finland Social interaction technologies can successfully employ the previously untapped power of the web to utilize the collaborative creation of information and user-driven content. In this chapter, the social capital framework is applied to illustrate how Web 2.0 tools and techniques can support effective information and knowledge management in organizations. Interactions within and between organizations generate important practices that underscore the role of social capital. Managing social capital for effective knowledge sharing is a complex process, and Web 2.0 lends some support for organizations by creating a new culture of voluntary, contributive, and collaborative participation. The argument is made that Web

2.0 technologies can be seen as important tools that can bridge the creation and sharing of knowledge in diverse organizational contexts. Chapter 11 Social Capital, Social Networks, and the Social Web: The Case of Virtual Volunteering .................. 110 Dhrubodhi Mukherjee, Southern Illinois University, USA Social interaction technologies create communicative possibilities that go beyond dyadic interactions and across physical boundaries, bringing a qualitative shift in the functioning of the Internet. The present chapter employs social capital and social networks perspectives to identify the social determinants of virtual volunteering in the age of Web 2.0, explores the social motivation of volunteers who perform tasks using the Social Web in the context of online volunteering, and addresses the dynamic interplay of social capital, social networks, and the Social Web with implications for virtual volunteering. The argument furthered is that active participation in social networks generates social capital and facilitates the development of the Social Web. Chapter 12 From Software to Team Ware: Virtual Teams and Online Learning Culture ...................................... 121 Francesco Sofo, University of Canberra, Australia Social interaction technologies have made it possible for teams to exist in a virtual reality. Such change to the workplace status quo requires a new appreciation of the ways in which team members can create, maintain, transmit and influence their competitiveness and effectiveness. This chapter explores the concepts of virtual teams and online culture; it analyses the key requirements for the successful functioning of virtual teams: for instance, building trust, consolidating authentic communication flows and thinking critically. Commencing with a review of the current research, the chapter concentrates on the rise of virtual teams, the key dimensions, and the importance of establishing online learning cultures to ensure high performance. Additionally, pitfalls of virtual teams and recommendations for enhancing their work are presented.

Section 2 Concepts, Contexts, and Applications The chapters in this section scrutinize the ways social interaction technologies enhance the powers of connectivity, interaction, and collaboration for individuals, groups, organizations, and society as a whole in local and global contexts. The contributions discuss the deployment of SIT applications in knowledge management, education, business, and commerce. A broad range of concepts are introduced and analyzed: using folksonomies for knowledge organization and sharing; creating metadata through collaborative tagging; social tagging as annotation; constructing technology enhanced social and personal learning spaces; the impact of SIT on self-expression and social identity formation; online social, romantic and parasocial interactions and relationships; generating online interactive spaces for women; social networking and online community formation.

Chapter 13 Folksonomy: The Collaborative Knowledge Organization System ................................................... 132 Katrin Weller, Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany Isabella Peters, Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany Wolfgang G. Stock, Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany This chapter discusses folksonomies as a novel way of indexing documents and locating information based on user generated keywords. Folksonomies are considered from the point of view of knowledge organization and representation in the context of user collaboration within the Web 2.0 environments. Folksonomies provide multiple benefits which make them a useful indexing method in various contexts; however, they also have a number of shortcomings that may hamper precise or exhaustive document retrieval. The position maintained is that folksonomies are a valuable addition to the traditional spectrum of knowledge organization methods since they facilitate user input, stimulate active language use and timeliness, create opportunities for processing large data sets, and allow new ways of social navigation within document collections. Applications of folksonomies as well as recommendations for effective information indexing and retrieval are discussed. Chapter 14 Folksonomy: Creating Metadata through Collaborative Tagging....................................................... 147 Stefan Bitzer, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany Lars Thoroe, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany Matthias Schumann, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany Modern Web 2.0 technologies facilitate the collaboration and sharing of information among users, thereby enabling cooperative processes of information search. One kind of user participation is collaborative tagging, where individuals assign keywords to resources and objects on the Internet. Through the allocation of keywords, objects are enhanced with user-created metadata which results in the so-called folksonomies. This chapter focuses on the classification of tags based on function and user motivation, examines advantages and disadvantages of folksonomies, and provides a review of current applications using collaborative tagging. Future trends and potential developments are identified as they relate to the implementation of collaborative tagging in corporate settings. Chapter 15 E-Tagging in Context: Information Management across Community Networks ............................... 158 Heather D. Pfeiffer, New Mexico State University, USA Emma L. Tonkin, University of Bath, UK This chapter examines social tagging as annotation: first from the perspective of classification research; and second from the perspective of knowledge representation and knowledge management. Using the context meta-model of the annotation, the authors demonstrate that the model is adequately represented in existing knowledge representation theory: specifically, from the perspective of socially constructed meaning in community networks. Furthermore, the set of tagging representations (that is, triadic networks of the individual, object, and annotation) are explored throughout the knowledge representation domain. In contrast to many commentators, the authors of this chapter conclude that social tagging may

effectively be explored via a multidisciplinary approach linking knowledge representation and classification research and creating an open domain network. Chapter 16 Using Notification Systems to Create Social Places for Online Learning .......................................... 170 James M. Laffey, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA Christopher J. Amelung, Yale University, USA Context-aware activity notification systems have potential to improve and support the social experience of online learning. The authors of this chapter have developed a Context-aware Activity Notification System (CANS) that monitors online learning activities and represents relevant contextual information by providing notification and making the learning activity salient to other participants. The chapter describes previous efforts to develop and support online learning context awareness systems; it also defines the critical components and features of such a system. It is argued that notification systems can provide methods for using the context of activity to support members’ understanding of the meaning of activity. When designed and implemented effectively, CANS can turn course management systems (CMS) into technologies of social interaction to support the social requirements of learning. Chapter 17 Peer Learning and Social Interactions in an Asynchronous Learning Environment .......................... 181 Angela T. Ragusa, Charles Sturt University, Australia This chapter explores how Internet-based asynchronous communication forums utilized in teaching undergraduate courses affect social interactions and student satisfaction. Drawing from an analysis of qualitative data, such as student and teachers’ perceptions, this case study reveals four key factors that affect learner satisfaction: (1) trust of people and technology, (2) awareness of how technically-mediated interactions differ from face-to-face interactions, (3) peer-based learning opportunities, and 4) integration of relevant learning materials and opportunities for social engagement. The findings suggest that when asynchronous forums are used as the principle vehicle for communication and learning, students feel less socially isolated, report a sense of belonging, and positively evaluate learning outcomes. The case study identifies asynchronous electronic forums as an effective tool for peer learning and social interactions among upper-level distance education students in Australia. Chapter 18 Educational Podcasting: A Taxonomy of Pedagogical Applications .................................................. 194 Catherine McLoughlin, Australian Catholic University, Australia Mark J. W. Lee, Charles Sturt University, Australia The proliferation of Web 2.0 technologies generates a new wave of online behavior, distributed collaboration, and social interaction. They are already having a transformative effect on education, triggering changes in how teachers and students communicate and learn. The chapter illustrates the new forms of learning, communication, and participation enabled by podcasting and the pedagogical innovations that are possible with this audio-based Web 2.0 technology. Beyond having access to a wider range of content, learners can engage in creative authorship by producing and manipulating digital audio content

and making it available for consumption and critique by classmates, teachers, and a wider audience on the web. A range of podcasting activities are described in contemporary learning environments. The emphasis is on tertiary education settings where students are engaged in content creation, self-directed learning, and metacognitive skill development. These examples are discussed in terms of how they are indicative of the pedagogical choices now available to teachers and learners. Chapter 19 Wiki Use in Higher Education: Implications for Group Size and Task Complexity .......................... 209 Elizabeth Koh, National University of Singapore, Singapore John Lim, National University of Singapore, Singapore In recent years, the field of education has discovered the educational value of social interaction technologies, including wikis. However, a lack of conceptual understanding and operationalization of wiki use has prevented a more extensive adoption of this collaborative technology by educational institutions. The present chapter provides insights into the functionality of wikis and their educational implications for higher education. The authors contend that a conceptualization of wiki use in the classroom context can be derived from a typology of online interactive pedagogies. The proposed conceptualization is based on the assumption that certain kinds of wiki-related activities correspond to certain levels of classroom interactions: namely, social interaction, general discussion, topic focused discussion, and collaborative activities. Additionally, group size and task complexity should be considered as criteria for wiki implementation. The main premise of the chapter is that the instructional use of wiki-based classroom technologies can enhance student learning. Chapter 20 The Hybrid Course: Facilitating Learning through Social Interaction Technologies ......................... 220 Lorraine D. Jackson, California Polytechnic State University, USA Joe Grimes, California Polytechnic State University, USA This chapter surveys the benefits and challenges of hybrid courses, which blend face-to-face instruction with online learning, and opportunities provided by the introduction of web-based social interaction technologies. It discusses the pedagogical implications of various Web 2.0 tools: that is, asynchronous discussion boards, blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, e-portfolios, folksonomies, educational gaming, data mashups, and simulations. The authors argue that as hybrid courses continue to evolve to meet the needs of students, instructors, and institutions of higher learning, the integration of Web 2.0 applications in a hybrid model requires thoughtful course design, clear educational objectives, and carefully planned activities. Chapter 21 The Use of Social Interaction Technologies in E-Portfolios............................................................... 233 Lina Pelliccione, Curtin University of Technology, Australia Catherine Pocknee, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia Julie Mulvany, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

The chapter focuses on the potential of electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) to engage and motivate the learners and presents a framework for the informed inclusion and adoption of social interaction technologies as a means to increase the effective use of ePortfolios. Electronic portfolios are a web-based format for providing genuine evidence of student performance, self-reflection, competence, career planning and leadership. The ePortfolios meet the needs of the digital learner in the knowledge society. The collaboratively constructed artifacts enable the articulation of shared knowledge building and selfreflective practice, further confirming the status of ePortfolios as living documents. By their electronic nature, ePortfolios open promising opportunities for the assimilation of social interaction technologies such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, video, and photo sharing. The authors trace the development and use of ePortfolios within the context of higher education. Various ePortfolio tools are discussed along with their educational potential and the associated challenges. Chapter 22 Commerce and Gender: Generating Interactive Spaces for Female Online Users ............................. 245 Noemi Maria Sadowska, Regents Business School, Regent’s College, UK Internet technology presented the women’s magazine industry with new prospects for publishing and user interaction. The case of BEME.com, the UK online commercial portal targeting female users, exemplifies the tendency for a commercial context to trade in and on gender stereotypes instead of pursuing opportunities for novel conceptions of interaction with users. Contemporary design practices together with a feminist framework are drawn on to explore these issues. It is argued that although design managers and producers might have been aware of the Internet potential to foster new forms of interactive spaces for female users, these advances did not fit within the existing business models of commercial portals. The notions of “becoming” and “user interaction” are suggested as alternative approaches to the development of female oriented Internet portals. Chapter 23 Social Interaction Technologies: A Case Study of Guanxi and Women Managers’ Careers in Information Technology in China ...................................................................................... 257 Jiehua Huang, Guangzhou University, China and Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland Iiris Aaltio, University of Jyväskylä, Finland This chapter explores a relationship between social interaction technologies (SIT) and guanxi, a major Chinese informal style of networking, in the context of the careers of women managers in the information technology (IT) field in China. Addressing women’s under-representation in non-traditional occupations (such as IT), prior research has established that networking, especially informal, is an important career management tool for women. Recent advances in social capital theory and social network analysis provide a framework for understanding the role of social processes in achieving career success. Today, the growing web-based social and professional networking in China weighs against the traditional forms of relationships, such as personal networks based on guanxi. The study indicates that SIT and guanxi should be viewed as complementary rather than mutually exclusive influences.

Chapter 24 Online Participation: Shaping the Networks of Professional Women ................................................ 270 Helen Donelan, The Open University, UK Clem Herman, The Open University, UK Karen Kear, The Open University, UK Gill Kirkup, The Open University, UK Social interaction technologies present women with powerful tools to extend their network of professional contacts. This chapter considers the use of online networks by professional women, specifically those working in science, engineering, and technology, who may face particular barriers in advancing their careers; it explores the potential offered by online participation and interaction for overcoming these difficulties. Recent discussions about women’s networks and networking strategies are extended, and the authors investigate how these strategies are being affected by the growth and evolution of online social networking. Different approaches to online networking for career development are discussed, together with an examination of associated Internet and Web 2.0 technologies and the potential these approaches and tools present to women working in science, engineering, and technology. Chapter 25 Women Bloggers Seeking Validation and Financial Recompense in the Blogosphere ...................... 281 Sarah Pedersen, The Aberdeen Business School, The Robert Gordon University, UK Previous researchers investigating motivations for blogging have suggested mainly intangible benefits: for instance, documenting the author’s life, providing commentary and opinions, expressing deeply felt emotions, working out ideas through writing, and forming and maintaining communities and forums. The research detailed in this chapter focuses on the materialistic motivations of women bloggers in the U.K. and U.S. The author suggests that a need for validation and a strong financial stimulus should be added to this list of incentives. Chapter 26 Personal Blogging: Individual Differences and Motivations.............................................................. 292 Rosanna E. Guadagno, University of Alabama, USA Cassie A. Eno, University of Alabama, USA Bradley M. Okdie, University of Alabama, USA The present chapter examines current research of blogging practices; it focuses on the personal blog, a blog created and maintained by an individual and not used for financial or occupational gain. The authors maintain that individual difference factors, such as personality and gender, may contribute to differences in likelihood to blog, motivation to blog, and blog content. The authors argue that the same factors that allow for differentiation of individuals in more classic self-expressive communication modalities (e.g., journaling) may also delineate individuals in new modes of online communication and self-expression. However, these factors may manifest themselves differently over more contemporary methods of self-expression and communication. The authors conclude that bloggers and blog readership appear to be steadily growing, making this area of online self-expression increasingly deserving of scientific inquiry.

Chapter 27 Audience Replies to Character Blogs as Parasocial Relationships...................................................... 302 James D. Robinson, University of Dayton, USA Robert Agne, Auburn University, USA News anchors, talk show hosts, and soap opera characters often become objects of parasocial affection because of the nature of these program genres. This chapter explores the concept of parasocial interaction by focusing on audience replies to blog posts made on behalf of a TV character, Jessica Buchanan of ABC Television Network’s One Life to Live show. The authors employ communication accommodation theory to illuminate the concept and to identify specific communicative behaviors that occur during parasocial interaction. The chapter presents evidence of parasocial interaction within the blog replies and audience accommodation to the blog posts. Analysis suggests that parasocial interaction is the mediated manifestation of the relationship dimension inherent in television messages and used by audience members in much the same way it is used during face-to-face interaction. Chapter 28 Situating Social Identity through Language Convergence in Online Groups...................................... 315 Scott L. Crabill, Oakland University, USA According to social identity theory, individuals create and maintain their social identity through group membership. During face-to-face interactions within a group, people assess various verbal and nonverbal cues to influence the perceptions of themselves by others. However, in the context of online communication these cues are not as readily available. A screen name can be viewed as part of an individual’s “social identity creation”: a message that members of online discussion boards interpret and react to while trying to situate themselves within the group. This chapter explores how language convergence can function as a cue that facilitates situating social identity within online in-groups. Results of a content analysis of 400 screen names suggest that the screen names of discussion board members serve as an organizing variable for participants to situate themselves socially within the context of online interaction. Chapter 29 Online Relationships and the Realm of Romantic Possibilities........................................................... 327 Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, University of Haifa, Israel Human life concerns not only—or even mainly—the present, but rather, and to a significant extent, the realm of imagined possibilities that include cyberspace. The fundamental human capacity to imagine the possible not only reveals reality, but often disregards it as well. Although the realm of potential romantic possibilities is promising, it is also risky. To guide our path through this unknown territory, humans have created boundaries that eliminate the options that seem immoral or dangerous. Internetbased social interaction technologies have considerably increased the boundaries of the realm of the romantically possible and its accessibility. Hence, the challenge of coping with this realm has become central to modern life and has far reaching implications for human relationships. This chapter theorizes the role of technology in creating potential possibilities for romantic relationships and focuses on the imagination, interactivity, reciprocity, and anonymity of cyberspace.

Chapter 30 The Virtual Social Continuum Expressed: Interaction and Community Formation in MMORPGs ................................................................................................................... 336 Alan Rea, Western Michigan University, USA From the interactive textual worlds of MUDs and MuSHes to the visually rich, textured three-dimensional realms of MMORPGs, participants move from loose to strong associations forming social networks via structured guidelines and interaction patterns. These virtual world inhabitants create communication conduits, collaborate to attain goals and solve problems, or entertain themselves. In this chapter, the author uses Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, one of the most successful MMORPGs to date, to chart the various associations ranging from casual conversations to groups and guilds in which role specialization is critical to close-knit community success. The author argues that using rewards for accepted behavior creates a socialization continuum that stimulates players to interact with one another.

Section 3 Issues, Viewpoints, and Perspectives The concluding section details the practical advantages of social interaction technologies and discusses some of the issues pertaining to the unintended consequences of the uncritical application of these technologies. The expressed concerns entail the paradox of rapid technological change and slow creation of formal and informal societal checks and balances, legal aspects of user-contributed content distribution, issues of privacy and surveillance, and online fraud and marketing to children. Recognizing that SIT are having far-reaching and lasting effects on society, the contributors offer specific solutions and viewpoints that address such key issues as: the emerging role of SIT as enablers of political dialog and facilitators of civic interaction and online democracy; social media and participatory journalism; the use of social software by the nonprofit and public sectors; and, the role of new technologies in educational outreach. The chapters suggest diverse theoretical perspectives, approaches, and conceptual frameworks to ascertain the opportunities and benefits emerging from the SIT phenomenon. Chapter 31 Legal Issues Associated with Emerging Social Interaction Technologies .......................................... 351 Robert D. Sprague, University of Wyoming, USA This chapter focuses on legal issues that may arise from the increasing use of social interaction technologies: prospective employers searching the Internet to discover information from candidates’ blogs, personal web pages, or social networking profiles; employees being fired because of blog comments; a still-evolving federal law granting online service providers sweeping immunity from liability for userpublished content; and attempts to apply the federal computer crime law to conduct on social networking sites. The U.S. legal system has been slow to adapt to the rapid proliferation of social interaction technologies. This paradox of rapid technological change and slow legal development can sometimes cause unfairness and uncertainty. Until the U.S. legal system begins to adapt to the growing use of these technologies, there will be no change.

Chapter 32 Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act: How ISPs and Users are Legally Exempted from Offensive Materials ................................................................................................... 363 Joshua Azriel, Kennesaw State University, USA As a federal law, the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) criminalizes any offensive content posted on a computer server that is operated by an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The law exempts ISPs and other “users” from any liability for the illegal content that is posted by third parties as long as they make a “good faith” effort to restrict the information. Plaintiffs, who claim to be victims of offensive messages and sued ISPs, consistently lost their court cases. District and appellate courts have upheld Section 230’s provisions and Congress’s authority to regulate in this area of online communication. The CDA applies to many forms of Internet communication: for example, websites, chat rooms, discussion forums, wikis, and blogs. This chapter reviews the law, examines how federal and state courts have interpreted the CDA regarding ISPs, describes under what conditions an ISP can be held responsible for illegal content, analyzes the “user” portion of the law, and presents the legal dangers of providing immunity for “users” who post illegal content online. Chapter 33 Blogs and Forums in a Presidential Election Process in Turkey ........................................................ 372 Güliz Uluç, Ege University, Turkey Mehmet Yilmaz, Ege University, Turkey Umit Isikdag, IT Consultant, Ankara, Turkey Internet forums and weblogs have been institutionalized as an integral part of the political communication system. Political candidates, interest groups, and other political actors increasingly employ the Internet as a communication tool. Weblogs and online discussion forums are recognized as new democratic meeting places. This chapter investigates the role of political blogs and forums in the 2007 presidential election in Turkey and focuses on the interaction between political actors and the citizens. The content of 270 top-rated blogs and 15 discussion forums posted between April and September of 2007 was analyzed. The findings indicate that blogs and forums function as enablers of political dialogue and facilitate political participation and civic interaction. The conclusion is drawn that blogs and forums have emerged as innovative modes of political communication in Turkey resulting in a broad interchange of diverse political opinions in the political arena. Chapter 34 Wiki Journalism .................................................................................................................................. 383 Joseph E. Burns, Southeastern Louisiana University, USA Wiki journalism is a format of participatory journalism in which citizens are encouraged to add to, or modify, a wiki-based news story. Although the process is relatively new and the mainstream media still seem wary to accept the concept, the public has begun to recognize the potential of wiki journalism as a form of reporting. Wiki journalism has claimed success in the primary coverage of large news stories (for example, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007) and in being the first source to provide images, sound, and first-hand accounts. The technology is already in place for citizen-

based journalism to become a true new branch of media. However, critics of wiki journalism point out that this type of journalism is often based more on opinion than fact. Another concern is that when it comes to journalistic ethics and the law, participatory media do not function under the same set of rules as the traditional media. The author maintains that the future of wiki journalism depends on whether or not this novel news format can stand on its own. Chapter 35 Public Intimacy and the New Face (Book) of Surveillance: The Role of Social Media in Shaping Contemporary Dataveillance ................................................................................. 392 Lemi Baruh, Kadir Has University, Turkey Levent Soysal, Kadir Has University, Turkey In recent years, social media have become an important avenue for self-expression. At the same time, the ease with which individuals disclose their private information has added to an already heated debate about the privacy implications of interactive media. This chapter investigates the relationship between disclosure of personal information in social media and two related trends: the increasing value of subjective or private experience as a social currency and the evolving nature of automated dataveillance. The author argues that the results of the extended ability of individuals to negotiate their identity through social media are contradictory. The information revealed to communicate the complexity of one’s identity becomes an extensive source of data about individuals, thereby contributing to the functioning of a new regime of surveillance.

Volume 2 Chapter 36 Emerging Online Democracy: The Dynamics of Formal and Informal Control in Digitally Mediated Social Structures................................................................................. 404 Todd Kelshaw, Montclair State University, USA Christine A. Lemesianou, Montclair State University, USA The emergence and development of Web 2.0 has enabled new modes of social interaction that are potentially democratic, both within and across digitally mediated venues. Web-based interaction offers unlimited opportunities for organizing across geographic, demographic, and contextual boundaries, with ramifications in professional networking, political action, friendships, romances, learning, recreation, and entertainment. The wrangling between formal and informal modes of discursive control ensures perpetual dynamism and innovation; the wrangling also offers the promise that diverse voices are not only welcome but also potentially responsive and responsible. The conclusion advocated is the importance of paying attention to these tendencies since they demonstrate that the web’s proclivities for decentralization and pluralism do not necessarily lead to relativistic and nihilistic hypertextuality but to potentially novel forms of shared social control.

Chapter 37 Squeak Etoys: Interactive and Collaborative Learning Environments ............................................... 417 Christos J. Bouras, University of Patras, Greece Vassilis Poulopoulos, University of Patras, Greece Vassilis Tsogkas, University of Patras, Greece Squeak Etoys is a free software program and media-rich authoring system with a user-friendly visual interface. The software is designed to help six to twelve year-old children learn through interaction and collaboration; it comes preinstalled on XO laptop computers distributed by the One Laptop Per Child Foundation. The goal of the One Laptop Per Child initiative is to create novel educational opportunities for the world’s children by providing each child with a book-size, light and portable computer for personal use at school and at home. This chapter elaborates on the educational dimensions of the XO laptop and the Etoys environment developed to empower teachers and students with the capacity for creative learning, exploration, interaction, and collaboration. The authors focus on how the hardware and software capabilities of XO laptops can be utilized to allow children to interact, work together on projects, and engage in computer simulations and games while learning mathematics, physics, chemistry, and geometry. Chapter 38 The Sun Earth Moon System: Connecting Science and Informal Learning ....................................... 428 Ronald Marsh, John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Science, University of North Dakota, USA This chapter focuses on the issues pertaining to informal science learning through public outreach and the utilization of established and evolving web technologies. The Sun Earth Moon System (SEMs) is a website that integrates webcasting with Web 2.0 features to increase public awareness and interest in natural sciences as well as to dispel the stereotype that science is boring. The SEMs website provides live video webcasts of solar and lunar eclipses and planet transits streamed from various locations around the world as part of a web-based public outreach program. The SEMs project aims to offer the general public a realistic experience and evoke the spirit of excitement felt by being a part of a global community witnessing rare astronomical events. The purpose of the chapter is to explore webcasting and design strategies, such as the incorporation of social media elements, that can assist in the development of a science-oriented educational website. Chapter 39 Neogeography ..................................................................................................................................... 439 Judith Gelernter, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Neogeography refers to geography in the Web 2.0 style. The practice of neogeography shares the characteristics of other social interactive technologies as it represents a collaborative effort by the general public rather than professionals. Volunteer-supplied geographic tags may assume informational value beyond entertainment. Their potential is tempered by problems stemming from its novelty. For instance, neogeography-related websites provide different ways for people to contribute tags, photographs, locations, and commentary. More serious concerns are whether data and commentary are accurate and whether photographs can be an invasion of privacy. Assuming we come to terms with these concerns and there is a future for neogeography, the next generation of applications might change in appearance, mode of

Chapter 40 Social Software Use in Public Libraries ............................................................................................. 451 June Abbas, University of Oklahoma, USA With the emergence of Web 2.0, libraries have started employing social software applications (such as blogs, tagging, social networking, and wikis) to engage readers, encourage user-contributed content, and connect with user populations in novel ways. However, little research has been conducted on the applications of Web 2.0 technologies within public libraries. This chapter focuses on the applicability of social software in a library setting and examines the use of such innovative techniques as live tagging, social cataloging, and social bookmarking. The chapter evaluates the potential of social software tools for facilitating collaboration between librarians and library patrons; it addresses the concerns expressed by the library and information science community related to the issues of trust, authority, accuracy, responsibility, and ethics in the context of the Library 2.0. Chapter 41 Marketing for Children Using Social Interaction Technologies ......................................................... 462 Ruth E. Brown, University of Nebraska—Lincoln, USA Children are spending more time online and, in most cases, this means they are using social interaction technologies. Beyond the concern for safety, another issue is gathering strength: namely, interactive marketing to children. This chapter looks at the immersive nature of interactive marketing, which can be found in blogs, chat rooms, virtual worlds, advergaming, and other forms of advertainment. The chapter also examines: the ages of targetable audiences (some of whom cannot yet read the “advertisement” label), websites for children that use interactive marketing, where and how ads are displayed, the effects of interactive marketing, the potential for data collection through interactive marketing, the lack of regulation in interactive marketing, and the future trends of interactive marketing to children. Chapter 42 The Use of Social Media by Nonprofit Organizations: An Examination from the Diffusion of Innovations Perspective .................................................................................................................. 473 Richard D. Waters, North Carolina State University, USA Nonprofit organizations are an essential part of the social, political, and economic landscape of contemporary society. Social media provide ample opportunities for these organizations to increase their community presence, impact, effectiveness, and efficiency. A qualitative study of 39 nonprofit leaders explored how nonprofits are utilizing the potential of the social media technologies to carry out their programs and services. Thematic analysis revealed that nonprofits are slowly embracing the possibilities offered by the new social interaction technologies. Most nonprofit organizations lag behind and wait to see how other nonprofits incorporate these new communication outlets into their budgets and daily operations. Paralleling Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory, innovators and early adopters are using social media to revitalize their fundraising and volunteering efforts while the majority lags behind.

Chapter 43 Towards Understanding the Successful Adoption of Blog-Based Knowledge Management Systems: A Socio-Psychological Approach................................................................... 486 Joowon Park, Information and Communications University, South Korea Sooran Jo, Information and Communications University, South Korea Junghoon Moon, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea Knowledge has been recognized as a valuable resource for organizational activities. As businesses are entering the world of Web 2.0, knowledge sharing is widely regarded as a critical issue in the area of organizational knowledge management (KM). Recently, organizations have started adopting blog-based knowledge management systems (KMS) with encouraging results. Used as a tool for sharing organizational knowledge, blogging can aggregate the intellectual power of individual members, serve as innovative KMS, and lead to the creation of a trust-based corporate culture. However, despite the increasing adoption of blogs by organizations, a theoretical framework for understanding a blog-based KMS has not been developed. This chapter attempts to present a framework for understanding a blog-based KMS in an organizational setting, grounded in a socio-psychological approach and the application of social identity and symbolic interaction theories. Chapter 44 Social Software for Customer Knowledge Management..................................................................... 496 Zuopeng (Justin) Zhang, State University of New York at Plattsburgh, USA Social software is assuming a significant role in electronic business, increasingly referred to as e-business, and has been utilized recently on a growing scale by companies in customer relationship management. However, it is largely unclear at what levels firms should implement social software. This chapter addresses the gap by identifying the optimal level of social software deployment for a firm that plans to maximize its transactional benefits through the management of a customer knowledge base. The conclusion reached is that the optimal level of social software depends on a range of factors: for example, the initial volume of knowledge base, transaction benefits, and the estimates of the positive and negative effects of social software use. The chapter offers insights and guidance for business managers and practitioners. Chapter 45 Critical Success Factors in the Development of Folksonomy-Based Knowledge Management Tools............................................................................................................................... 509 Kenneth Owen, Lakehead University, Canada Robert Willis, Vancouver Island University, Canada This chapter examines three important aspects of folksonomies: common design factors found in folksonomies, developmental patterns of mature folksonomies, and the identification of knowledge consumer behaviors that can act as metrics for the evaluation of a small-scale folksonomy. In identifying desirable design elements, a comparative examination of tags and objects was made using a study conducted at Lakehead University. From this project, an exemplar of an effective folksonomical data structure was derived. User behavior was examined and categorized to identify behaviors that can be monitored and measured as indicators of user satisfaction. The authors analyze the structures of a folksonomy and synthesize a practical model of an effective folksonomy in the context of knowledge management.

Chapter 46 Representing and Sharing Tagging Data Using the Social Semantic Cloud of Tags .......................... 519 Hak-Lae Kim, National University of Galway, Ireland John G. Breslin, National University of Galway, Ireland Stefan Decker, National University of Galway, Ireland Hong-Gee Kim, Seoul National University, South Korea Social tagging has become an essential element for Web 2.0 and the emerging Semantic Web applications. With the rise of Web 2.0, websites that provide content creation and sharing features have become extremely popular. These sites allow users to categorize and browse content using tags (i.e., free-text keyword topics). However, the tagging structures or folksonomies created by users and communities are often interlocked with a particular site and cannot be reused in a different system or by a different client. This chapter presents a model for expressing the structure, features, and relations among tags in different Web 2.0 sites. The model, termed the Social Semantic Cloud of Tags (SCOT), allows for the exchange of semantic tag metadata and reuse of tags in various social software applications. Chapter 47 A Framework for Analyzing Social Interaction Using Broadband Visual Communication Technologies............................................................................................................. 528 Susan O’Donnell, National Research Council, Canada Heather Molyneaux, National Research Council, Canada Kerri Gibson, National Research Council, Canada Broadband visual communication (BVC) technologies—such as videoconferencing and video sharing— allow for the exchange of rich simultaneous or pre-recorded visual and audio data over broadband networks. This chapter introduces an analytical framework that can be utilized by multi-disciplinary teams working with BVC technologies to analyze the variables that hinder people’s adoption and use of BVC. The framework identifies four main categories, each with a number of sub-categories, covering variables that are social and technical in nature: namely, the production and reception of audio-visual content, technical infrastructure, interaction of users and groups with the technical infrastructure, and social and organizational relations. The authors apply the proposed framework to a study of BVC technology usability and effectiveness as well as technology needs assessment in remote and rural First Nation (Indigenous) communities of Canada. Chapter 48 Using the Social Web for Collaboration in Software Engineering Education .................................... 542 Pankaj Kamthan, Concordia University, Canada Recent innovations in the computer and software industry have placed new demands on academic programs in software engineering. Over the past decade, the technological environment in which software engineering education (SEE) resides has been rapidly changing. To be able to design, develop, and evaluate software applications and systems, future software engineers have to learn to adopt new technologies and acquire new skills. This chapter examines the educational impact of Social Web applications in classroom activities pertaining to SEE. The feasibility issues of the selection and adoption of collaborative

technologies and applications are emphasized, and the pedagogical patterns are discussed. The potential prospects of such an integration and related concerns are illustrated through examples. Chapter 49 Online Scams: Case Studies from Australia ....................................................................................... 561 Michelle Berzins, University of Canberra, Australia The adoption of new technologies presents a risk that inexperienced users may become immersed in a virtual world of cyber-crime featuring fraud, scams, and deceit. In addition to the societal benefits of social interaction technologies (SIT), the adoption of social software tools brings a range of security issues. The chapter highlights the “darker” side of SIT in which online safety and interpersonal trust become tangible commodities and where fraudsters prey on unsuspecting netizens; it demonstrates that an assortment of technological tools and psychological practices may be used to gain the confidence and trust of unsuspecting consumers. The author argues that consumer education can be successfully utilized to enhance the ability of Internet users to detect and avoid fraudulent interactions and safely enjoy the many benefits afforded by the emerging social interaction technologies. Chapter 50 The Usability of Social Software ........................................................................................................ 574 Lorna Uden, Staffordshire University, UK Alan Eardley, Staffordshire University, UK Emergent Web 2.0 technologies and applications (such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, mashups, and folksonomies) present a range of opportunities and benefits and are increasingly used by people to interact with each other. Despite the growing popularity of social software, there is a lack of research on the usability of these tools. This chapter focuses on how users interact with Web 2.0 technology, discusses a conceptual framework for a usability evaluation of social software, describes the different types of social software applications, and offers guidelines for their usability evaluation. The argument advanced is that social software usability should be viewed as a set of principles and practices aimed to deliver more service-orientated Web 2.0-based applications.

Section 4 Selected Readings Chapter 51 Interactivity Redefined for the Social Web ......................................................................................... 586 V. Sachdev, Middle Tennessee State University, USA S. Nerur, University of Texas at Arlington, USA J. T. C. Teng, University of Texas at Arlington, USA With the trend towards social interaction over the Internet and the mushrooming of Web sites such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube in the social computing space, practitioners and researchers are motivated to explain the sudden surge in user interest. The authors propose that interactivity is an important

and appropriate subject of investigation to shed light on this explosion in social media use. Based on a review of the extant literature, they justify the use of interactivity for addressing research questions motivated by this new phenomenon. In particular, they propose a redefinition of interactivity for the social computing domain and term it Social Computing Interactivity (SCI). The authors suggest possible operationalizations of the dimensions of SCI and explore theory bases which would inform a study of their relevance in predicting the continued growth of social computing. Chapter 52 Social Technologies and the Digital Commons .................................................................................. 601 Francesca da Rimini, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia This chapter investigates the premise that software is culture. It explores this proposition through the lens of peer production, of knowledge-based goods circulating in the electronic space of a digital commons, and the material space of free media labs. Computing history reveals that technological development has typically been influenced by external sociopolitical forces. However, with the advent of the Internet and the free software movement, such development is no longer solely shaped by an elite class. Dyne:bolic, Streamtime and the Container Project are three autonomously-managed projects that combine social technologies and cooperative labour with cultural activism. Innovative digital staging platforms enable creative expression by marginalised communities, and assist movements for social change. The author flags new social relations and shared social imaginaries generated in the nexus between open code and democratic media. In so doing the author aims to contribute tangible, inspiring examples to the emerging interdisciplinary field of software studies. Chapter 53 Virtual Constructivism: Avatars in Action .......................................................................................... 623 Laura M. Nicosia, Montclair State University, USA Contemporary educators have been reassessing pedagogical frameworks and reevaluating accepted epistemologies and ontologies of learning. The age-old debate whether knowledge is gained or constructed seems drawn to a consensus in the 21st Century: those who seek knowledge are active participants in the learning process and they have uniquely 21st Century attributes. Web 2.0+ technologies, various social media (Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, YouTube) and online virtual reality environments (Second Life, World of Warcraft, Sims) have influenced today’s students in ways that constructivists should explore, embrace and exploit. This essay explores how Second Life (SL) effectively employs and distills the principles of educational constructivism. SL offers endless opportunities for immersion within userconstructed environments and activities. Educational use of SL may facilitate learner-led activities and yield learning that is prompted by desire and curiosity rather than learning for learning’s sake. By exploiting these qualities with constructivist pedagogies, educators create environments that challenge and enable students to engage in the deepest kinds of learning. Chapter 54 Managing E-Relationships in a Supply Network................................................................................ 639 Susanna Xin Xu, National University of Ireland–Galway, Ireland Joe Nandhakumar, University of Warwick, UK

This chapter investigates the dynamics of the formation and transformation of electronic supply relationships (e-supply relationships) in the Chinese cultural, technological, and industrial network context. It focuses on a newly-formed large Chinese telecom company. The aim is to provide better insights into inter-organisational relationships (IORs) enabled by the application of newer types of Internet technology in different contexts, and to develop a new conceptual framework of e-supply relationships. In this research, the conceptualisation of the transformation process of e-supply relationships represents circuits of interactions between managerial actions and social structures, as well as the particular cultural and technological context within which the interactions take place. Chapter 55 A Study of Friendship Networks and Blogosphere............................................................................. 661 Nitin Agarwal, Arizona State University, USA Huan Liu, Arizona State University, USA Jianping Zhang, MITRE Corporation, USA In (Golbeck and Hendler, 2006), authors consider those social friendship networking sites where users explicitly provide trust ratings to other members. However, for large social friendship networks it is infeasible to assign trust ratings to each and every member so they propose an inferring mechanism which would assign binary trust ratings (trustworthy/non-trustworthy) to those who have not been assigned one. They demonstrate the use of these trust values in email filtering application domain and report encouraging results. Authors also assume three crucial properties of trust for their approach to work: transitivity, asymmetry, and personalization. These trust scores are often transitive, meaning, if Alice trusts Bob and Bob trusts Charles then Alice can trust Charles. Asymmetry says that for two people involved in a relationship, trust is not necessarily identical in both directions. This is contrary to what was proposed in (Yu and Singh, 2003). They assume symmetric trust values in the social friendship network Social networks allow us to share experiences, thoughts, opinions, and ideas. Members of these networks, in return experience a sense of community, a feeling of belonging, a bonding that members matter to one another and their needs will be met through being together. Individuals expand their social networks, convene groups of like-minded individuals and nurture discussions. In recent years, computers and the World Wide Web technologies have pushed social networks to a whole new level. It has made possible for individuals to connect with each other beyond geographical barriers in a “flat” world. The widespread awareness and pervasive usability of the social networks can be partially attributed to Web 2.0. Representative interaction Web services of social networks are social friendship networks, the blogosphere, social and collaborative annotation (aka “folksonomies”), and media sharing. In this work, we briefly introduce each of these with focus on social friendship networks and the blogosphere. We analyze and compare their varied characteristics, research issues, state-of-the-art approaches, and challenges these social networking services have posed in community formation, evolution and dynamics, emerging reputable experts and influential members of the community, information diffusion in social networks, community clustering into meaningful groups, collaboration recommendation, mining “collective wisdom” or “open source intelligence” from the exorbitantly available user-generated contents. We present a comparative study and put forth subtle yet essential differences of research in friendship networks and Blogosphere, and shed light on their potential research directions and on cross-pollination of the two fertile domains of ever expanding social networks on the Web.

Chapter 56 Blogs as a Social Networking Tool to Build Community ................................................................... 625 Lisa Kervin, University of Wollongong, Australia Jessica Mantei, University of Wollongong, Australia Anthony Herrington, University of Wollongong, Australia This chapter examines blogging as a social networking tool to engage final year preservice teachers in reflective processes. Using a developed Web site, the students post their own blogs and comment upon those of others. The authors argue that opportunity to engage with this networking experience provides avenue for the students to consider their emerging professional identity as teachers. The blogging mechanism brought together the physical university context and virtual online environment as students identified, examined and reflected upon the intricacies of what it means to be a teacher. The authors hope that examining the findings that emerged from our research will inform other educators as to the affordances of blogging as a social networking tool.

Compilation of References ............................................................................................................... 701

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Foreword

Web 2.0, the term no longer inspires curiosity. Indeed, Web 2.0 has become a commonplace, even an assumed feature of many digital venues. Although a measure of the term’s utility, it is more importantly a measure of the enormous and popular success of what it describes. In just a few years the World Wide Web has changed, offering new ways to publish and share content. Education has also been transformed, either by direct engagement with Web 2.0 technologies and practices, or by academia’s contact with the larger world. The term was coined by publisher Tim O’Reilly for a 2004 conference and unfolded in a 2005 article. It superceded a then-current software project label called social software. That term of art addressed a longstanding problem in digital culture: namely, the assumption that digital projects were asocial, if not actively inhuman. This draws on a generation of pop culture and cultural criticism, portraying machines as enemies of humanity, disconnectors of persons, agents of alienation, and enablers of bowling alone. “Social software” was raised as a banner for those with a diametrically opposed vision, those who saw technology connecting people. This view draws on the roots of networked computing, seen most significantly in epochal figures from J.C.R. Licklider to Tim Berners-Lee. It was seen in the rise of virtual communities during the 1980s, and the rapid growth of people sharing documents through the Web. By the first years of the 21st century Web services emerged that were explicitly designed to connect people. Friendster was initially the most notable, succeeded shortly by MySpace and Facebook, then by dozens of other platforms. As we can see from their name recognition and enormous user bases, such social software platforms clearly connected with a significant cultural need. People find something rewarding and meaningful in the process of posting personae and linking up with other people, from total strangers to friends from the past. The term “Web 2.0” then appeared, recasting social networks in a new light. O’Reilly’s 2005 article argues that these social software projects actually partake of a broader Web publication movement. This views Friendster alongside the blogosphere and MySpace as allied to the vast wiki world. It is now commonplace to see Web 2.0 as difficult to define, with blurry boundaries and far too many projects to monitor. But O’Reilly’s intervention did offer a generalizable model with certain readily understood characteristics. The total lack of a replacement term, four years later, suggests that the phrase is quite workable. First, we can note that there is no black-line division between Webs 1.0 and 2.0. Indeed, there is no special software to download, applications to run, or hardware to purchase. The numerical distinction describes a shift in style, a shift of information architecture. Second, Web 2.0 describes an emphasis on social connectivity. While Web 1.0 enabled people to share documents, opening up alternatives to broadcast media, it did not focus on connecting persons. Think about the ways a 1999 Web user had to connect with a Web page author: that is, through private email or a guest book. If such a connection were made between browser and creator, there would be no

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way for that link to appear in the larger world. Web 2.0 services, in contrast, emphasize such links. If Alice comments on Bob’s blog, Carol and Charlie can read the exchange. Since Carol can post her own comment, or Charlie post to his blog linking back to Bob and Alice, the link is productive. Other people can then see these links appear, adding their own. Third, what makes these social connections happen so quickly is an emphasis on microcontent. A decade of Web 1.0 practice established a publication apparatus: creating HTML locally, FTPing that local content to a Web server, and maintaining that Web host. The investment of time in following that multi-legged publication arc, while far easier than what broadcast media offered, was still significant. Web 2.0 drastically lowers the amount of that investment. Rather than designing a Web site from architectural scratch, one creates a blog in five minutes of clicks. Instead of building a new HTML page, one uses a wiki. We edit content on our Twitter feeds or Facebook walls in seconds, rather than going through the file-FTP-server cycle each time we want to alter our material. The result is a fast-growing, quickly modified, extensively social Web. It runs alongside the classic Web, not replacing it so much as constituting another layer. For example, educational practitioners have responded to this new Web stratum in several ways. First, many educators are invested in course management systems; those are following the Web 1.0-2.0 arc with microcontext-themed platforms emerging (e.g., Moodle) and the largest one, Blackboard, extending a series of social software tendrils. Second, a wide and connected body of educators has been teaching with Web 2.0 tools of all kinds, either using them to publish course materials, assigning students to use them, or both. Third, educators swim in the larger sea of cyberculture. Even if they don’t use wikis, a large number of students use Wikipedia. If they do not Twitter, many people in academia know the Facebook status box. Blog content crops up in our Google searches, even if we refuse to touch a single piece of the blogosphere. In short, since “social software” gave way to “Web 2.0”, educational practice has changed. And, educational practice will continue to do so - as Web 2.0 churns and grows, throwing off ever new services and concepts. By the time you read this book, dozens of new platforms will have appeared. Some of these will not have generic names, but we will try to understand them. The chapters in the Handbook of Research on Social Interaction Technologies and Collaboration Software: Concepts and Trends constitute a superb place to start.

Bryan Alexander Director for Research, National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education, USA

Bryan Alexander is Director of Research at the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE): a network of colleges, universities, and nonprofit educational organizations working together to advance higher education through the effective use of digital technologies. He holds a PhD from the University of Michigan and has taught information technology at Centenary College in Louisiana. His primary research interests are in mobile and wireless computing, digital gaming, and social software. Committed to exploring computer-mediated pedagogy, he writes and publishes on the critical issues of computer use in teaching and learning.

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Preface

We live in a time unparalleled in human history: a time of fundamental cultural, political, social, and economic change marked by an exponential growth in human powers to electronically collect, process, store, retrieve and disseminate information and create new knowledge. This sizable increase occurred during the second half of the 20th century with such landmark events as the emergence of the Internet in the 1960-70s, the introduction of personal computers in the 1980s, and the birth of the World Wide Web in the 1990s. It is not accidental that computers and the Internet are listed by National Academy of Engineering among the 20th century’s greatest engineering achievements that transformed the world (Constable & Somerville, 2003). Computer-based information technologies (IT) have witnessed a remarkable expansion, penetrating all areas of people’s lives – from personal to public. The last decade saw a shift in Internet innovations from information transmission and retrieval to interaction, collaboration and sharing, from “read-only” Web 1.0 with information and communication technologies (ICT) behind it to “read-write” Web 2.0 with social interaction technologies (SIT) enhanced by a variety of so-called “social software.” A grand vision of the creator of the web Tim Berners-Lee who designed his invention “for a social effect – to help people work together – and not as a technical toy” (1999, p. 123) is coming to fruition. As ICT matured, a shift towards SIT became inevitable. Social interaction technologies refer to an assortment of Internet-based tools and techniques aimed at initiating, maintaining, sharing, and distributing interactive and collaborative activities and spaces online. Social software, also known as collaboration software, represents digital electronic systems designed to advance social contact and interaction through computer networks. Social interaction technologies can be viewed as a result of change brought about by ICT. SIT now pose as agents of future change in their own right. Relying on SIT, the World Wide Web is evolving from its current shape towards the Semantic Web and semantic web technology (BernersLee & Hendler, 2001; Berners-Lee, Hendler, & Lassila, 2001; Berners-Lee, Hall, Hendler, Shadbolt, & Weitzner, 2006). SIT made possible the proliferation of social media powered by social software: thereby serving as a testimony that human society as a whole continues on the path of ingenious integration and adoption of information technologies by extending the existing system of checks and balances to secure free information exchange and promote new means of social connectedness. The Handbook of Research on Social Interaction Technologies and Collaboration Software: Concepts and Trends focuses on the latest explosion of Internet-based collaboration tools and platforms reaching end-users; it explores their origins, structures, purposes, and functions; and it muses over how SIT can expand human abilities and powers. This broad spectrum of applications and services includes: online social networking, blogs, wikis, podcasts, web feeds, folksonomies, social bookmaking, photo and video sharing, discussion forums, virtual worlds, and mashups intended to advance interaction, collaboration, and sharing online.

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Where the human community is found, diverse media of communication are also. Where computermediated communication is found, its benefits and drawbacks are also. Where social interaction technology is found, its contemporary and future challenges for the human community are also. Borrowing from V.L. Parsegian’s sage work, This Cybernetic World of Men, Machines, and Earth Systems (1972, p. 13), while “the computer has advantages over the human system,” its “picture is not altogether bright” because the computer brings “risks as well.” Since they “require highly skilled human judgment for their use or misuse,” computers “can compound human errors as well as reduce them.” In short, to avoid undesirable consequences, we must value the edification of human intelligence. In the broader sense of technology, Neil Postman, in Technopoly (1993, p. 18), asserted that a “new technology does not add or subtract something.” Rather, a new technology “changes everything.” He cautioned that inventions can have unintended results that are favorable and unfavorable, even when the intended effect is one of human benefit. To avoid a lopsided approach it is time to recognize that “understanding and fostering the growth of the World Wide Web, both in engineering and societal terms, will require the development of a new interdisciplinary field” (Berners-Lee, 2006, p. 769). The editors of this text and its authors have done their best to inform the reader on pursuing a path of wisdom and eschewing a path of folly with respect to social interaction technology and collaboration software. The joys and sorrows of social interaction technologies and collaboration software are noted with sanity and scholarship. Naïve optimism holds no sway in the learned writings of these authors. The promise of the Handbook is that it will generate dialogue among diverse scientists to enrich, in the words of Thomas S. Kuhn, “the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community” (1970, p. 175).

DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES The editors chose to select as many diverse perspectives on the subject of social interaction technologies and collaboration software as reasonably possible. Vehement efforts were extended to select suitable and learned authors from around the globe. The international celebrity of the authors is further enhanced by their varied academic fields. Overall, the Handbook presents state-of-the-art research on social interaction technologies and collaboration software as emerging fields of cross-disciplinary research and knowledge. It has been noted that “Web science, therefore, must be inherently interdisciplinary; its goal is to both understand the growth of the Web and to create approaches that allow new powerful and more beneficial patterns to occur” (Berners-Lee, 2006, p. 769). The Hanbook brings together experts from computer science, software engineering, management information systems, business and economics, knowledge management systems, marketing, public relations and advertising, law, journalism and media, communication, psychology, anthropology, social work, design, library and information science, and education. Additionally, the Handbook maintains a global approach. The contributors are scholars hailing from Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Greece, Finland, Ireland, Israel, Singapore, South Korea, Turkey, the U.K. and the U.S. with approaches from empirical, interpretive, historical, philosophical, critical, and other research perspectives utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. One can say that a world of authors and an array of research methods contribute to the extraordinary quality of the chapters addressing this contemporary and burgeoning topic in the socially and technologically converging fields of Web 2.0 communication.

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TOPICS Numerous authors cover varied and timely topics. To grasp the breadth of topics, please glance at the following extensive list: interactive and networked computing, mobile social services and the Social Web, social software and social media, marketing and advertising, various aspects and uses of blogs and podcasting, corporate added value and web-based collaboration, e-government and online democracy, virtual volunteering, different aspects and uses of folksonomies, tagging and the social semantic cloud of tags, blog-based knowledge management systems, systems of online learning, social interaction technology in ePortfolios, wikis in education and journalism, IT and the blogosphere in China, women bloggers on the web, parasocial relationships and romance in cyberspace, legal issues and social interaction technology, dataveillance and online fraud, neogeography, social software usability, social software in libraries and nonprofit organizations, and broadband visual communication technology for enhancing social interaction.

STRUCTURE OF THE TEXT All sections contribute to the reader’s enlightenment on social interaction technologies and collaboration software. The expertise, wisdom, scholarship, and talent of the authors are shared with the reader in three sections. Section I reviews Background and Development over chapters 1-12. Section II covers Concepts, Context, and Applications over chapters 13-30. And, Section III examines Issues, Viewpoints, and Perspectives over chapters 31-50. Finally, Selected Readings in the concluding section offer additional perspectives on social interaction technologies by featuring scholarly work recently published by IGI Global.

CHAPTER FEATURES The organization of the chapter follows close to this format: abstract, introduction, background, body, future trends, conclusion, references, and key terms and definitions. The abstract presents a scholarly overview of the chapter. The introduction informs us of the direction of the chapter. The background contextualizes the information covered in the chapter. The chapter then develops its position and builds its case in the body. The future trends section projects the potential for the chapter’s content. The conclusion reports that which the authors deduce from the study and its findings. The references section includes the relevant research sources. And, the key terms and definitions section delivers a selection of words (or phrases) and their definitions from the chapter authors.

CONTENT CONTRIBUTIONS Section I: Background and Development This section addresses general issues related to the origin and development of social interaction technologies (SIT) as a driving force behind the diverse (inter)faces of Web 2.0 and the technological frontier of the new millennium. As a tribute to the visionaries of the Internet and the World Wide Web, the section

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opens with a chapter on the legacy of J.C.R. Licklider. In 1960, Licklider authored a seminal paper, “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” that forever changed the history of computing and earned him a place in the Internet Hall of Fame. The remaining contributions discuss the growth of advanced web-based interaction technologies and their economic, social, political, and cultural implications for a variety of areas and activities ranging from Web 2.0 business and advertising models, to e-government, citizen marketing, mobile social networks, blogging, podcasting, virtual volunteering, and virtual teams. The chapters in Section I will now be highlighted. In Chapter 1, Tomasello examines J.C.R. Licklider’s legacy as a contributor to the development of modern networked computing. Caus, Christmann, and Hagenhoff, in Chapter 2, look into the opportunities and drawback of the mobile social web. In Chapter 3, Humphreys explains how mobile social networks allow users to connect with each other, share information, and create technologically enabled mobile communities. Baruh, in Chapter 4, examines the opportunities available for advertisers trying to reach consumers through social media. In Chapter 5, Brown explores “citizen marketing” or consumers voluntarily posting product information based on their knowledge and experience. Burns, in Chapter 6, affirms that the commercial future of podcasting appears to be in the area of advertising and broadcasting. In Chapter 7, Tai discusses the rise of the Chinese blogosphere. Hellsten, in Chapter 8, argues that the challenge of e-governance in developing countries resides in “good governance,” accessibility, and user skills. In Chapter 9, Bohl and Manouchehri evaluate potentials, risks, mainsprings, and restrictions associated with the corporate use of Web 2.0. Widén-Wulff and Tötterman, in Chapter 10, express their view that social interaction technologies can successfully employ the previously untapped power of the web to utilize the collaborative creation of information and user-driven content. In Chapter 11, Mukherjee maintains that social interaction technologies create communicative possibilities that go beyond dyadic interactions and across physical boundaries, bringing a qualitative shift in the functioning of the Internet. And, Sofo, in Chapter 12, holds that social interaction technologies have made it possible for teams to exist in a virtual reality.

Section II: Concepts, Contexts, and Applications The chapters in this section scrutinize the ways social interaction technologies enhance the powers of connectivity, interaction, and collaboration for individuals, groups, organizations, and society as a whole in local and global contexts. The contributions discuss the deployment of SIT applications in knowledge management, education, business, and commerce. A broad range of concepts are introduced and analyzed: using folksonomies for knowledge organization and sharing; creating metadata through collaborative tagging; social tagging as annotation; constructing technology enhanced social and personal learning spaces; the impact of SIT on self-expression and social identity formation; online social, romantic and parasocial interactions and relationships; generating online interactive spaces for women; social networking and online community formation. The chapters in Section II deliver the following valuable information. In Chapter 13, Weller, Peters, and Stock discuss folksonomies as a novel way of indexing documents and locating information based on user generated keywords. Bitzer, Thoroe, and Schumann, in Chapter 14, focus on the classification of tags based on function and user motivation, examine advantages and disadvantages of folksonomies, and provide a review of current applications using collaborative tagging. In chapter 15, Pfeiffer and Tonkin conclude that social tagging may effectively be explored via a multidisciplinary approach linking knowledge representation and classification research and creating an open domain network. Laffey and Amelung, in Chapter 16, build a case that context-aware activity notification systems have potential to improve and support the social experience of online learning. In Chapter 17, Ragusa reports that in Australia, there is a continuing trend among institutions of higher education to utilize and optimize distance

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learning as a method of delivery. McLoughlin and Lee, in Chapter 18, detail how a proliferation of Web 2.0 technologies generates a new wave of online behavior, distributed collaboration, and social interaction. In Chapter 19, Koh and Lim maintain that the instructional use of wiki-based classroom technologies can enhance student learning. Jackson and Grimes, in Chapter 20, survey the benefits and challenges of hybrid courses, which blend face-to-face instruction with online learning, and opportunities provided by the introduction of web-based social interaction technologies. In Chapter 21, Pelliccione, Pocknee, and Mulvany focus on the potential of electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) to engage and motivate the learners and presents a framework for the informed inclusion and adoption of social interaction technologies as a means to increase the effective use of ePortfolios. Sadowska, in Chapter 22, holds that Internet technology presented the women’s magazine industry with new prospects for publishing and user interaction. In Chapter 23, Huang and Aaltio explore a relationship between social interaction technologies (SIT) and guanxi, a major Chinese informal style of networking, in the context of the careers of women managers in the information technology (IT) field in China. Donelan, Herman, Kear, and Kirkup, in Chapter 24, elaborate on how social interaction technologies present women with powerful tools to extend their network of professional contacts. In Chapter 25, Pedersen suggests that a need for validation and a strong financial stimulus should be added to the list of incentives for women bloggers. Guadagno, Eno, and Okdie, in Chapter 26, conclude that bloggers and blog readership appear to be steadily growing, making this area of online self-expression increasingly deserving of scientific inquiry. In Chapter 27, Robinson and Agne explain how parasocial interaction is the mediated manifestation of the relationship dimension inherent in television messages and used by audience members in much the same way it is used during face-to-face interaction. Crabill, in Chapter 28, explores how language convergence can function as a cue that facilitates situating social identity within online in-groups. In Chapter 29, Ben-Ze’ev theorizes the role of technology in creating potential possibilities for romantic relationships and focuses on the imagination, interactivity, reciprocity, and anonymity of cyberspace. And, Rea, in Chapter 30, argues that using rewards for accepted behavior creates a socialization continuum that stimulates players of MMORPGs to interact with one another.

Section III: Issues, Viewpoints, and Perspectives This section details the practical advantages of social interaction technologies and discusses some of the issues pertaining to the unintended consequences of the uncritical application of these technologies. The expressed concerns entail the paradox of rapid technological change and slow creation of formal and informal societal checks and balances, legal aspects of user-contributed content distribution, issues of privacy and surveillance, and online fraud and marketing to children. Recognizing that SIT are having far-reaching and lasting effects on society, the contributors offer specific solutions and viewpoints that address such key issues as: the emerging role of SIT as enablers of political dialog and facilitators of civic interaction and online democracy; social media and participatory journalism; the use of social software by the nonprofit and public sectors; and, the role of new technologies in educational outreach. The chapters suggest diverse theoretical perspectives, approaches, and conceptual frameworks to ascertain the opportunities and benefits emerging from the SIT phenomenon. The chapters in Section III offer a wealth of content as well. In Chapter 31, Sprague elaborates on legal issues that may arise from the increasing use of social interaction technologies. Azriel, in Chapter 32, details how ISPs and users are legally exempted from offensive materials through Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act. In Chapter 33, Uluç, Yilmaz, and Isikdag explain in detail how blogs and forums have emerged as innovative modes of political communication in Turkey resulting in a broad interchange of diverse political opinions in the political arena. Burns, in Chapter 34, maintains that

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the future of wiki journalism depends on whether or not this novel news format can stand on its own. In Chapter 35, Baruh and Soysal investigate the relationship between disclosure of personal information in social media and two related trends: the increasing value of subjective or private experience as a social currency and the evolving nature of automated dataveillance. Kelshaw and Lemesianou, in Chapter 36, develop how web-based interaction offers unlimited opportunities for organizing across geographic, demographic, and contextual boundaries, with ramifications in professional networking, political action, friendships, romances, learning, recreation, and entertainment. In Chapter 37, Bouras, Poulopoulos, and Tsogkas elaborate on the educational dimensions of the XO laptop and the Etoys environment developed to empower teachers and students with the capacity for creative learning, exploration, interaction, and collaboration. Marsh, in Chapter 38, focuses on the issues pertaining to informal science learning through public outreach and the utilization of established and evolving web technologies. In Chapter 39, Gelernter narrates how neogeography shares the characteristics of other social interactive technologies as it represents a collaborative effort by the general public rather than professionals. Abbas, in Chapter 40, dwells on the applicability of social software in a library setting and examines the use of such innovative techniques as live tagging, social cataloging, and social bookmarking. In Chapter 41, Brown examines the immersive nature of interactive marketing, which can be found in blogs, chat rooms, virtual worlds, advergaming, and other forms of advertainment. Waters, in Chapter 42, discusses how nonprofit organizations are an essential part of the social, political, and economic landscape of contemporary society. In Chapter 43, Park, Jo, and Moon present a framework for understanding a blog-based KM system in an organizational setting, grounded in a socio-psychological approach and the application of social identity and symbolic interaction theories. In Chapter 44, Zhang suggests that social software is assuming a significant role in electronic business and has been utilized recently on a growing scale by companies in customer relationship management. Owen and Willis, in Chapter 45, investigate three important aspects of folksonomies: common design factors found in folksonomies, developmental patterns of mature folksonomies, and the identification of knowledge consumer behaviors that can act as metrics for the evaluation of a small-scale folksonomy. In Chapter 46, Kim, Breslin, Decker, and Kim analyze the structures of a folksonomy and synthesize a practical model of an effective folksonomy in the context of knowledge management. O’Donnell, Molyneaux, and Gibson, in Chapter 47, introduce an analytical framework that can be utilized by multi-disciplinary teams working with broadband visual communication (BVC) technologies to analyze the variables that hinder people’s adoption and use of BVC. In Chapter 48, Kamthan describes the educational impact of Social Web applications in classroom activities pertaining to software engineering education. Berzins, in Chapter 49, argues that consumer education can be successfully utilized to enhance the ability of Internet users to detect and avoid fraudulent interactions and safely enjoy the many benefits afforded by the emerging social interaction technologies. And, in Chapter 50, Uden and Eardley justify how emergent Web 2.0 technologies present a range of opportunities and argue that social software usability should be viewed as a set of principles aimed to deliver more service-orientated applications.

REFERENCES Berners-Lee, T. (with Fischetti, M.). (1999). Weaving the Web: The original design and ultimate destiny of the World Wide Web by its inventor. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. Berners-Lee, T., Hall, W., Hendler, J., Shadbolt, N., & Weitzner, D. J. (2006). Creating a science of the Web. Science, 313, 769-770.

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Berners-Lee, T., & Hendler, J. (2001). Publishing on the semantic web. Nature, 410, 10023-10024. Berners-Lee, T., Hendler, J., & Lassila, O. (2001). The semantic web. Scientific American, 284 (5), 34. Constable, G., & Somerville, B. (2003). A century of innovation: Twenty engineering achievements that transformed our lives. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press. Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Parsegian, V. L. (1972). This cybernetic world of men, machines, and earth systems. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. People of progress. (2000). Invention & Technology Magazine, 15 (3). Retrieved December 15, 2008, from http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/2000/3/2000_3_17.shtml Postman, N. (1993). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Vintage Books.

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Acknowledgment

First and foremost, the editors wish to thank all the authors for their insightful and perceptive contributions to this book. Without their hard-working efforts the Handbook would not have happened. The editors would also like to acknowledge the help of the many people from the academic community involved in the review process, without them the project could not have been completed on time. Our profound gratitude goes to the publishing team of IGI Global and its Director Dr. KhosrowPour. In particular the editors wish to acknowledge the following IGI Global representatives for their professional dedication: Jan Travers, Director of Editorial Content Kristin M. Klinger, Managing Acquisitions Editor Kristin M. Roth, Managing Development Editor Julia Mosemann, Development Editor Rebecca Beistline, Assistant Development Editor Beth Ardner, Editorial Assistant Jamie Snavely, Production Senior Managing Editor Gregory Guenther, Sales and Marketing Assistant To all those who have helped this book to come to fruition: thank you for your generous support, patience, and encouragement.

Tatyana Dumova Montclair State University, USA Richard Fiordo University of North Dakota, USA

Section 1

Background and Development

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Chapter 1

J.C.R. Licklider and the Rise of Interactive and Networked Computing Tami K. Tomasello East Carolina University, USA

ABSTRACT This chapter examines J.C.R. Licklider’s legacy as a contributor to the development of modern networked computing. In 1960 Licklider published his seminal “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” the first of three articles that attempted to redefine the human-computer interaction. Licklider outlined a vision for interactive, networked computing and, ultimately, the Internet that we experience today. Providing an overview of Licklider’s role as a visionary of the computerized communication networks of today, this chapter pays particular attention to the main ideas conveyed in “Man-Computer Symbiosis” and the influence of these ideas on academic and professional researchers during the following decades.

INTRODUCTION The history of humankind’s attempts to create communication networks is complex and longstanding (Mattelart, 2000), ranging from early forms of optical telegraphy to contemporary electronic networks. The long history makes pinpointing the exact origin of the Internet difficult. However, many technology historians and researchers agree that Joseph Carl Robnett (J.C.R.) Licklider was instrumental in envisaging, writing about, and assembling the team of engineers that helped to foster the rise of networked DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch001

computing and computer-mediated communication (Brate, 2002; Hafner & Lyon, 1998; Packer & Jordan, 2001; Randall, 1997; Segaller, 1999; Waldrop, 2001). A key event in Licklider’s contribution to the development of computer networks occurred in 1960 with the publication of “Man-Computer Symbiosis” in the inaugural issue of Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics published by the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE). The first of three articles by Licklider that explored and redefined the human-computer relationship, this prescient piece outlined a vision for interactive, networked computing and, ultimately, the Internet that we experience today. Licklider’s vision and

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J.C.R. Licklider and the Rise of Interactive and Networked Computing

his penning of “Man-Computer Symbiosis” are considered to be watershed events that ushered in the Digital Age. As reporter Charles Cooper (2007) observed of Licklider, “He may be the most important computer theorist you’ve never heard about.” This chapter provides an overview of Licklider’s role as a visionary in the development of computerized communication networks during the 1950s and 60s, paying particular attention to his academic writings on the subject. In particular, focusing on the main ideas that Licklider conveyed in “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” this chapter presents findings from a study that examined the spread and influence of the article among academic and professional researchers over a 40-year period from 1960-2001. The chapter concludes with recommendations concerning directions for future research that investigate the roles and contributions of technology visionaries; it also discusses future trends in the development of social interaction and collaboration technologies in light of current technological developments and in the context of technology challenges in computing that Licklider identified in the 1960s, challenges that persist in varying degrees today.

BACKGROUND Contrary to what one might expect of a computer visionary, Licklider’s career did not originate in computing; in fact, computer science as a formally recognized field would not develop until many years after Licklider had articulated his vision of networked computing (Hafner & Lyon, 1998). Instead, his studies began in “physiological psychology,” the field known today as neuroscience. In particular, Licklider investigated the brain’s ability to understand speech in the presence of signal distortion (Waldrop, 2001). These early studies helped Licklider to understand the workings of the human brain and prepared him to foresee the potential for improved human-computer

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interactions, which, in turn, enabled him to hold prestigious academic and governmental positions later in life. Born March 11, 1915 in St. Louis, Missouri, Licklider was the only child of Margaret and Joseph Licklider. In his youth and throughout life, Licklider possessed “a lively sense of fun, an insatiable curiosity, and an abiding love of all things technological” (Waldrop, 2001, p.8). Highly intelligent and inquisitive, Licklider was also known for his sense of humor and self-effacing nature. In 1937, Licklider earned a triple degree in physics, mathematics, and psychology from Washington University. A year later, he earned a master’s in psychology from the same university and then began doctoral studies at the University of Rochester in 1938, where his dissertation “made what may well have been the first maps of neural activity on the auditory cortex” (p. 13), which helped to identify those areas of the brain that are responsible for interpreting sound frequencies. Notably, Licklider came of age alongside the emergence of electronic computing. Built in the 1940s, the Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzer and Computer (ENIAC) was among the first operational electrical computers, a primary function of which was to calculate missile trajectories (Hafner & Lyon, 1998). Prior to this technological advancement, computers were mechanically-based, consisting of gears and levers rather than electrical switches and vacuum tubes. Among the more famous mechanical computers were: (1) Charles Babbages’ Analytic Engine, which was only partially built in 1830 and performed basic mathematical operations; (2) Herman Hollerith’s 1888 tabulating machine, which used an early version of punch cards and tallied the U. S. census in 1924; and (3) Vannevar Bush’s 1933 Differential Analyzer, which solved partial differential equations (Waldrop, 2001). In each case, the mechanical computers took considerable time—days or weeks—to program and were greatly limited in their calculating abilities. Electronic computing, using electrical switches

J.C.R. Licklider and the Rise of Interactive and Networked Computing

and binary code, promised to render faster and more complex calculations by comparison. During the 1940s, Licklider worked in Leo Beranek’s Psycho-Acoustics Lab at Harvard University. Beranek later formed the company Bolt, Beranek, & Newman (BBN) that would eventually play an important role in the development of networked computing. In the early 1950s, Licklider moved from Harvard to the Lincoln Laboratory at MIT, where as a lifelong learner, he became fascinated with computers based, in part, on his work with the national-level early warning defense project: Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), also known as Project Charles. Working with the SAGE system in the early 1950s, Licklider observed first-hand the promise of real-time human-computer interactions whereby human operators retrieved aircraft coordinates from a computer screen using a light gun. A serendipitous encounter a few years later with researcher Wesley Clark at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory also contributed to his increasing interest in the world of computing. Clark introduced Licklider to technological advances of the time: a room-sized TX-2 with the computing power of a contemporary hand-held calculator. For Licklider the bond was immediate. Within a few years, Licklider’s interest shifted from psychology to computing as he increasingly realized the potential for human-computer interactions to become highly sophisticated and mutually beneficial (Hafner & Lyon, 1998). When Licklider wrote “Man-Computer Symbiosis” in 1960, he had left MIT and was employed at Bolt, Baranek & Newman, the company that later built the Advanced Research Projects Agency network (ARPAnet). Licklider, who “hated to write” (Waldrop, 2001, p. 176), penned the article as a favor to Jerry Elkind, the editor for the IRE Transactions, whom he had formerly mentored. In Licklider’s words, “Man-computer symbiosis was largely about ideas for how to get a computer and a person thinking together, sharing, dividing the load….” (Licklider, 1988, p. 22). Licklider

further articulated his ideas for interactive and networked computing in two subsequent articles: “Man-computer Partnership” (1965) and “The Computer as a Communication Device” (1968). He co-authored the latter with Robert W. Taylor. Licklider referred tongue-in-cheek to his vision of closely linked human-computer interactions and the individuals who would make that vision a reality as his “intergalactic network” (Waldrop, 2001, p. 38). His science-fiction inspired name would closely mirror the current term we use to describe the global linking of computers -- the internet. As Brate (2002) noted, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, “Licklider would quietly lay the groundwork for an open network that allowed everyone to communicate and share computing power” (p. 87).

REDEFINING THE HUMANCOMPUTER RELATIONSHIP In “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” Licklider proposed a new role for the computer that went beyond that of a simple calculating and data storage device, a commonly held view in the 1950s and 60s, to one in which the computer and the human user entered into a mutually dependent and beneficial partnership. The article began with a description of the symbiotic relationship between the fig tree and the insect Blastophaga grossorum, in which both the tree and the wasp were mutually dependent on each other for survival; that is, the tree depends on the wasp for pollination, and the wasp depends on the tree for food. Licklider summarized the relationship stating, “This cooperative ‘living together in intimate association, or even in close union, of two dissimilar organisms’ is called symbiosis” (1960, p. 4). Using a biological analogy to describe the interconnected relationship between the fig tree and the wasp as a springboard, Licklider predicted that a similar relationship would emerge in the near future between humans and computers. In

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J.C.R. Licklider and the Rise of Interactive and Networked Computing

the human-computer relationship of the future, the computer would function less as a calculating machine and more as a partner in handling complex phenomena via flexible programming and participation in higher-order thinking. According to Licklider, the computer of the future would perform a variety of complex functions including: transforming hypotheses into models that could be tested against data sets, answering complex research questions, simulating models and displaying results in tabular and graphical formats, taking once static formulas and transforming these into dynamic models, and functioning as a “statistical-inference, decision-theory, or game-theory machine….” (p. 7). The computer would also continue to carry out the routinizable and clerical functions characteristic of its original design. Licklider’s vision stemmed from a personal observation that a majority (85%) of his time was spent preparing to work rather than actually engaging in productive activity, and he felt certain that computers could lighten that load for the researcher and layperson alike. Before a symbiotic relationship could develop, however, Licklider specified that advances in software programs and computer languages, storage devices and capacity, data processing speeds and time-sharing, input/output devices, and the development of data transfer connections (or networks) between computers had to occur first. He devoted considerable space in the article detailing the challenges and possible solutions to each of these technology hurdles. In brief, at the time that the article was written, computers were severely limited in terms of their calculating abilities and their accessibility to users. Computers were room-sized, multi-ton units. Data storage capacities were typically in the byte and kilobyte (thousands of bytes) range, whereas today’s devices routinely store data in the gigabyte (billions of bytes) range with supercomputer storage in the terabyte (trillions of bytes) range and possibly higher. Processing speeds were similarly limited, resulting in response lag times that would

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not be tolerated today. Time-sharing, the ability of a computer to process multiple program requests and user access to computers, was in its infancy. Most computers were only accessible to government, research, and select private sector organizations, which did not include the general public. Input/ output devices - such as display screens, teletypes, and light guns- were also limited in sophistication leading Licklider to claim that, “the pencil and the doodle pad or the chalk and blackboard” remained superior methods for communicating information (p. 9). Lastly, Licklider noted that the differences in the ways that humans and computers process information were perhaps the most daunting challenge to overcome; he concluded that computers would have to “think,” at least on the surface, more like humans if a symbiotic relationship were to form. Once these computing technology hurdles were surpassed, Licklider predicted the advent of “thinking centers,” electronic libraries of information (similar to today’s World Wide Web) and elaborated, “The picture readily enlarges itself into a network of such centers, connected to one another by wide-band communication lines and to individual users by leased-wire services” (p. 8). Licklider’s 1960 vision closely resembles the basic structure of today’s Internet, which is composed of geographically separated computers connected into networks. What Licklider did not foresee in his initial vision was the invention of the personal computer; his network of the future would connect mainframes. Five years later, in “Man-Computer Partnership” (1965), Licklider reiterated his belief that computers could be successfully networked and further emphasized the need to overcome the technological limitations that he had identified previously in the 1960 article. Then, in 1968, Licklider and Robert Taylor published the article, “The Computer as a Communication Device,” which began, “In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face” (p. 21). The machine to which they referred was

J.C.R. Licklider and the Rise of Interactive and Networked Computing

“the programmed digital computer” (p. 22). A possible interactive scenario of the future was described in this way: Available within the network will be functions and services to which you subscribe on a regular basis and others that you call for when you need them. In the former group will be investment guidance, tax counseling, selective dissemination of information in your field of specialization, announcement of cultural, sport, and entertainment events that fit your interests, etc. In the latter group will be dictionaries, encyclopedias, indexes, catalogues, editing programs, teaching programs, testing programs, programming systems, data bases, and—most important—communication, display, and modeling programs (p. 39). The network they foresaw would interconnect, via a “network of networks” (p. 38), geographically separated online communities to form a “supercommunity” of users (p. 32). The authors reasoned that computer-mediated communication of this nature would result in happier people because interactions could be actively selected according to what people had in common with one another (the currently popular social networking sites, Facebook and MySpace, are examples of this type of predicted interaction and supercommunity) rather than relying primarily on the fickleness of chance encounters. The end result of these envisaged interactive technologies, it was believed, would produce more efficient and effective communication between people. Licklider’s contributions to contemporary computing and its applications are particularly notable because he was among the first: (1) to clearly articulate a vision for networked computing in a public forum, (2) to recast the human-computer relationship as symbiotic, and (3) refashion the computer itself as a communication device rather than a large-scale calculator and data storage device. He also accurately described the functioning and appearance of today’s Internet in terms of its

structure and applications. Yet he did so before most of the actual technology existed, during a time “when computers were excruciatingly slow and clumsy, with mainframe systems using punch card input and teletype output the norm” (Packer & Jordan, 2001, p. 56). Equally important as his written works, Licklider held professional, academic, and governmental positions that eventually gave him access to the network of technology resources and authority necessary to carry out his vision. Most notably, he became Head of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) in 1962, a high-ranking position in the U.S. government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (APRA). As head of IPTO, Licklider was able to lay the groundwork necessary to bring together the individuals who would eventually build the ARPAnet, an experimental computer network developed in 1969 that helped pave the way for later Internet’s development and widespread diffusion. A true visionary, Licklider was not particularly interested in building a computer network himself; he was interested in identifying, assembling, and inspiring those who could. To this end he was successful. One of the key individuals who belonged to Licklider’s circle of scientists and engineers was Robert Taylor. Taylor, who co-authored the 1968 article “The Computer as a Communication Device” with Licklider, headed IPTO a few years after Licklider returned to MIT. Reflecting back on that time, Taylor (1989) credited “ManComputer Symbiosis” with motivating him to seek out Licklider: “the reason I moved from the NASA position [to ARPA] is fundamentally because over time, I became heartily subscribed to the Licklider vision of interactive computing. The 1960 man-computer symbiosis paper had had a large impact on me” (p. 5). Taylor took his place in computing history when he coordinated the design and implementation of the ARPAnet project, an early step toward achieving Licklider’s man-computer symbiosis and the building of the “intergalactic network.”

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J.C.R. Licklider and the Rise of Interactive and Networked Computing

Tracing the Influence of “ManComputer Symbiosis” A 2004 study by Tomasello examined the spread and influence of the main concepts in “ManComputer Symbiosis” among academic and professional researchers from 1960-2001 based, in part, on Taylor’s comment regarding the effect that Licklider’s article had on him and the computing community at large. Jerry Elkind, the IRE Transactions editor who published “ManComputer Symbiosis,” felt similarly to Taylor and claimed that Licklider’s article set a research agenda for computing that continues to be felt today (Waldrop, 2001). Intrigued by these comments, Tomasello content analyzed in-text citations to “Man-Computer Symbiosis” in 110 published research articles contained in the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) citation indexes. The ISI indexes offer comprehensive coverage of research publications in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences; importantly, these indexes allow patrons to identify the set of articles that refer to a particular publication. The main findings of the content analysis revealed that “Man-Computer Symbiosis” was consistently cited by academic and professional researchers an average of 3-4 times each year during the examined 40-year timeframe, which is an impressive accomplishment given that the article competes each year for recognition among an ever-increasing pool of thousands of newly published research articles. Citations peaked in 1961, the year following the publication of “ManComputer Symbiosis,” which is consistent with the general lag time that elapses between an article’s publication and the onset of other authors making reference to the work; in 1968, the year coinciding with the publication of “The Computer as a Communication Device” (Licklider & Taylor, 1968); and in 1993, the year corresponding with increased news coverage in the U.S. concerning the Clinton Administration’s focus on the rise of the then-fledgling Information Superhighway: that is, the Internet (Pavlik, 1998).

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Research articles citing “Man-Computer Symbiosis” most often (86%) referenced Licklider’s overarching notion concerning the importance of creating a symbiotic relationship between humans and computers, with the other related concepts cited in descending order of frequency: data processing speeds and timesharing, input/output devices, programming languages, and data storage and capacity. The location of citations to Licklider occurred primarily (74%) in sections presenting theory, literature reviews, and historical overviews; thus, Licklider’s work provided substantive context for subsequent studies that investigated a range of topics related to computing. Noteworthy, cited authors were affiliated with a variety of wellknown academic institutions (e.g., Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, and Stanford University) and private corporations (e.g., General Electric, Intel, Microsoft, Rand, Sylvania, and Union Carbide), several of which have made direct and indirect contributions to the development of current social networking and collaborative software initiatives and products. Lastly, articles containing citations to “ManComputer Symbiosis” were primarily (83%) published in journals classified into the broad subject category of science and technology, which is not surprising given that articles tend to be read and referred to by others within the same broad field of study (e.g., sciences, social sciences, humanities). However, the results also revealed that the article has been cited across a variety of disciplinary boundaries, including communication, economics, English, engineering, history, library science, medicine, philosophy, and psychology, with citations among the humanities and social sciences disciplines increasing overall since the 1990s. The increased spread of Licklider’s ideas into the humanities and social sciences may be attributed in part to the rise in popularity and relevance of the personal computer and the Internet in recent decades, which has made the use and study of computers a more relevant and accessible

J.C.R. Licklider and the Rise of Interactive and Networked Computing

topic to researchers in these fields. The author concluded that Licklider’s article helped to serve as “a common thread sewing together separate areas of computer research” to foster increased dialog between researchers in different areas of computing, as well as in different disciplines and market sectors (p. 143).

FUTURE TRENDS Today, the list of computer visionaries and practitioners frequently includes such well-known personalities as Tim Berners-Lee, Vinton Cerf, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates. However, other lesserknown and time-obscured, yet equally important, individuals have contributed to the success of the Internet and the social interaction technologies that rely on it. Cooper (2007) is not the only person to recognize the tendency to overlook earlier computer theorists and designers. Segaller (1999) also noted that innovators associated with the development of interactive and networked computing are “mostly still unknown and unrecognized” (p. 38). Future research, therefore, may look to the past to further identify and explore the works of those people whose visions have also shaped the computing technologies that we benefit from today. One possible method for identifying lesser-known visionaries is the use of citation analysis. An overlooked but potentially rich source of pioneering writings may be found in government documents, which contain a variety of technology proposals and reports, specifications, and requests for comments (RFCs) that may further illuminate the existence of past and current computer visionaries. Additionally, research examining the characteristics (e.g., personality traits, communication styles) that visionaries, past and present, hold in common with respect to how they communicate their ideas, along with detailed and systematic analyses of their writings, may help us to identify earlier and more completely those persons

whose contributions hold the most promise for illuminating the future of computing in general and social interaction technologies in particular. An intriguing aspect of Licklider’s initial writing was his use of a biological analogy -- symbiosis. In biology, symbiosis applies to the relationship between two living organisms; however, in an interesting twist, Licklider used the term to define a relationship between a living organism, the human, and a non-living entity, the computer. Future research may investigate the presence of similar analogies in past and present written works as a means to effectively convey new ideas and to inspire innovation. Regarding future trends in improving the human-computer relationship through the development of social interaction and collaborative technologies, we will continue to experience advancements in wireless connectivity with the goal of unencumbered mobility at the core of innovations in this area (McDowell, Steinberg, & Tomasello, 2008). Continued improvement to web standards will also progress as web content increasingly migrates to existing and as yet imagined smaller portable devices; current examples include cell phones and portable digital assistants (PDAs). A challenge that software designers continue to face is one that Licklider identified in “Man-Computer Symbiosis” when he claimed, “The basic dissimilarity between human languages and computer languages may be the most serious obstacle to true symbiosis” (1960, p. 8). The “language problem,” as Licklider dubbed this challenge, refers to the very different communication styles that humans and computers use. In brief, human language is goal-oriented and based on incentives and motivations, whereas computer language is based on step-by-step instructions that specify courses of action. The difference in these languages has created countless frustrations for human users of computers, including challenges in creating effective speech recognition programs and in users learning new software. Research will continue to strive to lessen this

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J.C.R. Licklider and the Rise of Interactive and Networked Computing

communication gap, with most efforts dedicated to making computers “think” and communicate more like humans.

CONCLUSION Licklider’s vision for networked computing and his publication of “Man-Computer Symbiosis” were watershed events that helped to usher in the Digital (or Information) Age, where computers now play an essential role in the human communication process. Using the biological term symbiosis to describe a new type of relationship between human and machine, Licklider’s vision provided a catalyst that contributed to the launch of a new direction in computing. Licklider proposed that computers function as linked communication devices at a time when most people thought of computers as large calculators, and he foresaw the day when humans and computers would form a close, sophisticated interactive partnership. Despite his uncanny ability to see into the future of computing, it is doubtful at the time of its writing that Licklider fully understood the foresight contained in “Man-Computer Symbiosis” nor its potential widespread influence. Decades later, in typical unassuming fashion, Licklider downplayed the insights his article provided stating in an interview that the piece “didn’t come out of any particular research. It was just a statement about the general notion of analyzing work …that you could see exactly how to get a computer to do” (Licklider, 1988, p. 22). Reading the article from today’s perspective, one is impressed by the clarity and detail of Licklider’s vision for technological improvements that would lead to the network of computers we now know as the Internet. Though many may argue, and rightly so, that we still have much to accomplish in the quest for ultimate human-computer symbiosis, we also recognize the enormous strides taken since the publication of “Man-Computer Symbiosis.” Graphical user interfaces, the wireless keyboard and mouse,

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streaming audio and video, gigahertz processors and hard drives in personal computers, virtual reality, telecommuting, programming languages, the World Wide Web, wireless networks, and online communities are examples of the steps that have been taken to advance the human-computer relationship during the last five decades in the areas specified by Licklider. The aforementioned examples do not, however, imply that improvements in computer technology are solely beneficial. Nor, importantly, does the term symbiosis mean that all relationships between organisms are mutually beneficial. Licklider himself expressed doubts during his career about the downside of increased integration of computers into our lives, and we see today some of the damaging effects of computing realized—the digital divide, toxic environmental pollutants from components manufacturing, computer viruses and hacking, phishing schemes, loss of privacy, and increased surveillance, to name a few. On the horizon lurk scenarios that are potentially more dangerous as revealed by computing pioneer Bill Joy (2000), a cofounder and former Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, in his dim forecast concerning developments in nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. Joy’s article parallels Licklider’s 1960 admission that, in time, computers via artificial intelligence (and, in the future, via artificial life) may one day supersede humankind. The full effects of these alternative visions remain to be seen. Licklider died in 1990 (Waldrop, 2001), a few short years before the World Wide Web made its public debut in the U.S. and its subsequent global diffusion; however, his vision lives on. During the more than 40 years since its publication, “ManComputer Symbiosis” has been consistently cited in the works of academic and professional researchers from prestigious universities and international corporations, as well as across multiple disciplines (Tomasello, 2004). A recent article published by researchers at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories indicates that scientists

J.C.R. Licklider and the Rise of Interactive and Networked Computing

continue to work toward achieving the symbiotic relationship that Licklider mapped out during the 1960s (Lesh, Marks, Rich, & Sidner, 2002. Ongoing references to “Man-Computer Symbiosis” by contemporary scientists, researchers, and historians are testaments to Licklider’s longstanding value as a contributor to the development of modern computing and ultimately Internet-based communication and social interaction technologies.

REFERENCES Brate, A. (2002). Technomanifestos: Visions from the information revolutionaries. New York: Texere. Cooper, C. (2007). Licklider’s vision of the digital age. CNET News. Retrieved March 15, 2008, from http://www.news.com/Lickliders-vision-of-theDigital-Age/2010-1012_3-6167919.html Hafner, K., & Lyon, M. (1998). Where wizards stay up late: The origins of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster. Joy, B. (2000). Why the future doesn’t need us. Wired (San Francisco, Calif.), 8(4), 238–262. Lesh, N., Marks, J., Rich, C., & Sidner, C. L. (2002). ‘Man-computer symbiosis’ revisited: Achieving natural communication and collaboration with computers. IECE Transactions . E (Norwalk, Conn.), 85-A, 1–9. Licklider, J. C. R. (1960). Man-computer symbiosis. IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, 1, 4–11. doi:10.1109/ THFE2.1960.4503259 Licklider, J. C. R. (1965). Man-computer partnership. International Science and Technology, 41, 18–26.

Licklider, J. C. R. (1988). Oral history interview by William Aspray and Arthur L. Norberg, 28 October 1988, Cambridge, Massachusetts ( [). Minneapolis, MN: Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.]. OH. Osteopathic Hospitals, 150. Licklider, J. C. R., & Taylor, R. (1968). The computer as a communication device. Science and Technology, 76, 21–31. Mattelart, A. (2000). Networking the world, 1794-2000 (L. Carey-Libbrecht & J. A. Cohen, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. McDowell, S. D., Steinberg, P. E., & Tomasello, T. K. (2008). Managing the infosphere: Governance, technology, and cultural practice in motion. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Packer, R., & Jordan, K. (Eds.). (2001). Multimedia: From Wagner to virtual reality. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Pavlik, J. V. (1998). New media technology: Cultural and commercial perspectives (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Randall, N. (1997). The soul of the Internet: Net gods, netizens, and the wiring of the world. New York: International Thomson Computer Press. Segaller, S. (1999). Nerds 2.0.1: A brief history of the Internet. New York: TV Books. Taylor, R. W. (1989). Oral history interview by William Aspray, 28 February 1989, San Francisco, California ( [). Minneapolis, MN: Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.]. OH. Osteopathic Hospitals, 154. Tomasello, T. K. (2004). A content analysis of citations to J.C.R. Licklider’s ‘Man-computer symbiosis,’ 1960-2001: Diffusing the intergalactic network. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Florida State University.

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Waldrop, M. M. (2001). The dream machine: J. C. R. Licklider and the revolution that made computing personal. New York: Viking.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS ARPAnet: The U.S. experimental computer network that in 1969 successfully interconnected four geographically separated computers located at the Stanford Research Institute, University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. Computer Network: A cluster of computers and related devices that are connected via permanent or temporary, wired or wireless technologies. Electronic Numerical Integrator and Analyzer (ENIAC): An early electronic computer developed in the 1940s by the U.S. Army to calculate missile trajectories. Input/Output Device: A peripheral or internal computer component that enables data to be entered and/or extracted. Examples of input/output

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devices include: internal and external disk drives, microphones, scanners, printers, keyboards, screens/monitors, and speakers. Interactive Computing: The immediate exchange of input and output between a computer and the user. Internet: The global network of computers used to exchange information and communication. Man-Computer Symbiosis: The humancomputer relationship in which human and machine are closely coupled in performing both lower (e.g., computational) and higher order (e.g., analytical) processes. Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE): A 1950s “network” of defense radars which involved real-time computing with human operators using keyboards, screen displays, and modems. Time-Sharing: The ability of a computer to process multiple commands and/or accommodate multiple users simultaneously without compromising performance.

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Chapter 2

Mobile Social Web

Opportunities and Drawbacks Thorsten Caus Georg August University of Göttingen, Germany Stefan Christmann Georg August University of Göttingen, Germany Svenja Hagenhoff Georg August University of Göttingen, Germany

ABSTRACT As mobile Internet usage continues to grow, the phenomenon of accessing online communities through mobile devices draws researchers’ attention. Statistics show that close to 60 percent of all mobile Internet traffic worldwide is related to the use of mobile social networks. In this chapter, the mobile social Web is defined, categories of mobile communities explained, and success factors and drawbacks discussed from the technical, social, and economic perspectives. Challenges, including low transmission rates, changes in usage patterns, search for new revenue sources, as well as the need for development of original mobile Web content and applications are addressed. The technical requirements for the mobile use of online communities are identified. The chapter closes with a summary of potential economic and social prospects of the emerging mobile social Web.

INTRODUCTION Until recently, the Internet was a domain restricted to stationary computers, but nowadays it can also be accessed through mobile devices equipped with web browsing capabilities. Now it is not only possible to surf the web using wireless access and mobile devices, but there is also a growing number of mobile Internet applications and services. Increasingly, mobile social networking applications have DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch002

been made available to a large number of mobile phone users. Internet users have accepted online communities and internalized the concept of the Social Web also referred to as Web 2.0 (Koesch, Magdanz, & Stadler, 2007). Private as well as business users have become familiar with various online communities (Patrzek, 2007; von Tetzchner, 2008). On the one hand, mobile social networks are becoming more widespread because of the increasing dissemination of new wireless communication technologies (Heng, 2006, p. 5). On the other hand, a large number of

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Mobile Social Web

devices are designed to implement new communications technologies, for example, the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) in Europe (Heng, 2006, p. 1). Studies conducted by Opera Software, an Internet software and services company, demonstrate that 40 percent of all mobile Internet traffic worldwide is related to the use of online communities. In some countries the share is as high as 60 percent: for example, in the United States, South Africa, and Indonesia (von Tetzchner, 2008). Research into the various ways of using the Social Web in a mobile context is now of paramount importance. In this chapter, mobile social web is defined, categories of mobile online communities and their success factors explained, and selected opportunities and drawbacks of the mobile online communities discussed from a technical, social, and economic perspectives.

BACKGROUND The Social Web can be viewed as a concept and a platform that utilizes social software (e.g., forums, wikis, blogs, etc.) to fulfill or support some of the important human needs, such as: self-realization, acceptance, social connectedness, and safety (Maslow, 1943, p. 372-383). The purpose of the Social Web is to support human communication and facilitate social contact. The Social Web encompasses numerous Internet applications, such as social networking sites, massively multiplayer online role-playing games, photo and video sharing, online stores and auction houses, virtual worlds, and wiki collaborations. The most popular and widespread actualizations are online communities (e.g., MySpace, Facebook, StudiVZ or XING). The term “Social Web” is often used in everyday language as well as in scholarly literature as a synonym for “virtual” and “online communities” (Hummel, 2005, p. 5), although these terms do not differ greatly (Fremuth & Tasch, 2002, pp. 5-6).

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In the past years many academic disciplines have dealt with the Social Web. Various attempts to provide a definition have resulted in three different approaches: technical, social, and economic. The technical approach focuses on the Internet as a medium or platform for a community. The sociological point of view stresses the forming and functioning of communities, whereas the economic perspective examines potential gains and intended profits (Hummel, 2005, p. 8-11). These three perspectives have led to a variety of definitions of online communities with differing points of emphasis. A detailed overview of common definitions is given by Fremuth and Tasch (2002), Hummel (2005) and Markus (2002). In identifying an online community one perspective emphasizes that it is formed by a group of people, while another stresses its web platform. The definition used in this chapter combines both approaches, for an online community is seen as a social group that interacts through a web platform over an extended period of time. An online community can be characterized by four elements (Gebert & von Rosenstiel, 1992, p. 122-123; Hamman, 2000, p. 225): • • • •

group of people with shared objectives (e.g., interests, goals) interaction over an extended period of time closeness due to bonds and relationships shared space for interactions governed by certain rules (for example, role definitions).

Without shared objectives there would be no interaction and relationship and, subsequently, no community at all (Markus, 2002, p. 36). Interactions within the community are seen as topicoriented communication as well as the execution of actions (Kim, 2000, p. 5). Both can take place independently of time and location (Winkler & Mandl, 2004, p. 14). The process of founding and maintaining such online communities usually

Mobile Social Web

Table 1. Success factors on online communities (adopted from Koch, Groh, & Hillebrand, 2002; Leitner, 2003) Users’ point of view • Advantages of usage, for example in the form of problem solving or entertainment • Simple compilation of contributions • Easy technical access, usage and adequate stability • Equality, credibility and trust • Non-commercial orientation

Corporations’ point of view • Personal network and personal characteristics of entrepreneurial team • Product or service idea in business model • Available resources and capabilities • Marketing strategy with viral emphasis • Potential for speedy marketing

takes place on the Internet (Eigner & Nausner, 2003, p. 58). The second defining characteristic is the web platform, which can be seen as an Internet communication system which acts as an intermediary. It enables and facilitates meetings, the maintenance of the community, and its interaction with other people (Reichwald, Fremuth, & Ney, 2002, p. 8). There are different ways of categorizing online communities (Brunold, Merz, & Wagner, 2000, p. 30-37; Fremuth & Tasch, 2002, p. 21; Hummel, 2005, p. 46). A reasonable approach is to categorize them according to similarities, for they play a major role in online communities. Therefore, an online community can be geographic (bound to an area), demographic (classification according to nationality, age, gender), or based on shared interests or activities (Kim, 2000, p. 5). Online communities can be viewed as social systems. Relationships and interactions can only develop once a web platform has been established, which makes it difficult to start a community (Leitner, 2003, p. 36). The network-effect character of online communities shows this very clearly. There will only be accelerated growth once a critical amount of relationships and interactions between users has been achieved. This is due to the fact that users do not benefit before this point is reached (Reichwald, Fremuth, & Ney, 2002, p. 8). Even though this development is difficult to predict, an operator is able to influence the

development of an online community by making it more attractive (Reichwald, Fremuth, & Ney, 2002, p. 9-10). The success factors that have been identified are listed in Table 1.

THE MOBILE SOCIAL WEB The mobile use of online communities can be referred to as the mobile social web. In this context, mobility is understood as the unrestricted transfer of text, voice or data independent of user’s physical location (Kurose & Ross, 2005, pp. 536-538). Therefore, mobile online communities are free of interruption caused by the movement of the user from one location to another. The devices employed can be either wireless or wired (Kurose & Ross, 2005, p. 504). Suitable types of devices are mobile phones, smart phones (Michelsen & Schaale, 2002, p. 51) and personal digital assistants, as these can always stay switched on and do not need to be booted. Although mobility does not necessarily require wireless connections to these devices, wireless mobile networks are used most commonly (Gerum, Sjurts, & Stieglitz, 2003, p. 145). European standards, for instance, include the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) extensions, Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) standard (Herzig, 2001, p. 399), General Radio Packet Service (GPRS) protocol (Stader, 2001, p. 37), and the 3rd generation Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) technology (Kurose & Ross, 2005, pp. 534-535). The mobile social web involves opportunities as well as drawbacks, as will be discussed below.

Opportunities of the Mobile Social Web The features of mobile communities generally correspond to those of traditional online communities. They are enhanced by a new way of accessing the community-web-platform through

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Mobile Social Web

Figure 1. Overview of the mobile social web potentials

the user in an online community. The user’s mobile device then serves as a membership card or an individual entrance ticket (Reichwald, Fremuth, & Ney, 2002, p. 7). Identifying the user can be automated, making it more reliable. It is also more authentic and results in more confidence within the community (Hummel, 2005, p. 72).

Social Aspects

mobile, wireless devices. On closer examination, these communities do not only seem to benefit from mobile access, but also from additional potentials resulting from mobility and localization possibilities. Furthermore the question arises, whether this newly opened potential encompasses not only technical and social aspects but economic aspects as well (see Figure 1).

Technical Aspects Mobile wireless devices facilitate ubiquitous access to online communities (Koch, Groh, & Hillebrand, 2002, p. 2). The user is able to gain access anywhere and any time, while being liberated from the world of stationary Internet and permanently installed devices (Reichwald, Fremuth & Ney, 2002, p. 6). Furthermore, users benefit from being reachable at all times by being armed with mobile wireless devices (Wiedmann, Buckler, & Buxel, 2000, p. 86). Therefore, the users can stay online and be accessible continuously and without interruption. No time is lost: for example, by turning the devices on or logging in. Thus, interaction becomes more spontaneous and expressive. Mobile wireless devices make it possible to identify the user via his PIN and SIM card, both of which are requirements of mobile communications (Tasch & Brakel, 2004, p. 4). This explicit possibility of identification can be used to identify

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A local context can be defined by identifying a user’s current whereabouts (Koch, Groh, & Hillebrand, 2002, p. 3). A user’s whereabouts could be presented to other users through geomapping or textually. Furthermore, an awareness service could be employed in addition to existing information services, such as “buddy lists” (Tasch & Brakel, 2004, p. 7). Contacts and friends in the vicinity of the user can be shown on the mobile device. Mobile online communities could thus improve interactions between community members and extend social ties. For example, people with similar interests can get together spontaneously. Contexts can be used to find out about the accessibility of mobile community users (Groh, 2003, p. 9). Depending on the user’s current whereabouts a service can provide information about if and how a person may be contacted and the user can decide how to do this. The contact information can simply rely on such area aspects as availability of UMTS. Personal preferences can also be used for this purpose. Another potential feature is to filter content according to current contexts (Groh, 2003, p. 9). A personal information service can select information about places of interest in the vicinity of the user’s current location and report it to the user (context specific presentation of information). Moreover, context specific capturing of content is conceivable (Groh, 2003, p. 8). Metadata (e.g., location data or location names) and information and news services form the basis for this idea. For example, an entry reviewing the quality of food and drinks in a local café could be generated

Mobile Social Web

automatically by entering the name of the café or its location. Personal meetings can be organized more easily as the awareness of a person’s location increases, matching the users’ interests is extended, and the management of accessibility becomes more efficient. Stronger relationships between persons will typically result when they are geographically close and have personal encounters (Larsen, Urry, & Axhausen, 2006, pp. 12-13). These aspects are not available in stationary online communities because they depend on time and location. Faceto-face communication can lead to an improved quality of relationships because interactions become closer and more intense. All of the above will result in the strengthening of a community (Schneider, 2003, p. 99).

•

Economic Aspects Mobile communities allow an opportunity for spontaneous, affective, and meaningful community activities, which may result in closer relationships between community members than in the case of traditional online communities. Data input and output can be accomplished more easily through context specific services (Diekmann et al., 2006). Therefore, community mobile operators assume that users will be more willing to pay for participation in mobile communities than in stationary online communities (Reichwald, Fremuth, & Ney, 2002, p. 12). The following list provides details of primary and secondary revenue sources for mobile operators (Reichwald, Fremuth, & Ney, 2002). Primary revenue sources arise from operating a mobile online community (Reichwald, Fremuth, & Ney, 2002, p. 11). Three possibilities can be identified: •

To levy usage fees: Users pay for the usage of mobile information and interactivity services and for community content. The fees depend on the usage of the services

•

or they are usage-independent (Reichwald et al., 2002, pp. 24-25). Users pay either for the usage of each single service or for using services during a certain period of time. Both approaches have proved unsuccessful in the case of non-mobile online communities (Reichwald et al., 2002, pp. 23-24). It may be expected that the advantages of mobile communities and their improved attractiveness are great enough to generate an increased willingness to pay (Reichwald, Fremuth, & Ney, 2002, p. 12). Moreover, users are generally accustomed to paying for mobile services. Advertising and sponsoring: Even now, non-mobile online communities allow the generation of advertisements tailored for special target groups by analyzing user profiles. In comparison to mass advertisements, this approach involves less wastefulness (Schubert & Ginsburg, 2000, pp. 51-52). For example, depending on the user’s current location, advertisements can be provided. Companies willing to sponsor certain activities are another potential source of revenue (Reichwald et al., 2002, p. 20). Data transmission fees: Fees for using telecommunication (TC) services have to be paid to the TC companies. The operator of a mobile online community could negotiate a share of the revenues. For this revenue sharing purpose, cooperation between the TC company and the community operator is needed, and accounting models have to be developed.

The users themselves can become the potential generators of possibilities to earn money for the community. Their content contributions can be used for market research as well as ideas about new services and products. Documented behavior, usage patterns, and preferences can be used to filter properties of target groups. The main potential for

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Mobile Social Web

Figure 2. Overview of the drawbacks of the mobile social web

community operators has to be made up by selling the gathered knowledge as consulting services or by using it for themselves (Reichwald, Fremuth, & Ney 2002, p. 12). Mobile communities can facilitate activities at a higher level of utility and quality, as data are potentially more differentiated and reliable compared to stationary activities.

Drawbacks of the Mobile Social Web Mobile online communities have drawbacks, as summarized in Figure 2.

Technical Aspects The utility of a service is a success factor as well as a challenge. It has to be decided which services should be accessible in a mobile community to make it attractive (Yom, 2002, p. 177). Not only information and interaction services have to be selected, content needs to be chosen, too. Restricted possibilities of data presentation and device handling as well as limited capacities of mobile devices affect the utility. Other factors influencing usability are data transmission costs, low data transmission rates, device handling problems, and inconvenient data input and output possibilities (Bliemel & Fassott, 2002, p. 14). The fees of mobile network operators are mostly based on data volume. Therefore, a community user will have to pay fees depending on the intensity of his or her usage.

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Low data transmission rates are often a problem for mobile device users. Established GSM services, such as Short Message Service (SMS), provide an adequate transmission rate; however, there are only limited possibilities for data presentation. Consequently, it makes more sense to opt for 3rd generation technologies like GPRS and UMTS, especially as the increasing dissemination of these technologies renders this alternative increasingly feasible. An appropriate localization technology must be integrated in order to realize enhanced mobile services and provide new functionalities of mobile online communities, such as contextual community content, context-oriented information collection, or efficient connectivity management. The localization of end devices connected to cellular networks via their radio cell is currently still expensive. However, free and precise localization using Global Positioning System (GPS) is not yet feasible, as the vast majority of users do not have GPS-compatible end devices. The possibility of unambiguous identification poses another problem. In case a mobile device gets lost, unauthorized persons may pretend to be the original user, as mobile devices usually have only a very low degree of security (Reisinger, 2007). This is especially a problem when users believe in the trustworthiness of the identification using mobile end devices.

Social Aspects The electronic capturing and processing of the user context as well as the opening of communities for mobile usage can lead to negative consequences. Publishing the actual location of a user means an intrusion into his or her privacy and a limitation to intimacy. Being spied upon undiscovered could be the result of using contextual services. Parents could use these services to locate their children. Partners in a relationship could use it to track each other. The risks involved may lead to a fear of misuse or limited intimacy, resulting in the

Mobile Social Web

merely conditional use of contextual services. In stationary online communities, we observe that little emphasis is put on intimacy - users publish a multitude of personal data (Gross & Acquisti, 2005, p. 4-8). Hence, it remains open whether the added value of contextual services or the fear of misuse and limited intimacy will prevail. At present mobile radio services, including SMS or telephony, are preferably used for contacting persons one already knows (Tasch & Brakel, 2004, p. 4). Stationary online communities are commonly used to create new relationships: i.e. contacting persons hitherto unknown to the user (Fremuth & Tasch, 2002, p. 24). The projection of mobile radio usage patterns onto stationary online communities could lead to the change from a preferably theme-oriented usage towards a person-oriented or communication-oriented usage of mobile online communities (Reichwald et al., 2002, p. 13). Mobile community activities would then be realized preferentially with already known persons. Such trends could jeopardize the establishment of theme-orientated mobile online communities.

•

•

Economic Aspects A commercial design of mobile online communities has to identify primary and secondary revenue sources for their operators. Commercial intentions should be declared and openly communicated to the community (Leitner, 2003, pp. 43-44). This is the only way to grant trust and authenticity from the very beginning. Using primary revenue sources involves the following challenges: •

Collection of usage fees: So far, the stationary Internet largely provides free content and services (Reichwald, Fremuth, & Ney, 2002, p. 11). Internet users are accustomed to free services. There is a possibility that this factor will have a negative impact on the willingness to pay for mobile services. Users already pay for mobile data

services such as SMS or mobile Internet access (Reichwald et al., 2002, p. 27). Fees for the use of services or content would increase these costs. Advertising and sponsoring: Advertising in online communities was often frowned upon in the past (Leitner, 2003, pp. 41-42). Even now, although an increased number of advertising banners are placed, the acceptance of advertising does not seem to be self-evident. Moreover, advertising messages on mobile devices are still fairly uncommon. It is unclear whether a satisfactory advertising effect can be achieved by mobile advertising in online communities. It is assumed that the perception duration of advertisement tends to drop with mobile usage compared to the stationary Internet (Heinonen & Stransdvik, 2007, p. 610; Reichwald et al., 2002, p. 22). Even when advertisements are noticed, little space for advertising messages is available due to the small displays of mobile devices (Michelsen & Schaale, 2002, p. 20). Mobile data transmission fees: As yet volume-billing models for the use of the mobile Internet are widespread; this could be a restriction to the time-consuming use of a mobile online community (Reichwald et al., 2002, p. 28). This can lead to lower data volumes, resulting in fewer payments to mobile radio operators. As a consequence, these operators would be less willing to forward payments to a community operator. It remains to be seen how this revenue potential develops through billing models for mobile Internet usage and cooperation.

There are also new challenges for the secondary revenue sources: Using a mobile online community as an instrument for market research can be profitable for an operator, but it seems reasonable that the users need to know that this

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Mobile Social Web

is drafted on the basis of content and the analysis of their usage habits (Leitner, 2003, p. 43-44). This could especially affect success factors of an online community like equality, credibility and trust. Sharing part of the revenues with users could be a solution.

FUTURE TRENDS A growing number of Internet services make their applications available to mobile users. This can be attributed to the increasing proliferation of mobile broadband Internet access (especially UMTS in Europe). Three variants of mobile implementation are available. Users can browse profile pages and photo albums via WAP and add new images and texts by means of SMS and Multimedia Message Service (MMS). The ShoZu service,1 in contrast, performs as an integration platform and allows mobile users to upload and download content at multiple online communities with a single message. One ConnectTM provided by Yahoo is another illustration which integrates social communities (e.g., MySpace, Dopplr, Facebook or Last.fm), instant messaging services (e.g., Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger), and the ordinary communication channels of mobile phones. Finally, as the example of the COSMOS project2 shows, a comprehensive use of mobile technical and social opportunities appears to be no so distant future—the COSMOS project integrates contextual services into the existing mobile social web. Users are informed about the geographical distance between them and may send messages to contacts within their own vicinity. The abovementioned trends are expected to advance in the future; yet, the possible dominance of one of them cannot be predicted.

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CONCLUSION The analysis of the potentials of mobile online communities leads to the conclusion that the social significance of the mobile Internet goes further than providing communities with an additional access channel. Besides mobile access and instant connectivity, unambiguous identification and contextual services can also be realized. The mobile web platform gains efficiency and facilitates not only flexible, spontaneous, and emotional interactions, but also credible and intensive ones. Reckoning with these possibilities, a community mobile operator can take an economic perspective and identify revenue sources that make the commercialization of mobile communities feasible. However, the specific technical and social characteristics of mobile communities can cast doubt upon their prospective potentials. Commercialization appears less promising as the willingness of users to pay fees is rather low. Mobile advertising poses additional problems despite its context-relatedness. Moreover, the realization of secondary revenue sources can lead to problems of trust. The assumption that the social significance of the mobile Internet will go beyond providing an additional access channel to online communities has so far only partially been confirmed. Many challenges to mobile communities remain to be resolved in the future for the economic perspective to gain relevance and the commercial interpretation to become a success.

REFERENCES Bliemel, F., & Fassott, G. (2002). Kundenfokus im mobile commerce: Anforderungen der kunden und anforderungen an die kunden. In G. Silberer, J. Wohlfahrt, & T. Wilhelm (Eds.), Mobile commerce - grundlagen, geschäftsmodelle, erfolgsfaktoren (pp. 3-23). Wiesbaden, Germany: Gabler.

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Brunold, J., Merz, H., & Wagner, J. (2000). www. cybercommunities.de: Virtual communities: Strategie, umsetzung, erfolgsfaktoren. Landsberg, Germany: Verlag Moderne Industrie.

Hamman, R. B. (2000). Computernetze als verbindendes element von gemeinschaftsnetzen. In U. Thiedeke (Ed.), Virtuelle gruppen. Charakteristika und problemdimensionen (pp. 221-243). Wiesbaden, Germany: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

Diekmann, T., Kaspar, C., Seidenfaden, L., & Hagenhoff, S. (2006). Kontextbewusste informationsdienste auf grundlage von information beacons. Retrieved June 23, 2008, from http:// www.gi-mms.de/mms2006/kurzbeitraege/diekmann.pdf

Heinonen, K., & Strandvik, T. (2007). Consumer responsiveness to mobile marketing. International Journal of Mobile Communications, 5(6), 603–617. doi:10.1504/IJMC.2007.014177

Eigner, C., & Nausner, P. (2003). Willkommen, ‘social learning’! In C. Eigner, H. Leitner, P. Nausner, & U. Schneider (Eds.), Online-communities, weblogs und die soziale rückeroberung des netzes (pp. 52-94). Graz, Austria: Nausner & Nausner.

Heng, S. (2006). Entgegen vielen erwartungen! Breitbandige mobilfunktechnologie UMTS ist realität. Retrieved June 5, 2008, from http:// www.dbresearch.com/PROD/DBR_INTERNET_DEPROD/PROD0000000000198071.pdf

Fremuth, N., & Tasch, A. (2002). Virtuelle und mobile communities - begriffsklärungen und implikationen für geschäftsmodelle (Arbeitsberichte des Lehrstuhls für Allgemeine und Industrielle Betriebswirtschaftslehre, No. 35). München: Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine und Industrielle Betriebswirtschaftslehre.

Herzig, M. (2001). Basistechnologien und standards des mobile business. Wirtschaftsinformatik, 43(4), 397–404.

Gebert, D., & Von Rosenstiel, L. (1992). Organisationspsychologie: Person und organisation. Köln, Germany: Kohlhammer. Gerum, E., Sjurts, I., & Stieglitz, N. (2003). Der mobilfunkmarkt im umbruch - eine innovationsökonomische und unternehmensstrategische analyse. Wiesbaden, Germany: Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag. Groh, G. (2003). Ortsbezug in kontext-sensitiven diensten für mobile communities. Retrieved June 20, 2008, from http://www11.informatik. tu-muenchen.de/lehrstuhl/personen/groh/pub/ gis.pdf Gross, R., & Acquisti, A. (2005). Information revelation and privacy in online social networks (the Facebook case). Retrieved June 22, 2008, from http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/papers/ privacy-facebook-gross-acquisti.pdf

Hummel, J. (2005). Online-gemeinschaften als geschäftsmodell - eine analyse aus sozioökonomischer perspektive. Wiesbaden, Germany: Deutscher Universitätsverlag. Kim, A. J. (2000). Community building on the Web: Secret strategies for successful online communities. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press. Koch, M., Groh, G., & Hillebrand, C. (2002). Mobile communities - extending online communities into the real world. Retrieved May 27, 2008, from http://www11.informatik.tumuenchen.de/ publications/pdf/Koch2002c.pdf Koesch, S., Magdanz, F., & Stadler, R. (2007). Soziale netzwerke - mobile kontaktbörsen. Retrieved June 15, 2008, from http://www.spiegel. de/netzwelt/mobil/0,1518,470250,00.html Kurose, J. F., & Ross, K. W. (2005). Computer networking - a top-down approach featuring the Internet. Boston: Pearson Education.

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Larsen, J., Urry, J., & Axhausen, K. W. (2006). Mobilities, networks, geographies. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Leitner, H. (2003). Online-community, ‘hands on!’. In C. Eigner, H. Leitner, P. Nausner, & U. Schneider (Eds.), Online-communities, weblogs und die soziale rückeroberung des netzes (pp. 11-51). Graz, Austria: Nausner & Nausner. Markus, U. (2002). Integration der virtuellen community in das CRM: Konzeption, rahmenmodell, realisierung. Electronic Commerce, 15. Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–396. doi:10.1037/h0054346 Michelsen, D., & Schaale, A. (2002). Handy-business: M-commerce als massenmarkt. München, Germany: Financial Times Prentice Hall. Petrzek, D. (2007). Süchtig nach Myspace & Co. Internet World Business, 26, 1. Reichwald, R., Erben, R., Fremuth, N., & Tasch, A. (2002). Mobile communities: Phänomen und erlösungspotenziale. In R. Reichwald (Ed.), Arbeitsberichte des Lehrstuhls für Allgemeine und Industrielle Betriebswirtschaftslehre (no. 36). München, Germany: Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine und Industrielle Betriebswirtschaftslehre. Reichwald, R., Fremuth, N., & Ney, M. (2002). Mobile communities - erweiterung von virtuellen communities mit mobilen diensten. In R. Reichwald (Ed.), Mobile kommunikation (pp. 521-537). Wiesbaden, Germany: Gabler. Reisinger, D. (2007). ‘Bluejacking,’ ‘bluesnarfing’ and other mobile woes. Retrieved June 18, 2008, from http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_39764450-7.html

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Schneider, U. (2003). Online-community - neues medium und/oder neue sozialform? In C. Eigner, H. Leitner, P. Nausner, & U. Schneider (Eds.), Online-communities, weblogs und die soziale rückeroberung des netzes (pp. 95-114). Graz, Austria: Nausner & Nausner. Schubert, P., & Ginsburg, M. (2000). Virtual communities of transaction: The role of personalization in electronic commerce. EM Electronic Markets, 10(1), 45–56. doi:10.1080/10196780050033971 Stader, R. (2001). Client- und endgerätetechnologien für mobile community-support-systeme. In U. Baumgarten, H. Krcmar, R. Reichwald, & J. Schlichter (Eds.), Community online services and mobile solutions - projektstartbericht des verbundvorhabens COSMOS (pp. 31-44). München, Germany: Institut für Informatik, Technische Universität München. Tasch, A., & Brakel, O. (2004). Location based community services – new services for a new type of Web communities. Retrieved May 25, 2008, from http://www.cosmoscommunity.org/ downloadFiles/Lisbon-format-final.pdf von Tetzchner, J. S. (2008). Mobile browsing report, state of the mobile Web: First quarter, 2008. Retrieved June 23, 2008, from http://www.opera. com/mobile_report/ Wiedmann, K.-P., Buckler, F., & Buxel, H. (2000). Chancenpotentiale und gestaltungsperspektiven des m-commerce. Der Markt, 39(153), 84–96. doi:10.1007/BF03036349 Winkler, K., & Mandl, H. (2004). Virtuelle communities - kennzeichen, gestaltungsprinzipien und wissensmanagement-prozesse. Retrieved June 12, 2008, from http://epub.ub.unimuenchen.de/ archive/00000323/01/ FB_166.pdf

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Yom, M. (2002). Utility und usabilty im mobile commerce. In G. Silberer, J. Wohlfahrt, & T. Wilhelm (Eds), Mobile commerce - grundlagen, geschäftsmodelle, erfolgsfaktoren (pp. 173-184). Wiesbaden, Germany: Gabler.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS COSMOS: The Community-Driven Systems Management in Open Source (COSMOS) project is a collaboration of software developers aimed to create standards-based tools for system management. Mobile Internet: Use of TCP/IP based services and protocols with mobile devices via wireless communications technologies. Mobile Social Web: Refers to mobile social networks and other Web 2.0-based applications in which people access and form online communities by using mobile devices. Mobile Wireless Devices: Handheld elec-

tronic devices with wireless capability to connect to the Internet. Examples include mobile phones, smart phones, and personal digital assistants. Mobility: Unrestricted transfer of text, voice or data independent of user’s physical location. Online Community: A social group that interacts through a web platform over an extended period of time. Social Web: Refers to Web 2.0-based technologies and applications that are used to support communication and facilitate social contact, such as, social networking sites, massively multiplayer online role-playing games, photo and video sharing, online stores and auction houses, virtual worlds, and collaborative wikis.

ENDNOTES 1 2

http://www.shozu.com See http://www.eclipse.org/cosmos

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Chapter 3

Mobile Social Networks and Services Lee Humphreys Cornell University, USA

ABSTRACT Mobile social networks allow users to connect with each other, share information, and create technologically enabled mobile communities. With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the public dream of the likelihood of mobile computing was realized. This chapter reviews mobile social networks ranging from early examples to current services; and, it identifies and categorizes them according to a specific media type, mode, and code. The challenges of categorization in light of technology convergence are discussed. Issues of privacy, compatibility, and pricing are presented as they relate to mobile social networks. Potential strategies are suggested for dealing with these challenges. Finally, future trends of mobile social services are identified.

BACKGROUND Mobile communication is becoming ubiquitous in many parts of the world today with over 3 billion mobile phone users worldwide (Tsai, 2008; Wolverton, 2008). Over 255 million mobile subscribers live in the U.S. (CTIA, 2008), which means more Americans own a mobile phone than have an Internet connection (On the Move: The Role of Cellular Communications in American Life, 2006). Considerable research has explored the social efDOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch003

fects of mobile phone use (e.g., Goggin, 2006; Ito, Okabe, & Matsuda, 2005; Katz, 2003; Katz, 2006; Katz & Aakhus, 2002; Ling, 2004, 2008). Some have argued that mobile phones may lead to the atomization and privatization among users by discouraging face-to-face communication in urban environments (Banjo, Hu, & Sundar, 2006; Bull, 2004; Puro, 2002). As mobile technology advances, however, new services for mobile phones have been developed which allow people to create, develop, and strengthen social ties. Similar to social networking sites on the Internet (Benkler, 2006; Boyd, 2004; Boyd &

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Mobile Social Networks and Services

Ellison, 2007; Castells, 2000; Rheingold, 2002; Rosenbush, 2005; Saveri, Rheingold, & Vian, 2005), these mobile services may help users to build valuable networks to share information and resources (Ziv, 2009). One of the first mobile social devices to appear was the Lovegety in Japan (Iwatani, 1998; Reuters, 1998). The Lovegety was a stand-alone device that would fit in the palm of the hand and beep when it was within 5 meters of another device. There were “pink girl” devices and “blue boy” devices each with three settings: “let’s chat”, “let’s karaoke”, or “get2”. The devices beeped and flashed green when two co-located devices were on the same setting (e.g., both devices were set to “let’s chat”). The devices would beep and flash red when they were on different settings. According to one account, users would turn down the volumes, hide the devices, and pretend they did not have a device if they did not want to contact another Lovegety user (Iwatani, 1998). There were two kinds of information exchanged using the Lovegety. First, information regarding the identification of people who were interested in using a mobile device to meet other people; second, information regarding what kind of social interaction each person was looking for. The information exchanged was rather simplistic, but it allowed people to have interactions with strangers in public spaces mediated by mobile devices without divulging personal identifying information, such as mobile phone numbers or even names. MIT’s Media Lab and Intel Corporation each developed two other early mobile social networks. Social Serendipity was MIT’s Bluetooth-based social service meant to harness the power of mobile technology and social information (Eagle & Pentland, 2005). Social Serendipity facilitated social interaction among geographically proximate users by matching user profiles and then exchanging profile information with similar matches. Intel’s Jabberwocky sought to monitor and broadcast a user’s movement to identify “familiar strangers”

and encourage a sense of urban community (Paulos & Goodman, 2004). Both of these technologies relied on the mobility of the devices to ascertain locational information to facilitate social connections among users. Early versions of mobile social services, such as the Lovegety, Seredipity, and Jabberwocky, were often made as stand-alone mobile devices. As mobile phones have advanced, however, there has been a movement away from separate mobiles devices that facilitate social connectivity and towards mobile social services that work on mobile phones. The mobile phone has joined the ranks of keys and wallets as items most people do not leave home without (Lohr, 2005). Therefore, most publicly available mobile social services have been developed to be used with mobile phones. The present chapter reviews a range of mobile social services, from the early examples to most current, and identifies and categorizes various mobile social networks and services.

Mobile Social Services Mobile social services refer to software, applications, or systems for mobile phones that allow users to connect with other people, share information, and create technologically enabled mobile communities. Many different terms are used to describe these kinds of services including: mobile social network, mobile social software, mobile social network service, and mobile blog (or mo-blog). The term mobile social network has evolved in reference to the rise of such social networking services (SNS) as Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster. Boyd and Ellison (2007) define social network sites as “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.” The most obvious difference between a

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Mobile Social Networks and Services

mobile social network and a SNS is that the latter is web-based and the former is primarily mobile phone-based. Boyd and Ellison’s (2007) definition also is helpful to differentiate between mobile social networks and mobile social software (MoSoSo). Mobile social networks give users the ability both to identify those users with whom they are connected and to traverse the list of connections within the system. Sometimes this navigation occurs via an application on the mobile phone and sometimes it occurs on an affiliated website accessed through a computer. (As mobile technology is advancing, however, the ability to access more information through mobile devices is increasing; thus more and more of these services will be entirely mobile phone-based.) MoSoSo differ from mobile social networks in that MoSoSo are typically downloaded to one’s mobile device (or pre-installed on the phone prior to purchase) whereas a mobile social network does not require a special application or program running on the phone in order to work. Sometimes mobile social networks rely on text messaging, multimedia messaging services, or voice transmissions. MoSoSo also do not necessarily meet the three criteria of a SNS that Boyd and Ellison (2007) identify. Mobile social software may not have articulated lists of social connections among users. The purpose of mobile social software is to support social interactions among interconnected mobile phone users. For example, both Jabberwocky and Social Serendipity would be classified as mobile social software, not mobile social networks. Both facilitate the exchange of social information between groups of mobile users, but do not articulate users’ various social connections. Howard Rheingold’s book, Smart Mobs, (2002) was one of the first attempts to identify and describe the power of mobile connectivity among groups of users. He details the integral role of mobile phones in organizing the overthrow of President Joseph Estrada in the Philippines and the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle.

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Mobile technology allows for rapid exchange of information through the devices that people carry with them everyday which in turn allows them to socialize in ways previously unavailable. Mobile social services or MoSoSo can help people to connect with new people as well as to connect with old friends. Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe (2007) found that most of the connections on Facebook were among people who had offline ties (i.e., they had not “met” online). Similarly, mobile social networks can connect people who are already friends or acquaintances. In fact, most mobile social networks brand themselves as helping friends to connect with friends and not necessarily to make new relationships.

Media, Modes, and Codes There are a myriad of new mobile social services, but there are differences between these systems. Using traditional media typology, three broad factors can be identified to categorize these mobile systems: media, modes, and codes (Gross, 1973). The first factor of mobile social network categorization considers the media through which these systems operate. The term media is defined here as a means of communication, such as a mobile phone, computer, or wireless device. Despite an overall trend towards technological convergence, some mobile social networks solely rely on mobile phones to provide the technological means of connection between users. Some wireless devices use Bluetooth to connect users. Most mobile social networks, however, also allow for Internet-based connections. Often there is a web component of the mobile social network and it is not solely mobile phone-based. By identifying the particular media used in a variety of mobile social networks, one can begin to differentiate between the systems. It is also important to note that the media of mobile social networks facilitate the exchange of messages from one-to-one (interpersonal) to one-to-many (broad-

Mobile Social Networks and Services

casting). The mobile phone is often perceived as an interpersonal means of communication through which one person communicates via text message or voice to another person. The ability of mobile social networks to broadcast information to many people represents an important shift in mobile communicative practices. The mobile broadcast ability of messages is an important factor in mobile social networks because it allows groups of users to communicate quickly and easily. The second factor with which to categorize mobile social networks is the mode of communication. The mode of communication refers to the various forms of communication by which members are able to interact with one another, including text, image, voice (or audio), and video. Some mobile social networks facilitate communication via limited modes whereas others offer a variety of modes through which to interact. The mode of communication shapes the kinds of interactions that members have on mobile social networks. For example, sometimes there are limits on the number of characters that users can send over mobile social networks. Each of these modal differences shapes the kind of communication that occurs over the mobile social network. The third factor that differentiates mobile social networks is its code. The codes of communication are the symbolic systems of communicating social connections. Mobile social networks have various means through which members communicate their social network connections. Some systems display the particular relations of the users, while other mobile social networks display member profiles but not in relation to others. If no connection is displayed, the system would be classified as a mobile social service or software rather than a mobile social network. Another differentiating code is whether these systems require mutual connections or one-way connections. For example, some mobile social networks allow users to send messages to certain people but receive them from other people. Some services call this watching or following. A user might watch the

messages of a small number of users, but might be watched by a larger number of users or visa versa. For example, Malcolm Gladwell, an author and writer for The New Yorker Magazine, is followed on Twitter by 421 users but follows one user (Gladwell, 2008). A mutual network system does not allow this one-way messaging. For these mutual systems, users send and receive messages to and from the same people. The code of a mobile social network differentiates a variety of different services, all of which help users to connect with other members based upon common interests or geographic proximity. Table 1 categorizes the following mobile social services according to the type of media, mode, and code: Pownce.com, Twitxr, Twitter, Jaiku, MySay, Utterz, Cromple, Facebook Mobile, MySpace Mobile, Dodgeball, Socialight, Loopt, Kyte, and Radar. As such, Gross’s (1973) typology becomes a helpful tool with which to describe these services. For example, there are important differences in the mode of communication. Early mobile social networks, such as Dodgeball, were primarily text-based (Humphreys, 2007). Increasingly, these services are multi-modal, offering users the ability to broadcast text, images, audio, and video. For example, MySay and Utterz try to differentiate themselves from the other mobile social networks by allowing users to record their voices on their mobile phones and then broadcast them to the web. This categorization of networks also highlights the convergence of media. Increasingly, designers of mobile social networks are developing specific application-versions of their services, which can be integrated into other websites such as blogs or social network sites. For example, no longer do people have to go to the Twitter website to join, but they can download the application from the Facebook website itself. Thus not only are these services increasingly multi-modal, but they are also multi-media. This points to the convergent nature of communication technology (Jenkins, 2006). The lines between various modes and

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Mobile Social Networks and Services

Table 1. Categorization of mobile social services Name

Description

Media

Mode

Code

Kyte

“Share pictures & video online or from your mobile”

Web, mobile phone

Text, video, images, audio

No public display of social connections

MySay

“Talk to the web”

Mobile phone, web

Audio (voice), text, images, video

No public display of social connections

Cromple

“Keep friends updated with this simple blog system”

Web, mobile phone

Text

One-way friend networks

Jaiku

“Your conversation”

Web, mobile phone, Internet (IM)

Text, images

One-way friend networks

Pownce

“Send stuff to your friends”

Mobile, web, IM

Text, images, video, audio

One-way friend networks

Twitter

“What are you doing?”

Mobile, web, IM

Text, images

One-way friend networks

Twitxr

“A picture is worth a thousand word”

Mobile, web

Images, text

One-way friend networks

Utterz

“Share your news”

Mobile, web

Image, video, audio, text

One-way friend networks

Dodgeball

“Connect with your friends”

Mobile phone, web

Text

Mutual friend networks

Facebook Mobile

“Use Facebook on the go”

Mobile phone primarily (supplement to Facebook.com)

Text, images

Mutual friend network

Loopt

“Turn your mobile phone into a social compass”

Mobile phone (GPS), web, IM

Text, image

Mutual friend networks

MySpace Mobile

“A place for friends”

Mobile phone primarily (supplement to MySpace.com)

Text

Mutual friend networks

Radar

“Instant picture conversations with your favorite people and no one else”

Mobile, web, IM

Images, video, text, audio

Mutual friend networks

Socialight

“Discover right here right now information about places all around you”

Mobile phone (GPS), web

Images, text

Mutual friend networks

various media are blurring. Social network sites, for example, Facebook and MySpace, have added distinct mobile components to their services. In fact, MySpace is the largest mobile social network in the U.S. with a mobile audience of 3.7 million users (Minney, 2007). Facebook is the second most popular mobile social network in the U.S. with a mobile audience of 2 million users (Minney). The numerical success of these mobile platforms on MySpace and Facebook may have less to do with the need for mobility of the social network service than it does with the sheer success of these sites on the web. MySpace Mobile and Facebook Mobile are popular because their web services are popular. They each have developed

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a massive base of users, which is necessary for the success of all social media whether they are web or mobile based. The question then arises as to whether the term mobile social network is an appropriate way to describe multi-media social network services that are accessible on a variety of technological platforms? Despite the convergence of media, mobile social network is still a helpful term because it highlights the mobility, individuality, and accessibility of mobile device-based systems. Mobile phones are defined by their mobility. They are not confined to the kitchen, office, or even the phone booth, but can be found in all kinds of spaces. Unlike landlines, mobile phones are also primarily assigned

Mobile Social Networks and Services

to a particular body. Individuals often have their own mobile phones as opposed to private landlines which are typically assigned to a particular place (Wellman et al., 2003). Mobile phones are also often nearby and accessible. In fact, users have described being away from their mobile phones as anxiety inducing events (Cohen & Lemish, 2004; Humphreys, 2003; Rainie & Keeter, 2006). The accessibility, individuality, and mobility of mobile phones make them particularly powerful communication technologies which differ from more traditional PC technologies.

ISSUES AND CHALLENGES While much hype surrounds mobile social networks (e.g., Goodale, 2007; B. Johnson, 2007; Klaassen, 2006), several challenges regarding the development and use of mobile social networks persist. One of the largest challenges for mobile social networks is privacy. Some mobile social services allow and even encourage users to share copious amounts of information about themselves with those in their networks. Sometimes these services involve sharing locational information about where people are at certain points in time. Inevitably, concerns arise regarding who has access to this information and what is it being used for. For example, stalking may become a concern. Generally speaking, however, most of the services require users to actively identify who is in their network and will receive their messages, thus allowing users of mobile social networks to control their flows of information. Users can easily block other users from seeing their personal messages. Privacy issues, however, concern not only which users have access to information through these systems, but corporate surveillance of users as well. For example, when members use Dodgeball, they do not just tell everyone in their Dodgeball networks their location; they tell Dodgeball who tells everyone in their network. Dodgeball is owned

by Google, which means members are also telling Google where they are whenever they check in with their friends using Dodgeball. Another challenge for mobile social networks in the U.S. concerns media and model capability. Some mobile social services in the U.S. are only available on certain kinds of phones. For example, Loopt, a mobile geosocial networking services compatible with most Nextel and Sprint cellular phones in the U.S.; however, it is only compatible with AT&T’s Blackberries and iPhones. The reason that Loopt is not compatible with most AT&T phones is that Loopt relies on Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, which is not standard on most AT&T mobile devices as it is on Nextel and Sprint mobile phones. Therefore, the majority of AT&T mobile customers cannot use Loopt. This is certainly a challenge to Loopt’s growth and development. Until nearly all mobile phones in the U.S. have GPS, mobile social networks which rely on this satellite technology will be hampered. Similarly, while cameras on mobile phones in the U.S. have become increasingly standardized, mobile video is less common. Thus mobile social services (e.g., Kyte, Pownce and Radar), which encourage the sharing of mobile video, may have less of a market for their services until mobile video becomes more available. A final challenge for mobile social networks in the U.S. is the pricing for mobile services. Most mobile phone users in the U.S. have on-going subscriptions or contracts with the mobile service providers rather than pre-paid mobile phone service, which is more common in the rest of the world (CTIA, 2008; Kokko, 2004). Therefore most people in the U.S. pay for their mobile phone use about 30 days after they have incurred the charges. (This is sometimes referred to as a post-paid system.) All of the mobile social services discussed here are “free” to use. “Free” here refers to the fact that users do not pay the mobile social service to join or to send messages through their system. This, however, does not mean that the mobile social services are entirely free to use.

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Mobile Social Networks and Services

Mobile phone users incur charges for each minute they speak, each text message they send, and each data bit they download. What sometimes can happen is that new mobile social network users will not realize how much they will use these services and how much it might cost them, especially if they go over their voice, text or data limits. Sometimes users do not realize they have gone over their limits until they receive their bills the following month at which point it is too late. They receive a mobile phone bill much larger than they expect and are required to pay for their use. This can sometimes lead new mobile social network users to change their plan to unlimited or at least increased voice, text or data services. In some circumstances, an exorbitant mobile phone bill can lead new users to stop using the mobile social network altogether (Humphreys, 2008). Despite warnings from the mobile social networks, this kind of opaque billing system may discourage mobile social network adoption and use.

SOLUTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Mobile social network adoption and usage are increasing despite challenges (Minney, 2007). There are several steps that users, developers and regulators can take to further encourage the growth of mobile social networks. In the past, privacy campaigns by privacy advocates and government regulators have helped to encourage a shift in privacy policies of Google (C.Y. Johnson, 2007). Similar public advocacy could encourage more transparency in privacy policies of mobile social networks. There has also been a recent move among colleges and universities in the U.S. to create recommendations for information management on social network sites. For example, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recommends that students be “conscientious” when posting messages on Facebook and MySpace and encourages students to reset the privacy settings

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to “avoid having your contact information given out to other companies” (University of WisconsinMadison, 2008). Similar privacy awareness campaigns may help mobile social network users to be conscientious about their privacy and mobile communication practices. With any emerging technology, technical features take time to develop and standardize. Companies that provide GPS-based mobile social services are betting that a GPS (Global Positioning System) will become an increasingly standardized feature on mobile phones. Pew’s Internet and American Life Project found that mobile mapping was one feature that most mobile phone users wanted but did not yet have (Rainie & Keeter, 2006). Given the demand for mapping features, GPS is likely to become a more common feature on mobile phones. For example, when Apple introduced its second generation of iPhones, it had added GPS to the phone’s capabilities. Another change to the iPhone 3G signifies a second potential trend in mobile communication which may help with standardization and compatibility. iPhone 2.0 software update added an App Store – an application which allows users to quickly and easily download files (German & Bell, 2008). The iPhone App Store which offers applications designed for iPhone may encourage further innovation, development, and adoption of mobile social services. As mobile social services gain in popularity, pricing will become increasingly important. From 1998 until 2007, the average monthly mobile phone bill in the U.S. ranged between $40 and $50 (CTIA, 2008). In February 2008 both AT&T and Verizon began to offer unlimited voice for $99 (AT&T, 2008; Verizon, 2008). Unlimited data are an additional charge. Therefore the unlimited plans are a significant increase in price from what mobile phone users have been typically paying for service. That said, these unlimited mobile services have decreased in price. While it is still greater than the average monthly mobile bill, the lowering of costs to $99 per month for unlimited voice suggests that unlimited services may become

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a more popular plan among U.S. mobile phone users. Unlimited mobile services for a set price is likely to encourage the adoption and use of mobile social services because people could use the services as much as possible and would know exactly how much it will cost them.

FUTURE TRENDS There are several important areas for both the development and research of mobile social networks. With GPS technology and the triangulation of cell phone towers, the location of mobile phone users is identifiable. This opens up possibilities for the collection and use of location-aware services, which could be quite helpful for mobile social network users to communicate and access new kinds of information. Location-based services are a growing area of mobile technology development. Mapping services and geotagging allow users to interact with the physical space around them in new mediated ways. Socialight is one early example of a mobile social network with location aware messaging. Another potential area for the future development of mobile social networks is among specific populations. Already the use of mobile social networks at high-tech conferences has begun to rise (McCarthy, 2007). Mobile social networks can improve information flow efficiency among groups of people trying to connect with one another. One could also imagine that mobile social networks could be helpful to the elderly and youth populations as a means of maintaining family communications. An at-risk population constitutes another potential group that might benefit from the use of mobile social networks. For example, experimental research suggests that Alcoholics Anonymous members are less likely to fail when they use mobile phones to contact their support networks in time of need (Campbell & Kelley, 2006).

CONCLUSION With the introduction of the iPhone in June 2007, the public imagination of the possibility of mobile computing blossomed in the U.S. People suddenly had a tangible example of a mobile phone through which one could easily access the web. As mobile hardware and software become more advanced and user-friendly, mobile social networks will continue to grow. These services will increasingly become useful communication tools through which people manage their social relations.

REFERENCES AT&T. (2008, February 19). AT&T to launch unlimited U.S. calling plan (AT&T press release). Retrieved July 16, 2008, from http://www.att. com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&n ewsarticleid=25197 Banjo, O., Hu, Y., & Sundar, S. S. (2006). Cell phone usage and social interaction with proximate others: Ringing in a theoretical model. Paper presented at the International Communication Association, Dresden, Germany. Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Boyd, D. (2004). Friendster and publicly articulated social networking. In Proceedings of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1279-1282). Vienna, Austria: ACM. Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd. ellison.html Retrieved July 16, 2008.

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Bull, M. (2004). ‘To each their own bubble’: Mobile spaces of sound in the city. In N. Couldry & A. McCarthy (Eds.), MediaSpace: Place, scale and culture in a media age (pp. 275-293). London: Routledge. Campbell, S. W., & Kelley, M. (2006). Mobile phone use in AA networks: An exploratory study. Journal of Applied Communication, 34(2), 191–208. doi:10.1080/00909880600574104 Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Twitter profile page. Retrieved July 15, 2008, from https://twitter.com/ MalcolmGladwell Goggin, G. (2006). Cell phone culture: Mobile technology in everyday life. New York: Routledge. Goodale, G. (2007, January 19). Students’ new best friend: ‘MoSoSo’. Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved July 16, 2008, from http://www. csmonitor.com/2007/0119/p11s02-stct.htm

Cohen, A. A., & Lemish, D. (2004, May). From flat tires to suicide bombings: Mobile phones and emergencies. Paper presented at the International Communication Association, New Orleans, LA.

Gross, L. P. (1973). Modes of communication and the acquisition of symbolic competence. In G. Gerbner, L. P. Gross, & W. H. Melody (Eds.), Communication technology and social policy (pp. 189-207). New York: Wiley.

CTIA. (2008). Semi-annual wireless industry survey: Annualized wireless industry survey results - December 1985 to December 2007. Washington, DC: CTIA-The Wireless Association.

Humphreys, L. (2003). Can you hear me now? A field study of cellphone usage in public space. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

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Humphreys, L. (2007). Mobile social networks and social practice: A case study of dodgeball. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/humphreys. html Retrieved July 16, 2008.

Ellison, N., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook ‘friends’: Exploring the relationship between college students’ use of online social networks and social capital. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/ Retrieved July 16, 2008. doi:10.1111/j.10836101.2007.00367.x

Humphreys, L. (2008). Mobile devices and social networking. In M. Hartmann, P. Rössler & J. Höflich (Eds.), After the mobile? Social changes and the development of mobile communication. Berlin, Germany: Frank & Timme.

German, K., & Bell, D. (2008). CNet editors’ review: Apple iPhone 3G - 16GB, white. Retrieved July 16, 2008, from http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/apple-iphone-3g16gb/4505-6452_7-33064512.html?tag=promo

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Ito, M., Okabe, D., & Matsuda, M. (Eds.). (2005). Personal, portable, pedestrian: Mobile phones in Japanese life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Iwatani, Y. (1998, June 11). Love: Japanese style. Wired News. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press.

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Johnson, C. Y. (2007, September 17). Social networking sites breaking free from the PC: Services offering cellphone links. The Boston Globe. Retrieved July 16, 2008, from http://www.boston. com/business/technology/articles/2007/09/17/ social_networking_sites_breaking_free_from_ the_pc/ Katz, J. E. (2003). Machines that become us: The social context of personal communication technology. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Katz, J. E. (2006). Magic in the air: Mobile communication and the transformation of social life. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Katz, J. E., & Aakhus, M. (Eds.). (2002). Perpetual contact: Mobile communication, private talk, public performance. New York: Cambridge University Press. Klaassen, A. (2006, October 19). Forward thinking R/GA looks even further into the future. Advertising Age. Retrieved October 26, 2006, from http:// adage.com/digital/article?article_id=112571

McCarthy, J. F. (2007). The challenges of recommending digital selves in physical spaces. In Proceedings of the 2007 ACM Conference on Recommender Systems, Minneapolis, MN (pp. 85-86). Minney, J. (2007). Mobile social networking has 12.3 million friends in the US and estern Europe (M:Metrics press release). Retrieved July 16, 2008, from http://www.mmetrics.com/press/pressrelease.aspx?article=20070815-socialnetworking Paulos, E., & Goodman, E. (2004, May). The familiar stranger: Anxiety, comfort, and play in public spaces. In Proceedings of CHI (pp. 223230). Vienna, Austria: ACM. Puro, J. P. (2002). Finland: A mobile culture. In J. E. Katz & M. Aakhus (Eds.), Perpetual contact: Mobile communication, private talk, public performance (pp. 19-29). New York: Cambridge University Press. Rainie, L., & Keeter, S. (2006). Americans and their cell phones. Washington, DC: Pew Internet and American Life.

Kokko, J. (2004). Mobile Internet charging: Prepaid vs. postpaid. Helsinki, Finland: Networking Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology.

Reuters. (1998, May 15). Bleep at first sight. Wired. Retrieved April 8, 2008, from http://www.wired. com/culture/lifestyle/news/1998/05/12342

Ling, R. (2004). The mobile connection: The cell phone’s impact on society. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.

Rheingold, H. (2002). Smart mobs: The next social revolution. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books.

Ling, R. (2008). New tech, new ties: How mobile communication is reshaping social cohesion Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lohr, S. (2005, May 4). How much is too much. The New York Times, Section G, 1. On the move: The role of cellular communications in American life. (2006). Ann Arbor, MI: Department of Communication Studies, University of Michigan.

Rosenbush, S. (2005, July 19). News Corp.’s place in MySpace. Business Week Online. Retrieved April 17, 2008, from http://www. businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2005/ tc20050719_5427_tc119.htm Saveri, A., Rheingold, H., & Vian, K. (2005). Technologies of cooperation. Palo Alto, CA: Institute for the Future. Tsai, E. (2008). Worldwide mobile phone subscriber forecast, 2008-2012. Taipei, Taiwan: Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute.

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University of Wisconsin-Madison. (2008). Using Facebook and MySpace. Division of University Housing. Retrieved July 16, 2008, from http:// www.housing.wisc.edu/parents/facebook.php Verizon. (2008, February 19). Verizon Wireless introduces new unlimited plans that are as worry free as the guarantee (Verizon press release). Retrieved July 16, 2008, from http://news.vzw. com/news/2008/02/pr2008-02-19.html Wellman, B., Quan-Haase, A., Boase, J., Chen, W., Hampton, K., Isla del Diaz, I., et al. (2003). The social affordances of the Internet for networked individualism. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 8(3). Retrieved July 16, 2008, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol8/issue3/wellman.html Wolverton, T. (2008, April 7). Calling the future: Cell phone pioneer sees ‘another revolution’. San Jose Mercury News. Retrieved April 10, 2008, from http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ ci_8837221 Ziv, N. D. (2009). Mobile social networks: A new locus of innovation. In C. Romm-Livermore & K. Setzekorn (Eds.), Social networking communities and e-dating services: Concepts and implications (pp. 44-59). Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Bluetooth: A wireless protocol which allows short-range connections to be made between mobile phones, laptops, and other portable devices. Global Positioning System (GPS): A satel-

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lite-based navigation system used to triangulate particular points on Earth using longitudes and latitudes; increasingly, GPS is used to identify mobile phone users’ locations, so as to access and share location-based information. Micro-Blog: A personal chronological log of thoughts, activities, or reflections which are limited in size (for example, to 140 characters). Mobile Blog (or Mo-Blog): A personal chronological log of thoughts, activities, or reflections sent from one’s mobile phone to either a website, blog, or mobile device; depending on the system, mo-blogs may include text, audio, still images, and video; mo-blogs are often micro-blogs Mobile Social Network: A mobile phonebased service that allows individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of users with whom they share a connection and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. Mobile Social Service: Mobile Internet systems that allow users to connect with others and create virtual communities. Mobile Social Software (or MoSoSo): A mobile phone application which supports social interaction among interconnected mobile phone users. Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS): Video or picture messages sent over mobile phone networks. Short Messaging Service (SMS): Text messages sent over mobile phone networks. Social Networking Services (SNS): Online services that facilitate social interaction and networking.

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Chapter 4

Social Media Marketing Web X.0 of Opportunities Lemi Baruh Kadir Has University, Turkey

ABSTRACT In recent years social media applications, which enable consumers to contribute to the world of online content, have grown in popularity. However, this growth is yet to be transformed into a sustainable commercial model. Starting with a brief overview of existing online advertising models, this chapter discusses the opportunities available for advertisers trying to reach consumers through social media. The chapter focuses on viral marketing as a viable option for marketers, reviews recent viral marketing campaigns, and offers recommendations for a successful implementation of social media marketing. In conclusion, the author examines future trends regarding the utilization of the emerging Semantic Web in marketing online.

INTRODUCTION The brief history of the World Wide Web is filled with stories of unprecedented commercial success as well as shattered dreams of hopeful online entrepreneurs. It should not be surprising that, just as their predecessors, Web 2.0 and social media also bring about important questions regarding their sustainability. On the one hand, since 2006, social media sites have been growing in number and popularity (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). For example, according to DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch004

comScore, a leading Internet information provider, as of December 2007 Facebook had close to 98 million unique visitors, and Fox Interactive Media, including MySpace, had more than 150 million. Similarly, recent years have seen a phenomenal growth in the popularity of weblogs (blogs): in 2007 every day, 175,000 new blogs were added to an estimated 67 million blogs that were already up and running (as cited in Rappaport, 2007). On the other hand, skeptics voice their belief that social media, despite their current popularity, may not have the staying power (“MySpace, Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites,” 2006).

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Social Media Marketing

An important component of skeptics’ concerns about the sustainability of social media pertains to the fact that there are no agreed upon ways of monetizing the rising popularity of social media (Allison, 2007; Hall, 2007). Perhaps, the most telling example of this problem is Facebook. Despite having a market value of around $15 billion, Facebook’s 2007 revenue was $150 million (McCarthy, 2008) – a considerably small share of the $21 billion online advertising industry. Then, the question of whether social media will be more than just a fad boils down to advertisers’ ability to utilize the unique opportunities presented by social media. Although advertisers and social media entrepreneurs are yet to agree on a marketing model for social media, recent discussions point to several important requirements that a successful model should accommodate. Given the decentralized architecture of the Internet in general and social media in particular, a central tenet of these recent debates concerns the relative merits of more conventional advertising methods and word of mouth (or word of “mouse”) based marketing approaches that cede control to the consumers. In the light of these debates, this chapter will start by summarizing online advertising methods. After this brief summary, the chapter will focus on the opportunities and challenges for online marketers that are brought about by the development of social media. Finally, the chapter will discuss viral marketing and integrated marketing communication principles to provide a roadmap for realizing the financial and marketing potential of Web 2.0.

BACKGROUND Online Advertising In its most traditional sense, advertising is defined as a paid form of communication appearing in media, usually with the purpose of reaching a large number of potential customers. Since 1993, when

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CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be available to anyone free of charge, advertisers experimented with different methods of reaching consumers online. Unsurprisingly, the first reaction of advertisers was to treat the World Wide Web as a natural extension of traditional media, such as newspapers and television. And, just as in conventional mass media, early online advertising methods, such as banners, pop-ups and interstitials, were characterized by intrusiveness and adoption of a one-way stimulus-response model within which information flows from the advertiser to the customer (McCoy, Everard, Polak, & Galletta, 2007; Rappaport, 2007). However, even in the early years of online advertising, signs of what was to come in interactive marketing were revealed. Shortly after banners became a popular online advertising method in 1994, keyword-activated “smart banners” were introduced. What set smart banners apart from their predecessors was that the contents of the banners were personalized in response to the search words entered by the users. As such, smart banners were one of the first examples of how content variability in new media (Manovich, 2001) can be utilized to customize information to consumers’ needs (Faber, Lee & Nana 2007).

Customization and Message Congruence in Interactive Media As noted by several researchers, content variability and the consequent ability to customize content according to the needs of the consumer are made possible by the interactive capabilities of new media (Baruh, 2007; Faber et al., 2007). Two important characteristics of interactive media are the ability to facilitate a two-way flow of communication and the related ability to track and store every bit of information about how consumers use a system (McCallister & Turow, 2002). Real-time information about how consumers use a medium, especially when combined with other data through data mining, enables marketers to

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extract profiles about individuals that can then be used to tailor messages and products. The ultimate aim of this process is to target different consumer groups with specific messages that can tie a product to their informational needs, lifestyles or predispositions. Extant literature on online targeting suggests that consumers will be more receptive to messages that are tailored as such (McCoy et al. 2007; Robinson, Wyscocka, & Hand, 2007). To a large extent, this higher receptivity is the result of being able to promote the “right” product, at the “right” time and place and the “right” tone. A case in point that supports these research findings is the success of Google’s AdWords, which accounts for 40% of online advertising spending. The premise of AdWords is that the marketers can reach motivated consumers by providing them with contextual advertising messages congruent with their online keyword searches (and presumably, their interests). Similarly, a widely known feature of online vendors such as Amazon.com is their customized product recommendation systems. The recommendation system these online vendors utilize is based on a data mining system called market-basket analysis (also called association discovery). The premise of this system is that the marketer can create cross-selling opportunities by identifying the product types that a customer would be interested in (e.g., microwave popcorn) on the basis of other products that he or she has already purchased or is purchasing (e.g., a DVD movie). As such, what the market-basket analysis algorithm does is to identify product clusters that are purchased together or sequentially using the product purchasing history of customers whose tastes are similar to a specific customer.

ONE STEP FURTHER: WEB 2.0 OF OPPORTUNITIES Customization and Data from Social Media As can be inferred from the discussion above, collecting information about consumers is an important prerequisite of customizing advertising messages in accordance with the informational needs and lifestyles of consumers. Certainly, data about individuals’ online media consumption and purchasing behavior, especially when combined with other sources of data such as credit history, provide marketers with an unprecedented capability to not only determine which customers to target (and avoid) but also when and how to target them. Within this context, social network sites, such as Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn, have a potential to extend what is already a large pool of data about consumers. Such social network sites are designed to allow users to create personal profiles and connect with other users, friends or strangers. And through the creation and perennial updating of their profiles, users of social network sites actively participate in the dissemination of information about themselves (Andrejevic, 2007; Solove, 2007). The types of information users of social network sites disclose include: information about their hobbies, interests, likes and dislikes, whom they associate with, a dinner they had a couple of days ago and, sometimes, disturbingly private details about their social and sexual lives. Blogs, another highly popular form of social media, are no different from social network websites. As Solove (2007) points out, any topic, any issue and any personal experience are fair game for more than 60 million bloggers around the world. The massive quantities of data that social media users reveal online are not left untapped by media companies and marketers. For example, MySpace has recently begun an effort to mine data from its more than 100 million users in order to better

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target advertising messages. Named as MySpace HyperTargetting, the system initially began mining data about general interest categories, such as sports and gaming, and is now further dividing interests into thousands of subcategories (Morrisey, 2007).

The Community Touch An important point to note with respect to the types of data available in social media is that the digital goldmine of information is not simply a more detailed version of data collected about consumers’ interests and behaviors in other forms of interactive media. Rather, in social media, the available data contain unprecedented details about the network affinities of users. The data about the network affinities of users can be utilized at two levels. First, through the “tell me about your friends and I’ll tell you about yourself” principle, marketers can make further refinements to consumers’ profiles based on the interests shared by members of the communities they belong to. Secondly, information about the communities that an individual belongs to can be used to identify the paths through which they can be reached. Recent marketing techniques devised by online vendors and social media outlets illustrate how information about social affinities can be used to reach consumers. For example, Amazon.com’s iLike application, a music service that markets new music and concerts to interested listeners, works by scanning the music libraries of its subscribers. The service connects like-minded listeners and promotes new music to users through add-ons such as Facebook’s iLike widget. Similarly, Facebook’s own Beacon platform tracks purchases Facebook users make on partnering online vendors and then informs users’ networks about the recent purchase (Klaassen & Creamer, 2007; Thompson, 2007; Tsai, 2008). In addition to leveraging existing social networks to disseminate marketing messages, some software applications, for example, Stealth Friend Finder automatically generate

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massive and targeted Facebook Friend Requests to directly connect with the consumers.

Web 2.0 of Opportunities: Viral Marketing in Social Media These examples of social targeting pinpoint the direction that marketing in social media can take. Rather than being an advertising distribution system, Beacon is a viral marketing tool that lets community members know what their co-members have purchased. In other words, with the Beacon system, the consumer, through the publication of his/her purchasing decision, assumes the role of an influencer. Subramani and Rajagopalan (2003) suggest that consumers may assume such a role either passively or actively. In the passive form, the consumer spreads the word simply by using or purchasing a product (as is the case when an e-mail from a Blackberry user contains a message saying the e-mail was sent using a Blackberry account). On the other hand, active viral marketing requires that consumers participate in the message dissemination process by contacting other potential customers (Clow & Baack, 2007). An important criticism of passive viral marketing systems in social media is that they fail to utilize an important characteristic of Web 2.0 in general and social media in particular. Instead of being a passive consumer of readily available content, Web 2.0 users are participants in both the creation and dissemination of content. Accordingly, despite utilizing social graphs to target messages more effectively, the “your friend just bought this book from Amazon.com” message is nevertheless an advertising method that affords the consumer very little power as a potential source of influence (Anderson, 2006; Windley, 2007). Considered from this perspective, a more appropriate way of utilizing the viral potential of social media users is to invite them to actively participate in promoting the product. First, existing research shows that close to a quarter of users of online social networks, such as Facebook, use

Social Media Marketing

these sites to influence other users (Webb, 2007). Second, as evidenced by Facebook users’ negative reaction to Beacon, social network sites are relatively intimate environments and advertising intrusion (especially given an overall mistrust for advertising messages) is not welcome (Clemons, Barnett, & Appadurai, 2007; Gillin, 2007; Hall, 2007). In contrast, 94% of online social network users find product recommendations from friends to be at least very worthwhile to listen to (MacKeltworth, 2007). This finding is not surprising since recommendations coming from friends, family members, or colleagues are more likely to be trustworthy and relevant to one’s needs (Clemons et al., 2007). In fact, according to a recent survey, along with the reputation of the manufacturer, recommendations from friends and family members are the biggest factor that influences purchasing decisions made by individuals (Klaassen & Creamer, 2007). Third, thanks to synchronous connections between multiple users, a computer-mediated word of mouth can reach a larger number of people than word of mouth in the brick and mortar world. As briefly mentioned before, in addition to these three important advantages of inviting social media users to actively disseminate marketing messages, product information, or recommendations, social media also provide marketers with an unprecedented capability to identify the individuals who would be the best candidates in a social network to act as viral marketers. Domingos (2005) suggests that in addition to actually liking a product, a suitable viral marketing candidate should have high connectivity and should be powerful as a source of influence. Using social network analyses (Hanneman & Riddle, 2005; Scott, 2000; Wasserman & Faust, 1995), data regarding personal affiliations and social network memberships can be utilized to identify opinion leaders (“hubs”) who are central to and powerful in a given network. Recently, there have been several attempts to apply social network analysis to social media to

identify social network influencers. For example, Spertus, Sahami, and Büyükkökten (2005) used network data from Orkut.com to identify members who could be used to recommend new communities to users. Similarly, in a study of Flickr and Yahoo360 networks, Kumar, Novak and Tomkins (2006) were able to distinguish between passive users and active inviters that contributed to the extension of the network. And recently, MySpace announced that it is constructing an “influencer” option for advertisers who could be interested in reaching users with active and large networks. To identify potential influencers, MySpace will use data regarding users’ group memberships and interests, their friends’ interests, level of network activity in a given network and other factors (Morrissey, 2007).

The Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective In 1976, Wayne DeLozier suggested that marketing communication was a process of creating an integrated group of stimuli with the purpose of evoking a set of desired responses. According to this integrated marketing communications perspective, which has been adopted by many companies since the 1980’s, rather than being considered in isolation from one another, each component of the marketing mix should be coordinated to present a unified image to consumers. Considered from this perspective, fulfilling the viral marketing promise of Web 2.0 and social media requires that the viral marketing effort be part of a greater scheme of corporate communications. In other words, rather than merely focusing on spreading the word, the viral marketing effort should fit the brand personality (Webb, 2007). A particular case illustrating this point is the “Top This TV Challenge” campaign of Heinz®. In this campaign, Heinz® invited consumers to produce 30-second TV commercials for Heinz® Ketchup and submit the commercials on YouTube. The winner of the contest, determined first by a panel

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of judges and then by the votes of consumers, was awarded $57,000 and a chance to get the commercial aired on national television. The premise of the campaign was not only that it fit the “fun” brand image of Heinz® Ketchup but also that the consumers would play a crucial role in disseminating Heinz Ketchup’s name. Just as intended, many of the 4,000 qualified contestants who posted their videos on YouTube (as required) also created MySpace and Facebook pages promoting their own videos and consequently Heinz Ketchup. Another example illustrating the connection between viral marketing and an integrated marketing communications approach that provides a fit between the marketing campaign and the organizational image is the “Download Day” organized by Mozilla Firefox in June 2008. Mozilla is a not for profit organization that is mostly known for its Firefox Web Browser (a challenger of the market leader, Internet Explorer). The organization is a self-proclaimed open source project that publicly shares the source codes of their own software for the development of new Internet applications. Unlike its major competitors, such as Internet Explorer and Safari, the Firefox Web Browser is positioned as an “organic browser” that has been developed through a collaborative process whereby thousands of software developers – the majority of which are not employed by Mozilla – contribute to the software. Likewise, the dissemination of Firefox largely relies on volunteers “spreading” the software. In June 2008, Mozilla created a Download Day event to promote the third version of its Firefox Web Browser. The purpose of the Download Day was to set a world record in the number of downloads in 24 hours. To inform would-be users about the event, Mozilla heavily utilized social media and viral marketing. Following the initial announcement, the word of mouth about the Download Day first quickly spread through social news aggregators such as DiggTM and Reddit.com. Then, the links in the social news aggregators forwarded interested users to the

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Download Day homepage. In addition to asking individuals to pledge to download Firefox on Download Day and providing an update on the number of individuals who pledged to download, the homepage also invited them to engage in viral marketing by inviting their social networks to the event via Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, promoting the event on microblogging Twitterlike websites or organizing “Download Fests” on university campuses. These two examples provide important insights regarding the criteria for a successful viral marketing campaign online (and in social media): 1.

2.

Campaign-Organizational Image Congruence: In the Download Day example, the event, the promoted goal (setting a world record) and the method of dissemination of the information of the event (through social media) were in line with Mozilla’s overall image as a non-corporate, decentralized and innovative organization that relies on volunteers and users for its promotion as well as software development. Similarly, the “Top This TV Challenge” campaign of Heinz® fits the “fun” brand image of Heinz® Ketchup. Inciting Virality and Buzz: This is the key for creating a pull rather than inducing a push in an organization’s marketing campaign. An attractive event (in this case a world record setting event) or a message is a crucial component in developing an organic viral marketing process. The ability to create buzz through the event will also increase the chances that the viral marketing campaign will supplement other marketing communication goals: such as, providing material for other promotional efforts or getting coverage in traditional media— the latter being especially important for Firefox given that Mozilla does not have a centrally controlled advertising budget to spend on conventional media. For example,

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3.

4.

the overwhelming interest in the Top This TV Challenge (with 5.2 million views) also helped create publicity for the company in the mainstream media and prompted Heinz® to repeat the challenge in 2008. Getting Consumers to be Personally Invested: Mozilla’s Download Day emphasized not only the possibility of a world record but that the consumers would be an integral part of this unique success. In this case, the prospects of being a part of a possible Guinness World Record-setting activity may have increased the chances that consumers identify with (and are invested in) not only the product or the brand but also the success of the campaign. Perhaps, for the contestants in the Heinz® Top This TV Challenge, the personal investment was even higher because their own success (in terms of getting enough votes to win the contest) partly depended on the popular votes they would get from other consumers. Creating Levels of Viral Involvement: In terms of options available for viral marketing, social media not only expand the available options but also create the possibility of multiple levels of viral involvement. For example, in the Heinz® Top This TV Challenge, the level of viral activity of a contestant that promotes his/her video will naturally be higher than a regular YouTube user who happens to come across a challenger’s video that is worth sharing with friends. The Mozilla’s Download Day event, on the other hand, systematically utilized the social media (and other venues) to create tiers of consumer involvement. For example, an enthusiastic Firefox user could go as far as organizing a download festival whereas a regular user of Facebook or MySpace could invite friends to pledge for the download on the Mozilla’s Download Day homepage.

FUTURE TRENDS As discussed in the preceding sections, a central tenet of the debates regarding the marketing potential of social media pertains to the balance that needs to be struck between the efficiency of automatic recommendation systems and the organic involvement created by the real community touch of viral marketing campaigns that invite consumers to actively participate in the dissemination of the marketing messages. On the one hand, systems such as Facebook’s Beacon platform and MySpace’s “influencer” option promise to deliver large-scale, automated word of mouth that can expand the reach of viral marketing campaigns. However, the perceived intrusiveness of such systems, as well as their tendency to use consumers as passive hubs to automatically relay marketing messages, may call into question the true virality of such advertising efforts, consequently reducing their appeal for consumers. Recent discussions regarding “Web 3.0” and the future of the Internet may point to the direction that this uneasy relationship between virality and automatic customization may take. Despite frequent disagreements regarding the definition of Web 3.0, an increasing number of commentators have started to use the concept interchangeably with the Semantic Web – a set of technologies that enable software agents to understand, interpret and extract knowledge from information, making it possible for them to complete “sophisticated tasks for users” (Berners-Lee, Hendler & Lassila, 2001). Michael Bloch provides a simple example explaining how the Semantic Web would work: You want to go out to dinner…and your car is in the shop… You issue a command for the agent to search for a restaurant serving Indian food within a 10-mile radius…You want a restaurant that has a 4 star rating issued by a well-known restaurant critic. Furthermore, you want the table booked and a cab to pick you up from your place. Additionally you want a call to be made

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to your phone once that’s all done; but you don’t want to be disturbed by the call as you’ll be in a meeting - just for the reservation details added to your phone organizer. (Bloch, 2007)

that potential customers arrive at as a result of the viral marketing effort.

CONCLUSION As this example suggests, the Semantic Web is more than a compilation of web pages. Rather, it is a network of systems and databases that can communicate with each other to perform tasks on an individual’s behalf. Moreover, as recent developments suggest, the Semantic Web will have the potential for subtler customization of information in accordance with the cognitive (and perhaps emotional) styles/needs of consumers. For example, an article by Hauser, Urban, Liberali and Braun (forthcoming) from MIT’s Sloan School of Management announces an algorithm that uses clickstream data to morph the website content and format to the cognitive style of its users. As evidenced by recently developed semantic web advertising applications (such as SemanticMatchTM – a semantic advertising platform that utilizes a natural language processing algorithm to understand content and sentiments and target advertising accordingly), when applied to online advertising, semantic capabilities can enhance customization, decrease errors that are associated with keyword targeted advertising and provide a more conversational interaction between the advertiser and the consumer. With respect to viral marketing, such advancements in language processing and customization can address an important shortcoming of passive virality by making it more personal. Whereas social network analyses aid the identification of hubs that can act as active viral marketers, improvements in natural language processing can prove beneficial in terms of understanding the communicative processes and dynamics within a social network. This information can help the marketing organization create different strategies to reach various potential hubs, create levels of viral involvement depending on the depth and the context of the communicative processes between network members, and customize the webpage

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In recent years, Web 2.0 applications that enable web users to contribute to the world of online content have grown in popularity. In 2008, the Top 10 most frequently visited web site list of Alexa Internet – a web traffic information service – consistently included several social media sites: namely, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Wikipedia and Orkut.com (2008). Despite their popular appeal, however, many of the Web 2.0 initiatives are still struggling to turn their popularity into financial success. What is important to note is that when it comes to monetizing social media, there are no magic formulas. However, as explained above, the interactive nature of social media, combined with consumers’ participation in the creation and dissemination of information, make viral marketing a viable candidate to fulfill the promise of a Web 2.0 of opportunities. In contrast to impersonal advertising methods that consumers do not trust and find intrusive, viral marketing through social media has the potential to be a personal, personable, participatory and trustworthy. source of information. Nonetheless, this should not be taken for granted that any and all viral marketing efforts in social media would be successful. Extant literature suggests that there are certain prerequisites to a successful implementation of a viral marketing campaign in social media. First, as Webb (2007) suggests, because the company is going to have to rely on consumers to push the message, the message (and the product) should be worth pushing. Second, as consumers grow more suspicious of traditional advertising methods, marketers engaging in viral marketing in social media should pay the utmost attention to keeping viral marketing free from centralized interference that can damage its credibility. For

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example, Coplan (2007) notes that to remain credible, consumer marketers should be “honest about their opinions good and bad, open about their affiliation – and unpaid” (p. 26). This second prerequisite of success in social media marketing is closely related to the third one: In the world of consumer marketers, companies should learn to “cede control to customers” (cited in Poynter, 2008, p. 12). Partially, this means that viral marketing may be mixed with negative word of mouth and backlash (Gillin, 2007; Giuliana, 2005). At the same time, both positive and negative word of mouth should be considered as an opportunity to engage in a conversation with customers. For example, recently Cadbury PLC decided to relaunch Wispa (a chocolate bar discontinued in 2003) as a response to demands from 14,000 Facebook members (Poynter, 2008). Finally, as evidenced by the recent negative public reaction to the inadequate privacy protection on Facebook, marketers should be aware of the relatively intimate nature of social network sites.

REFERENCES Alexa.com. (2008). Global top 500. Retrieved July 6, 2008, from http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/ top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none Allison, K. (2007). Facebook set for a delicate balancing act. Financial Times (North American Edition), 8.

Berners-Lee, T., Hendler, J., & Lassila, O. (2001). The Semantic Web. American Scientist. Retrieved June 3, 2008, from http://www.sciam.com/article. cfm?id=the-semantic-web. Bloch, M. (2007, July 28). The Semantic Web–Web 3.0. Retrieved June 3, 2008, from http://www. tamingthebeast.net/blog/online-world/semanticweb-30-0707.htm Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210–230. doi:10.1111/j.10836101.2007.00393.x Clemons, E. K., Barnett, S., & Appadurai, A. (2007). The future of advertising and the value of social networks: Some preliminary examinations. Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Electronic Commerce, Minneapolis, MN. Clow, K. E., & Baack, D. (2007). Integrated advertising, promotion, and marketing communications. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. ComScore, Inc. (2008). Top global Web properties. Retrieved February 19, 2008, from http://www. comscore.com/press/data.asp Coplan, J. H. (2007). Should friends pitch friends? Adweek, 48, 26–26. DeLozier, M. W. (1976). The marketing communications process. London: McGraw Hill.

Anderson, C. (2006). The log tail: How endless choice is creating unlimited demand. London: Random House Business Books.

Domingos, P. (2005). Mining social networks for viral marketing. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 20(1).

Andrejevic, M. (2007). iSpy: Surveillance and power in the interactive era. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.

Faber, R. J., Lee, M., & Nan, X. (2004). Advertising and the consumer information environment online. The American Behavioral Scientist, 48(4), 447–466. doi:10.1177/0002764204270281

Baruh, L. (2007). Read at your own risk: Shrinkage of privacy and interactive media. New Media & Society, 9(2), 187–211. doi:10.1177/1461444807072220

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Gillin, P. (2007). The new influencers: A marketer’s guide to the new social media. Sanger, CA: Quill Driver Books. Giuliana, D. (2005). Alternative marketing techniques for entrepreneurs. Retrieved January 3, 2008, from http://www.scribd.com/doc/35013/ Alternative-Marketing-Techniques-for-Entrepreneurs Hall, E. (2007). Study: Popularity of social networks hampers ad growth. Advertising Age, 78(31), 18. Hanneman, R., & Riddle, M. (2005). Introduction to social network methods. Retrieved December 17, 2007, from http://www.faculty.ucr. edu/~hanneman/nettext/C10_Centrality.html Hauser, J. R., Urban, G. L., Liberali, G., & Braun, M. (forthcoming). Website morphing. Marketing Science. Retrieved July 4, 2008, from http://web. mit.edu/hauser/www/Papers/Hauser_Urban_Liberali_Braun_Website_Morphing_May_2008. pdf Klaassen, A., & Creamer, M. (2007). Facebook to add shopping service to its menu. Advertising Age, 78(44), 39–40. Kumar, R., Novak, J., & Tomkins, A. (2006). Structure and evolution of online social networks. Paper presented at the 12th International Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Data Mining, New York. MacKelworth, T. (2007). Social networks: Evolution of the marketing paradigm. Retrieved March 12, 2008, from http://www.amacltd.com/pdf/ SocialNetworksWhitePaper.pdf Manovich, L. (2001). The language of new media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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McAllister, M. P., & Turow, J. (2002). New media and the commercial sphere: Two intersecting trends, five categories of concern. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 46(4), 505– 515. doi:10.1207/s15506878jobem4604_1 McCarthy, C. (2008, February 1). Report: Facebook raises ’08 revenue projection. Retrieved March 6, 2008, from http://www.news.com/830113577_3-9862792-36.html McCoy, S., Everard, A., Polak, P., & Galletta, D. F. (2007). The effects of online advertising. Communications of the ACM, 50(3), 84–88. doi:10.1145/1226736.1226740 Morrissey, B. (2007). Social network ads: Too close, too personal? Adweek, 48, 11–11. Poynter, R. (2008). Facebook: The future of networking with customers. International Journal of Market Research, 50(1), 11–12. Rappaport, S. D. (2007). Lessons from online practice: New advertising models. Journal of Advertising Research, 47(2), 135–141. doi:10.2501/ S0021849907070158 Robinson, H., Wyscocka, A., & Hand, C. (2007). Internet advertising effectiveness: The effect of design on click-through rates for banner ads. International Journal of Advertising, 26(4), 527–541. Scott, J. P. (2000). Social network analysis: A handbook. London: Sage Publications. Solove, D. J. (2007). The future of reputation: Gossip, rumor, and privacy on the Internet. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Spertus, E., Sahami, M., & Büyükkökten, O. (2005). Evaluating similarity measures: A largescale study in the Orkut social network. Paper presented at the 11th International Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Data Mining, Chicago, IL.

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Subramani, M. R., & Rajagopalan, B. (2003). Knowledge-sharing and influence in online social networks via viral marketing. Communications of the ACM, 46(12), 300–307. doi:10.1145/953460.953514 Thompson, R. J. (2007). Can’t skip this: Consumers acclimating to Internet ads. Brandweek, 48, 5. MySpace, Facebook and other social networking sites: Hot today, gone tomorrow? (2006, May 3). Knowledge@Wharton. Retrieved April 24, 2007, from http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article. cfm?articleid=1463 Tsai, J. (2008). Facebook’s about-face. Customer Relationship Management, 12(1), 17–18. Wasserman, S., & Faust, K. (1995). Social network analysis: Methods and applications. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Webb, G. (2007, October/November). A new future for brand marketing. The British Journal of Administrative Management, 13-15. Windley, P. (2007). The fine line between advertising and recommendations. Retrieved December 12, 2007, from http://blogs.zdnet.com/ BTL/?p=7134 Zarsky, T. Z. (2004). Desperately seeking solutions: Using implementation-based solutions for the troubles of information privacy in the age of data mining and the Internet Society. Maine Law Review, 56, 13–59.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Content Variability: Content variability refers to the notion that new media objects can exist in an infinite number of variations. This characteristic of new media is the result of the digital coding of content and consequently the modular nature of information. Data Mining: Data mining is a technologically

driven process of using algorithms to analyze data from multiple perspectives and extract meaningful patterns that can be used to predict future users behavior The market basket analysis system that Amazon.com uses to recommend new products to its customers on the basis of their past purchases is a widely known example of how data mining can be utilized in marketing. Interactive Media: Interactive media is a catch-all term that is used to describe the twoway flow of information between the content user and the content producer. In addition to enabling consumers to actively participate in the production of content, interactive media also allow for the collection of real time data, which can later be used for content customization. Semantic Web: The Semantic Web refers to a set of design principles, specifications, and web technologies that enable networked software agents to understand, interpret and communicate with each other to perform sophisticated tasks on behalf of users. Social Network Analysis: Social network analysis is a research methodology utilized in research to investigate the structure and patterns of the relationship between social agents. Examples of sources of relational data include: contacts, connections, and group ties which can be studied using quantitative methodologies. Social Network Sites: Social network sites are web-based systems that enable end-users to create online profiles, form associations with other users, and view other individuals’ profiles. Examples of social network sites include: Match. com, MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, Hi5, Bebo and LinkedIn. Viral Marketing: Viral marketing refers to a form of word of mouth marketing that relies on consumers relaying product information, a marketing message or a personal endorsement to other potential buyers. Web 2.0: Introduced in 2004, during a conference brainstorming session between O’Reilly Media and MediaLive International, Web 2.0 refers

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to the second generation of web-based content. Rather than merely pointing to technological changes in the infrastructure of the Internet, the concept of Web 2.0 underlines the notion that end-users can do much more than consume readily available content: The user of Web 2.0 also plays

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a key role in the creation and the dissemination of content. Popular examples include: video-sharing and photo-sharing sites, such as YouTube and Flickr; social network sites, such as Orkut, MySpace and Facebook; and Weblogs (blogs).

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Chapter 5

Citizen Marketing Ruth E. Brown The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA

ABSTRACT This chapter explores citizen marketing, which refers to consumers voluntarily posting product information based on their knowledge and experience. The product information may take the form of opinions, reviews, videos, ads, or entire websites; it is persuasive in that it meets a consumer need for credible peer review of products. Research into information spread by word-of-mouth provides the theoretical foundation for citizen marketing. Because it is found on the Internet where word spreads quickly, citizen marketing empowers individuals to bring change in the form of product design or price. The chapter examines how mainstream marketers are trying to channel citizen marketing through various means, including unfiltered peer-to-peer interaction on product websites.

INTRODUCTION Marketing is historically considered an activity that business performs to direct the flow of goods and services from producers to consumers. An integral part of marketing is sending consumers messages that promote goods and services. However, the growth of the Internet and the development of social software have turned the tables in this top-down process by ushering in the age of citizen marketing. Today consumers can speak their minds in a DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch005

communication medium that provides worldwide access. Businesses can receive these messages and adjust their products, pricing, promotion, and distribution accordingly. Citizen marketing refers to consumers voluntarily posting online product information, based on their experiences with the product. The information may be positive or negative and may be in the form of posts, reviews, consumer-generated advertisements, videos, or entire websites. Product information posted by citizen marketers can be found on Internet forums, bulletin boards, blogs, ratings or opinion sites, social networking sites,

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Citizen Marketing

video sharing sites, or even on mainstream marketers’ websites as consumer reviews or discussion boards. When individuals voluntarily create content about a product they have used and then share that information on the Internet, they are citizen marketers. Product here refers to goods, services, brands, companies, organizations, or people, such as political candidates. Consumers are increasingly turning to the Internet to receive more product information. Often what they seek is provided by citizen marketers, who are eager to share their experiences and their knowledge of a product. What makes their words so believable and so persuasive is the fact that citizen marketers are not on the company payroll and are not trying to sell anything. They are consumers who volunteer their time as writers, animators, designers, and videographers to express their opinions about products. They use their own talents and their own equipment to write or videotape reviews; create music, ads, podcasts, and videos; establish blogs, websites, photo sharing sites, and web forums. Sometimes their work looks amateurish, but sometimes it matches work done by professionals. Regardless, it is authentic, it is often passionate, and it has the potential to influence others. This chapter explores the theoretical foundation of citizen marketing, notes the importance of citizen marketing as it relates to consumer behavior, provides examples, and explains how businesses are trying to leverage this new electronic word-of-mouth.

BACKGROUND Today’s citizen marketers were envisioned by futurist Alvin Toffler (1980) who coined the term “prosumers,” thus blending the words producer and consumer. The term was used to describe consumers who educated themselves and became involved in the design and manufacture of products. This is what some citizen marketers are doing

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today as they critique products, make suggestions for improvement, and publish their ideas through posts on the Internet. The term customer evangelist was also used prior to citizen marketing and is still used by some to describe passionate consumers who hold positive beliefs about a company and a product and who voluntarily promote those beliefs to others through a variety of channels, including the Internet. Additionally, McConnell, and Huba (2003) indicated that customer evangelists regularly purchase the product for themselves and others, provide unsolicited praise or suggestions for improvements, forgive occasional problems with the product or the company, feel part of something bigger, and cannot be bought. The term vigilante marketing is used occasionally to describe consumers acting as self-appointed promoters of a brand. Munoz and Schau (2007) defined vigilante marketing more specifically as “unpaid advertising and marketing efforts, including one-to-one, one-to-many, and manyto-many commercially oriented communications undertaken by brand loyalists on behalf of the brand” (p. 35). Although a variety of terms exist, citizen marketing was chosen because it can include both positive and negative commentary, and because it parallels citizen journalism, a term widely used to describe ordinary people posting stories, news, photos or video, as well as comments and ideas for news or feature stories online. The phenomenon of citizen marketing, as it is true of other user-created content (UCC), was made possible by new web technology, dubbed Web 2.0, and by the more widespread availability and use of broadband Internet access. Similar to other UCC, citizen marketing and citizen journalism seem to be done without expectation of remuneration but rather for self-expression, as a way of connecting with peers who have close interests, or possibly to achieve a certain degree of notoriety. McConnell and Huba (2007) noted that about 10 percent of those who visit a website will interact

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with it, but only a very small percent will actually create content for it. Based on numbers reported by Wikipedia and Yahoo Groups, McConnell, and Huba postulated that content creators comprise about 1 percent of the site’s visitors, thus their decision to nickname citizen marketers “the One Percenters.” The One Percenters contributed because it was a hobby, and it was fun. Research done by Sun, Youn, Wu, and Kuntaraporn (2006) found that online leadership, which is provided by the One Percenters, had a positive relationship with innovativeness. This suggested that an innovative person was more likely to be an opinion leader. Online opinion leaders also were often found to be online opinion seekers who wanted to continually update their own information or add to their knowledge. Thus, opinion leaders had high Internet usage in relation to the subject about which they provided their opinions. Interestingly, the researchers found that Internet social relationship had a positive relationship with online opinion seeking but not with online opinion leadership.

CITIZEN MARKETERS CREATE AND INFLUENCE Citizen marketers have made their voices heard throughout the Internet by providing their opinions and sharing their experiences regarding products and services as well as companies and organizations. The Internet facilitates this by enabling the mechanism for individuals from all over the world to share useful information on a topic of mutual interest. What began as simple textual messages in chat rooms and on discussion boards has blossomed into full scale websites and videos produced by consumers who have a message to share. Regardless of whether that message is for or against a product or a company, it has the potential to reach large numbers of people throughout the world. The lone citizen marketer can speak his or her mind, usually to a group of people drawn

Figure 1. Citizen marketers voluntarily post product reviews, opinions, videos, ads, or entire websites on the Internet. These posts are found on forums, discussion boards, blogs, ratings sites, social networking sites, video-sharing sites, or even mainstream marketers’ websites. They are usually read by like-minded individuals and have the potential to influence.

together by similar interests, and this draws others into the conversation. Sometimes the conversation involves posts and links on a website; sometimes it involves forwarding a link, photo, or video. What starts out with one person can quickly spread to many (see Figure 1). The term citizen marketer was first used in a blog called “Creating Customer Evangelists,” written by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba (2005), who have researched the effects of word-of-mouth advertising on customer loyalty and used their blog to share ideas about citizen marketing. McConnell and Huba (2007 identified four types of citizen marketers: •

Filters collect information about a company or product from traditional and non-traditional media, package it with their own observations, links and summaries, and post it regularly. An example is iLounge.com. It started as iPodLounge.com in 2001, a few days after Apple Computer introduced the iPod. Ad revenue allowed the creator to quit his day job and to work fulltime on the

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•

•

•

site which now draws more than 4 million people a month of which 100,000 participate in forums. Fanatics praise and constructively critique to make their chosen brand as good as it can be. Some people might call them customer evangelists. They like to analyze progress of the product or brand and promote courses of action. McChronicles.blogspot. com is a good example because the creator critiques McDonald’s marketing and even conducts secret shopper reviews of McDonald’s stores on his travels. Facilitators are community builders who connect fans and build support groups. Cars are a favorite interest of facilitators who have created online forums for owners (and potential owners) of Chevrolet Corvettes, Ford Thunderbirds, Ford Explorers, Nissan Maximas, and BMW MiniCoopers, to name a few. Firecrackers pop up occasionally with a song, animation, ad, video, or other novelty that attracts a lot of attention at first but then dies out. McConnell and Huba call these citizen marketers “one-hit wonders” (p. 19). Go to YouTube.com for a plethora of examples. Some of the work there is obviously done by amateurs, but some is so professional that you cannot tell what is an advertisement produced by an agency and what is one created by a skilled amateur.

Some work by citizen marketers has found large audiences and some has not, but on the Internet it is not necessary for an audience to be large in order to be influential. Basically, citizen marketing is about consumers taking control and influencing people as a result of their own experiences and what they say online about those experiences. Often these postings lead to improvements in a product or its service. That is what happened in 2004 when Randy Cassingham wrote in his “This Is True” blog about a new Dell

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laptop computer he had just purchased and with which he was so dissatisfied that he added a page to his website specifically to talk about it and to allow readers to post their comments. Many readers participated in the ongoing discussion, which led to Dell executives calling to apologize. The company sent a service man with parts. All of these activities were documented on the blog, along with Cassingham’s own observations and conclusions (Cassingham, 2007). A more recent example is when Steve Jobs announced on Sept. 5, 2007, just ten weeks after the iPhone was introduced, that Apple was cutting the price of the iPhone by $200. Blogs and web forums erupted in mass consternation as customers who had purchased their iPhones prior to the price break aired their anger. These postings were enough to force Jobs to issue an apology on the Apple website and provide a $100 credit on Apple products for customers who had purchased the iPhone at the initial price (Musgrove, 2007). Each of the above is an example of citizen marketers exerting their cumulative power to influence change. They accomplished something that individuals alone could not have done. They are active consumers; sometimes the information on which they act originates with the consumer, as in the case of the Dell laptop, and sometimes it originates with the company, as in the case of the iPhone price cut. From there, the message is spread to other interested consumers who discuss the matter and act accordingly. Spreading the message through the Internet is often referred to as using electronic word-of-mouth or eWOM (Hung & Li, 2007).

WORD-OF-MOUTH THEORY PROVIDES FOUNDATION Theories that provide the foundation for citizen marketing involve research on word-of-mouth and how it affects consumer behavior. Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) found word-of-mouth to be a

Citizen Marketing

far greater influence on consumers than advertising or personal selling. The old adage that “your best salesman is a satisfied customer” was tested by Engel, Kegerreis, and Blackwell (1969), who studied innovators and found that nearly 60 percent believed word-of-mouth communication was the single most effective source in their decision to adopt an innovation. A primary reason for the impact that wordof-mouth has on consumers is its credibility. Consumer recommendations were deemed the most credible form of advertising by 78 percent of global respondents who participated in a 2007 Nielsen Survey. The recommendation of someone who has used the product is the most trusted source of information when consumers are deciding which products or services to buy, according to David McCallum, the global managing director for Nielsen’s Customized Research Services (Nielsen Online Global Consumer Study, 2007). Citizen marketers use electronic word-ofmouth to exchange a large quantity of diverse information that is not provided by traditional marketing communication as they discuss a branded product from multiple perspectives, such as price, design, reputation, effectiveness, and problem areas. They report their experiences and often compare them to less well-known competing brands. Although product information is often discussed in online forums, consumer reviews are particularly popular sources of this type of information. Schindler and Bickart (2005) found that consumers used and appreciated the convenience of an online channel for information input and decision making. In fact, the researchers reported that consumer-generated information that was gleaned online influenced every stage of the decisionmaking process from problem recognition through consideration, alternative evaluation, decision, and post-decision processes. They argued that a consumer’s mention of a product or its benefit could stimulate product recognition, a consumer’s ideas for alternatives could add to the consideration set, and a consumer’s experience with a product

could lead to an alternative being advanced or eliminated during the alternative evaluation. Also, mention of attributes important to the potential buyer could affect the purchase decision. After the purchase is made, online word-of-mouth could increase satisfaction with the purchase by providing reassuring positive information. Although their research focused on medium and high involvement decisions, Schindler and Bickart stressed that low involvement decisions involving entertainment, such as movie reviews, had similar results. It follows then, that positive consumer endorsements enhance the audience’s attitudes toward the endorsed product (Wang, 2005). Wang discovered that even though information provided by institutions was perceived by the audience as having more expertise than information provided by regular consumers, audiences were shifting their reliance toward regular consumers’ positive endorsements and credibility when it was time to make their decisions. Thus it appears that citizen marketers’ postings are important in helping consumers make decisions about products. Speed, convenience, and one-to-many reach are benefits of online word-of-mouth and citizen marketing, but so is ease in forwarding. Sun, Youn, Wu and Kuntaraporn (2006) found that online word-of-mouth led to online forwarding, which can be one-to-one or one-to-many. In addition, they found that online forwarding led to increased online chatting, which has the potential to reach a broader audience than forwarding. Online chatting is also called “buzz” (see Figure 2). When buzz was studied by Niederhoffer, Mooth, Wiesenfeld, and Gordon (2007), five key themes were found. These themes are as follows: a minority of new consumer packaged good brands generated a majority of the buzz, new product buzz usually preceded sales, strong new product buzz usually occurred in tandem with the strong use of traditional media, brand distinctiveness and strong category presence could predict buzz, and strong buzz appeared to drive sales.

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Citizen Marketing

Figure 2. One citizen marketer posts product information, which is discussed by a group of like-minded consumers, some of whom forward the information to others who discuss and forward it to additional individuals or groups. One post can quickly reach many individuals and create buzz.

BUSINESSES ATTEMPT TO LEVERAGE CONSUMER POWER Businesses saw the potential influence of these third-party endorsers and wanted to channel their power to increase positive buzz. This is where conversation marketing entered the picture. The term conversation marketing has been used frequently since publication of “The Cluetrain Manifesto” on Cluetrain.com. Now a book (Levine, Locke, Searls, & Weinberger, 2001), the manifesto declared that markets are actually conversations. These markets consist of human beings rather than geographic segments. The manifesto proclaimed that the Internet enables the exchange of knowledge through networked conversations, which results in smarter, more informed, and more organized markets. In studying promotional chat, Mayzlin (2006) found that anonymity on the Internet allows firms to directly manipulate conversations between and among consumers, but those messages can still be informative. Unlike traditional media, firms with lower quality merchandise engage in more promotional chat because they don’t get the free publicity that is often awarded superior products with competitive advantages. To help business capitalize on this new idea, Dave Balter founded BzzAgent in 2001 to create a network of unpaid citizen marketers who would utilize word-of-mouth to promote clients. Through

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its website, BzzAgents of all ages are recruited, trained, and kept up-to-date on activities in which they can participate. All participation is voluntary and involves conversing with friends online or offline about a specified product. BzzAgents are supposed to identify themselves upfront and be honest. They are encouraged to talk up the product but not to close the sale, and they are asked to report their activities after logging onto the BzzAgents website. Their only remuneration involves special offers and discounts for themselves and their friends (BzzAgent, 2007). They are a reincarnation of citizen marketers, but a breed that has been harnessed for specific marketing purposes. BzzAgent methods are in line with the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s Code of Ethics, adopted in 2005, which states that consumer protection and respect are of utmost importance. The essence of the code is “the Honesty ROI” which includes honesty of relationship (say for whom you are speaking), honesty of opinion (say what you believe), and honesty of identity (WOMMA, 2005). However, “faux citizen marketers” can now be found on the Internet. Some of the faux citizen marketers are consumers who signed up at PayPerPost.com to earn $8 or more for each “opportunity.” The PayPerPost (PPP) website promises that a little hard work blogging can easily bring $500 per month, and it shows the amounts

Citizen Marketing

earned by the top three bloggers, usually $1,500 to $2,000 apiece. Some of these bloggers tip off their readers with a PPP before the product reference, and some of the blogs have a disclosure box, which states that the blog is supported by a company, organization, or group of organizations (Frazier, 2006). Although many of the PayPerPost mentions use a neutral tone, posts by enthusiastic first-time faux citizen marketers can overflow with enthusiasm. Research by Shimp, Wood, and Smarandescu (2007) warns that consumers who exaggerate the benefits or experience of a product risk mitigating the evaluation. The authors emphasized that sometimes the exaggeration occurs because of consumers’ expectations of what a testimonial should be. Other times the exaggeration occurs because consumers want to win a prize or other incentive offered by the company for participation. Authenticity and credibility are important components of citizen marketing and factor into believability. Advertisers who log onto a discussion board as “newbies” and quickly ask a question about a product or give a favorable recommendation on a product lack the authenticity of the long-time discussion board members and are often summarily dismissed by the members who see them for the intruders that they are. Public relations professionals, too, are sometimes discovered posing as citizen marketers. A two-minute video that poked fun of Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was uploaded on YouTube. com in 2006, supposedly by a 29-year-old from California. However, it was later found to be the work of a public relations firm whose client was ExxonMobil (Fernando, 2007). Consumer-generated advertisements are another piece of the citizen marketing phenomenon that businesses seek to channel. A few companies have embraced consumer-generated advertisements with excellent results. In 2005, Converse asked customers to submit short films that showed their love of the sneakers. At least 750 films were

submitted from 20 countries. Some of the films were chosen to air on cable channels, and many were uploaded to Conversegallery.com (Jeffers, 2005). However, when Chevy Tahoe tried something similar the next year, providing video clips of the product for individuals to add text, some citizen marketers seized the opportunity to send negative messages, such as charging General Motors with contributing to global warming; then they uploaded the videos to YouTube.com. The videos had thousands of views, thanks in part to the publicity they generated in traditional media (Sandoval, 2006). The Super Bowl provided a new venue for consumer-generated advertisements in 2007. That is when Frito-Lay aired the winner of its contest for Doritos ads. Learning from the Chevy Tahoe experience, the Frito-Lay contest had more guidelines and a filter with the winner being selected by an online vote after the company chose the five finalists (Doritos, 2006).

FUTURE TRENDS Mainstream marketers appear to be following the lead of conventional media, which were challenged by citizen journalists. In response, media organizations shifted from creating all of their own online content to providing the framework for citizens to publish and to offer feedback on the media websites. The media made their websites more interactive in order to receive citizen input and also to better enable citizens to forward media-provided stories, pictures, and video. New technology is now seen by the media as a way to reconnect with audiences through journalist blogs and citizen input, which they say is making journalism better (Loeschner, 2008). Marketers, too, are changing their strategies to encourage citizen interaction. Schindler and Bickart (2001) found that online forums were much more effective in generating product interest than corporate websites. They claimed that the forums were simply better posi-

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tioned to pique readers’ interest in the product category than were the corporate websites. However, corporate websites are now attempting to create their own forums and their own communities of passionate consumers. This involves taking a “hands-off” approach and allowing consumers to vent about the negative as well as extol the positive aspects of the product. The “hands-off” approach provides authenticity yet allows the marketer to easily monitor the site, seeking ways to improve the product. BMW has done this successfully with its bmwboard.com where owners discuss everything from mileage to turbo noise and rust on wheel hubs. Members of communities on Cisco and Dell websites help each other solve hardware and software problems before contacting customer service. By monitoring the communities, the companies can quickly and easily learn about problems that need to be addressed as customers with various skill levels continually test their products in a variety of environments. Amazon.com is another example of a company attempting to facilitate citizen marketing. Already a leader in textual product reviews, it added the capability to upload video reviews of products plus a photo and profile of each volunteer reviewer to make the reviewer seem more like a friend. In addition, it has created online communities for people of similar interests to gather and discuss those interests, generally as they relate to Amazon products or services. Research shows that consumers who post messages or product reviews visit those community websites nine times more often than they visit websites without communities (Foux, 2005). Customer communities are becoming a vital asset for companies that seek to gain more effective customer insights faster, respond more effectively to greater customer expectations driven by the Internet and reformulate communications in light of fragmenting traditional mass-media channels. Citizen marketing will continue to grow in

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quantity, quality, and importance. “The power is moving to the customer. And ultimately, the customers will become the marketplace,” according to Greg Toledo, manager of business development at Altrec.com, Inc. (Demery, 2005, p. 3). His outdoor gear company hoped to use this strategy to their advantage by building a quasi-social network site that included customer-submitted content and linked recommended products to buy pages. “The effect of like-minded consumers sharing product information and being able to act on that information and purchase their friend’s recommendations in one destination is explosive,” said Neel Grover, president of Buy.com, who sees social networking as a catalyst for the future of online retail commerce (Demery, 2005). Facebook tried a similar idea in November 2007 when it implemented a new technology, dubbed Beacon, which tracked products that Facebook users viewed and purchased on other websites. Purchases were then announced by Facebook to friends of the purchasers. Although this could have been a powerful tool, Facebook users were upset because they did not realize that their purchases would be made known. An online petition, signed by more than 50,000 Facebook users, caused the company to announce that it would no longer send such a message without explicit approval (Story and Stone, 2007). Certainly, as more new methods of marketing online are tried, some will fail while others succeed, but the power of the consumer – of citizen marketers making their opinions known – has already been felt and must now be dealt with by corporations.

CONCLUSION Citizen marketers have already influenced many consumers and businesses and will continue to do so faster and in greater numbers as more consumers go to the web for product information. Forums, blogs, and product websites administered

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by passionate consumers are being monitored by company personnel who want to know what consumers think of their products and who need to manage the company’s customer relations. The two-way communication enabled by the Internet and social interaction technologies also provides opportunities for businesses to engage in customer relationship building, which has the potential to reinvigorate brands. “Opportunities to reach out, even to those who don’t like your brand, can have positive consequences,” according to Hanlon and Hawkins (2008). “Reaching out conveys confidence, accessibility, respect and authenticity to people both inside and outside of the brand community” (p. 15). They advised to stop preaching to the audience, and start conversing with its members. Businesses and organizations should consider how to bring citizen marketers into the fold and make them customer evangelists. McConnell and Huba (2003) suggest this can be done by gathering customer feedback, sharing knowledge freely, building word-of-mouth networks, creating community, devising smaller specialized offerings to hook customers, and focusing on making the world or the industry better. It should be noted, though, that a cadre of citizen marketers will probably never be brought into the fold by corporations because they want to remain independent, operating as individual voices, and collecting and disseminating information from other individual voices to provide product information to consumers worldwide. This is their hobby, this is their passion, and this is their fun.

Burston-Marsteller. (2001). The power of online influencers, your company’s newest stakeholder group; the power of e-fluentials. Retrieved March 28, 2008, from http://www.efluentials.com BzzAgent. (2007). Our company. About agents. Retrieved January 21, 2008, from http://www. bzzagent.com/ Cassingham, R. (2007). Dell hell. This is true. Retrieved March 17, 2008, from http://www. thisistrue.com/dellhell.html Demery, P. (2005). Where everyone becomes an advertiser. Retrieved March 1, 2008, from http:// www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=13712 Doritos. (2007). Create your own Super Bowl ad campaign. Retrieved January 22, 2008, from http://www.superbowlads.us/2006/12/doritos_2007_cr.html Engel, J. F., Kegerreis, R. J., & Blackwell, R. D. (1969). Word-of-mouth communication by the innovator. Journal of Marketing, 33(3), 15–19. doi:10.2307/1248475 Fernando, A. (2007, January/February). Social media change the rules. Communication World, 9-10. Retrieved March 17, 2008, from http:// findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_1_24/ ai_n27101707/pg_2?tag=artBody;col1 Foux, G. (2005). Customer communities herald new ground rules for successful marketing. Journal of Direct . Data and Digital Marketing Practice, 7(2), 112–121. doi:10.1057/palgrave. dddmp.4340515

REFERENCES

Frazier, M. (2006). Want to build up blog buzz? Start writing checks for $8. Advertising Age, 77(44), 3.

Bulik, B. S. (2007, October 15). Nintendo is Ad Age’s marketer of the year. Advertising Age, News, p. 1.

Hanlon, P., & Hawkins, J. (2008). Expand your brand community online. Advertising Age, 79(1), 14–15.

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Hung, K., & Li, S. (2007). The influence of eWOM on virtual consumer communities: Social capital, consumer learning, and behavioral outcomes. Journal of Advertising Research, 47(4), 485–495. doi:10.2501/S002184990707050X

Niederhoffer, K., Mooth, R., Wiesenfeld, D., & Gordon, J. (2007). The origin and impact of CPG new-product buzz: Emerging trends and implications. Journal of Advertising Research, 47(4), 420–426. doi:10.2501/S0021849907070432

Jeffers, M. (2005, May 16). Word on the street. Adweek, 46(19).

Nielsen Online Global Consumer Study. (2007). Word-of-mouth the most powerful selling tool: Nielsen global survey. Retrieved February 25, 2008, from http://www.nielsen.com/media/2007/ pr_071001.html

Katz, E., & Lazarsfeld, P. F. (1955). Personal influence: The part played by people in the flow of mass communication. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Locke, C., Levine, F., Searls, D., & Weinberger, D. (2001). The cluetrain manifesto: The end of business as usual. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing. Loeschner, J. (2008, March 28). Research brief: The troubled news media. Center for Media Research. Retrieved March 28, 2008, from http:// blogs.mediapost.com/research_brief/?p=1670 Mayzlin, D. (2006). Promotional chat on the Internet. Marketing Science, 35(2), 155–163. doi:10.1287/mksc.1050.0137 McConnell, B., & Huba, J. (2003). Creating customer evangelists: How loyal customers become a volunteer sales force. Chicago, IL: Dearborn Trade Publishing. McConnell, B., & Huba, J. (2005). Creating customer evangelists (blog). Retrieved January 21, 2008, from http://www.creatingcustomerevangelists.com/about.asp McConnell, B., & Huba, J. (2007). Citizen marketers: When people are the message. Chicago, IL: Kaplan Publishing. Musgrove, M. (2007, September 7). Hi, it’s Steve. Sorry for the price cut. Take a credit. The Washington Post, p. D01.

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Sandoval, G. (2006, April 3). GM slow to react to nasty ads. Retrieved January 21, 2008, from http://www.news.cnet.com Muñiz, A. M. Jr, & Schau, H. J. (2007). Vigilante marketing and consumer-created communications. Journal of Advertising, 36(3), 35–50. doi:doi:10.2753/JOA0091-3367360303 Schindler, R. M., & Bickart, B. (2001). Internet forums as influential sources of consumer information. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 15(3), 31–40. doi:10.1002/dir.1014 Schindler, R. M., & Bickart, B. (2005). Published word of mouth: Referable, consumer-generated information on the Internet. In C. P. Haugtvedt, K. A. Machleit, & R. F. Yalch (Eds.), Online consumer psychology: Understanding and influencing consumer behavior in the virtual world (pp. 35-54). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Shimp, T., Wood, S., & Smarandescu, L. (2007). Self-generated advertisements: Testimonials and the perils of consumer exaggeration. Journal of Advertising Research, 47(4), 453–460. doi:10.2501/ S002184990707047X Story, L., & Stone, B. (2007, November 30). Facebook retreats on online tracking. The New York Times. Retrieved March 17, 2008, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/ technology/30face.html

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Sun, T., Youn, S., Wu, G., & Kuntaraporn, M. (2006). Online word-of-mouth (or mouse): An exploration of its antecedents and consequences. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11, 1104–1127. doi:10.1111/j.10836101.2006.00310.x Toffler, A. (1980). The third wave. New York: Bantam Books. Wang, A. (2005). The effects of expert and consumer endorsements on audience response. Journal of Advertising Research, 45(4), 402–412. doi:10.1017/S0021849905050452 Word of Mouth Marketing Association. (WOMMA). (2005). Ethics code. Retrieved March 10, 2008, from http://www.womma.org/ethicscode/

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Buzz: Online conversations and discussions between like-minded consumers. Citizen Journalism: Individuals voluntarily writing stories or opinion pieces, taking photos or video, and posting them online.

Citizen Marketing: Individuals voluntarily posting information, reviews, advertisements, and videos online in order to share their experiences regarding a particular product.. Consumer-Generated Advertisements: Advertisements created by consumers with or without encouragement (such as contests). Conversation Marketing: Use of social media by corporate marketers to promote products or brands. Customer Evangelists: Consumers who are positively passionate about a particular product and who choose to voluntarily share their experience with others both online and offline. Electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM): Person-to-person communication that occurs over the Internet or another electronic form of communication. Prosumer: A combination of the words producer and consumer used to describe consumers who become involved in the design and manufacture of customized products. Vigilante Marketing: Voluntary advertising and marketing efforts by brand loyalists on behalf of the brand.

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Chapter 6

The Past, Present, and Future of Podcasting Joseph E. Burns Southeastern Louisiana University, USA

ABSTRACT Thanks to the friendship of an XML programmer and an ex-MTV video jock, the first podcast took place in July of 2003 by automatically streaming a single audio file half way around the world. Four months later Apple Computer, Inc. proved that its personal listening device, the iPod, could synch with a new program called iTunes and download files using the same technology. Since then podcasting has grown at a remarkable rate. In 2007, over 65 million people had used an RSS feed to download a podcast. Literally, millions of podcasts are currently available covering every topic imaginable. The broadcast media have begun to use podcasting as a method of time shifting programming. Educators are using podcasting for reaching out to students. Businesses are using podcasting as a marketing tool. Music artists are using the format to promote themselves and sell their records. The commercial future of podcasting appears to be in the area of advertising and broadcasting.

INTRODUCTION Podcasting, a Lewis Carroll-style portmanteau word created out of the brand name iPod and the term broadcasting is a distinctive area within social interaction technology. Although podcasting often employs multi-user social software application such as iTunes to distribute content, that content is often listened to or viewed within the cocooning world of DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch006

a personal audio/video devise (Kay, 2005; Kuster, 2007; Sarrel, 2007). The upload or the download is the interaction, and often the download does not involve a user at all. Podcasts can be pushed to, or pulled by, a user incorporating Really Simple Syndication (RSS) subscription software scripts that gather and update audio and video files automatically (Go, 2007; Holtz, 2008). Once the content has been served, the interaction can end there. The user listens to or views the file, deletes it, and waits for the next episode. However,

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The Past, Present, and Future of Podcasting

because a podcast audio or video file is digital and in a format common to the Internet, normally MP3, that file can go viral being reposted, edited, linked to through social sites (such as YouTube, Facebook, or MySpace), or moved around the Internet through email or by some other social interaction means (Copeland, 2008). Podcasts are often free yet many times involve a fee. They are seen as a low-cost method for unsigned musicians to present themselves to a worldwide audience yet are used by the music licensing firms ASCAP and BMI and many national radio talk shows as a new subscription revenue stream. Local broadcast radio seems to be rushing to offer its programming through podcasting to allow its audience to listen to time shifted content claiming the audience consume “what they want, when they want” (Burns, 2007). Yet at the same time those same stations want the Arbitron Rating Service to find a method of accurately measuring when the audience is listening to that time shifted programming in order to track it for advertising purposes. Podcasts are global yet they are enjoyed individually. Podcasts are used by the largest broadcast entities in the world but are easy enough for a high school student to create. They are used for entertainment, education, instruction, profit and just to pass the time. Podcasting is a strange dichotomy and yet a viable and interesting section of social interaction technology.

BACKGROUND The concept of offering packets of audio and video, known generally as files or episodes, for download has been in use since the general public began using the Internet. Yet, simply offering a file for download through an Internet server or over email is not specifically part of the history of podcasting. What we know today as podcasting must include the use of syndication feed enclosures or the ability to deliver the files as part

of a subscription process. This is why the word broadcast is used to make up the term podcasting (Overton, 2006). The earliest demonstration of what we know today as podcasting can be traced back to late 2000 and the convergence of programmer Dave Winer’s RSS format and multiple audiobloggers, including ex-MTV Video Jock Adam Curry (Christopher, 2006).-Winer’s RSS format was, and is today, a small program written in Extensible Markup Language (XML) that allowed users to create a subscription link to a server in order to automatically download updating files (Joly, 2007; Lopresti, 2007; McCormick, 2007). Curry and others were running what were termed audioblogs, Internet web logs in audio packet formats available for download. Audiobloggers were interested in Winer’s RSS program because through it, a user would only need to install the XML program once. From that point on, the subscription would automatically update on a timely basis set up by the audioblog. The testing proved successful, yet the files were still being played on stationary computers. The technology that would free the user to move was about to be released. In October of 2001, less than a year after Winer had shown the viability of the RSS format, Apple Computer, Inc. began marketing the iPod (Kahney, 2006). According to Bob Doyle (2005), webmaster of skyBuilders.com, in July of 2003 his server hosted the first podcast that followed the format we know today. The podcasted file was an interview of Dave Winer by Boston-area reporter Christopher Lydon. The file was streamed automatically through RSS to Adam Curry’s iPod in Europe. The experiment’s success moved Winer to write the first widely available RSS file-sharing program, iPodder. Four months later at the first BloggerCon 2003 conference (October 4-5, 2003, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA).Kevin Marks, a programmer working for Apple Computer demonstrated how to download RSS-enclosed audio

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files into the iTunes audio player and synch the player with the new Apple iPod audio devise. The demonstration can be viewed in podcast format at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ml/output.pl/35512/ stream/temp.ram. Now the technology was in place but the concept needed a name. A February 2004 article by Ben Hammersley (2004) on the The Guardian. co.uk, titled “Audible Revolution,” asked what name should be given to the audio interviews by Christopher Lydon, noted above, that were being distributed through RSS and the new iPodder software. The article suggested: audioblogging, guerilla media, and the now accepted podcasting.

RSS: Really Simple Syndication RSS, the concept of using an Extensible Markup Language (XML) script to create a feed from a server to your computer, known in podcasting as subscribing, has larger uses than just helping you to get your favorite radio show or the latest news program. When a user clicks to start an RSS subscription, he or she enacts a small program that creates a feed, or channel, that makes a connection between the server and his or her computer. However, that feed does not always have to be just a single feed. The feed can be one of many. It can be what is known as aggregate. Feed aggregators, also known as RSS feed readers and news aggregators, are programs that allow a user to search through numerous podcasts in various genres choosing what he or she would like to read (What is RSS?, 2008). Using one is akin to creating your own morning newspaper. The program aggregates every RSS channel the user chooses and displays what it finds in a format chosen by the user. There are currently over 100 feed aggregators available (News on Feeds, 2008). The most popular include Amphetadesk, FeedReader, and NewsGator for Windows, My Yahoo, Bloglines, and Google Reader. Advancements in the feed aggregators appear

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to be in the area of search aggregators that will actually search out RSS feeds for the user under a set of parameters set by the user and RSS-Narrators that will take aggregated text podcasts and convert them into MP3 audio files to be loaded onto portable digital players.

PODCASTING IN CURRENT USE Since the first podcast in 2003, little has changed regarding how the hardware and software of podcasting communicates. What has changed is the amount of competition. RSS, in an updated form, RSS 2.0, is still the dominant method of creating podcasting subscriptions, although a new syndication format named “ATOM” has come into the market (Fichter, 2004; McMahon, 2006). While iTunes is still the dominant “podcatcher” as well, close to 100 competitors exist (including Juice, Doppler, AudioShell, Newzee). The Zune Marketplace, built to serve customers of the Microsoft Zune media player, is attempting to take market share (Bennington, 2007; Dahl, 2008). What has changed dramatically since 2003 are the almost staggering numbers of podcasts users have to choose from, the number of people subscribing, and how quickly that number has grown (Bullis, 2005). Less than one year after Kevin Marks demonstrated the viability of subscribing to podcasts through iTunes, Apple announced that the software had over one million podcast subscriptions (AppleInsider Staff, 2005). In January of 2006, Edison Media Research suggested the number of users subscribing to podcasts, not just those using iTunes, was 27 million (Edison Media Research, 2006). Then in November of that same year, Pew Research Center suggested that 12% of all Internet users had subscribed to a podcast putting the total number at a suggested 65 million users (Madden, 2006). With the actual number of podcasts available being in the multi-millions, podcasting search engines, outside of the iTunes search capabilities,

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began to show up on the Internet in 2005. Popular podcast search engines include: Odeo.com, Podcast.net, PodcastAlley.com, and Podzinger. com which changed its name to EveryZing.com since showcasing podcast video searches (Sullivan, 2007). A relatively new method of searching includes Podscope.com which searches the text within the podcast itself and numerous RSS search engines including Plazoo.com and Bloglines. com. Yahoo, Google, and AOL created searches as well, but by late 2007 each had pulled their service (Crowell, 2005).

Podcasting and Traditional Media The traditional broadcast media, particularly radio, began using podcasting as a method of serving their audience as early as 2005. Trinity Broadcasting, a division of Viacom, seemed the most interested in podcasting offering the first fully on-line and podcasted radio station, KYouRadio.com (Jardin, 2005). KYouRadio.com was created using San Francisco’s KYCY staff, changing the format from talk to music, and making a profit by including advertisements in the Internet stream and podcast downloads. The station was able to circumvent the concern over additional music royalty and distribution fees by using only unlicensed listenersubmitted music in their programming. Commercial radio talk shows including Premier’s Jim Rome and Rush Limbaugh began offering show content in podcast format but these shows offered their podcasts for a monthly or yearly subscription fee. This is a trend many broadcast shows are following today (Leung, 2005; Staff, 2005). Most syndicated radio shows can be found through an iTunes search and can be downloaded through the station’s website through an RSS feed or by a fee-based subscription service. Talk radio still has the most active podcasting audience (Klaassen, & Oser, 2005). NPR has followed suit as well allowing its audience to time shift much of its programming through podcasting (Dotinga, 2006).

However, broadcast stations offering their programming are wary of additional costs and what fees and royalties must be paid are not always clear (Garrity, Butler, & Bruno, 2005). Both the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) have stated that the fees paid for on-air music play do not apply to podcasting and the federal government has allowed both music licensing firms to charge an additional “webcasting royalty” under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1995 (LaPolt, 2007). In January of 2005, ASCAP (2007) offered digital licenses allowing stations to offer specific services and streams. There are two licenses available. The first is an interactive license that allows pay-for-play jukebox formats online, snippets of music under 30 seconds, known as a sample, as well as user-created play lists. Podcasting music is not mentioned, but the wording of the first license seems to forbid music in any form other than a 30-seconds-or-less sample. The second is a non-interactive license that covers streaming, but specifically disallows podcasting (Podcasting News, 2005). BMI does offer a podcasting license. It requires additional royalties be paid. In fact, BMI seem to be behind podcasting to the point where the company itself offers podcasted music on the BMI.com website (BMI, 2005). So it seems the licensing firms and the federal government both feel radio stations should pay additional funds on top of the royalties currently paid to broadcast music for the ability to podcast music. However, most broadcast facilities that broadcast do not pay these additional fees. In fact, many go out of their way to not pay them. Radio stations and networks are getting around paying the fees by offering podcast programming that contain only 30-second music samples claiming their current fees cover those snippets of music. Many stations simply choose programming that contains no music or, as in the case of Rush Limbaugh, are stripping away existing

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music altogether (Limbaugh, 2005). This makes the statement of allowing the audience to listen to what they want when they want a rather difficult one to live up to, especially if the audience wants to hear music. Persons interested in creating podcasts for subscription would do well to stay abreast of the latest rulings of ASCAP, BMI, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), and Copyright Law as each entity has come into financial play in a previous podcast case (Burns, 2007; Lang, 2006).

Podcasting for All On a more positive note, persons who create their own content, and thus own the copyright, can use podcasting to create a world-wide venue that never existed before. Hardware and software packages and books are currently for sale dedicated to helping users create podcasts. Websites exists that explain how to post and promote your podcasts. The process is becoming as easy as creating a website. Companies such as Behringer, ION Audio, M-Audio, Alesis, Rode, and Sampson are all offering podcasting hardware packages that include mixing boards, headphones, USB microphones and MIDI inputs all specifically designed to create podcasts for less than $200. There are numerous tutorial sites that assist users in creating their own RSS feed scripts. Some sites, such as feedpublish.com and IBM. com’s developerWorks community allow users to create the RSS code by filling out forms. A search for “podcasting” on Amazon.com turned up hundreds of books on creating, bettering, and using podcasts to a user’s advantage. With podcasting, amateur musicians, producers, and DJs are now able to write, record, package, podcast, offer subscriptions, and sell their music over iTunes or on their own domain (Berry, 2006). The podcasting concept has allowed an

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unknown musician to distribute without the use of the music business (Battino, 2005). YouTube has made podcasting an even easier distribution method acting as a world-wide billboard for the music (Doyle, 2006). Although many students would rather use podcasts for entertainment, a lot of them are using iPods to listen to their professor’s lectures as many teachers have begun podcasting their lectures, and iTunes is building iTunesU around it (Lum, 2006; Young, 2007). People are learning foreign languages through podcasting. Just about any language is available for instruction. Newsweek (2006) writes that the most successful language instruction service is Chinesepod. com teaching the Chinese language in 1045 free lessons. The service is downloaded over 120,000 times per week. Interestingly enough, podcasting is so prevalent in today’s society, that it is not only professors and musicians who are using podcasting to capture an audience. Museums are podcasting tours. Architectural and cultural walking tours are now available. Podcasting godfather Adam Curry offers a podcasted walking tour of South Beach, Miami (Curry, 2005), and Sweatshopper.com Walking Tours offers tours of two Wal-Marts in Maine. Police departments are podcasting safety messages. iPlayMusic.com offers video-based podcasts that teach guitar. Podcastpickle.com offers video RSS feeds from Crash Test Kitchens and other channels offering podcasted recipes. Users not only receive the ingredient list and instruction but can watch the dish prepared on their iPod. Many people listen to their iPod while exercising in order to pass the time, but now there are podcasts that offer fitness tips as well as long-form podcasts that actually lead you through a complete workout (Long, 2006). Book lovers have known for a long time that books-on-tape have been available for purchase over iTunes and other podcatchers since their inception but not every book is under copyright protection and Librivox.org

The Past, Present, and Future of Podcasting

has taken advantage of that fact and made those books available for download in podcast format for free. Parents who find it difficult getting children to read may find it easier to have their children listen to books in podcast format through the site Storynory.com. Users that find reading computer manuals boring can find any number of podcasts explaining how to program their computer. The site Phppodcasts.com is just one example showcasing the PHP computer language. There seems to be no limit on the content that can be packaged into podcast format.

Branding the Podcast The above discussion illustrates a concern that a user attempting to bring a new podcast to the Internet will face—heavy competition. Just like the World Wide Web before, podcasting use has grown exponentially. Bringing a new podcast to the market poses a problem of how to be recognized in the sea of already existing content. Marketing books and websites state the answer lies in creating a good podcasting product and then following basic marketing: branding the podcast with a catchy name, domain, and artwork that will stand out among the crowd (PodcastFAQ, 2008). Websites have gone as far as holding contests to name their podcast hoping to create a name with a stronger appeal than the common use of the company name with the term cast affixed to the end. Help sites suggest the name of the podcast should be short, representative, appealing, and eye catching as most podcatchers display the names of podcasts in text. Housley (2008) states that demographic research, attention to audio quality, and a shorter run time have all proven supportive to the success of a podcast, but there is still no magic bullet. Companies that create a well-branded decent product and take the time to market that podcast, making sure it appears on iTunes and other RSS search engines, may have no success. It has to

do with the audience and the time people have available. The podcast audience is already accepting podcasts. To accept a new podcast, many people may feel they will need to drop an existing podcast from their routine. What the company is offering may be a good product, but it may not be strong enough to convince a large enough audience to change their routine.

The Terminology of Podcasting To this point, the terminology of podcasting has remained relatively tame. A podcast is an audio and/or video packet traditionally in MP3 format, known as an episode, that people subscribe to using an RSS feed channel and then play on their personal digital device, such as an iPod. However, podcasting is an overwhelming topic that spans much more technology and content than has been covered above and as such has a language all its own. A person who creates podcasts is generally known as a podcaster, a podder, or one of the pod people (Walker, 2005). Users that download podcasts make up the podosphere, a take off on the word blogosphere (Heister, 2008). The process of creating new content steams through podcasting, called narrowpodding, is so well known that many targeted content streams have podcast names all their own. Creating educational content is called learncasting (Stevens, 2006). Religious content is called godcasting or psalmcasting (The Economist, 2007). Blogger content is called blogcasting (Higgins, 2006). Video podcasts have three words vying for the title: vodcasting, vidcasting, and vlogging (Daily, 2007; Trier, 2007). Creating a podcast specifically for a mobile phone is called a mobilecasting while sending the mobilecast directly to the phone itself is called punchcasting. Launching a podcast directly from a cellular phone is termed phonecasting or voicecasting (Stevens, 2006).

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Remember also that since copyright laws do apply to content included within your podcasts, be sure to use music and voice tracks that are legally podsafe (Vogele & Garlick, 2006).

FUTURE TRENDS The future of podcasting will surely include updated versions of the software and hardware used to create and distribute podcasts as well as new competition that will no doubt enter into and fall out of the market. Portable devices will become smaller with larger hard drives, sharper displays, and newer compression formats will allow more content to be placed within a smaller amount of hard drive space. However, the most important future for podcasting will be in the tracking and commercial end. Just like the beginning of the Internet, podcasting is in a stage where much of it is still being done for the love of doing it, and content is plentiful; but as Green (2005) points out, there will come a time where a profit will need to be made, and it is projected that over 80% of those using podcasting commercially will lose money doing it. Advertising via podcasting, even through those podcasts that are being paid for by subscription fees, appears to be a viable topic in the broadcast and business community (Anderson, 2006). The concept of pre-roll ads, those that run before the podcast downloads, and embedded ads, those within the podcast itself, are both being tested (Klaassen & Taylor, 2006; Shields, 2006). The advertisements are seen as needed to offset production costs and make profit. Pre-roll ads are currently in use by major market radio stations in New York and Los Angeles. The pre-roll is done, generally, in one of two ways: before the download and at the beginning of the podcast itself. In the before-the-download format, a person downloading a podcast must listen to the advertisement from the server and then the download begins. This format allows for the number of

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advertisements played to be tracked and for the advertiser to be charged on a per-spot basis. The second format has the advertisement at the very beginning of the podcast. Although this may suggest the commercial is embedded, radio stations do not see these spots as embedded because of their placement at the beginning of the podcast, before the content. In fact, the placement allows the station to continue to claim that the podcast is offered commercial free (Burns, 2007). Since there is no method yet of exactly tracking whether the commercials are played after being downloaded, this commercial format is normally charged on a flat rate based on the number of times the podcast is downloaded per month. Embedded commercials are either done through podcasted shows leaving commercial breaks in the podcast, adding additional commercials in post-production, or having the announcer read commercials during the normal content of the show. This format, again, cannot be well tracked yet and is mostly charged on a monthly, per download, or flat fee basis. The future also holds the key to how the podcasts that cannot currently be tracked could somehow be tracked. If advertisers are going to buy time before or inside of a podcast, those advertisers will want to know if the spot is listened to or watched. Simply reporting downloads will not be enough. The Arbitron Rating Service was successful in tracking a podcast in New York City in 2006 as part of a test of their Portable People Meter (PPM) system. The system works by embedding signals into radio broadcasts that are then tracked within major markets (Arbitron, 2007a; Arbitron, 2007b). Using the system, a single podcast was tracked from download through the transfer to the personal device to the user actually listening to the podcast. The problem is that the successful test took place using an iPod. Recent surveys of podcast listeners conducted by Bridge Data suggest that almost 80% of all podcasts downloaded were never transferred to a portable devise or

The Past, Present, and Future of Podcasting

were deleted without being listened to (Dixon & Greeson, 2006). There is no proof yet that the Arbitron system is able to track a podcast without being placed on an iPod or equal player. That leaves out what the majority of podcasts users are listening to. However, that single tracked podcast was only the first successful test. Arbitron, and no doubt other companies, are working on ways to track listener’s podcasting habits. The ability to do so will mean a solid new revenue stream for the broadcast and business industries.

CONCLUSION In the world of podcasting, there is truly something for everyone, and if there is not, someone will create it, write an RSS script for it, and begin accepting subscriptions. The idea of taking little shows, or episodes, and packaging them into MP3 audio files or MPEG video files and distributing them around the Web seemed simple enough, but it happened at just the right time when the hardware and software that would make it possible became available. Podcasts are a popular delivery format appealing to both broad and niche markets. They work well for huge broadcast networks and basement musicians surrounded by cobbled digital instruments. Podcasts are both free and available for a fee. Only one idea about podcasting future is for certain: if there is content, it can be turned into a podcast.

Arbitron. (2007a). The portable people meter. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from http://www.arbitron.com/portable_people_meters/home.htm Arbitron. (2007b). Arbitron announces PPM ratings report schedule for Philadelphia. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from http://www.arbitron.com/ portable_people_meters/home.htm ASCAP. (2007). ASCAP’S new media and Internet licenses. Retrieved May, 2007, from http://www. ascap.com/weblicense Battino, D. (2005). The art of podcasting. Electronic Musician, 21(12), 42–56. Bennington, A. (2007). Stick it in your ear: Keeping current with podcasts. Online, 31(3), 30–33. Berry, R. (2006). Will the iPod kill the radio star? Profiling podcasting as radio. The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 12(2), 143–162. doi:10.1177/1354856506066522 BMI. (2005). BMI launches new songwriter/artist podcast; licenses podcasters in nationwide initiative. Retrieved May, 2007, from http://www.bmi. com/news/entry/234431 Bullis, K. (2005). Podcasting takes off. Technology Review, 108(10), 30. Burns, J. E. (October, 2007). Podcasting: Why do you podcast? Paper presented at the International Academy of Business and Public Administration Disciplines annual convention, New Orleans, LA.

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Christopher, C. L. (2006, April 6). Extra, extra, hear all about it. Seybold Report: Analyzing Publishing Technologies, 5/6(25/1), 10-15.

Anderson, D. (2006, March 6). Podcasting ads reel in $80M. Brandweek, 47(10), 16.

Copeland, M. V. (2008, January 21). Six leaps of innovation. Fortune, 157(1), 27–30.

AppleInsider Staff. (2005). iTunes podcast subscriptions top one million. Retrieved February 1, 2008, from http://www.appleinsider.com/ articles/05/06/30/

Crowell, S. (2005). Video and podcast search engines. Retrieved February 2, 2008, from http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage. html?page=3555196

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Curry, A. (2005). Daily source code for January 7 2005. Retrieved June 18, 2008, from Dahl, E. (2008). A potential alternative to the iPod. PC World, 26(2), 88. Daily, G. (2007). Light, camera, action. EContent, 30(5), 24–29. Dixon, C., & Greeson, M. (2006). Recasting the concept of podcasting: Part I. Retrieved February 2, 2008, from http://news.digitaltrends.com/ talkback109.html

Heister, M. (2008, June 18). I’m doing a lousy job of keeping up with old media. Retrieved June 19, 2008, from http://mheister.com/thepodosphere Higgins, T. (2006). How to podcast using just Blogger.com. Retrieved January 29, 2008, from http://blogcasting.blogspot.com Holtz, S. (2008). Bring your intranet into the 21st century. Communication World, 25(1), 14–18. http://radio.weblogs.com/0001014/categories/ dailySourceCode/2005/01/07.html#a6993

Dotinga, R. (2006, April 17). Podcasting shakes up local media. Christian Science Monitor (Boston, Mass.), 98(98), 2.

industry...2007. Retrieved February 3, 2008, from http://www.musicbizacademy.com/articles/ dl_newmedia.htm

Doyle, B. (2005). The first podcast. EContent, 28(9), 33.

itunes_podcast_subscriptions_top_one_million. html

Doyle, B. (2006). You Tube and iTV. EContent, 29(9), 22.

Jardin, X. (2005, April 27). Podcasting killed the radio star. Retrieved February 6, 2008, from http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/ news/2005/04/67344

Edison Media Research. (2006). Internet & multimedia 2006: On-demand media explodes. Retrieved February 1, 2008, from http://www. edisonresearch.com/home/archives/2006/06/ internet_multim_4.php Fichter, D. (2004). Using RSS to create new services. Online, 28(4), 52–55. Garrity, B., Butler, S., & Bruno, A. (2005, October 1). Podcast at the crossroads. Billboard, 117(40), 8.

Joly, K. (2007). 10 steps to better blogs. University Business, 10(1), 65–66. Kahney, L. (2006, October). Straight dope on the iPod’s birth. Retrieved January 29, 2008, from http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2006/10/71956 Kay, R. (2005, October 3). Podcasting. Computerworld, 39(40), 34.

Go, A. (2007, December 31). Make your favorite blogs come to you. U.S. News & World Report, 142(23), 50.

Klaassen, A., & Oser, K. (2005, October 24). From airwaves to MP3: Podcasting makes liftoff. Advertising Age, 76(43), 6.

Green, H. (2005). Indie podcasting: Not so independent anymore. Retrieved February 6, 2008, from http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ content/nov2005/tc20051130_220713.htm

Klaassen, A., & Taylor, L. (2006, April 24). Few compete to settle podcasting’s wild west. Advertising Age, 77(17), 13.

Hammersley, B. (2004). Audible revolution. Retrieved February 6, 2008, from http://arts.guardian. co.uk/features/story/0,1145758,00.html

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Kuster, J. M. (2007, November 27). Professional and personal - podcasting. ASHA Leader, 12(16), 24–25.

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Lang, M. N. (2006). The regulation of shrinkwrapped radio: Implications of copyright on podcasting. CommLaw Conspectus, 14(2), 463–502. LaPolt, D. (2007). Taking a glance at other income streams in the music Leung, J. (2005). Clear channel radio expands podcast offerings. Retrieved February 6, 2008, from http://www.podcastingnews.com/archives/2005/06/clear_channel_r.html Limbaugh, R. (2005). Why no podcast music, Rush? Retrieved February 6, 2008, from http:// www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/podcastlandingpage/why_no_music.guest.html Long, K. (2006). Uncommon uses: Podcasting. Retrieved June 19, 2008, from http:// experiencecurve.com/archives/uncommon-usespodcasting Lopresti, M. (2007). Microsoft RSS patent applications. EContent, 30(2), 8. Lum, L. (2006, March 9). The power of podcasting. Diverse Issues in Higher Education, 23(2), 32–35. Madden, M. (2006). 12% of Internet users have downloaded a podcast. Retrieved February 1, 2008, from http://www.pewinternet.org/ pdfs/PIP_Podcasting.pdf McCormick, J. (2007, April, 23). Top 100 most influential people in it. eWeek, 24(14), 16-22. McMahon, F. (2006). Simplifying RSS feeds. Digital Content Producer, 32(8), 52–59. News on Feeds. (2008). Web-based aggregators. Retrieved June 18, 2008, from http://www.newsonfeeds.com/faq/aggregators Newsweek. (2006, September 25). My name is iPod. Retrieved June 18, 2008, from http://www. newsweek.com/id/45680

Overton, G. (2006). Are you Webcasting or podcasting? Laser Focus World, 42(6), 61–63. Podcast, FAQ (2008). Branding. Retrieved June 19, 2008, from http://www.podcastfaq.com/ podcast-promotion/branding/ Podcasting News. (2005). ASCAP posts podcasting licensing agreements for music. Retrieved May 15, 2007, from http://www.podcastingnews.com/ archives/2005/02/ Sarrel, M. D. (2007, February 6). Painless podcasting. PC Magazine, 26(3), 1. Shields, M. (2006, April 4). Planting podcasting seed. MediaWeek, 16(15), 7. Staff. (2005). Radio wades into podcast revenue stream. Retrieved February 6, 2007, from http:// www.marketingvox.com/archives/2005/11/28/ radio_wades_into_podcast_revenue_stream Stevens, P. S. (2006). Podcast, vidcast, voicecast? Podcast jargon for beginners. Retrieved June 19, 2008, from http://podcast-software-review. toptenreviews.com/podcast-vidcast-voicecastpodcast-jargon-for-beginners.html Sullivan, D. (2007, September 27). Yahoo podcasts to close; the sorry state of podcast search. Retrieved February 2, 2008, from http://searchengineland. com/070927-112229.php The Economist. (2007, December 22). The battle of the books. The Economist, 385(8560), 80–82. Trier, J. (2007). ‘Cool’ engagements with YouTube: Part 1. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 50, 408–412. doi:10.1598/JAAL.50.5.7 Vogele, C., & Garlick, M. (2006). Podcasting legal guide: Rules for the revolution. Retrieved June 19, 2008, from http://wiki.creativecommons. org/Podcasting_Legal_Guide

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Walker, L. (2005, March 10). Bloggers, meet the Pod people. Retrieved June 19, 2008, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/ A20235-2005Mar9.html What is RSS? (2008). What is RSS? RSS explained. Retrieved June 18, 2008 from http:// www.whatisrss.com Young, J. R. (2007, November 30). Colleges try to make podcasting of courses easier. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 54(14), A23.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Audioblog/Audioblogger: An audioblogger is a person who blogs using audio files. The audioblog is the nickname for a blog that features an audioblogger’s content. Embedded Advertisements: These are commercials that are placed into stop breaks within the podcast itself. Feed Aggregator: A feed aggregator, also known as RSS feed readers and news aggregators, are programs that allows a user to search through numerous podcasts in various genres choosing what he or she would like to read. The aggregator compiles the feeds to the user’s parameters creating what would be akin to a morning newspaper set to the user’s specifications. iPod: The iPod is a personal audio/video devise, now in its sixth generation, sold by the Apple Computer, Inc. The name comes from a play on a line from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, “Open the pod bay door HAL.” The lowercase “i” comes from Apple’s habit of placing the lower-case letter in front of all of its trademarks. iTunes: The iTunes software is currently the

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most popular podcatcher software. iTunes allows users to easily subscribe to podcasts through RSS, search podcasts titles, and have access to Apple’s audio and video store. Podcatcher: A podcatcher is any piece of software that will run RSS software and gather podcasts automatically. The most popular podcatcher software is the Apple iTunes client. Podcasting: Podcasting is the serving of audio or video files, normally in MPEG format, through RSS subscription services or individually through websites. The podcast files themselves, normally known as episodes, are played on portable audio/video devices such as iPods or on personal computers. Pre-Roll Advertisements: In podcasting, a pre-roll advertisement can be on the server or at the very beginning of the podcast itself. The advertisement on the server plays after the user clicks to gather the podcast but before the podcast packet actually begins to download. The pre-roll on the podcast is a commercial at the very beginning of the Podcast rather than being embedded within the podcast content itself. Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary (RSS): Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, usually written as RSS, was created by Dave Winer. RSS is a script written, normally, in Extensible Markup Language (XML) that, once clicked on, creates a channel between a user’s podcatcher and a server. Once that channel is created, a subscription is underway allowing the server to deliver new and updated podcasts on a regular basis. Vodcasting/Vidcasting/Vlogging: These are all current nicknames for distributing podcasts that feature video.

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Chapter 7

The Rise of the Chinese Blogosphere Zixue Tai University of Kentucky, USA

ABSTRACT In comparison with the USA and Europe, the Chinese blogosphere was off to a later start; however, it has experienced phenomenal growth since its formal birth in 2002. Now China boasts by far the largest blogging community in the world, surpassing the blogger population in the United States and Europe combined. Chinese bloggers are among the first globally to both actively engage in blog writing and reading. Although the Chinese blogosphere has closely followed the global path of technological innovation and ingenuity, it has taken many of its own unique twists and turns in terms of its creative uses and impact on the social, political and cultural contexts of Chinese society. Focusing on the popularization of blogs, mainstreaming, and commercialization of the global cyber culture in China, this chapter paints a portrait of a Chinese blogger. Due to the omnipresent state control of cyberspace and heavy-handed state censoring of online information, most Chinese bloggers have shied away from politically sensitive and subversive issues and topics. The most popular blogging topics include the documentation of personal experiences and the expression of individual viewpoints on a wide range of topics; these topics are followed by hobbies, entertainment, and amusement.

INTRODUCTION In 1995 China’s Internet users made up less than 1% of the world’s Internet population; in 2007 they comprised about 16% of the global Internet total (Stanley, 2008). Against this backdrop of an DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch007

explosive growth of the Internet in China (Fanning, 2008; MacLeod, 2008) and amidst the global ballyhoo of blogs, the blogosphere has captured the imagination of millions of Chinese netizens with blogging as one of the top ten Internet applications (China Internet Network Information Center, 2008). The first blog-like type of online content appeared in the United States in 1994 (Barlow, 2007). The

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mainstreaming and popularization of blogs as a web phenomenon and as a social, political, and cultural force occurred at the turn of the new century: that is, years earlier than Jorn Barger first introduced a “weblog” and Peter Merholz coined the term “blog” (Barlow, 2007; Blood, 2002). The history of the blog in China’s cyberspace, however, began much later. While a handful of users already used a few blogging sites at the beginning of the new century, the Chinese blogosphere was not officially born until the publication of Blog China1 in August 2002. Blog China introduced the term “Boke” (Mandarin Chinese for both “blogs” and “bloggers”) to the Chinese blogosphere and became the first website in China dedicated to blogging (Fang & Wang, 2003). Since 2002, the Chinese blogosphere has experienced a remarkable growth. By November 2007, China registered about 47 million bloggers (about one fourth of China’s Internet population), with 16.9 million being active contributors (updating blog entries weekly or more often); there were 72.8 million blog “spaces” (sites) published in China, of which 28.8 million were active ones (being updated at least monthly) (China Internet Network Information Center, 2007). The rapid popularity of blogs in China brought a new dynamic to the multiple dimensions of the Chinese cyberspace. Although the blogosphere in China has closely followed the global path of technological innovation and ingenuity, it has taken many of its own unique twists and turns with respect to its creative uses and impact on the social, political and cultural scenes of Chinese society.

BACKGROUND User Generated Content holds a special place among Chinese netizens. Blogs, together with a variety of other social media technologies, fulfill a niche need for diverse users (Bruns, 2008). Universal McCann, a global media communications agency, has conducted three waves

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of world surveys of Internet users in over twenty countries from September 2006 through March 2008. Its latest survey estimates that, as of March 2008, China has over 42 million bloggers (cf. 47 million estimated by the China Internet Network Information Center as of November 2007, as mentioned earlier)2 out of a worldwide total of 184 million. China’s blogging community is by far the largest in the world, larger than that in the U.S. and Western Europe combined (Universal McCann, 2008). The prominence of blogs in the cyber culture of a particular nation can be demonstrated by the percentage of Internet users who regularly read and write blogs. Of the 29 nations surveyed by Universal McCann in its Third Wave study in interviewing active Internet users (i.e., using the Internet every day or every other day), China is ranked third (88.1% of Chinese netizens reported ever reading blogs), slightly trailing South Korea (92.1%) and the Philippines (90.3%). By comparison, only 60.3% Internet users in the United States reported ever reading blogs, putting the U.S. close to the bottom on the list (Universal McCann, 2008). However, using a different measure, which calculates the percentage of users who reported reading the blogs on a daily or weekly basis among all blog readers, China leads the rest of the nations with 89% of its users saying they do it, trailed closely by South Korea and Brazil (tied at 84%), Japan (82%), and India (81%). The United States again is found close to the bottom of the list, with only 65% of blog readers reporting doing this weekly or more often. This higher level of dependence on blogs, as a particular type of User Generated Content (UGC) in Chinese cyberspace used more than anywhere else, is quintessentially consistent with previous findings that Chinese netizens are more likely to access other types of similar content, such as BBS and chat rooms, than their counterparts elsewhere (Tai, 2006). Likewise, there is also a strong tendency among Chinese Internet users to contribute content to

The Rise of the Chinese Blogosphere

the blogosphere. Chinese netizens, like those elsewhere, don’t like to remain passive recipients of information online; they actively participate in the information production process. In that regard, blogging becomes the natural venue. China’s Internet users are setting the trend in running blogs with 70.3% of active Internet surfers reporting having their own blogs; this is second only to South Korea’s 70.6% (Universal McCann, 2008). In terms of the frequency in writing blog entries, China’s bloggers, 78% of whom say they write weekly or more often, are ahead of those in the other 28 nations surveyed. Blog writers in South Korea trail closely behind, with 75% of them reporting doing the same while only 45% of bloggers in the United States indicated doing so (Universal McCann, 2008). A point of particular relevance for the discussion of the Chinese blogosphere is China’s closely controlled media and information environment. While Chinese society has undergone unprecedented transformation in the wake of three decades of economic liberalization and reform, the Chinese communication system has been at the forefront of this period of wrenching change as a result of the government’s initiative to “marketize” the state-run media sector (Zhao, 2008). Although there is a fundamental shift from ideological indoctrination to mass appeal, mass media still have to walk the delicate line between serving audience needs and demands and following state directives and bureaucratic orders. As a result, the flow of information from the official media is not always free. Due to the structural constraints of the Chinese media environment, User Generated Content (UGC) distributed via various media platforms, including Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), text messaging (SMS), instant messaging (IM), and personal blogs, takes on a special meaning for Chinese netizens (Stanley, 2004; Tai, 2006). UGC often serves as a viable and sometimes sole source of information for individuals (e.g., Tai & Sun, 2007). Meanwhile, Chinese netizens display an unusually higher level of online efficacy (i.e.,

believing that they can effect social change through online participation) than their counterparts in most other countries (Tai, 2006). The nature of the Chinese blogosphere, therefore, needs to be understood within this broader context.

THE EVOLVING LANDSCAPE OF THE CHINESE BLOGOSPHERE The Portrait of a Chinese Blogger What are China’s bloggers like? Two comprehensive surveys that were conducted in China based on interviews of randomly sampled bloggers help to clarify the issue: one was a telephone survey completed in 2007 (China Internet Network Information Center, 2007); the other was a 2006 online survey done by CTR Market Research (CTR, 2006).3 To get a better understanding, the author will also make cross-national comparisons by using results from the Pew Research Center’s 2006 survey of U.S. bloggers (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2006). In both China and the United States, the blogosphere is overwhelmingly dominated by the young: “twentysomethings” are leading the charge, followed by people in their 30s, and then by those in their 40s. Only a small proportion of bloggers are 50 or older. While U.S. bloggers are slightly dominated by male writers (54% men versus 46% women), women outnumber men in the Chinese blogosphere; that is, the 57% versus 43% gender difference in bloggers is just the opposite of China’s Internet population overall with 45% women versus 55% men. Bloggers are more avid newsreaders than the average netizens both in China and the U.S., and they are also more enthusiastic blog readers – about 90% of US bloggers said they have read others’ blogs whereas 93% Chinese blog writers reported doing the same. The most popular blogging topics in both countries are, expectedly, documentation of their life and personal experiences as well as expression of personal viewpoints on a wide range of topics, followed by hobbies, entertainment and

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amusement. Therefore, the blogs, true to their original intent, are still maintained primarily as personal diaries. That the personal blogs are by far the most popular type of content is highly consistent with the global pattern of blog writing and reading as identified in the Universal McCann survey in 2008. To add more of a personal touch to the blogosphere, while about half of US bloggers tend to believe that their audience is mostly people they know, sixty-eight percent of Chinese bloggers reported reading blogs by people they know. Bloggers in both China and the U.S. are more likely to link to friends’ blogs and to visit blogs recommended to them by their friends. There are also notable areas of difference between bloggers in China and the U.S. Although only 11% of U.S. bloggers said they focus on government and politics, some politically oriented blogs tend to be popular hits in that they attract an unusually high volume of traffic and create buzz among blog audiences and even occasionally the mainstream media (Barlow, 2008). In China, most bloggers try to stay away from politics, especially domestic politics, mainly because many political topics are taboo and may get individual bloggers into trouble. Moreover, most blog hosting sites have enforced policies to ban the discussion of sensitive topics. So the dearth of political bloggers in China is a natural result of the lack of popular participation in its political life. With regard to revealing their identifying information, bloggers also fare differently in the two countries. In the United States, more than half (55%) of the bloggers use an alias, whereas about 80% of China’s bloggers leave pieces of their factual personal identifying information (i.e., gender, name, photos, occupation, mailbox, phone number, home address, resume) as ranked by the order of frequency).

Landmark Developments In the course of the explosive growth of the Chinese blogosphere in the new century from non-existence to the largest space of its kind in

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the word, there have been a number of key events that have shaped the course of its development. Understanding these events offers a glimpse of the unique twists and turns of the particular contours of China’s blogging culture. The first event that enlightened Chinese netizens to the blogs was “The Blogger Manifesto” drafted and distributed online by blog pioneers Fang Xingdong and Wang Junxiu in July 2002 and the publication of the first Chinese blog site (BlogChina.com) a month later (Fang & Wang, 2003). In the Blogger Manifesto, Fang and Wang argue that the birth of blogging marks the phase of the transition of the Internet into a culture technology from its early phases of first military and then commercial applications; they also maintain that blogging is pushing the Internet from an age of information sharing by portal sites to thought sharing on blog pages. BlogChina also introduced the idea and the practice of blogging to many Chinese Internet users for the first time. In November of the same year, BlogCN.com4 became the first site to offer free hosting for Chinese bloggers. Soon, the Blog Service Provider (BSP) list quickly expanded with the addition of BlogDriver.com, BlogBus.com, and BlogChina. com within the next two months. In this takeoff stage (2002-2003) of the Chinese blogosphere, however, it was just a few individuals and private businesses investing in blog hosting services with the aim of spreading the idea of blogging to Chinese netizens and thus getting them involved in writing blogs. There was hardly any coherent business strategy or long-term planning in place. This situation continued in 2003, with the noticeable change that the blog was making a bigger splash. Subsequently, more BSPs jumped on the bandwagon. Almost all of these investors were invariably small start-ups exclusively specializing in blog hosting services. Of the major Internet sites that offer information services in China, Qianlong Wang (21dnn.net.cn), a Beijing-based portal site jointly run by local media companies, was the only one offering blog-related services

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in 2003. Things took on a different turn in 2004, when all major Chinese portal sites, led by the big three (Netease, Sohu, Sina), followed suit as part of their strategy to compete for Internet traffic. By year end 2004, there were over 300 BSPs in China (Fang & Zhang, 2005). The list exploded to 1,460 by 2006 (Xinhua News Net, 2006). While blog use has thrived on its anti-commercial and anti-corporate nature of empowering individuals to take over the process of information production, the blog as a business venture can only survive in today’s global environment based on a viable marketing strategy. Since the nascent Chinese blog industry is still in a process of consolidation and transformation, investors, advertisers, and Internet giants have an extensive role to play here. Initially, as in many business operations, merging with successful start-ups was believed to be a short-cut strategy to catch up in the blog business. Therefore, two high-profile merger cases took place in 2004 and 2005: Blogbus.com (ranked No. 7 in 2005) purchased Yourblog.org (ranked No. 2 in 2005), and Blogchina.com (ranked No. 1 in 2005) bought Blogdriver.com (ranked No. 3 in 2005) (Asia-Pacific Economic Times, 2005). Although some had speculated that this was the start of more mergers in the years to come, the large-scale merger wave has not materialized as of 2008. Instead, Chinese blog entrepreneurs have shifted their focus to the capital market, improving customer service and stepping up technological innovation. Since cash flow is essential to the success of any business operations, many independent start-up Internet Business Service Provider (BSP) companies quickly found that they were reaching the end of the money-squeezing game. Of the everchanging thousand-plus Internet BSP companies in China, hundreds have already been wiped off the list as more are joining in. For the ones that stumble forward, surviving financially has been a constant challenge. The situation was exacerbated after existing Internet companies started to compete for a share of the blogosphere. Therefore, the

next step was natural that these start-ups would eye toward venture capitalists for urgently needed cash. In 2004, BlogChina became the first to win venture capital support (US$ 50K), followed by BlogBus (US$ 20K). There was a significant increase in venture capital inflow into China’s blog market the next year, led by a US$ 10 million deal for Blogcn from global investors IDG and Granite, one of the largest of such blog-focused global opportunistic transactions (Zhao, 2006). After a spotty downturn in early 2006 when major blog service providers had to lay off staff and tighten belts due to financial difficulties, the influx of international venture capital reached a new height in 2007 as information services featured by blogs, social networks, wikis, and other Web 2.0 companies landed a record US$ 209 million in 22 deals in the 2nd quarter, representing a 100% increase over the previous quarter of the same year (Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young, 2007). A few of the sites -- among them Bokee.com (blog service), 51.com (blog and social networking), and Qihoo.com (search engine for blog and BBS sites) -- are weighing the ambitious move of a possible NASDAQ IPO listing in the near future. Over a decade ago, Goldhaver (1997) pointed out that the Internet economy is an “attention economy” – what becomes scarce is not information but rather attention. The web platform, then, is in a sense a leveled playing ground. Attention is not guaranteed for anybody, and the ones with eye-catching information stand out. Large established corporate and institutional powers often have more resources to compete for public attention. In the early years, China’s blogosphere was solely dominated by active writers whose names were otherwise unknown in the offline world. History changed in October 2005 when Sina.com, the most popular portal in China, started its Mingren Boke (Celebrity Blogger) movement by inviting social elites in different walks of life (with the noticeable exception of politicians) to become bloggers on its blog section (blog.sina. com.cn) as an overall strategy to attract online

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visit and to promote its brand. The first celebrity to join was the popular writer Yu Hua, followed by hundreds of big names from sports to entertainment to business circles. The star of stars has been Xu Jinglei, who made her fame through movie acting and directing. Her blog recorded 10 million hits within 112 days, making history not only in China but across the world as well. As of June 2008, Xu’s blog has landed over 160 million visits, followed by over 159 million hits by that of Han Han (a popular writer and commentator). Each of the entries by these popular bloggers is typically followed by comments numbered often in the thousands on the particular blog page, and generates numerous additional discussions and debates throughout the blogosphere. A selection of Xu’s 2006 blogs resulted in a popular seller, a print republication of her online writings, titled Old Xu’s Blogs (Xu, 2006). In no time, Mingren Boke has become a unique cultural phenomenon of the Chinese blogosphere unrivaled in other parts of the world. In 2005, Chinese bloggers were called on to take part in three waves of blog contests to win cash awards. Sohu’s First Global Chinese Blog Contest started with big fanfare on September 24, followed quickly on September 26 by the First China Blog Contest hosted by its competitor Sina; On October 12, Bokee.com, not wanting to be left behind, co-sponsored its own Second Global Chinese Blog Contest with China Internet Communication Association. All three contests offered a cash award for up to RMB ¥10,000, and became one of the most-talked-about events among bloggers and the conventional media. Today, blog contests have become routine events, with sponsors ranging from industries to institutions to Websites featuring a variety of themes and topics with a diversified body of participants. Thanks to a combination of high-profile events (e.g., influx of foreign venture capital, rise of celebrity bloggers, and hosting of blog contests), the year 2005 was dubbed by Boke Yuannian (“primary year of the blog”) in China.

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The popularization of blogging in China has accidentally led to the rise of a special genre of bloggers, often nicknamed Boke Mingren (“blog celebrities”), who have established a fame among blog writers and readers solely through their blog sites. Those people, unlike Mingren Boke, would otherwise have no way of getting known by the public without the blogosphere. Their elite status is totally owed to the quality (coupled with the quantity, as those who write little stand a minimal chance of joining this league) of their blogs. Two good examples are Acosta and wu2198 – both nicknames, and their sites are hosted at blog. sina.com.cn/u/1456252804, and blog.sina.com. cn/u/1216826604; these blogs are ranked No. 3 and No. 4 respectively on Sina’s blogs with over 149.4 million and 148.7 million hits as of June 2008. In contrast with offline celebrities whose life and family background is known to the public in excruciating detail, these grassroots writers gain widespread recognition through the currency of their blogs while other aspects of their lives are scarcely available, despite their enormous appeal to some. In fact, “Who is Acosta/wu2198” has been searched so many times that it is featured as a popular phrase on China’s No. 1 search engine Baidu. Toppers of this league, as expected, change on a regular basis as more and more vie for the spotlight. The mainstreaming of the blog in Chinese cyberspace would inevitably spill over to the domain of coverage of important news events. This milestone development took place in February 2006, when, for the first time, the national media utilized blogging as an interactive tool in their news reporting of the annual sessions of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in Beijing. These annual sessions have become important barometers for Chinese politics; they incur a large presence of national and international press corps. A significant change in 2006 was the rise of the blog as a viable platform in covering and delivering news to the Chinese

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netizens by the domestic media. China Central Television (CCTV), the only national television network, took the lead in having its reporters blog news stories and solicit feedback and comments from the audience on CCTV’s own blog services (blog.cctv.com). This type of news coverage creates an additional personal touch to the stories and adds depth to the news compared with what is delivered over the air. For most readers, what was popular was the behind-the-news type of story from the reporters. Xinhua, the official news agency, was not to be left behind in getting its own reporters involved in news blogging on blog.xinhuanet.com, albeit not as extensively. The preeminent mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, People’s Daily, also created its own blog sections (blog.people.com. cn) and carried news blogs by its own reporters. Soon this practice spread to most of the rest of the nation’s media Web sites. A significant note of difference between China’s media blog sites and those in the West is that the Chinese media have also opened its blog space to users by functioning also as a blog hosting service, allowing users to blog alongside their reporters. Compared with other blog sites, although the media sites started relatively late, they have a unique advantage that most others cannot claim – a readily available troupe of professional reporters. Most media blog sites have been strategically employed to gain a competitive edge over the vast number of competing blog sites. Now it has become part of routine reporting for staff journalists to run their blogs as part of their regular assignment. While blog use initially prospered as a countertrend opposing the increasing commercialization of the global cyber culture, it is just a matter of time when commercial interests will penetrate the blogosphere. This did not take long in China (Chen, 2008; Zhao, 2007). First, thus far, there have been two rounds of fund-raising drives by BSPs (first in 2005-2006 and then in 20072008) targeting both domestic and international opportunistic investors. The need for financial

viability is illustrated well by the case of Mingsi Blog (under two URLs, meansys.com and blogms. com), which started BSP operation on October 23, 2003. After “burning” RMB¥ 1.5 million for 1000 days, it went out of business on August 1, 2006, despite its status of being continuously ranked in the top ten Chinese blog sites for two consecutive years (2004-2005) and a blogger base of over one million. On February 27, 2008, Mingsi staged a comeback (under a new DNS at blog.stnn.cc) with the technical and financial support of the HongKong-based Tsing Tao News Corp. Second, unlike their Western counterparts which run by charging bloggers a flat monthly fee for maintaining a blog site on their servers, all Chinese BSPs thrived on offering free hosting service to users. That has been a significant contributing factor to the popularization of blogging among Chinese netizens. The downside of this practice, however, is the inevitable pressure for BSPs to find alternative revenues to remain in business and sustain the growing demand of the blog market. As a business strategy, then, some BSPs have switched to a two-tiered service model: free hosting basic service supplanted by fee-based premium service to different groups of users. As early as May 2004, BlogBus became the first in China to offer VIP services to paying clients. A few more BSPs adopted similar practices in 2005 and later (e.g., Blogcn, BlogChina, QQ.com), with more considering joining in. Fee-paying bloggers can get value-added services such as a personalized domain name, more storage, customized page design, and the ability to add plug-in applications. Tencent is the current leader not only in instant messaging (QQ, TM2008, QQ Groups, RTX), but in tapping into new blogging services: such as video blog (QQVideo), audio blog (RTX), and mobile blog (Taotao) as part of its value-added services. Third, blog sites have resorted to advertising on their main pages as a major revenue source. This step is unsurprising in consideration of the fact that high page views are always the envy of

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advertisers. Ironically, the one who is leading the charge is none other than Fang Xingdong, the founder of BlogChina and Bokee who started his blog career by branding the blog as a way to counter the commercialization of cyber culture. Although advertisers had a presence on the sites of some popular BSPs in the early years, their impact was largely negligible for individual bloggers. A monumental step took place in 2006 when Hexun and Bokee released their respective plans to introduce advertising to pages of individual bloggers. Hexun first put forward its plan called “Blog Advertising Union,” through which individual bloggers hosted by Hexun can sign up for the types of advertising they would like to see on their blogs. Hexun then will specifically redistribute the ads to appropriate individual blog sites. Bokee developed a similar plan, nicknamed “Bokee Gold Bank,” in August in which bloggers can voluntarily place advertising on their pages. In both plans, individual bloggers get rewarded in a profit-sharing arrangement with the BSPs based on the number of click-throughs during a specific period of time. In November 2007, Sina was the first major portal to have followed with its own advertising profit-sharing plan by involving bloggers. At the same time, Sina was also leading all Internet sites with blog services in advertising revenue, with its third quarter blog advertising experiencing a 160% growth over the previous quarter and reaching a record US$ 1.6 million (Chen, 2008). Additionally, other advertising strategies that are being experimented with include blogger endorsement of particular products and sponsorship of particular blog events. The former solicits product use and discussion from prominent bloggers, and the latter involves commercial entities to sponsor blog activities through which their products/services can be advertised (e.g., the popular Lady Blogger Beauty Contest, which was held in three consecutive years from 2006 to 2008).

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FUTURE TRENDS According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT, formerly the Ministry of Information Industry), as of May 2008, China has over 592 million mobile phone users (MIIT, 2008), boasting by far the largest mobile network in the world. An area that promises to significantly reshape the Chinese blogosphere in the near future is moblog, or mobile blog, which allows users to post blog entries directly on the Web through mobile technology, such as a cell phone or PDA. In mid-2006, China Mobile, the largest wireless phone service operator in the country, started to offer moblog service to its Beijing-based subscribers on four platforms: the World Wide Web, WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), MMS (multimedia messaging service), and IVR (interactive voice response). Of the four platforms, only the first one enables mobloggers to access third-party Web sites while the latter three are all licensed to China Mobile. Since then, moblog service has been expanded to most major cities in China, and a few popular sites specializing in moblogs (e.g., monternet, 139, and 3City) have emerged. Since text-based moblog service has serious limitation due to its length constraints, moblog services have instead diverged in the direction of audio and video blogs. Major BSPs have also started to create value-added services to the growing body of mobloggers in China. From August 15 to December 31 of 2006, China Mobile sponsored the First China Mobile Moblog Contest” to advertise its services and attract users. Within the first month, as many as 200, 000 participants registered and over a million voted. This “blog-on-the-move” trend is in all likelihood going to accelerate in the near future, especially in consideration of China’s unfolding national 3G mobile network. After successfully releasing its TD-SCDMA (Time DivisionSynchronous Code Division Multiple Access) national standard for 3G mobile technology in

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early 2006 (after much wrangling and delay), China started commercial trials of 3G services in eight major cities on April 1, 2008; it plans to officially offer services across the nation soon thereafter. Mobile service providers in the major cities were in full gear to rush 3G services to users to take advantage of the precious opportunity of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. As mobloggers reach a critical mass, this is undoubtedly going to substantially change the nature of the blog culture in Chinese cyberspace. A particularly important point of observation will be the role mobloggers play in the real-time covering major breaking news in the future and the challenge this poses for the authorities to control information flow under such circumstances. Whereas the blog has become a fad among Chinese netizens and Internet businesses, the landscape of China’s blogosphere is going to be significantly redrawn in the next five to ten years. Since 2002, the number of Blog Service Providers that have declared bankruptcy is already in the hundreds, and it continues to grow. Most of them are still in the process of struggling for profitability, while a few have stood out in the cut-throat competition for users. Although the blogosphere was officially introduced to Chinese netizens and monopolized in early days by independent BSPs specializing in the blog business, major portals quickly overtook the BSPs and now become the dominant players thanks largely to competitive leverages in other areas of online information production, consumption, and financial strength. This suggests that solely depending on the blog business may not be a viable corporate strategy. For independent BSPs, expanding into other areas of business may be a crucial step to survive in the long term. Additionally, instead of trying to cater to the needs of everyone, BSPs may very well fare better in pinpointing a particular niche market and serving the special needs of selective groups. For independent BSPs and portals alike, how to work out a sustainable advertising/business model will remain a challenge in the near future.

In this regard, because of the particularities of the Chinese blogosphere, no one can hope to find ready solutions from elsewhere. Those who meet the challenge will occupy the high-point in the battle of commercializing the blogosphere, and it is likely that major winners and losers will be determined in the next five to ten years. Moreover, overseas capital will play a pivotal role in the process. Finally, how the Chinese authority will respond to the future blogosphere will be a focus of global attention. It is not reasonable to expect the Chinese government to give the blog its free reign; however, it is not realistic to foresee the Chinese authorities gaining total control in the blogosphere either. Just as the Internet has brought about dynamic socio-political changes to China (Tai, 2006; Zheng, 2007), the blogosphere is positioned to achieve similar effects in enabling new interactions between the state and society. It is very likely that the state will become even more responsive to popular demands from the blog community. In many cases, it may be more accountable for actions due to pressure from the blogosphere. Meanwhile, the blog will turn into a significant platform of public participation in the political process. How exactly things of that nature will happen, nonetheless, will have to be seen in the future.

CONCLUSION The Chinese blogosphere was off to a later start compared with those in most countries in the West, but it has experienced phenomenal growth since its formal birth in 2002. Now China boasts by far the largest blog community in the world, surpassing the size of that in the United States and Europe combined. Along with the high numbers is the propensity of Chinese netizens to contribute to User Generated Content online – whether it is bulletin board messages, chat room postings, or blog entries. Chinese bloggers are among the first

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in the world to both actively engage in blog writing and blog reading. Because the overall information environment is one-sidedly dominated by a few official-sanctioned portals and alternative sources from the conventional online portals are reduced to a minimum, the blogs (along with other types of Internet communication venues) have become an important forum for netizens to create content of their own to compensate for the generally dull and unexciting daily flow of information from the official sources. Meanwhile, due to the omnipresent state power in cyberspace and heavy-handed state censoring of online information (Zheng, 2007), most Chinese bloggers have voluntarily shied away from politically sensitive and subversive issues and topics and have opted to focus predominantly on entertainment and amusement as a strategy of self-survival. Blog Service Providers have played an indispensable role in the popularization of China’s blogosphere, especially in the early stages of its development. However, independent BSPs were soon overtaken by conventional portal sites in attracting blog writers and readers, as these portals – driven by their unchallengeable competitive edges in financing and technological power – have become the dominating players in the Chinese blogosphere. The BSPs’ initial merger strategy to gain a foothold in the fierce competition for blog writers and readers was soon replaced by campaigns to attract overseas venture capitals. Independent BSPs still face an uncertain future as they are still in the process of searching for a feasible long-term business strategy. The key role of advertisers in this process is still at the experimental stage and will be a crucial shaper of future developments. As Drezner and Farrell (2004, p. 35) observe, “even as the blogosphere continues to expand, only a few blogs are likely to emerge as focal points.” The nature of cyberspace makes it possible for only a limited number of bloggers to make it to the “A-list” of established, well-known, and often controversial bloggers (Bruns & Jacobs, 2006, p.1).

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These bloggers who become household names come in two types in the Chinese blogosphere: Mingren Boke (celebrity bloggers) and Boke Mingren (blog celebrities). In functioning as “focal points,” these bloggers are able to successfully grab public attention by creating controversies that less prominent bloggers find convenient to debate and share their viewpoints on. In this sense, big-name bloggers and less renowned ones have developed this symbiotic relationship with one another in sustaining the network chain of information production in the blogosphere. Additionally, news Web sites and conventional news media play the role of an amplifier in spreading the news to a larger audience. For those bloggers who otherwise do not have name recognition, the best way to achieve fame is to publicly stage stunts that are difficult for others to ignore. So the Chinese blogosphere has to some extent become a mind-boggling bazaar of hype manufacturing by a variety of individuals for different kinds of purposes through feeding public curiosity for the sexy, weird, and bizarre. The end of an attention-grabber justifies any means imaginable – thus the rise of a new profession called “network hand-pusher” whose sole service is to calculate the most likely move in the particular situation for its shock value. In China, every type of media content is subject to official control and regulation. Blogs are no exception. For that reason, the vast majority of Chinese bloggers have not played a major role in covering important news, especially when it involves controversial issues. News only gains momentum when the conventional media and the officially-approved portals get involved. Major news bloggers are also reporters for the conventional media because of their privileged status as government-appointed messengers. The average bloggers, however, often pick up the news from these official sources and blog their viewpoints or comments. When it involves sensitive topics and grievances against public officials, anonymous forums, such as BBS and chat rooms, are

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preferred channels. Since blogs and other forums complement each other, the popularization of the blogs has not diminished the need for other online forums.

REFERENCES Asia-Pacific Economic Times. (2005, January 21). The blog business enters commercialization: It attracts venture capital, but one hopes it is not a new round of Internet bubble (In Chinese). p. 09. Barlow, A. (2007). The rise of the blogosphere. Westport, CT: Praeger. Barlow, A. (2008). Blogging America: The new public sphere. Westport, CT: Praeger. Blood, R. (2002). Weblogs: A history and perspective. In J. Rodzvilla (Ed.), We’ve got blog: How blogs are changing our culture (pp. 7-16). Cambridge, MA: Perseus. Bruns, A. (2008). Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and beyond: From production to produsage. New York: Peter Lang. Bruns, A., & Jacobs, J. (2006). Introduction. In A. Bruns & J. Jacobs (Eds.), Uses of blogs (pp. 1-8). New York: Peter Lang. Chen, D. (2008, January 9). Blogger daily share over RMB¥ 3,00, blog commercialization shows clear path (In Chinese). Telecomm Info Daily, p. B2. China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). (2006, December). 2006 survey report on China Weblog market. Retrieved December 15, 2008, from http://www.cnnic.org.cn/html/ Dir/2006/09/25/4176.htm

China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). (2008, July). Statistical survey report on the Internet development in China (Abridged ed.). Retrieved December 15, 2008, from http://www. cnnic.cn/download/2008/CNNIC22threport-en. pdf Drezner, D. W., & Farrell, H. (2004). Web of influence. Foreign Policy, 145, 32–40. doi:10.2307/4152942 Fang, X., & Wang, J. (2003). Bloggers – firestealers in the e-age (In Chinese). Beijing, China: China Founder (Fangzheng) Publishing House. Fang, X., & Zhang, X. (2005). Analytical report of China blog development: 2004. In B. Cui (Ed.), China media industry development report: 20042005 (In Chinese). Beijing, China: Social Science Literature Press. Fanning, R. A. (2008). Silicon dragon: How China is winning the tech race. New York: McGraw Hill. Goldhaver, M. H. (1997). Attention and the Net. First Monday, 2(4). Retrieved December 15, 2008, from http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/ issue2_4/goldhaber/ Jones, D. VentureOne, & Ernst & Young. (2007, August 14). Fueled by record IT investment, venture investment in mainland China reaches $560 million in 2nd quarter (Press release). Retrieved December 15, 2008, from http://www. ey.com/Global/Assets.nsf/China_E/140807_ Press_Release(Eng)/$file/Venture%20capital_ EY_PressRelease_Final_Eng.pdf MacLeod, C. (2008, April 21). China vaults past USA in number of Internet users. USA Today, p. 1A.

China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). (2007, December). 2007 survey report on China Weblog market. Retrieved December 15, 2008, from http://www.cnnic.cn/uploadfiles/ doc/2007/12/26/113707.doc

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Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). (of China). (2008). Monthly telecommunications statistical report: May 2008. Retrieved December 15, 2008, from http://www.miit.gov.cn/ art/2008/06/24/art_5136_49229.html Pew Internet & American Life Project. (2006, July 19). Bloggers: A portrait of the Internet’s new storytellers. Retrieved December 15, 2008, from http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP%20Bloggers%20Report%20July%2019%202006.pdf Stanley, M. (2004, April 14). The China Internet report. Retrieved from http://www.morganstanley. com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs/China_Internet_Report0404.pdf Stanley, M. (2008, March 18). Internet trends. Retrieved December 15, 2008, from http://www. morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/ pdfs/InternetTrends031808.pdf Tai, Z. (2006). The Internet in China: Cyberspace and civil society. New York: Routledge. Tai, Z., & Sun, T. (2007). Media dependencies in a changing media environment: The case of the 2003 SARS epidemic in China. New Media & Society, 9(6), 987–1009. doi:10.1177/1461444807082691 Tremayne, M. (Ed.). (2007). Blogging, citizenship, and the future of media. New York: Routledge. Universal McCann. (2008, March). Power to the people: Social media tracker. Wave.3. Retrieved December 15, 2008, from http://www.universalmccann.com/Assets/wave_3_20080403093750. pdf Xinhua News Net. (2006, December 8). Chinese search engine Baidu launches blog search service. Retrieved December 15, 2008, from http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-12/08/ content_5452254.htm Xu, J. (2006). Old Xu’s blogs (In Chinese). Beijing, China: CITIC Publishing.

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Zhao, X. (2007, January 9). Blog commercialization goes from shriek to roar (In Chinese). Jiansu Commercial News, p. 2. Zhao, Y. (2008). Communication in China: Political economy, power, and conflict. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Zheng, Y. (2007). Technological empowerment: The Internet, state, and society in China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS BlogCN: Known in China as Zhongguo Boke (China Blog), BlogCN is one of the most popular blog service providers in China. It offers both free and fee-based (VIP) blog hosting services to bloggers in the Chinese language. BlogCN started its operation in November 2002, and was the first to offer free blog hosting service in China. Headquartered in Hangzhou (the provincial capital of Zhenjiang), it has registered over 25 million bloggers and attracts an average of 30 million visits per day as of late 2008. BlogChina: An arch competitor of BlogCN (as suggested by its Chinese name Boke Zhongguo, or Blog China), it is headquartered in the Zhongguancun district of Beijing, nicknamed the “Silicon Valley of China.” It was founded in August 2002 by a blog pioneer Fang Xingdong as www.blogchina.com, and changed its name to Boke Wang (Blog Net) in July 2005 (hosted at www.bokee.com). As of late 2008, it claims over 20 registered users, and reports an average of 1.2 million logins per day. Blog Service Provider (BSP): A company that offers free or paid blog hosting service. BSPs have played an indispensable role in the popularization of China’s blogosphere, particularly in the early stages. Boke: (1) a noun to refer to a blog page or site; (2) a noun for a blogger; (3) a verb to mean “to

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author a blog page or site.” The term was coined by blog pioneers Fang Xingdong and Wang Junxiu in July 2002 in their effort to introduce blogs/ blogging to China. Boke Mingren: The popularization of blogging in China has led to the rise of a special genre of bloggers, often nicknamed Boke Mingren (“blog celebrities”), who have established a reputation among blog writers and readers through their blog entries. China Blog Contest: It has become a common strategy among major BSPs in China to host contests among bloggers for varying amounts of cash prizes in order to promote their brands and attract traffic to their sites. Each contest is typically thematically branded with a particular focus, and often involves commercial sponsor(s). China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC): A non-profit network information center of China founded in 1997. CNNIC is administered jointly by the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (MII) and by Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). QQ: The most popular instant messaging service in China offered by Tencent Inc. As of September 2008, QQ had 865 million registered accounts, of which 355 million were active. Besides instant messaging, Tencent also offers game, chat, and blog services. Mingren Boke: A term for celebrity bloggers in China. It was first coined by Sina when it staged a movement to sign up celebrities in China to open accounts and contribute to its blog section (at blog.

sina.com.cn). This was part of an effort to gain competitive edge over popular independent blog sites by diverting traffic to Sina’s blog sites. Netizen: Called Wang Min in Mandarin, the term is defined by the China Internet Network Information Center as any Chinese citizen older than six years who has used the Internet in the past six months. User Generated Content (UGC): The term refers to various types of content that is generated by end-users and is publicly available on the Internet. Examples include postings on electronic Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), messages in online chat rooms, and blog entries.

ENDNOTES 1 2

3

4

http://www.blogchina.com This discrepancy can be probably best explained by the particular procedures in which Universal McCanns and CNNIC defined bloggers in their surveys: the former only included users who were between the ages of 16-54, while the latter extended the definition to all age groups. CTR is a joint venture between China’s Central Television Network (CCTV) and Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS), an international market information group which specializes in market research and consulting. http://www.blogcn.com

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Chapter 8

E-Government

A Case Study of East African Community Initiative Sirkku Kristiina Hellsten University of Helsinki, Finland

ABSTRACT E-government and other applications of information technologies can provide powerful means for global, national and local justice, increased democracy, decentralized decision-making, and more efficient service delivery. In general, e-government initiatives are aimed at modernizing governmental agencies in their dealings with the public and extending services into online environments. In various African countries, e-government initiatives have begun; they have allowed citizens easy access to public services and lobbying opportunities at policy level decision-making. This chapter identifies prospects and challenges in e-government and e-governance in the East African region. The author sketches harmonizing strategies for the development of an ethical framework for their implementation and argues that the challenge of e-governance in developing countries resides in the challenge of “good governance” as well as issues of accessibility and user skills.

INTRODUCTION This chapter focuses on the role of the modern information and communication technologies (ICT) in the development of e-government and e-democracy in the East African region, particularly, in the countries of East African Community (EAC): Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda. Founded in 1999, EAC is a regional intergovernmental orDOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch008

ganization with the goal to develop an economic and political union of the member states1. In this chapter the author explores an EAC e-government initiative in enhancing democracy and civil society. The main issue discussed is how the use of information and communication technologies can empower ordinary citizens and help them to participate in politics, public affairs and economics locally and nationally. The chapter identifies the prospects and challenges in e-government and e-governance in the

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East Africa, and sketches harmonizing strategies for the development of an ethical framework for their implementation. It examines the strategic priorities of the East African Community regional e-government initiative and its relation to the wider political, economic, and social issues in the region. The author argues that besides the problems of accessibility and user skills, the challenge of e-government in developing countries resides mainly in the field of “good governance”: developing the accountability, transparency, and responsiveness of involved governments (whether national or local). The author emphasises that e-government and the principles of “good governance” have to be implemented concurrently to promote sustainable development and democracy. By “good governance” the author means governance that is responsive to the citizens’ needs and concerns, is accountable and transparent, promotes democracy and political participation to realize the common good of the society—instead of supporting narrow and selfish benefits for the ruling elites. The author concludes that for e-governance to bring about democratic participation, more accountable leadership, social justice, and equitable human development, all e-government initiatives have to include elements of attitude and culture changes as well as the principles of “good governance.”

BACKGROUND Globalization has brought a special emphasis on knowledge creation and transfer as the primary driver of economic growth and competitiveness with information technologies playing an everincreasing role. The economic, social and political landscape in which development is taking place has changed altogether. All countries, developed and developing, are reconsidering their approaches and strategies of growth to incorporate new realities of a globalized knowledge-based economy. For developing countries the opportunities are now open to utilize information and communication

technologies to make rapid advances in their economic and political progress by acknowledging and promoting the free flow of information in global communication. In 1996 only five African countries had Internet connectivity. In 2001 all of the countries in the continent had access to the Internet. During the first decade of the 21st century, the Internet access in Africa has further increased. The mushrooming of cyber cafes in African cities and major towns, the spread of personal computers and mobile phones enabled access to a virtual global village in which information and knowledge from most parts of the globe is accessible at the click of the mouse. Africa currently has 260 million mobile phone users, and about 20 million landline subscribers, with wireless connections increasing faster than wired. According to ComScore, a global Internet information provider, there are over 41 million Internet users across Africa now.2 But still this number represents only about 5% of the population of the African continent. The continuing growth of interactive Internet-based local, national and global communication and the dissemination of information and knowledge provide a widening base for democratic participation and civil society in the regions that have been formerly marginalized. The increasing Internet connectivity and ereadiness is particularly important in many African countries that face serious economic and political challenges. These include, for instance: (1) the promotion of sustainable development and the eradication of poverty; (2) providing equal and fair access to the natural resources; (3) the prevention, management and resolution of ethnic conflicts and reinforcement of peace, security and stability; (4) the endorsement of inclusive popular participation in the development processes of democracy and “good governance”; and, (5) the promotion of human rights and civil society activities. E-government, for its part, is defined by the United Nations as a “government that applies ICT to transform its internal and external rela-

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tionships” (UNPAN, 2005). The definition of e-government adopted by EAC is: a “situation in which administrative, legislative and judicial agencies (including both central and local governments) digitize their internal and external operations and utilize networked systems efficiently to realize better quality in the provision of public services.”3 In the Kenyan government web page e-government is defined as the “use of a range of information technology... by government agencies to run government operations in order to improve effectiveness, efficiency, service delivery and to promote democracy...” (Directorate of e-Government, 2008). In general, e-governance has three main domains: (a) e-administration: improving government processes; (b) e-services: connecting individual citizens with their governments through ICT; and, (c) e-society: building interactions with and within civil society (Heeks, 2001). ICT is seen as allowing a government’s internal and external communication to gain speed, precision, simplicity, outreach, and networking capacity, which can be converted into cost reduction and increased services. ICT can also enable transparency and accountability and prepare people for participation in an inclusive political process that can produce well-informed public consent, which forms the basis for the legitimacy of governments (IICD, 2007). The definitions of e-government have clear normative connotations of development and positive change. It is no surprise then that many promoters of information technology are confident that ICT and newer social interaction technologies can play an important role in increasing civic involvement in developing African countries. There is no doubt that creating and supporting the systems of e-government and e-democracy could help create a more direct relationship between people and their representatives, and empower citizens with knowledge that can help them make informed decisions, find government information, contact elected officials or regional offices, and learn about government programs.

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Within sub-regional integration, the citizens of different East African countries could communicate with their legislators and representatives as well as with each other on the issues and policies that will directly influence them. Particularly, applications of e-government in the remote areas could help citizens to stay in touch with their local and national governments. The civil society organizations could also effectively take part in governance and democracy issues; the human rights situation can be promoted with relevant information; and channels for citizens to report and follow up human rights violations and cases of corruption can be established. E-government is also helpful in improving government accountability and cost saving, since e-government provides more services within a shorter time than the traditional government (Kaaya, 2004; Netchaeva, 2002). Since civic involvement and political participation is linked to economic development and participatory democracy, with e-government there would be more opportunities to build more trust between the citizens and their governments, and to help citizens understand the roles of the civil society organizations. Across the East African region, informational technology could offer new ways of providing access to essential information, as well as create the potential for widespread sharing of indigenous and global knowledge, promote human development, create conditions for alleviation of poverty through enhancement of economic activities and participation in political decision-making. In the short run, domestically and regionally, citizens could have new ways of online registration and voting that could reduce the possibilities of electoral fraud and could make the voting process easier and more accessible for those living in peripheries. Between elections citizens could communicate with their representatives and articulate their grievances. Overall, e-government could create significant opportunities for better governance, and political and economic advancement.

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E-GOVERNMENT IN EAST AFRICA: PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES The members of the East African Community (EAC)—Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi—have their own national e-government initiatives at various stages of execution. These efforts form a basis for a regional East African Community e-governance program4 that has recognized the role of information technology in facilitating the process of political and economic integration in the region. The EAC regional e-governance initiative emphasizes the importance and benefits associated with e-government implementation in all the member states. All the initiatives have produced policy papers and implementation frameworks, while partner states have been able to set up web-based information and communication systems; they are currently working on various types of e-services to the citizens on local, regional, and national administrative levels. The EAC members adopted a consensus statement according to which the partner states support EAC secretariat in coordination and implementation of e-government process in the region with identified priority areas in customs control, e-parliament, e-health, e-banking, e-procurement, e-commerce, and meteorology (EAC Consensus Statement, 2004). High priority is given to migrating government services into online environments, as the newly introduced practices of e-government are found to have great efficiency and flexibility. The e-readiness in the countries in the East African region differs and the initiatives for egovernment are in different stages. The stages range from the website creations to two-way interactions and online transactions, aiming toward creating comprehensive e-government portals that can provide a wide range of information and services to end-users and support one-stop online transactions without the need for dealing directly with different government agencies5 (Kaaya 2004; Kagwe, 2007). In some of the EAC member states, for example, Kenya, the e-government develop-

ment is tied together with wider public service reforms. The Kenyan Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC), for instance, has an online reporting and information system, which citizens can use to anonymously report cases of corruption and other misuse of public offices. The State Law Office offers comprehensive information on the legislation and related issues as well as downloadable forms for different services. In fact, the Kenyan e-government project as a whole has received an international recognition for its achievements. United Republic of Tanzania has established the Tanzania National Website and introduced various other information management systems and public service networks: such as, an Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS), a customs transit network connecting all Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) offices, and a Development of Motor Vehicles Online Register, among others. The Ugandan government through the National Planning Authority (NPA) in collaboration with other core government agencies, private sector, civil society and academia embarked on the harmonization and coordination of e-government initiatives through the Inter-Agency e-Government National Planning team. This approach includes creating a legal framework, which enhances government service delivery and local government and information communication systems, such as data and information for parliament use and an integrated financial management system. For direct public services, Uganda is, for example, setting up a computerized driver’s licence issuance system. Rwanda has undergone a rapid turnaround from one of the most technologically deficient nations only a decade ago to a country where legislative business is conducted online while wireless Internet access is available almost anywhere in the country. This is a remarkable development in comparison to other countries in the East African region in which the improvement has been considerably slower (Mwangi, 2006, p. 199-208). Burundi at the moment has the least developed

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e-government system due to the fact that the country is still recovering from a long-lasting war. The rapid development of e-government in Rwanda can be partly explained by Rwanda’s recent history of the 1994 genocide and its aftermath: the destruction of public trust, infrastructure, institutional framework, and property. In general, the misuse of the official channels of communication have forced the country to work hard on rebuilding and reconciling the nation, and to emphasize impartial leadership and governance, open dialogue, and availability of equal services to all. However, despite the efforts to increase the use of information technologies in government services, and various e-government initiatives and policies, all of the above will not automatically increase democracy, end poverty, and create a civil society with a participatory democracy and have accountable and transparent governance. E-government efforts are the means towards improving effective government operations and communication, and many challenges still remain. The major obstacles for building democracy with the help of information technology are, on the one hand, the “hardware issues” related to the availability of the technology (the equipment as well as user skills). On the other hand, “software challenges” exist in finding a way to make the implementation of e-governance go hand in hand with the political commitment to and realization of the principles of “good governance.”

Domestic and Regional Problems in Accessibility The first challenge is directly related to economic issues, digital divide, and technological marginalization. According to the United Nations global e-Government Survey 2008: From e-Government to Connected Governance (UNPAN, 2008), the developing countries are still lagging behind in e-government implementation which appears to have a strong relation with per capita income. Many African countries still lack the telecom-

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munications infrastructure to be able to benefit from the opportunities provided by the information technologies. An individual in a developed country is over 22 times more likely to be an Internet user than someone in a developing country. Despite the recent advances of the information technologies and the fact that more and more people around the globe have direct access to technologies and the information they convey, there are still vast regions in Africa, which have either no, or very limited access to the means of communication and information exchange. For example, most Internet users in East Africa access the web at cyber cafés, because the prices of Internet services are prohibitive in the region in which approximately half of the population still lives below the poverty line on less than one dollar a day. And for those who can at least afford to use cyber cafés, the accessibility of cafes (and the quality of their services) varies widely in the region. While the e-government services are gradually being set and increasingly used by the citizenry, they are still accessible to a limited segment of the population (Hook & Werner, 2003). In fact, there are many places in East Africa with restricted access to global connections. Many regions lack even traditional communication channels: such as telephone, radio, and television. Even in the places where Internet access is available, the connections are frequently slow and costly. While various e-government projects have been set up with national and international funding pledged, attention should be focused on more comprehensive development that combines constructing an einfrastructure alongside the “traditional infrastructure” and e-institutions alongside the “traditional bureaucracies.” Other barriers involve unreliable power supply, poor communications infrastructure in general (including telephone connections in rural areas), low literacy rates, and language issues (most of the government services and web-pages are in English while the most widely spoken African language in the region is Swahili along with numerous other local languages6).

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Digital Divide Based on global surveys, the United Nations has developed the e-Government Index (UNPAN, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008) that serves as a composite indicator of the progress among 192 member states towards implementing e-government. In 2003, the EAC countries scored deficient e-government capacity though they had web presence in government services (Kaaya, 2004, p. 43). The 2008 UN e-Government Readiness Index placed the five EAC states between the 122nd and 174th ranking positions with Kenya and Uganda at the top and Burundi at the bottom of the EAC group (UNPAN, 2008). Thus, in relation to e-readiness, it should be noted that in East Africa out of a total population of about 91 million, only about 1 million people have direct access to the Internet. The Internet services are concentrated in urban areas. The digital divide remains mainly intact, and the implementation of e-government services should go hand in hand with strategies to improve the overall infrastructure and economic conditions as well. Here the issue of political will is of central importance because it reflects the government’s willingness to embrace e-government services and to commit financial, human and physical resources (Kaaya, 2004, p. 42). While e-governance and the wider use of Internet technology are promoted as a development goal, it is important to notice that the obstacles in the access to information and knowledge are the same as the access to global markets in general. The lack of Internet connectivity in Africa—and elsewhere in the developing world—is at least partly based on global economic inequalities. In the most parts of East Africa, the very same obstacles that prevent the use of information technology are the ones that prevent its widespread use in the poor parts of the world. Geographic isolation with no reliable means of transportation, coupled with a lack of education, is further aggravated by poverty. Few people can utilize even the traditional communication channels, let alone the

new information technologies. This implies that Internet service providers have to charge high fees to make up for their investment costs. Because most private companies have to play according to the rules of market, the service providers are locked in maintaining excessively high prices in regions where there are few customers and where the connections are difficult to establish. Therefore, the use of information technologies, such as the Internet or mobile phone, remains limited to a relatively small elite, which includes foreign business and donor partners who can afford the costs. This has kept the demand relatively low, which has meant limited competition and virtually no interest from private investors. Thus, the prices continue to remain unaffordable to the wider public and especially in the rural areas— where the services and connections are needed the most. Since anticipated returns remain insufficient to attract private capital to build comprehensive communication networks in low-income areas, government investments, and international donor commitment are central in guaranteeing the accessibility of e-services.

Political Will: Needed Locally and Globally If the people in the East African nations are to benefit from e-governance, the existing governments - as well as the international development organizations—have to make more comprehensive investments that would provide service network to all, not just a few and privileged—educated urban dwellers, middle class, and elites. The policy needs to focus on providing access to the information technology, education, and technical training (Heeks, 2001; UNCTAD, 2004, 2005; UNPAN, 2005). While a globalized economy tends to benefit those who are better off, regional, national and local East African governments have to set their developmental priorities, including democracy. To enhance e-democracy and e-inclusion, it is

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important to focus on the improvement of the public service culture as a whole. Legislation that prevents publication of official documents online, or in general, blocks the information access to the public, has to be adjusted. While the security and confidentiality issues are central in developing e-government service, there is a need to further enhance the freedom of information and public access to the documents related to the use of public resources and public funds. Open and free access to information increases government accountability and prevents corruption. The governments in the East African region still tend to maintain secrecy around official documents and government transactions. Even parliaments tend to be reluctant to post their debates and related documents on their official websites. However, many business companies and civil society organizations provide access to “public information” on their websites for citizens with or without charge.

FUTURE TRENDS: E-GOVERNANCE OR “GOOD GOVERNANCE”? In relation to the political will, one of the main challenges to e-government is related to the wider attitude change within the traditionally hierarchical and frequently authoritarian leadership culture that is prevalent in the region. The problem is that e-government can as easily be used to control, censor, and suffocate citizens’ participation as it can be used to enhance democracy. If e-governance is to bring about wider democratic space and empower people, the leadership needs to comply with a new ethical and democratic culture and to follow the principles of “good governance” while expanding the government and state services online. “Good governance” requires setting up new ethical and legal frameworks, enhancing more transparent political leadership and long-term political commitment, and increasing enlightened public engagement and inclusive partnership. Clearly, setting up systems of monitoring and evaluation are of central importance. This is

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naturally a “chicken and egg” question: Can the use of new technology in itself enhance cultural transparency and accountability, or do we need first a cultural change before we can expect real e-democracy to work anywhere? In Kenya, for example, while there are interactive online anticorruption reporting systems, the end result is the same, as it would be without new, sophisticated technology. In many parts of Africa, political power has for a long time been centralized in the executive branch: around a president and his inner circle. Since checks and balances are not integrated in the governance systems, as a result, corruption, nepotism, and cronyism have for decades remained the problem of many African countries. Additionally, persistent and consistent inequalities and historical injustices often lead to conflict. The greed of leaders and grievances of those outside and without power tend to instigate violence with ethnic undertones. The result is a vicious cycle of bad governance, poverty, and marginalization in Africa and East Africa is no exception. The 2007 general election political crisis in Kenya shows that even systems with advanced levels of e-governance fail when power games and greed take over the considerations of the common good in the leadership. This leads to a question whether the Rwandan genocide situation could have been avoided with more efficient governance systems. In both cases, communication technology was used to incite ethnic hatred and animosities. In Kenya, short message service (SMS) and e-mail campaigns for and against political candidates were often ethnically targeted. In Rwanda, the media were used as a means for instigating genocide. Democracy and “good governance” are not advanced merely by setting in place democratic processes and institutions, whether online or in traditional forms, if there is no public trust in the formal institutions of governance. Without serious political commitment to the democratic values of impartiality, equality, individual freedom, and rights, as well as political and social justice,

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information technology cannot change the culture of impunity, political authoritarianism, and communal (whether ethnic or regional) partiality and favoritism. Technological development needs to be accompanied by cultural and attitudinal changes. Adapting the political democratic culture does not mean leaving behind traditional cultural values, but rather helps to integrate these values in new environments of openness and interconnectedness. Information technology can be used to promote cultural tolerance, diversity and pluralism. It can give different cultures a channel to distribute information, start a dialogue, exchange views, and express their concerns across the country, the region, the continent, and the world. Global interaction between minority cultures and ethnic communities could further empower people and let them realize that the problems they share are similar. It could help the government find solutions to the issues that may have appeared local and unique—akin to indigenous rights issues, land ownership, and language matters. Instead of lamenting that globalization leads to the cultural neo-colonialism, we can instead all learn from each other and from each other’s experiences through the means of information and communication technology. The basic technological readiness for expansion of e-government services in Africa is available, and citizens with access to the Internet are content to use new communication channels to manage their personal and public lives. In Africa, the overall access to the Internet services is gradually improving, but it will take time before it will be available equally to all citizens. However, cultural and attitudinal change that is needed to turn e-government into “good governance” is still lacking. More emphasis on improving professional and leadership ethics is needed nationally and locally.

CONCLUSION Currently, it appears that e-government initiatives have not yet succeeded in empowering East African citizens to participate in regional, national, and local markets or policy-making. Neither have they been able to balance the traditional power hierarchies. Without political commitment to the principles of “good governance” and democratic values, e-government cannot deliver impartial social justice in the region. In many East African countries, citizens are concerned with their endemic dismal socio-economic and political conditions, disappointed with the working of traditional governments, frustrated with the quality and service of the public sector, and worried about the future of their region—as well as the African continent as a whole—in a rapidly globalizing world. Many are also disenchanted with their political leadership. Despite the setting up the e-government delivery systems, the regular issues and problems of inadequate governance continue to exist. Among them is the struggle within the political elites, the greed and selfishness of those in decision-making positions, and the stubborn tendency to stick with old hierarchical patterns of power and resist change. In such political environment, there is a need to set up working two-way communication channels and use Internet technology to enhance more open and transparent forms of governance. It is also important to pay more attention to the unwanted effect of e-development in an African social and cultural context in which personal relations have always played a central role. These side effects may actually result in strengthening the powers of the elites, the educated, and the corporate sectors at the expense of the ordinary people—particularly, the poor and marginalized. E-participation could further weaken what little influence the poor have over their rulers if human face-to-face communication and relations are eliminated and replaced by impersonal virtual interaction. The periphery areas could become

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“virtually marginalized” with leaders maintaining contact only through communication technology and feeling that personal visits to these areas are no longer needed and necessary to keep in touch with the “reality” of their “potential voters.” It therefore remains to be seen whether the concept of e-government will in the long term strengthen the African sense of community, cohesion, and solidarity or lead into disintegration by weakening the connections between urban and rural areas while leaving the underprivileged alone. While planning and setting up e-government systems, there is a need to look to the new generations of African leaders who welcome and promote the principles of “good governance” and “democracy”—once the technical capacity and accessibility of ICT has been reached. For e-governance to be successful, it needs to be able to empower ordinary people to effectively and meaningfully participate in decision-making that affects their lives, livelihood, and life-styles. Besides technological education, it is necessary to maintain a clear focus on training both the government officials and the citizenry about ethical considerations, codes of conduct, and principles of “good governance.” Only then can e-government enhance opportunities for the poor, the marginalized, and the illiterate, making their voices heard more clearly than before. While there have been consistent efforts to integrate democratic principles into the frameworks and policy papers of e-government initiatives in East Africa, there remains a need to increase ethical training and enforcement of professional ethics through codes of conduct, performance based management, and performance contracts within governments, and civil service. Only such a comprehensive approach to e-governance can make leaders and administrators more responsible, accountable, and transparent while making citizens more aware of their rights and responsibilities (Modiddin, 2002; also see AEC Secretariat, 2005; Kagoda-Batuwa, 2006).

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REFERENCES Annan, K. (2003). IT industry must help bridge global digital divide. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org/ content/stories Clarke, M. (2003). E-development? Development and the new economy (UNU/WIDER Policy Brief No. 7). Helsinki, Finland: UNU Press. Coleman, S. (2005) African e-governance: Opportunities and challenges. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://www.commissionforafrica. org Directorate of e-Government. (2008). Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://www.e-government.go.ke East African Community (EAC). (2004). Consensus statement. In Proceedings of the East African Community e-government workshop. Arusha, Tanzania: EAC. East African Community (EAC) Secretariat. (2005). Regional e-government framework: Main report. Arusha, Tanzania: EAC. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://www.eac.int/ eac_egov_draft_framework.pdf Government of Kenya. (2006). Draft national information and communication policy. Nairobi, Kenya: Office of the President. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://www.e-government. go.ke Heeks, R. (2001) Building e-governance for development: A framework for national and donor action (E-Government Working Paper No. 12). Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://www. man.ac.uk/idpm Hook, F., & Werner, M. (2003). Kenya cyber cafe users survey. Nairobi, Kenya: Archway Technology Management Limited.

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Humphrey, J., Mansell, R., Paré, D., & Schmitz, H. (2004). E-commerce for developing countries: Expectations and reality. IDS Bulletin, 35(1), 31–39. doi:10.1111/j.1759-5436.2004.tb00106.x

Sarocco, C. (2002). Improving IP connectivity in the least developed countries. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://www.itu.int/osg/ spu/ni/ipdc

Kaaya, J. (2004). Implementing e-government services in East-Africa: Assessing status through content analysis of government websites. Electronic [from http://www.ejeg.com]. Journal of E-Government, 2(1), 39–54. Retrieved September 28, 2008.

United Nations. (2003). World public sector report 2003: E-government at the crossroads. New York: United Nations. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/ public/documents/UN/UNPAN012733.pdf

Kagoda-Batuwa, S. (2006). Statement by the co-coordinator, e-government initiative of East African Community. Paper presented at the East African Regional Cyber Law and E-Justice Stakeholders Consultative Workshop. Arusha, Tanzania: EAC. Kagwe, M. (2007). E-government and ICT in Kenya. Presentation at the World Bank Menda, A. (2005). Computering local government in Tanzania: The Kinondoni experience. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://www. iconnect-online.org Modiddin, A. (2002). The challenges of edemocracy: Opportunities and risks. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://unpan1.un.org/ intradoc/groups/public/documents/CAFRAD/ UNPAN007932.pdf Mwangi, W. (2006). The social relations of egovernment diffusion in developing countries: The case of Rwanda. In Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Digital Government Research (ACM International Conference Proceedings series, Vol. 151.). New York: ACM. Netchaeva, I. (2002). E-government and edemocracy: A comparison of opportunities in the North and South. International Communication Gazette, 64(5), 467–477. doi:10.1177/17480485 020640050601

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAC). (2004). UNCTAD e-commerce and development report 2004. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://r0.unctad.org/ ecommerce/ecommerce_en/edr04_en United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAC). (2006) The digital divide report: ICT diffusion index 2005 (UNCTAC/ITE/IPC/2006/5). New York: United Nations. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). (2008). eGovernance-Africa.net. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://ictd.undp. org/africaegov/en/about.php United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). (2005). Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://www/uneca.org/aisi/nici United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). (2002). Mediumterm strategy 2002-2007. Communication and information technology. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://portal.unesco.org/ci United Nations Public Administration Network (UNPAN). (2003). UN global e-government survey 2003. New York: United Nations. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://unpan1. un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/ unpan016066.pdf

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United Nations Public Administration Network (UNPAN). (2004). UN global e-government readiness report 2004: Towards access for opportunity. New York: United Nations. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/ groups/public/documents/un/unpan019207.pdf United Nations Public Administration Network (UNPAN). (2005). United Nations e-government readiness report 2005: From e-govenrment to e-inclusion. New York: United Nations. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://unpan1. un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/ unpan021888.pdf United Nations Public Administration Network (UNPAN). (2008). UN e-government survey 2008: From e-government to connected governance. New York: United Nations. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/ groups/public/documents/UN/UNPAN028607. pdf

in 1999, EAC is a regional intergovernmental organization that includes Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and Rwanda and aims to develop an economic and political union. E-Democracy: Democratic governance, processes, and institutions that use the Internet technology in their operations. E-Development: Development processes and activities through the use of the information and communication technologies. E-Government: Internet-based government’s activity and services. E-Readiness: A country’s capacity and ability to provide services through the Internet. “Good Governance”: The principles of responsive, accountable, and transparent governance, public service, and leadership practices.

ENDNOTES 1

Weddi, D. (2005). Transforming local government: E-governance in Uganda. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://www.ftpiicd.org/iconnect/ ICT4D_Governance/EN_Governance_UG.pdf

2 3

4

5

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Digital Divide: Inequalities in global access to the Internet, online resources, and services. East African Community (EAC): Founded

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See http://www.eac.int/about-eac.html See http://www.comscore.com See http://www.eac.int/programes-activities/ eac-programmes/178-e-government.html See http://www.eac.int/programes-activities/ eac-programmes/178-e-government.html See http://www.kenya.go.ke for Kenya, http://www.tanzania.go.tz for Tanzania, and http://www.government.go.ug for Uganda. In Burundi and Rwanda historically more French is spoken.

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Chapter 9

Corporate Added Value in the Context of Web 2.0 Oliver Bohl Accenture, Munich, Germany Shakib Manouchehri University of Kassel, Germany

ABSTRACT Firms have faced and explored the increased use of Web 2.0. Driven mainly by private users, Web 2.0 may also have significant implications for corporate actions and business models. By systematically scanning and verifying possible positive and negative effects on the value of their creation, firms might be able to formulate and establish well-grounded strategies for corporate Web 2.0 applications and services. To establish such a process in an effective and adequate manner, it is necessary to analyze the relationship between Web 2.0 and corporate added value. This chapter contributes to these efforts by demonstrating that the corporate use of Web 2.0 applications is reinforced by fundamental and long-term business trends. The discussion pertains to the possibilities emerging from the application of Web 2.0 paradigms to business models: the market model, the activity model, and the capital market model. The potentials, risks, mainsprings, and restrictions associated with the corporate use of Web 2.0 are evaluated.

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Firms have faced, and already explored, the increased use of Web 2.0. Due to the popularity of their offers, Web 2.0 applications enjoy the recognition of many private user groups. Companies, however, miss the added value of the applications. This chapter addresses this area of conflict. The companies, which expect an added value by using corresponding DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch009

offers, are of particular interest. The present chapter concentrates on the following: the internal effect amongst others through increasing networking, the simplification of communication through networkeffects, increasing user-participation, and external effects (“prosumers,” “mashups,” etc.) from the use of Web 2.0. One major aim is to analyze the potential to support or thwart these trends by comparing paradigms of Web 2.0 with general trends which have an influence on the added value of a company. Following the definition of basic terms,

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essential trends and their consequences on the Web 2.0 are discussed in terms of three sub-models of business. Building on this, the chapter details the chances and risks for corporate application of Web 2.0 paradigms. The term “Web 2.0” suggests a fundamental technological improvement by assigning a version number. This misleads insofar as it is preferably used for the characterization of a new use of Internet-technology. Common characterizations of Web 2.0 are mostly based on seven paradigms defined by O’Reilly (2005): “The Web as a Platform,” “Harnessing Collective Intelligence,” “Data is the Next Intel Inside,” “End of Software Release Cycle,” “Lightweight Programming Models,” “Software above the Level of a Single Device,” and “Rich User Experiences.” This paradigm-catalogue clarifies the current understanding of Web 2.0 as a phenomenon, occurring in an area of conflict, which contains technological, socio-cultural, and economic influences as poles. It is essential to consider these influences as bundled. However, from the aforesaid paradigms, O’Reilly derives seven core-competences which companies should possess in case they want to implement approaches of Web 2.0 in their business processes. To this, he adds use and service instead of software packages, which are characterized by a cost-efficient scalability. He next defines the control of unique data-sources, which are hard to copy and whose value increases proportional to their frequency of use. As a third factor, correspondent companies should believe in the users as co-developers. The willingness to capitalize on collective intelligence is then presented, and the achievement and use of “the long tail” of small websites by establishing communities is fifth. A sixth core-competence is defined by the creation of software beyond the borders of individual devices, which are influenced by a seventh attribute -- the use of “light weighted” user interfaces and adequate development, especially business models (O’Reilly, 2005). Paradigms and components of companies’

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use of Web 2.0 normally require an adjustment to established business models. This is clarified by the above-mentioned core competences which mostly don’t exist bundled in companies. O’Reilly specifically explains this relation by pointing out the requirement for adequateness to business models as a separate core competence. By that, he characterizes a close relation between efforts and possibilities in the corporate use of Web 2.0 and the design of business models. Concerning business models, it should be emphasized that the concept is a further development of the strategyconcept, which has been discussed for 40 years in the literature (Chesbrough & Rosenbloom, 2002; Knyphausen-Aufsess & Meinhardt, 2002). This discussion offers possibilities of a structured analysis of corporate added value activities (Magretta, 2002). According to such an analysis, business models help corporate organizations to systemize their actions so that they can support the analysis of corporate added value. The models are discussed as a basis for corporate service provision (Pigneur, 2000). Consequently, they are considered analytical units for corporate added value activities. As a result, they offer the ability to describe the aims and tasks of corporate acting (Grob et al., 2005; Hoppe & Breitner, 2003). These can be compared to approaches of Web 2.0 as well as common trends.

Web 2.0 Business Models Web 2.0 offers innovative possibilities for the adopting companies. Corporate action is normally determined by effective trends in the long run. Some essential trends in the context of Web 2.0 are discussed in the following. For an effective discussion of business models, it is necessary to consider the constituent elements separately. Business models are decomposed into sub-models to fulfill this task. Hoppe and Breitner (2003) propose a regulation framework for that. The authors focus on the middle-term and long-term profit maximization of the concerned

Corporate Added Value in the Context of Web 2.0

Figure 1. Web 2.0 business models

correlations of these with additional, in particular socio-cultural and technical, trends are meaningful for the design of future business models in Web 2.0. Subsequently, what influences the paradigms have sub-models that should be considered. This happens through a discussion of essential, but exemplary, effects of Web 2.0.

Market Model Oriented View

activity, which is influencing three sub-models: the market model, the activity model, and the capital market model. Simultaneously the models influence each other and have to be coordinated. The market model serves the characterization of market structures, the activity model describes the added value, and the capital market model portrays the costs and revenues to be realized by the targeted business. These sub-models are used in research to analyze general trends, which affect the corporate added value and therefore also the business models. Furthermore they serve to identify correspondents and contrary elements in the approaches of Web 2.0. Therefore it can be clarified within a market model of how the proceeding prosuming (or blurring of boundaries between producing and consuming) can be fostered by the use of Web 2.0. In an activity model, the issue of localization of value adding activities is relevant, while the capital model can be used to analyze the distribution of costs and revenues. Within such an analysis of (economic) trends and their correspondences in Web 2.0, it is important that the customer is moved toward the center of the business model triad. Figure 1 illustrates these relations. Trends are assigned to the separate sub-models within a cloud of terms. The analysis of the sub-models is closely related to O’Reilly’s implemented paradigms. The

Market model oriented considerations are used to characterize market structures. The effects of Web 2.0, which are assigned to paradigms and therefore balanced with general trends of the informationcommunity, are centered here. The transformation of customers into corporate processes can be considered a major alteration of market structure. Applications of Web 2.0 (which cause contents to be increasingly produced, published, recommended and rated by users) imply an increasing integration of formerly non-involved groups to the added value. The relevant processes and markets change correspondingly. Often the involved users act without commercial interest und the corporate partners concentrate on the organization of value adding activities. This characterization of the “Web as a Power” which forms markets and consumers was already declared in 1999 within the Cluetrain Manifesto’s 95 theses (Levine et al., 2000). Theses 9 to 12 reflect the increasing force of consumers and networked conversations (Schroll & Neef, 2006). Furthermore technical specifications of Web 2.0 affect the market models. Technologies associated with Web 2.0 offer new potentials. Websites now offer the use of interactive functions and elements in the browser, based on AJAX, which were formerly known as applications being installed on PCs. Thus, simplified software can be offered simplified, for it saves the user the trouble of installation and care. Programs are run on servers, and data is also saved independent of devices. These considerations correlate with such paradigms as: “Web as a Platform”, “Lightweight

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Programming Models,” and “Software above the Level of a Single Device.” Cumulative trends can be found for these characteristics. Lately, a trend towards the use of so- called thin-clients can be observed in scenarios of network computing. Peer-to-peer technologies also support the paradigm of the web as a universal platform—to be used through a browser (Taft, 2006). Trends towards migration of monolithic applications and application-systems strengthen the paradigms in the direction of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Combined, Web 2.0 applications offer a significant potential to realize broad software/services by the use of Internet-based technologies (Keller, 2006; Mulpuru, 2006).

Activity Model Oriented View The activity sub-model is used to describe corporate added value. Besides the involvement of users to the added value, the mashups -- realizable by the consequent use of Web 2.0 paradigms -- use of user generated content and new localized connections of value adding activities have significant importance. Concerning the provision of content, the term user generatedcontent is discussed in the context of Web 2.0. Content, characterized as user generated, occurs on platforms which involve customers. The most common samples include: weblogs, wikis, and file sharing portals for an exchange of, for instance, photos (Flickr.com) or videos (YouTube. com). The history of user generated content in online communities and Internet forums goes back to 1994 with the porting of such existing prototypes as the WELL. The prototypes were exclusively limited to text-information at that time. In the course of technical development, possibilities have arisen for the user to act as a producer and provider of additional media-forms and contents (e.g., images, audio, and videos). The importance of correspondent approaches becomes apparent by the fact that 70 million active blogs are registered at the moment. Flickr has 5,000 page views per

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minute; YouTube uploads 30,000 videos daily; and Wikipedia yields 3.8 million articles in 200 languages (Schroll & Neef, 2006). Against this background the present users have to consider how to structure their processes and activities when concretely designing their market models; they also have to take into account how many producers will produce and provide how much content: that is, what interests new providers will gain from the overall-use of media and what existing providers will give away that revolutionizes their business model (Schroll & Neef, 2006). The increased interest in the active exposure to the Internet contains further potential - through new forms and possibilities of participation as well as through the increased networking of users - to find solutions to problems faster and more efficiently, as it has been until now, to reach new activity models. This assumption can be illustrated especially through the paradigms of “Harnessing Collective Intelligence” and “End of the Software Release Cycle” in the context of Web 2.0, where the use of collective intelligence and the renunciation of traditional software-development-processes are forecast. If one combines both approaches, a connection to the trend of open source-projects will occur. The development of open-source-software shows that results with comprehensive features (e.g., Linux) can emerge. The question for the motivation and organization of correspondent approaches is interesting since, to some extent, high quality results are achieved, although classical basic conditions—budget, client, agreements of aim and time, and payment for work—are missing (Langen & Hansen, 2004). Instead, selfdetermination of aims, quality-awareness of their own work, and internationally allocated working systems with self-organization and formal planning can be observed. It is also interesting to analyze the “mashup principle” as a special paradigm of Web 2.0. The realized added value by a combination of free available resources and services to “ambitious” user-adequate and complex service-offers has to

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be distinguished in this context. This induces a massive rethinking by many users and will cause an erosion of present added-value-structures. The open interfaces of Google Maps and Amazon. com in particular are used for the design of applications that combine contents and services of different providers for new offers. Tutorlinker. com provides a market that finds tutors with the description of their focus on content and prices based on their geographical location -- through an integration of Google Maps. In this context, the “microwork principle” is significant. The attractiveness and the success of many Web 2.0 applications are based on that. Users contribute to the success of the application. According to a survey, 57% of the Web 2.0 users can be classified as actively participating users (Result Gmb, 2007). This delineates a broad participation of users in the creation of contents. At Wikipedia, for example, a whole can be determined from many small contributions. Consequently, a network effect results and the users benefit from it to a great extend because they create and use contents collectively, for example, bookmarks in Del.icio.us, news at digg.com, gastronomy reviews at Qype.com, or hotel ratings at Tripadvisor.com (Schroll & Neef, 2006). This approach reflects the two paradigms of “Harnessing Collective Intelligence” and “Data is the Next Intel Inside.” The use of collective intelligence is directly discussed as an important trend and therefore supports the use of Web 2.0. The approach by Surowiecki (2004), entitled “Wisdom of the Crowds,” is often mentioned in this context. Two questions are combined: (a) Why is such a big group “smarter” than a single member of the group? and (b) How can the business life, economy, society, and nation be formed by the wisdom of a mass? As one could reveal through Wikipedia, when many work on something, something new and grand can arise. As regards the topic of “swarm intelligence,” contrary approaches also exist; these approaches mainly question the potential for innovation in collective systems (Lanier, 2006).

Capital Market Model Oriented View In a capital market model oriented view, the costs and revenues which have to be realized are characterized by the targeted business. A major aspect of the Web 2.0 applications is the fact that these are offered to the users free. In private contexts, users pay with their own content and with the attention they pay for the platform. For the financing of the offers, different characteristics can be found. Some providers (e.g., YouTube.com) offer their content and service free of charge and make profit by placing advertisements. Supplies (e.g., marketplace of Amazon.com) are partly offered, yet provisions are incurred to the adjustor. Other suppliers (e.g., Thinkfree.com), offer some supplies as basic services, which can be complemented by further offers with costs. Also a financing by membership fees for enhanced services for premium users can be accomplished (Xing.com). License-based offers can also be found, where the user pays for single contents or the duration of use. Mixed forms of these approaches also occur (Skiba et al., 2006). Another approach involves the use of positive effects of communities. A community increases its purchasing power and can negotiate better conditions for its members: e.g., for mobile phone contracts, DSL access, and hotel contingents. It doesn’t seem to be absurd to pay the participating users for their efforts. There are current approaches where providers pay users for the upload of particular contents. When recalling contents, the up-loader gets credited a particular amount, for example, in such online talent competitions as Spymac.com. The following aspects are also important and worthy of discussion: the revenue sharing among the users and the corporate use of Web 2.0 applications, including the creation of a corporate-internal wiki, blogsystem, or social networks. Internal social software components can be utilized by companies to match expertsystems in which expert-knowledge results from

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the wisdom of employees. This promises positive results for costs.

CORPORATE USE OF WEB 2.0: POTENTIAL AND RISKS The connection of Web 2.0 and corporate added value, discussed in this chapter, has initial ambiguity because of the illustrated explicit involvement of users with the added value. The approach of Web 2.0 propagates a (sometimes active) exchange of contents between users, their network, and communication. As a general rule, this happens without explicit commercial interests and often, at first, outside corporate action. Through the establishment of web-based communities (or the provisions of interaction platforms and their sales to commercial investors, or via IPOs), massive revenues are generated and business models are constituted. As far as the application of Web 2.0 in daily life, almost no commercial use can be realized; yet, more corporate users discover Web 2.0 applications, such as blogs, folksonomies, and social bookmarking privately. New challenges and changes for their business models result for the utilizing companies. As demonstrated, the corporate use of Web 2.0 applications with increasing importance is supported by fundamental, long-term trends. At the same time, it is striking that currently unstructured approaches to implementing Web 2.0 with corporate actions lead to the absurd. A prominent example includes sub-optimal behaviors, which were shown by the corporate use of weblogs. The revolt of employees of the Siemens Corporation against corporate management on the intranet caused headlines, as the company attempted to use the innovative power of social software as a novel instrument of corporate communication. The employees misused a blog, established by the corporate management, concerning customer satisfaction, to communicate about their discontent with corporate

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management (Seith, 2006). Other examples of the inadequate use entail the corporate assisted financial support of active and assumed independent bloggers and the upload of supposedly privately produced video-clips at YouTube (“Lonely Girl 15”). If corresponding approaches are made too offensive, positive potential can quickly change to negative effects. A direct, blind adaptation of corporations acting out of “traditional” surroundings and the takeover of non-adapted business models appear critical. The corporate use of Web 2.0 offers a promise for the intensification of customer relationships through web communities, email, and so on. This can happen through various instruments, including weblogs and active forms of customer analysis (e.g., the corporate analysis of statistics of the use of wikis and social networks). These methods gain importance and offer enhanced possibilities for meeting users’ individualized needs. Only the bundled integration of Web 2.0 paradigms into the corporate culture and explicit integration into the business models will ensure its maximal utilization. A comparison of common trends affecting companies makes it clear. The change of markets, associated with Web 2.0 is reflected in a trend, which is determined as the emergence of “prosumers” and has been fostered by companies for a long-time (von Kortzfleisch & Winand, 1997). In this context, Schwartz (2005), using the term “age of participation,” describes the increasing disappearance of the border between provider and buyer as well as between producer and consumer. Users are called prosumers because they enter the markets actively and the added value is affected by their attendance and semiprofessional contributions. The hitherto existing users become new providers. It should be noted in this context that the approaches of Web 2.0 support, or even accelerate, the networking of different participants. This trend correlates with steadily increasing corporate networking and the virtualization of service-establishment, which, in turn, are driven by the economic premise of

Corporate Added Value in the Context of Web 2.0

concentration on corporate core competences. Companies observe that the use of Web 2.0 applications leads to an increased productivity within groups. In general, the pattern of using Web 2.0 is characterized as employee-driven customization of IT applications or as bottom-up integration (LaMonica, 2006). Employees are using the Web 2.0 tools privately in the form of applications such photo and video sharing (e.g., YouTube or Flickr); they chat with each other and comment, using weblogs; make use of collaborative tagging of their bookmarks on platforms similar to Del. icio.us; and enroll in networks (such as Xing or LinkedIn). This way familiarity with Web 2.0 originates and gains relevance, and a transfer to the corporate context is easier to realize. Such an approach allows for viewing Web 2.0 as parallel to corporate design options that tend to shift towards outsourcing and service orientation. Taken together, these aspects affect the market and activity models of corporate business models. Overall, capital market models, the analysis of costs, and the use of Web 2.0 applications are likely to have an impact on future business models. The examination of the paradigms of O’Reilly and the use of Web 2.0 by companies demonstrates significant cost-saving potential. Cost advantages rank first in the reduction of piloting-phases and introduction-phases of systems (Mayfield, 2005) as Web 2.0 applications contain a big part of functionalities regarding collaboration. Costs within the software development processes pertaining to the implementation, introduction, and maintenance of software can be reduced. With web access, only the costs for installation and maintenance remain for the client. There is no need for the establishment of different versions or separate platforms and the capability of workstations does not have to be changed. However, different browser types as well as plug-ins may have to be installed. It is also essential to consider the characteristics of mobile and ubiquitous access possibilities and their limited ability for illustration and transfer. Upgrades are available

directly during the construction of the network and independent of the platform. Since data are stored online instead of local hard drives, the costs of software, synchronization, and transaction disappear. Finally, if one considers the text-phase and introduction-phase of Web 2.0 applications, it can be assumed that they can be shortened. Reasons for this include that Web 2.0 applications are kept simple in the ideal case; they are designed to be conventional, user-friendly, and easy to implement. The knowledge of experienced users, which was generated by the use in private contests, can be utilized. Training and further education costs can be reduced for this reason.

FUTURE TRENDS As demonstrated, the use of Web 2.0 technologies nowadays is an integral part of most people’s everyday life; in the future, it may have a significant influence on professional work as well. Another area of increasing importance is mobility and technologies that enable mobile working. Consequently, a link between formerly separate fields of mobile technologies and Web 2.0 applications has a potential to foster the diffusion of the mobile Internet. The principle of “Harnessing Collective Intelligence” can be extended to restricted mobile devices—small, battery driven, multifunctional devices carried by the user. The distinguishing principle of Mobile Web 2.0 is the fact that people carrying devices become prosumers rather than consumers. Jaokar & Fish (2006) use three guidelines to define seven principles of (future) Mobile Web 2.0: “Harnessing Collective Intelligence,” “Capturing Information at the Point of Inspiration,” and “Extending the Web.” The authors explain that mobile devices are ideally poised to capture user-generated content at the point of inspiration. Instead of various numbers (such as home or mobile numbers), they propose tags as a much more natural way to identify people.

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Mobile Web 2.0 will be multilingual and impact more people whose first language is not English. A global network of mobile phones will emerge. The authors assume that the emerging Mobile Web 2.0 will drive digital convergence, potentially through mashups. They conclude that the Mobile Web 2.0 will foster the usage of location-based services and mobile search services. It is apparent that suppliers of existing Web 2.0 services are looking for new opportunities to migrate successfully into mobile scenarios and offer their users access and possibilities to interact with their social network regardless of space and time. For instance, providers are already offering mobile access to formerly stationary used webbased services: TinyTube.net, which is focused on the distribution of mobile video, and partyStrands, a service combining stationary and mobile technologies for an improved user experience. Such preliminary approaches lack the user’s perception and most often offer only marginally adapted services. A multiplicity of these services makes little or no use of the options, potential mobile devices, and infrastructures offered. To illustrate, currently only a minority utilizes location-based services; furthermore, they do not take into account the limitations of mobile devices (specifically, user interfaces). Applications of the Mobile Web 2.0, contextual mobile social software, and mobile social networking are seen as core elements of the future mobile data communication. According to market analysis carried out by Informa Telecoms & Media (2006), the market for mobile communities is expected to reach 13 billion dollars by 2011. Based on the examples cited above, one can agree with Ahonen (2006): Call it Mobile Social Networks.... Call it Digital Communities on 3G. Call it mobile blogging, moblogging. Call it user-generated content on mobile. But trust me, Communities Dominate. We now have found our first true killer application for the 3G space. And it is the digital community services.

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Due to the massive diffusion of mobile technologies and the increasing number of people using social software, the targeted combination of these areas is viewed as a key to successful future applications.

CONCLUSION The availability of Web 2.0 applications in mobile contexts has already been realized; however, the potential of mobile devices and infrastructures (e.g., the extended possibilities of localization) have not been sufficiently analyzed (Alby, 2007). The need for further research becomes especially evident against the background of a growing convergence of communication instruments and mobile devices playing an increasingly important role. This chapter clarifies the requirements that affect companies that want to use Web 2.0 effectively and efficiently. The authors argue that the corporate use of Web 2.0 applications is reinforced by fundamental and long-term corporate trends. By adapting and migrating to new business models, companies can seize the momentum and utilize the current trends. To take advantage of the market structures and value adding activities as well as facilitate the distribution of the realized costs and revenues, a targeted transfer of business models should be done, particularly as regards the specific sub-models. Such an approach may serve as an effective implementation strategy for investigating the relationship between Web 2.0 and corporate added value.

REFERENCES Ahonen, T. (2006). Like SMS before it. Retrieved July 11, 2007, from http://communities-dominate. blogs.com/ brands/2006/10/like_sms_before. html

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Alby, T. (2007). Web 2.0. Munich, Germany: Carl Hanser. Chesbrough, H. W., & Rosenbloom, R. S. (2002). The role of the business model in capturing value from innovation. Industrial and Corporate Change, 11, 529–555. doi:10.1093/icc/11.3.529 Grob, H. L., vom Brocke, J., & Bensberg, F. (2005). Finanzwirtschaftliche bewertung von geschäftsmodellen im e-learning. In M.-H. Breitner & G. Hoppe (Eds.), E-learning (pp. 101-116). Heidelberg, Germany: Physica. Hoppe, G., & Breitner, M.-H. (2003). Classification and sustainability analysis of e-learning applications. Hannover, Germany: IWI. Informa Telecoms & Media. (2006). Mobile communities and user-generated content. Retrieved January 10, 2007, from http://www.informatm. com Jaokar, A., & Fish, T. (2006). Mobile Web 2.0. London: Futuretext. Keller, E. (2006). A new dogfight: SOA versus Web 2.0. Manufacturing Business Technology. Retrieved April 12, 2007, from http://www.mbtmag.com/current_issues/2006/june/col2.asp LaMonica, M. (2006). Web 2.0 entering corporate world slowly. Cnet News. Retrieved April 10, 2007, from http://news.com.com/Web+2.0+entering+c orporate+world+slowly/2100-7345_3-6117854. html Langen, M., & Hansen, T. (2004). Wissensaustausch in open source projekten. In M. Engelien & K. Meissner (Eds.), Virtuelle organisation und neue medien (pp. 373-382). Lohmar, Germany: Eul. Lanier, J. (2006). The hazards of the new online collectivism. Retrieved April 10, 2007, from http:// www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html

Levine, R., et al. (2000). The cluetrain manifesto: The end of business as usual. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. Magretta, J. (2002). Why business models matter. Harvard Business Review, 5, 3–8. Mayfield, R. (2005). Many-to-many: Fear, greed and social software. Retrieved April 12, 2007, from http://many.corante.com Mulpuru, S. (2006). 5 trends for Web 2.0. SiliconIndia. Retrieved April 12, 2007, from http:// www.siliconindia.com/ magazine/fullstory.php/ PNH725517105 O’Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0. Retrieved November 15, 2006, from http://www.oreillynet. com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-isweb-20.html Pigneur, Y. (2000). The e-business model handbook. Retrieved April 10, 2007, from http://www. hec.unil.ch/ yp/Pub/00-ebmh.pdf Result Gmb, H. (2007). Web 2.0 - begriffsdefinition und eine analyse der auswirkungen auf das allgemeine mediennutzungsverhalten. Retrieved April 10, 2007, from http://www.result.de/ research-studien-web-2-0 Schroll, W., & Neef, A. (2006). Web 2.0 was ist dran? Perspektive Blau. Retrieved April 10, 2007, from http://www.perspektive-blau.de/ wissen/0609a/0609a.htm Schwartz, J. (2005). The participation age. Retrieved April 11, 2007, from http://blogs.sun.com/ jonathan/date/20050404 Seith, A. (2006). Siemens-Mitarbeiter revoltieren im intranet. Spiegel Online. Retrieved April 10, 2007, from http://www.spiegel.de/ wirtschaft/0,1518,439346,00.html Skiba, B., Tamas, A., & Robinson, K. (2006). Web 2.0: Hype or reality - a strategic analysis. London: Armapartners.

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Surowiecki, J. (2004). The wisdom of crowds. New York: Doubleday. Taft, D. K. (2006). Ajax, Soa to merge. eWEEK. Retrieved April 10, 2007, from http://www.eweek. com/article2/ 0,1895,2022638,00.asp von Kortzfleisch, H., & Winand, U. (1997). Tele-insuring: Der Beitrag neuer kommunikations- und informationstechniken (KIT) zur verbesserung der kundenorientierung im versicherungsbereich. DBW, 57(3), 337-355. zu Knyphausen-Aufsess, D., & Meinhardt, Y. (2002). Revisiting strategy: Ein ansatz zur systematisierung von geschäftsmodellen. In T. Bieger, N. Bickhoff, R. Caspers, D. zu Knyphausen-Aufsess, & K. Reding (Eds.), Zukünftige geschäftsmodelle (pp. 63-90). Berlin, Germany: Springer.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Activity Model: The activity model is used to describe corporate added value. Besides the involvement of users to the added value of mashups - realizable by the consequent use of Web 2.0 paradigms, the use of user generated content, and the connected new localization of value adding activities.

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Business Models: Business models are reduced to sub-models (the market model, the activity model, and the capital market model) to fulfill the task and are centered on the middleterm and long-term profit maximization of the concerned activity. Capital Market Model: Within a capital market model oriented view, the costs and revenues which have to be realized are characterized by the targeted business. Market Model: Market model oriented considerations are used to characterize market structures. The effects of Web 2.0, attributed to paradigms and therefore balanced with general trends in the information-community, are centered here. Migration: In the discipline of information systems, migration refers to the replacement or upgrade of applications and/or software systems with potentially better ones. Mobile Social Software: Social software designed for use on mobile devices. Prosumer: The trend towards the so-called “age of participation” provides that in the future there will be no more separation between bidder and buyer, producer and consumer. Today users are no longer only consumers; they have increasingly become producers. This new type of participant is called a prosumer.

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Chapter 10

A Social Capital Perspective on Collaboration and Web 2.0 Gunilla Widén-Wulff Åbo Akademi University, Finland Anna-Karin Tötterman Åbo Akademi University, Finland

ABSTRACT Social interaction technologies can successfully employ the previously untapped power of the Web to utilize the collaborative creation of information and user-driven content. In this chapter, the social capital framework is applied to illustrate how Web 2.0 tools and techniques can support effective information and knowledge management in organizations. Interactions within and between organizations generate important practices that underscore the role of social capital. Managing social capital for effective knowledge sharing is a complex process, and Web 2.0 lends some support for organizations by creating a new culture of voluntary, contributive, and collaborative participation. The argument is made that Web 2.0 technologies can be seen as important tools that can bridge the creation and sharing of knowledge in diverse organizational contexts.

INTRODUCTION During the last decade the processes of globalization and development of virtual tools for knowledge management has profoundly influenced many organizations. Groups and individuals must manage different social and cultural environments, dissimilar modes of communication and information processing, and various Internet-based technologies. This gives rise to new challenges and possibilities for DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch010

managing information and knowledge in organizations. The introduction of a service-oriented web which becomes increasingly social and interactive, defined by Tim O’Reilly (2005) as Web 2.0, raises the issue of computer self-efficacy or information competence that yields a higher performance-related outcome and a greater use of computers in organizations. The social nature of Web 2.0 emphasizes the importance of user skills termed electronic literacy (Godwin-Jones, 2006). To draw a deeper picture of the benefits and challenges associated with Web 2.0, we will ap-

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ply the social capital framework to illuminate how Web 2.0 tools and techniques can support effective knowledge sharing in organizations. As argued (Audunson, Vårheim, Aabø & Holm, 2007; Johnson, 2004; Tötterman, in press; Tötterman & Widén-Wulff, 2007; Widén-Wulff, 2007; Widén-Wulff et al., 2008; Widén-Wulff & Ginman, 2004), social capital can provide a suitable theoretical framework for understanding knowledge management processes in organizations.

BACKGROUND Research on social capital has been carried out in different disciplines and at different levels depending on the chosen perspective (e.g., Fukuyama, 1995; Putnam, 2000). At the organizational level, social capital has been connected, for example, to interunit resource exchange (Tsai & Ghoshal, 1998) and to individual gains in terms of status and career opportunities (Burt, 1997; Lin, 1999). There exists no unified definition of social capital, however. In this chapter, we use a definition of social capital by Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998, p. 243) that includes the individual and the social aspects: “The sum of actual and potential resources embedded within, available through, and derived from the network of relationships possessed by an individual or social unit. Social capital thus comprises both the network and the assets that may be mobilized through that network.” Social capital is also often described in three dimensions: a structural dimension (network character), a relational dimension (trust and social identity), and a content dimension (communication to facilitate social capital). The structural dimension includes the network structure and the nature of the network ties between the actors. Networks are viewed as the cornerstone for resource exchange and the ties can be described as information channels (Adler & Kwon, 2002). The relational dimension embraces social identity and trust. The notion of trust is a crucial aspect of

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social capital (Fukuyama, 1995). An atmosphere of trust among the members of an organization has been suggested as an important factor facilitating information and knowledge sharing, cooperation, and other forms of collective actions within and outside the social unit (Huotari & Iivonen, 2004). Identification is also viewed as an important part of relational social capital (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). Cognitive identification can be described as the process by which individuals view themselves as part of a social unit and define themselves by the group (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Tyler & Blader, 2001). Communication is seen as a critical aspect of social capital. It is considered a foundation for social capital and a key mechanism in generating further organizational goals: namely, intellectual capital and reduced transaction costs (Hazleton & Kennan, 2000). By communication, a common knowledge base can be created which facilitates further communication and information sharing. The communication content within the network structure can also be seen as an essential motivation to information practices (Adler & Kwon, 2002; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). Further, versatile communicative ability is crucial in creating the communicative mechanism that creates in organizations further advantages with fruitful social capital (Hazleton & Kennan, 2000). It has been shown that the social capital framework is a usable navigation tool in picturing the information and knowledge sharing processes. Although social capital is inherent to every organization and group, it has not always received attention it deserves. Social capital is a context of dynamic environments for information sharing and continuously changing while following patterns and rhythms. It opens up relational, structural, and content dimensions related to sharing. It gives an overall picture to organizational and collaborative action and improves the understanding of the role of information and knowledge sharing in diverse institutional contexts and results in better information control.

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The new social interactive technologies within the concept of Web 2.0 allow new collaborative possibilities and place new demands in terms of knowledge sharing in organizations. These technologies are seen as a network of collaborative applications where users consume, create, and recreate information from several sources resulting in new contents and structure. The entire informational value is constructed by user action and user interaction. It is a social dynamic that includes how the information is used, understood, and re-invented all the time (Miller, 2006; Tredinnick, 2006a). One benefit of the Web 2.0 techniques is that they are technically not challenging. Sharing, for example, experiences and information on work procedures in a blog is rewarding when the person knows colleagues and peers will read about how the procedure works and contributes knowledge on the topic. The exchange of views leads to a more productive knowledge sharing environment (Brady, 2005; Ojala, 2005). The Web 2.0 technology also gives collaboration and knowledge sharing a visible structure; it is motivating to collaborate when one’s inputs are seen immediately. The social and interactive features of Web 2.0 are important reasons for their popularity. Social aspects of knowledge sharing are, however, not easy and straightforward to manage. There is a wide range of specific social factors that influence people’s willingness to share knowledge. Among other aspects, it has been acknowledged that interpersonal trust and commitment to the group or organization is of importance (e.g., Byrne, 2001; Newell & Swan, 2000). There is evidently a need for an interactive discussion - combining social capital aspects, knowledge sharing theories, and Web 2.0 techniques - to develop concepts from a common basis.

DIMENSIONS OF SOCIAL CAPITAL AND WEB 2.0 It has been shown that the different aspects of social capital bring a deeper understanding to the knowledge sharing processes. It has also been stated that Web 2.0 technologies and tools are bringing forward new collaborative possibilities. The authors will examine these new possibilities and demands through the lenses of social capital and its dimensions.

The Structural Dimension The structural dimension of social capital is defined through network structures and the nature of the network ties between the actors. Social interactions in the structures are channels for information flows. Through these interactions, an actor may gain information and also access to other actors and their resources. There is a need to know the network, how to access it, and what kinds of benefits there are within the network. Structures, ties, and networks are seen as enablers of efficient knowledge sharing. Web 2. 0 technologies give the sharing visible structures: for example, wikis finding their way into the workplace where they are seen as a possibility for employees collectively and easily to store, edit, and access work-related material. Wikis help the employees to collaborate electronically by merging fragmented knowledge in the organization into more usable entities and easily accessible data (Hasan & Pfaff, 2006). The wikis give collective knowledge a visible structure in which everyone can contribute. Organizational blogs are also a good example of giving a structural dimension to collaborative work. There are mainly two types of blogs associated with the workplace: internal and external blogs. External blogs are difficult to evaluate as knowledge sharing tools in an organization since these are personal blogs of employees only connected to that person’s individual interests. However, external blogs also shape a network,

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connecting persons in an organization to a wider network that could be used for collaborative purposes. The internal blogs are more important from the workplace point of view. They are often part of an intranet and are encouraged by the employer. Internal blogs seem to work best if they are the personal diary type, as were the original blogs. To work as a knowledge sharing technology, the blogs need to be non-alienating and should be the voice of the employers, not a management tool (Ojala, 2005). From the structural dimension point of view, linking between blog posts enables visible and public feedback and the shaping of communities (Brady, 2005) - useful information when developing effective knowledge sharing.

The Relational Dimension The relational dimension is defined through trust, identity, and roles. In the relational dimension the underlying motives for sharing are stressed. It has been shown that the exchange of information in online environments is highly dependent on social relationships. Although a social infrastructure often starts in face-to-face environments, online techniques and web platforms support the development of relational ties (Hall & Widén-Wulff, 2008). It has been said that Web 2.0 tools bring structure to collaborative processes. They also support possibilities to develop social relations, resulting in different kinds of benefits. There are a number of studies looking at blogs, wikis, and social networks as important tools of support for learning in different environments, e.g., the context of higher education (Craig, 2007). Hall and Davison (2007) have studied blogs as a tool to encourage the interaction between students and found that blogs increased reflective engagement with teaching material; there was also a higher level of shared peer support between class members. There is a learning outcome as a positive effect of social software, but it must be remembered that simply importing informal Web 2.0 applications

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does not automatically lead to stronger relations, giving positive effects (Selwyn, 2007). Although Web 2.0 tools are easy to adopt, new applications always demand some motivation from the individual to be able to adapt to the interactive tools. Trust is an important enabler to both motivating and using social technologies and needs to be integrated into this understanding. Trust is usually built over time (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995) and is not always possible in this kind of environment.

The Content Dimension The content dimension is defined as shared goals, common experience, language, and knowledge where shared meaning and collective knowledge are key aspects. The Web 2.0 technologies especially promote a shared language and collective knowledge. In a workplace, a collective view on specific problems may be mediated. Attitudes in the workplace have changed rapidly from looking at blogs as individual diaries with the description of the person’s political interests into being a more collective tool where several persons can participate and generate a wider knowledge base on a specific matter. With these features the blogs reflect a personal viewpoint and allow readers to respond and comment (Ojala, 2005), creating a dynamic context (Klamma, Cao, & Spaniol, 2007) and a collective viewpoint. Blogs also generate a common language which is usually very casual. Blogs are easy to use, informal, and allow lapses in language, grammar and typographical errors (Ojala, 2005). At the same time, this may create a serious flaw by flattening the expertise and undermining the basis of quality assurance (Brabazon, 2006). The dynamic nature of blogs may also cause problems, making the knowledge content unstable (Klamma et al., 2007). There are also some important cautions against the use of wikis in organizations. There is a risk that the wiki will be edited in a destructive manner to include irrelevant or even mislead-

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ing information. Here one encounters the same problems with quality assurance and reliability as mentioned above (Hasan & Pfaff, 2006). Despite some problematic issues concerning the quality of information produced through social software, there is an obvious strength in the possibility of generating collective knowledge, viewpoints, and action. This is a clear benefit to effective knowledge sharing and management.

Web 2.0 as a Generator of Social Capital, Collaboration, and Knowledge Sharing Knowledge work may be defined as using one’s intellectual and social capital to create new knowledge (Cohen & Prusak, 2001). Within the objectivist perspective on knowledge management, knowledge is understood as an entity that people possess and which can be transferred to other people. From the practice-based perspective, knowledge is seen as socially constructed and embedded in people’s actions. From this point of view, the focus is often on social and socio-technological conditions interacting with collaborative knowledge sharing across different groups, communities, and regimes in both offline and online settings. One of the problems of knowledge work and knowledge management is the difficulty in getting people to share their tacit knowledge. This is where the social and interactive tools of Web 2.0 could bring some positive effects and support the sharing of expertise (Angeles, 2003; Stover, 2004). As mentioned earlier, there are many different kinds of social software applications. Specifically, the public nature of blogs and wikis are seen as motivating people to write and contribute; it enables them to create ideas, accumulate knowledge, create networks, share, and manage (Brady, 2005; Hasan & Pfaff, 2006). Web 2.0 in fact highlights one of the ideals: free and open generation of information and knowledge in social interactions -- an intersection of users, social contexts, and information

systems. Therefore, one can claim that Web 2.0 is constructed out of a real use and need, based on the user’s learning processes both offline and online. In contrast, earlier information system initiatives in organizations, such as the managed intranets, were characterized by the organization’s preferred and idealized view of itself, harming the free and democratic generation and capitalization of the organizational member’s knowledge (Tredinnick, 2006b). It has been shown that there are a number of possibilities using Web 2.0 techniques as knowledge sharing tools in organizations. At the same time, there is a need for a critical view and a need to avoid adopting them automatically to solve all knowledge management issues. Information and knowledge in any organization is individual and specific for each environment. Knowledge management is contextualized by the organization and includes information as an object and a user construct (Kirk, 2005). The fact that it is highly specific as to what constitutes information and knowledge in an organization means that the knowledge management initiatives must be brought to the local context where the human and social processes underpin the formal structures enabling information sharing. The ability to manage people and what they know - in other words, the human and social networks - is known to be a complex and challenging process. In this respect, the use of blogs and wikis for creating ideas, sharing knowledge, and shaping communities and networks is found to be suitable for various knowledge processes (Klamma et al., 2007). Important core competences of using Web 2.0 technologies in organizations encompass the fact that these tools are foremost; that they induce trust and make users co-developers of information and content. Harnessing collective intelligence can be reached through customer self-service and developing lightweight user interfaces (O’Reilly, 2005). Web 2.0 tools can be seen as generators of social capital and knowledge sharing, where

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social capital refers to both norms and networks as facilitating collective action and encouraging cooperation. Understanding how social capital works is vital for creating new intellectual capital in organizations where a new culture of voluntary, contributive, and collaborative participation is emerging (Brady, 2005). As such, the structural, relational, and content dimensions of social capital become visible in the analysis of social software and knowledge sharing in organizations

FUTURE TRENDS Knowledge at the organizational level is created in conversations, collaboration, and different social contexts (Avram, 2006). The ability to share information and knowledge among different communities, groups, and discourses is crucial for an organization’s innovative capability (Davenport & Hall, 2002; Kogut & Zander, 1992). To fully understand and utilize these knowledge processes, the focus should be on social and socio-technological conditions interacting with the knowledge processes (Orlikowski, 2002). This kind of knowledge work is seen as supportive of social capital (Cohen & Prusak, 2001). Among the positive effects of having a high level of social capital is the availability of intellectual resources through networks and through the relationships between individuals and social units. However, managing social capital and knowledge related processes are challenging areas. One of the problems knowledge work and management faces is the difficulty in encouraging people to share their tacit knowledge. Until now, writings on Web 2.0 in organizations have merely focused on describing the new technology tools and techniques and their potential benefits, as well as voiced certain skepticism towards their value (Avram, 2006; Dvorak, 2006; Ojala, 2005; Tredinnick, 2006b). In the future, it would be of great importance to conduct deeper studies based upon multi-sided empiri-

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cal research into the interaction and integration of social contexts, social software, and various knowledge processes within different workplace and organizational settings. It would be of interest to explore, examine, and theorize on such questions as: How are the Web 2.0 techniques used in organizations? How are they affecting knowledge processes in organizations? How are they interacting with different social contexts? As social software continues to expand, new tools will emerge that will bring new challenges to information and knowledge sharing in organizations. Regardless of how the future of the web would materialize, there will always be challenges in understanding individuals’ information behavior and effective knowledge management in online environments and organizational contexts.

CONCLUSION Managing social capital for effective knowledge sharing is a complex process, but Web 2.0 lends some concrete support in this organizational challenge. In this chapter, we have addressed the fact that social interaction technologies have a potential in terms of knowledge management in organizations. Contributing to a blog or wiki may help employees to collaborate electronically and share their expertise with others by merging fragmented knowledge into more usable entities and accessible data (Hasan & Pfaff, 2006). The informal character of blogs and wikis also supports the ease of adoption of these tools. However, this also challenges the issue of quality of the information produced. In addition, new technologies may demand a certain degree of motivation from individuals to be able to adapt to the interactivity of Web 2.0. Trust is considered an important motivator while the motives for using blogs as a knowledge sharing tool include the possibility of increasing one’s own knowledge base, exploring one’s thoughts, supporting and disproving one’s own ideas.

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Web 2.0 tools that allow knowledge processes to function in and between individuals, units, and social networks may well support developing the social capital of an organization. Furthermore, Web 2.0 technologies afford the possibility of increasing one’s knowledge base, exploring one’s thoughts, and supporting and disproving one’s ideas. Overall, Web 2.0 techniques and applications can be seen as important tools that can bridge different knowledge sharing processes and collaboration between individuals and groups in organizational contexts.

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Burt, R. S. (1997). The contingent value of social capital. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42(2), 339–365. doi:10.2307/2393923 Byrne, R. (2001). Employees: Capital or commodity? Career Development International, 6(6), 324–330. doi:10.1108/EUM0000000005988 Cohen, D., & Prusak, L. (2001). In good company: How social capital makes organizations work. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Compeau, D., Higgins, C. A., & Huff, S. (1999). Social cognitive theory and individual reactions to computing technology: A longitudinal study. MIS Quarterly, 23(2), 145–158. doi:10.2307/249749 Craig, E. M. (2007). Changing paradigms: Managed learning environments and Web 2.0. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 24(3), 152–161. doi:10.1108/10650740710762185 Davenport, E., & Hall, H. (2002). Organizational knowledge and communities of practice. Annual Review of Information Science & Technology, 36, 170–227. doi:10.1002/aris.1440360105 Dvorak, J. C. (2006). Web 2.0 baloney. Retrieved January 15, 2008, from www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1931858,00.asp Fukuyama, F. (1995). Social capital and the global economy. Foreign Affairs (Council on Foreign Relations), 74(5), 89–103. Godwin-Jones, R. (2006). Emerging technologies: Tag clouds in the blogosphere: Electronic literacy and social networking. Language Learning & Technology, 10(2), 8–15. Hall, H., & Davison, B. (2007). Social software as support in hybrid learning environments: The value of the blog as a tool for reflective learning and peer support. Library & Information Science Research, 29(2), 163–187. doi:10.1016/j. lisr.2007.04.007

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Selwyn, N. (2007) Web 2.0 applications as alternative environments for informal learning - a critical review. Paper presented at the OECD-KERIS expert meeting, Cheju Island, South Korea. Stover, M. (2004). Making tacit knowledge explicit: The ready reference database as codified knowledge. RSR. Reference Services Review, 32(2), 164–173. doi:10.1108/00907320410537685 Tötterman, A.-K. (in press). Kommunikationsdimensionen i socialt kapital. En studie av informationsdelning, förtroende och social identitet vid en universitetsfakultet. (The communication dimension in social capital: A study of information sharing, trust and social identity at a university faculty.) (Meddelanden från Ekonomisk-statsvetenskapliga fakulteten vid Åbo Akademi.) Tötterman, A.-K., & Widén-Wulff, G. (2007). What a social capital perspective can bring into the understanding of information sharing in a university context. Information Research, 12(4). Retrieved January 9, 2008, from http://InformationR.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis19.html Tredinnick, L. (2006a). Anarchy and the organisation: The intranet. In . Proceedings of Online Information, 27-29, 163–167. Tredinnick, L. (2006b). Web 2.0 and business: A pointer to the intranets of the future? Business Information Review, 23(4), 228–234. doi:10.1177/0266382106072239 Tsai, W., & Ghoshal, S. (1998). Social capital and value creation: The role of intrafirm networks. Academy of Management Journal, 41(4), 464–476. doi:10.2307/257085 Tyler, T. R., & Blader, S. L. (2001). Identity and co-operative behaviour in groups. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 4(3), 207–226. doi:10.1177/1368430201004003003

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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Knowledge Management: A broad concept which refers to the theoretical and practical base for the effective management of organizational knowledge. Knowledge Work: Creation, application, and utilization of knowledge. Includes the development and use of tacit knowledge. Social Capital: Refers to capital that is created and nurtured in social relations. Social Interaction Technologies: An assortment of interactive and collaborative applications, such as blogs and wikis, where users can consume, create, and recreate information resulting in new contents and structure. Web 2.0: An Internet phenomenon where new competencies emerge in the form of more social and interactive uses of the web. Wikis: Web-based applications that can be used for collaborative knowledge management.

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Chapter 11

Social Capital, Social Networks, and the Social Web The Case of Virtual Volunteering Dhrubodhi Mukherjee Southern Illinois University, USA

ABSTRACT Social interaction technologies create communicative possibilities that go beyond dyadic interactions and across physical boundaries, bringing a qualitative shift in the functioning of the Internet. The present chapter employs social capital and social networks perspectives to identify the social determinants of virtual volunteering in the age of Web 2.0, explores the social motivation of volunteers who perform tasks using the social Web in the context of online volunteering, and addresses the dynamic interplay of social capital, social networks, and the social Web with implications for virtual volunteering. The argument furthered is that active participation in social networks generates social capital and facilitates the development of the social Web.

INTRODUCTION The Social Web or Web 2.0 refers to an aggregation of social interaction and collaboration technologies, including blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networking sites, photo and video sharing services, and simulated 3-D virtual worlds – a phenomenon, which has brought about a qualitative shift in the functioning of the Internet (O’Reilly, 2005). The Social Web has displayed an immense potential to create online social environments (Mikroyannidis, 2007). From DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch011

a medium for information retrieval and electronic mail exchange, the World Wide Web has grown into a comprehensive platform for social interaction and collaboration with rich communicative possibilities. The Social Web has developed over the recent years through smaller decentralized initiatives worldwide. As such, the Social Web is becoming a platform for the creation of a World Volunteer Web1 where virtual volunteers can communicate and interact with volunteer organizations and volunteer managers to explore and pursue common goals and interests. This evolution has resulted in the formation of new web-based organizations in the U.S., such as the

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VolunteerMatch2 which aims to help prospective volunteers find suitable volunteer opportunities in their communities. Virtual or online volunteering is the process of volunteering performed from an offsite or remote location through the use of the Internet (Cravens, 2000, 2006; Ellis & Cravens, 2000; Fussell & Setlock, 2003). Today, many national and international organizations recruit virtual volunteers to perform various tasks (Capeling-Alakija, 2001). United Nations Volunteer Programme, Amnesty International, SeniorNet, and Elder Wisdom Circle are some of the early adopters of virtual volunteering. Created as a virtual volunteering segment under the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)3, a UN global development network, the United Nations Volunteers (UNV)4 program has been designed to connect prospective volunteers, primarily from developed countries, with non-profit organizations to assist the low development regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Cravens, 2006). UNV defines online volunteering as “a form of social behaviour, undertaken freely over the Internet, which benefits the community and society at large as well as the volunteer, and which is not driven by financial considerations.”5 The United Nations Volunteers program launched a website6 to facilitate virtual volunteering by supporting collaboration between development organizations and volunteers over the world. In 2000, in association with Cisco Systems the UNV program started a joint initiative called NetAid7 to utilize the power of information technology to combat poverty around the world by raising awareness among young generations (Cravens, 2006). Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam (2000) expressed concerns that Americans are becoming detached from civic activities and community life, resulting in a loss of so-called social capital. According to Putnam, social capital stands for the value—economic, emotional, spiritual, and social—that people generate by engaging in social relationships (1995a, 1995b). Putnam considered

social capital as the glue holding communities together with the power of cooperative actions. At the core of Putnam’s proposition is the notion that social capital is dictated by how networks of individuals in a community create conditions where people are inclined to do things for one another. In his seminal work, Bowling Alone, Putnam (2000) argued that social capital in America was declining and that Americans were becoming less engaged in collective and informal interactions, including volunteerism. After attributing several reasons for the decline in social capital, Putnam singled out television for its detrimental influence. Putnam (2000) asserted that TV has atomized local communities by providing people with a source of passive entertainment within the comforts of their homes. As a result, Putnam (2001) claimed, social activities and civic engagement in recent decades have been replaced with television viewing and cautioned that the Internet might take the same route. Some scholars, however, believe that unlike TV, the Internet has interactive potential and may connect rather than disconnect people (Benschoten, 2000; Galston, 2000). Overall, different technological innovations have helped people make time commitments to other than traditional volunteering and civic engagement activities (Robinson & Goeffrey, 1997). From the early 1950’s to the present day, television, videogames, the iPod, the iPhone, MP3 players, and electronic gadgets as well as the overall digitalization of entertainment have all had a profound displacement impact on the social engagement that takes place during leisure time. As the Internet penetration among American households has grown, so have concerns over the possible unfavorable effects on social capital. A Pew Internet & American Life (2007) survey suggested that nearly 75 percent of Americans reported to have used the Internet, a 10 percent increase from year 2005. Almost 92 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 are on the Internet. The report indicated that on a typical day, one third of Internet users go online for “no obvious reason”

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(Finn, 2006). However, one study, found that heavy Internet use was generally associated with high levels of participation in voluntary associations (Wellman, 2001 As of today, virtual volunteering is an emerging field involving thousands of individuals and organizations around the world; however, there is a paucity of empirical research and theoretical frameworks to understand the social implications of these activities. The present chapter addresses a relationship between social capital, social networks and the Social Web, and discusses the scholarly debate on the virtue of the Social Web in the context of online volunteering. The author employs the social capital and social networks perspectives to explore the social determinants behind virtual volunteering.

BACKGROUND The practice of virtual volunteering is a comparatively recent phenomenon. However, volunteering using telephone connections has a longer historical precedence (Benschoten, 2000; Blanchard & Horan, 1998). In the early 1970s, Project Gutenberg began recruiting virtual volunteers in a nationwide effort to digitalize books available in the public domain (Hart, 1992). The idea received further advance when a California based non-profit organization named Impact Online initiated the Virtual Volunteering Project to promote volunteering practices among non-profit organizations (Ellis & Cravens, 2000). The project identified organizations that already employed virtual volunteers in their existing programs and also introduced virtual volunteering to new organizations. The Virtual Volunteering Project later shifted its base to the University of Texas at Austin.8 A Pew Internet & American Life national survey found that 67 percent of teenagers and young adults are involved in civic activities and social networking using the social features of the Internet, the largest among all age groups (Len-

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hart, Madden, Macgill, & Smith, 2007). Online social networking sites provide an opportunity to maintain a web-profile with an array of other services (such as instant messaging, email, photo and video sharing) and the ability to connect with friends. MySpace and Facebook are popular social networking sites with more than 120 million members (Weber, 2007). MySpace and Facebook have recently added new forums for civic participation on their respective sites. The Facebook network runs several community action projects where unfamiliar volunteers from the same neighborhoods connect with one another through a Facebook group to raise funds or donations for such projects as Actions Against Hunger. ServiceLeader.org, a website maintained by the University of Texas at Austin, lists many tasks that virtual volunteers can perform: such as, conducting research for a cause, data collection and scrutiny, news tracking and media analysis, tutoring and mentoring, legal consultations, providing accounting and tax advice, developing business and technology plans, translation and proofreading, providing multimedia expertise in desktop publishing, graphic and web design, and assisting with computer technology.9 Many organizations, such as SeniorNet, encourage skilled senior citizens to get involved in volunteering by using the Internet. Various population segments -- including the elderly, people with disabilities, women, and minorities -- can now engage in social capital generating activities through the Social Web. The introduction of social interaction technologies has helped the Internet to reflect the real world with its rich social connections and interactions more closely. When Peter Hoschka coined the phrase “the Social Web” in 1998, he initiated the possibility of merging various social interactive features of the Internet in one single platform (Hoschka, 1998). The vagaries of human behavior have become more apparent in computer enabled interactions (Mukherjee, 2007). The concept and the practices of the Social Web

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have raised expectations of the possible positive impact of the Internet on civic engagement, citizen participation, and volunteering (Dunlop & Holosko, 2007).

Virtual Volunteering Virtual volunteering emanates from the convergence of computer and communication technologies (Monge & Contractor, 2003). This new form of online interaction causes a “spatial transformation” by dissociating spatial proximity from real life functions (Castells, 1996, p. 394). Wellman (2001) maintained that when computer networks connect real people, they become social networks. The rapid growth of information and communication technologies has expanded social networks beyond geographic limitations (Wellman, 2001). As a result, participants of volunteer activities become disembodied from their geographic locations and integrated into functional virtual networks (Castells, 1996). These networks open up multiple possibilities for virtual volunteers and the organizations/communities for which they serve by forming social ties beyond their immediate geographic boundaries and by sharing the skills and resources embedded across these social ties. Volunteering on the web operates on the same altruistic and philanthropic principles as that of on-site volunteering. The motivation for virtual volunteers stems from the desire to see their contribution make a meaningful difference for the communities they care about. Thus, this kind of volunteering also reaffirms accountability for the organizations they serve. The collaborative work environment on the Internet, sustained by both synchronous and asynchronous communications, positively reinforces prosocial behavior in volunteers (Sproull, Conley, & Moon, 2005). Moreover, virtual volunteers get access to a wide range of information on the Internet about the organization and their respective assignments before signing up for the task. The availability of information

online gives these netizens a further advantage, as they could voice their concerns and opinions in an interactive environment. These arrangements help relieve stress, doubts, and misunderstandings for virtual volunteers while sustaining their motivation. Sproull and colleagues argue that social networking on the Internet provides volunteers with a unique platform for social support and social learning, which is very important for maintaining and increasing their social motivation. Volunteering in cyberspace has several inherent advantages that have been attracting organizations from around the world (Gardyn, 2006). Because it is done through the Internet infrastructure, virtual volunteering produces an opportunity to access a wide range of services that could not have been easily located around particular geographic areas; for example, organizations in remote areas with an Internet connection would find it very useful to connect with a virtual volunteer from another place (Cravens, 2006). Secondly, virtual volunteering has been estimated to save considerable resources for both the volunteer and the agencies they serve, as organizations can save on office space and overhead expenses by employing virtual volunteers. Participating volunteers also enjoy enormous flexibility to perform their tasks. Time flexibility reduces volunteers’ stress and gives them the ability to work within the confines of their own schedules. To manage volunteering online is also less expensive than on-site since there is no transportation cost involved, the return on investments is much higher, and technology and staff operating cost are minimal. Moreover, managers acquire access to a wide pool of volunteers from geographically dispersed areas; this access renders ease and diversity to their recruitment efforts. Recent empirical research (Amichai-Hamburger, 2008) avers that volunteers who perform their tasks online are more educated, hail from higher socio-economic strata, and are more likely to hold professional positions. Generally, virtual volunteers perform tasks that are highly professional in nature: namely, data

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entry, accounting, translation, business plans and grant writing assistance, and computer technology support (Sproull, Conley, & Moon, 2005). Virtual volunteering involves the use of Internet-based tools (e.g., e-mail, listservs, chat rooms, MOOs, VOIP telephony, and webcams) to deliver assigned tasks over distance. Volunteers communicate their work progress via email to a project manager. They are primarily employed by the not-for-profit human service and political organizations to perform specific tasks that require specialized skill-sets, which organizations either cannot afford or cannot get access to outside of the virtual environment. Similar to face-to-face volunteering, virtual volunteers need to self-motivate themselves and commit to a time-line. Organizations, by contrast, must provide basic infrastructure and administrative support to help volunteers perform their tasks in virtual environments. As virtual volunteering expands, it creates opportunities for people who have hitherto remained on the receiving end of volunteering. The online nature of volunteering has paved the way for a population group, whose physical mobility is restricted either by disability or old age, to become actively engaged in volunteering (Strathdee, 2005). The Pew Internet & American Life Project (2006) research shows that Internet penetration is growing among the elderly. Older adults have the time, knowledge and skills to contribute to many social causes across the world, but may be restricted by age and mobility issues. Oraves (2000) observed that almost 53 percent of people with disabilities have recognized the Internet as their window to volunteering opportunities. Volunteering online adds more value to an organization. Though organizations pursue uniform rules for both online and onsite volunteers, demographic characteristics of virtual volunteers make the former more sustainable. Major corporations, e.g., Hewlett-Packard, are allocating time to their employees for online volunteering or to work with disadvantaged groups. Other organizations

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have created volunteering opportunities for their retirees. Thus, virtual volunteering technology has enabled the inclusion of highly skilled elderly and disabled people to use their vast knowledge and work experiences to help social causes. Elder Wisdom Circle10 is an organization that allows elderly people to “adopt” grandchildren through the Internet to mentor and advise them. Similarly, the “disability rights movement” has received a good amount of fund-raising online through a network of virtual volunteers who are disabled themselves (Galston, 2000). Thus, through cooperative action, conventionally disadvantaged groups receive an opportunity to empower themselves and become more fully engaged and integrated in inter-generational and cross-sectional social networks.

DISCUSSION Social capital theorists assume that human relationships have intrinsic values that, if nurtured according to the society’s norm, could produce positive outcomes for society as a whole and for individuals in particular. Putnam (2000) termed the summation of such relationships as social capital, and thought that, if harnessed, they could bring about coordinated action among groups of individuals. Pierre Bourdieu (1986), however, believed that social capital stemmed from structural hierarchies of society which allowed persons better positioned in social, economic, and cultural hierarchy to use their social networks to their advantage. Economists and structural social scientists have observed that human relationships are embedded with certain values depending on their interactions (Benkler, 2006). Through communication across social networks of connected individuals, groups, and communities, such values are accrued and shared by the individual and collective entities. These values are resources generated outside the market in the domain of social relationships by connected actors; they can function emotionally

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as support from a friend during stress and instrumentally as economic support from a local church (Antonnuci, 2001). Putnam’s view of the Internet vis-à-vis social capital had drawn criticism from researchers who wanted him to take a more definite stance on the potential of the Internet as it relates to social capital (Field, 2003; Fukuyama, 2001). In his book Better Together, Putnam showcased the online portal Craigslist, a network of community based message boards, as an example of successful “tapping” of the Internet’s potential to nurture social capital (Putnam & Feldstein, 2003). Putnam, however, has not carried out any empirical study of the connecting power of the Internet. Nevertheless, with advances in social interaction technologies, the Internet is emerging as a vehicle for the creation of a global multi-level social network. Social networks are constituted by a set of relational ties across several sets of actors (nodes), which together form a social structure (Scott, 2001). Network theorists argue that a proper understanding of social capital requires a more precise analysis of the specific qualities and configurations of network ties (Wasserman & Faust, 1998). Putnam distinguishes two types of networks that determine the characteristics of social capital: bridging and bonding ties (or exclusive and inclusive ties). Bridging ties refers to diverse networks that encompass more distant ties or weak ties outside of one’s close networks, such as operational relationships with co-workers and other people at professional online forums. Bonding ties refer to relationships that are characterized by homogenous (similar) networks between people who are alike and share high trust and reciprocity, such as immediate family members, close friends, and neighbors (Putnam, 2000). Coleman (1988) labeled these bonding ties dense and closed networks, dense because they are emotionally rich and closed because boundaries are such that outsiders or persons with different characteristics find it hard to assimilate. According to Haythornthwaite and Wellman

(1998), the effectiveness of social networks that can generate social capital would depend on the structure of the network where communication takes place. The structure of social networks consists of both strong and weak ties that determine the quality of communication and the exchange of embedded resources, which eventually lead to social capital formation. As strong ties, bonding is characterized by emotional involvement, while bridging ties are mostly weak ties enriched with opportunities to earn instrumental support or referrals that help to move up the social ladder. The notion of bridging networks is more explicitly explored by Burt (1992) who called attention to the gap between different network clusters. A bridging and linking network transcends this gap by providing opportunities for diverse transaction of resources across varied networks. The social network theory of media use (Haythornthwaite, 1999) maintains that technology mediated human interactions evolve with the intensification of the quality of communication. The theory predicts that interaction through social networks would be more frequent among participants who have strong ties in real life and would be weak among those with weak ties. When friendship networks expand in real life, the friendship would need further reinforcement through the Social Web technologies. This works on the assumption that one utilizes multiple communication techniques; in short, friendship networks expand the Social Web providing that platform. Thus Haythornthwaite proposes an attractive proposition that participation in social networks could supplement face-to-face communication and positively influence the accumulation of the social capital by adding more units to the already existing social network. Communication is an important ingredient in the formation of social capital, and the mode of communication, whether face-to-face or through a social network, impacts the scope of social capital. As the quality of the interaction between human beings and technology progresses, people

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create new social spaces where social capital is generated. The Social Web has exponentionally multiplied such tools of communication and made them available for everyone’s use. Wellman (2001) argued that modern social association has undergone significant changes along with the technological facilitation of social communications. He claimed that the definition of community has undergone a transformation from territorial communities into a set of social connections that exist across individual social networks, which he called “networked individualism.” Still, Wellman has been optimistic that online networks would gradually increase social capital in communities by strengthening social ties and facilitating civic engagement. The mechanisms for generating the two important ingredients of social capital, namely trust and reciprocity, in physical space and real time do not require traditional methods of regular onsite participation. The Social Web reduces the time it takes to build norms that are important for accumulating social capital in communities. The phenomena of online social networking sites, forums, blogs, and wikis have made the Internet much more socially entrenched and behaviorally fluid. Furthermore, social networks can accrue the benefits of social capital by facilitating community action and community cohesion, helping people easily engage in social networks, making them accessible through the Internet, and providing strong reference points of trust through the connectivity of their web platforms. The social capital generated through volunteering online helps participants associate with new networks of friends and support. Friendship networks, emotional support, and building trust have been identified as important factors in developing social capital (Schultz, 1961). As volunteering incorporates social interaction tools in its repertoire, with each new innovation the mode of interaction between the volunteer and the organization or community goes through transformations. Today, users incorporate multiple channels and

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add newer modes of online communication to their existing ones to accommodate the emotional and communicational demands resulting from a qualitative change in virtual relationships. For instance, someone who started primarily with basic e-mail communication may upgrade to using online chat, Internet telephony (e.g., Skype), or video conferencing software based on the requirements of a task level of interaction. As a rule, virtual volunteers who develop strong social ties with the organization/community use more than one Internet tool (e-mail, forum, listserv, blog, etc.) in their work. Thus, newer channels of communication are added to the existing ones leading to closer involvement with the network.

FUTURE TRENDS While the beginning of the Social Web era has started a process of re-conceptualization of volunteering on empirical and theoretical grounds, research of virtual volunteering is still in its exploratory stages. In the absence of a method for tracking every instance of online volunteering, there is no empirical data on the prevalence and distribution of virtual volunteering across organizations (Cravens, 2006). Overall, virtual volunteering is an important phenomenon that needs a rigorous examination to help the scholarly community, policy makers, and practitioners understand the nature of emerging civic engagement through the Internet. It has been suggested that social interactions through virtual networks can be supplementary to existing social relations. The Social Web, therefore, is a communicative tool that adds to or facilitates the social connectedness of humanity. Higher participation in a social network increases its size and contributes to bridging ties, as people who participate are more likely to communicate with diverse categories of individuals. The scholarly community works on developing conceptualizations of virtual volunteering, typologies, and theoretical frameworks (Acevedo,

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2005; Murray & Harrison, 2002). Future studies, however, may also focus on the negative side of online social networks and the unintended consequences of networked social interactions. Finally, it would be significant to trace whether and how the Social Web will change the essence or notion of social capital, as we know it from Bourdieu, Coleman, and Putnam. The prospects of the Social Web may be difficult to predict considering the pace with which social interaction technologies are evolving. Investments in broadband infrastructure, which had brought major computer networks of the world into one connected platform, have revolutionized patterns of communication for organizations and communities across geographic boundaries (Aneesh, 2006). Under these circumstances, virtual volunteering creates new opportunities for social cohesion and international social development worldwide. As mass usage brings down related costs and makes technology more accessible (Norris, 2001), virtual volunteering becomes instrumental in creating a coalition of partnerships for social and human development that span across individuals, communities, organizations, and governments.

CONCLUSION Virtual volunteering has emerged as an outlet for social engagement; it aspires to balance the lack of civic participation with the growing opportunities for social interaction provided by the Social Web. The virtual volunteering model is highly flexible and makes it possible for volunteers to participate in social causes from their homes and workplaces through an ensemble of communication tools brought to the Internet by the generation of Web 2.0 technologies (ILO, 2004). The growing interest in virtual volunteering (Cravens, 2000, 2006) suggests that awareness of the importance of civic participation exists across communities, but the method of such participation has undergone a significant change.

Virtual volunteering as a form of social interaction, centers on performing a given task; at the same time, it helps volunteers to reach out to one another and form lasting relations. These relations include volunteers, volunteers and agencies, and the communities they serve. Through communication across social networks of connected individuals, groups, and communities social values are accrued and shared by individual and collective entities. Through the process of social interaction during volunteering, virtual volunteers serve their communities and contribute to the accumulation of social capital assets in society. The Internet has created avenues where asynchronous communication is able to play a major role in the disbursement of volunteering services. Thus, it has created a win-win situation for volunteers and the organizations they serve by adding flexibility of time and place to the world of volunteering. Online social networks have altered the traditional theoretical assumptions about social capital formation, which have long suggested that only prolonged civil participation in a primarily face-to-face environment will lead to its creation. The rules of social engagement in a social network environment on the Internet follow a different path; they generate community trust and reciprocity through the creation of reputable web portals that benefit from community goodwill and the affirmation of millions of social networks dispersed all over the globe. To summarize, the Social Web reduces the amount of time and effort required to increase social capital assets and enhance the community’s positive outcomes by enabling rich social interactions. Thus, active participation in social networks generates social capital, and the Social Web facilitates such participation by providing the necessary interactive platforms.

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Castells, M. (1996). The rise of the network society. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, S95–S12. doi:10.1086/228943 Cravens, J. (2000). Virtual volunteerism: Online volunteers providing assistance to human service agencies. In J. Finn & G. Holden (Eds.), Human services online: A new arena for service delivery (pp. 119-136). New York: Haworth Press.

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Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Benschoten, E. V. (2000). Technology, democracy, and the creation of community. National Civic Review, 89(3), 185–192. doi:10.1002/ncr.89301 Blanchard, A., & Horan, T. (1998). Virtual communities and social capital. Social Science Computer Review, 16(3), 293–307. doi:10.1177/089443939801600306 Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital: Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education. New York: Greenwood Press. Burt, R. S. (1992). Structural holes: The social structure of competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Capeling-Alakija, S. (2001). Volunteerism is a tradition. UN Chronicle, 38(1), 64–65.

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Ellis, S. J., & Cravens, J. (2000). The virtual volunteering guidebook. Palo Alto, CA: ImpactOnline. Retrieved December 15, from http://www. serviceleader.org/new/documents/vvguide.pdf Field, J. (2003). Social capital: Key ideas. New York: Routledge. Finn, J. (2006). An exploratory study of email use by direct service social workers. Journal of Technology in Human Services, 24(4), 1–20. doi:10.1300/J017v24n04_01 Fukuyama, F. (2001). Social capital, civil society and development. Third World Quarterly, 22(1), 7–20. doi:10.1080/713701144 Fussell, S. R., & Setlock, L. D. (2003). Informal communication in an online volunteer community: Implications for supporting virtual relationships. Unpublished manuscript, Carnegie Mellon University.

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Galston, W. A. (2000). Does the Internet strengthen community? National Civic Review, 89(3), 193–202. doi:10.1002/ncr.89302 Gardyn, R. (2006). Volunteering goes virtual. Chronicle of Philanthropy, 8. Retrieved November 1, 2008, from http://philanthropy.com/free/ articles/v18/i07/07t00501.htm Hart, M. (1992). Guttenberg: The history and philosophy of project Gutenberg. Retrieved March 26, 2007, from http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/ Gutenberg:The_History_and_Philosophy_of_ Project_Gutenberg_by_Michael_Hart Haythornthwaite, C. (1999). A social network theory of tie strength and media use: A framework for evaluating multi-level impacts of new media. Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois. Haythornthwaite, C., & Wellman, B. (1998). Work, friendship and media use for information exchange in a networked organization. Journal of the American Society for Information Science American Society for Information Science, 49(12), 1101–1114. doi:10.1002/(SICI)10974571(1998)49:123.0.CO;2Z Hoschka, P. (1998). Computers as assistants: A new generation of support systems. New York: CRC. International Labor Organization (ILO). (2004). A fair globalization: Creating opportunities for all. Geneva, Switzerland. Lenhart, A., Madden, M., Macgill, A. R., & Smith, A. (2007). Teens and social media. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Mukherjee, D. (2007). Reassembling the social environment: A network approach to human behavior. Administration in Social Work, 8(1), 208–218. Murray, V., & Harrison, Y. (2002). Virtual volunteering: Current status and future prospects. Toronto, Canada: Canadian Centre for Philanthropy. Retrieved December 15, 2008, from http://www. onlinevolunteering.org/resources/documents/ murray_sr2_english_web.pdf Norris, P. (2001). Digital divide. New York: Cambridge University Press. O’Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. Retrieved December 15, 2008, from http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/ news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html Oraves, J. (2000). Online counseling and the Internet: Perspectives for mental health care supervision and education. Journal of Mental Health, 9(2), 1–12. Pew Internet & American Life Project. (2006). Reports: Demographics. Retrieved February 16, 2007, from http://www.pewinternet.org/ PPF/r/171/report_display.asp Pew Internet & American Life Project. (2007). Demographics of Internet users. Retrieved February 16, 2007, from http://www.pewinternet.org/ trends/User_Demo_2.15.08.htm Putnam, R. (1995a). Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital. Journal of Democracy, 6, 67–78. doi:10.1353/jod.1995.0002

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Putnam, R. (2001). Civic disengagement in contemporary America. Government and Opposition, 36(2), 135–156. doi:10.1111/1477-7053.00059 Putnam, R., & Feldstein, L. M. (2003). Better together: Restoring the American community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Robinson, J. P., & Goeffrey, G. (1997). Time for life: The surprising ways Americans use their time. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Schultz, T. W. (1961). Investment in human capital. The American Economic Review, 51(2), 1–17. Scott, J. (2001). Social network analysis: A handbook (2nd ed.). London: Sage Publications. Sproull, L., Conley, C., & Moon, J. Y. (2005). Prosocial behavior on the net. In Y. AmichaiHamburger (Ed.), The social Net: Human behavior in cyberspace (pp. 139-162). New York: Oxford University Press. Strathdee, R. (2005). Social exclusion and the remaking of social networks. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company. Wasserman, S., & Faust, K. (1998). Social network analysis: Methods and applications. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Weber, L. (2007). Marketing to the social Web: How digital customer communities build your business. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Wellman, B. (2001). Computer networks as social networks. Science, 293, 2031–2034. doi:10.1126/ science.1065547

Social Network: A social structure made of nodes of individuals and organizations that are tied by specific types of interdependency. Social Networking Site: An online service that allows users to maintain a personal profile and communicate with others in an interactive media-rich environment. Social Web: Also known as Web 2.0, the Social Web is an aggregation of social interaction and collaboration technologies, including blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networking, photo and video sharing, and simulated 3-D virtual worlds. The United Nations Volunteer (UNV) program: Created under the auspices of the United Nations Development Programme, UNV encourages people around the world to engage in volunteering activities. VolunteerMatch: A U.S. national nonprofit organization which maintains a website (www. volunteermatch.org) dedicated to help people find volunteer opportunities in their local communities; the database of volunteer opportunities can be searched by location, interest area, or keyword. Virtual Volunteering: The process of volunteering performed from an offsite or remote location through the use of the Internet.

ENDNOTES 1 2 3 4 5

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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

7 8

Social Capital: The value (trust, reciprocity, social and emotional support) that is generated from participation in formal and informal social network relationships.

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9 10

http://www.worldvolunteerweb.org http://www.volunteermatch.org http://hdr.undp.org/en/ http://www.unv.org http://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en/org/ resources/further_reading.html http://www.onlinevolunteering.org http://www.netaid.org http://www.serviceleader.org http://www.serviceleader.org/new/virtual/ http://www.elderwisdomcircle.org

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Chapter 12

From Software to Team Ware

Virtual Teams and Online Learning Culture Francesco Sofo University of Canberra, Australia

ABSTRACT Social interaction technologies have made it possible for teams to exist in a virtual reality. Such change to the workplace status quo requires a new appreciation of the ways in which team members can create, maintain, transmit and influence their competitiveness and effectiveness. This chapter explores the concepts of virtual teams and online culture; it analyses the key requirements for the successful functioning of virtual teams: for instance, building trust, consolidating authentic communication flows and thinking critically. Commencing with a review of the current research, the chapter concentrates on the rise of virtual teams, the key dimensions, and the importance of establishing online learning cultures to ensure high performance. Additionally, pitfalls of virtual teams and recommendations for enhancing their work are presented.

INTRODUCTION The emergence of social interaction technologies (SIT) has drastically altered the way in which individuals relate to each other, particularly with regard to team work and group membership. A team used to be constrained by the geographical location of its members, and the quality of the face-to-face interaction and interdependence was largely reliant on the close proximity through which members worked. In DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch012

recent years, teams have evolved to become virtual entities consisting of teleworkers, telecommuters and individuals situated in countries around the world who are linked together through collaborative work. This shift has seen changes to the ways in which team work occurs, and the virtual world of work has emerged as a complex environment where success is dependent on a shared culture that facilitates knowledge creation and the best contributions of all its members (Starke-Meyerring & Andrews, 2006). Modern workplace is inherently ambiguous, uncertain and full of change. It puts exacting

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From Software to Team Ware

demands on the team to be effective in terms of communication processes and trust, and presents an increasing environmental complexity which is further exacerbated by the transfer of previously familiar concepts such as “team work” to a virtual, online world. Gone are the geographic borders and face-to-face interactions that previously embodied teaming; instead team members are faced with a trail of communications held on a server and transmitted via the Internet. The irony is that teleworkers are now working over greater distances and those who have not been in itinerant occupations have suddenly found themselves, similar to the nomads, working across vast distances (Sofo, 2000). New communication and social interaction technologies have made it possible for teams to function in a virtual reality. Such change to the workplace status quo requires a new appreciation of the ways in which team members can create, maintain, transmit and influence their competitiveness and effectiveness. This emerging shift in workplace culture defines the identity and uniqueness of an organization and thus gives purpose to its activities, responsibilities and behavior of its members (Lundberg, 1988). This chapter reviews the concepts of virtual teams and online culture that promote critical thinking, including the transferability of key skills to the working of virtual teams. By commencing with an exploration of the concepts of virtual teams and online culture, and outlining their connection and links to the current research, this chapter analyses the key requirements for the successful functioning of a virtual team, including building trust, and consolidating authentic communication flows. Some practice guidelines for developing online learning cultures for virtual teams, as well as recommendations for enhancing the ability of virtual team members to think critically, are provided.

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BACKGROUND Traditionally, a team is viewed as a group of people who bring balanced competencies and accountability to shared purposes, approaches and performance targets. Members of a team have a unified commitment and think of themselves as a whole or as being “more than individuals.” There is usually synergy which means that when the individual efforts and actions are harmonized, something different and unique is created that could not be produced by any single individual of the team. There are six vital elements that comprise the concept of a team: the first element is size which is linked to the scope of the task as well as the other elements of the team; the second element is the fact that members’ skills are balanced which is a strong basis for interdependence; the third element is mutual accountability where members essentially consider themselves as synergistic and trust each other. The fourth, fifth and sixth elements relate to the synergies of purpose, approach and performance targets (Dani, Burns, Backhouse, & Kochhar, 2006). These six elements of a team are all present in a virtual team where commitment, communication and trust are still vitally important to success. A traditional team is usually co-located whereas a virtual team is not, thus, distance is viewed as the seventh element of a virtual team. Virtual teams are teams whose members are geographically distributed, requiring them to work together through electronic means with minimal face-to-face interaction (Malhotra, Majchrzak, & Rosen, 2007); they are also a group of people who work interdependently with a shared purpose across space, time, and organization boundaries using technology (Lipnack & Stamps, 2000). Virtual teams can vary in size, competencies, duration and focus. Many have a proven capacity to create dialogue amongst diverse individuals and groups in order to develop a mutually supportive, collaborative network of people sharing meanings and achieving common objectives. Virtual teams

From Software to Team Ware

are characterized by reciprocal relationships among all the stakeholders, particularly when there is a shared culture among the members and their broader learning communities. Virtual teams need commitment to feedback, experimentation, reflecting critically, welcoming ambiguity and exploring multiple perspectives – all of which are key skills inherent to critical thinking. There is a place for adopting overt roles of thinking critically to nurture the work of individuals and their virtual teams. Successful teams – whether virtual or not – rely on the ability of seemingly disparate people to work together in order to achieve a common and desirable outcome. A virtual team is in fact a virtual learning community, a network of relationships based on common aims and shared meaning that creates and uses a distinctive learning culture. Factors that enhance the quality of team work include personal effectiveness, the sharing of mental models, team learning, a demonstrated commitment to effective implementation and mutual accountability for the phases and stages of delivery (Senge, 2006). Whether real or virtual, learning communities or teams require parallel and distributive leadership (Andrews et al., 2004). By extension, they must also contain reflective, active and critical thinkers who are capable of moving in unison even if individuals are separated geographically. Virtual teams, for example, learning communities are therefore based on a leadership culture of learning, trust and openness which communicates to all members that there are choices and that any individual can demonstrate leadership and thus influence direction and development (Walker & Shuangye, 2007). To perform effectively, care needs to be taken in dealing with a number of factors that can impact on the performance of either a face-to-face team, a virtual team or a mixed mode team including social loafing and the effect of transactive memory systems. Individuals who believe that they are taking part in a task with others have been found to reduce their performance, independent of any potential

loss attributable to distraction or a lack of coordination during the actual group performance – a situation known as social loafing. Steiner’s (1972) empirical study found that reduced contribution still exists when the number of team members increase, even after controlling for the coordination loss within the team. An individual’s psychological motivation may therefore be a key factor of social loafing. A possible explanation for the emergence of social loafing in team work may be that the greater the number of team members, the less chance there is of the individual contribution of each being identified or observed. This means that some members may be able to “hide” in the team, thus resulting in a reduced contribution or loafing. During an early twentieth century experiment, Maximilien Ringelmann (1861-1931), noticed that individual performance decreased as group size increased. This finding is in stark contrast to the assumption that the total output of a team should be at least equal to, or more than, the sum of each individual contribution. The finding of this experiment reported by Kravitz and Martin (1986) indicates that the real performance of a team is much lower than expected. This has become known as the “Ringelmann effect.” Ringelmann identified two possible causes to this effect: the first is a coordination loss where an increasing number of team members results in more complex linkages between each of them, causing difficulties in the attainment or maintenance of harmony among the members. Team members have even been found to counteract one another. The second possible cause is motivation loss due to differences in the thought, conception and background of team members which leads to a reduction in their commitment to dedicate their best to the team. Inaction is likely to be the outcome thus making members’ performance on the team less than it would be as individuals. Kerr and Bruun (1981) believed that effort was somewhat dispensable so when individuals realized that their performance was not easily

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recognized nor valued in the team setting, then a re-evaluation could take place where those individuals decide to decrease the level of their contribution. This in turn decreases the level of personal motivation and dedication that individuals might show to both their work and their team. Tension can arise within the team when other members start noticing the loafing, and thus resent the fact that they are working with free-riders who may share the results of their performance without any real participation or contribution. Even more relevant is Comer’s (1995) finding that when people realize that team members are being inactive, there is an increased possibility that they all end up displaying the same loafing behavior. This means that people reduce their contribution to the task at hand because they want to protect themselves from being hurt by the social loafer. Co-worker loafing can therefore have significant effect on morale, the general functioning of the team as well as the overall result achieved by the team. All of these causes and effects of social loafing would appear to be further exacerbated for the virtual team where the online environment is not conducive to the easy attainment or maintenance of coordination, motivation and trust. Some of these factors link in to the work of Wegner, Erber and Raymond (1991) who found that transactive memory systems (TMS) have a larger impact on team performance than other variables such as cohesion, motivation and social identity. The three key dimensions of TMS of teams include who knows what (expertise location), who does what (task coordination) and relying on tasks being done (trust). Because TMS dimensions are more difficult to achieve in a virtual team than in a face-to-face team, Kamawattanachai and Yoo (2007) recommended the need to emphasize early and frequent task-oriented communication during the formation stage of a virtual team as well as the further refinement of e-tools such as electronic diaries to build trust and greater coordination among members. Several authors have confirmed that TMS improves team performance (Kamawat-

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tanachai & Yoo, 2007; Moreland & Myaskovsky, 2000; Senge, 2006).

The Rise of Virtual Teams There has been substantial literature on the differences between teams and virtual teams especially in terms of coordination, communication and collaboration (Fiol & O’Connor, 2005; Lipnack & Stamps, 2000; Saunders, Van Slyke, & Vogel, 2004). Perhaps what has been less examined is the role of adaptability and how tolerance for ambiguity and the capacity for thinking critically are assumed base-line skills for any member of a virtual team. Adaptability and openness of mind refer to relying on, and trusting each other that more than one solution exists (Sofo, 2004). These competencies enable any team to identify and challenge assumptions, to see with fresh eyes, to have an open mind and to create new perspectives. The key additional ingredient to a virtual team includes human interaction across time and space which is mediated by technology. Virtual teams often comprise cross-functional members who work on interdependent tasks and share responsibility for team performance targets, yet do not meet face-toface. Instead, collaboration is facilitated through an assortment of social interaction technologies. Thomas, Bostrom and Gouge (2007) found that virtual teams used an average of thirteen different technologies in each project they examined. Communication and social interaction technologies have made crossing boundaries possible and have brought virtual teams into existence. Given this crossing of boundaries, the term virtual team has been coined to refer to any interdependent group activity that involves spatial or time-based dispersion across distributed or global environmental settings. Lipnack and Stamps (2000) introduced coordinates to better appreciate virtual teams within the new global order with elements including space, time and organizational distance. Penetration of each of these elements has implications for building relationships among

From Software to Team Ware

team members and between the team and headquarters. In their model, the top right hand corner represents the greatest degree of virtuality while the bottom left hand corner at the axis represents the least degree of virtuality, the traditional work team. Lipnack and Stamps suggest it is possible to compute an index of virtuality by locating the team characteristics along each axis and multiplying the two digits. The higher the score of the “x” axis (organizational distance) multiplied by the “y” axis (space/time distance), the more virtual the team. It is assumed that the higher the score, the greater the challenges faced by the team due to the virtual nature of the communication processes. This, in turn, has implications for the way in which team goals can be met. Examples of virtual teams which might generate a low score using the model include a co-located team where all members work in the same area (building/floor) and can have face-toface meetings easily instead of relying on SIT. Cross-functional teams would generate a higher score than the co-located teams due to the need for cooperation across organizational boundaries or between people in different organizations. The highest scoring situations might included a fully distributed team where team members are located in different countries and are heavily reliant on SIT to facilitate their interactions, decision-making processes and outputs. Of course, it is also possible that co-located teams decide to work virtually to different degrees while distributed teams decide that frequent face-to-face meetings are important. Given their increasing popularity, virtual teams must be successful teams, and this means that any online culture must be a learning culture. Without learning there would be ineffective virtual teams and similarly, ineffective online cultures. Many organizations have transformed their culture by utilizing the Internet and adapting their work patterns and strategies to meet the requirements of the digital age. There needs to be deep integration between e-learning and web-based systems

to achieve the criteria of a learning culture, and whilst SIT may be used by any team, it becomes the lifeblood for a virtual team and is thus indispensable to its success. The inclusion of information technology can make the work of a virtual team more complex than that of traditional teams, yet without them, it would be practically impossible to have virtual teams as we know them today. For example, the introduction of virtual worlds such as Second Life has resulted in new language being created for a virtual living environment with multi-lateral control. In an environment where there is unilateral control, the maintenance of rationality at all costs and limited learning, lead to the persistence of the status quo. Argyris and Schon (1978) call this single loop learning: it describes a learning culture that fuels error processes and misunderstandings, is limited, uncreative, unchanging and reinforces existing routines. It is a type of culture that insists on doing things right, persisting with the status quo, maintaining the same rules and doing little differently. This type of learning can incorporate quite sophisticated defensive routines and is inadequate for learning that leads to improvement and change. So it would seem that a culture of an organization that does not allow the organization to reduce its defensive organizational routines, be adaptable, flexible, organize situations where its staff can be original and learn new things and ways to protect each other overtly, is not a learning culture. To counteract the deleterious effects of this type of culture many authors on virtual teams emphasize the importance of building trust in virtual team relationships (Lipnack & Stamps, 2000; StarkeMeyerring & Andrews, 2006; Stinson, Pearson, & Lucas, 2006; Thomas, Bostrom, & Gouge, 2007). Further, Dani, Burns, Backhouse and Kochhar (2005) demonstrated that there does appear to be a relationship between trust and cultural orientation of firms for the working of virtual teams. Since SIT provide the major communication mechanisms in virtual teams, team members need to be able to adapt technology use when problems

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or improvement opportunities arise. Adaptability then, is the linchpin of virtual teams. Where adaptable and flexible routines are encouraged, double loop learning occurs. This is the hallmark of a learning culture suited to virtual teams. In both single loop and double loop learning, errors are detected and corrected. The difference is that in single loop learning the culture within a team or an organization promotes skilled unconscious incompetence and vicious cycles and thus does not encourage or permit challenge. In double loop learning, the culture encourages skilled conscious incompetence, virtuous cycles and a reconsideration of the underlying values and structures to promote adaptability and flexibility. A learning culture is therefore where trusting relationships are nurtured that encourage learning at all levels. Stinson, Pearson and Lucas (2006) emphasized several major factors: learning environment, identifying and fulfilling learning and development needs, and applying the learning outcomes to the workplace. Their twelve characteristics of a learning culture include: 1.

Valuing and recognizing the need for lifelong learning 2. Encouraging active learning amongst staff 3. Developing individual self-awareness 4. Being open to new ideas, making time for learning, teams 5. Departments and organizations making time for learning 6. Developing shared visions within teams 7. Learning at department or organizational levels 8. Taking the time for team-building 9. Developing leadership skills 10. Learning from mistakes 11. Thinking about the wider environment 12. Taking the time to recognize achievements Virtual teams are a twenty-first century structural work innovation and appeal to managers wanting to save funds, reduce travel burdens and

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increase efficiency. The practice of virtual teams seems unproblematic because of SIT such as email, chat capabilities, videoconferencing and group support systems. Limitations of distance such as travel and accommodation costs and time have been reduced as individuals can interact via SIT. Virtual team work (such as specialized task forces and committees) offers attractive costsaving devices for decision-making. Apart from this economic rationalist approach to virtual teams, another attractive aspect is creativity. A salient feature of virtual teams in organizations is teambased innovation as SIT has the power to extend capabilities and invite the best global talents to join membership of a virtual team. Virtual teams therefore are slowly becoming synonymous with diversity and creativity because they are required to leverage and integrate diverse expertise and to generate innovative products, processes and business strategies.

PITFALLS OF VIRTUAL TEAMS In spite of modern facilities, communication and performance challenges of teams remain and the lack of face-to-face contact makes some of these challenges more difficult to accomplish especially where there is a loss of trust. Issues of negotiation, persuasion and outcomes achievement may be easier for some individuals on a face-to-face basis than at a distance. Body language which has more impact on the effectiveness of communication than do voice and meta-verbal aspects, is a factor contributing to the success of teams but generally is reduced or eliminated in the interactions of virtual teams. Sharing information, brainstorming, negotiating alternatives, decision-making, persuasiveness and successful outputs take on new forms that exclude the use of body language. The replacement of face-to-face work with virtual work has been inevitable and is increasing. Not only does the maintenance of trust, often gained through body language, seem

From Software to Team Ware

more difficult to achieve (Watson-Manheim & Belanger, 2002) but also the loss of trust is fatal to the effectiveness of virtual teams (de Pillis & Furumo, 2007). As well as difficulties in gaining trust and maintaining it, there are other drawbacks to virtual teams that are not immediately visible. A challenge to the effectiveness of any group is that created by social loafing or free riding where individuals do not contribute equally to the operation of a group or in fact where they do not complete their fair share of the work mutually agreed to. Compared to face-to-face groups, social loafing is not only less visible in virtual teams but can also result in individuals contributing even less (Chidambaram & Tung, 2005). Results of a study conducted by de Pillis and Furumo (2007) show that virtual teams yield significantly lower performance, lower satisfaction and a lower result-to-effort ratio than face-to-face teams. Virtual teams appeared to excel only at lowering commitment, morale and performance. Issues of communication and emotional intelligence form a complex base of possible difficulties to the success of virtual teams that endeavor to bridge space over time. The three dimensions of TMS reviewed earlier are a formidable basis of delayed impact on virtual team performance and each dimension acts differently on performance not only temporally but also dynamically and interactively (Kamawattanachai & Yoo, 2007). For example, knowledge coordination appears to be emergent and evolving while the other two factors may not be emergent or may follow different paths. It appears to take longer to build emotional intelligence and effective TMS in virtual teams compared to face-to-face teams and social communication in virtual teams particularly in the early stages may in fact be harmful to team task performance. The traditional importance of achieving a balance between the strength of task orientation versus emotional well being of the team members has been persistently referred to in the literature as difficult to achieve in face-to-face

teams. This challenge is exacerbated in virtual teams since it is easier to keep emotional intelligence of the team hidden within virtual teams compared to face-to-face teams. Further, trust takes time to develop in any face-to-face group but in virtual teams it takes longer to build but once established, beliefs and levels of trust seem more embedded and difficult to change. The focus on developing online learning cultures is on technical and technological literacy where e-learning provides tools for problem solving, just-in-time learning and day to day knowledge sharing. Jones, Oyung and Pace (2005) focused attention on four key challenges of working in a mostly virtual team environment. The first of these challenges involves building a sense of community and common purpose which can be achieved through use of instant messaging, frequent all-hands meetings, use of video, pictures and occasional face-to-face meetings where possible. The second challenge includes time-zone issues which can be overcome by regularly sharing the inconvenience by recording meetings for off-line listening, all-hands meetings and offering multiple sessions of training to accommodate the different times. The third challenge relates to language and cultural differences that need to be made explicit and resolved equitably. The final issue is attention span which can be overcome by limiting the length of virtual meetings and using multimedia (video/images) instead of always relying on spoken or written language.

FUTURE TRENDS Developing effective online learning cultures for virtual teams and communities is critical. Watkins and Marsick (1993) defined six action imperatives as the framework to creating and supporting a learning culture: creating continuous learning opportunities; promoting inquiry and dialogue; encouraging collaboration and team learning; establishing systems to capture and share learning;

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empowering people toward a collective vision and connecting the organization to its environment. Herrington (2004) reiterated these imperatives and added other specific criteria important to maintaining a technological environment for learning in virtual teams. These principles consist of: equality in power and access, both linguistically and technologically; synchronous communication; stable, fast connections; robust visual and audible information for interaction; equal access to information; and, additional actual international exchange. Starke-Meyerring and Andrews (2006) suggested that a learning environment for intercultural virtual team work should accomplish the following ten aspects. These strategies can also be regarded as good practice guidelines for developing online learning cultures, which in turn will raise the performance of virtual teams: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

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Facilitate team integration across institutions, fostering the development of a shared culture (e.g., through calendars, blogs, and other technologies that foster inclusive communication, updating, and keeping track of contextual information) Ensure availability of an integrated set of technologies with alerting features that let all know what has been added where Provide various communication channels (e.g., voice, visual, synchronous, and asynchronous) Provide sufficient opportunities to learn how to critically assess the impact of various digital technologies on communication and collaboration Allow for teams to control their own Web space Facilitate the exchange and tracking of collaboratively produced and professionally designed draft documents Allow equal access by all Reflect the shared partnership identity

9.

Integrate the shared learning environment with the communication practices and the technological infrastructure available to all in each location 10. Protect privacy

CONCLUSION At the heart of virtual teams is the concept of work. The practice of working virtually continues to be reshaped especially as greater diversity of virtual interaction is possible. The lack of physical presence is challenging but social interaction technologies enable learning as the key process of virtual work to be achieved more deeply. Online teams and communities continue to be vital learning sources. Visionary leaders are finding ways to integrate virtual teams as part of the new form of work by promoting virtual structures and rewarding new forms and sources of productivity. Building social capital virtually, stimulating well focused business and social relationships through virtual teams and creating virtual networks as key approaches to work are being figured into performance management systems by progressive leaders (Hoefling, 2001). Virtual teams are a key aspect of networked organizations where shared meanings are communicated pervasively to provide a common ground and integrate the organizational vision and efforts of all. We would expect more sophisticated social networking technologies in the future to facilitate team scheduling and build fully networked organizations. We would expect leaders and workers to commit to virtual systemic structures and supportive collaboration. The linchpin of working in virtual teams is productive learning facilitated through social interaction technologies and achieved cooperatively within the environments of trust. Virtuality is becoming the norm, the habitual way of working and learning. Work is ever more seen as collaboration which in turn is increasingly treated as a relational activity.

From Software to Team Ware

Performance is becoming more deeply team based and team incentives are not uncommon within organizations where virtual teams flourish. Working virtually signals a paradigm shift based on the use of new communication and social interaction technologies. This change relinquishes the physical handshake but enriches past human experience of face-to-face collaboration and community building.

REFERENCES Andrews, D., Conway, J., Dawson, M., Lewis, M., McMaster, J., Morgan, A., & Starr, H. (2004). School revitalization: The IDEAS way (ACEA Monograph Series No. 34). Winmalee, Australia: Australian Council for Educational Leaders. Argyris, C., & Schon, D. (1978). Organizational learning: A theory of action perspective. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Chidambaram, I., & Tung, I. (2005). Is out of sight out of mind? An empirical study of social loafing in technology supported groups. Information Systems Research, 16(2), 27–39. doi:10.1287/ isre.1050.0051 Comer, D. (1995). A model of social loafing in real work groups. Human Relations, 48(6), 647–667. doi:10.1177/001872679504800603 Dani, S., Burns, N., Backhouse, C., & Kochhar, A. (2006). The implications of organizational culture and trust in the working of virtual teams. Journal of Engineering Manufacture, 220(6), 951–960. de Pillis, E., & Furumo, K. (2007). Counting the cost of virtual teams. Communications of the ACM, 50(12), 93–95. doi:10.1145/1323688.1323714 Fiol, C., & O’Connor, E. (2005). Identification in face-to-face, hybrid and pure virtual teams: Untangling the contradictions. Organization Science, 16(1), 19–32. doi:10.1287/orsc.1040.0101

Herrington, T. (2004). Where in the world is the Global Classroom Project? In J. Di Leo & W. Jacobs (Eds.), If classrooms matter: Progressive visions of educational environments (pp. 197-210). New York: Routledge. Hoefling, T. (2001). Working virtually: Managing people for successful virtual teams and organizations. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing. Jones, R., Oyung, R., & Pace, L. (2005). Working virtually: Challenges of virtual teams. Hershey, PA: Cybertech Publishing. Kamawattanachai, P., & Yoo, Y. (2007). The impact of knowledge coordination on virtual team performance over time. MIS Quarterly, 31(4), 783–808. Kerr, N., & Bruun, S. (1981). Ringelmann revisited: Alternative explanations for the social loafing effect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 7(2), 224–231. doi:10.1177/014616728172007 Kravitz, D., & Martin, B. (1986). Ringelmann rediscovered: The original article. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 936–941. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.50.5.936 Lipnack, J., & Stamps, J. (2000). Virtual teams: People working across boundaries with technology. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Lundberg, C. (1988). Working with culture. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 1, 38–47. doi:10.1108/eb025598 Malhotra, A., Majchrzak, A., & Rosen, B. (2007). Leading virtual teams. Academy of Management, 21(1), 60–70. Moreland, R., & Myaskovsky, L. (2000). Exploring the performance benefits of group training: Transactive memory or improved communication? Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 82(1), 117–133. doi:10.1006/ obhd.2000.2891

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Saunders, C., Van Slyke, C., & Vogel, D. (2004). My time or yours? Managing time visions in global virtual teams. Academy of Management Executive, 18(1), 19.

Watson-Manheim, M., & Belanger, F. (2002). Support for communication-based work processes in virtual work. e-Service Journal, 1(3), 61-82.

Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization (2nd ed.). Melbourne, Australia: Random House.

Wegner, D., Erber, R., & Raymond, P. (1991). Transactive memory in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(6), 923–929. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.61.6.923

Sofo, F. (2000). Human resource development: Perspectives, roles and practice choices. Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

Sofo, F. (2004). Open your mind: The 7 keys to thinking critically. Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin. Starke-Meyerring, D., & Andrews, D. (2006). Building a shared virtual learning culture. Business Communication Quarterly, 69(1), 25–49. doi:10.1177/1080569905285543 Steiner, I. (1972). Group process and productivity. New York: Academic Press. Stinson, L., Pearson, D., & Lucas, B. (2006). Developing a learning culture: Twelve tips for individuals, teams and organizations . Medical Teacher, 28(4), 309–312. doi:10.1080/01421590600726433 Thomas, D., Bostrom, R., & Gouge, M. (2007). Making knowledge work in virtual teams. Communications of the ACM, 50(1), 85–90. doi:10.1145/1297797.1297802 Walker, A., & Shuangye, C. (2007). Leader authenticity in intercultural school contexts in Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 35(2), 185-204. Watkins, K., & Marsick, V. (1993) Sculpting the learning organization. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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All-Hands Meetings: Regular information sessions that include all team members. Asynchronous Communication: Communication that occurs independent of time or location. Meeting Management Software: Assists the operation of virtual teams by enabling the sharing of information and processes. Online Learning Culture: Includes practices that value and use team ware as the prime communication venue. Team Ware: Software applications that act as collaborative tools for virtual team members: e.g., audio and video conferencing, instant messaging, e-mail, virtual spaces for document/idea sharing, and meeting management tools. Telecommuters: Workers or people who work from home (telecommute) using telephone, the Internet and other communication technologies. Teleworkers: People working remotely from their workplace (includes telecommuters). Virtual Team: A group of people who rely on communication technologies to achieve their goals. Trust: Refers to a sense of reliability and confidence necessary to complete tasks in a working environment.

Section 2

Concepts, Contexts, and Applications

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Chapter 13

Folksonomy

The Collaborative Knowledge Organization System Katrin Weller Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany Isabella Peters Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany Wolfgang G. Stock Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany

ABSTRACT This chapter discusses folksonomies as a novel way of indexing documents and locating information based on user generated keywords. Folksonomies are considered from the point of view of knowledge organization and representation in the context of user collaboration within the Web 2.0 environments. Folksonomies provide multiple benefits which make them a useful indexing method in various contexts; however, they also have a number of shortcomings that may hamper precise or exhaustive document retrieval. The position maintained is that folksonomies are a valuable addition to the traditional spectrum of knowledge organization methods since they facilitate user input, stimulate active language use and timeliness, create opportunities for processing large data sets, and allow new ways of social navigation within document collections. Applications of folksonomies as well as recommendations for effective information indexing and retrieval are discussed.

INTRODUCTION A key problem facing today’s information society is how to find and retrieve information precisely and effectively. Substantial research efforts concentrate on the challenges of information structuring and storing, particularly within different sub-disciplines DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch013

of computer science and information science. In this context, information retrieval studies focus on methods and algorithms to enable precise and comprehensive searching of document collections (Frakes & Baeza-Yates, 1992; Stock, 2007a). In addition, techniques of knowledge representation have been established (Cleveland & Cleveland, 2001; Lancaster, 2003; Stock & Stock, 2008). Most prominent are approaches of document indexing:

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Folksonomy

Figure 1. An exemplary tag cloud. Tag clouds display the most popular tags within a folksonomy based system. The bigger the font size, the more documents have been indexed with a tag.

i.e., assigning content-descriptive keywords to documents. This enhances retrieval techniques and aids users in deciding on a document’s relevance. Different knowledge organization systems (KOS) are developed to support sophisticated document indexing. Common examples of KOS include classification systems (taxonomies), thesauri, and controlled keywords (nomenclatures). Recently, a well-known problem of indexing documents with content-descriptive metadata has been addressed from a new, user centered perspective. Within the so-called “Web 2.0” (O’Reilly, 2005), web users have begun publishing their own content on a large scale and started using social software to store and share documents, such as photos, videos or bookmarks (Gordon-Murnane, 2006; Hammond, Hannay, Lund, & Scott, 2005). And they have also begun to index these documents with their own keywords to make them retrievable. In this context, the assigned keywords are called tags. The indexing process is called (social) tagging, the totality of tags used within one platform is called folksonomy. A tag cloud is a popular method for displaying most frequently applied tags of a folksonomy visually (Figure 1). Thus, a folksonomy is an indexing method open for users to apply freely chosen index terms. Peter Merholz (2004) entitles this method “metadata for the masses”; the writer James Surowiecki (2004) refers to it as one example of “the wisdom of crowds.” The term “folksonomy”, as a combination of “folk” and “taxonomy”, was introduced in 2004 by Thomas Vander Wal and cited in a blog

post by Gene Smith (2004). Smith uses the term “classification” for paraphrasing folksonomies. This term arouses a misleading and faulty connotation. The same holds for the term “taxonomy.” Folksonomies are not classifications or taxonomies, since they work neither with notations nor with semantic relations. They are, however, a new type of knowledge organization system, with its own advantages and disadvantages.

BACKGROUND Knowledge Organization Systems Knowledge representation methods are applied to provide a better basis for information retrieval tools. This may basically be done in two ways: by abstracting the topics of a document and by indexing a document, i.e., assigning content-descriptive keywords or placing it into a concept scheme (Cleveland & Cleveland, 2001; Lancaster, 2003). For indexing documents with content-descriptive keywords, different types of knowledge organization systems (KOS) have been developed. The most important methods – classifications, thesauri and nomenclatures – comprise a controlled vocabulary, which is used for indexing. The vocabulary of classifications and thesauri usually has the form of a structured concept hierarchy, which may be enriched with further semantic relations, e.g., relations of equivalence and concept associations (Peters & Weller, 2008; Weller & Peters, 2007). Recently, two new developments have entered the spectrum of KOS: folksonomies and ontologies (Weller, 2007). They complement traditional techniques in different ways. Folksonomies include novel social dimensions of user involvement; ontologies extend the possibilities of formal vocabulary structuring (e.g., Alexiev et al., 2005; Davies, Fensel, & van Harmelen, 2003; Staab & Studer, 2004). Both have revived discussions about metadata on the web (Madhavan et al., 2006; Safari, 2004) and have increased the

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Folksonomy

Figure 2. Classification of KOS according to complexity and broadness of the domain

awareness of knowledge representation issues in scientific areas and even within the common web-user community. We may classify different KOS according to the complexity of their formal structure (mainly defined by the number of specified semantic relations in use for structuring the vocabulary) and the extent of the captured domain (Figure 2). Both aspects are inversely proportional: the more complex the structure, the smaller the captured domain will have to be, due to feasibility reasons. Folksonomy is a completely unstructured method of document indexing. While in most other cases trained indexers or other experts are responsible for indexing documents, folksonomies allow the producers or the users of certain content to take over this task. There is no authority which controls the terminology in use. This also means that folksonomies are in no way limited to a certain domain of interest. They can be easily applied to all given contexts, as long as a community of interest exists.

Web 2.0 and User Collaboration The term Web 2.0 was coined during a discussion by Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty from O’Reilly Media (O’Reilly, 2005). The phrase has

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since been widely assumed, yet definitions still vary slightly. Generally, it describes a new era of the World Wide Web, in which the users are in the spotlight and can to easily contribute to the creation of new web-content. The borders between “consumers” and “producers” of content are blurring; we may talk of a new type of web user: the “prosumer” as envisioned by Toffler (1980). Furthermore, the focus is on many-to-many relationships. The interrelation of groups of users (namely, communities) is emphasized. The collaboration of large communities enables the creation of content in new formats and of enormous scale. Thus, besides social networking and personal interconnections, the interlinking of topics and discussions plays a decisive role. Various new communication channels create a “matrix of dialogues” (Maness, 2006) across different types of content and different data formats (e.g., blogs, wikis, podcasts, multimedia content, discussions, forums, personal profiles). With this enormous growth of user-created content, new ways of navigating through it are needed. It was within social software platforms, that folksonomies have been introduced as an easy way to let users organize their data and make it accessible and retrievable: Everyone was allowed to tag documents with freely chosen keywords. With the success of the photo-sharing platform Flickr1, the video-community YouTube2, the social bookmarking tool Del.icio.us3, and the blog search engine Technorati4 the principles of searching documents by assigned tags became widely known.

FOLKSONOMIES AND SOCIAL TAGGING APPLICATIONS Characteristics of Folksonomies In folksonomies, we are confronted with three different elements (Marlow, Naaman, Boyd, & Davis, 2006): the documents to be described, the tags which are used for description, and the

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Figure 3. Interrelation of tags, users, and documents (adapted fromPeters & Stock, 2007).

users who are indexing the content. These three elements enable different dimensions of interconnections that can be used for browsing and navigation (Figure 3). Users as well as documents are interconnected with each other in a social network environment, in which the paths run along the tags. On the one hand, documents are linked “thematically” with each other when they have been indexed with the same tags. On the other hand, documents are related via users, so-called shared users. Finally, users are linked with each other when they use the same tags for indexing or when they index the same documents. Users are thematically related when they index with the same tags; they are coupled with shared documents when they index the same documents. Thus, tags can help to identify communities of interest. The extent of commonality may be illustrated quantitatively with similarity rates such as Cosinus, Jaccard-Sneath or Dice (Stock & Stock, 2008, p. 373), while communities of similar users can be detected by cluster analysis. All these interrelations can be used to browse a document collection. One may find interesting documents not only via tag searches, but also by following

links to documents, which related users have tagged or by using the tags that they also use. This can be described as one type of social navigation. The most popular tags of a folksonomy (via tag clouds) are another way for entering document collections and browsing for content (Sinclair & Cardew-Hall, 2008). According to Vander Wal (2005), one can distinguish between two types of folksonomies: broad folksonomies, where one document can be tagged by several users, so that tags can be assigned to each document more than once (e.g., Del.icio. us); and narrow folksonomies, where each tag is recorded for a document only once (e.g., Flickr, Technorati, YouTube) (Vander Wal, 2005; see also Peters & Stock, 2007). Usually the document’s author provides the tags, although occasionally other users are also allowed to add tags. The basis for tag clouds are platform-specific or resource-specific tag distributions which could be also represented by graphs (see Figures 4 & 5). Vander Wal (2005), Shirky (2005) and others state that in broad folksonomies the distribution of tags given to a document follows a Lotka-like power law (Egghe & Rousseau, 1990, p. 293; Egghe, 2005). If this assumption is true, we see a curve with only few tags at the top of the distribution, and a “long tail” of numerous tags on the lower ranks on the right-hand side of the curve (see Figure 4). Investigations of documentspecific tag distributions demonstrate that another prototypic tag distribution may appear as well. This inverse logistic distribution (Stock, 2006) shows a lot of relevant tags on the curve’s lefthand side (the “long trunk”) and the known “long tail” (see Figure 5). As both distributions share the characteristic “long tail,” they are difficult to differentiate. Therefore, they are both often called “power law.” The evolution of tag distributions with “long tail” characteristic is commonly explained by the known “rich gets richer” or “success breeds success” phenomena. Popular tags will be used more often because of their better visibility whereas

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Figure 4. Power law distribution of tags (based on tagging data from Del.icio.us retrieved May 15, 2008, http://www.go2web20.net).

unpopular tags may be used seldom and will form the “long tail” (Cattuto, Loreto, & Pietronero, 2007; Halpin, Robu, & Shepherd, 2007). Several studies showed that the characteristic shape of the distributions of document-specific tags (not the absolute number of tags) will remain stable at a certain point in time (Kipp & Campbell, 2006; Golder & Huberman, 1006; Halpin, Robu, & Shepherd, 2007; Maass, Kowatsch, & Münster, 2007). To enhance precision in folksonomy-based information retrieval systems, we may profit from this knowledge and work with power tags as an additional search feature (assuming that the most frequent tags are the most relevant ones and that less frequent tags can be neglected). In case of a power-law distribution we may consider only the first n tags (e.g., the first three tags) and in case of an inverse-logistic distribution we have

Figure 5. Inverse-logistic distribution of tags (based on tagging data from Del.icio.us retrieved May 15, 2008, from http://www.readwriteweb. com).

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to regard all tags of the long trunk up to the turning point of the curve (Peters & Stock, 2007). In most cases the “long trunk” will be shorter than the “long tail.” Searches using the option “power tags only” will enhance precision of search results due to the reciprocal relationship of recall and precision. As power tags prune the tag distribution at a certain threshold, the amount of searchable and retrievable resources will decrease and recall will diminish along with it.

Applications of Folksonomies By now, folksonomies are an essential part of many social software and Web 2.0-based applications. Users can tag various types of data, including scientific articles, references, bookmarks, pictures, videos, audio files, blog posts, discussions, events or even other users. The emergent contentdescriptive tags can be used as an additional access-point to data collections besides traditional folder structures. They are particularly needed to improve retrievability of non-textual documents, such as videos and photos. Based on an idea by Luis von Ahn (2006), Google uses a game-like application to incite users to tag pictures on the Web. With the Google Image Labeler5 metadata for large collections of images on the Web are collected to improve Google’s image search. Besides the various Web 2.0 applications, it is also possible to work with folksonomies in other contexts, e.g., in intranets of companies (Fichter, 2006), for indexing corporate blogs, podcasts and vodcasts (Peters, 2006), for corporate bookmarking services (Millen et al., 2006) and message boards (Murison, 2005). Commercial online information suppliers have started to work with folksonomies as well (e.g., Engineering Village6 by Reed Elsevier and WISO7 by GENIOS). Folksonomies are suggested for broader use within professional databases (Stock, 2007b) as well as libraries (Kroski, 2005; Spiteri, 2006). Single libraries have begun to implement social tagging applications for their catalogue

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Table 1. Benefits and problems with folksonomies Benefits Folksonomies • represent an authentic use of language • allow multiple interpretations • recognize neologisms • are cheap methods of indexing • are the only way to index mass information on the Web • give the quality “control“ to the masses • allow searching and – perhaps even better – browsing • can help to identify communities • are sources for collaborative recommender systems • are sources for the development of ontologies, thesauri or classification systems • make people sensitive to information indexing issues

Problems Folksonomies • have no vocabulary control and do not recognize synonyms and homonyms • do not make use of semantic relations between tags • mix up different basic levels • merge different languages • do not distinguish formal from content-descriptive tags • include spam-tags, user-specific tags, and other misleading keywords

(e.g., the University of Pennsylvania with its system PennTags8). Trant (2006) analyzes folksonomies as a user centered access point to art museums collections. One can furthermore envision social tagging as an addition to classificatory folder approaches, e.g., for online shopping portals. Some software developers have also integrated the tagging principle into their products. With Windows Vista, Microsoft enables tagging of several data formats, such as pictures, videos and Office files. A similar approach can be found with Apple’s iPhoto. Yet, as long as tagging is performed by single users within their personal workspace, the social component is lacking and we cannot speak of folksonomies in a strict sense, but of personomies (Hotho et al., 2006).

Benefits and Problems with Folksonomies Metadata produced by broad communities are costefficient and can easily be applied to large data collections. The pros and cons of folksonomies are well discussed (e.g., Kroski, 2005; Peters & Stock,

2007; Smith, 2008). Discussion on the quality of folksonomies often focuses on a comparison with other KOS. While traditional techniques are based on elaborated knowledge representations techniques, controlled vocabularies, and expert skills in indexing, folksonomies rely on the principles of “collective intelligence” (Weiss, 2005) and wisdom of the crowds. This leads to the following key aspects of a critical reflection on folksonomies, which will be discussed in more detail (Weller, 2007): (a) the confrontation of user’s language versus vocabulary control; (b) the social and personal objectives in tagging behavior; and (c) the contrast between retrieval and exploration. Table 1 summarizes the main benefits and problems with folksonomies. The main property of a folksonomy is that it authentically captures the language-use of its user community and reflects the prosumers’ conceptual model of information (Quintarelli, 2005). People are free to use whichever tags they want and do not depend on a predefined set of terms. This freedom in the choice of tags however means that folksonomies are entirely uncontrolled vocabularies, which leads to the well known “vocabulary problem” (Furnas et al., 1987; Furnas et al., 2006; Golder & Huberman, 2006; Mathes, 2004): Different people use different words to describe the same object. Synonyms, trans-language synonyms, spelling variants and abbreviations are not bound together. Thus, someone searching for “United States of America” will not find documents tagged with “US”, “USA”, “United States” or “America.” Homonyms and polysems are not distinguished, thus for example searching for “trunk” in Flickr’s folksonomy will retrieve photos of trees as well as suitcases and probably also elephants. As different languages are used within most folksonomies, additional trans-language homonyms may occur. Misspellings and encoding limitations are serious problems for folksonomies (Guy & Tonkin, 2006). All these peculiarities have to be kept in mind by the user when searching in folksonomy based systems. Alternatively, additional techniques of

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vocabulary control may be applied to avoid some of these problems. But still the flexibility in the choice of tags is probably also the greatest advantage of folksonomies: It enables timeliness and multiple perspectives. A controlled vocabulary is always bound to a certain point in time and to a certain point of view. Folksonomy users can create tags quickly in response to new developments and changes in terminologies (Kroski, 2005). Some tags may be neologisms. Mathes (2004) discusses the words “sometaithurts” (for “so meta it hurts”) and “flicktion” on Flickr. “Although small, there is a quick formation of new terms to describe what is going on, and others adopting that term and the activity is describes” (Mathes, 2004). Such an unanticipated and unexpected use of tags reflects a “communication and ad-hoc group formation facilitated through metadata” (Mathes, 2004). Collaborative tagging of documents leads to “multiple interpretations”, different and sometimes disparate opinions and “multicultural views” of the same piece of information (Peterson, 2006). Folksonomies “include everyone’s vocabulary and reflect everyone’s needs without cultural, social, or political bias” (Kroski, 2005), even niche interests can be represented. “Shared intersubjectivities” enable the users “to benefit, not just from their own discoveries, but from those of others” (Campbell, 2006, p. 10). Tags can be used as basis for recommender systems (Szomszor et al., 2007). Yet, the intentions of tags in social tagging systems are not always social. Users who tag documents do not necessarily do this with the objective of helping a community in finding relevant documents. Many users simply use tags to organize their own private documents. Vander Wal (2008) describes social tagging as being “collective” work rather than “collaborative.” Thus, many tags in use are personal rather than social (Guy & Tonkin, 2006). Some tags do not describe the document, but give a judgment (“stupid”). User-specific tags

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describe or evaluate a document only from the user’s very own perspective so that some tags “are virtually meaningless to anybody except their creators” (Pluzhenskaia, 2006, p. 23). Some other tags can be called “performative”: Often a planned or done activity is tagged, for example “toread” on Del.icio.us (Kipp, 2006a). Additionally, there are syncategorematic tags – terms which can only be understood in the specific context. A good example of this type of tag is the term “me” on Flickr, which describes a photo of the document’s author. Some keywords are even mere spam-tags. Overall, research has analyzed the nature of tags as well as the different functions of tags (see Al-Khalifa & Davis, 2007; Golder & Huberman, 2006; Kipp, 2006b). The strength of folksonomies lies in “serendipity” (Mathes, 2004), in discovering information via different paths, and in easy to handle search mechanisms (Quintarelli, 2005). “The long tail paradigm is also about discovery of information, not just about finding it”, Quintarelli (2005) adds. Folksonomies provide different entry points to document collections; as described above, users may browse along relations between tags, users and documents. Searching with tags is much easier for non-information professionals than searching with elaborated retrieval tools such as, for example, the International Patent Classification system. On the other hand, professionally generated metadata are usually segmented into different fields, such as the document type and the notations of classification systems. Here indexing distinguishes formal aspects from content-descriptive information (“aboutness”). In folksonomies a strict boundary between different metadata is lacking. There are tags that identify what a document is about. At the same time, one can find tags referring to formal descriptions at the same level: i.e., tags identifying the owner of the document or tags referring to file format (Golder & Huberman, 2006, p. 203). Within a library catalog, this can cause problems, as one could not, for example, clearly distinguish between books written by William Shakespeare and books about him.

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SOLUTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS There are basically three different approaches aiming to solve the present problems of folksonomies. All approaches complement each other. First, one can focus on the actors and try to educate users to improve “tag literacy” (Guy & Tonkin, 2006). The second approach comprises combinations of social tagging with other knowledge organization systems (Weller, 2007). And finally we may generally consider tags as elements of natural language and treat them by means of automatic methods of natural language processing (NLP) for better retrieval results (Peters & Stock, 2007; Stock, 2007a, chapter 13-18). Improvement of tag literacy would require a broader understanding of indexing principles within the folksonomy community. For training the user in selecting “good” tags, systems that suggest tags to the users (based on co-occurrences, lexical similarity or semantic relations) may be useful (MacLaurin, 2005; Xu et al., 2006). Yet, providing tag suggestions has influences on the classical “wisdom of the crowds” approach; the social component of folksonomies may get lost and the “success breeds success”-effect (Egghe & Rousseau, 1995) may adulterate the tag distributions. Combinations of folksonomies and other KOS are very promising: e.g., approaches of using clustering mechanisms to apply some structure for search result presentations or methods of automatic query expansion or query refinement (Grahl et al., 2007; Gruber, 2007; Kolbitsch, 2007). Some research is done in the field of emergent semantics: i.e., gradually growing semantic structures from folksonomies to more complex KOS (see Zacharias & Braun, 2007) for instance by identifying existing semantic interrelations between concepts (Angeletou et al., 2007; Peters & Weller, 2008). Related approaches of editing and improving unstructured folksonomies with basic vocabulary control are discussed as tag gardening (Governor, 2006; Weller & Peters, 2008).

The development and updating of structured KOS can profit from folksonomies (Aurnhammer et al., 2006; Christiaens, 2006; Gendarmi & Lanubile, 2006; Macgregor & McCulloch, 2006; Mika, 2005; Spyns et al., 2006; Zhang et al., 2006), because the tags, their frequency and their distribution are sources for new controlled terms, for modifications of terms and perhaps for deleting concepts in the sense of a “bottom-up categorization” (Vander Wal, 2005). In this way tags guarantee a fast response to changes and innovations in the knowledge domain. Generally, folksonomies should not be regarded as competitors for classical KOS but rather as a complement. According to Peters (2006) it is not advisable to work exclusively with folksonomies in professional environments (e.g., intranets, commercial online services), but to mix them with other indexing methods. Here, a layer model (Krause, 1996) for the combined use of folksonomies, thesauri, classification systems, etc. will work well. To revise applied tags for effective information indexing and retrieval, it is useful to treat them by means of NLP. After language identification and parsing of tags, typical NLP-tasks, including error detection, word form conflation, identification of named entities, phrase recognition, and decompounding, can be executed. In this way, the variety and ambiguity of tags can be reduced considerably.

FUTURE TRENDS The topics of information retrieval and relevance ranking within folksonomies have not yet been discussed exhaustively. First approaches try to implement a PageRank-like relevance algorithm, the FolkRank, for the ranking of tagged documents (Hotho et al., 2006): “The basic notion is that a resource which is tagged with important tags by important users becomes important itself” (Hotho et al., 2006, 417). A patent application by Yahoo!

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for its photo-sharing service Flickr proposes an “interestingness” ranking which takes into account, for instance, the user’s behavior in clicking and tagging or the number of assigned tags (Butterfield et al., 2006). All in all, three sets of applicable ranking factors can be determined: (1) tags, (2) collaboration, and (3) prosumers (Peters & Stock, 2007). Besides research efforts on improving the quality of folksonomies, some work is also done to use them as a basis for new applications (or as a source for data mining). For example, different methods for identifying communities of interest with the help of folksonomies are considered (Diederich & Iofciu, 2006; Wu et al., 2006), and analyses on how people tag documents on the web might lead to a better understanding of how humans organize and process information (Lodwick, 2005).

CONCLUSION Folksonomies present a valuable addition to the spectrum of knowledge representation methods. They appear in the context of user collaboration in Web 2.0 environment and provide easy and comprehensive access to large data collections. With web users taking control over document indexing, folksonomies offer an inexpensive way of processing large data sets. User centered approaches to tagging have multiple benefits, as they can actively capture the authentic language of the user, are flexible and allow new ways of social navigation within document collections. Yet some problems derive from the unstructured nature of tags which may be solved by improving the users’ tag literacy, by (automatic) query refinements, or by processing tags through natural language processing. In the future, the advantages and shortcomings of folksonomies will be considered more closely as advanced approaches to the use of social tagging applications are emerging. Folksonomies and traditional knowledge representation methods are

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not to be viewed as rivalling systems; additionally, new options for combinations of different techniques will be designed. This will also be particularly beneficial in specialized contexts, since the number of professional database providers, libraries, and museums that have adapted folksonomies continues to grow.

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Sinclair, J., & Cardew-Hall, M. (2008). The folksonomy tag cloud: When is it useful? Journal of Information Science, 34(1), 15–29. doi:10.1177/0165551506078083 Smith, G. (2004, August 3). Folksonomy: Social classification. Retrieved January 10, 2008, from http://atomiq.org/archives/2004/08/folksonomy_ social_classification.html Smith, G. (2008). Tagging: People-powered metadata for the social Web. Berkeley, CA: New Riders. Spiteri, L. F. (2006). The use of folksonomies in public library catalogues. The Serials Librarian, 51(2), 75–89. doi:10.1300/J123v51n02_06 Spyns, P., de Moor, A., Vandenbussche, J., & Meersman, R. (2006). From folksonomies to ontologies: How the twain meet. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4275, 738–755. doi:10.1007/11914853_45 Staab, S., & Studer, R. (Eds.). (2004). Handbook on ontologies. Berlin, Germany: Springer. Stock, W. G. (2006). On relevance distributions. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(8), 1126–1129. doi:10.1002/asi.20359 Stock, W. G. (2007a). Information retrieval: Informationen suchen und finden. München, Germany: Oldenbourg. Stock, W. G. (2007b). Folksonomies and science communication. A mash-up of professional science databases and Web 2.0 services. Information Services & Use, 27(3), 97–103. Stock, W. G., & Stock, M. (2008). Wissensrepräsentation: Informationen auswerten und bereitstellen. München, Germany: Oldenbourg. Surowiecki, J. (2004). The wisdom of crowds: Why the many are smarter than the few. New York: Anchor Books.

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Szomszor, M., Cattuto, C., Alani, H., O’Hara, K., Baldassarri, A., Loreto, V., et al. (2007, June). Folksonomies, the Semantic Web, and movie recommendation. In B. Hoser & A. Hotho (Eds.), Bridging the gap between Semantic Web and Web 2.0 (pp. 71-84). Innsbruck, Austria: International Workshop at the 4th European Semantic Web Conference (SemNet 2007). Toffler, A. (1980). The third wave. New York: Morrow. Trant, J. (2006). Exploring the potential for social tagging and folksonomy in art museums: Proof of concept. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 12(1), 83–105. doi:10.1080/13614560600802940 Vander Wal, T. (2005, February 21). Explaining and showing broad and narrow folksonomies. Retrieved January 10, 2008, from http://www. vanderwal.net/random/entrysel.php?blog=1635 Vander Wal, T. (2008). Keeping up with social tagging. In Workshop Good Tags – Bad Tags, Social Tagging in der Wissensorganisation, Institut für Wissensmedien, Tübingen, Germany. Retrieved June 23, 2008, from http://www.e-teaching.org/ community/taggingcast von Ahn, L. (2006). Games with a purpose. IEEE Computer Magazine, 96-98. Weiss, A. (2005). The power of collective intelligence. netWorker, 9(3), 16-23. Weller, K. (2007). Folksonomies and ontologies: Two new players in indexing and knowledge representation. In H. Jezzard (Ed.), Online Information Conference Proceedings (pp. 108-115). London: Learned Information Europe. Weller, K., & Peters, I. (2007). Reconsidering relationships for knowledge representation. In Proceedings of I-KNOW ‘07, Graz, Austria (pp. 493-496).

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Weller, K., & Peters, I. (2008). Seeding, weeding, fertilizing – different tag gardening activities for folksonomy maintenance and enrichment. In Triple-I Conference, Proceedings of I-Semantics, Graz, Austria (pp. 110-117). Wu, H., Zubair, M., & Maly, K. (2006). Harvesting social knowledge from folksonomies. In Proceedings of the 17th Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia (pp. 111-114). New York: ACM. Xu, Z., Fu, Y., Mao, J., & Su, D. (2006). Towards the Semantic Web: Collaborative tag suggestions. In Proceedings of the 15th International WWW Conference. Zacharias, V., & Braun, S. (2007). SOBOLEO. Social bookmarking and lightweight ontology engineering. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Social and Collaborative Construction of Structured Knowledge (CKC), 16th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2007), Banff, Alberta, Canada. Zhang, L., Wu, X., & Yu, Y. (2006). Emergent semantics from folksonomies: A quantitative study. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4090, 168–186. doi:10.1007/11803034_8

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Broad and Narrow Folksonomies: Broad and narrow folksonomies differ in whether multiple assignments of identical tags are possible or not. Systems with broad folksonomies allow to assign the same tag to one document several times (thus the tag frequency can be counted), whereas narrow folksonomies record every tag only once. Folksonomy: An indexing method open for users to apply freely chosen index terms. The term “folksonomy” was introduced in 2004 by

Thomas Vander Wal as a combination of “folk” and “taxonomy.” Knowledge Representation and Indexing: In the context of information storage and retrieval techniques, knowledge representation is concerned with providing methods for organizing and representing knowledge domains and sorting documents accordingly. A traditional way to do this is by document indexing: i.e., by assigning keywords or notations (usually taken from a controlled vocabulary or classification scheme) to a document to describe its content. Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS): Knowledge Organization Systems are (structured) representations of a knowledge domain, used for document classification and indexing. Common classical knowledge organization systems include classifications (taxonomies), thesauri, and nomenclatures. Folksonomies and ontologies are new forms of KOS. Tag: Within a given context, a tag is a keyword assigned to a document to describe it. Tags can be used for document retrieval. Folksonomy tags can be freely chosen by the users of a folksonomybased system. Tag Cloud: A tag cloud displays the popularity of tags, either for tags assigned to one single document or for all tags within a complete folksonomy-based platform. The bigger and broader a tag is displayed in a tag cloud, the more often has it been used. Tag Distribution: The frequency of tags assigned to one document (or within a platform) can be counted and visualized as a tag distribution graph. Some specific forms of tag distributions are dominant within folksonomies: for example, the emergence of a “long tail”, which reacts to the rules of the power law. A “long trunk” may appear as well; the curve then follows an inverselogistic distribution.

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ENDNOTES

6

1

7

2 3 4 5

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Flickr: http://www.flickr.com You Tube: http://www.youtube.com Del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us Technorati: http://www.technorati.com Google Image Labeler: http://images.google. com/imagelabeler/

8

Engineering Village: http://www.engineeringvillage.com WISO: http://www.wiso-net.de PennTags: http://tags.library.upenn.edu/

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Chapter 14

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Creating Metadata through Collaborative Tagging Stefan Bitzer Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany Lars Thoroe Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany Matthias Schumann Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany

ABSTRACT Modern Web 2.0 technologies facilitate the collaboration and sharing of information among users, thereby enabling cooperative processes of information search. One kind of user participation is collaborative tagging, where individuals assign keywords to resources and objects on the Internet. Through the allocation of keywords, objects are enhanced with user-created metadata which results in the so-called folksonomies. This chapter focuses on the classification of tags based on function and user motivation, examines advantages and disadvantages of folksonomies, and provides a review of current applications using collaborative tagging. Future trends and potential developments are identified as they relate to the implementation of collaborative tagging in corporate settings.

INTRODUCTION Since the introduction of social software and Web 2.0 technologies, discussion about the influence and importance of a broad range of new tools for various fields has followed (Safran, Gütl, & Helic, 2007; Boulos & Wheeler, 2007). Considerable potential for Web 2.0-based applications is seen in supporting information retrieval and classificaDOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch014

tion of online resources. The Internet offers a huge amount of information varying in content, format, and quality. This diversity poses a challenge for users seeking specific information. Modern Web 2.0 technologies facilitate the collaboration and sharing of information among users, thus enabling cooperative processes of information search. While in Web 1.0 the user was not integrated into the organization of content, in today’s Del.icio.us-type folksonomy-based systems the user is actively engaged via the newly emerged tag recommenda-

Copyright © 2010, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

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tion mechanisms. Such collaborative enrichment of web content enhanced with metadata is viewed as a step towards the Semantic Web (Xu, Fu, Mao, & Su, 2006).

Figure 1. Broad and narrow folksonomies

BACKGROUND Folksonomies and Tagging Vander Wal (2005) defines folksonomy as the outcome of individual free tagging of online content and resources in a social environment for one’s own retrieval. With this term, Vander Wal refers to the result of a process of collaboratively assigning keywords to resources or items on the Internet, the so-called collaborative tagging. Therefore, folksonomy is often used synonymously with the terms social classification, social indexing, or social tagging (Voß, 2007). Folksonomy is a portmanteau of the words folk and taxonomy (Bateman, Brooks, & McCalla, 2006). The naming, however, is disputed. Some see it as a misnomer because of the reference to taxonomy. A classification scheme like taxonomy is strictly hierarchic and contains relations, unlike a folksonomy, which consists of a flat namespace (Mathes, 2004). The vocabulary is not preassigned, instead the users describe the information and items within their own comprehension. The purpose of folksonomies is not categorization but connecting items and expressing their meaning through personal understanding (Vander Wal, 2005). In the context of folksonomies, three elements have to be considered (Marlow, Naaman, Boyd, & Davis, 2006), namely, resources, tags used for describing the resources, and users who assign the tags. In broad folksonomies (as in Figure 1), many users describe the same item with a term from their personal vocabulary. Hence, similar or different tags can be assigned to an object (from 1 to 5). On the basis of all assigned tags, users are able to retrieve the described object. A common example of an application of broad folksonomies is a popular social bookmarking service, Del.icio.

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us1 (Lux, Granitzer, & Kern, 2007). By contrast, in narrow folksonomies (Figure 1) there are only a few tags, mostly provided by the content creator and a group of a few people. Due to this, the number of tags and tagging persons is significantly lower than in broad folksonomies. Every tag is generally created and recorded once only, either by the content creator or a small group of selected users. Only new tags can be attributed to an object, which inhibits the possibility of counting tag frequencies. Accordingly, all tags are ranked equally and a tag distribution cannot be created. However, it can be shown via which tag users found the resource. The approach of the narrow folksonomy resembles professional indexing with controlled terms for thesauri or ontologies; in contrast, folksonomies have uncontrolled terms. Popular examples for narrow folksonomies (Cattuto, Loreto, & Pietronero, 2007) include services such as Flickr2 (photographs) or Technorati3 (blog posts). Today folksonomies are implemented in various fields. In addition to a high diffusion of Web 2.0-based services, folksonomies are employed in corporate applications (Fichter, 2006). Capabilities have been found in indexing corporate blogs, podcasts and vodcasts (Peters, 2006); corporate social bookmarking (Damianos, Griffith, & Cuomo, 2006; Millen, Feinberg, & Kerr, 2006); and message boards (Murison, 2005).

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Figure 2. A sample tag cloud

its quantity of assignment by different users (Hassan-Montero & Herrero-Solana, 2006). As mentioned, this weighted list is only possible in broad folksonomies.

Classification of Tags

Furthermore, the use of folksonomies in public facilities has also gained popularity, for example, in art museums (Trant & Wyman, 2006) or public library catalogs (Spiteri, 2006).

CREATING METADATA THROUGH COLLABORATIVE TAGGING As indicated, folksonomies are the result of collaborative tagging. In the process of tagging, an item is augmented with metadata in the form of descriptive keywords. Tagging an item yields a flat hierarchy of descriptors, called a tag cloud (see Figure 2), which is a weighted list, where each tag is visually highlighted according to

Tags are commonly classified according to two dimensions: function and motivation. Usually, the following functions of tags are distinguished (Golder & Huberman, 2005), see Table 1. Most tags fall in one of the first three categories which are relatively general. In contrast, tags of the last four categories are user-specific and not widely used. The second dimension for classifying tags is the motivation for their assignment. Reasons for tagging an item can be manifold depending on the target group and expectations for future use of the tag. The following motives can be distinguished (Marlow et al., 2006), see Table 2.

Table 1. Classification of tags based on their functions Function

Description

Examples

Identifying the topical context

These tags in the form of nouns describe the topics of the bookmarked resources. The topics can include people or organizations as well.

“folksonomy” or “collaborative tagging”

Identifying the type of item

As an extension of the topical description, tags can specify the type of a bookmarked item.

“article”, “study”, “blog” or “book”

Identifying the owner

Some tags identify the owner or creator of the bookmarked content. As a result of the apparent popularity of weblogs among Web 2.0 users, identifying content ownership can be particularly important.

“O’Reilly” or “Microsoft”

Refining categories

Tags of this category refine existing tags to improve their expressiveness.

Origin “folksonomy” → “critique of folksonomy”

Identifying qualities or characteristics

With this type of tag, the user expresses his opinion about the item.

Adjectives like “funny”, “informative” or “well arranged”

Self-reference

Tags starting with “my” characterize the relation between the content and the tagger.

“myHomepage”

Task organizing

Grouping task-related information to a website can be an important part of organizing while performing a task (Jones et al. 2005)

“print”, “jobsearch”

Benefiting user

Individual and community use

Individual use

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Table 2. Classification of tags based on user motivations for tagging Motivation for tagging

Description

Examples

Future retrieval

The motivation to tag one or various resources is to enhance its later information retrieval, be it for personal or common use.

“folksonomy” or “collaborative tagging”

Contribution and sharing

In this case the tags are used to introduce the item to either known or unknown audiences.

“class reunion_ housten_highschool_2008”

Attract attention

People can be attracted to resources by common tags. Tag clouds or other popularity reflecting lists are visible in the system, so users may be encouraged to contribute tags to influence the global view.

“excellent information” or “brand new”

Play and competition

Tags can be assigned based on an internal or external set of rules. These rules establish the conditions for different competitions, such as a specific manipulation of tag clouds or tagging of all items with a particular feature.

Tagging all photos with peculiar hats like “gigantic blue hat”

Self presentation

To identify the connection between a resource and a user, tags can mark and describe the relation in the form of personal comments.

Opinion expression

If a user wants to communicate his/her opinion to others, s/he can do it with corresponding tags.

Advantages of Tags In folksonomies the users act as producers and consumers of the tags and can thus be referred to as prosumers (Peters & Stock, 2007). The term prosumer is in this context a portmanteau word formed by contracting the words producer and consumer (Pettenati & Cigognini, 2007). As a result of this role-aggregation, the tags authentically represent the language of authors and users. This sort of indexing discloses diversified interpretations, different opinions, and multicultural views of the same content (Peterson, 2006). Ontologies, thesauri, or classification systems are the results of time-consuming and expensive procedures (Maedche, & Staab, 2000). Compared to this, folksonomies are significantly cheaper. The indexing is done by volunteers in a collaborative way and there is no complicated, hierarchically organized nomenclature to learn (Wu, Zubair, & Maly, 2006). In this context one speaks about low-entrance barriers for participating in creating folksonomies (Mathes, 2004). One advantage over automatic methods for indexing, like popular search engines (such as Google, Yahoo!), is that besides textual documents, non-textual documents

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“seen live” “informative” or “obsolete information”

(images, videos, music, etc.) are indexed as well. Folksonomies can also have a positive influence on the development and updating of controlled vocabularies (Aurnhammer, Hanappe, & Steels, 2006). The frequency of tag assignment can serve as a basis for new controlled terms, for modifications of terms, or for deleting concepts. In this manner tags offer a fast access to changes and innovations in the knowledge domain. Under the phrase “browsing vs. finding,” Mathes (2004) declares a new kind of finding information. In addition to a concrete search by entering tags, the user can browse the system following the related tags and thereby discover other potentially relevant content (Ohkura, Kiyota, & Nakagawa, 2006). In this manner the user can access additional contents, which he or she may have not found otherwise. A further advantage is assigned to the formation of desire lines. In the course of time the most common tags emerge and reflect in this way the choices in diction, terminology, and precision of the users. This makes it easier for the user to find the investigated information (Mathes, 2004). Another advantage is the feedback given in the process of tagging. As soon as a user assigns a tag

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to an item, the cluster of items that are marked with the same tag is displayed. If this cluster does not meet the user’s expectation, he or she can add a tag or change it to a more fitting description. Additionally the scope can be expanded to include all items from all users that match the tag. Thus the group norm in this context is shown, and the user can either adapt it or try to influence the group norm with his or her tag or both (Udell, 2004).

Figure 3. Semantic problems in folksonomies

Disadvantages of Tags The simple and convenient process of collaborative tagging has drawbacks. The uncontrolled vocabulary, especially as a main feature of folksonomies, leads to several limitations and problems. As users can describe items with various expressions, ambiguity of the tags can emerge. Ambiguities accrue, when users apply different terms to documents in different ways, because there are no explicit systematic guidelines and no scope notes. With homonyms and acronyms there are two different kinds of ambiguities (Mathes, 2004). A classic example for a homonym is the English word “coach”, which can be used for an overland bus or a sports manager. Also acronyms can lead to problems. “MIT” for example can be an acronym for “Massachusetts Institute of Technology” and “Made in Taiwan” (Hsieh, Lai & Chou, 2006). At the opposite end of the spectrum, the lack of synonym control can cause synonymous but different tags being used for the same item (Golder & Huberman, 2006). In practice, tag clouds show that most terms are used in plural and singular. Furthermore many users from different countries tag in their own language. Merging these can cause problems in trans-language synonymy and homonymy (Gordon-Murnane, 2006). Another problem is the widespread limitations of tags to a single word. This reduces the description alternatives extensively since in many cases two or more words can be more suggestive (Mathes, 2004). Figure 3 shows some exemplary problems

with folksonomies and the tags used. Besides the described vocabulary-based problems, folksonomies also have to deal with additional adversities. Prosumers tag in different contexts with different tasks and motivations, and they possess different expertise and cognitive talents. These different approaches can cause the folksonomy, as a result of the process, to be very heterogeneous. Moreover it is probably that a significant amount of tagging is done for personal use rather than public benefit (Golder & Huberman, 2006). Lastly the produced metadata through folksonomies have limitations compared to professionally generated metadata (Peters & Stock, 2007). Professional metadata is explicitly segmented into different fields (like document type or kind of content) and formal aspects are considered as well. In folksonomies, a separation between different metadata is missing; and, in the end, the flat hierarchy prevents a structural classification of the described item.

Applications of Collaborative Tagging Today, the implementation of collaborative tagging functionalities is still mostly limited to websites, where folksonomies are generated by users via tagging. CiteULike4 for example is a social bookmarking service which enables the sharing of scientific references amongst researchers

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(Hammond, Hannay, Lund, & Scott, 2005). The bibliographical description of an article is imported by a bookmarklet into a personal library. The user can structure his library with freely chosen tags which creates a folksonomy of academic interests. Youtube,5 as another popular example, allows the creation and exchange of tags for the uploaded videos. Flickr and Del.icio.us are among the most frequently used tagging websites (Hammond et al., 2005) and are described in more detail in what follows. Flickr provides users the possibility to administer their photos online. As aforementioned, Flickr constitutes a narrow folksonomy, because only the user himself or herself or a small group can tag the object. Registered users can upload their own photos, get in contact with other users, and exchange and mark up to 70 tags per photo. It is also possible to label only a specific part of a picture. Furthermore the uploaded images can be integrated to other websites, for example blogs. The user decides if his pictures are publicly available or not. Users with common interests can establish a group. For example the group called “Stockholm” only consists of members who uploaded pictures of Stockholm. The most frequently used tags are shown in a tag cloud. In addition, the personal tags of a user are shown to him as a separate tag cloud. For every uploaded picture, a title and a description can be registered. The related tags can be split up through a blank and joined via quotation marks, if a tag consists of two or more words (Xu et al., 2006). Del.icio.us saves and structures bookmarks. The objects, in this case websites, can be tagged by various users without a predefined vocabulary (Wu, Zhang, & Yu, 2006), which results in the development of a broad folksonomy (Lux, Granitzer & Kern, 2007). A gratis registration allows the user to save his personal bookmarks and enhance them with tags for a better and easier retrieval. The saved links and the assigned tags are shown as a list, whereas the tags can be also shown as a tag cloud. Furthermore the user can

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select the most popular or recent tags. By picking a specific tag, all bookmarks assigned with this tag are shown. In contrast to Flickr, Del.icio.us recommends proposals for potential tags. These proposals are based on existing tags of other users for similar websites (Veres, 2006). These two examples show the success of current applications of collaborative tagging. If this success continues, the question arises, how the availability of large amounts of metadata may shape the web in the future. One vision often mentioned in this context is the Semantic Web, which we will compare to folksonomies in the following section.

Folksonomies and the Semantic Web A widely discussed extension of the World Wide Web, which also relies on the assignment of metadata to web resources, is the Semantic Web. Folksonomies are often mentioned in the context of the Semantic Web (Specia, & Motta, 2007; Xu et al., 2006). However, despite similarities, these two concepts are fundamentally different, as will be shown in the following comparison. The term Semantic Web can be traced back to Tim Berners-Lee who in 1992 founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to standardize and advance the web. More specifically, the Semantic Web is a structuring extension of the World Wide Web. It is based on content which is readable and understandable by computers. Through metadata the content within the web is to be enhanced with meaning so that software agents can carry out sophisticated tasks for the user (Alesso & Smith, 2005). To achieve this, two basic requirements have to be met. First of all, a general and consistent processing of data integration and combination from various sources is needed. Secondly, computer languages for gathering relations between data and real world objects are required. Based on these requirements, the W3C Consortium in 2004 published the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL)

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Table 3. Comparison of folksonomies and the Semantic Web Folksonomies

Semantic Web

Based on tags

Based on ontologies (taxonomies, thesauri)

Created by users

Created by experts

No given rules

Predetermined rules

Free vocabulary

Predetermined vocabulary

Flat hierarchy

Hierarchic structure

No previous knowledge required

Previous knowledge required

Simple, cheap, uncomplex

Complex, extensive

as technical recommendations to facilitate standardization in this area (W3C Consortium, 2007). RDF is an XML-based, standardized language that is designed to describe information about resources on the Internet. To enable a semantic interpretation of these RDF statements, the language was extended by the RDF Schema. RDF Schema (RDFS) defines the vocabulary used in RDF statements with semantic meaning. Through these standards, machine-readable ontologies can be created and distributed using OWL. Both the Semantic Web and folksonomies have the ambition to augment web resources with metadata and improve the overall usability of the Internet. Nevertheless, they differ in major issues. The Semantic Web is based on expert-created ontologies, which in turn are built on taxonomies and thesauri. The predetermined vocabulary possesses a distinct structured hierarchy. Consequently, the creation of Semantic Web compliant metadata is a complex and extensive process. In contrast, collaborative tagging of web resources leading to a folksonomy can be accomplished by regular users without any need for previous knowledge. There are no restrictive rules and, as a rule, no controlled vocabulary. The result is a simple and flat hierarchy, see Table 3. The comparison shows that the approach of folksonomies is fundamentally different from the Semantic Web. With its unstructured approach, collaborative tagging avoids the inherent problem of the implementation of the Semantic

Web (Gruber, 2007): The increasing amount of information and websites on the Internet precludes that the existing content can be enhanced with machine-readable metadata in the form of ontologies by experts. This process would be far too cost-intensive and time-consuming. Collaborative tagging facilitates the distribution of the effort of creating metadata on to the community, even though only a flat unstructured composition evolves with the described problems. For this reason, folksonomies are often seen as supplemental to the Semantic Web (Gruber, 2007; Specia & Motta, 2007; Xu et al., 2006).

FUTURE TRENDS Due to the success of folksonomies on the web, the value of collaborative tagging for corporate applications has become visible (Millen, Feinberg, & Kerr 2006). This interest, for instance, can be observed in the acquisition of the two popular tagging systems–Flickr and Del.icio.us–by Yahoo! Inc. in 2005 (see Press Room, 2007 Press Room, 2007Yahoo! Press Room, 2007!!). The use of collaborative tagging in corporations is also called enterprise tagging (Muller 2007). On the one hand, the potential of collaborative tagging can be considered from the point of view of personal knowledge management of employees (Macgregor, & McCulloch 2006). In this case a person or a group of employees can tag objects

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and information for more effective retrieval, for example, from an organization’s Intranet. IBM, on the other hand, experiments with a company wide system called “Dogear” (Millen, Feinberg, & Kerr). Dogear is a shared bookmarking system within IBM Intranet site and is connected to the enterprise directory. This allows an association of tags to concrete employees who are known (or of interest) due to their expertise or professional role. Through this conjunction with real identities, the user can search both by people and by tag. In the process of tagging, the user is not limited by a predefined vocabulary: an auto-complete feature encourages consistency. So far IBM’s internal Dogear system stored over 300,000 bookmarks to internal and external information sources tagged by the employees (IBM, 2008). Whether broad or narrow folksonomies will prevail for corporate applications in the future is still under consideration. Some proclaim that to guarantee interoperability across distributed systems, controlled vocabularies are essential (Macgregor, & McCulloch 2006). This strengthens the case for narrow folksonomies. However, IBM’s system has shown that with an uncontrolled vocabulary and a large number of users (i.e. a broad folksonomy), a corporation can benefit as well (Millen, Feinberg, & Kerr, 2006). Meanwhile solutions for a reduction of the described disadvantages are developed. One approach tries to improve the tagging-capability of users by an enhanced visualization of synonyms and alternative spellings to the user (Ives, 2006). Others focus on automatic methods for processing tags (Peters, & Stock, 2007). Moreover, approaches to derive hierarchies, classifications, and ontologies from folksonomies are being developed. By means of an algorithm, a hierarchy of tags is automatically built from the data in a tagging system. The algorithm utilizes notions of similarity and generality in the data generated through tagging (Heymann, & Garcia-Molina, 2006). The development of these algorithms is crucial for structuring metadata generated by collaborative tagging. If these efforts prove successful, folksonomies may evolve as a pathway to the Semantic Web. 154

CONCLUSION The rising number of users participating in collaborative tagging shows acceptance and potential of folksonomies. The WWW with its billions of web pages continues to grow exponentially. Collaborative tagging can be one approach to augment content with metadata in order to improve the usability of information. Despite the described limitations and problems, folksonomies constitute an effective way of distributing the effort for generating metadata among community members. This new metadata significantly improves the retrieval of tagged resources (Hotho, Jaschke, Schmitz, & Stumme, 2006). Furthermore, the emerging flat hierarchy of keywords can be seen as a step towards the Semantic Web (Xu et al., 2006).

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Boulos, M. N. K., & Wheeler, S. (2007). The emerging Web 2.0 social software: An enabling suite of sociable technologies in health and health care education. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 24(1), 2–23. doi:10.1111/j.14711842.2007.00701.x Cattuto, C., Loreto, V., & Pietronero, L. (2007). Semiotic dynamics and collaborative tagging. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(5), 1461–1464. doi:10.1073/pnas.0610487104 Damianos, L., Griffith, J., & Cuomo, D. (2006). Onomi: Social bookmarking on a corporate intranet. In Proceedings of the 17th conference on Hypertext and hypermedia. Davies, J., Studer, R., & Warren, P. (2006). Semantic Web technologies: Trends and research in ontology-based systems. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons. Fichter, D. (2006). Intranet applications for tagging and folksonomies. Online, 30(3), 43–45. Golder, S., & Huberman, B. A. (2006). The structure of collaborative tagging systems (HP Labs Tech. Rep.). Gordon-Murnane, L. (2006). Social bookmarking, folksonomies, and Web 2.0 tools. Searcher – The Magazine for Database Professionals, 14(6), 26-38. Gruber, T. (2007). Ontology of folksonomy: A mash-up of apples and oranges. International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems, 3(1), 1–11. Hammond, T., Hannay, T., Lund, B., & Scott, J. (2005). Social bookmarking tools - a general review. D-Lib Magazine, 11(4). doi:10.1045/ april2005-hammond

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Macgregor, G., & McCulloch, E. (2006). Collaborative tagging as a knowledge organisation and resource discovery tool. Library Review, 55(5), 291–300. doi:10.1108/00242530610667558 Maedche, A., & Staab, S. (2000). Mining ontologies from text. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management. Marlow, C., Naaman, M., Boyd, D., & Davis, M. (2006). HT06, tagging paper, taxonomy, Flickr, academic article, to read. In Proceedings of the 17th Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia (pp. 31-40). Mathes, A. (2004). Folksonomies – cooperative classification and communication through shared metadata. Retrieved September 9, 2008, from http://www.adammathes.com/academic/ computer-mediated-communication/folksonomies.html Millen, D. R., Feinberg, J., & Kerr, B. (2006). DOGEAR: Social bookmarking in the enterprise. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 111-120). Muller, M. J. (2007). Patterns of tag usage in enterprise tagging services: A constraint on exploratory search? In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI 2007 Workshop on Exploratory Search and HCI: Designing and Evaluating Interfaces to Support Exploratory Search Interaction (pp. 13-16). Murison, J. (2005). Messageboard topic tagging: User tagging of collectively owned community content. In Proceedings of the 2005 Conference on Designing for User eXperience. Ohkura, T., Kiyota, Y., & Nakagawa, H. (2006). Browsing system for weblog articles based on automated folksonomy. In Proceedings of the WWW 2006 Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem: Aggregation, Analysis and Dynamics.

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Peters, I. (2006). Against folksonomies: Indexing blogs and podcasts for corporate knowledge management. In H. Jezzard (Ed.), Proceedings of Preparing for Information 2.0. Online Information 2006 (pp. 93-97). London: Learned Information Europe. Peters, I., & Stock, W. G. (2007). Folksonomy and information retrieval. In Proceedings of the 70th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 45. Peterson, E. (2006). Beneath the metadata: Some philosophical problems with folksonomies. D-Lib Magazine, 12(11). doi:10.1045/november2006peterson Pettenati, M. C., & Cigognini, M. E. (2007). Social networking theories and tools to support connectivist learning activities. International Journal of Web-Based Learning and Teaching Technologies, 2(3), 42–60. Safran, C., Gütl, C., & Helic, D. (2007). The impact of Web 2.0 on learning at a technical university – a usage survey. In Proceedings of World Conference on e-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (ELEARN). Specia, L., & Motta, E. (2007). Integrating folksonomies with the Semantic Web. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4519, 624–639. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-72667-8_44 Spiteri, L. F. (2006). The use of folksonomies in public library catalogues. The Serials Librarian, 51(2), 75–89. doi:10.1300/J123v51n02_06 Taniar, D., & Rahayu, J. W. (2006). Web semantics and ontology. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing.

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Trant, J., & Wyman, B. (2006). Investigating social tagging and folksonomy in art museums with steve.museum. In Proceedings of the World Wide Web 2006. Edinburgh, UK: ACM Press. Retrieved December 19, 2007, from http://www.archimuse. com/research/www2006-tagging-steve.pdf Udell, J. (2004, August 20). Collaborative knowledge gardening. InfoWorld. Vander Wal, T. (2005). Folksonomy definition and Wikipedia. Retrieved December 19, 2007, from http://www.vanderwal.net/random/entrysel. php?blog=1750 Veres, C. (2006). The language of folksonomies: What tags reveal about user classification. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3999, 58–69. doi:10.1007/11765448_6 Voß, J. (2007). Tagging, folksonomy & co. - renaissance of manual indexing? Paper presented at the 10th International Symposium for Information Science. Wu, H., Zubair, M., & Maly, K. (2006). Harvesting social knowledge from folksonomies. In Proceedings of the 17th Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia (pp. 111-114). Wu, X., Zhang, L., & Yu, Y. (2006). Exploring social annotations for the Semantic Web. In Proceedings of the 15th international conference on World Wide Web, Edinburgh, UK (pp. 417-426). Xu, Z., Fu, Y., Mao, J., & Su, D. (2006). Towards the Semantic Web: Collaborative tag suggestions. In Proceedings of the workshop on collaborative Web tagging. Retrieved December 19, 2007, from http://www.ibiblio.org/www_tagging/2006/13. pdf

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Collaborative Tagging: The process of collaboratively assigning keywords to resources or items on the Internet. Enterprise Tagging: The use of collaborative tagging in a corporate environment. Ontology: Data model that constitutes a set of concepts within a domain. The model includes the relationships between those concepts as well as rules for inference and integrity. Semantic Web: Augmentation of online resources with unambiguous machine-readable descriptions of content or functions. While existing web resources are extended without modifying their original functionality, the boundary between human and automated understanding is abrogated. Tags: Descriptive keywords which users attribute to online resources. Tag Cloud: Weighted list with a visual description of user-generated tags. In tag clouds, tags are typically listed alphabetically, while the tag frequency is shown with font size or color. Taxonomy: Segmentation and classification of elements into a hierarchic category system on the basis of defined relations. Thesauri: Originating in bibliography, thesauri are taxonomies enhanced with primitive definite relations such as synonyms.

ENDNOTES 1 2 3 4 5

Yahoo! Press Room. (2007). Yahoo! continues social media expansion with MyBlogLog acquisition. Retrieved December 19, 2007, from http:// yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/inthenews. cfm?ArchiveWeek=20070112

http://www.del.icio.us http://www.flickr.com http://www.technorati.com http://www.citeulike.com http://www.youtube.com

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Chapter 15

E-Tagging in Context

Information Management across Community Networks Heather D. Pfeiffer New Mexico State University, USA Emma L. Tonkin University of Bath, UK

ABSTRACT This chapter examines social tagging as annotation: first from the perspective of classification research; and second from the perspective of knowledge representation and knowledge management. Using the context meta-model of the annotation, the authors demonstrate that the model is adequately represented in existing knowledge representation theory: specifically, from the perspective of socially constructed meaning in community networks. Furthermore, the set of tagging representations (that is, triadic networks of the individual, object, and annotation) are explored throughout the knowledge representation domain. In contrast to many commentators, the authors of this chapter conclude that social tagging may effectively be explored via a multidisciplinary approach linking knowledge representation and classification research and creating an open domain network.

INTRODUCTION Inter-site and intra-site variation of certain aspects of tag production, content, and patterns of use has recently begun to attract attention by commentators in knowledge management (KM) as well as in classification research (CR). Examples include variation in the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic context of tags, as well as in the patterns of production and use of tags within and between individuals and larger DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch015

social communities. It is conjectured that variation in features of tagging systems (such as user-interface concerns) are at the root of much of these variations, but there is also a great deal of variance within and between tag sites and communities that relates to the topic and character of the discussion, the nature of social tagging as a speech act, or as a performance that reflects on the identity that speakers construct for themselves. This variation may be seen through comparison of research results within and across various tagging systems, but the subject has not yet received large-scale, thorough investigation.

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The term social tagging appears to suggest that the process of tagging - annotating a resource with a free-text keyword or phrase - is understood to be connected to some form of underlying “community” or “network” structure. As a result, some perceive a dichotomy between semantic annotation or knowledge management, and the use of social tagging to aggregate opinions (Mika, 2007). In short, a distinction exists between well-formed semantic annotations that enable the development of efficient computational methods for analyzing and interacting with information and the free tags of social networks that are weakly defined and incompletely interpretable. Reflected is a historical bias towards a characterization of knowledge management systems as representative of consensus within a research community or other closed domain, whilst user classifications generally exhibit partial consensus within a loosely defined community. There is significant disagreement about the forms that this social dimension may take, just as there is a great deal of discussion about the uses of tagging that are considered valid and should be encouraged. The analysis of social tagging has been approached via a number of dimensions, of which the perspective of existing research into areas (such as classification research) is perhaps the most common, with the casting of the tag into broadly researched existing forms (such as keyword, label and annotation). Application of existing research perspectives and theory often highlights valid links with prior and related work and hence leads to productive research avenues at a cost perhaps of casting the data into a mould in which it fits uncomfortably. In this chapter, we bring together a set of perspectives on social tagging and cast them into existing models and theory drawn from the knowledge management domain, with the aim of demonstrating the sound theoretical basis for a rapprochement between the two domains. The familiarity of knowledge management research with systems thinking and knowledge as a

socially-constructed resource (Good, Kawas, & Wilkinson, 2007) suggests that bridging this gap provides the classification researcher with a rich set of tools and resources to complement existing approaches to research in this area. Knowledge itself is considered a manifestation of information in social systems, a result of interpretation of data (Fuchs, 2004). Many recent tools and techniques focus on exploring aspects of the connection between social tagging and the underlying community, in particular the role of tagging as a means of shared informal annotation. We summarize relevant research results, bringing together areas of investigation linked to various aspects of the process of authoring, reading and making use of tags, including facets of tag use other than the well-known model of personal or shared resource management. A broad, multidisciplinary view allows for more realistic models of tag generation and use, thereby providing a means to make more effective and varied use of existing research tools in the analysis and reuse of social tagging and networking data.

BACKGROUND Social tagging inherits from previous work on non-hierarchical file systems, designed to solve issues first identified by Barreau and Nardi (1995) that limit the usability and intuitiveness of the hierarchical file system paradigm. Barreau and Nardi found that hierarchical file organization suffered due to the variety of roles for information in the workplace, resulting in difficulty defining an appropriate filing scheme and increasing the cost in terms of time; they also noted that hierarchical filing schemes were perceived as complex to understand and use, points which may also be seen as valid criticisms of formal, particularly hierarchical, approaches to classification. Historical examples of attempts to solve these issues include MIT’s 1991-1992 Semantic File system project (Gifford, Jouvelot, Sheldon, & O’Toole, 1991) and

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XEROX PARC’s Placeless Documents initiative (Dourish et al., 2000). Social tagging is also often linked to work on keyword systems, in particular into intra-indexer and inter-indexer consistency (Leonard, 1975). Such pilot projects explored approaches to simplifying and reducing the cost of classification; they often bear many similarities to the social tagging systems of today with one significant dissimilarity being the intended audience and scale of each system; these systems were not in general used by large and varied communities, but were limited to personal information management or information management within the small office setting. Services made available to the Internet can quickly attain a large user base. As the number of users increases, so does the opportunity for many forms of collaborative use to take place; that is, there is a possibility that users no longer consider the service to be entirely for the purpose of personal (single-user) information management. It is reasonable to suppose that the user might then choose to treat the system: as a channel for information exchange between colleagues or user groups; as a means of persuasion or performance; as a means of developing a public identity or online profile (Zollers, 2007; Tonkin et al., 2008); or, as a means of making use of any of the subtler approaches to situating the written word within a socio-cultural context. In practice, tags are often employed to convey information beyond their primary use as symbols representing the theme or content of an object. As such, they may contain keywords, interpretative data, reactions, and functional/action tags (Golder & Huberman, 2006; Kipp, 2007). Several models of social tagging have been proposed that concentrate more closely on the network, system, and community interactions that underlie many social tagging services and their uses. For example, Zhdanova (2007) describes folksonomies via a model that is based upon existing models for semantic social network representation. Yeung and colleagues (2007)

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Figure 1. A is a set of annotations: A ⊆ U × T × R. Adapted from Yeung’s poster version of paper

begin from a tripartite graph of users, tags, and resources (see Figure 1) describing the effect of this linking as “mutual contextualization”; that is, through association with other elements, semantics is acquired. At the basis of this discussion, and particularly visible in Yeung’s work, is the assertion that the processes involved in tagging depend upon the same processes that govern lexical choice and pragmatic interpretation in natural language. When this is the case, the author of the annotation may be expected to apply a model of the perceived audience during that process, whilst the reader interprets the result in a similar manner via a model of the speaker’s knowledge and intentions. Such a process is consistent with a view of natural language as a “noisy information channel”: rather than the commonly applied model of stylized natural language in classification applied as a lossless conduit through which information is encoded, transmitted, and received without error. Precedent for this appears in classification research, in particular in discussion of inter-indexer consistency and intra-indexer consistency, the variation in term use by one or several individuals. Indexing and tagging are similar in the sense that in most circumstances, the expectation by system designers is that the user will attempt

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to find the term that most accurately conveys the intended semantic. The user is attempting to describe the resource so that others looking for a resource on that topic will be able to retrieve it. However, the individual classifying a web page in a social context seeks the term that is most likely to convey the correct image in a situated context, or indeed the term that reflects most appropriately on the individual, whilst formal indexing replaces this social context with a presupposition of joint adherence to a standardized set of definitions. Message formation occurs within a common ground framework (Krauss & Fussell, 1991), meaning that in order to maximize his or her chances of being understood, the individual encoding information – writing an annotation or description, for example – must guess at the most appropriate encoding. To do this, the author must look for background knowledge (common ground) that is likely to be shared by the reader. In constructing an analogous description within a knowledge management context, social contexts can be seen as ontologies, where hierarchies and relationships are the abstract elements of an ontology (Pfeiffer, 2007). This ontology is a synonym for the arrangement of a generalization hierarchy that classifies the categories or concept types of the hierarchy – formally, the term refers to the study of being (Sowa, 1991). The ontology also provides an encoded description of the relationships, operations, and constraints that are essential to help define the nature (knowledge) of our world or reality (Russell & Norvig, 1995). A general ontology defines an informal list of concepts that are part of the domain. Such concepts are seen as tags within the ontology and are defined by categories in which they are members. Individuals, however, may have differing levels of familiarity with a large set of social contexts. Each individual can therefore be thought of as having a slightly different set of concepts, or at least associated symbols, available to them. As described by Krauss and Fussell (1991), the individual encoding information must attempt

to construct the annotation so that it has the best chance of being understood by the intended audience, given that they share at best only a partial set of concepts or associated symbols.

Classification, Organization, Utterance, and Identity Current research focuses on deconstructing tag sets via various models: search, relation to knowledge management, linguistic model, social network discovery, affect and emotion, philosophical and epistemological, and comparison to controlled vocabulary (Shiri, 2007). It is helpful to understand how social tagging is used in context, just as analysis of written and spoken utterance is important to related technologies (such as the Semantic Web, natural language processing, and search methods across bodies of spoken and written text in information retrieval). Social tagging is cheap to implement and popular to use. Many effects obviously extant in the informal classification domain – such as semantic shift, drift and change in scope – are visible, though less obvious, in other knowledge management systems, including the Semantic Web. For this reason, results arising from the study of social tagging systems within a socio-cultural context may potentially lead to a better understanding of inconsistencies in other datasets over time or between physical or social contexts. Two principal approaches to the study of social tagging exist. The first is interpretive, focusing on analysis of specific annotation instances. The second examines tag application and could be described as structural; treating tags as symbolic markers across which a network, or graph, is defined. The former is not the primary focus of this chapter. However, findings from the interpretive approach are relevant to the latter, and therefore will be briefly summarized here. Several models have been developed describing tag networks according to the latter approach (see Figure 2). These concentrate on users tagging information,

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Figure 2. A combination of all three Zhen models. (1) User - Tag - Information; (2) User - Tag - User; and (3) Information - Tag - Information

users connecting to other users by way of tags, and information being connected to other information by way of tags (Zhen, 2007). This in itself can be related, from a knowledge management perspective, to Richards (Odgen & Richards, 1923), who applied the structure of a triangle of meaning combining reference, referent, and symbol, showing that there is a triadic relationship between the three entities. Peirce (1931-1958) clarified this description, describing a triangle relating concept, object, and sign.

Defining a CrossDisciplinary Meta-Model Within the management of knowledge, social systems are believed to become self-organizing (Fuchs, 2004). Knowledge is a manifestation of information in social systems that involve the interpretation, evaluation, and usage of data where individuals perform a re-organization of a knowledge system within a joint environment (Fuchs, 2003; Fuchs, 2004). Tags are often employed to convey information beyond their primary use as symbols representing the theme or content of an object (Tonkin et al., 2008). As such, they may contain keywords, interpretative data, reactions, and functional/action tags (Golder & Huberman, 2006; Kipp, 2007). They may also perform social

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Figure 3. A selection of tag types, represented according to placement on a simplified 3-D subset of Marshall’s (1998) dimensions of annotations

functions, such as persuasion, identity, and performance (Zollers, 2007). The widespread move in classification research towards definition of functional models, frameworks or typologies of tags can be described by regarding these models superposed upon a meta-structure -- the typology of physical annotations developed by Marshall (1998), which may be seen as an interpretive study. By examination of physical annotations, scribbles in the margin of a book made in biro or pencil, Marshall (1998) developed a set of dimensions describing variance in their use. Many annotations are well-formed, formal, completely specified and computationally tractable. Others exhibit some or all of the features of natural language (for example: incomplete, sparse, ambiguous and tacit, dependent on context). The full typology defines seven dimensions of variance. For ease of visualization, these are represented here according to the three major supersets that Marshall defines -- form, function, and audience (see Figure 3). This model again implies that tags are not undirected: that they are constructed with an intended audience. Marshall identifies as examples of possible audiences the user, a community, or a global audience of speakers of that language.

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Frameworks such as Marshall’s (1998) or models such as Zhen’s (2007) provide a means and a method for a rich, multi-dimensional model of social tagging, and explicitly model the social or pragmatic aspects as well as the semantic and syntactic. Accepting Marshall’s model as a valid meta-model describing in coarse grain the characteristics of tag classification systems, we then ask whether a preexisting representation equivalent to this model exists in the domain of knowledge representation (KR). From a knowledge representation perspective, this model is not unfamiliar. The tags are viewed as the “glue” between the user and information or meta-data (Pfeiffer, Chavez, & Hartley, 2005). Of primary importance is the insight, familiar to the knowledge representation domain, that formulation of a message implies reference to an audience -- that is, the information is formulated in such a way as to maximize the listener’s comprehension (Chavez & Hartley, 2005). The individual constructing a message works with reference to a representation of a listener. The speaker is not able to know the extent of knowledge of the listener, but must work from a theory constructed by reference to observable behavior (for example, Whiten’s “theory of mind” (1991).

Self-Organizing Social Systems Within the domain of knowledge management, social systems are often described as “self-organizing” (Fuchs, 2004). Knowledge is a manifestation of information in social systems that involve the interpretation, evaluation, and usage of data where individuals perform a re-organization of a knowledge system within a joint environment (Fuchs, 2003, 2004). A social tagging system in widespread use by a large variety of contributors provides many examples that are describable as symptomatic of this re-organization behavior. As a consequence of this characteristic, an ontology built for application within a dynamic social system is itself potentially subject to alteration,

both planned and consequent to external forces. Thus, an old annotation may become irrelevant or inaccurate. Furthermore, annotations may be assigned in KR much as described by Barreau and Nardi (1995), as instruments in a short-term task (Borri et al., 2006); such annotations may therefore be described as “transient” in much the same way as described by Marshall (1998). Audience plays an important role in KR. Social tagging in a community setting might be described as being built within collaborative testbeds (Keeler & Pfeiffer, 2005) - shared services that enable interaction between users and user groups. These testbeds are using a game interface for the development of a formalized interface to build rich context structures of tagging hierarchies for multiple contexts: such as, tools specification requirements for knowledge acquisition. The testbed allow users to discuss and define the tags for the ontology in a collaborative manner. Hovy (2005, within the critique found in this paper, argues that testbeds used by research communities often do not represent best practice in the domain, in that participants do not apply good methodologies in building ontologies and do not produce adequate ontological tags for the applications at hand. Instead, a game interface may be engineered that incorporates Peirce’s Theory of Inquiry (see Peirce, 1993), such that it requires that social tags cannot be added or modified in the ontology without stating a factual reason (Keeler & Pfeiffer, 2006). As a result, the process uses the scientific methodology of hypothesis generation, followed by experimentation, analysis of results, and presentation of conclusions: instead of purely representing social opinion, which may be illfounded or transient and is difficult to deconstruct after the fact. In a closed process involving only a single individual, this scientific methodology, whilst formal and well-documented, may lead to an insular and perhaps brittle or inflexible approach to knowledge representation and the developed ontology. By using a collaborative testbed, however,

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widespread accessibility and openness increases the effectiveness of the approach by ensuring that a wide variety of views and arguments are accessed during ontology development while still laying an emphasis on the central importance of well-founded argumentation.

Community as Context The term community covers a wide spectrum of functional or rhetorical applications of which a few characteristic definitions are represented here: •

•

•

• •

•

Language communities: Sharing a common language and perhaps a shared knowledge base; Speech communities: The term arises from linguistics; a speech community uses language in a shared manner, generally unique to that community; Discourse communities: Sharing common public goals, mechanisms for intercommunication, participatory mechanisms, discourse expectations/genres, specialized terminology, and a critical mass of experts (Swales, 1990); National communities:Nations of people of similar heritage; Research communities: Share a common ‘closed’ research area of interest when understanding methodologies and functionality of applications; Practice communities: Task groups, linked by a shared aim.

Many factors have an impact upon a given facet of measured “community membership”-including ideology, identity, shared interests and goals, and patterns of contact and communication. Community membership is complex to define and model; it may be partial, voluntary and circumstantial. Individual identity is sometimes referred to a self-image, bringing together certain interpersonal characteristics, roles, relationships and values

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(Huffaker & Calvert, 2005; Calvert, 2002), and may be developed through various means including experimentation, search and social interaction (Harter, 1998). Individual identity may reflect the individual’s chosen community affiliations, but is not limited by them – that is, individual identity may contain unique characteristics that are not copied from other community members. Language use and identity have become viewed as closely “linked” with participation in online settings being characterized by some as a form of identity exploration (Turkle, 1995). From both interpretive and structural perspectives, language use within a computer-mediated communication context is expected to show characteristics indicative of the underlying community network. In practice, communities are seldom monolithic, stable and simple meta-structures. An assertion that an individual’s language relates to membership in a given community or population may be accurate only to the extent that the community itself is clearly defined. Lassiter (2008) refers to this characterization of language, by analogy with political philosophy, as communitarianism. Other metrics that may be used to define a community, such as co-citation of thematically relevant resources (Moulaison, Tonkin, & Corrado, 2008) or other bibliometric approaches, are susceptible to similar objections. The grouping of individuals offers an opportunity to generalize across the activities of a large number of individuals, a process that is of course in many cases statistically defensible. Community structures have an objective, measurable existence and can be usefully studied (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). Many sites applying social tagging show overt characteristics of language-in-use. Terms are situated in context and often require pragmatic analysis -- examination of the context surrounding the use of terms -- to elicit meaning. Pragmatic analysis is linked to acceptance of the idea of the “semantic triangle” idea that links reference (sometimes known as concept), referent (or sign) and term (or symbol) in a tripartite graph (Odgen

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& Richards, 1923). The reference level is hidden, but there is an implication that examination of the wide variance in term use permits indirect examination of this landscape. Sowa (2005) argued that there are three identifiable basic fields involved in knowledge sharing: logic, ontology, and computation. These fields are used by bringing together logic and ontologies to construct different contextual models for different applications. The problem of aligning tags in a single ontology with another ontology is very similar to aligning words from the vocabularies of different natural languages as discussed in Yeung’s work (2007). Therefore, creation and modification of ontologies are related to the community in which they are used. When tags in a current ontology cannot be aligned within a community, a new ontology needs to be created. However, if communities can merge to create a new compound domain or expand one of the existing ontologies, then both domains can be represented as one ontology.

FUTURE TRENDS The recent resurgence of interest in social network analysis, identity, and community membership carries a risk of promoting an oversimplified view of a complex system – or, alternatively, of needlessly overcomplicating the problem. However, a critical approach to analysis acts to counterbalance the former complaint, promoting a more realistic and perhaps more sensitive perception of community membership and identity. As one of many community systems are built upon network effects and interaction between individuals, the process of social tagging is intimately linked to the structures that underpin language: the growth and dissipation of community structures and resources, identity and culture, and manifestation of expressed ideas and ideologies. The structure is rich, complex, and dynamic. It is possible that this aspect of technology dam-

ages retrieval performance, although solutions, often dependent upon the existence of underlying community structures that govern or direct usage patterns, have been identified for “several specific shortcomings” (such as disambiguation, hyponyms and synonyms). However, the richness of tagging networks as resources for identification of community structures (for example, via idiosyncratic use of terminology or choice of resources) has only recently become clear with widespread development and use of social tagging services. In addition, the area of community informatics is increasingly important as the web’s population grows and diversifies. Existing applications based around Web 2.0/user-contributed information show signs of the great potential of these techniques. Services such as Technorati presently combine social tagging of blogs with social network analysis techniques to help identify the primary subject area of a given site and to map how closely that author (or group of authors) is linked to others. This information is made available via a software interface so that it can be used by third-party programmers and applications as well as through a web interface. Other sites such as Cloudalicious (http://cloudalicio.us/tagcloud. php) and Flickr’s timeline and “interestingness” provide alternative views on display of tagging data that demonstrate features, such as shifting readership demographic or site focus and content. An increased focus on linking between social network and content network analysis constitutes an approach that the authors expect to be of some interest in the years to come.

CONCLUSION In this chapter we have highlighted various relevant areas of research and theory which in combination paint a multidisciplinary view of the research area. These perspectives describe various different aspects of the processes under-

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lying tagging and approaches towards practical analysis and use of this information corpus: such as applications in the area of information retrieval, application of tags as units of semantic annotation, and further processing via techniques such as sentiment analysis. We have described relations between relevant theory and historical work in the area of classification research, taking into account usability issues surrounding document classification, the process and constructs applied during classification, users’ motivations and aims in classification, and the cognitive processes involved in generating and interpreting an annotation. From the knowledge representation domain, we have examined the process of generating an ontology within a domain, highlighting the similarities of the triadic models described in Peirce (1993) and Richards (Odgen & Richards, 1923) semiotic triangle and the constructs described by classification researchers, the shared need to take the user and surrounding social structure into account, and the potential that knowledge representation constructs (such as the ontology) may benefit from development via an open, collaborative testbed similar to social tagging services. The authors have shown that knowledge management theory is more compatible with the developed models of social classification than is sometimes suggested, although the problem is greatly simplified in some communities (networks) by formalizing and limiting the scale and use cases of the domain ontology. Modeling different aspects of user behavior in tagging allow researchers in either the classification research or knowledge management domain to examine the role and influence of tagging behaviors in the development of a shared terminology or language. An emphasis on examination and description of social or cultural interconnections between users enables new views on the types of information that may be revealed via analysis of tag datasets and inspires novel methods for extracting such data. On a more general level, the authors contend that user-contributed content

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and community informatics are closely linked, but that a holistic, interdisciplinary understanding of the research area is useful. Many topic areas and academic structures contribute to the research area of formal and informal semantic annotation, amongst them: computer science, library and information science, linguistics and management studies. As a result of this heterogeneity, the field is uniquely challenging and rewarding.

REFERENCES Barreau, D. K., & Nardi, B. (1995). Finding and reminding: File organization from the desktop. ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 27(3), 39–43. doi:10.1145/221296.221307 Borri, D., Celino, A., Concilio, G., & De Liddo, A. (2006). Structuring short-term organizational memories by argumentation based transientscenarios. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA’06) (pp. 166-170). Calvert, S. L. (2002). Identity construction on the Internet. In S. L. Calvert, A. B. Jordon, & R. R. Cocking (Eds.), Children in the digital age: Influences of electronic media on development (pp. 57-70). Westport, CT: Praeger. Chavez, N., Jr., & Hartley, R. T. (2005). The role of object-oriented techniques and multi-agents in story understanding. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Integration of Knowledge Intensive Multi-Agent Systems, Waltham, MA (pp. 580-585). Dourish, P., Edwards, W. K., LaMarca, A., Lamping, J., Petersen, K., & Salisbury, M. (2000). Extending document management systems with user-specific active properties. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 18(2), 140–170. doi:10.1145/348751.348758

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Fuchs, C. (2003). The Internet as a self-organizing socio-technological system. Human Strategies in Complexity Research Paper. Retrieved September 30, 2008, from http://ssrn.com/abstract=458680 Fuchs, C. (2004). Knowledge management in selforganizing social systems. Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, 5. Retrieved September 30, 2008, from http://www.tlainc.com/articl61.htm Gifford, D. K., Jouvelot, P., Sheldon, M. A., & O’Toole, J. J. (1991). Semantic file systems. In Proceedings of the 13th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (pp. 16-25). New York: ACM. Golder, S., & Huberman, B. A. (2006). Usage patterns of collaborative tagging systems. Journal of Information Science, 32(2), 198–208. doi:10.1177/0165551506062337 Good, B., Kawas, E., & Wilkinson, M. (2007). Bridging the gap between social tagging and semantic annotation: E.D. the entity describer. Retrieved September 30, 2008, from http://hdl. handle.net/10101/npre.2007.945.1 Harter, S. (1998). The development of self-representations. In W. Damon & N. Eisenberg (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social, emotional, and personality development (5th ed.) (pp. 553-617). New York: Wiley. Hovy, E. (2005). Methodology for the reliable construction of ontological knowledge. In F. Dau, M.-L. Mugnier, & G. Stumme (Eds.), Proceedings of the 13th Annual International Conference on Conceptual Structures (LNAI 3596, pp. 91-106). Berlin, Germany: Springer. Huffaker, D. A., & Calvert, S. L. (2005). Gender, identity and language use in teenage blogs. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(2).

Keeler, M. A., & Pfeiffer, H. D. (2005). Games of inquiry for collaborative concept structuring. In F. Dau, M.-L. Mugnier, & G. Stumme (Eds.), Conceptual structures: Common semantics for sharing knowledge (LNCS 3596, pp. 396-410). Berlin, Germany: Springer. Keeler, M. A., & Pfeiffer, H. D. (2006). Building a pragmatic methodology for KR tool research and development. In H. Scharfe, P. Hitzler, & P. Ohrstrom (Eds.), Conceptual structures: Inspiration and application (LNCS 4068, pp. 314-330). Berlin, Germany: Springer. Kipp, M. I. (2007). @toread and cool: Tagging for time, task and emotion. In Proceedings of the 8th Information Architecture Summit, Las Vegas, NV. Retrieved September 30, 2007, from http:// eprints.rclis.org/archive/00010445/ Krauss, R. M., & Fussell, S. R. (1991). Constructing shared communicative environments. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley, (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 172-200). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Lassiter, D. (2008). Semantic externalism, language variation, and sociolinguistic accommodation. Mind & Language. Leonard, L. E. (1975). Inter-indexer consistency and retrieval effectiveness: Measurement of relationships. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Marshall, C. C. (1998). Towards an ecology of hypertext annotation. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM conference on hypertext and hypermedia (pp. 40-49). New York: ACM. Mika, P. (2007). Ontologies are us: A unified model of social networks and semantics. Journal of Web Semantics, 5(1), 5–15. doi:10.1016/j. websem.2006.11.002

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Moulaison, H. L., Tonkin, E., & Corrado, E. M. (2008). Linking communities of practice online: A comparative study of French and anglo biblioblogs. Paper presented at the Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication Conference, Nimes, France. Odgen, C. K., & Richards, I. A. (1923). The meaning of meaning: A study of the influence of language upon thought and of the science of symbolism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Peirce, C. S. (1993). Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A chronological edition (C. J. Kloesel, Ed.). Bloomington, IN: Indiana Univ. Press. Pfeiffer, H. D. (2007). The effect of data structures modifications on algorithms for reasoning operations using a conceptual graphs knowledge base. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM. Pfeiffer, H. D., Chavez, J. N., & Hartley, R. T. (2005). A generic interface for communication between story understanding systems and knowledge bases. Paper presented at the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, Albuquerque, NM. Russell, S., & Norvig, P. (1995). Artifical intelligence: A modern approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Russell, T. (2008). Cloudalicious: Watching tags over time. Retrieved August 30, 2008, from http:// cloudalicio.us/tagcloud.php Shiri, A. (2007). Trend analysis in social tagging: A LIS perspective. Paper presented at the 11th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, Budapest, Hungary.

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Zollers, A. (2007). Emerging motivations for tagging. Retrieved August 28, 2008, from http:// www2007.org/workshops/paper_55.pdf

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Annotation: Additions to a digital object, such as marginal notes containing reactions, commentary, analysis, or links to related work. Community Network: Formally, community networks constitute systems supporting distinct geographical communities. Knowledge: A manifestation of information in social systems that involve the interpretation, evaluation, and usage of data. Ontology: Comes from the Greek words onto (being) and logos (study) meaning the study of being or the basic categories for existence.

Pragmatics: The meaning of an utterance or written sentence often differs from that gleaned from a semantic analysis of the sentence. Pragmatics represents the study of language in use. Semiotic Triangle: Richards (Odgen & Richards, 1923) applied the structure of a triangle of meaning (reference, referent, and symbol) to show that the object which is referred to by a given symbol or word is not static, but relative to each language user. Peirce (1931-1958) later utilized a similar notion, using concept instead of reference, object instead of referent, and sign instead of symbol. Social Tagging Services: Services that permit one or more individuals to provide short plaintext descriptions or metadata that create a unique identifier, usually a pointer to a digital object.

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Chapter 16

Using Notification Systems to Create Social Places for Online Learning James M. Laffey University of Missouri-Columbia, USA Christopher J. Amelung Yale University, USA

ABSTRACT Context-aware activity notification systems have potential to improve and support the social experience of online learning. The authors of this chapter have developed a context-aware activity notification system (CANS) that monitors online learning activities and represents relevant contextual information by providing notification and making the learning activity salient to other participants. The chapter describes previous efforts to develop and support online learning context awareness systems; it also defines the critical components and features of such a system. It is argued that notification systems can provide methods for using the context of activity to support members’ understanding of the meaning of activity. When designed and implemented effectively, CANS can turn course management systems (CMS) into technologies of social interaction to support the social requirements of learning.

INTRODUCTION Online learning in its various forms plays an increasingly important role in how students learn, how faculties teach, and how higher education meets the needs of its constituents. However, while online learning plays a powerful role in broadening access within and beyond campus sites, there is a growing concern that it may be diminishing the quality of teaching and learning by forcing instructors and DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch016

learners to view courses through the narrow lens afforded by contemporary software systems. Today’s approach to online learning is encapsulated in course management systems (CMS) of which Blackboard, WebCT and Sakai represent most popular applications. The CMS provide fairly effective ways for instructors to give and control access to course information (syllabus, assignments, grades) and instructional resources. They also present some facilities for direct interaction through discussion boards and chat rooms. The CMS approach helps manage the course and related information but is

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limited in supporting the interaction, coordination and cooperation between students and instructors. The authors of this chapter have developed a Context-aware Activity Notification System (CANS) (Amelung, 2007; Laffey & Amelung, 2007) as a mechanism for improving social ability in online learning (Laffey, Lin, & Lin, 2006). CANS is a software system that monitors activity within an information system, represents relevant contextual information (such as where, when or under what conditions), and provides notification to other participants about the activity. In traditional face-to-face courses instructors and students come to a physical place where they mutually act out the course activities. Coordination and cooperation are facilitated by cues and structures in the context: such as, a bell ringing to signify it is time to attend to the teacher, the clock on the wall providing a common marker for knowing how long an activity should last, or students passing completed work forward at the end of a class period. Seeing how others use these cues and structures also shapes interaction. However, in online learning the CMS is a black veil between the instructor and students and among the students. Faculty and students are limited in their knowledge about what is happening in the course to the “words” spoken. Students do not see other students working; nor for the most part do they see each other’s products. Instructors do not see students working and can only influence them with words. Similarly, students do not see instructors working outside of the formal presentations and feedback prescribed by the instruction. Seeing that an instructor has read your discussion post or looked at the file you uploaded to share with the class may encourage participation and develop a sense of an interpersonal relationship with the instructor. Evidence of high dropout rates in distance learning attests to the problems that students may have with this form of education. Chyung (2001) found that online learners who dropped out perceived that their online learning environment

was not engaging, had low levels of confidence while learning at a distance, and had low satisfaction levels for the instructional processes used in the online learning environment. The incidental learning that happens through working together, the social navigation that happens through observing others, and the motivation to keep learning that happens because of a sense of shared social experience are possible in a traditional classroom because members see and experience activity in context, but in online learning these outcomes are greatly constrained. However, there is potential for new social interaction technologies to improve the social experience and social support of online learning. These same approaches and technologies that have potential for supporting the social nature of online learning may also be important to online collaborative work and leisure activity. The ability to turn an online space into a social place is a challenge to the design and implementation of all forms of online activity and interactivity. This chapter describes one such social interaction technology, context-aware activity notification systems. These systems have the potential to make the activity of other members salient and to enhance the social nature of learning in an online space, in this case a course. To the extent that these notifications are provided in ways that are meaningful to the social roles and interactive tasks of being in a course, then the members will experience the online environment as a social place for learning and activity.

BACKGROUND The goal of transforming course management systems from information space to social place is in keeping with the recognition that education is a social activity and that information access and use has a social nature. In The Social Life of Information, Brown and Duguid (2000) summarized a growing recognition that information systems need to both support use in social contexts

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and represent the social nature of accessing and using information. For example, a tech support information system should be organized by the practices that people do which cause them to need tech support and include meta data about who has provided the information, how frequently it is used, and what other resources were used by the folks who used this one. In this way, the users do not simply have a static piece of information related to the problem they are solving; they can make attributions about the information, such as the likelihood of it being accurate or sufficient. Being able to make these attributions gives the information contextual meaning and helps the user have a sense of how that information fits into practices within a community, such as the importance and value of the information or perhaps peripheral status of the information. In this sense, having the relevant contextual information is seen as important or necessary for making decisions and solving problems effectively (Palumbo, 1990). By having a goal of transforming CMS in to a social place, we mean that the online system becomes a medium that represents both the explicit and tacit information of social activity and that the forms and objects of the system communicate possibilities for action (Harrison & Dourish, 1996). This emphasis on creating “place” foreshadowed Web 2.0 by emphasizing the value of supporting social practices rather than simply enabling information access and exchange. As discussed earlier for face-to-face classes, the awareness of what others are doing is necessary for social practice. What others do and how they use the elements of their environments stimulate us to action, provide feedback to our own actions, and support social navigation. Social navigation refers to the phenomena of people using what other people do as a guide for what to do (Benford, Bowers, Fahlen, Greenhalgh, & Snowden 1995; Gutwin & Greenberg, 1996). By context aware, we refer to how we use cues from our environment to make sense of the situation and decide what to do. In education many of

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these cues represent the social circumstances and include the physical and historical circumstances that may have a role in shaping activity. Early work on context awareness emphasized the need to design computer systems in ways that accounted for the social contexts of the environments in which they were being used (Moran, 1994): for example, how the computer activity fits into the broader scheme of activity in which the computer activity occurs, is but one of the processes that shapes the meaning of the computer activity for the participants. More recent work has shown the value and role of context awareness for ubiquitous and pervasive computing (Moran & Dourish, 2001; Kaptelinin & Czerwinski, 2007). The potential and new insights for context awareness for CMS is that there is social activity and a social context “within” the CMS, and that the appropriate use of notification systems can change the information spaces of CMS into social places for collaborative and social learning. Carroll, Neale, Isenhour, Rosson, and McCrickard (2003) investigated the role of notification systems in supporting collaborative awareness in a virtual school context. Their study found that three types of awareness information contributed to the productivity of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration: social awareness (“who is around”), action awareness (“what is happening to objects”), and activity awareness (“how are things going on”). Unlike some types of notification systems that simply and straightforwardly provide information about events, Carroll and his collaborators found substantial complexity in maintaining awareness for the long-term activities of their educational site. They also found that in some cases the relevant information for maintaining context awareness can be provided as notes about discrete events while in other cases the notes should be snapshots that aggregate series of events. They conclude that to coordinate and effectively work in the online cooperative world of educational settings, users (teachers and students) need sets of tools for: (1) managing objects in the

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learning process, (2) knowing when someone does something to an object, and (3) keeping track of objects over a span of time and work practice. Their work suggests the need for notification systems that not only convey information, but also put that information into the context of work practices and social roles. Yang (2006) and colleagues showed how matchmaking between learner and service ontologies enables interactive matchmaking in collaborative learning environments. Learner profiles consist of entities, such as student accessibility preferences, calendars, and locations. Service profiles consist of knowing such entities as who is online, how to get in touch with classmates, and how to find relevant course materials. The goal is to augment collaborative learning by providing the student user with information relevant to educational purposes, such as whether other authors of a collaborative work are online for discussion. Our interest in context awareness emerged from our development and implementation of an online learning system back in the late 1990’s. As we used and studied the system, we noticed that users (instructors and students) were using what we called activity information to navigate the system. Our online system had an “activity monitor” that displayed recent activity of others in the system on the home page. We noticed how we were drawn to using the monitor to click through to see what had been done rather than using the normal navigation tools of opening the library or discussion applications and then navigating to the target. It became clear that students were doing the same. However, as the semester marched on, the performance of our activity monitor slowed as it had to handle more and more activity. The architecture and mechanisms of the monitor needed to be reconsidered and redeveloped. Chris Amelung, a doctoral student at the time, took on the redevelopment for his dissertation work and the result was the first implementation of CANS (Amelung, 2005).

CANS has a vocabulary of activity and monitors those activity events in a CMS, such as when a discussion board item is read, a resource is uploaded or an announcement is posted. CANS also has a registry of preferences which it uses to distribute notifications. Instructors and students can create reporters to establish and manage notification. For example, an instructor could create a reporter for the time period of a course unit that would keep him abreast of how students are doing and if any are falling behind. Similarly students could create reporters for a work group to know when others in the group have contributed or reviewed work, thus facilitating coordination of activity and keeping a sense of group work even when members never see each other. Notifications are currently packaged as e-mail digests, widgets (small applications that stay resident on a computer desktop), or web pages within the CMS.

NOTIFICATION IN COURSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS The above discussion shows that context in educational settings is quite complex, social, and important. A variety of notification and awareness services are potentially meaningful, but the constructs upon which researchers are building systems of awareness for collaborative and educational purposes are still in formation. This section will examine the components of notification systems and identify approaches to design for context awareness as well as issues in creating a sense of place associated with the various components. It should be noted that almost all CMS have some notification functionality tied to specific applications within the system with possible aggregation for notification, but the objective here is to identify a comprehensive framework that can apply to the full course experience and not simply augment a specific application.

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Monitoring

Storage

The most straightforward way to monitor online activity is by recording all mouse clicks or keystrokes. This approach is sensible if there is no a priori schema for differences among these actions. However, in CMS almost all acts can be understood by application and function. For example, a specific mouse click in a discussion board can be recognized as opening a message for viewing or as starting a reply or new thread. Thus, similar to the ontology constructed by Yang (2006) or the vocabulary constructed by Amelung (2005), the monitor can create a specific set of events to monitor, based on a framework for what would be meaningful to members and impact behavior. In the case of CANS a listener was created and tuned to certain events and not others. The listener needs to record the event and appropriate context information which may include actor, time and application specific attributes, such as the name of the thread being read. Building the ontology or vocabulary for the system is a substantial task of marrying the specific functionality of the CMS to a pedagogical schema for knowing what is relevant and important for teaching and learning behavior. It is also important to keep in mind that CMS’s are growing and evolving systems that add and modify functionality over time. The monitoring mechanisms must adapt and be able to include new functionality as changes in the CMS dictate. CMS such as Sakai have numerous applications and an institution may choose to activate or disable some of this functionality. Because CANS systems are applied across a variety of institutions, they must be sensitive to the local implementation and accommodate new functionality as they become available. In all aspects of the development of monitoring mechanisms that are attuned to CMS functions and are adaptable to changing functions, a critical concern is that the monitoring process does not negatively impact the performance of the CMS.

Since almost all implementations of CMS are sensitive to system performance, how data are handled is a concern. One form of notification, streaming or tickertape type applications requires no substantial storage. The data is usually limited in scope and distributed as a stream to anyone who signs up for it. CMS usually require more complex forms of notification. As suggested by Carroll, there is a need to keep track of information over a span of time and for aggregation to answer complex questions, such as which students are behind on an expected activity during a particular unit of the course. The CANS system stores data on a secondary server to the CMS. This allows minimal impact on CMS performance, having data available for a variety of reporting functions and requests, and affording the opportunity to merge activity information across multiple online systems. However, for notification systems that seek to also enable dynamic interactivity with the notifications, such as comparing today’s level of activity with that over the last three days, then hybrid storage forms may be required to accommodate both massive storage and quick retrieval within sets of data.

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Processing Processing refers to matching event information to requests for notifications. The simplest form of this is to program for all users to get the same information. Under some circumstances this may be reasonable, but in online learning there is considerable variety in user roles, how users want to work and the interdependency of information. Subsequently, customizing outputs to users and contexts seems necessary. In CANS administrators can establish what information will be monitored for their site, and instructors can establish what information within the set enabled by administrators will be monitored for their course. Users can then create reporters which allow one time

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requests for certain types of reports: such as, what was the activity level in my course for this past semester or subscriptions to information reports such as receiving an e-mail note each morning of the semester reporting on the activity of the previous day.

Figure 1. CANS e-mail notification

Representation Representation has two considerations. First, what is the mechanism for delivering the notice? In many cases notification outside the CMS is desired or required. External notices can be provided via e-mail, external web pages, widgets or even phone calls. In some cases notice within the CMS is desired. Awareness information could be embedded within an application. For example, posts in a discussion board or files in a resource section can be labeled with frequency of reads. Additionally, within CMS awareness, information could be provided within a special application that allowed requests for custom reports of archived data as well as interaction with the data. For example an instructor may want to see when during the course of an assignment students actually used the resources made available to them, and then once the findings are available the instructor may want to sort by attributes of the data. The second consideration for representation is how the notice should be displayed. Figure 1 illustrates a text-based digest of information currently used in CANS. This form is effective for communicating both general information about the level of activity and detail about who did what. However, as the amount of information increases, the effectiveness and efficiency of this form decreases. Figure 2 shows a visual representation that provides a quick summary for a large amount of information but requires interactive capabilities for drilling down into the data for the user who wants more detail. Figure 3 uses social comparison for organizing the data and shows how the choice of representation impacts the meaning of the information. In this case users see how their activity level compares

to the activity level of a high performer and to the class average. We have discovered that an important issue in representation is identity. What identity does the notice represent? For example the representations can include names of the actors or not. Under some circumstances, having your name on a list that shows who has done the most activity can bring social pressure to motivate more activity. In teaching, this is a tool that an instructor can use to motivate students. However, students are likely to not want such a list and some may feel it is a violation of their privacy. Under some circumstances, university policies or government regulations may even be issues to consider. Additionally there is always the law of unintended consequences to Figure 2. Visualization for large group

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Figure 3. CANS social comparison digest

consider. An instructor may want to motivate students to further effort, but may engender activity that simply tries to cheat the notification system by opening items without reading them. Our best judgment is to provide a variety of ways to represent identity so that the circumstances of the institution and course and the pedagogical approaches of the instructor can determine the form taken. One approach as is illustrated in Figure 3 is to keep the members anonymous. Comparison information is provided but it preserves the privacy of the individual members. However, the form shown in Figure 3 requires an individual representation for each member, so the benefits of both comparison and privacy come at the cost of added design and processing. An alternative identity to basing notification on who has done what is to use system objects as the design center. For example, rather than pointing out who has read a discussion board message, the system can report that a particular message has been read 5 times. This approach may meet the need of supporting social navigation without risking privacy concerns, but may impact the social nature of the course differently than when the members are the design center for activity notification. As with many of the points discussed in this chapter, this is an issue for further research.

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Management Educational coursework and the participants in the coursework have great variety. No one size or form of notification will suit all types. For example, the type of notification system that fits a small enrollment graduate course being taught online is likely to be inappropriate for a large enrollment undergraduate on-campus course. The online graduate course may benefit from a high level of student-to-student awareness and personalization, but the same approach in the undergraduate class may be overwhelming with the amount and detail of information provided. Similarly, different institutions or instructors may wish to manage privacy concerns differently. For example, while in some cases knowing the name of who has read a discussion board post may benefit group interaction, in others it may be seen as a violation of one’s privacy. Thus the capabilities of the system must be customizable by those who implement the system and then again by those who use the system. CANS allows management in a tiered fashion. The CANS implementation for a site or multiple sites allows the course management administrator to set permissions for monitoring and notification functionality. Within this set of permissions an instructor or course manager can set permissions for how the course will work. These permissions then provide the functionality that members use to create reporters and notification representations. Figure 4 is a prototype for how permissions may be managed in the Sakai implementation of CANS. Within Sakai, members have roles that correspond to having access or having rights to maintain sites and collections. The system administrator can set the permissions that will be the default for the roles in each course. Instructors can reduce permissions within their courses but not add those restricted by the administrator. Items such as id.open prescribe whether a member in the role can see the personal identifier for the actor opening an object in Sakai. With this schema members could be given permis-

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Figure 4. Setting monitoring and notification permissions in CANS for a Sakai implementation

sion to know who posted something but not who read it or vice versa.

FUTURE TRENDS A few years ago the dominant experience of being online was accessing information or making transactions. Today, especially for youth, being online is a social experience. Taken from another perspective, social activity is increasingly mediated by technology and the Internet. We interact with colleagues, friends, family and absolute strangers through e-mail, chat rooms, shared documents, video conferencing, and 3D virtual environments. As we become socially networked via technology, we will also need forms of social information that fit these new environments and relationships. Attending to the behavior of others and using that behavior to help shape our own behavior and serve as a basis for the types and levels of relationships we form with others is a natural part of human everyday experience. Context awareness and notification tools for online environments can facilitate the attention and sense making that happens rather intuitively in natural settings. But, how to make this happen in ways that resonate with us when we are online constitutes a design challenge and an area in need of further research. Our experience suggests that these tools are likely

to come in many forms that are appropriate for the nature of the communities or relationships being formed in online spaces. For example, online auctions such as eBay provide mechanisms to keep track of the status of your bid in an auction based on what others are doing. The designers of eBay recognized that what motivates a person to place a higher bid in a traditional auction is hearing another person make a bid higher than your last one. Similarly, the pace of bidding and other contextual factors influences bidders. Designing a user experience that makes these circumstances of one’s auction activity salient in an online space has substantially impacted the use and ways of using eBay and other online transaction systems. The task then is to design context awareness and notification that are appropriate to the task, community, and individuals involved in online spaces. One of the key challenges we see for our design efforts for context awareness in teaching and learning was foreshadowed by Carroll, Neale, Isenhour, Rosson, and McCrickard (2003) when they discussed the need to keep track of objects over time. Most events are not just moments in time. They have a past and a future as well as a present. When the stock market ticker shows the current price, it also shows the change from the last price. For most activity this sense of trajectory is also a key part of making sense of the information and being able to use the activity information to make choices about one’s own behaviors. One way of addressing this need is to provide more and more data so that users can use what is relevant in their eyes. For example, the e-mail digest of Figure 1 can become more verbose about each event and show more events. However, this method rapidly runs into diminishing returns as the data fairly quickly overwhelm us and become noise. Visualization as in Figures 2 and 3 are part of the solution to making more information available and valuable. Our experience suggests that there are two aspects of visualizing data in context awareness

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that have potential for making information more salient for users and their choices. The first is having visualizations that fit the context. In a sense we mean context aware representation. For example Figure 2 is a useful way of representing information for a large class but may be irrelevant to the needs of a smaller class. Our second key aspect is interactivity. We want the ability to ask questions of our data representations, such as sorting and filtering information. Similarly we want the ability to compare information. For example, an instructor may look at a display of yesterday’s activity that shows 2 or 3 students with a very low level of activity. The instructor may want to then see what happened over the last week to see if the same pattern is evident. The CANS project faces challenges of integrating activity information into the core teaching and learning activities of CMS. Current capabilities allow notification through e-mail digests. The next steps include embedding information into the CMS home pages and applications so that notifications can provide both peripheral awareness and be embedded in learning tasks. Embedding information into the CMS is of course a technical challenge that will require innovative solutions; but if we truly hope to move from information space to social place, the embedding will require that we understand how the activity information relates to teaching and learning practices. This requires a socio-technical solution for connecting a member to his or her group and points to the need for improved methods of designing systems. Similarly, institutions of higher education are concerned with regulations about releasing information about students, and students are concerned about maintaining a sense of privacy and security in their work. These issues require political-technical solutions for connecting members to their community. While the future of notification systems promise ubiquity, rich media representations, integration across systems, and customization to improve meaning and salience, the future

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also demands technical solutions that fit social customs, motives and regulations. It is important to remember that just because information can be provided and may be useful does not mean it should be provided. The application of context awareness in the service of making information systems more social requires interdisciplinary thinking and research across social psychology, organizational development, learning technologies and computer science.

CONCLUSION The preceding discussion has briefly presented a rationale and framework from prior work that shows the value of making online learning more social and the potential for using social interaction technologies, such as context-aware activity notification systems. The authors identified the components of such a system and highlighted some of the design and implementation complexities and issues. The chapter has also highlighted that while context awareness is a natural and necessary part of human activity and human learning, there is much work to be done to make it a powerful and integral part of course management systems. Although making social information available, salient, and meaningful in online systems and for online learning seems a natural progression of system capabilities in a Web 2.0 and beyond world, little is known about how to do so in ways that provide the information as natural components of a social place for activity, optimize the beneficial effects on teaching and learning, and maintain comfort levels of institutions and individuals for privacy and security. Efforts such as the research and development underway for the CANS project are needed to identify the best fit of information to the social nature of online learning and to identify the best technical solutions for efficiency and useful features for processing, representation, and management of activity information. The challenge is clear, however, as the online

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lives of students outside of their courses become ever richer and more social with new interaction technologies. If the online experience of courses through CMS fail to keep up with the increasing sociality of being networked, online learning will miss its potential both as a medium for learning and as a transformation of society that can increase access to higher education.

REFERENCES Allen, E., & Seaman, J. (2007). Online nation: Five years of growth in online learning. Babson Park, MA: The Sloan Consortium. Amelung, C. (2005). A context-based activity notification framework for developers of computer supported collaborative environments. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Missouri, Columbia.

Chyung, S. Y. (2001). Systematic and systemic approaches to reducing attrition rates in online higher education. American Journal of Distance Education, 15(3), 36–49. Gutwin, C., & Greenberg, S. (1996). Workspace awareness for groupware. In Proceedings of the Common Ground: CHI’96 Conference Companion (pp. 208-209). Vancouver, Canada: ACM Press. Harrison, S., & Dourish, P. (1996). Re-place-ing space: The roles of place and space in collaborative systems. In M. S. Ackerman (Ed.), Proceedings of the ACM 1996 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 67-76). Boston, MA: ACM Press. Kaptelinin, V., & Czerwinski, M. (Eds.). (2007). Beyond the desktop metaphor: Designing integrated digital work environments. Boston, MA: MIT Press.

Amelung, C. (2007). Using social context and elearner identity as a framework for an e-learning notification system. International Journal on E-Learning, 6(4), 501–517.

Laffey, J., & Amelung, C. (2007). Cues and mechanisms for improving the social nature of online learning. In Proceedings of the AACE World Conference on Education Multimedia and Hypermedia, Vancouver, Canada.

Benford, S., Bowers, J., Fahlen, L. E., Greenhalgh, C., & Snowden, D. (1995). User embodiment in collaborative virtual environments. In Proceedings of CHI’95 (pp. 242-249). New York: ACM Press.

Laffey, J., Lin, G., & Lin, Y. (2006). Assessing social ability in online learning environments. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 17(2), 166–173.

Brown, J., & Duguid, P. (2000). The social life of information. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Carroll, J. M., Neale, D. C., Isenhour, P. L., Rosson, M. B., & McCrickard, D. S. (2003). Notification and awareness: Synchronizing taskoriented collaborative activity. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 58(5), 605–632. doi:10.1016/S1071-5819(03)00024-7

Moran, T., & Dourish, P. (2001). Introduction to this special issue on context-aware computing. Human-Computer Interaction, 16(2, 3 & 4), 87-95. Moran, T. P. (Ed.). (1994). [Special issue on context in design]. Human-Computer Interaction, 9, 1–149. doi:10.1207/s15327051hci0901_1 Palumbo, D. (1990). Programming language/ problem-solving research: A review of relevant issues. Review of Educational Research, 60(1), 65–89.

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Yang, S. J. H. (2006). Context aware ubiquitous learning environments for peer-to-peer collaborative learning. Educational Technology & Society, 9(1), 188–201.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Context-Aware Activity Notification System (CANS): A software system that monitors activity within an information system and represents relevant contextual information, such as where or when or under what conditions, and provides notification to other participants about the activity. Context Awareness: In a general sense, it means the salience of physical, social, historical or other circumstances that may have a role in shaping activity. The term has been appropriated within a movement toward ubiquitous computing (moving computing beyond the desktop and into the world of activity) to indicate awareness within the computing system of physical conditions outside the system, such as location or user attributes. Course Management System (CMS): A software system that simplifies the tasks of managing course content and interaction to help teachers

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organize and facilitate instruction. Typically systems provide security and some process support for teacher and student work. Online Learning: Multiple terms including e-learning, networked learning and cyber learning, as well as online learning, are used to refer to educational practice that takes place via networked computers. The general benefit is to allow learners to learn from any place (at a distance) and anytime (asynchronously). Social Ability: A person’s capacity to associate with fellows and to use the members, resources and tools of the social context to achieve something of value. Used to represent a sense of competence for social interaction in online environments Social Navigation: A construct that represents being aware of what others are doing as a primary guide for one’s own actions. Research on social navigation has shown that people move in an information space based on where other people are, what they have done, or what they have looked at. Social Place: A construct used in humancomputing interaction to refer to designing the information space to represent cues and markers for social practices.

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Chapter 17

Peer Learning and Social Interactions in an Asynchronous Learning Environment Angela T. Ragusa Charles Sturt University, Australia

ABSTRACT This chapter explores how Internet-based asynchronous communication forums utilized in teaching undergraduate courses affect social interactions and student satisfaction. Drawing from an analysis of qualitative data, such as student and teachers’ perceptions, this case study reveals four key factors that affect learner satisfaction: (1) trust of people and technology, (2) awareness of how technically-mediated interactions differ from face-to-face interactions, (3) peer-based learning opportunities, and (4) integration of relevant learning materials and opportunities for social engagement. The findings suggest that when asynchronous forums are used as the principle vehicle for communication and learning, students feel less socially isolated, report a sense of belonging, and positively evaluate learning outcomes. The case study identifies asynchronous electronic forums as an effective tool for peer learning and social interactions among upper-level distance education students in Australia.

INTRODUCTION Electronic communication has irrevocably changed the way learners and educators approach education. Internet-based communication forums are one specific venue in today’s network society enabling and facilitating dialogue across cultures, geographies and generations. This chapter explores some key issues facing developers, users, and evaluators of DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch017

software for distance education. Drawing from distance education learning and teaching experiences in Australia and conceptualised within a global learning environment, this chapter emphasizes advantages and disadvantages of incorporating asynchronous electronic forums as educational technology in teaching advanced sociology subjects. By presenting empirical qualitative data, informed by the social theory of Symbolic Interactionism, this chapter demonstrates how Internet-based social interaction technology can enhance learning

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and communication among undergraduates by creating a shared purpose and awareness among otherwise isolated users. The study presented here is contrasted with recent e-learning research that questions both the utility of specific communication technologies as well as the pedagogical appropriateness of their application. The overarching objective of this chapter is to provide an alternative perspective. Distance education technologies are often characterized as mediocre and supplemental tools whose primary purpose is to augment traditional classroom-based learning. In contrast, this chapter reveals how the adoption of asynchronous forums as the principal learning and communication vehicle in a seniorlevel correspondence-based distance education course resulted in enhanced student satisfaction. It is argued that high-quality social interactions pursued for the purpose of higher education can be attained virtually, without face-to-face interaction, although the interactions experienced may differ in a number of ways. Ultimately, while identifying and acknowledging the complexity of virtual communication, this research questions the fundamental assumption that virtual classrooms are a priori inherently inferior to those occurring face-to-face.

BACKGROUND Social interactions exist and are understood from both lay and professional vantage points. In this section a sociological definition of social interactions is offered to inform and conceptualise the ensuing analysis of student-student and studentteacher interactions occurring in asynchronous subject forums. The present case study seeks to offer researchers, practitioners, and users theoretically grounded, yet concrete and tangible advice, on users’ and designers’ perceptions and experiences in a distance education environment. The research purpose is to inform users and planners of distance learning courses about asynchronous

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forums as communication, interaction and networking tools to facilitate learning and student engagement.

Social Interaction and Knowledge Society From a sociological perspective, social interaction involves tacit knowledge, shared meaning systems and negotiated agreements about the norms, purpose and process of communicating. Classical symbolic interactionists, such as George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman, provide a useful theoretical framework to understand social interaction as fluid, mutable and subjective. According to Goffman (1967, p. 9), “the definition of the situation” is both contingent and social. By using this theoretical approach to frame contemporary communication technologies, such as asynchronous forums, we may improve our understanding of how individuals and institutions “do” education. Historically, learning in the modern era was a passive activity (Palloff & Pratt, 2001) where students attended geospatially “real” schools to learn objective facts, histories and skills necessary to participate in society. Today, knowledge-based economy (OEC, 1996) is redefining the purpose and focus of education specifically, and knowledge production, or epistemology, more broadly. In our new knowledge society, knowledge is no longer handed down but rather exists as an interaction between learner and environment which subsequently reconfigures both (Semple, 2000). In contrast with modernist science, which was resolved to operate under the constraints of the natural world, post-modern science and technology “is not concerned with discovering ‘laws of nature’, as it is [seeking] the reinvention of nature itself” (Holmes, Hughes, & Julian, 2007, p. 66). Contemporary educators, particularly in higher education, occupy social roles demanding flexibility and cultural awareness in addition to disciplinary and trans-disciplinary expertise.

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“Revolutions” in communications and information technologies (Aronson, 2001) have fundamentally altered the structure of our global world economy and its social institutions. Education is one such institution. Global communication technologies have permitted the growth of global and virtual classrooms. Virtual classrooms, upon which distance education increasingly relies, transcend the national and physical boundaries of traditional classrooms (Ragusa, 2007) and create learning environments mediated by computers and reliant on global telecommunications systems.

Virtual Classrooms and E-Learning Debates Despite the initial use of e-learning for distance education students, virtual classrooms are increasingly being used to supplement traditional learning environments. Learning environments utilizing blended, or hybrid, teaching styles incorporating traditional lectures supplemented by virtual learning have been found to be both productive and appropriate (DeCastro, Munoz, De Freitas, & El-Hani, 2008). However, lack of research on “purely” distance education delivery appears to be leaning to perhaps premature generalizations, such as the assertion that successful distance learning requires both synchronous and asynchronous communication modes in order to be successful (Yucel, 2006). A persistent theme in debates is the notion that distance education is an inferior, albeit perhaps necessary, mode to reach non-traditional and rural students who otherwise are unable to access higher education (E-Learning, 2007). According to Maeroff, Online learning seems to be still living down the early days. Those who thought that this was going to be a whole revolution with everybody moving courses online were so wrong. People who saw piles and buckets of money at the end of the rainbow were just misguided. It is clear now that, more than anything, e-learning benefits people who are mature, self-motivated, and looking for

classes that teach various aspects of career and professional development…. Also, e-learning will never, and probably should never, be the dominant method of educating students. But it will be a fixed part of the delivery system of higher education. (cited in E-Learning, 2007) Although this may characterize perceptions about higher education in the U.S., in Australia there is a continuing trend among universities to not only move components of courses to electronic delivery, but moreover for electronic/distance learning to be the dominant method of education particularly at a number of specific universities. Statements such as, “e-learning will never, and probably should never be the dominant method of educating students” reveal deep-seated values and beliefs about the role, (in)adequacies and purpose of technology in higher education. Such values and beliefs are fundamentally connected to societal norms regarding social interactions. Distance education implementing forums generally relies upon two types of communication: synchronized and/or asynchronised (Yucel, 2006). Synchronized forums are characterized by real-time/simultaneous communication where dialogue occurs at the same time yet is mediated by technology. In contrast, asynchronous forums utilize a static form of communication, akin to posting a message on a billboard and then awaiting others to view and/or reply. In Australia, the introduction of asynchronous forums has enabled academics to create learning and assessment tasks that transcend traditional correspondence-based tasks characteristic of distance education. This technology has dramatically changed the structure of distance education, from a passive to an interactive learning experience (Anderson & Garrison, 1995) permitting the fostering of critical thinking skills if appropriately structured (Yang, 2005). Despite changes in practice, little research explores the use of asynchronous forums in Australia and virtually none comes from the discipline of sociology. Traditionally, distance education students independently read

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and completed written assignments, submit them for marking and wait for written feedback. The process relies heavily on introverted characteristics and independent work. Consequently, distance education students identify isolation as one of the principle barriers they struggle to overcome (Ragusa, 2006). Jorgensen (2002) articulates that active involvement in collaborative online learning is key to equalizing quality, cautioning “when individuals are simply receiving posted material and sending back individual work, the results are poorer then in traditional classrooms” (p. 9). Indeed, recent research shows variation in preference for online forum interaction is associated with perceived isolation (Ragusa, 2006). In sum, historically shaped structural and subjective factors work to influence the social interactions and communications of asynchronous forum managers and users both overtly, via concrete technical systems, and more subtly, via socialization and normative expectations. Previously, research on asynchronous forums has focused on: netiquette and didactic guidelines (Buelens, Totte, Deketelaere, & Dierickx, 2007), the timing, rate and role of instructors and student perception and participation (Mazzolini & Maddison, 2007; Yang, 2005), discourse and content analysis (Beuchot & Bullen, 2005; Perrotta, 2006; Schrire, 2006; Zhu, 2006), flaming (Lee, 2005), professional development (Barnett, 2006) and meta-analyses of research methodologies to assess discussion forums (Marra, 2006). This research is mainly conducted in North America and Europe. Only van Aalst and Chan (2007) ask how collaborative computer-supported learning can be assessed, although their research focuses on portfolios of graduate and Grade 12 students in Hong Kong and Canada. The present study examines student satisfaction with learning using asynchronous forums.

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Asynchronous Forums as Social Interactive Communication Environments Surveys of large introductory courses (N=100-350 students) demonstrate inconsistency in student endorsement and satisfaction in distance education broadly and asynchronous forums specifically (see Ragusa, 2006). Differences in support services offered by Australian Technical and Further Education (TAFE) and high school environments, compared to universities providing distance education, is one element augmenting first year students’ reservations about virtual forms of learning. To explore student experiences with communication technologies, this research prioritizes senior students’ perceptions assuming that they have over time adapted to tertiary environments. Due to attrition rates and disciplinary specialization, advanced courses contain far fewer students than first year subjects. As such, this research offers an in-depth, case study of final year experiences and does not seek broad extrapolation from the experiences of 22 students in their senior year (“third-year” in Australia) enrolled in social theory courses (in 2006 and 2007). The insights presented are derived from learner/educator communications whereby the only mechanisms for social interaction available were virtual, either via e-mail or through accessing the subjects’ asynchronous forums. Data were gathered via surveys for two consecutive years (with a 30% response rate in 2006 and 88% rate in 2007) and student reflections (100% response rate in both 2006 and 2007) designed to explore communication and isolation issues raised by the introductory student surveys more deeply. Students’ only contact with the lecturer was by written comments returned via the post on essay assignments. Student dissatisfaction with non-interactive correspondence-based learning is expressed in a number of survey comments: such as, (1) “It was great to have to work more closely/ directly with other students. This was such a nice

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change, especially as a distance education student” (Student R, 2007); (2) and “The online format made the subject easier to understand increasing my enthusiasm for the learning environment” (Student Q, 2007); and, (3) “The sub-forum design is excellent and I would like to see this used in other subjects. This also helped to build relationships with classmates - a rare opportunity for distance students” (Student U, 2007). Sixty-three percent (2007) and 100% (2006) of the students agreed they would like to see the same online forum approach used in other subjects; all agreed responses to their subject forum postings helped their learning. In both cohorts, asynchronous forums were used for assessment. Unlike the predominant use of electronic communication for the distribution of information, this subject used asynchronous forums as a virtual classroom enabling students to prepare and conduct class presentations, lead and manage formal discussions with their peers and reflect on how the “tyranny” of distance may be mitigated by technology.

Four Key Lessons to Inform Virtual Interactions To understand the pedagogical implications of electronic communication and interaction, students in both cohorts were asked to reflect on their experience of using technology to coordinate an assessment item with their peers, use asynchronous forums to lead and participate in virtual classroom discussions, and learn social theory. From these reflections, four key lessons about the complexity of virtual social interaction emerge:

1. Electronic Communication Requires Trust - of People and Technology Identified as one of the greatest challenges was developing a working relationship “with an unseen partner and impression management, which was tentative and gradual on both sides” (Student A,

2007). To accomplish this, students “worked hard at communicating to each other, establishing and re-establishing guidelines continuously over the time committed” (Student A, 2007). While for some establishing communication norms and guidelines proved challenging, for others the limitations of technology posed greater complexities and was frequently contrasted with face-to-face interaction. Asynchronous forums possess temporal drawbacks and advantages different from traditional classrooms: A compounding factor was the difficulty for XX in contacting her fellow team member due to circumstances beyond the control of both of us. These included technological difficulties and complications. Although we finally managed to get in touch, it should also be noted, that as distance education students, communication was somewhat slower than what it may have been had we been able to communicate face to face. For example, if one of us had an idea or a problem that needed to be discussed with the other then we would have to e-mail the other person and wait for a response, which usually wouldn’t be until the following day. As such a simple question, or idea, which may usually only take minutes or a couple of hours to work through face to face, took at least a day. (Student O, 2006)

2. Interactions Mediated by Technology are Different in Kind Interacting with people via the Internet remains different from face-to-face interactions for a number of reasons. Communication, cognitive, literary and technical skills are thrust into a public arena for viewing causing some personal discomfort: “This presentation brought my predominantly private studies, interpretations, and academic ability into the public sphere, with the potential of judgement by peers, which I felt to be the most daunting aspect of the exercise” (Student G, 2007). Second, that one may never meet those with whom one is working/ conversing is an unusual reality for some:

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One of the challenges of this project was to work with another person who lives too far away from me to meet face to face…the distance factor was definitely a challenge. This was resolved by my partner and I contacting each other by phone, but this was still a challenge for me. (Student B, 2007) …juggling a full time job and then a second shift as wife and mother, followed by a third shift as student. I was often very tired by the time the books came out; The challenges faced once the presentation was launched were entirely different, now it was a race against the clock to check the forum for a response, formulate a reply and have it posted in order that there was time for other participants to respond and develop a dialogue. I feel that my partner and I were able to overcome the problems of distance and timing to coordinate a comprehensive presentation that facilitated the learning of our fellow students (Student F, 2007). The main challenge is distance, not knowing the audience I am addressing and not being provided with the knowledge gained through non-verbal communication. Not being able to sit down and communicate thoroughly. Found it difficult to communicate effectively over phone and net. Nothing beats real life one on one formal communicating. As responses are not instant you as a student and a worker have to juggle work and study, sometimes they don’t correlate as well as you like and have to wait for an answers or other students have to wait for your reply, which doesn’t always lend itself to effective communicating (Student N, 2006). On the positive side, I met a new person from a totally different world who was similar in age with similar commitments trying to better her life. Having two people work on the same subject is positive as it gives different perspectives and ideas. This assessment was definitely an achievement in that I have never done one with this format (i.e. a forum discussion). Having positive input

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from fellow students and the lecturer was also encouraging. (Student M, 2006). Holding logistical issues constant, interaction and communication norms themselves become subject to review. As one astute student deduced: This project has enabled us to gain an insight into both Symbolic Interaction and electronic forms of communication. The greatest difficulty encountered in this activity has been, ironically, interpretation. Electronic communication is a difficult medium in which to express ideas and concepts. It is made harder when comprehension is not equal amongst participants…Examples are good, if used academically and with a full understanding…Symbolic interaction concerns the negotiation of shared meanings, and, as the discussions emphasised, such a negotiation is often a very precarious business. This is the greatest assistance of these discussions: it has been made patently clear that people use their past to interpret their present and future…Distance and communication issues have made writing and contributing to a joint venture a difficult undertaking. Different approaches to work and time constraints have been equally constricting. However, it has been a positive experience. As a peer of this student identified, often being challenged can be daunting: “I felt with the discussion that everyone knew a lot more than me which challenged me to read more...this exercise emphasized the difference between distance education and face to face – there are definitely negatives!” (Student M, 2006).

3. Electronic Communication Technologies hold Potential for Making Distance Education less Individualistic As noted, isolation, both physical and social, is a prominent barrier to distance education students’ success. This research shows communication

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technologies hold great potential for substantially altering distance education experiences: “It [the asynchronous forum] was a different method of studying from my prior experiences and it was nice to feel like the class was learning together instead of just individually” (Student C, 2007). The creation of virtual classrooms that prioritise meaningful interactions offers an example of how technology can facilitate peer-based collaborative learning. As Student D (2007) notes: I believe that the sheer ability to work with a ‘distant’ partner…has been a success as life tends to get in the way of doing things like this. XX and I had some excellent exchanges and discussions via e-mail, instant messaging and telephone and I believe we communicated and coordinated this assignment as well as we possibly could. I am pleased that when I couldn’t understand something – I was able to consult with XX and with other classmates via the forum. The multiplicity of technologies available, combined with a positive approach, can assuage demands facing distance education students who also are employees, parents, etc: “Interaction with my project partner held some challenges as we quickly found out that we worked different hours which allowed us to rarely work jointly, however, this was overcome by constant daily e-mails and openness” (Student E, 2007). This experience proved to be common as nearly every student mentioned competing life demands and put forth their opinion about the flexibility, or inflexibility, of communication technologies.

4. Electronic Communication Forums hold much Potential for Greater Perceived Relevance and Engagement in Learning Tasks A common question from students is the relevance of subject material to their lives and careers. In this subject, learning and practicing PowerPoint

software offered a tangible skill for use beyond the classroom. Surprisingly, although only a minority of students had past experience and some approached the task with trepidation, not one negative comment resulted. Student E (2007) stated, “It provided me with an opportunity to present an assignment in a unique style, one that I am not familiar with, instead of another long winded essay.” By listing the achievements gained (“allows recounting of subject material; allows structured interaction; maintains a high level of precision and accuracy; always encouraging trying something new and succeeding (hopefully); putting together a comprehensive power point presentation; overcoming communication difficulties”), Student N (2006) shows us how learning outcomes from AOF compare with those of traditional classrooms. As Student S (2006) commented, “I found that the online discussion was really helpful - most times when I was unclear of an aspect of a topic somebody online was able to clarify and give examples - very good way to learn this topic.” Yet, to achieve successful outcomes, electronic interactions require different strategies: Being used to working in isolation requires adjustments when asked to work with another person, and I don’t believe that we allowed ourselves enough time to cover the ‘space and time’ aspect, given that we are both in the workforce. The greatest achievement was that we managed to present one presentation, which I believe appeared interesting, and on time. The exercise showed me that I am capable of undertaking new ventures (learning Powerpoint), and work under pressure, rather better than I had previously thought. (Student H, 2007). Along with learning technical skills, electronic interactions permit the exchange of different types of social engagement. Specifically, written dialogue has potential to be far more detailed and personal than traditional classroom communications: “The discussions gave me a much better understanding of sociological theory and enabled me to apply the theories to everyday life” (Student

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W, 2007). While in some cases this has negative consequences (Ragusa, 2007), it also holds great potential for developing deeper learning and critical thinking:

“facts” demand analysis and critical thought. Student O (2006) notes this learning objective was best achieved through academically guided peer discussions:

I actually got more out of the group forum discussions than I thought I would. I was apprehensive initially about a group assignment and hosting a forum, but found the support of my peers, their willingness to participate and their honesty so rewarding…I felt I received the support I needed from my peers on the forum” (Student I, 2007).

Both of us found the varying opinions of all of the discussion participants somewhat fascinating and even more enlightening. The discussion was extremely beneficial to our learning in that it gave us a clearer perspective of the varying viewpoints of our fellow students. Having this interaction with them allowed both of us to ponder many issues in relation to the theory which they otherwise may not have considered. We gradually gained more confidence to participate in the discussions with our peers…We both found it a little challenging and intimidating when we attempted to respond to the opinions of classmates, without sounding condescending or too light-hearted. As it turned out many of the participants were able to apply life experiences to the responses, and this in turn meant that the discussion was led into other aspects that were surprising.

Learning to work in a discussion group and being totally fascinated how a project can come together via e-communications. The amazement that questions you created can create such thought provoking material from people all over the country – not because they have to but because they were genuinely interested…I feel creating this is a gratifying achievement” (Student L, 2006). All participants of the 2006 cohort strongly agreed they were “encouraged to think critically about the subject.” Still, the key to fostering a nurturing environment lies in the structure and management of technology. Asynchronous forums themselves do not create positive communication environments. Comparing this subject to another, Student J (2006) notes, “I made the point to another student that this is the first “discussion forum” that I have had the opportunity to debate/discuss issues at length.” Student T (2007) states, “The forum leadership and discussion was thoroughly enjoyed as it assisted in learning the various themes involved and compared our learning with others.” According to Student K (2006), “Of particular use is the discussion format. It is only there that we can see whether our statements have been clear, or if we have a correct understanding of the topic.” Structuring asynchronous forums as “safe” environments to explore the complexity and multiplicity of ideas is particularly suitable for social sciences and areas where ethics and

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Continuing the practice of offering situated “knowledges” (Harding, 1992), whereby researchers let “the researched” speak on their behalf, this final student quote echoes well the main points: Some students made insightful and fascinating comments that had not been raised in any book I had read. It was good to learn Powerpoint, I found that once I started putting in pictures and messed about with settings, it was hard to stop… Another thing that really impressed me was how well the class was able to discuss the subject with maturity and manners. Distance education was possibly of great assistance as the passionate few did not dominate a verbal discussion and there was no authoritative presence ‘correcting’students with different opinions. Most students submitted different, sometimes very different opinions on the forums… Receiving a forum posting was rather like getting a personal e-mail, and gave me a rather

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revelatory sense of fellowship or community with my classmates which I have not otherwise experienced in distance education. Distance education is quite an isolated experience with most interaction of ideas occurring between oneself and the reading materials rather than with other people.I found that some who may have known the subject the best were not the most effective communicators. The two skills (understanding the subject and being able to communicate ideas about the subject) were neither inclusive nor exclusive to each other, just totally separate skills. I concluded from this that it is more important to be able to communicate clearly a little of what you have learned, than to learn much and not to be able to communicate any of it. (Student P, 2006)

Comparative Evaluation of Learning Outcomes Overall, experiences of the two cohorts show that asynchronous forums are valuable learning tools. Empirically, on a scale of 1 (very strongly disagree) to 7 (very strongly agree), subject evaluations confirm this finding. Evaluations for the 2007 cohort are presented in the charts in Figure 1 on the left and exist in contrast with the 2006 cohort evaluations for the same or similar items depicted in the charts on the right hand side. As the charts demonstrate, all students completing the evaluations reported they agreed, strongly agreed or very strongly agreed that the subject, learning materials and assessment tasks utilizing asynchronous forums were beneficial to their learning. These evaluations demonstrate widespread support of asynchronous forums in these two cohorts where they were used for both supporting and assessment tasks. However, as detailed in the next section, the qualitative nature of this research warrants caution in generalizing the findings. Still, the general lessons learned are noteworthy and may serve as guidelines for future users and

developers of asynchronous forums for distance education students.

FUTURE TRENDS In discussing what it would take to have an education revolution in the U.S., Robert Zemsky, a member of the U.S. Department of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, asks: “How many distance-education courses do exactly online what we do on the classroom? We did not want it to be that way. E-learning was supposed to be the different space, not the replicated space” (cited in E-Learning, 2007). Although the research results presented in this chapter cannot endeavor to explain Australia’s progress towards an education revolution, it does contribute evidence towards viewing virtual learning as indeed a “different space.” However, what appears to remain the same at this point in time are some educational institutions’ stereotypes and norms about what constitutes quality education. In Australia, as elsewhere, social change is occurring in relation to the nature and praxis of education. Future research should focus on the parameters of this social change, noting resistance as well as adoption of educational technologies while paying close attention to how social expectations impact interactions. Despite distance education students’ embracement of social interaction technologies, such as asynchronous forums, and request for them to be more widely adopted as noted in this research, uptake by individual academics has been exceedingly low in parts of Australia over the past several years due to perceptions of heightened workload. In response to changing student needs in a technologically-driven society, some Australian universities have institutionalised interactive technology by requiring all subjects to operate using a Sakai platform. The imperative for all teachers and learners to socially interact using communication technologies demonstrates a distinct change

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Figure 1. Evaluation items comparable across two cohorts

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from correspondence-driven learning and supports Lynch’s (2002) identification of communication cues and interaction opportunities as key criteria differentiating traditional classrooms from online learning environments. Large-scale change points to the need for new methods of planning, evaluating and altering how distance education delivery is conducted and affected in this new social structure and raises many questions including: What new skills are required by learners, administrators and teachers? How does electronic learning differ from face-to-face? What equity and social justice issues accompany different communicative abilities and technical access? These and other questions highlight ethical considerations about ownership of ideas, privacy, identity and the infiltration of personal lives into public spaces which all require further exploration.

CONCLUSION Electronic communication forums, specifically asynchronous forums, are arguably better planned and executed when communication norms and expectations are made explicit. This research has provided firsthand accounts of asynchronous forum users from two senior courses an Australian university. Conceptualised within a sociological framework prioritising users’ perceptions and experiences with asynchronous forums as a vehicle for peer learning and social interaction, the findings support the claim that asynchronous electronic forums can be used effectively in among upper-level distance education courses. By focusing less on the technical structure of electronic communication forums in favour of analysing users’ experiences with asynchronous forums as social interaction tools, with potential to bridge demographic and socio-cultural divides (multigenerational, multinational, multicultural, geospatially disparate, etc.), this chapter identified and evidenced four key lessons for future users, planners, and evaluators. These lessons reveal

asynchronous forums hold potential for generating positive learning experiences, particularly among small cohorts of senior students. Incorporating well-structured asynchronous forum assessment tasks into distance education develops life skills: such as, greater technological competence, leadership and critical thinking, making abstract theories and subject information relevant by encouraging application and connection to everyday life, and working to assuage the social isolation some students experience by fostering group solidarity, integration, and dialogue with peers.

REFERENCES Anderson, T., & Garrison, D. R. (1995). Critical thinking distance education: Developing critical communities in audio teleconferencing context. Higher Education, 29(2), 183–199. doi:10.1007/ BF01383838 Aronson, J. D. (2001). The communications and Internet revolution. In J. Davis & S. Smith (Eds.), The globalization of world politics (pp. 540-558). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Barnett, M. (2006). Using a Web-based professional development system to support preservice teachers in examining authentic classroom practice. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 14(4), 701–729. Beuchot, A., & Bullen, M. (2005). Interaction and interpersonality in online discussion forums. Distance Education, 26(1), 67–87. doi:10.1080/01587910500081285 Buelens, H., Totte, N., Deketelaere, A., & Dierickx, K. (2007). Electronic discussion forums and medical ethics education: The impact of dialectic guidelines and netiquette. Medical Education, 41(7), 711–717. doi:10.1111/j.13652923.2007.02793.x

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DeCastro, L. N., Munoz, Y. J., De Freitas, L. R., & El-Hani, C. N. (2008). A virtual laboratory on natural computing: A learning experiment. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 6(2), 55–73. E-learning. Successes and failures. (2007, January). The Chronicle of Higher Education, 53(18). Retrieved October 6, 2008, from http://chronicle. com/weekly/v53/i18/18b02001.htm Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behaviour. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Harding, S. (1992). Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women’s lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Holmes, D., Hughes, K., & Julian, R. (2007). Australian sociology: A changing society. Frenchs Forest, NSW, Australia: Pearson Education Australia. Jorgensen, D. (2002). The challenges and benefits of asynchronous learning networks. In H. Iver (Ed.), Distance learning: Information access and services for virtual users (pp. 3-17). New York: Haworth Information Press. Lee, H. (2005). Behavioral strategies for dealing with flaming in an online forum. The Sociological Quarterly, 46(2), 385–403. doi:10.1111/j.15338525.2005.00017.x Lynch, M. (2002). The online educator: A guide creating to virtual classroom. London: Routledge Falmer. Marra, R. (2006). A review of research methods for assessing content of computer-mediated discussion forums. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 17(3), 243–267. Mazzolini, M., & Maddison, S. (2007). When to jump in: The role of the instructor in online discussion forums. Computers & Education, 49(2), 193–213. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2005.06.011

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Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OEC). (1996). The knowledge-based economy. Paris, France: OECD. Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2001). Lessons from the cyberspace classroom: The realities of online teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Perrotta, C. (2006). Learning to be a psychologist: The construction of identity in an online forum. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 22(6), 456–466. doi:10.1111/j.13652729.2006.00193.x Ragusa, A. T. (2006). Student expectations of distance education: A qualitative analysis exploring the culture, virtual geography and sociology of higher education at an Australian university. In K. Purnell, J. Lidstone, & S. Hodgson (Eds.), Changes in geographical education: Past, present and future (pp. 353-357). Brisbane, QLD: Queensland University of Technology. Ragusa, A. T. (2007). The impact of socio-cultural factors in multi-cultural virtual communication environments. In K. St-Amant (Ed.), Linguistic and cultural online communication issues in the global age (pp. 306-327). Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing. Schrire, S. (2006). Knowledge building in asynchronous discussion groups: Going beyond quantitative analysis. Computers & Education, 46(1), 49–70. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2005.04.006 Semple, A. (2000). Learning series and the influence on the development and use of educational technologies. Australian Science Teachers Journal, 46(3), 21–28. van Aalst, J., & Chan, C. K. K. (2007). Studentdirected assessment of knowledge building using electronic portfolios. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 16(2), 175–220.

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Yang, Y.-T. C. (2005). Using Socratic method to promote critical thinking skills through asynchronous discussion forums in distance learning environments. American Journal of Distance Education, 19(3), 163–181. doi:10.1207/s15389286ajde1903_4 Yucel, S. A. (2006). E-learning approach in teacher training. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 7(4). Zhu, E. (2006). Interaction and cognitive engagement: An analysis of four asynchronous online discussions. Instructional Science, 34(6), 451–480. doi:10.1007/s11251-006-0004-0

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Asynchronous Forums: An Internet-based electronic communication environment, which permits users to post messages for some or all of the members to view. Messages remain posted until a forum moderator removes them. Asynchronous refers to the static nature of the environment. Postings are done one at a time, anonymously or not, and offer a written electronic record of the communications conducted. Knowledge-Based Economy: A phrase used to describe economies in which information and

knowledge hold greater contributing power to the economic welfare of nations than in industrial societies. Network Society: A term used to characterize the changes in a society brought about by the Internet communication technologies and in which individuals and groups organised around digital information networks. Peer-Based Collaborative Learning: A teaching and learning strategy which places emphasis on group work and interactions among students in contrast to traditional teacher-centered learning. Social Interaction: The exchange of verbal and nonverbal communication in a society. Within the social sciences Symbolic Interactionism, stemming largely from the works of George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman, is a theoretical tradition that studies the relationship between “self” and society. Situated Knowledges: A view of social reality put forth by the feminist social philosopher, Sandra Harding, which argues that our social position in the world affects, and creates, the types of “knowledges” and worldviews we experience. In other words, what we think and believe is “socially situated” and socially constructed. Sub-Forum: An online communication environment that exists as a subset to a larger electronic forum.

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Chapter 18

Educational Podcasting

A Taxonomy of Pedagogical Applications Catherine McLoughlin Australian Catholic University, Australia Mark J. W. Lee Charles Sturt University, Australia

ABSTRACT The proliferation of Web 2.0 technologies generates a new wave of online behavior, distributed collaboration, and social interaction. They are already having a transformative effect on education, triggering changes in how teachers and students communicate and learn. The chapter illustrates the new forms of learning, communication, and participation enabled by podcasting and the pedagogical innovations that are possible with this audio-based Web 2.0 technology. Beyond having access to a wider range of content, learners can engage in creative authorship by producing and manipulating digital audio content and making it available for consumption and critique by classmates, teachers, and a wider audience on the Web. A range of podcasting activities are described in contemporary learning environments. The emphasis is on tertiary education settings where students are engaged in content creation, self-directed learning, and metacognitive skill development. These examples are discussed in terms of how they are indicative of the pedagogical choices now available to teachers and learners.

INTRODUCTION Podcasting technology allows audio content from one or more user selected feeds (channels) to be automatically downloaded to one’s computer as it becomes available, and later transferred to a portable player for consumption at a convenient time and place. It has enjoyed phenomenal growth DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch018

in mainstream society, alongside other Web 2.0 technologies that enable Internet users to author and distribute rich media content. Jon Udell (as cited in Campbell, 2005) attributes this growth to five main factors: 1. 2. 3.

The pervasiveness of the Internet; The rapid growth of broadband; The widespread availability of the multimedia personal computer;

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4.

5.

The blurring of the distinction between streaming and downloading media content; and The rapid uptake of portable MP3-capable devices.

Adam Curry (2004), of MTV fame, first coined the term “podcast,” which is a portmanteau word that combines the words ‘iPod’ (the name of Apple Computer’s popular music player) and “broadcast.” Podcasting has also been likened to a TiVo or similar device that uses a process of time shifting to allow for flexible viewing at a time convenient to the user. Once downloaded, audio podcasts can be transferred to a variety of portable devices, including but not limited to dedicated music players such as Apple’s iPod, handheld computers, as well as many modern mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). Podcasting has the potential to support learning in a range of settings and across the disciplines. This chapter outlines innovative pedagogical uses and applications of podcasting across a range of settings, including student-generated audio segments for distribution to and critique by peers. Students at colleges and universities worldwide are now engaged in creative authorship by being able to produce and manipulate audio files and video clips, tag them with chosen keywords, and make this content available to their friends and peers worldwide through media sharing websites and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. Such applications are reflective of the new emphasis on user-generated content, creativity, and community-based knowledge building that are characteristic of Web 2.0.

it becomes available, for transfer to or synchronization with a portable device when the user is next able to physically access his/her computer. The editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary declared “podcasting” the “Word of the Year” for 2005; they defined the term as “a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player” (Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 1). This is but one testament to the burgeoning growth of the technology and its au courant status in mainstream society. In fact, the word “podcast” has spawned a number of associated words, each with a particular meaning as Table 1 displays. The popularity of podcasting has resulted in a situation whereby many authors, educators, and educational technologists tend to use the term very loosely to refer to any digital audio content that is broadcast over the Internet (for which the correct term is “audiocast,” as seen in Table 1). One definition that remains true and accurate to the use of the word by its originator (Curry, 2004), is that proposed by Dixon and Greeson (2006), who highlight three key characteristics of podcasting: 1.

2.

3.

BACKGROUND Podcasting allows users to receive new audio material on their desktop computers automatically by subscription. It offers a low-cost, low-barrier solution for the timely delivery of fresh content as

It uses file-based downloads – As opposed to streaming, which by definition means playing the media as it downloads, podcast files are downloaded in their entirely before they are consumed; It is subscription-based – The user preselects one or more feeds or channels of his/ her choice and podcasts are automatically “pushed” to his/her computer on a regular schedule; The content is consumed on portable devices, such as dedicated MP3 players (including but not limited to iPods), mobile phones, as well as personal digital assistants (PDAs) that have MP3 playback capabilities. However, according to a survey by Bridge Data (n.d., cited in Dixon & Greeson, 2006) more than

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80% of podcast downloads never make it to a portable player or another device – they are consumed on the PC, or perhaps never listened to. The subscription-based download of podcast media files is made possible by Really Simple

Syndication (RSS Advisory Board, 2005), a technology originally designed to facilitate the syndication of text summaries of additions to frequently updated websites, such as news sites. RSS 2.0 feeds permit the inclusion of enclosures, which in the case of podcasts are simply references to MP3 audio files. A podcast-aware aggregator or

Table 1. Some podcasting-related terms Term

Likely origin / source

Explanation

Podcast

Curry (2004)

A portmanteau that combines the words “iPod” (the name of Apple Computer’s popular music player) and “broadcast.” Podcasts are typically audio files in MPEG Layer 3 (MP3) format.

Audiocast

Unknown

Any digital audio content that is broadcast over the Internet. The term serves as somewhat of an umbrella term for audio content that is distributed through various mechanisms, including podcasting, streaming, etc.

Enhanced podcast

Apple Computer (2005)

An (audio) podcast synchronized with static images such as artwork, photos, or slides. (Not to be confused with a vodcast, which contains video content.) Apple’s proprietary MP4a format is typically used, which also allows the inclusion of chapter marks (used to divide a lengthy podcast into sections) and clickable hyperlinks.

Vodcast

van der Ziel (2005)

The publishing/syndication of video files instead of audio files using the same technology as podcasting. Sometimes also referred to as a “vidcast.”

Screencast

Udell (2004)

A type of vodcast that contains a (video) recording of the activity on a computer screen, possibly with an audio track consisting of sound output from the computer whose screen is being recorded, or from an external source, such as voice narration or music.

Narrowcast

Unknown

Refers to audio or video programs (such as many podcasts or vodcasts) that target a specific audience demographic, as opposed to a broadcast, which is pitched at a mass audience.

Skypecast

Skype Limited (2007)

A conversation conducted over the free Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service Skype that has been recorded and made available as a podcast.

Mobcast

Carvin (2005)

A podcast created using a mobile phone (smartphone). The term combines the concept of mobile podcasting with “Smart Mobs” (Rheingold, 2002), which is used to describe self-structuring social organization and collective action enabled by the use of modern ICTs.

Palmcast

Unknown

A podcast that is created and/or consumed using a Palm Pilot or similar Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).

Punchcast

Unknown

A term used to describe the process of downloading a podcast or vodcast from a media server on the Internet, directly onto an Internet-connected mobile device (such as a PDA or smartphone), without the use of a desktop or laptop computer. Punchcasts can be either live or recorded for on-demand use following the live broadcast.

Phonecast

PhoneCasting LLC (2007)

A form of punchcast that specifically involves Internet transmission of audio or video content directly to a mobile phone.

Zencast

Creative Technology (2007)

A proprietary term that refers to a vodcast consumed using Creative’s Zen digital media device.

Autocast

Mike (2005)

An automatically generated audio podcast, created by processing textual information such as blog entries using a combination of software including XML parsers, text-to-speech software, and audio conversion utilities.

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“podcatcher” application on the user’s desktop is configured with the URL of the feed(s) to monitor for newly added MP3 enclosures.

PODCASTING AS PART OF THE WEB 2.0 MOVEMENT “Web 2.0” refers to a new generation or improved form of the World Wide Web that emphasizes collaboration, participation, and sharing of knowledge and content among users. While Web 2.0 does not entail radical changes in the technical specifications of the web, most proponents of the concept describe it in terms of new possibilities and applications. O’Reilly (O’Reilly 2005a, 2005b) believes that these new applications have emerged due to a changing socio-cultural context, giving rise to the perception of revolutionary new uses for the same technologies. Characteristic of Web 2.0 are socially-based tools and systems referred to collectively as social software, which includes but is not limited to weblogs (blogs), wikis, RSS, peer-to-peer (P2P) media sharing applications, social bookmarking utilities, and of course, podcasting. These new tools make possible a range of online behaviors, distributed collaboration, and social interaction, and are already having a transformative effect on society, triggering changes in how people communicate and learn (McLoughlin & Lee, 2008). Advocates of Web 2.0 assert that the terms “co-creation” and “users add value” encapsulate the practices of those who participate in and use social software, showing that that is not just an assembly of tools, but a set of concepts, practices, and attitudes that define its scope. Users can participate and create content, and in doing so become “prosumers” (both consumers and producers); this openness is a characteristic hallmark of Web 2.0, in which users mix, amend, and recombine content, collaboratively and open to a global audience, inviting revision and commentary. The added dimension of scale means

that the more people using the tools, the greater the network effect. The combined efforts and collective intelligence of hundreds of individuals can result in the co-production of resources such as Wikipedia entries, illustrating the power of the “wisdom of crowds” (Surowiecki, 2004). The “wisdom of crowds” concept acknowledges that when working cooperatively and sharing ideas, communities can be significantly more productive than individuals working in isolation. It is this “architecture of participation” (Barsky & Purdon, 2006, p. 65) that ensures that Web 2.0 is continually responsive to users. These concepts are central to the philosophy and ethos of the Web 2.0 movement, and inspire and underpin the various exemplars of educational podcasting described later in this chapter.

EDUCATIONAL USES OF PODCASTING: BEYOND CONTENT DELIVERY Many existing educational uses of podcasting focus on employing the technology to deliver instructional content such as lectures, which can lead to questions of pedagogical soundness and can also have adverse effects on class attendance. Used appropriately, however, podcasting can enhance classroom learning by engaging students in the material and adding yet another modality of learning (Carson, 2006). Recent innovative developments and pedagogic applications of podcasting are promising examples of how the technology is moving away from didactic modes of teaching and transmission of content to enable greater student agency in the learning process (McLoughlin, Lee, & Chan, 2007). Schlosser (2006) reminds us that “[t]he use of audio in education is not new, but is experiencing a renaissance fuelled by the ubiquity of portable audio players, broadband Internet, and software tools that allow the relatively easy creation and distribution of audio files” (p. 1). The authors of the present

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chapter believe the true potential of podcasting lies in its community-building value, and its use as a vehicle for disseminating learner-generated content. This view is echoed by Atkinson (2006), who agrees that podcasting has limited impact as a mere method of distribution. According to him, “The emerging developmental and research direction seems … to be learning through creating podcasts and similar, in contrast to learning from podcasts” (p. 21, emphasis in original). There is an increased recognition that learnergenerated content distributed via podcasting technology is a form of knowledge creation, and associated with the development of peer-to peer collaboration and learning (Lee & Chan, 2006). This is not tantamount to declaring that digital audio will replace listening to live lectures or reading; instead, podcasting can augment these forms of activity, while increasing the portability and accessibility of learning resources for learning “on the go,” or mobile listening (Bull, 2005). The implementation of innovative applications of podcasting can be demonstrated by a number of exemplary practices by tertiary teachers at various institutions worldwide, as shown in Table 2. Instead of using the affordances of this technology merely to deliver content to students, examples are provided where learners have both control and agency in creating and distributing audio learning materials. Creating a productive and satisfying learning experience involves actively engaging students and having them take responsibility for their own learning (Pintrich, Wolters, & Baxter, 2002); pedagogical applications that enable active learning through audio learning are discussed, in particular the use of podcasting to support learnergenerated content in ways that foster self-directed learning. The aforementioned philosophy and ethos of Web 2.0 are also clearly evidenced in the examples presented.

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EDUCATIONAL PODCASTING MODELS Podcasting to Support LearnerGenerated Content Chan and Lee’s (2005; Lee, Chan, & McLoughlin, 2006) podcasting approach is centered around 3 to 5 minute talkback radio-style “shows,” in which two or more students participate in informal discussions on pertinent issues related to the relevant unit and its content. The podcast production process is driven entirely by a group of volunteer students, with minimal intervention from their lecturer. Following on from this, Lee, McLoughlin, and Chan (2008) sought to investigate the knowledge building and construction processes that these student-producers engaged in as they worked individually as well as collaboratively as a team, as well as the levels of reflection and metacognition that occurred as a result of their participation in the creation of podcasts. The views and experiences of the student-listeners, and the impact of the podcasts on these students, form the topic of a number of other publications (for example, see McLoughlin, Lee, & Chan, 2007; Lee & Chan 2007a, 2007b).

Podcasting to Foster Knowledge Creation In today’s knowledge society (Bereiter, 2002) there is a premium on the processes of creation, innovation, and discovery, as these are the means by which social and cultural capital are increased. The concept of knowledge has attained increasingly complex meanings, combining expertise, concepts, and skilled performance. This complexity is illustrated through the proliferation of concepts distinguishing between knowledge types, for example, situated and abstract forms of knowledge, and semantic, logical, empirical, systemic, procedural metacognitive, and conditional knowledge. The multiplicities of knowledge are also reflected in an ever-broadening view of

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Table 2. Examples of podcasting in tertiary teaching and learning Reference/ author

Institution/ Country

Description of technology use

Key pedagogical features

Read (2005)

Drexel University, USA

Drexel distributed iPod Photo players to their Education freshmen in September 2005. Read reported there were plans for a variety of learner-centered applications, including but not limited to having students record study-group sessions and interviews, as well as having them maintain audio blogs to connect with administrators and peers during the work experience semester.

Peer-to-peer learning; distributed intelligence approach

Lee, Chan, and McLoughlin (2006)

Charles Sturt University, Australia

Second year undergraduate students take charge of producing talkback radio-style podcasts to assist first year students undertaking a unit of study that the former group previously completed.

Learner-centered instruction; student-generated content

Evans (2006)

Swathmore College, USA

Students studying a literature course read short passages aloud and record them as podcasts, as well as creating separate podcasts discussing the passage they chose and its relationship to other material.

Development of digital and social competencies

Miller (2006, 2007)

University of Connecticut, USA

Three types of podcasts are used to support a General Psychology Blending of formal and course: • iCube podcasts – Informal discussions with students informal learning; mobile, following each week’s lectures; • Precasts – Short enhanced ubiquitous learning podcasts previewing material prior to each lecture; • Postcasts – Short post-lecture podcasts containing re-explanations of selected concepts.

Frydenberg (2006)

Bentley lege USA

Col-

Students in an introductory information technology class work in pairs or groups to produce vodcasts to teach topics from the course schedule to their peers.

Peer teaching; reciprocal learning

Edirisingha, Salmon, and Fothergill (2006)

University of Leicester UK

Students make use of “profcasts,” i.e. material designed to support learning distinct from that which is facilitated through structured on-campus or e-learning processes alone. E.g., weekly profcasts to supplement online teaching through updated information and guidance.

Extended learning, enrichment and extension activities; personalization of learning content

Kukulska-Hulme (2005)

Open University, UK

Students studying German and Spanish courses in distance mode use digital voice recorders and mini-camcorders to record interviews with other students and with native speakers, as well as to create audio-visual tours for sharing with their peers.

Peer-to-peer learning; learner-generated content

McCarty (2005; 2006); Sener (2007a)

Osaka Jogakuin College, Japan

Students are interviewed by their professor, perform roles, and/ or present their own creations, in contribution to the professor’s bilingual podcast feed and blog targeted to those studying Japanese or English as a foreign language.

Cross-cultural collaborative work using student-generated content

Chan, Frydenberg, and Lee (2007)

Bentley College, USA and Charles Sturt University, Australia

Undergraduate students studying first year (freshman) level introductory information technology subjects at Charles Sturt University and Bentley College work in teams consisting of a mixture of students from each institution. Each team is given the task of collaboratively producing a short podcast, to be recorded using the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) tool Skype, i.e., a “Skypecast” (Skype Limited, 2007), in which members discuss issues of relevance to topics that are common to the curricula at both institutions.

Cross-cultural, Internet-mediated collaborative learning and exchange

Australian Catholic University, Australia

McLoughlin, Brady, Lee, & Russell (2007)

Pre-service teachers studying secondary teaching courses use podcasting and blogs to engage in peer mentoring with their classmates while undertaking their teaching practicum, during which they are assigned to geographically dispersed schools. They share experiences, stories and anecdotes, as well as offering support, feedback and encouragement to one another via podcasting.

Peer mentoring and personalization of learning

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attributes and skills required of graduates, ranging from generic skills to domain knowledge coupled with a demand for hard-core entrepreneurship and innovation (McLoughlin & Luca, 2006). In planning for the educational application of technology, besides technical and social infrastructure, educators and designers need to consider the epistemological foundations of learning. Extant theories and models help to explain the role of different agents (for example, individuals, communities, networks) in knowledge creation, the mechanisms of knowledge advancement (for instance, how new ideas are generated and advanced), and processes of inquiry (such as the role of questions and activities to promote learning). The metaphor of learning as knowledge creation appears to help to overcome the separation of the cognitive (the acquisition metaphor) and the situative (the participation metaphor) perspectives (Sfard, 1998). Learning as knowledge creation means that knowledge is valued, sought, and emphasized, as in the acquisition and participation metaphor, but the processes involved are different: Learners are required to engage in social interaction, knowledge building dialogue with a focus on developing and creating knowledge. For example, Lee, Chan, and McLoughlin (2006) worked with second year undergraduate students and guided them to take charge of producing talkback radio-style podcasts to assist first year students undertaking a unit of study that the former group previously completed. The entire podcast production process, from inception and scriptwriting to the final recording, was driven by the student-producers, with minimal instructor intervention. Learners were not there to simply participate in activity and acquire skills, but also to produce shared outcomes and advance the intellectual capital of the group, by generating content to be shared with a group of peers.

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Podcasting to Support Metacognitive Skill Development To support his course in General Psychology at the University of Connecticut, Miller (2006, 2007; Sener, 2007b) hosts weekly informal discussions with students following each week’s lectures. During these discussions, students are able to seek clarification on the course material and talk about it in greater depth, as well as to discuss issues not covered during the lecture. The discussions are recorded and made available to other members of the class as a series of podcasts. In this way, the podcasts are about course content (metacognitive) rather than simply being recordings of the course content itself (transmission of content). The process of creating and participating in the discussions is an instance of learner-generated content creation. All students in the cohort are welcome to submit questions in advance of the discussion via email; these answers, as well as those asked by students who attend in person, are answered during the discussion, and the dialogue can be captured, used, archived, and re-used, and become part of the overall resource pool.

Podcasting for SelfRegulated Learning At Bentley College, USA, Information Technology (IT) students enrolled in Mark Frydenberg’s (2006) IT Intensive course purchase Pocket PCs instead of textbooks, which they use to explore technology concepts in a hands-on, learner-centered approach. Participants form pairs or groups and work together to plan and produce vodcasts. Each group produces a vodcast on one of the topics in the course schedule for sharing with the rest of the class. This may be viewed as a novel form of peer and reciprocal teaching, and serves a dual purpose: In the process, students not only display their understanding of the course topics through the production of content for their peers, but also develop and exercise IT skills that are directly linked to the objectives of the course.

Educational Podcasting

Podcasting and Personalization of the Learning Experience Podcasting can be used to personalize the learning experience to suit the needs, characteristics, and preferences of the individual learner. This necessitates acknowledgement that learning is multi-episodic and that informal as well as formal events contribute to the learners’ repertoire of skills. To achieve personalized learning, a range of tools can be used to support learner interaction in multiple contexts. In a study conducted by McLoughlin, Brady, Lee, and Russell (2007) pre-service teachers studying secondary teaching courses used podcasting and blogs to engage in peer mentoring with their classmates while undertaking their teaching practicum, during which they were assigned to geographically dispersed schools. They shared experiences, stories and anecdotes as well as offering support, feedback, and encouragement to one another via podcasting. Another example of the use of podcasting to support personalized learning is the research of Edirisingha, Salmon, and Fothergill (2006). Students are given aces to “profcasts,” i.e. material designed to support learning distinct from that which is facilitated through structured on-campus or e-learning processes alone. This material is based on student interests and learning needs and therefore enriches the learning experience while catering for diversity while weekly profcasts supplement teaching through updated information and guidance.

PODCASTING, WEB 2.0, AND EDUCATIONAL INNOVATION So, what do podcasting and Web 2.0 mean for education? The advent of this new wave of tools and technologies provokes us to consider the implications for and potential applications to formal spaces of learning in colleges and universities (Berg, Berquam, & Christoph 2007).

Social software applications can also be viewed as pedagogical tools that stem from their affordances of information discovery and sharing. Anderson (2004) observes that “The greatest affordance of the web for educational use is the profound and multifaceted increase in communication and interaction capability” (p. 42), which is even more evident in Web 2.0 when compared to the set of linked information sources that characterized “Web 1.0.” Drawing on extant Web 2.0 research and practice, some examples of the pedagogical applications of social software tools in general that apply to educational podcasting are discussed below.

Connectivity and Social Rapport Social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Ning, and Friendster attract and support networks of people and facilitate connections between them. They are representative of what Gee (2004) calls affinity spaces, in which people acquire both social and communicative skills, and at the same time become engaged in the architecture of participation of Web 2.0. In these spaces, users engage in informal learning, and creative, expressive forms of behavior and identity seeking, while developing a range of digital literacies.

Collaborative Information Discovery and Sharing Data sharing is enabled through a range of software applications, and experts and novices alike can make their work available to the rest of the virtual world, for example through podcasts, blogs, and wikis. Social bookmarking tools such as Del.icio. us, Furl, and Digg allow people to build up collections of web resources or bookmarks, classify and organize them through the use of metadata tags, and share both the bookmarks and tags with others. In this way, users with similar interests can learn from one another through subscribing to the bookmarks and tags of others, and actively

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contribute to the ongoing growth and evolution of web-based information and knowledge.

Content Creation Web 2.0 emphasizes the pre-eminence of content creation over content consumption. Anyone can create, assemble, organize, and share content to meet their own needs and those of others. Open source and open content (cf. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008; MERLOT, 2008) initiatives, as well as copyright licensing models such as Creative Commons (2008), are helping fuel the growth of user-generated content.

Knowledge/Information Aggregation and Content Modification The large uptake of RSS, as well as related technologies such as podcasting and vodcasting, is indicative of a move to collecting material from many sources and using it for personal needs. Hilton (2006) describes these technologies as part of a move from “producer push” to “demand pull,” whereby students are now accustomed to obtaining and consuming content “on demand.” There is also a trend towards the rise of “microcontent” (Lindner, 2005, 2006; Haque, 2005), or digital content in small fragments that are loosely connected, and which can be re-mixed and reformulated by individuals to produce new patterns, images, and interpretations (see also Mejias, 2005; Weinberger, 2002). (This is representative of the concept of a “mash-up.”)

FUTURE TRENDS The developments and pedagogic applications of podcasting now emerging worldwide are promising examples of how the technology is moving away from didactic modes of teaching and transmission of content to enable greater learner agency in the teaching-learning process, increased

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recognition that learner-generated content is a form of knowledge creation, and the development of peer-to peer forms of collaboration and learning. This is not tantamount to declaring that digital audio will replace listening to live lectures or reading from texts, but podcasting can augment these forms of activity, while increasing the portability and accessibility of learning resources for demand-driven learning. Judging by current approaches and application, pedagogies for podcasting within Web 2.0 are learner centered and socially rich, and students operate increasingly in an egalitarian electronic space. While teachers might act as facilitators and provide support, they are not necessarily primarily responsible for the creation of the content. In many of the educational scenarios depicted in Table 2, learners interact with and create podcast resources, individually as well as in collaboration with peers and experts. In addition, there is much evidence of podcasting and other Web 2.0 tools being used to facilitate greater levels of learner choice and autonomy, especially in terms of the ways in which content is distributed and consumed. The authors believe that a key future trend will involve the integration and use of podcasts to support personalized learning not as isolated resources or artifacts, but as part of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) (Downes, 2005; Attwell, 2006, 2007), which affirm the role of the individual in organizing, customizing, and shaping his/her own learning environment. A PLE may be broadly defined as a learning environment in which learners manage their own learning using various software and services. In contrast to an institutionally controlled Learning Management System (LMS), a PLE provides contextually appropriate toolsets by enabling individuals to adjust and select options based on their needs and circumstance, resulting in (ideally) a model where learner needs, not technologies, drive the learning process. This approach to learning means that learning content is created and distributed in a very different manner to the traditional approach:

Educational Podcasting

Rather than being composed, organized, and packaged, content is syndicated. From there, it is re-mixed and re-purposed (“mashed up”) with the student’s own individual application in mind, the finished product being fed forward to become the raw material other students’ reading and use. In a PLE, a student is able to customize, control, and shape his/her own “Personal Learning Landscape” (Tosh & Werdmuller, 2004; Werdmuller & Tosh, 2005), integrating multiple feeds and sources to allow for the aggregation of a range of multimedia content not limited to podcasts. For example, the audio material may be intermingled with text from blog entries, images, videos (vodcasts), animations, SlideShare presentations, and so on. This illustrates the concept of “Small technologies loosely joined” described by Lamb, Levine, & Norman (2004; see also MacLearning.org, 2007), where RSS and other syndication technologies that form the basis of podcasting are the conduit joining the various technology pieces in a Web 2.0-based architecture. It is also reflective of a new learning paradigm called micro-learning, which involves learning through relatively small learning units and short-term learning activities. Micro-learning processes often derive from interaction with “micro-content” or “micro-media,” which “can be consumed in unbundled microchunks … and aggregated and reconstructed in hyper-efficient ways.” (Haque 2005, slide 33). This atomization of learning beyond the learning object (Menell, 2005) results in personalized smaller units of information that can be learned and recombined, enabling greater relevance for learners as well as allowing for just-in-time learning. Taking a broader view, these developments highlight the way in which informal and incidental learning and knowledge acquisition are increasingly occurring through small chunks of learning content and the use of flexible technologies that can enable learners to access the content, as well as creating new content, easily, anywhere, on demand, and on the move.

CONCLUSION The conceptual tenets of Web 2.0 envision the specifics of the next generation of learners as selfmotivated and capable of using the new tools, and that learning environments can be controlled by students is at once both empowering and fraught with tensions and risk. The indications are that new forms of innovative pedagogy are emerging, with the powerful multimedia aspects of the web enabling access to information on a global scale, coupled with socially rich, participatory, and interconnected experiences that allow students to create and contribute ideas. In this constantly morphing educational landscape, there still remains a need for gatekeepers, for structured and scaffolded learning resources, and for expert feedback. How educational podcasting applications will continue to evolve, as well as how teachers might leverage the medium of digital audio, depends on student needs, availability of technological infrastructure, and teacher confidence with new media. Podcasting, as part of the raft of Web 2.0 technologies, may be used creatively to bring about a substantive change in teaching and learning, to support genuine learner-generated content and knowledge creation as the examples in Table 2 demonstrate, or it can simply be used to reinforce existing didactic pedagogies and content delivery. To conclude, there are several implications for educators interested in using podcasting to support and/or enhance learning. While many reports and articles on podcasting are informational and technical in nature, more studies are emerging that provide evidence of the technology’s pedagogical value. Key findings indicate that student flexibility and access to educational resources are major strengths of audio-based learning (Schlosser, 2006). Emerging research is giving increased attention to the applications of podcasting in improving the quality of teaching, to engage students and to provide for diverse learner needs. Practitioners need to consider the educational goals and learning outcomes they

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are trying to achieve using podcasting, so that instructional design is not driven simply by the availability and ease of use of the technology. Other researchers emphasize that podcasting lends itself to an innovative, student-centered learning paradigm where student agency in the creation of podcasts as shared learning objects is central. For example, as seen in Lee, McLoughlin, and Chan, (2008), the production of podcast episodes for sharing among peers can serve as a catalyst for student engagement, if creation of the scripts and audio files is undertaken by learners and teachers in a collaborative effort. Furthermore, supporting and encouraging knowledge building processes can be achieved by instructors in variety of ways, through task design supported by social software tools to promote high levels of self-regulation, collaborative inquiry, and peer-to-peer dialogue. Overall, if podcasting activities are planned in such a way as to move beyond the mere provision of information and learning resources to students, to incorporate learner creation of content, peer-to-peer sharing, and collaboration, they can provide considerable scope for valuable sociocollaborative and experiential modes of learning. However, such approaches are not without their challenges, as they call for educators and institutions to relinquish some degree of control and to look beyond the traditional view of classroom authority.

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Chan, A., & Lee, M. J. W. (2005). An MP3 a day keeps the worries away: Exploring the use of podcasting to address preconceptions and alleviate pre-class anxiety amongst undergraduate information technology students. In D. H. R. Spennemann & L. Burr (Eds.), Good practice in practice: Proceedings of the student experience conference (pp. 58-70). Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia: Charles Sturt University. Creative Commons. (2008). Retrieved July 12, 2008, from http://creativecommons.org/. Creative Technology. (2007). ZENcast.com – largest collection of free video, blogs, vodcasts, podcasts and tech news. Retrieved March 21, 2007, from http://www.zencast.com Curry, A. (2004). iPodder – a brief history. Retrieved April 23, 2005, from http://www.ipodder. org/history Dixon, C., & Greeson, M. (2006). Recasting the concept of podcasting (part I). Retrieved September 20, 2006, from http://news.digitaltrends.com/ talkback109.html Edirisingha, P., Salmon, G., & Fothergill, J. (2006, October). Profcasting: A pilot study and a model for integrating podcasts into online learning. Paper presented at the Fourth EDEN Research Workshop, Castelldefels, Spain. Evans, L. (2006). Using student podcasts in literature classes. Retrieved January 23, 2007, from http://www.academiccommons.org/ctfl/vignette/ using-student-podcasts-in-literature-classes Frydenberg, M. (2006). Principles and pedagogy: The two p’s of podcasting in the information technology classroom. In D. Colton, W. J. Tastle, M. Hensel, & A. A. Abdullat (Eds.), Proceedings of ISECON 2006 (§3354). Chicago, IL: Association of Information Technology Professionals. Retrieved November 27, 2006, from http://isedj. org/isecon/2006/3354/ISECON.2006.Frydenberg.pdf

Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. New York: Palmgrave-McMillan. Haque, U. (2005). The new economics of media: Micromedia, connected consumption, and the snowball effect. Retrieved January 5, 2006, from http://www.bubblegeneration.com/resources/ mediaeconomics.ppt Hilton, J. (2006). The future for higher education: Sunrise or perfect storm? EDUCAUSE Review, 41(2), 58–71. Kukulska-Hulme, A. (2005). The mobile language learner—now and in the future. Retrieved February 3, 2006, from http://www2.humlab.umu.se/ video/Praktikvision/agnes.ram Lee, M. J. W., & Chan, A. (2006). Exploring the potential for podcasting to deliver mobile ubiquitous learning in higher education. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 18(1), 94–115. doi:10.1007/BF03032726 Lee, M. J. W., & Chan, A. (2007a). Pervasive, lifestyle-integrated mobile learning for distance learners: An analysis and unexpected results from a podcasting study. Open Learning, 22(3), 201–218. Lee, M. J. W., & Chan, A. (2007b). Reducing the effects of isolation and promoting inclusivity for distance learners through podcasting. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 8(1), 85104. Retrieved May 22, 2008, from http://tojde. anadolu.edu.tr/tojde25/pdf/article_7.pdf Lee, M. J. W., Chan, A., & McLoughlin, C. (2006). Students as producers: Second year students’ experiences as podcasters of content for first year undergraduates. In Proceedings of the 7th IEEE Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training (pp. 832-841). Sydney, NSW: University of Technology.

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Lee, M. J. W., McLoughlin, C., & Chan, A. (2008). Talk the talk: Learner-generated podcasts as catalysts for knowledge creation. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(3), 501–521. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2007.00746.x Lindner, M. (2005). Wild microcontent. Retrieved December 12, 2006, from http://phaidon.philo.at/ martin/archives/000318.html Lindner, M. (2006). Use these tools, your mind will follow: Learning in immersive micromedia and microknowledge environments. In D. Whitelock & S. Wheeler (Eds.), The next generation: Research proceedings of the 13th ALT-C conference (pp. 41-49). Oxford, UK: ALT. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (2008). MIT OpenCourseWare. Retrieved July 12, 2008, from http://ocw.mit.edu McCarty, S. (2005). Spoken Internet to go: Popularization through podcasting. The JALT CALL Journal, 1(2), 67–74. McCarty, S. (2006). Japancasting. Retrieved May 3, 2008, from http://stevemc.blogmatrix.com. McLoughlin, C., Brady, J., Lee, M. J. W., & Russell, R. (2007, November). Peer-to-peer: An e-mentoring approach to developing community, mutual engagement and professional identity for pre-service teachers. Paper presented at the 2007 Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) Conference, Fremantle, WA. McLoughlin, C., & Lee, M. J. W. (2008). Future learning landscapes: Transforming pedagogy through social software. Innovate: Journal of Online Education, 4(5). Retrieved July 11, 2008, from http://innovateonline.info/index. php?view=article&id=539

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McLoughlin, C., Lee, M. J. W., & Chan, A. (2007, June). Promoting engagement and motivation for distance learners through podcasting. Paper presented at the European Distance Education and E-Learning Network (EDEN) Annual Conference 2007, Naples, Italy. McLoughlin, C., & Luca, J. (2006). Applying situated learning theory to the creation of learning environments to enhance socialisation and self-regulation. In A. Herrington & J. Herrington (Eds.), Authentic learning environments in higher education (pp. 194-213). Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing. Mejias, U. (2005). A nomad’s guide to learning and social software. The knowledge tree: An e-journal of learning innovation, 7. Retrieved December 10, 2006, from http://knowledgetree.flexiblelearning. net.au/edition07/download/la_mejias.pdf MERLOT. (2008). Retrieved July 12, 2008, from http://www.merlot.org Mike. (2005). AutoCast. Retrieved January 10, 2007, from http://www.autocastsoftware.com Miller, D. B. (2006, October 18). Podcasting at the University of Connecticut: Enhancing the educational experience. Campus Technology. Retrieved January 20, 2007, from http://campustechnology. com/news_article.asp?id=19424&typeid=156 Miller, D. B. (2007). iCube. Retrieved April 10, 2007, from http://icube.uconn.edu/ O’Reilly, T. (2005a). Web 2.0: Compact definition? Retrieved November 28, 2006, from http://radar. oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/web_20_compact_definition.html O’Reilly, T. (2005b) What is Web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. Retrieved December 15, 2006, from http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/ news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

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Oxford University Press. (2005). All hail “podcasting”: More also-rans for the 2005 WOTY. Retrieved July 3, 2006, from http://blog.oup.com/ oupblog/2005/12/podcasting_is_t.html PhoneCasting LLC. (2007). PhoneCasting— phonecasting and podcasting for wireless devices. Retrieved April 10, 2007, from http://www.phonecasting.com Pintrich, P. R., Wolters, C. A., & Baxter, G. P. (2002). Assessing metacognition and self-regulated learning. In G. Schraw & J. C. Impara (Eds.), Issues in the measurement of metacognition (pp. 43-97). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Read, B. (2005, March 2). Drexel U. will give free iPods to students in School of Education. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved May 8, 2005, from http://chronicle.com/ free/2005/03/2005030203n.htm RSS Advisory Board. (2005). Really simple syndication: RSS 2.0.1 specification (revision 6). Retrieved March 2, 2006, from http://www.rssboard. org/rss-2-0-1-rv-6 Schlosser, C. A. (2006). Audio in online courses: Beyond podcasting. Paper presented at E-Learn 2006 World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education. Retrieved October 20, 2006, from http://www. nova.edu/~burmeist/audio_online.html Sener, J. (2007a). Podcasting student performances to develop EFL skills. Retrieved March 10, 2007, from http://www.sloan-c-wiki.org/wiki/index. php?title=Podcasting_Student_Performances_to_ Develop_EFL_Skills Sener, J. (2007b). University of Connecticut – beyond lecturecasting: Using podcasts for discussion and student content creation. Retrieved March 10, 2007, from http://www.sloan-c-wiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=University_of_Connecticut_--_Beyond_Lecturecasting:_Using_Podcasts_for_Discussion_and_Student_Content_Creation

Sfard, A. (1998). On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one. Educational Researcher, 27(2), 4–13. Skype Limited. (2007). Skypecasts. Retrieved July 21, 2008, from https://skypecasts.skype.com/ skypecasts/overview.html Surowiecki, K. (2004). The wisdom of crowds. New York: Doubleday. Udell, J. (2004, November 17). Name that genre: Screencast. Retrieved November 18, 2005, from http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2004/11/17. html van der Ziel, S. (2005). VODcast. Retrieved December 10, 2005, from http://www.vodcast.nl Weinberger, D. (2002). Small pieces loosely joined: A unified theory of the Web. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Mash-Up: Content or material that is collected from several web-based sources, and then modified, re-mixed, and/or re-combined to create a new formulation of the material. A mash-up is typically a digital media file including one or more the following: text, graphics, audio, video, and animation. Mash-ups are commonly seen in “Web 2.0” services such as blogs, wikis, RSS and podcast feeds, media sharing sites (e.g. YouTube) and social networking sites (e.g. MySpace, Facebook). Micro-Content: Small, basic units of digital content or media that can be consumed in unbundled micro-chunks, and aggregated and reconstructed in various ways. Micro-content often forms the basis of micro-learning. Micro-Learning: An emergent paradigm that involves learning through small learning units (micro-content) and short-term learning activities.

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MPEG Layer 3 (MP3): A digital audio encoding format that makes use of a lossy compression algorithm, which sacrifices the fidelity of the audio to reduce the amount of data required to represent the audio recording, thereby resulting a file size that is suitable for transmission over the Internet. Since the compression works by reducing the accuracy of certain parts of sound that are deemed beyond the auditory resolution ability of most people, for most listeners, an MP3 file sounds like a faithful reproduction of the original audio. MP3 is commonly used format for consumer audio storage, as well as a de facto standard for the transfer and playback of music on digital audio players. Most podcasts are produced in MP3 format. Personal Learning Environment (PLE): A system, application, or suite of applications that assists learners in taking control of and managing their own learning. It represents an alternative approach to the Learning Management System (LMS), which by contrast adopts an institutioncentric or course-centric view of learning. Key PLE concepts include the blending of formal and informal learning, participation in social networks that transcend institutional boundaries, as well as the use of a range of networking protocols (RSS, peer-to-peer [P2P], Web services) to connect systems, resources, and users within a personally managed space.

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Podcasting: A portmanteau word that combines the words “iPod” (the name of Apple Computer’s popular music player) and “broadcast.” Refers to the distribution of digital audio files, typically in MPEG Layer 3 (MP3) format, through a syndication protocol such as RSS. The user subscribes to one or more feeds or channels of his/ her choice using a podcast aggregation program, which periodically polls the feeds for new audio files and downloads them automatically to the user’s hard disk as they become available. Really Simple Syndication (RSS): A technology originally designed to facilitate the publication of text summaries of additions to frequently updated websites, such as news sites and blogs. The user subscribes to the feed(s) of one or more RSS-enabled websites by configuring a news reader or aggregator program installed on his/ her computer with the URL(s) of the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) file(s) that comprise the feed. The program perodically checks the feed for new content and downloads it as it becomes available. RSS 2.0 feeds permit the inclusion of enclosures, which permit multimedia files (such as MP3 files in the case of podcasting) to be referenced in the feed. Vodcasting: The publishing/syndication of video files instead of audio files using the same technology as podcasting.

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Chapter 19

Wiki Use in Higher Education Implications for Group Size and Task Complexity Elizabeth Koh National University of Singapore, Singapore John Lim National University of Singapore, Singapore

ABSTRACT In recent years, the field of education has discovered the educational value of social interaction technologies, including Wikis. However, a lack of conceptual understanding and operationalization of Wiki use has prevented a more extensive adoption of this collaborative technology by educational institutions. The present chapter provides insights into the functionality of Wikis and their educational implications for higher education. The authors contend that a conceptualization of Wiki use in the classroom context can be derived from a typology of online interactive pedagogies. The proposed conceptualization is based on the assumption that certain kinds of Wiki-related activities correspond to certain levels of classroom interactions: namely, social interaction, general discussion, topic focused discussion, and collaborative activities. Additionally, group size and task complexity should be considered as criteria for Wiki implementation. The main premise of the chapter is that the instructional use of Wiki-based classroom technologies can enhance student learning.

INTRODUCTION Due to the collaborative nature of Wiki technologies, Wiki has become a buzzword in 21st century higher education. A Wiki is a platform for content creation and negotiation by user audiences. Students use Wikis for collaborative writing exercises, completing group assignments, service learning, DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch019

and community outreach projects (Hamer, 2006; O’Shea et al., 2007; Wheeler, Yeomans, & Wheeler, 2008). Instructors implement an assortment of Wiki functions for content management systems and for various class-related activities (Bruns & Humphreys, 2005; Glogoff, 2006). These activities have been carried out with varying degrees of success in achieving student learning outcomes. It has been established that online education, with its emphasis on student-centered learning, can benefit from the

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Wiki Use in Higher Education

addition of Wiki tools to the higher education landscape (Bower et al., 2006; Fuchs-Kittowski & Köhler, 2005). However, as Wang and Turner stressed, Wiki deployment in online learning has led to considerable dilemmas that necessitate further investigation (2004). Addressing the issue of technology-mediated communication in online learning communities, Geer (2006) developed a comprehensive pedagogical framework which integrates three essential elements: learning outcomes, interactive pedagogies, and interactive technologies. This framework can inform instructors’ adoption of interactive technology tools in online learning environments. As Geer wrote: Central to the framework are the specific types of activities that support varying levels of interaction, ranging from very general to more specific and focused activities. These activities which have been derived from a reading of the literature and also from university teaching experiences, include social interaction, general discussion, topic focused, scripted, cooperative and collaborative activities. Such interactive pedagogies could be used to support student interactions and learning (p. 132). Geer placed Wikis exclusively within the category of topic focused interactive pedagogy used for achieving such learning outcomes as analysis, interpretation, exploration, reflection, and experiential learning (p. 133). After carefully reviewing the existing research of Wiki implementations in the higher educational context, the authors propose expanding the range of interactive pedagogies that can inform Wiki use to include social interaction, general discussion, and cooperative activities. That will allow broadening the range of possible student learning outcomes to encompass: information exchange, observation, clarification, comparison, and task division (p. 138).

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BACKGROUND The term Wiki refers to both technology and a concept of how one can create and edit online content (Louridas, 2006). In essence, Wikis are editable websites that enable users to apply simple markup language to build content and collaborate (Lamont, 2007). Developing Wiki pages involves three simple steps: write (or edit), save, and display (Klobas, 2006). Known as “open editing,” Wikis allow users to browse through Wiki pages, edit existing pages, or create new ones (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001). Wikis encourage internal linking of pages but limit the appearance of the so-called “orphaned pages” (i.e., pages that have no direct links to them); thus, a constantly changing body of content is evolving (Wang & Turner, 2004). Besides, Wikis offer an opportunity for groups of users to join their efforts in developing content. Many Wiki systems utilize web-based opensource software technologies (Raman, 2006). The users can choose to either install or run a Wiki on their own computer or use Wiki hosting services. Wiki pages can be displayed by any web browser, are available anytime, and can be accessed from anywhere. Wiki platforms are highly flexible in terms of their structure and can be customized to suit various purposes. In addition, Wikis can have different read-and-edit access permissions (Chawner & Lewis, 2005; Leuf & Cunningham, 2001); they are either open (anyone can edit the Wiki) or allow only registered members or selected persons to access and edit the Wiki. The ease and speed with which web pages can be created are the fundamental concepts in Wiki deployment. High flexibility and functionality of Wikis have led to their rapid proliferation in many areas (Louridas, 2006). Examples of successful Wiki implementations can be found in the practices of many organizations and corporations (Bean & Hott, 2005; Raman, 2006). Wikis have also become common in the educational landscape (Parker & Chao, 2007; Raman, Ryan & Olfman, 2005; Schwartz et al., 2004).

Wiki Use in Higher Education

Conceptualizing Wiki use in Higher Education A review of the recent scholarly literature reveals multitudinous ways in which Wikis have been employed in higher education. One of the forerunners of Wiki systems in education is the Collaborative Webs project (CoWebs) implemented at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001). CoWeb (originally known as “Swiki”) has been successfully applied for information sharing and distribution, creation of collaborative artifacts, reviewing classroom material, and storing student work online (Guzdial, Rick, & Kehoe, 2001; Lueg & Fisher, 2003). Tonkin (2005) highlighted four instructional methods for Wiki use: (1) single-user Wikis for students to take notes and present information; (2) lab book Wikis which allow for peer reviewing; (3) collaborative writing Wikis to enable web-based group authoring; (4) and knowledge-based Wikis which provide a web-based knowledge repository for a group. Other models incorporate creating online spaces to store and edit work done by students (Bower et al., 2006; Wheeler et al., 2008) or student team Wikis (Hamer, 2006; Trentin, 2008). Hamer (2006) reported on the results of a case study which examined how Wiki technology was used to allow teams of students to create their own collaborative workspace, record work-in-progress, and participate in class activities. The Wiki and the implemented pedagogy challenged students’ communication and writing skills, helping them to actively construct knowledge instead of being passive recipients. The mutual performance of students was central to their learning. Other common applications of Wikis include: Wiki “micropedias,” FAQ Wikis, problem solving Wikis, and Wikis being used to create operating guidelines, tutorials, and project spaces (Bower et al., 2006; Bruns & Humphreys, 2005; Parker & Chao, 2007). Wikis can be used for keeping and annotating lecture notes collaboratively. This allows instructors to verify what students learned

Table 1. Categories of Wiki use Wiki Use

Operational Definitions

Examples

Wikis for social interaction

Activities that build communal bonds and relationships among learners

Icebreaker activities, personal Wiki spaces

Wikis for general discussion

Broad based dialogue where any topic can be raised and discussed

Class discussion spaces, extending discussions beyond the classroom

Wikis for topic focused discussion

Discussion that is focused upon a specific subject matter

Topical writing, micropedias, glossaries

Wikis for cooperative activities

Tasks in which groups of learners work together to achieve common goals

Group authoring, project spaces

during the lecture (O’Neill, 2005; O’Shea et al., 2007). However, there is still a lack of conceptual understanding and operationalization of Wiki use in higher education that prevents both educational institutions and educators from a higher adoption rate of this promising interactive and collaborative technology. The authors of this chapter contend that a conceptualization of Wiki use in the classroom context can be derived from a typology of online interactive pedagogies developed by Geer (2006). These pedagogies encompass various forms of learning that can be supported by instructional technologies. The authors use the pedagogies of social interaction, general discussion, topic-focused activities, and cooperative activities to conceptualize the educational implications of Wikis (see Table 1). The proposed conceptualization is based on the assumption that certain kinds of Wiki-related activities correspond to certain levels of classroom interactions, group size, and task complexity.

Wikis for Social Interaction Learning is a highly social process in which the exchange of meaningful personal information is crucial to learners’ cognitive development

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(Leidner & Jarvenpaa, 1995). A Wiki need not only be a task-focused or content-filled system; it can also be a system that fosters social interaction in the classroom (Augar, Raitman, & Zhou, 2004). Social interaction refers to activities that build communal bonds and develop interpersonal relationships among learners. Educational research has pointed out the importance of a climate of open-mindedness to encourage the formation of trust and cooperation (Hughes et al., 2002). Augar and colleagues (2004) reported than an icebreaking activity using Wikis at Deakin University in Australia has been successful in fostering social interaction. Wikis provide opportunities for social interaction as shared collective spaces where information can be easily created and can flow bi-directionally between students and instructors. Wikis can coordinate the sharing of information among groups of students. Students can set-up personal profile pages so that their peers may know more about them; other students can then comment on their pages and interact with them (Schwartz et al., 2004; Hamer, 2006). When a supportive and rich social environment facilitates the formation of a collaborative learning community, students are more likely to attain their personal learning goals.

Wikis for General Discussion Another key utility of the Wiki is its use in general discussion especially in large classes. General discussion refers to a broad-based scope of dialogue where any topic can be addressed. Students can raise questions and clarify (or provide) information that relates to the course. An exchange of different viewpoints encourages participants to rethink their own views and promotes critical thinking. Wikis can successfully host class discussions either within the main course page or on specifically created discussion pages (Fuchs-Kittowski & Köhler, 2005). If the discussion occurs on the main page, it is easy for the instructor and the students

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to connect ideas and concepts through internal linkages. This enables students to relate to ideas more easily and to learn collaboratively. For instance, Farabaugh (2007) focused on the instructional use of QwikiWiki and MediaWiki for maintaining student discussions. After completing the readings and submitting short writing assignments to the course Wiki, students were able to reflect on each other’s work and even take the discussion beyond the classroom. The instructor reported that the Wiki was a useful tool to enhance reflective and associative thinking among the students. Similarly, Wheeler and colleagues (2008) wrote that students were able to sharpen their critical thinking skills through a class discussion on a Wiki.

Wikis for Topic-Focused Activities As previously suggested (Geer, 2006), Wikis can be used in topic-focused discussions to foster a deeper sense of engagement with course content. Examples of topic-focused activities include: review and discussion of examination questions, “micro encyclopedias” which detail facts and analyses of concepts in a specific area, glossaries which succinctly define keywords of module content, and topical writing which entails reports aligned to a particular subject. These activities typically require one integrated solution. Guzdial and colleagues (2001) described a simple way of carrying out a topic-focused activity which involved posting past-year examination questions on the Wiki. Students could post questions, answer them, and critique others’ responses. Bruns and Humphreys (2005) reported using the Wiki-based encyclopedia format in a New Media Technologies course, while Lund and Smødal (2006) utilized it in English as a Foreign Language. In the latter, Lund and Smødal deployed Wikis for designing two encyclopedia-type collaborative activities. The first was a collective assignment carried out over a two-week period on a singular topic while the second (in response to

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feedback from the earlier project) extended over an entire term and involved a topic that called for more role-playing. The second project also included a greater teacher presence in the Wiki via the discussion pages. The results showed that some students who were used to independent writing were uncomfortable with collective writing practices. Still, they were able to overcome the individual attribution and became engaged in the collective creation of knowledge. The study found that both projects enabled students to form a learning community. Thus, Wikis have a positive impact on topic-focused activities.

Wikis for Cooperative Activities “Cooperative activities” refer to tasks in which a group of learners works together to achieve a common goal. Members of the group are individually responsible for their own tasks, while the efforts of the whole group are aggregated. The term cooperative learning is often associated with the term collaborative learning. Some researchers contrast the two terms and view cooperation as a division of labor in which individuals achieve their objectives jointly and collaboration as a commitment to succeed (Jones et al., 2006; Paulus, 2005). Others reveal that there are more similarities than differences between them (Strijbos, Martens & Jochems, 2004). Researchers have found that collaborative groups tend to divide the tasks before integrating them – choosing to cooperate rather than collaborate (Hathorn & Ingram, 2002). Cooperative groups are characterized by active learning in small groups with the teacher as facilitator with teaching and learning being shared experiences (Kirschner, 2001). Wiki functionality includes: (1) open editing (to enable group authoring), (2) versioning (an ability to track the updates to the group project), (3) and maintaining a discussion space (for further elaboration). These features aptly support cooperative learning (Schaffert et al., 2006). Cooperative activities include group writing exercises, project

work, or any group work that requires the creation of collaborative documents. These tasks are usually problem-oriented and require the combination of multiple members’ contributions for the group to succeed. Nicol, Littlejohn, and Grierson (2005) examined a cooperative activity that involved co-creation of engineering designs using two components: an Orbit repository and a TikiWiki. The Wiki, in particular, afforded teams the ability to share resources, allowed easy display and description of files, and encouraged the contextualization of the content. Schwartz and colleagues (2004) note how Wikis form a community of practice through: “a virtual presence, a variety of interactions, easy participation, valuable content, connections to a broader subject field, personal and community identity and interaction, democratic participation, and evolution over time” (p. 2). Indeed, cooperative learning is enhanced when it occurs within a community of practice (Parker & Chao, 2007). Cooperative activity facilitated by the capacities of the Wiki also increased the perceived writing and critical thinking skills of students (Trentin, 2008; Wheeler et al., 2008). A conclusion can be drawn that the functionality of a Wiki is salient for cooperative activities; this will in turn enhance student learning.

Group Size The authors have taken into account that group size and task complexity are both key considerations in the classrooms (Cohen, 1994; Lim & Zhong, 2005). The four instructional pedagogies discussed above can be grouped into a matrix with group size as one dimension and task complexity as the other (Table 2). The size of the group involved ranges from small to large while the complexity of the task varies from simple to complex. As an important criterion in collaborative learning (Lim & Zhong, 2005; Tolmie & Boyle, 2000), group size can be classified as small or

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large. Small groups consist of two to six members while large groups have seven members or more (Strijbos et al., 2004). For social interaction and general discussion, group sizes are typically large. In contrast, topic-focused and cooperative activities are more suitable for smaller group sizes because they require higher levels of interaction. Communication in small groups is characterized by openness and accuracy (Lowry et al. 2006). It has been documented that successful use of online collaboration is typically associated with smaller groups in face-to-face (Johnson & Johnson, 1996) and online settings (Tolmie & Boyle, 2000). This leads to the first proposition: Proposition 1: The effect of group size is manifested in such a way that Wiki-based learning will be more effective utilizing cooperative and topic-focused pedagogies (associated with smaller groups) than general discussion and social interaction methods (associated with larger groups).

Task Complexity The nature of tasks is another dimension important to the study of collaborative learning (Strijbos et al., 2004). Past research has delineated several characteristics of tasks: such as idea generation, discussion, problem solving tasks (Hackman, 1968), and task complexity (Payne, 1976). Complex tasks have more cognitive demands, are more challenging and difficult, contain several desired outcomes, uncertainties, conflicts and multiple decision paths (Campbell, 1988). In contrast, simple tasks contain none of the above attributes and tend to have one solution or opinion. The different types of pedagogies discussed in this chapter correspond to various levels of task complexity. Social interaction is considered a simple task since students share their own opinions and do not require much specialized information to make decisions. Topic-focused activities tend to have a single solution or a set of related solutions which denotes them as simple tasks. In contrast, cooperative and general discussion pedagogies

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Table 2. Group size vs. task complexity Task

Simple

Complex

Small group

Topic focused

Cooperative

Large group

Social interaction

General discussion

are positioned as complex tasks as they involve coordination, conflicting information, and multiple solutions. Complex tasks would engender more collaborative learning than simple tasks since complex tasks would require participants to come to an understanding of other views, possibly to reach a consensus and attain coordination (Cohen, 1994; Johnson & Johnson, 1996). Research has provided evidence of the importance of negotiation, teamwork, and collaboration for Wiki implementations that employ cooperative and general discussion activities (Bruns & Humphreys, 2005; Hamer, 2006). In contrast, simple tasks involve participants sharing facts about themselves without requiring integration of conflicting ideas. In this activity, individual student contributions are added together to yield a meaningful outcome (Campbell, 1988), and there is less learning from other learners. In this regard, collaborative learning in simple task assignments would be lower than in complex tasks. This leads to the second proposition: Proposition 2: The effect of task complexity is manifested in such a way that Wiki-based collaborative learning will improve by employing general discussion and cooperative activities (associated with complex tasks) rather than topicfocused and social interaction methods (associated with simple tasks). There is also a possible relationship between group size and task complexity. Curral and associates (2001) found that large teams and complex tasks were not a predictor of performance as they had higher process losses compared to smaller teams performing the complex task. Process losses

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in large teams include “free riding” (Valacich, Dennis, & Nunamaker, 1992) and “social loafing” (Chidambaram & Tung, 2005). In contrast, Wiki-based cooperative learning have been theorized and found to produce higher learning outcomes (Bruns & Humphreys, 2005; Parker & Chao, 2007). These observations suggest that collaborative learning may be higher when small groups perform complex tasks. This leads to the third proposition: Proposition 3: Wiki-based collaborative learning will be more effective for cooperative pedagogy (associated with complex tasks and small groups) than social interaction activities (associated with simple tasks and large groups). The proposed conceptualization can serve as a reference point assisting instructors in choosing Wiki-based course assignments and activities that facilitate student learning. The key premise is that carefully selected pedagogies can generate higher levels of learning. An instructor may want to evaluate the size of a group and then proceed with choosing the type of pedagogy that will help to determine the complexity of the task. Another option would be to consider the discussed pedagogies as an integrative set of activities in a course that is highly reliant on Wikis.

FUTURE TRENDS Teaching and learning can be considered an exemplary field for Wiki deployment (Glogoff, 2006; Leuf & Cunningham, 2001; Parker & Chao, 2007). In the last few years, Wiki software has been incorporated by the institutions of higher learning as stand alone platforms or a part of course management systems. As a result, many Wiki-based educational websites have emerged providing resources in subjects ranging from mathematics to literature. These institutional developments were preceded by the grassroots implementation of Wikis by individual instructors who have become the

early adopters of Wiki technology. They have successfully utilized Wikis for their classrooms and courses. This trend has been facilitated by the availability of free Wiki services and is most likely to continue. Indeed, the outlook for Wiki adoption in higher education is bright with more diverse uses expected in the future. Similar to any educational activity, the adoption of Wiki technologies should benefit from new conceptual models and theoretical frameworks. Future research should focus on integrating related concepts from the fields of educational psychology, information systems, and computer supported collaborative learning. Such a cross-disciplinary approach could lead to creating a theoretical framework that can function as a reference point for further development and implementation of Wikis in higher education and that can serve as a guide for educators, instructional designers, and researchers.

CONCLUSION In recent years, the field of higher education has discovered the educational value of social-interaction technologies, including Wikis. However, a lack of conceptual understanding and operationalization of Wiki use has prevented an increase in the adoption of this collaborative technology by educational institutions. The present chapter has provided insights into the functionality of Wikis and their educational implications for higher education. The authors contend that a conceptualization of Wiki use in the classroom context can be derived from an existing typology of online interactive pedagogies. The proposed conceptualization is based on the assumption that certain kinds of Wikirelated activities correspond to certain levels of classroom interactions: namely, social interaction, general discussion, topic focused discussion, and collaborative activities. Furthermore, group size and task complexity should also be considered as criteria for Wiki implementation.

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In addition to mapping Wiki use in the higher education landscape, this chapter raises awareness of the utility of Wikis in education. Wiki technology is a highly suitable and flexible tool for collaborative learning which offers educators numerous opportunities for customizing it for instructional purposes. However, there are certain limitations in using Wikis in teaching. As regard intellectual property rights, plagiarism can easily occur when students post copyrighted material. Another disadvantage of Wikis stems from their novelty, as users are unfamiliar with this technology and are accustomed to “read-only” web-based systems (Raman, 2006). Although the learning curve is short, instructors and students need time and training to learn how to use the systems. Finally, Wiki interfaces may be considered aesthetically unattractive (Klobas, 2006). A simple and somewhat chaotic Wiki page may disappoint visitors who are used to well-designed websites. Still, this can be circumvented by Wiki administrators who can add more stylistic features to the interface. The main premise of the chapter is that the instructional uses of Wiki-based classroom technologies can enhance student learning and assist in maximizing student learning outcomes. In light of the present discussion, the conceptualization contained in this chapter aims to provide an identification and categorization of interactive pedagogies as they apply to integrating Wiki tools in the classroom. As the authors seek to determine the best possible fit between interactive pedagogies, group size, and task design, the proposed conceptualization can assist instructors in planning and implementing Wiki-based classroom activities, assignments, collaborations, and interactions.

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Bean, L., & Hott, D. D. (2005). Wiki: A speedy new tool to manage projects. Journal of Corporate Accounting & Finance, 16(5), 3–8. doi:10.1002/ jcaf.20128 Bower, M., Woo, K., Roberts, M., & Watters, P. Wiki pedagogy: A tale of two Wikis. In Proceedings of the ITHET2006 (pp. 191-202). Bruns, A., & Humphreys, S. (2005). Wikis in teaching and assessment: The M/Cyclopedia project. In [New York: ACM Press.]. Proceedings of the WikiSym, 2005, 25–32. doi:10.1145/1104973.1104976 Campbell, D. J. (1988). Task complexity: A review and analysis. Academy of Management Review, 13(1), 40–52. doi:10.2307/258353 Chawner, B., & Lewis, P. H. (2005). WikiWikiWebs: New ways to communicate in a Web environment. Information Technology and Libraries, 25(1), 33–43. Chidambaram, L., & Tung, L. L. (2005). Is out of sight, out of mind? An empirical study of social loafing in technology-supported groups. Information Systems Research, 16(2), 149–160. doi:10.1287/isre.1050.0051 Cohen, E. G. (1994). Restructuring the classroom: Conditions for productive small groups. Review of Educational Research, 64, 1–35. Curral, L. A., Forrester, R. H., Dawson, J. F., & West, M. A. (2001). It’s what you do and the way that you do it: Team task, team size, and innovationrelated group processes. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 10(2), 187–204. doi:10.1080/13594320143000627 Farabaugh, R. (2007). ‘The Isile is full of noises’: Using Wiki software to establish a discourse community in a Shakespeare classroom. Language Awareness, 16(1), 41–56. doi:10.2167/la428.0

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Fuchs-Kittowski, F., & Köhler,A. (2005). Wiki communities in the context of work processes. In [New York: ACM Press.]. Proceedings of the WikiSym, 2005, 33–39. doi:10.1145/1104973.1104977 Geer, R. (2006, July). A pedagogical framework for technology-mediated interactions. In Proceedings of the 2006 Australian Teacher Education Association Conference (pp. 130-141). Retrieved November 8, 2007, from http://www.atea.edu.au/ ConfPapers/2006/geer.pdf Glogoff, S. (2006). The LTC Wiki - experiences with integrating a Wiki in instruction. In S. Mader (Ed.), Using Wiki in education. Retrieved August 9, 2008, from http://www.wikiineducation.com Guzdial, M., Rick, J., & Kehoe, C. (2001). Beyond adoption to invention: Teacher-created collaborative activities in higher education. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 10(3), 265–279. doi:10.1207/ S15327809JLS1003_2 Hackman, J. R. (1968). Effects of task characteristics on group products. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 4, 162–187. doi:10.1016/00221031(68)90040-1 Hamer, J. (2006). Some experiences with the “contributing student approach.” ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 38(3), 68-72. Retrieved November 8, 2007, from http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1140123.1140145 Hathorn, L. G., & Ingram, A. L. (2002). Cooperation and collaboration using computermediated communication. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 26(3), 325–347. doi:10.2190/7MKH-QVVN-G4CQ-XRDU Hughes, S. C., Wickersham, L., Ryan-Jones, D. L., & Smith, S. A. (2002). Overcoming social and psychological barriers to effective on-line collaboration. Educational Technology & Society, 5(1), 86–92.

Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1996). Cooperation and the use of technology. In D. H. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook of research for educational communications and technology (pp. 1017-1044). New York: Macmillan Library Reference. Jones, C., Cook, J., Jones, A., & de Laat, M. (2006). Collaboration. In G. Conole & M. Oliver (Eds.), Contemporary perspectives in e-learning research (pp. 174-189). London: RoutledgeFalmer. Kirschner, P. A. (2001). Using integrated electronic environments for collaborative teaching/ learning. Research Dialogue in Learning and Instruction, 2(1), 1–10. doi:10.1016/S09594752(00)00021-9 Klobas, J. (2006). Wikis: Tools for information work and collaboration. Oxford, UK: Chandos Publishing. Lamont, J. (2007). Blogs and Wikis: Ready for prime time? KM World, 14(1), 14-15, 26. Leidner, D. E., & Jarvenpaa, S. L. (1995). The use of information technology to enhance management school education: A theoretical view. MIS Quarterly, 19(3), 256–291. doi:10.2307/249596 Leuf, B., & Cunningham, W. (2001). The Wiki way: Quick collaboration on the Web. Boston, MA: Addison Wesley. Lim, J., & Zhong, Y. (2005). Cultural diversity, leadership, group size and collaborative learning systems: An experimental study. In . Proceedings of the HICSS, 2005, 1–9. Louridas, P. (2006). Using Wikis in software development. IEEE Software, 6, 88–91. doi:10.1109/ MS.2006.62

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Lowry, P. B., Roberts, T. L., Romano, N. C. Jr, Cheney, P. D., & Hightower, R. T. (2006). The impact of group size and social presence on small-group communication: Does computer-mediated communication make a difference? Small Group Research, 37(6), 631–661. doi:10.1177/1046496406294322 Lueg, C., & Fisher, D. (2003). From Usenet to CoWebs: Interacting with social information spaces. London: Springer. Lund, A., & Smødal, O. (2006). Is there a space for the teacher in a WIKI? In Proceedings of the 2006 International Symposium on Wikis (pp. 3746). New York: ACM Press. Nicol, D., Littlejohn, A., & Grierson, H. (2005). The importance of structuring information and resources within shared workspaces during collaborative design learning. Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning, 20(1), 31–49. O’Neill, M. E. (2005). Automated use of a Wiki for collaborative lecture notes. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 37(1), 267–271. doi:10.1145/1047124.1047440 O’Shea, P. M., Baker, P. B., Allen, D. W., CurryCorcoran, D. E., & Allen, D. B. (2007). New levels of student participatory learning: A Wiki text for the introductory course in education. Journal of Online Interactive Learning, 6(3). Retrieved June 24, 2008, from http://www.ncolr.org/jiol/ issues/viewarticle.cfm?volID=6&IssueID=21& ArticleID=110 Parker, K. R., & Chao, J. T. (2007). Wiki as a teaching tool. Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects, 3, 58–72. Paulus, T. M. (2005). Collaborative and cooperative approaches to online group work: The impact of task type. Distance Education, 26(1), 111–125. doi:10.1080/01587910500081343

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Payne, J. W. (1976). Task complexity and contingent processing in decision making: An information search and protocol analysis. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16(2), 366– 387. doi:10.1016/0030-5073(76)90022-2 Raman, M. (2006). Wiki technology as a ‘free’ collaborative tool within an organizational setting. Information Systems Management, 23(4), 59–66. doi:10.1201/1078.10580530/46352.23.4 .20060901/95114.8 Raman, M., Ryan, T., & Olfman, L. (2005). Designing knowledge management systems for teaching and learning with Wiki technology. Journal of Information Systems Education, 16(35), 311–320. Schaffert, S., Bischof, D., Buerger, T., Gruber, A., Hilzensauer, W., & Schaffert, S. (2006). Learning with semantic Wikis. In . Proceedings of SemWiki, 2006, 109–123. Schwartz, L., Clark, S., Cossarin, M., & Rudolph, J. (2004). Educational Wikis: Features and selection criteria. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 5(1). Retrieved October 3, 2007, from http://www.irrodl.org/ index.php/irrodl/article/view/163/692 Strijbos, J. W., Martens, R. L., & Jochems, W. M. G. (2004). Designing for interaction: Six steps to designing computer-supported group-based learning. Computers & Education, 42(4), 403–424. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2003.10.004 Surowiecki, J. (2004). The wisdom of crowds: Why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies, and nations. New York: Doubleday. Tolmie, A., & Boyle, J. (2000). Factors influencing the success of computer mediated communication (CMC) environments in university teaching: A review and case study. Computers & Education, 34(2), 119–140. doi:10.1016/S03601315(00)00008-7

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Tonkin, E. (2005). Making the case for a Wiki. Ariadne, 42. Retrieved June 4, 2008, from http:// www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue42/tonkin/ Trentin, G. (2008). Using a Wiki to evaluate individual contribution to a collaborative learning project. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. Retrieved May 9, 2008, from http://www.blackwellpublishing.com. Valacich, J. S., Dennis, A. R., & Nunamaker, J. F. Jr. (1992). Group size and anonymity effects on computer-mediated idea generation. Small Group Research, 23(1), 49–73. doi:10.1177/1046496492231004 Wang, C.-M., & Turner, D. (2004, April). Extending the Wiki paradigm for use in the classroom. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Technology: Coding and Computing, 2004. Proceedings, 1(5-7), 255–259. Wheeler, S., Yeomans, P., & Wheeler, D. (2008). The good, the bad and the Wiki: Evaluating student-generated content for collaborative learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(6), 987–995. doi:10.1111/j.14678535.2007.00799.x

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Collaborative Learning: A pedagogy that engages students in teamwork and is closely related to cooperative learning. It is based on the assumption that learning goals are maximized by sharing knowledge among learners. Community of Practice: A group of people who are mutually engaged in achieving a common purpose by sharing of resources. CoWeb (Collaborative Web) or Swiki: CoWeb is a web-based group collaboration tool written in Squeak, an open-source programming language. It has been developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1999 for educational use. MediaWiki: A popular Wiki engine developed in 2002 and written in the PHP programming language. MediaWiki is used for maintaining Wikipedia. Micropedia: An online encyclopedia that contains a limited amount of content and is typically limited to a certain topic. QwikiWiki: A Wiki software engine written in PHP programming language. Wiki: A collaborative website in which anyone can freely create and edit content.

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Chapter 20

The Hybrid Course

Facilitating Learning through Social Interaction Technologies Lorraine D. Jackson California Polytechnic State University, USA Joe Grimes California Polytechnic State University, USA

ABSTRACT This chapter surveys the benefits and challenges of hybrid courses, which blend face-to-face instruction with online learning, and opportunities provided by the introduction of Web-based social interaction technologies. It discusses the pedagogical implications of various Web 2.0 tools: that is, asynchronous discussion boards, blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, e-portfolios, folksonomies, educational gaming, data mashups, and simulations. The authors argue that as hybrid courses continue to evolve to meet the needs of students, instructors, and institutions of higher learning, the integration of Web 2.0 applications in a hybrid model requires thoughtful course design, clear educational objectives, and carefully planned activities.

INTRODUCTION The traditional face-to-face classroom, in which an instructor lectures, demonstrates, and leads discussion, has been the primary method for acquiring an education in colleges and universities. However, advances in social interaction technologies have resulted in greater variation in educational experiences for online learning. A study by the National Center for Education Statistics surveying over 4,000 two and four year degree granting institutions found DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch020

that 88% plan to increase or start offering courses using asynchronous computer based instruction as the primary mode of delivery (National Center for Education Statistics, 2003). Asynchronous instruction means that students and faculty are not required to be present at the same time (either electronically or in person) to participate in the class. Technology is clearly transforming the educational landscape. On the continuum from fully face-to-face to fully online courses, hybrid or blended courses are centered somewhere in the middle merging the most desirable aspects of both approaches (So & Brush, 2008). In a hybrid course, students spend more

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The Hybrid Course

time learning online through planned activities, tutorials, assignments, and discussion. To make time for online activities, the face-to-face class meeting time is reduced significantly. Unlike the traditional lecture-based classroom (also known as face-to-face teaching), students have more flexibility regarding the time and place where learning occurs (Aycock, Garnham, & Kaleta, 2002). Some contend that this promotes students’ active engagement in their learning, typically called student-centered or constructivist learning. Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (1999) argue that active, as opposed to passive, learners are better able to understand complex information, are more likely to transfer concepts learned in one setting to another, and are more likely to retain information.

BACKGROUND As recently as the mid 1990’s, most students did not own a personal computer, used single function technologies (e.g., phone, camera, video player), and had irregular access to the Internet. Today’s students typically own computers, have multifunction mobile technologies, and use the Internet on a daily basis (McGee & Diaz, 2007). The technological environment continues to change for faculty as well. During the 1990’s the “technology” in the classroom originally consisted of chalkboards, overhead transparency projectors and VCRs. Classroom Internet access was not common. Additionally, faculty may or may not have had access to email from home, and if they did, dial-up service made home use of the Internet slow and sometimes unreliable. Today, more classrooms are equipped with various types of technology including Internet access, integrated projectors for computers and DVDs, audio and video devices for distance learning, and document cameras, to name a few. Typically, faculty members have home access to campus computing resources using improved broadband connections.

Learning management systems, sometimes called course management systems, are becoming more commonplace and are enabling communications, learning materials, assignments, and grading to occur online. Although face-to-face lecturing is still a mainstay of many professors’ teaching repertoire, emerging technology is shifting the methods used by faculty (Maloney, 2007). Educators are no longer solely lecturers, but are increasingly becoming designers and facilitators of learning environments. Along with changes in technology, advancements in learning theory also play a role in this paradigm shift. Educators are now advised to incorporate more constructivist pedagogy in which active learning is accomplished (Rovai, 2007). Instead of focusing exclusively on the transfer of knowledge from teacher to student, educators are encouraged to find ways to motivate and involve students in the discovery and even the creation of knowledge. The expected outcomes of effective teaching are also changing. As educators move from a teaching-centered to a learning-centered model, student recall of information is not necessarily the preferred outcome. Student understanding, integration, and application become salient desirable outcomes. Indeed, changes in technology and learning theory are having an impact on how contemporary educators approach instruction. Many educators are beginning to teach in ways that differ from how they were taught when they were students (Hartman, Dziuban, & BrophyEllison, 2007). According to Burbules (2007), education needs to be understood in the current context of technological ubiquity. Although definitions of Web 2.0 vary, the term acknowledges development of web applications beyond read-only websites that now allow Internet users to increasingly become content providers as well as receivers. The earlier developments on the World Wide Web served to disperse information in a top-down manner. Today, the web has evolved to be more participatory with collective users building information from the bot-

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tom up or interacting with each other in real time or asynchronously. The web is also increasingly accessible and user-friendly. Web feeds or web syndications update relevant information automatically, harnessing the combined intelligence of users. Social networking and resource sharing sites have emerged rapidly and “students have turned these sites into the nexus of their social and even academic universe” (Hartman, Dziuban, & Brophy-Ellison, 2007, p. 66). The current uses of technology are blurring traditional spheres previously viewed as separate. Work and play, learning and entertainment, accessing and creating, and public and private areas are no longer demarcated with clear distinction (Burbules, 2007). This chapter reviews newer and emerging applications of technology, many of which are being used in education, particularly in hybrid courses blending traditional face-to-face teaching with enhanced technology. Learning management systems, user-created content, social networking, collaborative learning, podcasting, virtual worlds, and educational gaming are beginning to broadly affect higher education, and will continue to do so in the near future. The benefits and challenges of these emerging applications for hybrid learning are discussed.

HYBRID COURSES AND SOCIAL SOFTWARE Courses taught in hybrid mode do not simply “add technology” to the existing curriculum, but should involve thoughtful course redesign in order to apply principles of good pedagogy fully augmented with outside-of-class activities enabled with technology. Bloom’s taxonomy describes several categories of learning. In the cognitive learning domain, instructional activities range from lower levels to higher levels of learning. For example, as one moves up the hierarchy (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) the development of intellectual

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attitudes and skills become increasingly sophisticated (Bloom, 1956). Higher thinking rests on a foundation of lower order thinking. For most courses, hybrid mode is best implemented by having the students do preparatory work outside of class so the in-class activities can provide an opportunity for learning at higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy with very little traditional lecturing occurring. A Learning Management System (LMS) is an important component of most hybrid courses. It is a software application or web-based instructional technology used to develop, implement, and evaluate student-learning activities. Examples of learning management systems include Blackboard®, Webboard®, or WebCT®. Some faculty members create their own websites providing resources analogous to an LMS. An instructor may use the LMS to provide learning materials (e.g., readings, assignments, brief video, links to external websites, etc.) and social software applications (e.g., interactive chat, blogs, etc.). A typical tool embedded in an LMS is an asynchronous discussion board. According to Martyn (2003), the asynchronous discussion board lets the students post technical and content-oriented questions, clarify assignments, post and answer each other’s questions under the supervision of the faculty member, and build community. Gannon (2004) explains how she incorporated active learning into her course by giving students weekly online assignments, which included using the discussion board. Students were informed that their postings would be graded for quality and quantity, and Gannon observed that most students were motivated to participate and successfully completed the work. Likewise, a sample of 413 students in a hybrid setting reportedly found the discussion board tool more useful than in-class discussions because: (a) they could take their time to compose a response, (b) they were required to participate online as opposed to face-to-face where participation was not required, and (c) students who normally do not participate in class

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were less reluctant to participate online (AmreinBeardsley, Foulger, & Toth, 2007). There is also evidence that participation in online discussion can enhance engagement during face-to-face inclass discussions (Vess, 2005). Rovai (2007) provides a thoughtful synthesis of current techniques for facilitating online discussion effectively. Among his recommendations, instructors should provide forums for socio-emotional discussions as well as content and task oriented discussions. This serves to build a sense of community within the course. Similarly, instructors should balance developing a social presence in the virtual environment while avoiding monopolizing discussions. Additionally, instructors need to attend to social equity issues, and have an awareness of the communication patterns of culturally diverse students. The LMS can also be used to observe student participation online, evaluate student work, exchange material with students, hold virtual office hours or classes, manage groups or teams, anonymously deliver student evaluations and grades, and provide for wikis or blogs. One study found that students identified the online grade book and announcements as most useful (Amrein-Beardsley et al, 2007). In this study, students appreciated timely posting of assignment grades, found it helpful to monitor their progress, and felt more college instructors should use the tool. A web-based LMS should have the capability to link transparently to other web resources such as educational games, simulations, or other resources. Often a teacher will collect a number of resources in an organized fashion within the LMS, known as a learning module. The learning module enables students to accomplish one or more learning outcomes by performing a series of activities in an organized fashion. An LMS may be open-source, purchased for a license fee, or developed by a teacher to meet specific course requirements. LMS developers are encouraged to adhere to standards by following the Shared Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) to enable

compatibility between LMS (for more information about SCORM, see http://www.adlnet.gov/ scorm). LMS can have various Web 2.0 capabilities including: blogs, wikis, virtual classrooms, podcasting, Really Simple Syndication (RSS®), and e-portfolios, which are described below.

Blogs A blog, short for weblog, provides the capability for the user(s) to post information about a particular topic or to maintain a diary with entries typically posted in reverse chronological order. Currently the fastest growing area of the web, blogs account for around 27% of all Internet use (Ramos & Piper, 2006). In March 2005 there were approximately two million blogs worldwide. Technorati®, a blog search engine, is now tracking over 70 million blogs, and notes about 120,000 new blogs are created worldwide each day. In academic settings, student blogs may be used to share information, to report on events, to practice writing, to develop argumentative and editing skills, and to engage in collaborative design. Students reading blogs may benefit from exposure to a variety of perspectives, values, and life experiences. Ramos and Piper (2006) argue that as the Internet becomes more accessible around the world, so do “the voices in the blogosphere, representing viewpoints from a diversity of cultures, and allowing glimpses into people’s lives that have never before been possible” (p. 571). Blogs can be authored by groups or individuals, and may be authored by instructors or students. Research on blogs has looked at their personal journal or storytelling function. Herring, Scheidt, Bonus, and Wright (2005) examined a random sample of blogs and found that more than 70% could be classified as personal journals. However, blogs differ from diaries in the sense that they are public and others can comment on blog entries. Stefanone and Jang (2007) studied the personality characteristics of bloggers and observed that individuals high in extraversion and self-disclosure

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tend to have larger online social networks with stronger ties. Furthermore, they found that rather than promoting isolation, blogs tend to enhance existing relationships. Research on educational uses of blogs is presently limited. Stefanone and Jang (2007) remark that the potential exists for studying the effects of public accessibility of personal information. Other potential research areas include: the strategic use of blogs by students, student decision-making on blog content, demographic and psychological factors affecting blog behavior, perceived student benefits of blogging, and faculty experiences with the use of blogs as an educational tool.

Wikis A wiki is a writing space that is created and edited by a community of users (Saxton, 2008). Wikis provide the opportunity for educational collaboration where users may create text, link web pages, and edit their work. Wikis enable bottom-up editing where expertise is not limited to a few, but rather emerges from the combined efforts of the many (Ramos & Piper, 2006). Wikis and blogs can incorporate text, images, audio and video. They may be included in an LMS, or available as an open source product or licensed product. Wikis may be private to the class, often by authentication through the LMS, or open beyond the class. It is important to choose a wiki that meets the instructor’s educational objectives. Phillipson (2008) identifies several different types of educational wikis, three of which are presented here. For example, he describes the resource wiki as an assemblage of a collaborative knowledge base, much like the popular Wikipedia®. The presentation wiki, on the other hand, may aim to represent class content to the outside world, and may also highlight the process the class followed to assemble the information. A simulation wiki is an interactive environment where exploration, decisions, and branching pathways dominate. Phillipson (2008) describes how students involved in

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the Holocaust Wiki Project, used background information to invent a family. Then, using multiple actors, narratives and story lines, they were able to explore and study this historical event through participation in the wiki. Although these and other potential uses of wikis as an educational tool are just beginning to be explored, clearly, wikis have wide ranging potential in student learning.

Podcasts Podcasting, a term derived from the combination of Apple’s iPod® and broadcasting, involves transferring digital media files, such as audio and video, over the Internet for replay using portable media players and/or personal computers. The function of a podcast is communicative; it is useful for sharing ideas and information, and enables learning to occur in a convenient and portable format. Podcasts appear to have significant potential as a mobile learning tool. Evans (2008) explored the use of podcasts as a method for students to review material after taking a traditional lecture class, but prior to their final examination. In this study, podcasts were not used as an alternative to attendance, but rather as a supplemental method of review. The findings demonstrated that students were receptive to using podcasts and felt that podcasts were more effective than their own textbooks and notes in helping them to learn. Podcasting can also make material more accessible to diverse learners (Cebeci & Tekdal, 2006). Some have even converted entire lecture courses into podcasts, allowing class time to be dedicated to problem solving and group project sessions. However, McGee, and Diaz (2007) advise against transmitting entire lectures through podcasting; instead, they recommend selecting shorter, more pointed segments for transmission which they contend will result in more student use. Villano (2008) provides practical advice for designing better podcasts in areas, such as communication skills, sound quality, length, and editing, to name a few. Additional research is needed on the effec-

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tiveness of podcasting as a learning tool (Evans, 2008). Podcasts have the ability to be syndicated, or subscribed to using an aggregator, such as an RSS® reader.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS®) An RSS® reader receives feeds from content that is frequently updated, such as blog entries, podcasts, and/or news headlines. The reader or aggregator will frequently check the content of subscribed sites for updates and will display the new material. It will aggregate material from multiple sites into one location so that the user does not have to check multiple sites for updates. The RSS® reader may be incorporated in other educational tools, such as an LMS, wikis, or blog.

an e-portfolio format that meets the instructor’s education requirements.

Virtual Classroom Another possible component of some hybrid courses is the virtual classroom. “Virtual office hours” are possible through synchronous interactive chat (the equivalent of Instant Messenger®). The virtual classroom also provides other resources, such as an online “whiteboard” which has the capability to project material onto a “shared” screen which can be viewed by students when they are online. These sessions may be recorded and made available so that students can view them at a later time.

Folksonomies E-Portfolios E-portfolios are an integrated collection of webbased multimedia documents that may include curriculum standards, course assignments and corresponding student artifacts, and reviewer feedback to the student’s work (Gathercoal, Love, Bryde, & McKean, 2002). The evolution of web-based technology has made it easier to construct, store, and present evidence of academic work online. This, coupled with a shift toward competency-based education where students demonstrate what they have learned makes electronic portfolio development a growing trend (Johnson & Rayman, 2007). One example is the Digital Notebook project at Georgetown University. Students have an online space for learning, creating, collaborating, and storing the evidence of their work. Maloney (2007) explains: “Our hope is that the Digital Notebook will help students track how their thinking developed from their freshman to their senior year, in part by giving them the tools to map connections between the pieces of information they have learned and to share those connections and knowledge with others” (B27). As a practical matter, it is important to choose

With this capability, it is possible to add tags (keywords) to information providing the user with the ability to manage the information. This is also known as collaborativetagging and socialclassification. These tools make it possible to categorize and annotate content using tags and to provide the capabilities to associate tags with individuals. A folksonomy is user-driven and directly reflects the vocabulary of users. Folksonomies often arise in communities of web users, such as the Flickr® photo sharing site. It is anticipated that they will become popular because they place the responsibility of organization on the user. Folksonomies will likely become an important tool in student learning.

Educational Games The video game market is currently the third fastest growing segment of the entertainment media market, and is expected to be a 48.9 billion dollar industry in 2011 (Scanlon, 2007). Two areas slated for growth are the so-called “serious games” which are used for non-entertainment or educational purposes, and the innovative attempts to begin

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combining gaming with the social networking features of Web 2.0 (Scanlon, 2007). These games (sometimes called Massively Multiplayer Online Educational Gaming) bring multiple players together in a goal-oriented activity that can be collaborative or competitive in nature. Educational games (edugames) typically involve role-playing exercises where player-learners work towards achieving educational objectives. For example, games designed to make business deals and build wealth help learners practice strategy and apply knowledge competitively (New Media Consortium, 2007). Another educational game might include virtual immersion (Multi-User Virtual Environments) in a foreign language or culture, where players read directions, travel, and interact with others to complete a quest. One advantage of these games is that learning may be accelerated when there is an emotional response involved, such as excitement or interest (Waters, 2007). Another advantage is that the virtual world may provide a safe environment for trying new skills and making mistakes. In the virtual world, player-learners often use avatars (a computer user’s one, two or three dimensional representation of himself or herself). These representations can enable player-learners to save face as they try to improve their skill (Waters, 2007). Research demonstrates that well designed edugames have the potential advantage of increasing intrinsic motivation and deepening learning (Moore, Fowler, & Watson, 2007). Although educational gaming is not heavily used today, the proliferation of open-source gaming engines will make it more realistic for developers to produce these tools for educational purposes.

Data Mashups According to Maloney (2007), mashups are websites that “take dynamically changing pieces of information from completely different sources and compile the data into an integrated user experience, one that continues to change and grow as

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the underlying information changes” (B26-27). For example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has created a Google® Earth mashup that generates maps of the earth displaying air quality based on pollutants from businesses (New Media Consortium, 2008). It is anticipated that mashups will help educators show their students relationships between large data sets in ways that are meaningful. They can also be used for artistic and creative expression.

Simulations Because it is impractical or too costly to execute some educational experiments or events, often simulator tools are used to represent key elements of a physical or conceptual system. Because of the complexity of many of these systems, it is necessary to limit the number of elements represented. The simulation may be used to represent such things as a scientific experiment, a business process, or an engineering system. There are tools available for creating simulations such as those developed by Carnegie Mellon University as a part of their Open Learning Initiative. As these and other tools are developed further, it is anticipated that hybrid courses will play an important role in the evolution of the educational landscape.

BENEFITS OF HYBRID COURSES Well designed hybrid courses have the potential to benefit students in a variety of ways. Students have access to multiple course resources, and are not limited to learning in a particular physical space. In many ways, hybrid courses shift the focus away from the instructor, and promote a more learner-centered model. The extended access to the materials allows students to learn at their own pace. Additionally, students typically participate in online discussion and networked shared learning. So and Brush (2008) found that students who perceived high levels of collabora-

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tive learning in their course tended to be more satisfied with their hybrid experience. Building community, having exposure to other points of views, expressing ideas, and giving and receiving peer feedback are important aspects of hybrid courses. Students also benefit from practicing technical and online skills they will need upon entering the workforce. Marcketti and Yurchisin (2005) emphasized that undergraduates preferred the hybrid format to traditional offline format, and to a course that had exclusively online elements. Some argue that a good hybrid design can result in better student learning of past course objectives and achievement of new objectives. DeNeui and Dodge (2006) observed a significant positive correlation between students’ usage of online components and their success in the course. In their study, those who used Blackboard® more frequently scored better on exams than those who used it less frequently. Furthermore, research using a blind review process demonstrated that students in well-designed hybrid courses completed projects that scored between 10-12% higher grades than those written by students in lecture format classes (Martyn, 2003). Also, well-designed hybrid courses add new learning outcomes, such as life-long learning and team-based learning skills. Institutions with increasing enrollments and limited physical space may find that reducing in-class time can lead to more effective utilization of classrooms and meet the greater demands for education (Olapiriyakul & Scher, 2006).

of the project. This will provide an opportunity to consider the various factors that are either favorable or unfavorable. The results of the analysis will be unique to the faculty member and the course involved. There are several good models for moving to a hybrid mode on various university websites. Also, some learning modules have been developed by universities and are freely available for use by other universities. The efforts of Carnegie Mellon University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are noteworthy. Other modules are generally available on the Merlot.org website, and there are commercially developed products. In addition to the specific technical aspects of the LMS software and other technology, faculty may need training in pedagogical principles that apply to hybrid courses. Training may include understanding the impact of various learning styles and principles, creating learning outcomes, and designing appropriate online content, assignments and assessment methods. Faculty members need institutional support in the form of incentives or release time from teaching to take on the additional work that comes with converting a faceto-face course into one with an online component (Grosjean & Sork, 2007). They also need access to faculty development professionals who have technical and pedagogical knowledge, as well as awareness about how to facilitate compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Some of the other challenges that faculty and administrators should consider follow: 1.

CHALLENGES OF HYBRID COURSES Developing new methods of teaching takes motivation and an investment of time. When considering hybrid courses and the use of social software tools, it would be worthwhile for educators to conduct a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis of the objectives

Faculty who are using hybrid mode will find it beneficial to explain to students how the use of this approach will help to achieve specified learning outcomes. In other words, explaining why they are participating in new educational activities is helpful. “Today making the transition from passive to active learners means engaging them [students] in the conversation from the beginning” (Moore, Fowler, & Watson, 2007, p. 52).

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2.

3.

4.

5.

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Because this may be a new experience for the students, they will also need training and rules for professional behavior (“netiquette”) in this environment. The skills of research, critical thinking, and evaluation will be increasingly important to students who have unprecedented and instant access to user-created content of varying quality (New Media Consortium, 2007). Most student evaluations of teaching effectiveness instruments were designed to assess face-to-face instruction, focusing primarily on an individual instructor. In hybrid courses, a broad spectrum of elements shapes the learner’s experience (Grosjean & Sork, 2007). Some of these include the technology itself, the design of content, the organization and integration of materials, and even the faculty member’s ability to moderate an online community. Methods of evaluating instructors may need to be modified to assess the instructor as a designer and facilitator of an interactive learning environment. In this learning environment, teaching excellence is becoming more multifaceted (Hartman et al, 2007). Because faculty may be using the web and commercial products, they need to be aware of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) requirements as well as copyright and intellectual property requirements when using the products of others, including the copyright and intellectual property rights of their students. Hybrid courses emphasize more self-regulated learning on the part of students. Although this develops students’ active involvement, the research by Aycock and colleagues (2002) suggests that students’poor time management skills can be an obstacle. Understanding student motivation, appropriately pacing workload, providing sequential tasks, and having discussions about students’ self-directed learning roles may be helpful.

6.

It is also useful when implementing new instructional methods to provide students with opportunities for regular feedback. Grosjean and Sork (2007) recommend that instructors should be prepared to change aspects of their hybrid course if something is not working as intended. Evaluation, feedback, and reflection are necessary to make adjustments to hybrid courses over time.

FUTURE TRENDS Although there is extensive research on students’ satisfaction and perceptions of learning, only a few empirical studies have examined the influence of hybrid course technology on objective measures of student learning (DeNeui & Dodge, 2006), and more outcome-based research is needed. As a result, professional conferences and workshops related to hybrid learning are increasing in number and quality, with the non-profit Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) as one of the leaders (http://www. sloan-c.org). Shih, Feng, and Tsai (2008) examined research and trends in the field of e-learning between 2001-2005 and concluded that studies related to instructional approaches, information processing, and motivation will likely be influential topics for subsequent research. They predict that an essential issue in future research will be “how to maintain and enhance students’ learning motivation and teachers’ teaching motivation in a constantly changing educational environment” (p. 965). Additionally, they contend there may be enhanced “personalization” of education, whereby increased variety in the ways in which teaching occurs can accommodate various learning styles. Many of the Web 2.0 tools now available have been developed with little thought about using them for educational purposes. It is anticipated that the future will bring seamless ties between these tools allowing them to be geared more towards

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educational applications. For example, although not used significantly in education currently, it is anticipated that social resources, such as Second Life®, will be incorporated as a learning tool along with social software networks that were developed primarily for industrial use. According to the most recent Horizon Report (New Media Consortium, 2008), as globalization increases, online collaboration webs and the tools that support them are also expected to increase. Collaborative webs are networking sites that interested individuals or groups can access to foster educational sharing capabilities. Some examples include San Francisco State University’s Digital Information Virtual Archive (diva.sfsu.edu) and Skoolaborate® (www.skoolaborate.com). As ubiquitous as the broadband mobile phone has become, the varied features of it have also become more common: e.g., music playing, recording, camera and video capability, and photo storage. It is anticipated that these portable multimedia features will also be increasingly used for educational applications (New Media Consortium, 2008).

CONCLUSION This chapter has discussed the benefits and challenges of hybrid courses that blend face-to-face instruction with online learning and opportunities provided by the introduction of web-based social interaction technologies. The best hybrid courses are based on thoughtful design and utilize active learning, both in online education and interactive face-to-face meetings. The success of a hybrid course will be enhanced by: (a) effective planning and integration of the face-to-face and online activities to achieve the desired learning outcomes for the course; (b) choosing the appropriate tools to achieve the desired outcomes; (c) faculty preparation to enable the effective use of the new learning environment; and (d) developing a plan positioning students to understand their new role

and how they can be successful in it. If a hybrid course is designed properly, the strengths are likely to be: (a) increased learning by students; (b) more engagement by students because the course can be designed to allow them to bear responsibility for its success; (c) more enthusiastic participation by the students; (d) an opportunity for faculty to participate in a completely new way of teaching by having student-centered activities; and (e) ultimately a course that is more organized. The use of technology and development of hybrid courses will continue to evolve to meet the needs of contemporary students, faculty, and institutions of higher learning.

REFERENCES Amrein-Beardsley, A., Foulger, T., & Toth, M. (2007). Examining the development of a hybrid degree program: Using student and instructor data to inform decision-making. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 39(4), 331–357. Aycock, A., Garnham, C., & Kaleta, R. (2002). Lessons learned from the hybrid course project. Teaching with Technology Today, 8(6), 1-5. Retrieved July 9, 2008, from http://www.uwsa.edu/ ttt/articles/garnham2.htm Bloom, B. S. (Ed.). (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals: Handbook I. Cognitive domain. New York: Longmans, Green. Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Burbules, N. C. (2007). E-lessons learned. Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, 106(2), 207–216.

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Cebeci, Z., & Tekdal, M. (2006). Using podcasts as audio learning objects. Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects, 2, 7–57. DeNeui, D. L., & Dodge, T. (2006). Asynchronous learning networks and student outcomes: The utility of online learning components in hybrid courses. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 33(4), 256–259. Evans, C. (2008). The effectiveness of m-learning in the form of podcast revision lectures in higher education. Computers & Education, 50, 491–498. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2007.09.016 Gannon, E. J. (2004). Bringing active learning into a hybrid course. Academic Exchange Quarterly, 8(4), 253–257. Gathercoal, P., Love, D., Bryde, B., & McKean, G. (2002). On implementing Web-based electronic portfolios. EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 2, 29–37. Grosjean, G., & Sork, T. J. (2007). Going online: Uploading learning to the virtual classroom. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 113, 13–24. doi:10.1002/ace.243 Hartman, J. L., Dziuban, C., & Brophy-Ellison, J. (2007). Faculty 2.0. EDUCAUSE Review, 42(5), 62–76. Herring, S. C., Scheidt, L. A., Bonus, S., & Wright, E. (2005). Weblogs as a bridging genre. Information Technology & People, 18(2), 142–171. doi:10.1108/09593840510601513 Johnson, G., & Rayman, J. R. (2007). E-portfolios: A collaboration between student affairs and faculty. New Directions for Student Services, 119, 17–30. doi:10.1002/ss.246 Lam, P., & McNaught, C. (2006). Design and evaluation of online courses containing media-enhanced learning materials. Educational Media International, 43(3), 199–218. doi:10.1080/09523980600641403

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Maloney, E. (2007). What Web 2.0 can teach us about learning. [from Academic Search Elite Database.]. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 53(18), B26–B27. Retrieved July 9, 2008. Marcketti, S. B., & Yurchisin, J. (2005). Student perceptions of a hybrid course. Academic Exchange Quarterly, 9(3), 317–320. Martyn, M. (2003). The hybrid on-line model: Good practice. EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 1, 18–23. McGee, P., & Diaz, V. (2007). Wikis and podcasts and blogs! Oh my! What is a faculty member supposed to do? EDUCAUSE Review, 42(5), 28–40. Moore, A. H., Fowler, S. B., & Watson, C. E. (2007). Designing change for faculty, students and institutions. EDUCAUSE Review, 42(5), 42–60. National Center for Education Statistics. (2003). Distance education at degree granting postsecondary institutions 2000-2001. Retrieved March 2, 2008, from http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/peqis/ publications/2003017/ New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. (2007). The horizon report. Retrieved March 11, 2007 from http://www.nmc. org/horizon/ New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. (2008). The horizon report. Retrieved July 10, 2008, from http://www.nmc. org/horizon/ Olapiriyakul, K., & Scher, J. M. (2006). A guide to establishing hybrid learning courses: Employing information technology to create a new learning experience, and a case study. The Internet and Higher Education, 9, 287–301. doi:10.1016/j. iheduc.2006.08.001

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Phillipson, M. (2008). Wikis in the classroom: A taxonomy. Wildwiki. Retrieved July 10, 2008, from http://www.wildwiki.net/mediawiki/ index.php?title=%E2%80%9CWikis_in_the_ Classroom:_A_Taxonomy%E2%80%9D Ramos, M., & Piper, P. S. (2006). Letting the grass grow: Grassroots information on blogs and Wikis. RSR. Reference Services Review, 34(4), 570–574. doi:10.1108/00907320610716459 Rovai, A. P. (2007). Facilitating online discussions effectively. The Internet and Higher Education, 10, 77–88. doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2006.10.001 Saxton, B. (2008, Winter). Information tools: Using blogs, RSS®, and Wikis as professional resources. Young Adult Library Services, 27-29. Scanlon, J. (2007, August). Getting serious about gaming. Business Week Online, 10. Shih, M., Feng, J., & Tsai, C. (2008). Research and trends in the field of e-learning from 2001-2005: A content analysis of cognitive studies in selected journals. Computers & Education, 51, 955–967. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2007.10.004 So, H., & Brush, T. (2008). Student perceptions of collaborative learning, social presence and satisfaction in a blended learning environment: Relationships and critical factors. Computers & Education, 51, 318–336. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2007.05.009 Stefanone, M. A., & Jang, C. Y. (2007). Writing for friends and family: The interpersonal nature of blogs. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1). Retrieved July 8, 2008, from http:// jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/stefanone.html Vess, D. L. (2005). Asynchronous discussion and communication patterns in online and hybrid history courses. Communication Education, 54(4), 355–364. doi:10.1080/03634520500442210 Villano, M. (2008). Building a better podcast. T.H.E. Journal, 35(1), 30–37.

Waters, J. K. (2007). On a quest for English: Online role-playing games, which take players on explorations of medieval fantasy worlds, are showing the potential to be a powerful tool for ESL learning. [Technological Horizons in Education]. T.H.E. Journal, 34(10), 26–31.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Asynchronous Discussion Board: An online bulletin board where users may post and respond to messages in forums which are specific topic areas for discussion. Subordinate discussions within a forum are often called threads. Since users do not have to be online at the same time, they can enter the discussion board according to their own schedules. Avatar: A computer user’s one, two or threedimensional representation of himself or herself in a virtual space (See Multi-User Virtual Environment). Blog: Short for weblog, a blog provides the capability for the user(s) to post information about a particular topic or to maintain a diary with entries typically posted in reverse chronological order. Electronic Portfolios or E-Portfolios: An integrated collection of web-based multimedia documents that may include curriculum standards, course assignments and corresponding student artifacts, and reviewer feedback to the student’s work. Folksonomy: Also known as collaborative tagging and social classification, folksonomies make it possible to categorize and annotate content using tags (keywords) and to provide the capabilities to associate tags with individuals. Learning Management System (LMS): A software application or web-based technology used to develop, implement, and evaluate student-learning activities. Examples of Learning Management Systems include Blackboard®, Webboard®, or WebCT®.

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Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE): A virtual environment that enables simultaneous participants to represent themselves with avatars, interact with other participants and digital artifacts, and practice building skills or solving problems that have applications in real world contexts. Podcast: A method of publishing digital media files for transfer to and playback on a computer or a portable media player. Web 2.0: An improvement in the application of the web infrastructure to support communities

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on the web and deliver services such as wikis, blogs, folksonomies, and other social interaction technologies. Wiki: Software that provides the infrastructure for faculty and/or students to collaboratively develop and link Internet web pages. Each wiki has its unique characteristics, but most have tracking of individual effort and recovery of past versions.

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Chapter 21

The Use of Social Interaction Technologies in E-Portfolios Lina Pelliccione Curtin University of Technology, Australia Catherine Pocknee Swinburne University of Technology, Australia Julie Mulvany Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

ABSTRACT The chapter focuses on the potential of electronic portfolios (e-portfolios) to engage and motivate the learners and presents a framework for the informed inclusion and adoption of social interaction technologies as a means to increase the effective use of e-portfolios. Electronic portfolios are a Web-based format for providing genuine evidence of student performance, self-reflection, competence, career planning and leadership. The e-portfolios meet the needs of the digital learner in the knowledge society. The collaboratively constructed artifacts enable the articulation of shared knowledge building and selfreflective practice, further confirming the status of e-portfolios as living documents. By their electronic nature, e-portfolios open promising opportunities for the assimilation of social interaction technologies such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, video, and photo sharing. The authors trace the development and use of e-portfolios within the context of higher education. Various e-portfolio tools are discussed along with their educational potential and the associated challenges.

INTRODUCTION A significant body of research exists that identifies electronic portfolios (e-portfolios) as a first-rate tool for providing genuine evidence of performance, selfreflection, competence and leadership in students. The collaboratively constructed artifacts enable the DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch021

articulation of shared knowledge building and selfreflective practice, further confirming the status of e-portfolios as living documents. e-portfolios, by their electronic nature, open promising opportunities for the integration of various social interaction technologies, such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, video, photo sharing, and others. The chapter focuses on the potential of social interaction technologies to engage and motivate

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learners to extend their participation in the eportfolio process and so enable them to document lifelong learning capabilities as well as promote deeper learning (Tosh & Werdmuller, 2004). The authors trace the history, development and use of e-portfolios within the higher education context. Theoretical frameworks and educational potential are addressed along with the associated developmental challenges including individual commitment and engagement, deep learning and reflection, and assessment. The theories of “constructivism” and “connectivism” (Siemens, 2004) that underpin the adoption of social interaction technologies are reexamined. Finally the chapter concludes with arguments for the informed inclusion of social interaction technologies as a means to address factors currently impeding the effective use of e-portfolios.

BACKGROUND The use of e-portfolios in higher education is preceded by the traditional use of paper-based portfolios. Portfolios have had a long history as the showcase tools of artists, whereby they contained completed pieces of work to demonstrate skills and talent. Since this time portfolios have been widely used in a variety of disciplines, particularly in the field of education. The extensive use of paper-based portfolios in education (Tomkinson, 1997) has informed the transition to electronic portfolios, also known as e-portfolios. In the U.S. and Western European education and training, extensive resources have been allocated to assist in a system-wide adoption of e-portfolios. Portfolios are being increasingly used as a career advancement tool (Redish, Webb, & Jiang, 2006). In Europe, The Centre for Recording Achievement in the United Kingdom (Beetham, 2006) and the European Institute for eLearning (The Higher Education Academy, 2005) are promoting the use of Personal Development Plans whereby each individual has a personal electronic

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portfolio that contains “evidence of an individual’s achievements over a lifetime of learning and employment.” In the teacher education sector, for example, some graduates in the United States are required to demonstrate mandated National Standards prior to being granted teacher registration (Ma & Rada, 2005). With the introduction of Teacher Registration Boards and other accreditation bodies in all Australian States, it appears that Australia is moving in the same direction. In its simplest form, an e-portfolio is a collection of evidence that reflects a learner’s progress, development and achievement over time. Depending on the discipline, the e-portfolio usually contains education history, certificates, work-samples, awards, personal values, interests, photos, videos, observation, feedback from supervisors/peers, evaluations, and—importantly— reflections on each piece of evidence. The reflective comments highlight the reason for selection and the learning that occurred. These reflective processes and comments are the key to an e-portfolio. It is through this reflective process that the learner is provided with “learning spaces where he or she “can gain insights and a better understanding of him/herself as a learner” (Greenberg, 2003, p.12). The expansion of the World Wide Web has considerably transformed the potential of eportfolio. The graphical nature of the web and ability to link digital artifacts has revolutionized how information is located and reviewed. Web technologies now allow authors to seamlessly integrate text with graphics, audio and video. This visual capacity provides additional options for showcasing the authors’ accomplishments. Importantly, the linking mechanism of the web allows for tight integration between the elements of a portfolio and adds opportunity to connect the portfolio to the whole world. According to Siemens (2004), the growth of e-portfolios has been “fuelled by three broad factors: the dynamics of functioning in a knowledge economy, the changing nature of learning, and the changing needs of the learner.” In a knowledge

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economy, he argues, it is important for individuals to demonstrate their knowledge effectively, and the e-portfolio can display competencies and attributes undetected in an academic transcript. Siemens (2004) asserts that learning is also changing and that it is important to recognize that learning occurs in communities. Formal education becomes simply one aspect of one’s learning journey. The final factor influencing the adoption of e-portfolios, as Siemens (2004) claims, is that the social impact of technology has changed learners’ needs. Learners currently entering higher education are comfortable with the electronic environment, and actively seeking to engage with it. Although, e-portfolios, conceptually are similar to paper based portfolios, they have some distinct advantages over their paper counterparts. It is easier to organize, view and search an electronic portfolio. Depending on the software being used, a larger number of records can be securely stored, retrieved, and managed, and records and artifacts can be refined with little effort. e-portfolios enable the inclusion of more varied and extensive material, such as audio and visual artifacts, thus allowing for a multidimensional representation of the learner. The electronic nature of the e-portfolio enables a more creative and non-linear organizational structure. Their reduced size enables easy portability and access. This ease of access allows the learner to receive rapid and regular feedback from others. Unlike traditional portfolios e-portfolios may be reviewed by anyone, anywhere and anytime, and the author can control the nature of the interaction through organizing access (Greenberg, 2003). Exchanges can be private or public – teachers can provide feedback and discuss the student’s progress, students might discuss their work with each other, feedback can be sought from a wider audience, and individuals can reflect on their learning experiences (Greenberg, 2003). Eportfolios are relatively simple and inexpensive to reproduce and distribute. In addition, e-portfolios can showcase the technical and communication

skills of the creator. A growing body of research documents the advantages of electronic over paper based portfolios to enhance student reflection and learning and to provide improved evidence of student achievement to external groups (see, for example, Barrett, 2000; Butler, 2006; Greenberg, 2003; Jafari & Kaufman, 2006; Wetzel & Strudler, 2005). The use of e-portfolios in an educational environment facilitates student centered, reflective learning practices to complement flexible curriculum design. In addition, it provides students with a vehicle to demonstrate the acquisition of attributes and competencies valued by potential employers.

Integrating Electronic Portfolios with Web 2.0 Technologies Institutions of higher learning around the world are embracing student centered learning as a dynamic and effective approach for higher education: an approach which places the student at the center of their own learning experience and allows them to become active participants in their learning endeavors, constructing knowledge on their own terms (Biggs, 2003; Entwistle, 1997; Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983; Laurillard, 2002). In response to this trend, curriculum design in colleges and universities is increasingly focusing on capabilities rather than content. Students are progressively being asked more to demonstrate not only their general knowledge and skills within their discipline areas but also to articulate explicitly how they analyze, reconstruct and apply knowledge contextually in a variety of real life learning situations (Bowden, 2004; Bowden & Marton, 1998). Student e-portfolios are extremely responsive to current curriculum reform because they can be used to satisfy a variety of assessment and evaluation requirements in courses and programs. e-portfolios offer a suitable environment for a range of summative assessment tasks, as well as provide for continuous growth and reflection in

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the formative development of students and professionals alike. They are particularly well suited to holistic and iterative assessment and offer a forum where group work, self-assessment, and other employability skills can be articulated and evidenced. By their very nature e-portfolios are flexible tools which can be tailored to specific educational contexts (Meeus, Questier, & Derks, 2006) and are used in a wide range of ways in student learning contexts. Meeus, Questier and Derks (2006) suggest that e-portfolios are grounded pedagogically or educationally because they are student centered, competence oriented, and multimedia oriented; they are also cyclical with regard to action and reflection. It is these characteristics and the flexible nature of the technology which optimizes their educational use. From a learning theory perspective, e-portfolios support student centered learning approaches as they give students the opportunity to display a broad range of learning skills and attributes across an extensive range of learning domains (Knott, Lohani, Griffin, Loganathan, Adel, & Wildman, 2004). However, as Norman (1993) points out, modern day curricula often provide students with learning activities that are more concerned with experiencing various phenomena than encouraging reflective cognition. Electronic portfolio practitioners (Barrett, 2006; DiBase, 2002; Knott et al, 2004; Lambert & Corrin, 2006; Richards, 2005) claim that e-portfolios facilitate the reflective process in students by recording and articulating students’ learning experiences on multiple levels, thus enhancing the learning experience and engaging the student in a more profound analysis of the subject content. David DiBase (2002) in his long term eportfolio work at Pennsylvania State University notes that the key benefits of e-portfolios relate more to the process of developing and constructing the portfolio than to the final portfolio product. The constructive stages of collection, selection, reflection, projection, and presentation of the e-

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portfolio help to facilitate and encourage students to adopt a more reflective approach to learning. It is through this constructive process that students become more actively involved in planning their learning and more personally responsible for setting and achieving their educational goals (DiBase, 2002; Meeus et al., 2006). e-portfolios empower learners by allowing them to take control over their personal learning journey (Siemens, 2004; Tosh & Werdmuller, 2004). The reflective nature of e-portfolios encourages transformative practice. This notion is consistent with constructivist theory which argues that learners construct their own knowledge rather than simply receive it from others. Institutes who have a university wide commitment to curriculum that is student centered, or based on authentic learning models, are more likely to be able to encompass the broad range of educational opportunities that e-portfolios can provide. The adoption of a more student centered, authentic approach to learning ultimately promotes the notion of life-long learning. e-portfolios can be shared with other staff members and a systematic record of student progress can be established. When staff members collaboratively participate in the assessment process of e-portfolios, either formative or summative, they not only provide students with feedback concerning their progress toward achieving their learning goals, but also provide feedback about the effectiveness and impact of the learning experiences the course provides. When this process is adopted, students have evidence they can plan the advancement of their personal learning and staff can see how their teaching, and ultimately the course, can be improved (Raison & Pelliccione, 2006). This three-way approach benefits the learner, staff and the institution. Traditionally universities have been successful at developing knowledge and skills within defined discipline areas; however, both global challenges and pressure from industry to produce work ready graduates (see, e.g., European Ministers of Educa-

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tion, 1999; UNESCO, 1998) has forced academic staff to rethink how they can explicitly develop and assess less tangible capabilities. These include: the ability to deal with new, changing situations and problems, self-reflection and critique, the application of prior learning to new contexts, the ability to understand and deal with others’ perspectives, and how individual students can work within a team to resolve and deal with multiple issues and problems. These skills and abilities are frequently referred to as graduate attributes, key competencies or generic attributes. Many colleges and universities are now looking to e-portfolios as tools to demonstrate and articulate students’ acquisition of these attributes. Social interaction technologies, often referred to as “Web 2.0 technologies,” are providing academics with flexible online learning environments to stimulate and record complex social interactions that can evidence student acquisition of “workready” attributes and skills. These new technologies along with other “digital traces” or “digital knowledge artifacts” (such as writings, images and digital media files) are already allowing for sophisticated representation of relational concepts or processes (Vuorikari, 2005). A range of Web 2.0 technology tools is being utilized for e-portfolio development which afford learners different degrees of control, flexibility, and skill requirement: including specifically designed digital portfolio systems (such as PebblePad, Learning Assistant, and QuickStep); and, content-management systems offering e-portfolio functions (for example, Blackboard, WebCT, and LearnWise). Weblogs and wikis are being increasingly and successfully used within electronic portfolios to establish collaborative learning environments that both engage and motivate students, and promote greater retention of knowledge (BECTA, 2007, Shelley, Cashman, Gunter & Gunter, 2007). Hiler (2003) refers to the blog as “the latest disruptive technology” and the “killer application.” He claims that blogs provide a space for a variety of interests and promote collaborative activity, knowledge

sharing, reflection and debate. Oravec (2002) also found that blogging encourages personal reflection and collaboration. The exposure to blogging tools empowers students and encourages them to become more sophisticated critical and analytical thinkers (Ferdig & Trammel, 2004; Oravec, 2002). In addition, Ferdig and Trammel (2004) suggest that the relaxed and conversational tone makes the experience more conducive to improved student and lecturer relationships. The potential of Web 2.0 technologies to enhance educational learning environments, in particular e-portfolios, has not escaped the notice of commercial vendors. Waters (2008a, 2008b) documents the influence of these new tools on a number of commercial electronic portfolio systems -- Digication, Desire2Learn, Angel Learning and Epsilen. Waters (2008a) refers to the Epsilen as a “new species of electronic portfolios.” The Epsilen software was developed by the CyberLab at the Indiana University-Purdue University of Indianapolis which is directed by Ali Jafari, computer technology professor, who has a long history working with electronic portfolios. A basic Epsilen e-portfolio account is available free to registered students and staff at all United States colleges and universities. They currently have members from 950 institutions (Epsilen, 2008). A similar environment to Epsilen, named PebblePad, was developed in the UK and claims to bridge the gap between social and institutional learning: “PebblePad supports personal learning whilst providing a powerful suite of tools to improve learning in institutional contexts” (PebblePad, 2008). In addition, a number of open source e-portfolio systems have embedded various Web 2.0 features, such as blogging, wikis, messaging and group collaboration capabilities. An example of this system is the OSPortfolio (OSP) which is part of Sakai (an open source web-based collaboration and courseware management platform); it has been adopted by at least 60 institutions across 8 countries (Cambridge, 2008). One of the most recent open source e-portfolio systems was

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designed and funded in New Zealand by New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Commission’s elearning Collaborative Development Fund (2006). Mahara, which is colloquial Maori for “think” or “thought,” is an open source e-portfolio, weblog, resume building and social networking system. It differs from other e-portfolio applications by its particular emphasis on social networking and system architecture inspired by Moodle for better interoperability (Wyles, 2008). Integration of the Web 2.0 technologies and electronic portfolios continues. In a recent paper “The Value of eJournals to Support e-portfolio Development for Assessment in Teacher Education” presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Crichon and Kopp (2008) introduced an application called Electronic Documentation of Learning (eDOL) which allows students to document their field experiences in the form of an eJournal using text, photo, and video entries. Other software developers also continue to refine the assessment mechanisms of e-portfolio systems and are now attempting to extend the learning capabilities of the e-portfolio by taking advantage of the interactive facilities of the Web 2.0 technology. Subsequently, e-portfolios are beginning to take the form of a collage with various applications: namely, file sharing, databases, search facilities, wikis, podcasting, and other social media. Perhaps, the future of these new and other emerging tools will see the merging of e-portfolio systems with the personal learning environments (PLE) of new digital age students.

FUTURE TRENDS Gary Brown, the director for the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology at Washington State University, has argued that the advent of Web 2.0 technologies will invariably change the boundaries between e-portfolios and personal learning environments (cited in Waters, 2008b).

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He views electronic portfolios as being part of a continuum with assessment management systems at one extreme and personal learning environments at the other. Personal learning environments can be viewed as systems that are designed to help learners take control and manage their own learning space. It is argued that a personal learning environment can enable students to set their own learning goals, monitor their progress, manage the process and content of their learning, and set up communication networks that support both their formal and informal learning. In an earlier article from Handley and colleagues (Handley, Wilson, Petersen, Brown, & Ptaszynski, 2007) the concept of creating personal learning spaces in higher education is further explored. The authors suggest that university educators move beyond the traditional “walled gardens” approach to the point of designing learning spaces for each learner. In this way the learner is able to “aggregate, synthesize and reflect upon their learning.” The key concept is to place the learners at the center of their educational universe by providing them with the tools to control who has access to their own personal “walled garden.” The Microsoft SharePoint System (2007) is seen as a functional platform that can provide such an environment. Washington State University has recently adopted this collaboration and documentsharing platform to introduce e-portfolios across the university. Specifically they suggest: “In the model facilitated by SharePoint as an e-portfolio, the student is the central node in the learning network. A course, learning object, learning activity is available and students are invited to engage, but they are the owners of their own space and the work they will do, share, and showcase in that space” (Handley et al., 2007, p 3). Siemens (2006) stresses that educators need to continuously reflect on how learning has changed and how this change impacts the way the learning spaces and structures are designed. He argues that the utilization of new technology tools alters the way people work and function and posits a new

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theory of learning called “connectivism.” This theory acknowledges trends in learning, the use of technology and social and learning networks, and the “diminishing half-life” of knowledge (2005, 2006). Connectivism integrates elements of a number of learning theories, social structures, and technology to present a theory more conducive to the needs of the knowledge society. Siemens (2006) notes: Our desire to connect – to externalize – is a vital component of the learning process. Instead of merely developing learners for careers, we have an obligation to create a learning ecology where learners are able to shape their own meaning. Siemens (2006) challenges educators to design learning spaces that reflect a new understanding of learning and meet the needs of the digital learner in the knowledge society. The challenge has implications for the future landscape and use of e-portfolios. He claims that freedom and flexibility to design such learning spaces will be lost if the trend to centralize and standardize e-portfolio tools and services continues (2004). The web is shifting from being a utility where information is transmitted and consumed into a platform where content is created, shared, and remixed with a community of learners (Downes, 2006). Brown (2002) considers this as a fundamental shift from using technology to support the individual to using technology to support relationships between individuals. The new social media applications and social networking sites support learning communities by providing tools that enable and promote dialogue, collaborative content building, and the sharing of information, giving learners access to a range of knowledge and ideas (Lee & McLoughlin, 2005). The merge of e-portfolio tools and processes with social software has the potential to deliver the dynamic and flexible learning spaces required for digital age learners. This union will not only build knowledge but will build relationships and encompass the

powerful elements of reflective practice, higher order thinking, learner control, “connectivism,” community of learners, social integration, and lifelong learning. There are many benefits associated with the use of e-portfolios; there are also many hidden costs, obstacles, and challenges involved in their implementation (DiBase, 2002). Most practitioners and institutions that adopt e-portfolios report that they are labor intensive and require considerable time in planning, monitoring and provision of feedback to students (Linn & Gronlund, 2000; Strudler & Wetzel, 2005). Students need time, support, technical training and guidance (Heath, 2005; Pecheone et al, 2005; Smith & Tillema, 2003; Tosh et al, 2005; Wade & Yarbrough, 1996). Technical skills required may disadvantage the student if the student is being assessed on their technology skills over their learning (Abrami & Barrett, 2005). If used predominantly for assessment purposes, e-portfolios can be difficult to assess, requiring extensive preplanning in the establishment of reflective evaluation and performance (Abrami & Barrett, 2005). Students also need to be given clear guidelines as to the validation of claims and authenticity of evidence as artifacts are easily plagiarized from the Internet (Abrami & Barrett, 2005). Students need briefing about issues surrounding digital rights, intellectual property, copyright, privacy and free speech (Challis, 2005; DiBase, 2002). Many of the Web 2.0 technologies require extensive moderation and skill development. Institutions need to be aware of the ramification on their curriculum accreditation processes, professional development of staff, and the hidden costs associated with the technological “up-skilling” of students. Institutions will need to address ways of storing the large volume of data produced by students as well as developing policies on how long they support and maintain the data. Issues of access, security and privacy will also need to be addressed. Future consideration will need to be given to the development of new learning spaces to enable

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the crossing of the social, educational, cultural, professional, and political boundaries of students to give voice to a learner’s efficacy in a variety of overlapping contexts. E-portfolios will need to become living documents that are “portable” through the life of the learner to meet a variety of usages encompassing assessment, promotion, cultural identity and professional reflection (Vuorikari, 2005). An integrated approach to e-portfolios can certainly support community building among learners but is unlikely to be driven by educational agendas alone. The technology associated with these new environments will also need to deal efficiently with the rapid re-contextualization of content for a variety of different purposes in the learner’s life.

CONCLUSION Electronic portfolios offer students the prospect of reflecting on their personal and profession skills and the opportunity to demonstrate a range of lifelong capabilities. e-portfolios can be used to reflect the knowledge and skills obtained in an academic context; they can also incorporate social abilities and skills acquired in community, work and familial settings. e-portfolios can be constructed in such a way that they become living transportable documents used in a variety of career and professional contexts. The e-portfolio has the potential to become a living document managed and maintained dynamically over time; it can be constructed and reconstructed to meet a variety of social, professional and personal needs. Social interaction technologies have the power to add dynamic dimension to the e-portfolio process by creating spaces that encourage the development of a reflective community of learners that will motivate and inspire individuals to revisit, revise and reshape their experiences to reflect their learning journey.

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Tertiary Education Commission. (2006). Elearning collaborative development fund. Retrieved July 3, 2008, from http://www.tec.govt. nz/templates/standard.aspx?id=755 The Higher Education Academy. (2005). Personal development planning and employability. York, UK: Higher Education Academy. Tomkinson, B. (1997). Towards a taxonomy of teaching portfolios. Retrieved September 21, 2007, from http://www.lgu.ac.uk/deliberations/ portfolios Tosh, D., Light, T. P., Fleming, K., & Haywood, J. (2005). Engagement with electronic portfolios: Challenges from the student perspective. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 31(3). Retrieved January 24, 2008, from http://www.cjlt. ca/content/vol31.3/

Waters, J. K. (2008a). In the driver’s seat. T.H.E. Journal, 35(6), 43–50. Waters, J. K. (2008b). Unleashing the power of Web 2.0. Campus Technology. Retrieved July 1, 2008, from http://campustechnology.com/printarticle.aspx?id=63551 Wetzel, K., & Strudler, N. (2005). The diffusion of electronic portfolios in teacher education: Next steps and recommendations from accomplished users. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 38(2), 231–243. Whelan, D. (2003). In a fog about blogs. American Demographics, 25(6), 22–23. Wyles, R. (2008). Mahara - open source ePortfolio. Retrieved July 1, 2008, from http://www. eportfoliopractice.qut.edu.au/docs/AeP_presentations_web/AeP_SC_Mahara_6Feb08.pdf

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RESOURCES

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

Angel Learning - http://www.angellearning. com

E-Portfolio: A collection of evidence that reflects a learner’s progress, development, and achievement over time in a digital format. E-Portfolio Artifacts: Tangible evidence (i.e., work samples, reflections, photos, videos, feedback from supervisors/peers, awards, etc.) that demonstrates knowledge and skills and their application to various tasks and situations. Epsilen: A comprehensive e-learning environment designed in the U.S. that includes an e-portfolio feature. PebblePad: A flexible commercial e-portfolio system designed in collaboration with the University of Wolverhampton, UK. Personal Learning Environments (PLE): Learning systems that are purposely designed to help learners take control and manage their own learning space. Sakai: An open-source course management system that includes a full-featured online portfolio. Student Centered Learning: An instructional approach that places the student at the center of the learning experience and allows students to become active participants in their learning endeavors and construct knowledge on their own terms.

Australian ePortfolio Project - http://www. eportfoliopractice.qut.edu.au Blackboard - http:// southbank.blackboard.net The Centre for International ePortfolio Development - http://www. nottingham.ac.uk/eportfolio Digication - http:// risd.digication.com Desire2Learn - http://www.desire2learn.com Epsilen - http://www.epsilen.com European Institute for E-Learning (ElfEL) - http:// www.eife-l.org/about Learning Assistant - http://www.learningassistant. com Learnwise - http://vle.bilborough.ac.uk Mahara - http://www.mahara.org Moodle - http://moodle.com.au OSPortfolio http://osportfolio.org/testimonials PebblePad - http://www.pebblepad.com/default. asp Sakai - http://sakaiproject.org

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Chapter 22

Commerce and Gender Generating Interactive Spaces for Female Online Users Noemi Maria Sadowska Regents Business School, Regent’s College, UK

ABSTRACT Internet technology presented the women’s magazine industry with new prospects for publishing and user interaction. The case of BEME.com, the UK online commercial portal targeting female users, exemplifies the tendency for a commercial context to trade in and on gender stereotypes instead of pursuing opportunities for novel conceptions of interaction with users. Contemporary design practices together with a feminist framework are drawn on to explore these issues. It is argued that although design managers and producers might have been aware of the Internet potential to foster new forms of interactive spaces for female users, these advances did not fit within the existing business models of commercial portals. The notions of “becoming” and “user interaction” are suggested as alternative approaches to the development of female oriented Internet portals.

INTRODUCTION Historically, the women’s magazine publishing industry has traded in and on gender. Its goals and successes are measured by commercial standards where gender stereotypes define its inherent nature, communicate meanings, and users’ perception of what is being sold. Although it is not the only example, the business success of this interplay between commerce and gender owes a great deal to DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch022

the highly sophisticated visual language developed through years of design practices and enhanced by the adoption of computer-based publishing. In the past decade, magazine publishers have expanded into the realm of the World Wide Web exploring novel opportunities for online user interaction. It is argued that interaction has been a key component of the women’s magazine publishing industry. Whether in terms of inviting contributions from female readership, engaging readers in competitions, responding to readers’ questions and issues in advice columns, these tools of social

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interaction have informed notions of communities of readers and readership based on brand loyalty. However, the extent to which this interaction and brand-driven commercial model has also relied on, but moreover perpetuated, gender stereotypes has been the subject of considerable debate (Attfield, 1989; Gauntlett, 2002; McRobbie, 1999). This chapter investigates Internet spaces defined as commercial portals targeting female users and their role in developing online social interactions. In particular, the intention is to illuminate the impact of a commercial context on the generation of novel interactive spaces for female Internet users. Against the backdrop of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 growth, the case of BEME.com provides an opportunity to examine an online space developed directly out of the women’s magazine publishing tradition in the United Kingdom. A product of IPC Media, one of the leading U.K. consumer magazine publishers which specialises in what are referred to as traditional women’s magazines (including Marie Claire and Woman’s Own), the portal’s development in 1999 and launch in February 2000 was a direct response to an electronic commerce boom of that time. Initially, it was somewhat unusual in that developing BEME.com content and editorially driven brand was given priority over an e-commerce profit-driven strategy. However, at the beginning of 2001, limited commercial success triggered a redesign, strengthening its connection to a traditional woman’s magazine industry approach. When these hasty measures failed to generate sufficient advertising revenue, BEME.com was closed in August 2001. The chapter highlights how a traditional commercial print publishing concept has maintained a stronghold on the idea of interaction in an online environment. Whilst Web 2.0 technology has presented new possibilities for interaction, this new technology - even in latest commercial portals targeting female users - is not widely applied, and designers of commercial online spaces intended to attract female users do not seem capable or willing to break with gendered visual norms.

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Contemporary design and Internet practices and a feminist framework provide illuminative lenses with which to explore these issues. The data used in support of this argument derives from the author’s doctoral research asserting the potential of online portal design to offer alternative ways of communicating to female users in order to resist and combat the gendered status quo.

BACKGROUND Beetham (1996) argues that women’s magazines are situated at the crossroads of the following agendas: “money, public discourse and individual desire” (p. 2). As the Internet entered the women’s publishing industry, it did so against a broader background which questioned the potential of this technology to facilitate social interactions amongst its female readership. On the one hand, Spender (1995) claimed that Internet technology was close to the core values of femininity and Braidotti (1996) contended that it “enables a transgression of the dichotomous categories of male and female, constructing transgender or even genderless human identities and relations” (as cited in van Zoonen, 2002, p. 6). On the other hand, Wakeford (1997) argued for recognition of the opportunities of becoming connected but believed that stereotypes tend to overshadow the creative and political uses to which female users have adapted the Internet. Pohl (1997) concluded that whether or not women find specific places or ways to behave or interact on the Internet, these would always be gendered: “Gender-specific behaviour can be found on two levels. The first is the actual behaviour of the Internet users, and the second focuses on the stereotypes and images people have” (Pohl, 1997, p. 193). Indeed, evident within commercial women’s portals are conceptualisations of social interaction defined as female consumption opportunities underpinned by gender stereotypes. Weale (2000) observed that this is “one of the key differences in the

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way women are targeted. They are seen first and foremost as shoppers; everything is dictated by the commercial imperative.” Many of the debates around women’s magazines focus on the capacity of these artifacts to affect their readers’ identity construction, and these no less apply to online portals produced by women’s magazine industry. To inform this discussion, it is instructive to turn to the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. First, Foucault theorises how power relations can operate within a social context. He focuses on the notion of power which he does not see as an “asset which a person can have; rather, power is something exercised within interactions” (Gauntlett, 2002, p. 117). Furthermore, Foucault explains that access to power is unequal. He proposes the notion of “forced relations” as a platform of social inequality against which all the power interactions take place. Moreover, he points out that these can form “states of domination” where the power relations become so entrenched that they appear “one-sided and unchangeable” (Foucault, 2000, p. 283). As Gauntlett (2002) sums up, the point Foucault puts across remains: “power simply cannot be held by one group: power is everywhere and plays a role in all relationships and interactions … Power does not exist outside of social relationships; it’s exactly within these relationships that power comes into play” (p. 118). The value of Foucault’s argument on power stems from his belief that “where there is power, there is resistance.” Furthermore, “points of resistance are everywhere in the power network” (Foucault, 1998, p. 95). Therefore, just as power flows through networks so do points of resistance appear all over. These might become strategically mobile or remain dissipated and disorganised (Foucault, 1998). Second, Butler’s analysis of the process by which an individual assumes a subject position provides a useful lens through which to analyse the consequences of women’s magazine consumption for female readers. Rather than starting from an essentialist point of view, Butler argues for a

processual understanding of identity. To account for such a process, she traces the genealogy of the conditions of emergence of a subject position wherein sex and gender are effects rather than causes of institutions, discourses, and practices. As Salih (2002) comments, “Butler has collapsed the sex/gender distinction in order to argue that there is no sex that is not always already gender” (p. 62). This suggests that all bodies are gendered from the moment of and due to their social existence and there is no existence outside of the social. Thus, Butler argues that it is not about what someone is, but rather it is about what someone does, a sequence of acts, a “doing” rather than “being.” However, gender is a particular rather than generic process whereby the subject is not free to choose which gender they will enact; rather it is always determined by the “regulatory frame” in which the subject has limited choice. Butler’s further analysis of gender identities presents them as neither “straight, straightforward [n]or singular” but rather as “unstable” and “resignifiable” allowing for subversive “working against the grain” practice (Salih, 2002, p. 71). In a similar vein, Radner (1995) sees identities not as a moment but as “trajectories of perpetual movement within the confines of a specific social and cultural architecture – itineraries of dissatisfaction but also of pleasure in the movement itself, of returning and departing, only to return again” (p. xiv). Her reflection on notions of femininity and their incorporation in women’s magazines is based on recognition that “[f]emininity can be achieved with a minimum of effort for a certain socio-economic class able to afford the consumerism invoked through the image” (p. 177). However, she acknowledges that the images contained in women’s magazines “impose a tyranny” that the supporting text tries to deny. Although there is room for dispersion of meaning, the nature of the magazine will always re-center it back to the magazine’s focus on the female body and its definition through product consumption (Radner, 1995).

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Critiques of the women’s publishing industry along with gender theorising and debates on the potential of Internet technology are revealing of a relationship between interaction and gender construction and also alert us to the fact that even the latest interactive and collaborative Internet design (encapsulated by Web 2.0) faces issues of gender complicity where perceptions of commercial risk can outweigh technological and imaginative potential.

GENERATING INTERACTIVE SPACES FOR FEMALE ONLINE USERS: THE CASE OF BEME.COM The case of a woman’s commercial online portal BEME.com exemplifies two intentions common to many portal designs. These are: (a) the development of an online brand that fosters emotional attachment enabled by appropriate web design and interactivity; and (b) development of an online branded community that combines both social interactions as well as participation in the commercial aspects of the portal. In the case of BEME.com, IPC attempted to achieve both to generate an online portal that also abides by business imperatives.

Defining the Target Audience and Developing an Online Brand With a formidable and trusted presence in the U.K. women’s publishing sector, IPC Media continued to search for new ways to expand its market share by cultivating a sense of special relationship with the readers. As the corporate statement asserted, “[w]e’re using our powerful relationships with readers to stretch our brands across different media – including specials, masthead TV and events – and to grow share of spend” (IPC Connect, 2000). Consumer loyalty provided a strong base for IPC to confidently spread out into new markets and experiment with new web-based

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technologies. The corporate statement reasoned: “we’re not just focused on print-led brands. It’s well documented that women are currently the fastest growing community online, and we’ve leveraged IPC’s commanding number one position within the Women’s market to launch BEME. COM” (IPC Connect, 2000). Initially the BEME.com target audience was believed to spread from 18 to 60 years of age and covered a wide range of different lifestyles. However, following mid-point re-design of the site, the target audience was revised as 20 to 35 year-old women. Thus, the readers were expected to be of upper to lower middle class social status. At the same time, their occupations would range from higher to junior managerial, administrative or professional positions including supervisory or clerical responsibilities. They were also seen as a heterogeneous set of women at various stages of life (IPC Connect, 2000), where the geographical focus or limit was the Western hemisphere. However, as is often noted by feminist research, this understanding represents a particular, homogenised and stereotypical view of women strongly rooted within patriarchal social structures. In this case, the audience was positioned within “a web of psycho-social relationships which institute a socially significant difference on the axis of sex, which is so deeply located in our very sense of lived, sexual identity that it appears to us as natural and unalterable’ (Pollock, 1982, p. 10). Thus, BEME.com female users were positioned within a Western social, cultural and political milieu with strong ties to the practice and tradition of reading women’s weekly or monthly print magazines. These magazines have long instructed female users in the consumption of femininity and, as Gough-Yates (2003) and McRobbie (1999) argue, in forms which reflect multiplicity, fragmentation and contradiction. However, Ballaster, Beetham, Frazer, and Hebron (1991) observe that female users have become accustomed to being addressed as consumers of the “message of the text and of the commodities”

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and suggest that these magazines [or portals] are crucial in constructing female identity (p. 12). In addition, they claim, these conceptualisations of femininity are reiterated across the communication medium at any point in its history, providing an overall unifying message. Such positioning of BEME.com, backed up by decades of publishing tradition, resulted in a communication pattern transcending the design output from paper into portal publishing. Consequently, the BEME.com female users were considered to have an insider’s knowledge of the communication codes and design tools learnt and absorbed from the paper magazine industry. Building on such a description of its target audience, the BEME.com brand was coined as an experience defined by “AND” or “BOTH” descriptors. On the surface, this appeared to be a novel departure from the traditional approach where readers subscribed to “ONE” ideal, such as the “Cosmo girl” or the “ELLE woman.” The BEME. com approach encouraged female users’identification with a mother role “AND” engagement with fashion; these women could be career-minded professionals “AND” be looking to redesign their home interior or throw a spring party for friends. The focus of the brand was intended to acknowledge the many sides and uniqueness of subscribing female users; the “AND” or “BOTH” notion opened up the definition of the target audience by creating an infinite number of combinations. Thus, one was led to believe that the key to this Internet specific brand was an invitation to its female audiences not only to interact and engage with physical aspects of the portal by clicking through its pages but also to actively participate in generating its meaning to suit their own circumstances: “BE ME” or be yourself. This aligned with a brand-centric business model wherein the customer develops an emotional response to an organisation and where design facilitates and animates that bond. From a corporate perspective, the interactive nature of the BEME.com portal offered great opportunities for commercial success.

Development of an Online Branded Community Expanding IPC’s solid positioning within the women’s publishing market, BEME.com (2000) aimed to provide informative content that appealed to users “across a broad range of life stages.” However, developing a new brand was only part of its potential success. To strengthen the IPC’s online presence, BEME.com was intended to create an online branded community. The interactive nature of the portal was seen as similar to a television set, navigated by clicking through various channels. The content was meant neither to be “fluffy” nor totally serious. Its role was to entertain, inform and connect female users; its purpose was to offer women a communicative space online. However, following the portal’s redesign, the new female executive editor stated that: “[t]he new design will help us to showcase the best content for women on the net, updated at a pace that keeps up with women’s lives. It’s a focused, quality offering that’s funny, opinionated, stylish and direct” (IPC Media, 2000, pp. 30-33). Thus, the resulting product was based on what was already “out there” for women in the form of other portals, taking into consideration female users’ online consumption patterns. The female senior producer had desired that the portal offer something alternative to print magazines: …what … [female users] want to be using [BEME. com] for was more, we thought, tools and communication. So rather than using it as an offline, as a paper magazine would be used, i.e., just to read articles or whatever. It would be the whole kind of email to a friend, the chat, the forums all of those things. (Anonymous, personal communication, November 28, 2001). She strongly believed that the portal strategy should be built around and support social interactions: “to get women talking about BEME and

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talking to each other … It was to communicate … to keep them there and to keep them in the community aspects” (Anonymous, personal communication, November 28, 2001). Her observations and reflections indicate that the site had far more potential as a women’s online communicative space than just a promotion-driven shopping experience, and the male design manager/designer’s interpretation teased out the personal side of the BEME.com experience. The aim was to create a visually driven Internet communicative space that was personal. The notion of one-to-one direct communication facilitated by the design made the experience unique to each female user, emphasising her individuality and, at least initially, BEME.com offered a personal area specific to each user. However, in the course of production this area was buried in the structure of the portal and completely dismounted during the redesign. As the male design manager/designer commented, “I thought that was a big shame … because you can go and get a woman’s magazine and the Internet is far more a one-on-one experience, so I think they missed out an opportunity to have something far more personal” (Anonymous, personal communication December 11, 2001). The portal was instead developed with commercial interests in mind that muted the potential of BEME.com to facilitate an online community. The BEME brand that might have fostered personal attachment and interaction gave way to the promotion of an online branded community intent on commercial success on the same basis as women’s magazines. IPC incorporated the opportunities of the Internet to appeal to the female user on a personal and emotional level but to merely build on rather than depart from their commercial success in print-media.

IMPACT OF COMMERCIAL CONTEXT AND GENDER STEREOTYPES Although the BEME.com case offers interesting insights into potentially new ways of generating

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interactive spaces for female online users, it also illuminates poignant critiques of the ways in which commercial success has rested on the reproduction of gender stereotypes. Here, the role of design practice within this context is discussed.

Nothing More Than an Online Magazine Although, at the time of the research, access to those who engaged in BEME.com community was not possible, interviews were conducted with potential users to explore their involvement with commercial portals. How the interviewees defined themselves as potential BEME.com users was influenced by the types of experiences they had on the Internet in general, and how they saw themselves as consumers of women’s paper magazines in particular. In particular, they believed BEME.com to be a finished design outcome without possibility of adjustment as with a printed magazine. BEME. com design did not hold great value for the participants, reflecting their ambivalent attitudes towards women’s glossy magazines. For the most part, the site was evaluated in terms of how long it took for visual elements to download and therefore in terms of usability. The female users expressed no great interest in changing the design of online content, unless it infringed on their access and interests. Neither did they express particular need to protest against gendered content; approached as a finished product they could choose to navigate away from pages they disliked. Thus, notions of community or concepts of interactive spaces, from the perspective of female users, were clearly grounded in the traditions of paper publishing. The space and its design did not redefine these notions or alter patterns of meaning or identity construction. These interviews pointed to the conclusion that the introduction of the Internet as a new technology within the context of women’s magazines was seen only as a new, more accessible way of reading these periodicals.

Commerce and Gender

Although BEME.com claimed to promote individual experience, it did classify users as belonging to one group defined by gender. Feminist scholars’ critique of the commercial application of the Internet - where female users are seen as a gendered niche market addressed in one voice (Paasonen, 2002; Sadowska, 2006) - was echoed by the interviewees. They wanted to be in control of their interaction with BEME.com and did not believe they should be perceived as one group characterised solely by their gender. Fundamentally they perceived themselves as individuals who have developed a relationship with the Internet in general and in a multifaceted fashion supported by the interactive qualities of the medium. However, due to the limited interactive aspects of BEME. com, the habits of reading a women’s magazine overshadowed the potential sets of new social interactions an online space such as BEME.com could offer.

Design Practice Implicated in the Commercialisation of the Internet Analysis of the UK context of commercial online portals targeting female users points to a specific historically framed design genre. The investigation of BEME.com and its competitors (handbag.com, icircle.com and femail.co.uk) revealed a recurring and closely related set of design practices being applied to Internet output. Their very similar design style raised several questions, specifically: (a) what advantage was gained from creating portals with the same “look and feel”; (b) whether this design process had an effect on the perception of the Internet as democratic; and (c) the extent to which the Internet was a decentralised medium. In an environment that posed unknowns, portals might have begun with different content-structuring models represented by different interface design. However, following from what has been done/is being done, what has worked/is working within the women’s commercial online portals meant that successful features were being repeated at

the expense of elements of difference (Miller, 2000). O’Leary (1998) calls such a process the “Law of Merging Models,” where with time online content and services begin to resemble each other. Moreover, as portals moved away from a simple process of taking a customer from point A to point B, they focused on attracting users to online advertisements, in turn gaining commodity status themselves. Such a move from anonymous searching to the development of portal branding has seen portal interfaces become increasingly similar, certainly in terms of their range of functions (Miller, 2000). Miller (2000) argues that increased commercialisation of the Internet is resulting in its content and services being held in fewer and fewer hands. Therefore, qualities of the Internet that often inspire enthusiasm – such as the potential for a democratic decentralised approach to communication – are being eliminated in the case of commercial portals. The domination of a small number of old and new media firms has resulted in online portals redesigning and restructuring to maintain high market capitalisation and economic stability rather than offering opportunities for marginalized content and voices to come to the fore. This is evident in the way that portal interfaces are becoming more and more similar in their design. With reference to women’s commercial portals in particular, gender should also be recognised as an additional ingredient influencing the homogeneity of design outcome. Gender acts as a unifying and differentiating element amongst the many commercial portals attracting both male and female users online. Analysis of their visual language (Sadowska, 2002) attested strongly to a link between the visual canons of women’s paper magazines and women’s commercial portals and revealed different ways in which gender has been built into visual language through the design process. The key to understanding this design genre is the notion of gender which, to the publisher, provided a fundamental constitutive structure for the design

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of a women’s online portal. As within women’s paper publishing, female users were equated with their gender. The portals did not address female users as individuals with particular interests but as a gender group with gender-determined interests. This was symptomatic of both the nature of online portals targeting a “faceless mass” and the origins of these online portals, namely in the traditions of women’s paper publishing; an industry, as Ferguson (1983) argues, propagating ideologies which rely “on the premise of biological predestination and gender determinism” (p. 189). By generating online outcomes that mirrored their paper counterparts, online design practices disregarded qualities made possible by the Internet, such as interactivity and its potential to share and generate meaning with and for users.

Online Social Interaction Replaced by Online Shopping Whereas printed media, although full of alluring ads, does not offer immediate access to the purchase of promoted products, online portal technology and its latest developments have increasingly been utilised to ease the potential shopping experience for its female users. A study by Cyr and Bonanni (2005) indicated that although there are no significant gender differences in online customer loyalty and trust associated with particular websites or the security of the online transactions, there are “significant differences in perceptions of website design and website satisfaction between the genders” (p. 565) when it comes to shopping experiences. With ever developing online design practices and the coming of age of online visual communication, the inherent nature of the design of online portals targeting female users should also be changing. However, browsing BEME.com’s competitors which survived the Internet bust of 2001, it is evident that little has changed. These remaining sites continue to prescribe gendered content and community aspects, if any, are buried in layers of advertisements.

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It was clear that IPC management and BEME. com designers were aware of the Internet’s interactive potential. However, as the conceptualisation of BEME.com stemmed directly from the traditions of women’s magazine publishing, many aspects that might have supported social interaction were not prioritised. The model of generating beautiful but static content became the preferred design choice. Where Burnett and Marshall (2003) argue that online interactivity encourages users to engage in a different kind of literacy encompassing simultaneous reception and production, to have understood consumers simultaneously as producers would have had a profound impact on the way BEME.com was conceptualised and created as a commercial portal. Unfortunately, the traditions of women’s magazine publishing, along with predefined content supported by gender stereotypes, were barriers to implementing and facilitating this new kind of interactive literacy. Moreover, the graphic design roots of magazine publishing did not translate very well into the online interactive environment. Thus, the online community which IPC so clearly wanted to establish did not materialize and BEME.com was no more than an online version of a paper magazine. Furthermore, BEME.com generated a set of social interactions, embedded within site layouts, exemplifying Foucault’s argument of “states of domination.” The portal reproduced the power relations inherent in the commercial tradition of women’s magazine publishing which has always relied on gender to generate profit.

FUTURE TRENDS Where the prevailing trend in Internet technology is a focus on the abilities of any participant to become a content creator (Cormode & Krishnamurthy, 2008), defining female users through gender stereotypes and dictating the “appropriate” online content available in such commercial online portals is a sign of inherent conservatism on the

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part of women’s magazine publishing industry. Furthermore, in a context where the Internet is moving towards the facilitation of social networks, prioritising bi-directional communication, various “glue” technologies, and significant diversity in content types (Cormode & Krishnamurthy, 2008), there is a growing need for online commercial spaces that are targeting female users to move away from the traditional models and follow more closely the developing trends of technology itself. Under such circumstances, three key suggestions for their design emerge from the BEME.com case. They are: (a) centring all aspects of the design process on the actual end-user [and recognising the potential for that user to take on the role of both producer as well as consumer]; (b) consciously recognising the folly mistake of using gender alone as an appropriate description of female audiences; [and] (c) being aware of social, cultural, and political factors that exert influence over the design process. (Sadowska, 2007, p. 172). However, changes applied only to online design are inadequate in themselves to break the mould. Alternative business models need to be developed and applied in this context. There is growing interest in focusing on cultural differences as a means to offer opportunities of the localisation of Internet content as a means to develop new business tools within commercial spaces online (Cyr, Bonanni, & Ilsever, 2004; Cyr, Bonanni, Bowes, & Ilsever, 2005; Egger, 2001). Furthermore, Cyr and Bonanni (2005) argue that: [a] match of website characteristics to cultural preferences and sensitivities is, in fact, critical to building relationships in an environment where buyers and sellers are without personal contact. It may be that better understanding of gender preferences on the web is the new vanguard of localisation for the Internet (p. 579).

Taking a broader view of the developments in Internet social interaction technologies, the impact these have on the online design practice and the continued resistance of the women’s publishing industry to participate in the resulting changes, point to an ever growing need to research the role gender plays in defining spaces for online female communication. Could conscious recognition of potential gender differences be used in more “positive” ways to create online spaces where design practices acknowledge the individuality of female online users? What opportunities for alternative readings could Butler’s concept of a regulatory framework (Salih, 2002) offer, if recognised as part of the design process and commercial process, both at the point of production and consumption? If, as it has been argued already, female users cannot exist outside of gender, then recognising performative aspects of gender and emphasising the concept of “becoming” rather than “being” could serve as an interesting and potentially radical starting point for design practice. Such an alternative reading could lead to unconventional commercial opportunities that align well with the interactive nature of the Internet. One thing is clear, evident lack of change within existing commercial portals targeting female users demands further investigation into the relationships between such spaces, business models, gender values and design practices that bring these into being. As Wakeford (2000) proposes, this “will require a far wider variety of metaphors in a continuing attempt at a new vocabulary of women and technology” (p. 63).

CONCLUSION Dictation and prescription of the content and positioning of female users as mere observers is still a prevalent conceptualisation of social interaction within commercial portals targeting female audience. A traditionalist approach stemming from the women’s magazine industry does not truly support

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users’ social interactions and the basis of its commercial success in the trading of gender stereotypes inhibits the conceptualisation of female users as potential producers. Where many non-commercial sites have offered female users unprecedented opportunities for establishing novel forms of social interaction, the commercial context can be described as unsupportive. The case of BEME.com clearly indicates that although designers might have been aware of the potential of the Internet and its capacity to foster new forms of interactive spaces for female users, these advances did not fit within the business models supporting such commercial portals. The commercial traditions that underpin the production and consumption of such portals as BEME.com are so locked into place that even today, seven years after the portal closure, the same attitudes persist. Web technology formed the foundations of how commercial online portals targeting female users have been received by their audiences. Although the technology has moved on, the combination of business and visual offerings has not changed drastically. The injection of new modes of interaction through the development of social networking sites has enhanced the experience; however, it has not altered the paradigm. There is no denying that as with their paper counterparts, women’s commercial online portals have become part of the history of the growth and development of interactive spaces created specifically to target online female users. With the changing uses of the Internet technology these spaces are becoming less prominent, replaced by more interactive sites such as MySpace.com or Facebook.com which encourage a user/producer approach to content development. There is a growing understanding that emerging commercial online spaces for female users will have to alter their approach to achieve popularity and commercial success. This is likely to require a novel approach to their design: an approach which explicitly plays with rather than trades on gender stereotypes in which notions of “becoming” drive the design of and for spaces of interaction.

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REFERENCES Attfield, J. (1989). FORM/female FOLLOWS FUNCTION/male: Feminist critiques of design. In J. A. Walker (Ed.), Design history and the history of design. London: Pluto Press. Ballaster, R., Beetham, M., Frazer, E., & Hebron, S. (1991). Women’s worlds: Ideology, femininity and the woman’s magazine. London: Macmillan Press. Beetham, M. (1996). A magazine of her own? Domesticity and desire in the woman’s magazine, 1800-1914. London: Routledge. BEME. com. (2000). Retrieved November 15, 2000, from http://www.ipcmedia.com Braidotti, R. (1996). Cyberfeminism with a difference. Retrieved August 10, 2005, from http://www. let.uu.nl/womens_studies/rosi/cyberfem.htm Burnett, R., & Marshall, P. D. (2003). Web theory: An introduction. London: Routledge. Connect, I. P. C. (2000). Press release. Retrieved November 15, 2000, from http://www.ipcmedia. com Cormode, G., & Krishnamurthy, B. (2008). Key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. First Monday, 13(6). Retrieved July 4, 2008, from http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index. php/fm/article/view/2125/1972 Cyr, D., & Bonanni, C. (2005). Gender and Website design in e-business. International Journal of Electronic Business, 3(6), 565–582. doi:10.1504/ IJEB.2005.008536 Cyr, D., Bonanni, C., Bowes, J., & Ilsever, J. (2005). Beyond trust: Website design preferences across cultures. Journal of Global Information Management, 13(4), 24–52.

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Cyr, D., Bonanni, C., & Ilsever, J. (2004). Design and e-loyalty across cultures in electronic commerce. Paper presented at the 6th International Conference on Electronic Commerce (ICEC04). Ferguson, M. (1983). Forever feminine: Women’s magazines and the cult of femininity. London: Heinemann. Foucault, M. (1998). The history of sexuality (Vol. 1, The will to knowledge, R. Hurley, Trans.). London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (2000). Ethics: Subjectivity and truth. In P. Rabinow (Ed.). Essential works of Foucault, 1954-1984. London: Penguin. Gauntlett, D. (2002). Media, gender and identity: An introduction. London: Routledge. Gough-Yates, A. (2003). Understanding women’s magazines: Publishing, markets and readership. London: Routledge. McRobbie, A. (1999). In the culture society. London: Routledge. Media, I. P. C. Press Office. (2001, April 6). New strategy, new look and new structure for BEME. com. Retrieved September 17, 2001, from http:// www.ipcmedia.com Miller, V. (2000). Search engines, portals and global capitalism. In D. Gauntlett (Ed.), Web. studies: Rewiring media studies for the digital age. London: Arnold. O’Leary, M. (1998). Web directories demonstrate an enduring online law. Online, (July/August), 79-81. Paasonen, S. (2002). The woman question: Addressing women as Internet users. In M. Fernandez, F. Wilding, & M. Wright (Eds.), Domain errors: Cyberfeminist tactics, subversions, embodiments. New York: Autonomedia.

Pohl, M. (1997). The Internet - a ‘feminine’ technology? In R. Lander & A. Adam (Eds.), Women in computing. Exeter: Intellect. Pollock, G. (1982). Vision, voice, and power: Feminist art history and Marxism. Block, 6, 2–21. Radner, H. (1995). Shopping around: Feminine culture and the pursuit of pleasure. New York: Routledge. Sadowska, N. (2002). Women’s Internet sites: A search for design strategies to engage the female viewer. In M. Consalvo & S. Paasonen (Eds.), Women and everyday uses of the Internet: Agency and identity. New York: Peter Lang. Sadowska, N. (2006). Design and women’s expectations of WWW experience. In E. M. Trauth (Ed.), Encyclopedia of gender and information technology. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing. Sadowska, N. (2007). Interpreting the female user: How Web designers conceptualise development of commercial WWW sites to satisfy specific niche markets. In S. Kurniawan & P. Zaphiris (Eds.), Advances in universal Web design and evaluation (pp. 154-176). Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing. Salih, S. (2002). Judith Butler. London: Routledge. Spender, D. (1995). Nattering on the Net: Women, power and cyberspace. Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press. van Zoonen, L. (2002). Gendering the Internet: Claims, controversies and cultures. European Journal of Communication, 17(1), 5–23. Wakeford, N. (1997). Networking women and grrrls with information/communication technology: Surfing tales of the World Wide Web. In J. Terry & M. Calvert (Eds.), Processed lives: Gender and technology in everyday life. London: Routledge.

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Wakeford, N. (2000). New media, new methodologies: Studying the Web. In D. Gauntlett (Ed.), Web.studies: Rewiring media studies for the digital age. London: Arnold. Weale, S. (2000). Women of the world click here! RetrievedFebruary7,2001,fromhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3952603,00. html

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS BEME.com: Women’s commercial online portal launched in the United Kingdom in February 2000 by IPC Media. BEME.com has established itself as one of the top three women’s websites in the U.K. By the end 2000, BEME.com was garnering 1.5 million page impressions per month and was named the Best Designed Magazine on the Web. Commercial Online Portal: These are portals that are either general in their services or niche portals that specialise in specific interests: however: in all cases they are seen as “gateways” to the Internet content, acting as points of reference for the users on how to view and organise the information they access online. A commercial portal is one conceived and created as a business. Reliant on financial revenue for its survival, it is subject to financial goals which, if unmet, threaten its closure Feminist Framework: A feminist framework occupies a political position seeking changes on behalf of women by focusing on promoting an understanding of women as a group amongst many within any society identified by different needs, desires, values, and priorities due to their role and the position they occupy within these societies. The feminist framework offers new understanding of gender, questioning its “naturalness” in relation to the man/woman dichotomy by shifting the old

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patterns of description to reformulate them as fluid, culturally located negotiations. Gendered Design Practice: Design practice is understood as a combination of the process of designing (making) and its design outcome (the resulting artifact). The term also makes reference to design practitioners’ ability to not only create something new within pre-existing conditions, but also to imbue it with meaning decoded and understood by others. In cases where gender is not explicitly recognised as a factor of (or having influence over) the design process (or outcome) the design practice is then termed as gendered. Thus, gendered meanings are taken for granted leading to perpetuating gender stereotypes that disadvantage women through design processes or its outcomes. Interactivity: For the most part, interactivity is understood as an ability to facilitate interactions similar to interpersonal communications. Considered from within a feminist framework, interactivity is situated within a social, cultural, political and economic context. From design perspective it is an activity that sets online communication apart from other media such as print, film or animation. IPC Media: The leading U.K. consumer magazine publishing company and the largest publisher of women’s magazines in Europe. Women’s Magazine Publishing Industry: A specific area of commercial publishing practice often referred to as the commercial production of women’s glossy magazines or “glossies” for female readers. With the introduction of the Internet, the term has also been used to indicate online sites specifically targeting female audiences that subscribe to the traditional values and practices of the women’s paper magazine production and publication.

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Chapter 23

Social Interaction Technologies A Case Study of Guanxi and Women Managers’ Careers in Information Technology in China

Jiehua Huang Guangzhou University, China and Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland Iiris Aaltio University of Jyväskylä, Finland

ABSTRACT This chapter explores a relationship between social interaction technologies (SIT) and guanxi, a major Chinese informal style of networking, in the context of the careers of women managers in the information technology (IT) field in China. Addressing women’s under-representation in non-traditional occupations (such as IT), prior research has established that networking, especially informal, is an important career management tool for women. Recent advances in social capital theory and social network analysis provide a framework for understanding the role of social processes in achieving career success. Today, the growing Web-based social and professional networking in China weighs against the traditional forms of relationships, such as personal networks based on guanxi. The study indicates that SIT and guanxi should be viewed as complementary rather than mutually exclusive influences.

INTRODUCTION Careers are a window to a network of values of the institutions where they are actually made. Recent advances in social capital theory have helped analyze the ways in which the social networks of individuals affect their careers in organizations (Burt, 1997; Coleman, 1990; Ibarra, 1995; Kanter, 1977; Lin, 1999; Podolny & Baron, 1997). This theoretical DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch023

background provides scholars with knowledge for understanding the role of social processes in career success. Information technology (IT) and information and communication technology (ICT) refer to an industry that broadly covers the technologies of information and communication. In China, as in other countries around the world, more and more women are today working in this field as managers—although only a few at the top level (Aaltio & Huang, 2007). Ahuja (2002) stated that the barriers to female positioning in the IT industry

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are due to an “old boys network”—a large pool of more qualified and experienced male professionals, the lack of female role models and mentors, and established discriminatory practices. Kaplan and Niederman (2006) argued that inadequate social networks, skill obsolescence and limited vertical/internal job mobility present challenges to the career success of women in IT. In contrast, women who have more demographically diverse networks generally experience greater levels of career success (Cox, 1994; Ely, 1994; Ibarra, 1995). A lack of social networks and role models has been related to women’s under-representation in the field of IT. Social relations and ties between actors characterize today’s business culture. As expected, prosperity and social capital cumulate in the interplay between human partners and organizations (Bourdieu, 2005). There is a trend to understand business life more as a product of collective and shared interactions than separate individual efforts. This collectivity is not universal by nature but has country-specific and local features. Recently, guanxi, a major Chinese networking style, has been receiving a heightened research interest in the Western management field, with a major expansion in the literature on the growing importance of networks, networking, and network organizations (Puhakka, 2002; Steier & Greenwood, 2000; Tallberg, 2004; Wellman, Chen, & Dong, 2002). This is partly driven by the continuing and changing impact of ICT and the technological and social aspects of networking through them (Wellman, 2001). The very nature of ICT, incorporating both information and communication technologies, reflects how computers, communication, and social networks have become intertwined in people’s everyday life. This is also in line with the argument according to which networks have a positive impact on entrepreneurial success (Puhakka, 2002; Steier & Greenwood, 2000). Leung (2000) points out that gender issues and Chinese cultural traditions, such as guanxi, are major factors influencing career development and managerial growth in China.

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The development of Internet-based social networking sites have advanced social interaction, collaboration, and sharing of information (Boase & Wellman, 2006; Kavanaugh, Reese, Carroll, & Rosson, 2005), which weigh against the traditional forms of relationships—the social network and guanxi. According to Barry Wellman and collegues (2002), guanxi can be studied with a social network approach. According to social network analysis (SNA), Internet-based social networking enlarges people’s weak ties, which are different from the strong ties in guanxi and are essential to the effective spread of information between people in separate clusters (Burt, 1992; Granovetter, 1973; Wellman, Chen & Dong, 2002). From this perspective, SIT should enhance women’s networks and, therefore, benefit women IT managers’ career development. Based on a social network perspective and guanxi, this chapter explores the impact of SIT and guanxi on women managers’ careers in the context of the IT field in China. The chapter starts with a literature review on guanxi, SIT, and women’s careers in IT. The authors then analyze the results of a case study conducted in China and continue by covering future trends, a discussion, and a conclusion.

BACKGROUND Guanxi and guanxi ties In the Chinese language, guanxi has different meanings. It could refer to one of three things: (1) the existence of a relationship between people who share a group status or are related to a common person, (2) the actual connections with people and frequent contact between them, or (3) a contact person with little direct interaction (Bian, 1994). Commonly, guanxi is defined as the special relationships that two individuals have with each other, referring to a relationship between a person who needs something and a person who has the ability to give something.

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According to Fei (1992), the Chinese society is organized by concentric guanxi circles, extending outward from the family (the core) to relatives, friends, and business colleagues. The core of Chinese values is the differentiated attitudes toward parents, children, siblings, kinsmen, and friends, which Fei (1992) calls the “differentiated mode of association”: “No tie, no obligation, and no rights” (Lee & Dawes, 2005, pp. 29). Guanxi is based implicitly on mutual interests and benefits (Yang, 1994): such as, respect towards seniors coupled with respect from juniors, or the soliciting and giving of favors explicitly or implicitly (Wong & Slater, 2002). Yang (1994) categorizes interpersonal relationships (guanxi) in China into three groups: (1) between family members; (2) between familiar people (such as neighbors, friends, classmates and colleagues); and (3) between strangers or mere acquaintances. This classification is consistent with that of Hwang (1987) who argues that the relationships with family members primarily consist of expressive ties, with strangers of instrumental ties, and with familiar people of mixed ties. Instrumental ties are unstable and temporary, impersonal and utilitarian, and based on the norm of equity (resource allocation based on contribution). Mixed ties are in between and somewhat permanent and stable, such as those between friends, within the hometown, the same area, and the same school.

The Impact of SIT on Social Networking and guanxi The development of web-based social networking sites weighs against the traditional forms of relationships—personal networks and guanxi— and has significant implications for the way people acquire information, interact with each other, learn, and entertain themselves. Social networking proliferated before the coming of the Internet and the web. Since the 1990s, there has been a shift from place-to-place networking towards person-to-person network-

ing, which Wellman (2001) calls networked individualism, meaning that people have flexible autonomy using social networks. This is enhanced by the application of the Internet and its progeny, following a myriad of SIT: instant messages, webcams connecting individuals; chat rooms connecting groups; and blogs, photoblogs and podcasts to broadcast thoughts, pictures and sounds. Meanwhile, there has been a global expansion of mobile phone use, carrying both voice and text. People’s social interactions are mediated by modernity and technologies. The authors use social networking software to find, connect and capitalize on thousands of current, former, and potential network members. To note, one person achieved nearly 8,000 connections through LinkedIn (Mayaud, 2005). Early literature on the Internet’s role in society often made assertions that were either extremely optimistic or pessimistic (Boase & Wellman, 2006). Recently, research has begun to address this issue by providing evidence about the relationship between Internet use and contacts with friends and family, the extent to which the Internet is used to form new relationships, and the web’s role in neighbor relations. Based on an investigation with 350 randomly selected English-speaking non-frail adult online Toronto residents, the results of Connected Lives Project (Wellman et al., 2006) supported the theory of networked individualism—the Internet does not turn people away from their supportive ties. Internet-based social interaction software help people get a variety of social support—major and minor goods and services as well as emotional support. The findings from these studies indicate that the web adds to the overall volume of communication, helping maintain various kinds of relationships. Networking through Internet-based SIT can reduce the perceived hierarchies because gender, social class, ethnicity, age, life-style, etc. are less visible. Social capital is captured from embedded resources in social networks. The premise behind

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this notion is investment in social relations with expected returns (Lin, 1999). This is parallel with the nature of guanxi—reciprocity (Luo, 1997). For example, when one person offers a favor to another, the recipient must do an even bigger favor for him/her later: “The concept of social capital in a Chinese social context has been closely linked with the concept of guanxi” (Putnam, 2004). Guanxi also carries the meaning of power, social status, social capital, and resource transmission. It has been found that guanxi is a source of sustainable competitive advantage (Tsang, 1998), and Chinese managers’ career success depends on ties within and outside their firm (Dittmer & Lu, 1996). However, during the past two decades, China has experienced great economic and technological progress, which in turn affects people’s social interaction. As people are more mobile, the types of ties that lead to strong guanxi are presumably harder to maintain. The increase of information flows through SIT also weighs against the traditional forms of relationships, as people have more direct sources of information and influence. From this perspective, the application of SIT can surpass the hierarchical organization structure and gendered guanxi (examined in more detail in the third section) to facilitate personal networks, especially women’s networking.

SIT and Women’s Careers in IT The extensive application of IT has restructured the world economic system and exerted a great influence on women’s role in the world economies. However, the IT industry is also one of the most competitive industries around the world. Most IT companies are in their infancy. Growth in business and changes in the business environment have happened continuously. This situation causes pressure on management. In IT companies, there exists a need to accordingly develop management and leadership methods. Rapid movements in business have decreased systematic development. The span of planning has become short-term and

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plans may be controlled yearly, quarterly or even monthly. Profitability is now more important than growth. The most important target of human resource management (HRM) is personnel motivation and satisfaction. The CEOs of small IT companies take care of personnel matters with other responsibilities in the firm. The most important HRM practices in small-medium enterprises of IT seem to be recruitment, familiarizing, development, and motivation. In contrast, HRM processes in bigger companies are more precisely defined and planned. A study conducted by the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University shows that in a typical IT enterprise in China, females are concentrated in the departments of human resources and administration (73%) and marketing and financing (60%). From women employees, 12% are research employees and 16% of those in manufacturing (Shen & Ge, 2005). Women IT managers face both opportunities and challenges in their career. On one hand, they have passion and confidence. As among the female university graduates who can choose their career, the IT industry still takes precedence and becomes the most preferred occupation. Moreover, women’s average salary in the IT industry is 5 to 15% higher than that in other sectors (Shen & Ge, 2005). On the other hand, there are still many constraining factors preventing women’s career development in the IT industry. The report of the Blue Ribbon Panel (ITAA, 2003) lists five reasons for possible barriers women face in their entry into IT careers. These include the lack of role models and networking opportunities, the information gap about the academic requirements expected of high school students to enter the field, the unattractiveness of IT as a work environment, the lack of strong corporate commitment, and gender-related stereotypes that may impede women’s hiring and advancement opportunities. The lack of social networks and role models has been related to women’s under-representation in the IT field (Ahuja, 2002; Kaplan & Niederman,

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2006). Companies like hiring and promoting individuals with personal connections because those personal connections provide greater assurances that the individual will fit into the culture. Women in IT are still searching for appropriate expressions of behavior and values in organizations. Research has shown that women (in male dominated organizations) and minorities who have more demographically diverse networks generally experience greater levels of career success (Cox, 1994; Ely, 1994; Ibarra, 1995). The application of SIT makes it possible to facilitate women’s social networking. For example, WorldWIT (World Women. Insights. Technology) is the largest online networking group for women in business with free chapters in 24 countries. WorldWIT (2004) is the women’s version of social networking: a true community offering career advice, job opportunities, and business planning tips. As in “I know a guy who knows a guy,” it is the virtual solution to the old boys’ network. Mimi Francis, WorldWIT’s Chief Revenue Officer says: “Men tend to network on the golf course, which has historically left many professional women out in the cold. Today, women are networking on WorldWIT.” As the founder of WorldWIT, Liz Ryan says: “In today’s business climate, networking has become increasingly vital, especially for women. WorldWIT … is about making very real connections with other women who are hiring, mentoring, and building businesses.” Another study (Rutkowski et al., 2002) also indicates that Groupware, and particularly Group Support System (GSS) tools, support organizational co-ordination and interaction between various organizational structures. This implies that distance education, when employing group communication software, can produce educational results as good as face-to-face learning.

Case Study To explore guanxi from gender and career perspectives, the authors conducted an empirical study

focusing on the characteristics of guanxi bases of women managers in IT in Mainland China1 (Huang & Aaltio, 2008). The study is based on a social network theory perspective, which focuses on the structure of social interactions and how these structures enhance or constrain access to valued resources (Burt, 1992, 1997; Granovetter, 1973). Concerned with the fact that only few women in China play a part in the management, the authors specifically explore the composition and structure of these women IT managers’ guanxi bases and how they affect their careers and lives, partly using SNA. With the snowball sampling method (Singleton & Straits, 1999), the data about 21 women IT managers in southern China (Aaltio & Huang, 2007) was collected based on a face-to-face in-depth interviews and a questionnaire. The participants were asked to provide information on their associates in five network contents. The name-generator approach (Marsden, 1987) can be employed to ascertain the composition of social networks. This approach focuses on a core discussion network. A simplified name-eliciting method that allowed the associates to remain anonymous was adopted. This works well to help dismiss the suspicion of the participants. Since previous results indicate that 95% of people report fewer than five individuals in their (core discussion) networks (Marsden, 1987), the participants were asked to identify up to five persons with whom they had discussions: (1) to seek advice on a decision you have to make, (2) to seek information on what is going on in the organization, (3) to seek help when you want to influence the outcome of an important decision at work, (4) to seek help in times of (personal) crisis, and (5) to socialize with outside work. The five questions summarize the network contents of these IT women concerning their work and lives. For each associate identified, the participant was asked about her relationship with the associate and the associate’s demographic characteristics, including age, gender, education and marital status. Table 1 shows the characteristics of the

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Table 1. Demographic characteristics of the participants and their associates

Age

Participants (%) (n = 21)

Associates (%) (n = 190)

100

46.4

≤30

23.8

21.6

31-35

28.6

23.2

36-40

33.3

22.1

41-45

14.3

10.0

45+

23.2 A

Married

52.4

72.1

College degree (Master’s degree and above)

90.5 (33.4)

69.5 (24.2)

A

29% of the participants were married and had one child.

participants and their associates. By exploring the composition and structure of the associates, the authors found that the guanxi bases of these IT women are limited. The findings show that the average network size of these women IT managers is about 9 individuals. Compared with 14 individuals in the study of Chow and Ng (2004) in which the majority of the participants were male, our participants’ average network size is significantly smaller. The study also found the effect of female-to-male dyads, which are mainly within power-related and work-related guanxi. Women, who have a successful managerial career in IT, get wide guanxi networks and their career success network ties, especially power ties, are with men. For example, the majority of these women’s supervisors are over 45 years old (50%) and male (78.6%). The main role of supervisors is that of influence. This indicates the masculine and hierarchical managerial model even in a new industry such as IT. Female-to-female dyads are mostly related to socialized guanxi. The results demonstrate that the first three largest guanxi bases are coworkers, classmates, and family members. This indicates that women IT managers’ networks are mainly work-related (or professional) networks, although personal

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life and family ties are also important for them. Coworkers, especially supervisors, are the most important guanxi base for these women managers concerning career and work. Classmates are also a very important guanxi base to the participants. As one participant reported: “Classmates are important for me because by interacting with my classmates, it’s quite possible for me to get access to their networks.” Obviously, the role of classmates is in personal life and career networks. The age of classmates shows that most of them are younger than the participants; this indicates the tendency of on the job training and lifelong learning in the IT industry; and, it supports the research finding that women are more likely than men to try to learn more and to want more education as career tactics (Granrose, 2007). The results indicate that the majority of guanxi ties which have an impact on career (influence ties) are with older men, and these networks of ties are smaller than those of men’s as shown by Chow and Ng (2004). This implies a relatively narrow scope for women’s informal networking and weak ties. Researchers have argued that informal networks and weak ties are more important for women’s career success (e.g., Burt, 1992; Travers & Pemberton, 2000). However, women in organizational settings are often reported to experience a limited or indeed no access to informal networks (Kanter, 1977; O’Leary & Ickovics, 1992). This means that women’s access to the instrumental resources is limited, which are critical to one’s job effectiveness and career advancement, and are allocated by these networks. Besides, informal networks also provide friendships and social support. The disadvantages of experiencing difficulty in getting access to the networks include restricted knowledge of what is going on within the organization (or information) and difficulty in forming alliances—these in turn may be linked to career advancement issues, such as limited mobility and the glass ceiling effect. Obviously, networking with supervisors (most of them are older men, as shown by the results)

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concerning work and career issues is one of the strategies these women IT managers adopt. This to some degree limits women’s weak ties. Besides, all formulations and applications of the concept of guanxi are based on the idea of reciprocity as a key mechanism by which relationships may be transformed into a variety of assets. Researchers differ with respect to assessing the effects of reciprocal obligations on action. Some see reciprocity as the primary basis of social identity, leading to strong social relations, conveying a sense of belonging, and creating a clear normative order within which individuals can optimize their performance (Podolny & Baron, 1997). Others view reciprocity as a potential source of “structural arthritis” (Burt, 1997) because cohesive social ties may lock individuals into a continued mutual exchange. For example, one participant said: “I have good guanxi with my supervisor. Because of this, I can always get positive support and valuable information from him for my work. You know this is very important for my career…Of course I work hard in return.” There are two sides to a coin; thus reciprocity obligations, cemented by strong social ties, may make it difficult for individuals to extricate themselves from those obligations and to cultivate new relationships. Sometimes guanxi receivers feel a burden to “pay back.” As one participant emphasized, “After I got support or help from my coworkers, especially from my supervisors, I always think of “paying back” somehow one day. Sometimes this is really a burden for me. Because of this, I gave up an opportunity to work for another company with higher salary last year… I don’t know if I will regret, but this is what I should follow…” This implies that women are experiencing some emotional costs for maintaining the guanxi ties. From the in-depth interviews, it was found that in the gendered IT industry, women managers are finding a way of coping with the limited network. They either try to cope at work by somehow negating their gender, by being an “it” in IT (Adam et al., 2006), by networking in accordance with the

principles of guanxi, or by using SIT to widen their networks and keep contact with their networks. Some participants talked about how they have joined the web-based communities and share information among members. SIT provide people with alternative ways of acquiring information and interacting with each other regardless of time, space, and physical presence. This makes it possible for these women to surmount gendered guanxi and the perceived hierarchies in an organization because the gender, social class, age, etc. are less visible in SIT-based networking. Based partly on the social network analysis, SIT-based networking can enlarge women’s weak ties and release the “paying back” burden for these women. For instance, one participant reported she got her recent position (vice president) through an Internet-based headhunter company. Another participant, who is the CEO of a cross regional IT company, talked about how she managed her company through an Internet-based platform. When talking about SIT and guanxi, one participant noted: “Networking through SIT looks easy and simple; however, there exists uncertainty because of less, even no commitment and obligation between networking individuals. From this perspective, networking by guanxi is more efficient because it is based on obligation and long-term trust.” This indicates that the use of SIT as an efficient way of networking for women IT managers has just begun. This also implies the significant effect of the traditional culture on people’s lives and communications. Overall, the study indicates that SIT and guanxi should be viewed as complementary rather than mutually exclusive or separate influences.

SIT and Women in China Traditionally people in China, as in other emerging markets and developing nations, rely on their social networks as information sources, and public institutions tend to be fairly weak as citizen resources. With the development of the information technology, social software has shown

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itself to have significant potential for people’s interactions. According to The 22nd Statistics Report of China’s Networks Development issued by the China National Net Information Center (CNNIC, 2008), the domestic IT industry and market in China have undergone rapid development, with the number of Internet users reaching 253 million and the number of mobile phone users nearing 592 million. Chinese female netizens totaled 46.4% of all Internet users, which has formed a subset of IT users with strong potential. Compared with men’s use of the Internet, Chinese women mainly use the web for entertainment, sensibility needs, information, and networking with friends. It is interesting to note that more women (17%) than men (7%) in China use the Internet for developing friendships (Shen & Ge, 2005). This indicates that Chinese women emphasize the social networking function of the Internet more than men. Networking online affords people the ability to maintain larger networks of weak ties with a minimum effort, however, such networks can be viewed as physically distant, sparsely knit, transitory, socially diverse, and weak (Boase & Wellman, 2006; Wellman, 2001). Since the face-to-face network is still a key component of people’s daily life in China, it is not surprising that mobile phone usage is outpacing the rate of Internet adoption. The use of text messaging through mobile phone is an inexpensive way to maintain contacts with friends and family; it is also a mode of information exchange within a professional network. Social software applications used for networking (e.g., QQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, and Google Talk) have been widely adopted among certain demographics for a variety of purposes including career management. In China, a growing number of companies are applying SNS for employment recruitment (e.g., Zhaopin Ltd.2). Weblogs (or blogs) are becoming a “new form of mainstream personal communication” (Rosenbloom, 2004, p. 31) for millions of people

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to publish and exchange knowledge and information as well as to establish networks or build relationships. In 2007, there were about 46.98 million bloggers in China, which is about 26.1% of the netizens (CNNIC, 2007). Recent releases of blogging tools provide enhanced features for between-blog interactivity, thus promoting the creation of social networks among bloggers. As innovative social interaction technologies, these advances enable web-based word-of-mouth (through blogging activities) and demonstrate that it is not accidental that just a few years ago blogs were identified as being among the top “10 tech trends to watch” by the Fortune magazine (Vogelstein et al., 2005, p. 43). Additionally, webbased SIT are being increasingly used by Chinese women as efficient tools for compensating their inadequate networking in the male-dominated industries.

FUTURE TRENDS Since guanxi networks include connotations that are gendered and culturally bound, the authors argue that the research of professional networking in China needs to address the nature of social ties that create networks. These networks can be based on local and country-specific traditions even when displaying similarity with Western prototypes at the surface level. The present case study indicates that the application of SIT to personal networking can weaken the negative impact of gendered guanxi and expand the women’s network. The implementation of SIT can be a positive strategy for women’s managerial careers. These findings have important implications for organizations’ human resource management practices. Future research should focus more specifically on the impact of SIT on social networking in China, especially from the gender perspective: for example, showing how women can be trained to use SIT, comparing how women and men can equally benefit from using SIT, and drafting a legal framework

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to support the application of SIT. Furthermore, the application of SIT within cross-cultural contexts should be examined to understand how Chinese women’s social networking differs from their Western counterparts, considering guanxi as a central concept in Chinese society.

important cross-gender networking concerns. Based on the results of the above case study and social network perspective, the authors can explicate about the ways SIT may impact women managers’ networking: •

CONCLUSION The under-representation of women in the IT sector worldwide, especially in managerial positions, has been widely documented in the research literature. Most of the studies reported that inadequate networking and the lack of female role models and mentors are the main barriers for women entering the IT industry. The case study conducted in China and presented in this chapter also found evidence of the gendered guanxi and women’s limited networking abilities (Huang & Aaltio, 2008). In practice, women respond to male-dominated organizational cultures in a variety of ways, including the development of female associations or networks (Mills & Murgatroyd, 1991). Within the IT field, women have taken advantage of the emerging SIT to develop support networks to reach beyond organizational boundaries and create associations in cyberspace (see Lahey, 2002; WorldWIT, 2004). These female-centered formal and informal networks are aimed at encouraging and promoting IT as a professional field for women and developing effective networking and mentoring relationships for women across industries and IT interests (Ahuja, 2002). However, some scholars warn that organizations should be careful about the obvious matching of women with women in mentoring programs. Kaplan and Niederman (2006) argue that selecting women as mentors is perfectly suitable as long as the potential mentor has a diverse and powerful social network; otherwise, all else equal, a potential female protégé could arguably benefit more by being paired up with a male mentor, as this would address the

•

•

•

Advice and Information: Both consultation (advice) and information (guanxi) have been successfully linked to the strength-ofweak-ties hypothesis (Granovetter, 1973). Therefore, SIT may allow for better networking, enlarge the possibility to seek advice and new information by using their effective communication abilities, and lessen the gender inequality based on “old boys” networks. Influence: By using SIT, women can overcome old normative barriers which are based on traditions and gender stereotypes. Seeking Help: SIT may help women contact their affective guanxi networks (family, relatives, friends, etc.) when they are distant. Socializing: SIT can help women build careers and use networking strategies based on technology applications.

Overall, although the impact of SIT is not revolutionary, new technologies enlarge possibilities for networking and create situations in which the impact of traditions, norms, and gendered values is lessened. Therefore, the influence of SIT is empowering for women who build careers in the IT industry. For most of the women IT managers, a career epitomizes the advancement of individual abilities. Successful functioning in professional networks requires efficient communicational skills. Because much of their work is based on collaboration, women need to adapt to this reality if they seek to be successful in their careers. At the same time, the increased use of the multidimensional networks of organizations as vehicles for economic and political decision-making requires a distinct set

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of organizational, communication, and managerial skills, in which women have traditionally been considered proficient (Fountain, 2000; Morrison, Randall, & Van Velsor, 1992). Currently, the IT industry is in transition between the old sense of identity, which is based on masculine culture (the technical side), and the new one, based on inherently female values (the communication side) (Colwill & Townsend, 1999). Gender-biased cultural expectations still create a barrier to female managers’ careers in IT. However, the changing nature of IT work and the implementation of SIT opens it to diverse expertise and values. Considering that China is in transition at both social and organizational levels, the authors suggest that IT organizations may develop mentoring programs, especially informal ones, to address inadequate representation of women in the field and to support women managers’ careers in IT. Besides, women need to be more strategic when deciding how to develop relationships within and outside their organizations, which will benefit their career development in the field of IT.

Bian, Y. J. (1994). Work and inequality in urban China. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Boase, J., & Wellman, B. (2006). Personal relationships: On and off the Internet. In D. Perlman & A. L. Vangelisti (Eds.), Handbook of personal relations (pp. 709-723). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (2005). The social structure of the economy. UK: Polity Press. Burt, R. S. (1992). Structural holes: The structure of competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Burt, R. S. (1997). The contingent value of social capital. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42(2), 339–363. doi:10.2307/2393923 Chow, I. H., & Ng, I. (2004). The characteristics of Chinese personal ties (guanxi): Evidence from Hong Kong. Organization Studies, 25(7), 1075–1093. doi:10.1177/0170840604045092

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Social Network: Refers to a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency (such as values, visions, exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, trade, or sexual relations). Social Network Analysis (SNA): Views the attributes of individuals as less important than their relationships and ties with other actors within the social network. SNA has turned out to be useful for explaining many real-world phenomena, but it leaves less room for individual agency. It provides both a visual and a mathematical analysis of human relationships.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Career: Consists of the sequential choices made by an individual, and is a development process of creating and managing a professional identity and personality. Culture: A process of constructing shared meaning and is based on a unique human capacity for self-consciousness and awareness of others. Gender: Refers to the cultural construction of femininity and masculinity. Guanxi: A central concept in Chinese society, is defined as a personal network, a network of ties, or as a special relationship between two or more individuals, which has wide cultural implications Guanxi Base: Defined as a shared common identification held by two or more persons.

ENDNOTES 1

2

This study was supported by the Social Sciences Fund of Guangdong Province, China (No. XLY0313). Founded in 1997 and with branch offices in over 30 cities, Zhaopin Ltd. (www.zhaopin. com) is one of the leading recruitment and management agencies in China. Its services include: Internet-based and traditional media recruitment, campus recruiting, human resources outsourcing, corporate training, and staff assessment. Currently, there are hundreds of online-based recruitment companies in China.

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Chapter 24

Online Participation Shaping the Networks of Professional Women Helen Donelan The Open University, UK Clem Herman The Open University, UK Karen Kear The Open University, UK Gill Kirkup The Open University, UK

ABSTRACT Social interaction technologies present women with powerful tools to extend their network of professional contacts. This chapter considers the use of online networks by professional women, specifically those working in science, engineering, and technology, who may face particular barriers in advancing their careers; it explores the potential offered by online participation and interaction for overcoming these difficulties. Recent discussions about women’s networks and networking strategies are extended, and the authors investigate how these strategies are being affected by the growth and evolution of online social networking. Different approaches to online networking for career development are discussed, together with an examination of associated Internet and Web 2.0 technologies and the potential these approaches and tools present to women working in science, engineering, and technology.

INTRODUCTION Networking with other professionals may benefit an individual’s career and bring advantages to the organisations that they are affiliated with (Brass, Galaskiewicz, Greve, & Tsai, 2004; Emmerick, Eu-

wema, Geschiere, & Schouten, 2006). Networking enables new business contacts to be established (Lea, Yu, Maguluru, & Nichols 2006) and provides the means by which to sustain existing ones. Associated activities may include: participating in organised events or training opportunities; socialising; and the sharing of experiences, exemplars of good practice,

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch024

Copyright © 2010, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

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knowledge and resources. There has been much interest recently in how online networks are being used for professional networking purposes (Stone, 2007). That is, using tools such as web forums and social network sites to foster the relationships, and undertake the activities, described above. Online networking strategies may be particularly beneficial to women working in male-dominated professions. The challenges facing these women are numerous and can be exacerbated by limited possibilities for face-to-face networking (Brass, 1985) or by participation in networks that are not well recognized or connected (Vinnicombe, Singh, & Kumra, 2003). Online environments, where connections may be formed regardless of physical restrictions, can be used to provide networking opportunities for women striving for career development. Science, engineering and technology are sectors that have particular difficulties in recruiting and retaining women (Bebbington, 2002). This chapter considers the use of online networks by women working in these sectors in the U.K. It explores the different approaches to online networking that can be adopted and the tools available to participate in such activities. The chapter discusses the potential these approaches and tools present to women, and whether this potential is currently being realized. The current state of research pertaining to online social networking by women in general is also reviewed.

BACKGROUND The challenges facing women working in professions (such as science, engineering and technology) are well documented (Bebbington, 2002; Fox & Anderson, 2004; Michie & Nelson, 2006). Issues such as “macho” workplace cultures, inflexible career paths and reward systems, and extreme work pressures are still a major contributor to the low entry and retention rates (Bebbington, 2002; Fox & Anderson, 2004; Hewlett et al., 2008). However,

isolation and restricted opportunities for interacting with other professionals can exacerbate these problems. Inadequate social networks can limit progression opportunities (Kaplan & Niederman, 2006), provide access to too few role models and lead to isolation and insecurities (Hewlett et al., 2008; McCarthy, 2004). This chapter focuses on science, engineering and technology since the challenges facing women employed in these sectors are particularly prominent. However, the issues presented and patterns of online networking activity observed may also be pertinent in other male-dominated professions. Different approaches to tackle the networking difficulties facing women are being used. One response has been the formation of women’s corporate, public or professional face-to-face networks (McCarthy, 2004; Singh, Vinnicombe, & Kumra, 2006). Professional networks aim to overcome organizational and social barriers that may be present and provide a platform for women to meet and share career development strategies. Features that these environments provide include support, extended access to female role models and contemporaries (Singh, Vinnicombe, & Kumra, 2006) and relationships fostered within a social atmosphere. However, to achieve work-life balance, time constraints are often in place and these can limit travel options and render some of these face-to-face networks inaccessible. Therefore, additional communication channels that facilitate interaction over long-distances and support asynchronous participation could be beneficial. The growing online social networking culture is increasingly being used as a tool for career progression (Boyd & Ellison, 2007; Gefter, 2006). Many professionals have been using e-mail, mailing lists and web forums for conducting career or business related interactions for well over a decade. As Internet technologies and applications evolve, social network sites are becoming more and more popular for facilitating online social interactions. In addition, specialist career-based social network sites are now available that allow people to increase

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their professional visibility through the building of an online professional profile and a network of work-based contacts.

ONLINE NETWORKING FOR WOMEN’S CAREER DEVELOPMENT Online networking encompasses an extensive range of activities and interactions. Categorising different types of online networks is complex, as their nature can vary significantly over time with the composition and requirements of members and the evolution of social interaction technologies. We can, however, compare different approaches and specific tools that are currently being employed. We consider how these are being used to extend women’s access to other professionals and the impact this has on career development.

Approaches to Online Networking The term network-centred can be used to describe environments such as web forums and discussion groups, where a definable group is created that people may subsequently join or subscribe to. These groups may be stand-alone networks that have found a niche and exploited the Internet to connect a group of people with the same professional interests for the first time. They may also exist as a subsidiary of a larger existing online or offline network or organisation. Some of these groups are information-orientated, where the primary aim is distribution of information relevant to specific groups of people. These groups are typically characterised by a one-way online exchange, although discussions may arise infrequently on a member-wide basis. The relationships between members are likely to be weak (Haythornthwaite, 2000). Whilst it is debateable how much networking takes place in such groups, they can facilitate some discussion and do provide a means of sharing information throughout a group of people with similar pro-

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fessional interests. In this way they extend each member’s access to other professionals, providing many diverse, and potentially very useful, contacts. Alternatively, these groups may have a more interaction-orientated focus. That is, they exist primarily to provide access to other professionals for advice (technical, professional or even personal) or support. Whilst the distribution of information may still be one of the uses, here members are more likely to know other members and one-to-one and/or one-to-many online exchanges occur as a matter of course. The boundaries between information-oriented and interaction-orientated online networks are blurred and some networks may change between the two at different stages of the network’s evolution. Others may more obviously be one of the two types. For example, mailing lists are useful for the distribution of information but often provide a convenient channel for holding a conversation with many contributors. Online forums tend to be interaction orientated and encourage discussion between members, but they can also be used as a channel for information sharing. A second approach to online networking, which can be described as user-centred, is the use of Internet technologies, most noticeably Web 2.0 services (such as social network sites) to organise and structure one’s own social network. Instead of joining an existing group, this involves an individual creating her or his own online profile, extending invitations to others to join their network, and responding to similar invitations. Use of the Internet has evolved over recent years and social networking is now one of the major uses. The prevalence of social network sites has thus changed how online communities are structured (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). Previously groups of people came together, focused around a personal or professional need or interest, but increasingly online communities are built around what social network analysts may call an egocentric or personal network (Wellman & Berkowitz, 1988). User generated content has become a major

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source of new online material, and the anonymity of chat rooms and web forums has been reduced, as users publicly display photos and personal information in the form of profiles. Messages are exchanged with others in blogs and on social network sites. There has been much speculation in published works, the media and numerous blogs on how these sites distort the boundaries between the private and public spheres and what the social impact is of this (Donath & Boyd, 2004; Gross & Acquisti, 2005). Inevitably, this also means the boundaries between personal and professional identities are becoming vague. Associations or friendships are being formed within these sites between colleagues, ex-colleagues, or other professional peers. This permits insights into each other’s personal lives which may not naturally occur through other day-to-day interactions. Boyd and Ellison (2007) discuss how this “collapse in social contexts” was one of the problems faced by some of the early social network sites. However, this does not seem to have hindered some of today’s thriving sites that, although having an unreservedly social foundation, are impinging on the professional arena. Emerging within some of these socially founded sites are profession-based groups of people coming together from all over the world with little in common but their area of work. Formerly, web-based forums or discussion groups endeavoured to recruit members and then relied upon them to regularly visit the website, make contributions and maintain the group dynamic. There is now, though, less demand placed on members to be proactive, because RSS feeds or forwarding of new postings to an individual’s e-mail account enable participation through more accessible routes. In comparison, the professionbased groups being formed within social network sites (e.g., Facebook, currently one of the most popular social network sites in the U.K.) appeal to people who are typically already visiting the site regularly for social purposes. This may therefore be more compatible with people’s

existing online habits and less of a challenge to incorporate regular interaction with the group into their daily routines. In addition, social network sites facilitate an atmosphere based on social and informal interaction rather than one dictated by professional protocols. Other associations being formed between the personal and professional via these sites are more surreptitious. For example, some employers have been reported to be using sites, such as Facebook, to perform unofficial background searches on potential employees (Bennett, 2008) whilst individuals could potentially use the same methods to retrieve information on potential interviewers and employers. These searches may be performed covertly to elicit information that may not be disclosed in a face-to-face interview or even in a one-to-one online exchange. These different approaches and orientations offer a wide range of potential environments for women wanting to develop and extend their network of work-based contacts. The next section identifies the main tools that may be used to create and support these networks.

Tools for Online Networking Social Network Sites The above two examples of online networks take a network-centered approach. That is, there is a definable group that exists for people to join or subscribe to. These lists and forums may well continue to be useful in meeting some needs that are effectively addressed through an enclosed online space. In contrast, social network sites adopt a user-centered approach. Individuals build a public profile and create a network of online connections with others (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). There are career-based social network sites, for example LinkedIn,1 that specifically target those wishing to build up a professional network of contacts. These place more emphasis on employment and educational information than on other personal details. Links are made between trusted

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contacts and introductions facilitated by others through these contacts. The resulting network may provide the career progression opportunities being sought. The public display of connections is an important part of all online social networks and provides other viewers with indirect information about an individual (Donath & Boyd, 2004). In career-based sites, where connections are intended to be professional contacts, links can serve as unofficial recommendations, as they are made by mutual consent and therefore some degree of professional regard between connected members must be present. In addition, more formal recommendations of individuals can be created, and made visible, within the site.

Web-Forums Web forums (also known as e-groups or bulletin boards) allow groups of people to post and read messages about topics of interest to them. The messages are typically organised into conversational threads of messages and responses. Some forums also indicate which messages have already been read by the user (Preece, 2000). Through technologies, such as web feeds, new postings made within these forums can be forwarded to an individual’s e-mail account. Various women’s online forums currently exist. Some of these are associated with professional institutions, such as BCSWomen, a specialist group of the British Computer Society.2 Others are stand-alone networks that are connecting women for the first time. Some of these networks, such as BCSWomen, have hundreds of members and have successfully targeted a subset of women that benefit, personally and professionally, from interactions with other women in similar circumstances. Due to the geographical distribution of members, online interaction within these groups is the major form of communication, although some also organise infrequent face-to-face gatherings that are both socially and professionally driven. Web forums tend to be more interaction orientated than the mailing lists discussed previously.

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Observation of the online discourse in some of these forums indicates that activity is often most intense following, and in response to, appeals for help or advice and messages announcing members’ professional achievements. The supportive atmosphere previously sought by women in face-to-face networking environments (Singh, Vinnicombe, & Kumra, 2006) is also a major characteristic of these groups. Whilst they are bringing together women with technical or professional skills in common and are often used to access technical expertise, for many involved it is the support and solidarity aspect that is the main reason for becoming and remaining a member (Donelan, Herman, Kirkup, & Kear, 2007).

Mailing Lists Mailing lists (also called listservs) are used extensively to distribute information relevant to specific groups of people (Preece, 2000, p. 237). Mailing lists aimed at connecting and distributing information to women in science, engineering and technology currently exist. For example, Daphnet3 is an unmoderated mailing list of over 400 professional women that forwards information and announcements from various sources such as the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) and the Women in Physics Group (WiPG) of the Institute of Physics. The relationships between most members of such lists are likely to comprise little more than vaguely recognising other members’ names. Although the interaction that takes place via these lists may be limited, they can facilitate discussion and provide a means of sharing information throughout a group of people with similar professional interests. The lists therefore serve to extend each member’s access to other professionals. The most conclusive indicator of career development taking place within a network would be individuals successfully finding new jobs or achieving promotion as a result of membership. Past research has shown that people find jobs more

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effectively through “weak” rather than “strong” ties: i.e., acquaintances rather than friends (Brass, Galaskiewicz, Greve, & Tsai, 2004; Granovetter, 1982). The implication is that mailing lists, which foster such weak ties, have the potential to provide new career development opportunities through extending access to a wider and more diverse network of contacts.

Online Networks and Women in Science, Engineering and Technology A recent study (Donelan, Herman, Kirkup, & Kear, 2007) has demonstrated the extent to which different types of online network are being used by women working in science, engineering and technology (SET) in the U.K. Some of the findings of this study are summarised below. The research found that many women in SET are still using the more traditional forms of electronic communication such as e-mail, mailing lists and web forums. These still fulfil many career development needs, particularly those associated with accessing information or communicating with existing work-based contacts. The majority of those taking part in the research used mailing lists or web forums associated with their profession and felt they had benefited from these through access to information that had led to the development of their skills or knowledge. In addition, online forums were also sought out by women in SET to provide new contacts that could offer new job or training opportunities, support and collaboration. The study found that career-based social network sites are being used by a number of women in SET. These sites provide a convenient and accessible method for maintaining weak connections to a large number of professional contacts. They also create an awareness of the contacts, and therefore routes for advice and information, available. However, it is currently difficult to measure the long-term potential these present.

Many women cite “increased professional visibility” [sic] as reasons for joining these sites; yet, unless this leads to other more measurable results, such as a new job, business or training opportunity, it is difficult to determine the career development taking place. The study also implied that sites with a social foundation, for example Facebook,4 are impinging on the professional arena. Users are adding colleagues and other professional peers to their online social networks, thus allowing these colleagues an insight into their personal lives which may not naturally occur through other day-to-day interactions. In addition to the well established women’s online networks hosted via web-forums, groups are also being formed within social network sites to connect women with similar professional backgrounds or interests. For example, the Women in Technology group within Facebook had over 800 members at the time of writing. Although these groups are profession-based, they are defined by the social focus of the site itself and are therefore founded on informal interactions rather than dictated by professional protocols. Women appear to be joining both the more traditional web forums and the newer groups on social network sites in search of support and collaboration partners (Donelan, Herman, Kirkup, & Kear, 2007). Finally, the study also indicated that the majority of women in profession-based groups on social network sites already had online or offline connections with at least a few other existing members when they joined, whereas the traditional forums were more likely to connect women for the first time. Other research has shown that, in a non-career context, the primary use of Facebook is to connect people who already have an offline association, rather than those who are looking for new connections (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007; Lampe, Ellison & Steinfield, 2006). It may be that many of the profession based groups on social network sites are actually emerging from existing women’s online networks. Whilst the enabling tools are changing, the membership base

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is remaining fairly static. It is worth considering the potential effects of this on established ties within existing mailing lists and online forums. As one member of a list or forum initiates exploration of a social network site they may extend invitations to their associates, including other list/forum members. One consequence of this is the emergence of new communication channels outside of the original group context. These new groupings may have a more social perspective and therefore influence the nature of the relationships. A second consequence is the potential to form new contacts through “friends of friends” that may not have occurred through the original group setting. Another consideration that merits further research is the effect that the use of different types of online tools has on the gender mix of the networks of professional women. Some of the networks referred to in this chapter, whilst not exclusively for women, are nevertheless aimed at women. The networks are therefore biased towards women’s needs and particularly promote women networking with women. These networks have been shown to provide the support that is often being sought by women. However, it would be interesting to compare the resulting levels of access to well-connected ties with those provided by mixed gender online networks. Such ties can be invaluable for career advancement. Women’s use of online communication tools has changed considerably over the past decade. Recent figures indicate that women are spending more time online with the primary purpose of communicating with others. In the U.K., a recent study has shown that whilst overall men account for 55% of all time spent online, in the 25-34 age range it is women that account for the majority of time online. The implication is that this is due to the rise of social networking (Ofcom, 2008). These figures are supported by a U.S. study which indicated that young women are more likely to use the Internet than young men and are more enthusiastic online communicators

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(Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2005). This is a sizable shift from the 1990s when there was significant concern about the digital gender divide and the danger of women missing out on the benefits of the emerging Information Society. The transformation of the Internet from the early hacker culture where women felt excluded or even harassed, and in particular the emergence of Web 2.0 applications, has resulted in a more equal gender balance in online usage in the U.K. and many other industrialized countries. Indeed patterns of Internet usage largely reflect the demographics, concerns and behaviours of mainstream society (Herring, 2004). Yet this “normalisation” also implies that inequalities and gendered patterns of interaction continue to be replicated within online environments and networks. The long-term impact of these trends on women’s professional networking and career progression is not yet known. The implications are that online social networking, where communities may be formed regardless of geography and time limitations and where social interactions play a central role may provide an effective and complementary networking solution for women striving for career advancement. Continued research is needed that explores how these environments can be used to enable women to extend their networks and make them more effective.

FUTURE TRENDS The possibilities that online networks present for career development continue to be explored, as new users are introduced to them through contacts who are already users themselves. Today’s graduates have had exposure to the online social networking phenomenon from an early stage. As these young people enter the workplace, it is likely that online social networking techniques will bear more and more significance on the way professional people network. As communication technologies and appli-

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cations evolve, new methods for forming and maintaining networks become available. Current developments in web-based social interaction technologies, described as “social software” or “Web 2.0” are offering a range of new approaches to communication and collaboration. Many of these can be used effectively for professional and personal development (Freedman, 2007). For example, networks of bloggers and micro-bloggers are developing which allow their members to share information, resources and experiences (Java, Song, Finin, & Tseng, 2007; Mason & Rennie, 2008; Pedersen & Macafee, 2007). Wikis can be used for similar purposes, typically within smaller groups of people who are interested in a common topic and who contribute collaboratively to creating knowledge and resources around this topic (Mason & Rennie, 2008). It will be interesting to see whether young women embarking on careers in male-dominated sectors use social networking and other collaborative communication technologies for developing and strengthening their work-based contacts. If so, we should consider how this alters the shape and substance of their social networks and interactions, in comparison to women who already have established careers and networking practices.

CONCLUSION Social interaction technologies present women with powerful tools to extend their network of professional contacts. Recent research has implied that online networks can provide women, particularly those working in the science, engineering and technology sectors, with a means for finding avenues of support and collaboration within a professional context. Many of the networks currently available are facilitated through mailing lists and web forums. However, associations and groups continue to emerge within social network sites. More women in science, engineering and technology begin to use specialist career-based social

network sites to increase their professional visibility. The interactions these facilities provide may help alleviate some of the problems professional women face in male-dominated professions. It is impossible to predict whether the tools currently being used by professional women to network online will survive more than a few years. Given the life span of most Internet technologies this seems unlikely. However, if they positively influence attitudes towards networking, and increase awareness of its importance for career progression, the effects may be more long lasting than the technologies themselves.

REFERENCES Bebbington, D. (2002). Women in science, engineering and technology: A review of the issues. Higher Education Quarterly, 56(4), 360–375. doi:10.1111/1468-2273.00225 Bennett, R. (2008, March 25). Plea to ban employers trawling Facebook. Times online. Retrieved July 21, 2008, from http://technology.timesonline. co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3613896. ece Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1). Brass, D. J. (1985). Men’s and women’s networks: A study of interaction patterns and influence in an organisation. Academy of Management Journal, 28(2), 327–343. doi:10.2307/256204 Brass, D. J., Galaskiewicz, J., Greve, H. R., & Tsai, W. (2004). Taking stock of networks and organizations: A multilevel perspective. Academy of Management Journal, 47(6), 795–817. Donath, J., & Boyd, D. (2004). Public displays of connection. BT Technology Journal, 22(4), 71–82. doi:10.1023/B:BTTJ.0000047585.06264.cc

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Donelan, H., Herman, C., Kirkup, G., & Kear, K. (2007). Online participation and preferences: Shaping the professional networks of women in SET. UK Resource Centre for Women in SET. Retrieved January 10, 2008, from http://www. ukrc4setwomen.org/html/research-and-statistics/ partner-projects/ Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook “friends”: Social capital and college students’ use of online social networks sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), 1143–1168. doi:10.1111/j.10836101.2007.00367.x Emmerick, H. V., Euwema, M. C., Geschiere, M., & Schouten, M. (2006). Networking your way through the organization: Gender differences in the relationship between network participation and career satisfaction. Women in Management Review, 21(1), 54–66. doi:10.1108/09649420610643411 Fox, C., & Anderson, J. (2004). Asset 2003: The Athena survey of science, engineering and technology in higher education. London: The Athena Project. Retrieved June 6, 2006, from http://www. athenaproject.org.uk/reports/Report26.pdf Freedman, T. (2007) Web 2.0 in professional development. Retrieved July 30, 2008, from http://terry-freedman.org.uk/artman/publish/ article_1149.php Gefter, A. (2006). This is your space. New Scientist, 16, 46–48. doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(06)605009 Granovetter, M. (1982). The strength of weak ties: A network theory revisited. In P. V. Marsden & N. Lin (Eds.), Social structure and network analysis (pp. 105-130). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Gross, R., & Acquisti, A. (2005). Revelation and privacy in online social networks (the Facebook case). In S. De Capitani di Vimercati & R. Dingledine (Eds.), Proceedings of the ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (pp. 71-80). New York: ACM Press. 278

Haythornthwaite, C. (2000). Online personal networks: Size, composition and media used among distance learners. New Media & Society, 2(2), 195–226. doi:10.1177/14614440022225779 Herring, S. (2004). Slouching toward the ordinary: Current trend in computer mediated communication. New Media & Society, 6(1), 26–36. doi:10.1177/1461444804039906 Hewlett, S. A., Luce, C. B., Servon, L. J., Sherbin, L., Shiller, P., Sosnovich, E., & Sumberg, K. (2008). The Athena factor: Reversing the brain drain in science, engineering, and technology. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved July 31, 2008, from http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp. harvard.edu Java, A., Song, X., Finin, T., & Tseng, B. (2007, August). Why we Twitter: Understanding microblogging usage and communities. Paper presented at the Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Data: The 9th WebKDD, San Jose, CA. Kaplan, D. M., & Niederman, F. (2006). Career management concerns for women in IT. In E. M. Trauth (Ed.), Encyclopedia of gender and information technology (pp. 84-89). Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing. Lampe, C., Ellison, N., & Steinfield, C. (2006). A Face(book) in the crowd: Social searching vs. social browsing. In P. J. Hinds & D. Martin (Eds.), Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 167-170). New York: ACM Press. Lea, B., Yu, W., Maguluru, N., & Nichols, M. (2006). Enhancing business networks using social network based virtual communities. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 106(1), 121–138. doi:10.1108/02635570610641022 Mason, R., & Rennie, F. (2008). E-learning and social networking handbook. New York: Routledge.

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McCarthy, H. (2004). Girlfriends in high places: How women’s networks are changing the workplace. London: Demos. Retrieved April 21, 2006, from http://www.demos.co.uk Michie, S., & Nelson, D. L. (2006). Barriers women face in information technology careers: Self-efficacy, passion and gender biases . Women in Management Review, 21(1), 10–27. doi:10.1108/09649420610643385 Ofcom. (2008). Social networking: A quantitative and qualitative research report into attitudes, behaviours and use. Retrieved July 7, 2008, from http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/ medlitpub/medlitpubrss/socialnetworking/ Pedersen, S., & Macafee, C. (2007). Gender differences in British blogging. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4). doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00382.x Pew Internet and American Life Project. (2005). How women and men use the Internet. Retrieved July 7, 2008, from http://www.pewinternet.org/ PPF/r/171/report_display.asp Preece, J. (2000). Online communities: Designing usability; supporting sociability. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons. Singh, V., Vinnicombe, S., & Kumra, S. (2006). Women in formal corporate networks: an organisational citizenship perspective. Women in Management Review, 26(6), 458–482. doi:10.1108/09649420610683462 Stone, A. (2007, February 4). Get a lift from virtual networking. Times online. Retrieved July 31, 2008, from http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ business/entrepreneur/article1321067.ece

Vinnicombe, S., Singh, V., & Kumra, S. (2003). Making good connections: Best practice for women’s corporate networks. London: Opportunity Now. Retrieved May 2, 2006, from http:// www.opportunitynow.org.uk/resources/opportunity_now_publications/blank_2_1.html Wellman, B., & Berkowitz, S. D. (1988). Social structures: A network approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Career Development: The professional growth of an individual through activities associated with career progression and satisfaction. Career-Based Social Network Site: Social network site that allows individuals with career or business interests in common to form online connections. Mailing List: A list of subscribers who are recipients of distributed e-mail messages on a particular topic. Network: A set of relations or ties among people who have a common focus or goal. Networking: The process of maintaining ties with others in a social network and of generating new ties through contact with those people. Online Network: A network of people connected primarily via information and communication technologies. Social Network Site: A website that allows individuals to build a public profile, create online connections with other users of the site and extend their network through new associations. Web Forum: A web site providing facilities for holding asynchronous discussions between individuals with some common interest.

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ENDNOTES

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1 2

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http://www.linkedin.com http://www.bcs.org/bcswomen

http://www.wes.org.uk/daphnet.html http://www.facebook.com

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Chapter 25

Women Bloggers Seeking Validation and Financial Recompense in the Blogosphere Sarah Pedersen The Aberdeen Business School, The Robert Gordon University, UK

ABSTRACT Previous researchers investigating motivations for blogging have suggested mainly intangible benefits: for instance, documenting the author’s life, providing commentary and opinions, expressing deeply felt emotions, working out ideas through writing, and forming and maintaining communities and forums. The research detailed in this chapter focuses on the materialistic motivations of women bloggers in the U.K. and U.S. The author suggests that a need for validation and a strong financial stimulus should be added to this list of incentives.

INTRODUCTION This is not going be one of those spiritually uplifting blogs in which I name every fetus I’ve ever lost and then derive comfort from the fact that I have so many little angels looking down on me from heaven. No, this is going to be an angry blog, so please spare me the lectures about my attitude....I get plenty of opportunities to be a smiley-faced trooper in my real life. This is the only place where I get to be plain old pissed off at the universe.

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch025

The aim of this chapter is to investigate the motivations of women who blog, and the audience for whom they consider themselves to be writing. What makes a woman, like the one in the passage quoted above, write about her anguish, her hopes, her feelings of loss and pain and her plain anger in a publicly accessible website, where her words can be read by total strangers all over the world? What makes writing a blog different for a woman from simply writing in a diary or constructing a personal web page? And what, in particular, attracts women to journal blogging – North American studies suggest that more than half of all journal blog authors are women, that they persevere longer and write more (Henning, 2003) and that at least 50% of bloggers

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Women Bloggers Seeking Validation and Financial Recompense in the Blogosphere

in particular are female (Herring, Kouper, Schiedt, & Wright, 2004). This chapter summarises research into the motivations of women bloggers in the U.K. and the U.S. undertaken between 2005 and 2007 (see also Pedersen, 2006; Pedersen & Macafee, 2007; Pedersen 2007a). It suggests that female bloggers in particular are motivated by a need for validation and that there is a growing financial motivation to be found in the blogosphere, amongst men and women, but of particular interest to women looking for ways of earning income from home.

BACKGROUND From a handful of link-driven, internet-filtering sites in 1997 (Blood, 2000), blogging has taken off rapidly. The basic form of a blog is generally accepted to be brief, dated posts, collected on one web page. They are chronologically ordered rather than by topic or argument. At first, the use of blogs was restricted to those who had the necessary advanced programming skills. Such early blogs were primarily link-driven sites with editorial commentary – so-called filter blogs. However, with the introduction of free or inexpensive and easy-to-use blogging services, such as Blogger since 1999, the number of blogs has expanded rapidly (Herring, Scheidt, Bonus, & Wright, 2004). In 2008, the blog-tracking directory Technorati claims to be tracking over 112 million blogs. Filter sites have been joined by a second type of blog – the journal blog, which is essentially an online diary. The newer journal blogs have a commentary concentrated style, which may also include links and reader responses, depending on the theme and purpose of the blog. Whereas filter blogs are heavily reliant on links to and from their site and the comments of readers, researchers have suggested that journal blogs tend to have smaller audiences and fewer links to other sites (Nardi, Schiano, & Gumbrecht, 2003 Herring, Kouper, Scheidt, & Wright, 2004). Links-driven

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filter blogs tend to be focused on external events, while journal bloggers write about events in their own lives. However, it is important not to make too rigorous a distinction between the two types of blog – filter bloggers often write about their own lives and thoughts and journal bloggers will comment on external events such as politics and international affairs. While blogging as a form of online social interaction has attracted a growing amount of academic investigation in recent years, until recently the majority of such research has focused on the North American experience. This imbalance is now being redressed in relation to non-English language blogging. For example, examination of the state of the Polish blogosphere by Trammell, Tarkowski, Hofmokl, and Sapp (2006), Tricas-Garcia and Merelo-Guervos’work on the Spanish blogosphere (2004), and Abold’s (2006) discussion of the use of blogs in the 2005 German election campaign. Work on the Asian blogosphere has also developed rapidly (for example, see Hsi-Peng & Kuo-Lun, 2007; Miura & Yamashita, 2007) There has also been a limited amount of research into the U.K. blogosphere. Discussion of gender issues within the U.K. blogosphere has been undertaken by Pedersen and Macafee (2007) while Auty (2005) has investigated the blogs of U.K. politicians. Thelwall and his team have undertaken interesting research into bloggers’ reporting of and reaction to events such as the London bombings and the Danish cartoon controversy, demonstrating that blog search engines offer a unique retrospective source of public opinion (Thelwell, 2006; Thelwall, Byrne, & Goody, 2007; Thelwell & Stuart, 2007). From the outset, journal blogs have been associated with women. The research of teams led by Herring, for example, suggests that women write more diary-like blogs while male bloggers write more of the opinion-focused ones (Herring & Paolillo, 2006), and that journal bloggers are at least 50% female (Herring et al, 2004), while Henning (2003) suggests that women bloggers

Women Bloggers Seeking Validation and Financial Recompense in the Blogosphere

persevere longer and write more. The number of journal blogs is growing and now accounts for around 70% of all blogs on the Internet – meaning that the number of women bloggers is rising. In fact, according to a Nielsen/Net Ratings report published in the U.K. in May 2007, young women aged between 18 and 34 are now the most dominant online group in the U.K., marking a major shift from traditional male internet dominance. It is suggested that British women in this age category spend, on average, around 60 hours a month online (Nielsen Net Ratings, 2007). However, a substantial number of women bloggers has not necessarily lead to female dominance in the blogosphere. Here, popularity is measured in terms of links and it has been remarked that men tend to receive more links to their blogs from other bloggers (for references to the extensive online debate, see Pollard, 2003; Ratliff, 2004; Garfunkel, 2005). Ratliff has also produced evidence that men’s postings receive more comments than women’s (2006). Meanwhile, women’s blogs make up only 15% (Henning, 2003) of all blogrolls (the list of recommended links on a blog), and women bloggers are more even-handed in their blogroll linkages than male bloggers, who demonstrate a clear preference for linking to other male bloggers (Pedersen, 2007b). It has also been claimed that a greater amount of attention is given in the media to male bloggers (Herring et al, 2004; Pedersen & Macafee, 2006), while the apparent lack of women bloggers on political issues prompted Taylor (2004) to ask, “Is Blog a Masculine Noun?” One of the reasons suggested for such an imbalance is that blogs about technology and politics, which are popular subjects throughout the Internet, are more likely to be authored by men. It is suggested that men are more likely to blog about external events, rather than personal ones, and are therefore more likely to be found by prospective readers when using a search engine. Such discussions have lead to the establishment of the BlogHer movement in the United States with the mission to create oppor-

tunities for women bloggers to pursue exposure, education and community.

WOMEN’S MOTIVATIONS FOR BLOGGING The work of teams led by Schiano and Nardi on the motivations of bloggers suggested five main reasons for blogging (Nardi, Schiano, & Gumbrecht, 2003; Schiano, Nardi, Gumbrecht, & Swartz, 2004). These are: documenting the author’s life, providing commentary and opinions, expressing deeply felt emotions, working out ideas through writing, and forming and maintaining communities and forums. The research detailed below focused on women bloggers’ motivations for blogging; it suggests that a need for validation and a strong financial motivation need to be added to this list of motivations. A pilot analysis of 50 U.K. and U.S. women’s blogs focused on women’s reasons for blogging. The blogs were selected using the randomizer function from the blog directory Globe of Blogs. The criteria for selection were that: (1) the blogger had to have posted on her blog within a month of the start of the selection process; (2) the blog was written in English; (3) the blogger was resident in either the U.K. or the U.S.; and (4) the blogger was a woman over the age of 18. It was decided to exclude teenage blogs from the sample. A large proportion of blogs is written by adolescents: bloggers under 19 made up 58.3% in Henning’s 2005 figures (2005b), up from 52.8% in 2003. This population of bloggers is usually studied separately, since teenage blogging is acknowledged by most researchers to be a very different type of online communication from that of adult bloggers, associated generally with the use of community sites such as Bebo and MySpace. Therefore, it was decided to focus only on bloggers over the age of 18, which also avoided many ethical issues (Huffaker, 2004; Kumar et al., 2004; Lenhart & Madden, 2005). The analysis focused on reported

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motivations for blogging stated either in the “About Me” section that most blogs offer or in the blog itself. Blogs usually contain an archives section where all previous blog entries can be read, and the majority of the blogs analysed for this research contained two or three years’ worth of entries in such archives. A second, larger, blog analysis plus a survey was undertaken in two stages the following year. Overall 160 U.K. and U.S. bloggers (equal numbers of men and women and equal numbers from each country) were surveyed about their approaches to blogging, including blogging techniques, habits, motivations and rewards. At the same time, data was collected directly from respondents’ blogs and by means of online tools. Statistics for the sampled blogs were obtained from a range of blog-monitoring sites. These included: the ranking of the blog on two blog directories: Technorati and The Truth Laid Bear; a figure for the number of inward links, averaged from Technorati and BlogPulse figures (over variable periods of time depending on the content of the blogs’ feeds); and the number of outward links and images in the current feed, expressed as figures per 1000 words, based on data from SurfWax. Characteristics of the blog that were visible to inspection were noted, following the grounded theory approach of Herring and others (2004). These included: (1) the age of the blog (in months), based on the starting point of the archives; (2) links in the blogroll; (3) the number and nature of enhancements to the blog, such as site meters and logos or links for other blog services; (4) if there was a site meter, whether visitor statistics were hidden; and, (5) where available, the average number of visitors per day. The bloggers were identified through the use of the blog directories - Globe of Blogs and BritBlog. Both directories offered the opportunity to identify a blogger’s home county or state, which meant that it was possible to ensure a wide coverage of both countries. In addition, a blog related to the research was

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established. This gave first-hand experience of the challenges of blogging and also offered the opportunity for further data collection since the surveyed bloggers were invited to comment on the research as it was ongoing, an opportunity which they took up with enthusiasm. Most women bloggers in the sample attempted to come to grips with their reasons for blogging at the start of writing their blogs. However, the motivations expressed at the start of a blogger’s career might change and adapt over time. As one blogger wrote: This site started as a rather sad collection of pages containing fonts, files, and a bit about me back in 1996. I started a ‘Thoughts’ page; a list of bulleted random thoughts updated every few months. At that point, I could count all the visitors on one hand and I knew who every one of them was. Now I get 50,000+ hits a month, so this page has become a lot less personal (e.g. I won’t lament about my deepest thoughts and feelings and write sad poems about my cat). I now blog for a variety of reasons and people back home use it to see what’s up with me, but it’s mostly a way to sneak in some creative writing when I’m not writing software user guides. Several of the blogs analysed were originally established as part of the writer’s career or studies. However, these blogs might become less focused. A librarian who had started her blog as part of her continuous professional development, “to stay informed about changes and developments in our field,” was surprised to find that this was not all she wanted to write about and that life outside the library continually intruded into her blog entries. She accepted this and adapted her blog. What was surprising is the way in which some bloggers refused to allow their blog to adapt to include references to matters outside its stated purpose. Recipe blogs were “phased out” because the blogger “rarely had anything to add”; a blog focused on the South Beach diet stopped when

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the diet stopped, but the blogger reported that she would start a more general blog instead – “I have so much else to write and the topic of this blog has limited me.” Some women even managed to keep more than one blog on the go at the same time to fulfil different needs. Several of these second blogs documented the writers’ sex lives, although one woman wrote a separate blog about her pet hedgehog. This brings us to the question of who these women bloggers were writing for. Many of them were writing, firstly and most importantly, for themselves. The blog was used to vent their rage or celebrate their achievements in a more formal way than merely telling their family or friends. One blogger commented: “Unfortunately for you, dear readers, I am writing to myself as the primary audience and you all as the secondary. So it might not be as interesting for someone else to read. And for that, my apologies, but I won’t be changing the behaviour.” This writer had not told her family about her blog, which meant an irregular approach to her entries, caused by the need to keep her blog – and the comments about her family to be found within it – a secret. Other women, however, did inform their families and friends about their blogs and actually used them as a form of communication with loved ones, particularly if they lived away from them. Such bloggers commented as they posted that they were aware that their postings were being read by people who knew them in “RL” – real life. A student in Bloomington, Indiana, was “wierded out” to be informed by her boyfriend that his mother now read her blog, while a woman in the middle of a divorce settlement was warned by her lawyer to start a new blog under a different name so that her soon-to-be ex couldn’t use any statements in the blog as evidence in his battle to be granted custody of their children. Although most of the bloggers studied had “come out” to their loved ones about their blogs, they were still very aware, and mostly appreciative, of the total strangers who read and sometimes

commented on their posts. Many had regular readers, who became virtual friends and offered support and encouraging words on a daily basis – some even reported exchanging presents with regular readers. Those who left comments on a blog were likely to have a blog of their own, and dialogues over two blogs, with associated links, are common. Bloggers often apologize to their readers for boring them or not blogging for a day or two. This is the essential difference between a blog and a diary – the feedback from readers, and it is argued that the validation offered by such feedback is one of the main motivators for women who write journal blogs. Readers frequently commented on the latest blog entry and such comments were almost always supportive: either contrasting the blogger’s experience to their own, offering advice or simply using the oft-repeated phrase “You go, girl!” It was noticeable that commentators were usually similarly situated and therefore felt that they understood the blogger’s experience. Perhaps this is not an unexpected finding. Working mothers commented on the blogs of other working mothers, ditto stay-at-home moms or home educators. Supportive comments on sites dedicated to miscarriages or attempts to conceive came from other women in the same situation. On rare occasions, a negative comment might be made. The useful thing about a blog is that the blogger is the editor and can immediately remove such a comment – thus making the “public” sphere more “private” again. However, in the time that this comment existed, the blogger was usually inundated by many more supportive comments than usual. Bloggers asked their readers for comments and frequently thanked individuals for making a useful, wise or just funny reply. One woman urged readers to seek out her mother’s new blog and to leave a comment so that she knew that people were reading her. Another, an administrator from Minnesota, ruminated on how her attitude toward blogging had changed in the two years she had been writing:

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Suddenly it feels like it has become less of an outlet, less of a “journal” and more of an opportunity for me to seek the opinions of others - opinions that I’d never come across in offline-life, due to my fairly small circle of friends. I crave comments. I crave support. I crave attention. I crave the feedback.

A Financial Motivation As part of the survey, bloggers were asked about the usefulness of blogging: 29 respondents (18 of whom were women) agreed that blogging was useful because it brought customers for their business and 31 indicated that one of their reasons for keeping a blog was the hope that it would generate income. Such a financial motivation was particularly strong amongst women bloggers who were looking for ways in which to generate income as an alternative to full-time employment outside the home. Of the 31 respondents who mentioned a financial motivation in their written responses to the survey, 21 were women, and their responses showed very clearly that they were hoping that their blogging would lead to some sort of financial gain. As one U.K. woman respondent stated: “I hope to eventually make enough money from my blog to support my family; I see it as the beginnings of an online business.” The ways in which bloggers hoped to make money through their blogging differed. Some bloggers used their blog as a marketing tool for themselves or for their businesses. For example, one U.K. woman explained: “I started the blog as a way of promoting my online business, enhancing online word-of-mouth marketing … and developing my brand.” Her business sold home furnishings online and the blog described how she tracked such objects down. Another U.K. woman, who blogs about parenthood, stated that her blogging had started as a leisure activity but was now opening up serious work opportunities. One respondent, who worked as a children’s book

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illustrator, reported that she showcased her work and sold associated greetings cards through her blog. Another respondent, who described herself as an English courtesan, stated that many of her clients came through her blog, which offered details about her rates and specialisms. Direct financial reward was reported less often, but at least two women bloggers had managed to turn their blogging into a career – one U.K. respondent worked as a freelance blogger, setting up blogs for West End shows and individual actors. As she put it herself: “instead of blogging to moan about my lack of a decent job, I blog for money!” An American woman respondent reported that her blog of film criticism, originally set up for her friend’s amusement, was now syndicated across three newspapers in her home state. Of course, blogs can also make money through carrying advertising or requesting subscriptions. Heather B. Armstrong, the writer of the blog Dooce.com, famously supports her entire family through the advertising that her blog carries. As well as carrying advertisements on their blogs, bloggers might also earn money through “payper-post” advertising where bloggers write about certain products or services in their blogs in return for payment, although there is unease about this development in the blogosphere, which is seen as a morally ambiguous area because of the damage it might do to the editorial integrity of a blog, and no respondent in this study admitted to such activity. Bloggers might even hope for income through the printed publication of their entire blog. Blogs which have been successfully published as books include: Belle de Jour: Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl; Tom Reynolds’ Blood, Sweat and Tea: real life adventures in an inner-city ambulance; and The World According to Mimi Smartypants. In spring 2007 press coverage in the U.K. focused on the £70,000 book deal given to ex-Sunday Times education correspondent Judith O’Reilly for her blog Wife in the North. In August 2007 award-winning blog My Boyfriend is a Twat

Women Bloggers Seeking Validation and Financial Recompense in the Blogosphere

written by Belguim-based Zoe McCarthy was also reproduced in book form. There are now so many of these blog-to-book publications, also known as blooks, that a prize, the Blooker Prize, has been established. While none of the respondents to this survey had been approached by publishers yet, one admitted: “I also started blogging a young adult novel I am writing, to create interest in it, and hoping that by some chance an editor will happen across it and offer to publish it!” Another reported: I have aspirations to write a book about the food industry and I believe that writing the blog is a tool to (1) exercise my writing muscles and developing a voice; (2) distinguishing or creating a unique voice; (3) offer me opportunities for credibility and to be viewed as a subject matter expert. In 2006 Julie and Julia, a blook chronicling a woman’s attempt to cook all the recipes in Julia Child’s classic 1961 cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a tiny New York apartment kitchen, beat Belle de Jour: The Intimate Adventures of a London Call-Girl to win the first Blooker award. However, it was Belle de Jour that went on to be serialized on British television the following year. Research into the motivations of bloggers has previously focused on intangible rewards. However, financial motivations for blogging were found on both sides of the Atlantic. The business press has already declared that blogs have the potential to be effective marketing and communication tools for small businesses. In 2005, both Time and Business Week ran special issues devoted to blogging while Fortune put blogs as number one in its “10 Tech Trends to Watch for.” In 2008, would-be bloggers can buy books entitled Start Your Own Blogging Business and ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income. So far though, there has been limited academic investigation assessing the financial rewards of blogging, in particular for the lone blogger rather than large

corporations. Hill (2005) investigated the attitudes and experiences of small business bloggers using blogs as a marketing and communication tool in his MBA dissertation. However, this was a smallscale research project surveying only 15 bloggers and focused solely on the marketing possibilities of blogging rather than direct income generation through advertising sales or other opportunities. Overall, Hill’s findings suggested that blogs were used for relationship building with the business’s clients rather than direct sales. Only one respondent was making any money through the sale of advertising and most found that the main constraint that acted upon their use of the blog was lack of time. The situation seems to have changed since, with more bloggers at least expecting to raise a small amount of money from hosting advertising on their blogs, and many others hoping that their blogging will lead to greater things.

FUTURE TRENDS At present, the blogosphere continues to expand, although it must be noted that a high proportion of blogs are abandoned. Sifry (2005) estimated 45% in August 2005. Huffaker (2004) likewise found that 43% of teenage bloggers had abandoned blogs. As Henning (2003) puts it, “the majority of blogs started are dissolving into static, abandoned web pages”. Some are never used, but are created as tests or as automatic features on social networking sites (Henning, 2005a). While much of the early research into blogging focused on the North American experience, the expansion of the blogosphere into Asia and Europe is already providing new areas of research. In April 2007, Dave Sifry of Technorati reported that Japanese had now overtaken English as the most popular language for blog posts – 37% of posts tracked by Technorati were now in Japanese with Englishlanguage posts falling from 39% the previous year to 36%. He also reported that Farsi had joined the top ten most frequently used languages in

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the blogosphere, pointing to a growth in blogging in the Middle East (Sifry, 2007). Such an internationalization of the blogosphere offers new opportunities for researchers throughout the world and may well suggest new and different motivations for blogging dependent on different cultures and different international situations. Financial motivations for blogging appear to be a new and growing trend in the blogosphere demanding further investigation. It is also suggested that the rise of the “blook” and a reliance on advertising income, will repay further investigation, possibly from researchers in publishing and book studies. With the success of blooks, such as Julie and Julia and the dramatization of Belle de Jour, the book industry is developing a growing interest in cherry picking the most popular or innovative blogs – which after all come with their own established readership and marketing channels. The publication of books aimed at would-be ‘probloggers’, aiming to get rich from their blogging, also suggests that blogging is beginning to be perceived by some as an opportunity for those who need or wish to work from their own home, which of course includes many women.

CONCLUSION Women who blog do so for a variety of reasons, some of which have been documented by researchers. Such reasons might include: a need to publish their creative writing; to keep a diary; to communicate with family and friends across distances or to vent their feelings and emotions about particular problems or events in their lives. However, the important overall factor in all of these reasons is that they do this publicly. All the blogs studied were publicly accessible on the Internet and made even more available to the general reader through joining a blog-tracking directory. These women did not just want to write down their thoughts and feelings; they wanted the validation of their opinions which only comes from being read by

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others and receiving feedback. They could have chosen to write a diary or even to keep their blog private, accessible only by password by a chosen few. Instead, they chose to publish their lives and experiences to the world and welcomed comments, feedback and even the occasional criticism. In addition, a growing financial motivation can be identified. Such a motivation is not restricted to one sex, but does seem to be particularly appealing to women bloggers looking for a way to earn income from their home. In recent years, publicity about publication deals for blogs has also tended to focus on women bloggers. Such a financial motivation deserves further investigation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author wishes to acknowledge funding support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

NOTE Permission for quotation was gained from all bloggers mentioned in this chapter. The permission was given on condition of anonymity; therefore, no sources are given for direct quotations.

REFERENCES Abold, R. (2006, April). 1000 little election campaigns: Utilisation and acceptance of Weblogs in the run-up to the German general election 2005. Paper presented at the 2006 ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Nicosia, Cyprus. Auty, C. (2005). UK elected representatives and their Weblogs: First impressions. Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives, 57(4), 338–355.

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Blood, R. (2000). Weblogs: A history and perspective. Retrieved March 8, 2006, from http://www. rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html Entrepeneur Press. (2007). Start your own blogging business. Irvine, CA: Entrepreneur Press. Garfunkel, J. (2005). Promoting women bloggers: A timeline of relevant discussions. Message posted to http://civilities.net/PromotingWomenBloggersTimeline Henning, J. (2003). The blogging iceberg. Message posted to http://www.perseus.com/blogsurvey/ iceberg.html Henning, J. (2005a). Nothing old can stay. Message posted to http://www.perseusdevelopment. com/blogsurvey/blog/051223agerange.html Herring, S. C., Kouper, I., Schiedt, L. A., & Wright, E. (2004). Women and children last: The discursive construction of Weblogs. In L. Gurak, S. Antonijevic, L. Johnson, C. Ratliff, & J. Reyman (Eds.), Into the blogosphere: Rhetoric, community, and culture of Weblogs. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Retrieved March 7, 2006, from http:// blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/ Herring, S. C., & Paolillo, J. C. (2006). Gender and genre variation in Weblogs. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 10(4), 439–459. doi:10.1111/j.14679841.2006.00287.x Herring, S. C., Scheidt, L., Bonus, S., & Wright, E. (2004). Bridging the gap: A genre analysis of Weblogs. In Proceedings of the 37th Hawai’I International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-37). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press. Retrieved March 7, 2006, from http://www.blogninja.com/DDGDD04.doc Hill, J. (2005). The voice of the blog: The attitudes and experiences of small business bloggers using blogs as a marketing and communications tool. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Liverpool, England.

Hsi-Peng, L., & Kuo-Lun, H. (2007). Understanding intention to continuously share information on Weblogs. Internet Research, 17(4), 345–361. doi:10.1108/10662240710828030 Huffaker, D. (2004). Gender similarities and differences in online identity and language use among teenage bloggers. Unpublished master’s thesis, Georgetown University, USA. Kumar, R., Novak, J., Raghavan, P., & Tomkins, A. (2004). Structure and evolution of blogspace. Communications of the ACM, 47(12), 35–39. doi:10.1145/1035134.1035162 Lenhart, A., & Madden, M. (2005). Teen content creators and consumers. Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2 November 2005. Retrieved November 14, 2005, from http://www.pewinternet.org. pdfs/PIP_Teens_Content_Creation.pdf Miura, A., & Yamashita, K. (2007). Psychological and social influences on blog writing: An online survey of blog authors in Japan. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4). doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00381.x Nardi, B. A., Schiano, D. J., & Gumbrecht, M. (2003). Blogging as social activity, or, would you let 900 million people read your diary? Retrieved March 7, 2006, from http://home.comcast. net/~diane.schiano/CSCW04.Blog.pdf Nardi, B. A., Schiano, D. J., Gumbrecht, M., & Swartz, L. (2004). ‘I’m blogging this’: A closer look at why people blog. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery. Retrieved September 12, 2006, from http://www.ics.uci. edu/~jpd/classes/ics234cw04/nardi.pdf Nielsen Net Ratings. (2007). Young women now the most dominant group online. Retrieved January 8, 2008, from http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/

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Pedersen, S. (2006). Women users’ motivations for establishing and interacting with blogs (Web logs). International Journal of the Book, 3(2), 85–90. Pedersen, S. (2007a). Speaking the same language? Differences and similarities between U.S. and UK bloggers. The International Journal of the Book, 5(1), 33–40. Pedersen, S. (2007b). Now read this: Male and female bloggers’ recommendations for further reading. Paper presented at Beyond the Book: Contemporary Cultures of Reading conference, Birmingham, England. Pedersen, S., & Macafee, C. (2007). Gender differences in British blogging. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4). doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00382.x Pollard, D. (2003). Is the blogosphere sexist? Message posted to http://blogs.salon. com?0002007/2003/10/30.html Ratliff, C. (2004a). Whose voices get heard? Gender politics in the blogosphere. Message posted to http://culturecat.net/node/303 Ratliff, C. (2004b). *The* link portal on gender in the blogosphere. Message posted to http:// culturecat.net/node/637 Ratliff, C. (2006). WATW by the numbers. Message posted to http://culturecat.net/node/1030 Rowse, D., & Garrett, C. (2008). Problogger: Secrets for blogging your way to a six figure income. Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons. Schiano, D. J., Nardi, B. A., Gumbrecht, M., & Swartz, L. (2004, April). Blogging by the rest of us. Paper presented at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Vienna, Austria. Retrieved June 3, 2004, from http://home.comcast. net/~diane.schiano/CHI04.Blog.pdf

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Sifry, D. (2007). The state of the live Web: April 2007. Retrieved July 7, 2008, from http://www. sifry.com/alerts/archives/000493.html Taylor, R. (2004, May 11). Is blog a masculine noun? The Guardian. Retrieved September 15, 2006, from http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1214393,00.html Thelwall, M. (2006, May). Bloggers during the London attacks: Top information sources and topics. Paper presented at the 15th International World Wide Web Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland. Retrieved May 5, 2006, from http://www. blogpulse.com/www2006-workshop/papers/ blogs-during-london-attacks.pdf Thelwall, M., Byrne, A., & Goody, M. (2007). Which types of news story attract bloggers? Information Research 12(4). Thelwall, M., & Stuart, D. (2007). RUOK? Blogging communication technologies during crises. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(2). doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00336.x Trammell, K. D., Tarkowski, A., Hofmokl, J., & Sapp, A. M. (2006). Rzeczpospolita blogów [Republic of Blog]: Examining Polish bloggers through content analysis. Journal of ComputerMediated Communication, 11(3). doi:10.1111/ j.1083-6101.2006.00032.x Tricas-García, F., & Merelo-Guervos, J. J. (2004, March). The Spanish-speaking blogosphere: Towards the powerlaw? Paper presented at the IADIS International Conference WWW/Web Based Communities, Lisbon, Portugal.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Blog: Derived from the term “weblog.” A website, usually maintained by an individual (although there are also group blogs) with brief, dated posts. The posts are chronologically ordered rather than

Women Bloggers Seeking Validation and Financial Recompense in the Blogosphere

by topic or argument. Usually contains links to other blogs and web pages with commentary. May also contain readers’ comments. Blogosphere: A collective term for blogs and networks of bloggers. Blogroll: A list of favorite blogs recommended by the blogger. Blook: A book published as a blog or a printed book derived from an original blog. Blooker Prize: A literary award for blooks,

sponsored by Lulu.com, a print-on-demand publisher. The first prize was awarded in 2006. Filter Blogs: Proto-typical blogs. Links driven blogs with editorial commentary. More focused on external events than a filter blog. Journal Blogs: In comparison to filter blogs, more of an online diary. Usually less reliant on links and readers’comments than filter blogs. More focused on the bloggers’ life than a filter blog.

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Chapter 26

Personal Blogging

Individual Differences and Motivations Rosanna E. Guadagno University of Alabama, USA Cassie A. Eno University of Alabama, USA Bradley M. Okdie University of Alabama, USA

ABSTRACT The present chapter examines current research of blogging practices; it focuses on the personal blog, a blog created and maintained by an individual and not used for financial or occupational gain. The authors maintain that individual difference factors, such as personality and gender, may contribute to differences in likelihood to blog, motivation to blog, and blog content. The authors argue that the same factors that allow for differentiation of individuals in more classic self-expressive communication modalities (e.g., journaling) may also delineate individuals in new modes of online communication and self-expression. However, these factors may manifest themselves differently over more contemporary methods of self-expression and communication. The authors conclude that bloggers and blog readership appear to be steadily growing, making this area of online self-expression increasingly deserving of scientific inquiry.

INTRODUCTION Current trends in online social interaction have led to an increase in personalization and a decrease in anonymity owing to both technological advances and changing social norms (for a review, see Bargh & McKenna, 2004; McKenna & Bargh, 2000). At the forefront of these changing trends are blogs (short for weblogs), which are personal websites updated DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch026

regularly by their creator where journal-like entries or “posts” appear in reverse chronological order (Herring, Scheidt, Wright, & Bonus, 2005b). Blog topics vary from personal information (e.g., a log of daily activities, information about friendships and relationships) to political opinion to celebrity gossip to high tech news and information. Blogs can be created with little technological savvy as many blogging websites are user-friendly and allow the blog creator to simply choose a template and begin creating posts. Blogs, such as the ones described

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previously, are said to reside in the blogosphere -- an online world of conversation among bloggers via heavily interconnected blogs (Herring et al., 2005a). While this is how the blogosphere was originally conceptualized, at the current time blogs are mostly independent of each other. Although it is possible to post links of other blogs (also known as a blogroll) on one’s blog, most conversation occurs through a dialogue between the blog creator and readers of a particular blog. That is, each time a creator posts an entry on his or her blog, readers view the entry and have the option to respond with a comment. Blog creators can respond with a reciprocal comment and these comments may impact the content of future entries within the individual blog. However, these conversations have little impact on the content or dialogue of other blogs. Although reports indicate that the first blog appeared online in 1997 (Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht, & Swartz, 2004b), the number of blogs available online has only started to increase dramatically in the past few years (Sifry, 2007). The same can be said for research on bloggers’ demographics, motivations, personality, and practices. The present chapter examines current research in blogging practices, focusing on a type of blog known as a personal blog, which is created and maintained by an individual and is not used for financial or occupational gain. Specifically, we will review demographics on blogging and then examine two aspects of blogging: how individual differences – such as personality and gender – affect blogging practices and what motivates individuals to create and maintain a blog.

BACKGROUND Research indicates that while blogging is becoming increasingly popular around the globe, many of the world’s bloggers reside in the United States (Herring et al., 2005b). Similarly, much of the research on blogging has also been conducted in

the United States. This research indicates that, in the United States, bloggers are younger, better educated, more urban, less likely to be a member of an ethnic minority group, and more likely to shop online compared to the general population of Internet users in the United States (Lenhart & Fox, 2006). Although some research indicates that the adoption rate of blogging in other countries is lower than that of the United States (Herring et al., 2005b; Trammell, Tarkowski, Hofmokl, & Sapp, 2006), other research indicates that Japanese is the most commonly used language for writing blogs and is used more by one percent more bloggers than English (Sifry, 2007). Despite this change, relatively little research has been conducted to examine blogging patterns across different countries; however, the research that is available suggests that blogging patterns are similar across countries. For example, research conducted in Britain shows a similar pattern to what has been found in the United States (Pedersen & Macafee, 2007). These results also suggest that research conducted on blogging in the United States should generalize to blogging in other western countries; however, these results should be interpreted with caution until more research is available. In terms of number of blogs online, statistics on blogging in the United States indicate that 8 million US citizens keep a blog and 57 million US citizens report reading blogs (Lenhart & Fox, 2006). More recent data that examined worldwide blogging trends indicate that across the globe, there are 70 million blogs (as of April, 2007), and that this number is increasing daily by 120,000 (Sifry, 2007). This suggests that there are currently well over 100 million blogs available worldwide. Of all blogs maintained, it is estimated that there are 1.5 million new entries or posts per day (Sifry, 2007). Thus, overall blogging is becoming an increasingly popular online activity, particularly in Englishspeaking and Japanese- speaking countries.

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INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN BLOGGING Although the use of blogging as online expression is a relatively understudied phenomenon, a large body of existing literature on the psychological aspects of Internet use may offer insight into the psychological motivations of blogging. Literature on the psychological aspects of Internet usage indicates that individual differences on the Big Five factors of personality are indicative of different types of Internet usage as well as motivations behind these different usage trends. For example, individuals who are low in extraversion (defined as being not very sociable) and high in neuroticism (defined as being high in nervousness and insecurity) believe that they are better able to express their real-selves in online communication compared to face-to-face contexts (Amchai-Hamburger, Wainapel, & Fox, 2002). Hamburger and Ben-Artzi (2000) found support for the moderating effect of personality on Internet use; however, the results varied by gender. That is, women high in neuroticism and extraversion tended to use the Internet for social services (e.g., chatting, discussion groups, and people-finder services). However, men high in extraversion used the Internet for leisure services (e.g., websites with sexual content and random web surfing), while those high in neuroticism utilized the Internet for information services (e.g., searching for information needed for work or school projects). Similarly, loneliness has been found to mediate the relationship between neuroticism and Internet use for women, suggesting lonely women may be utilizing the Internet to assuage their loneliness (Amichai-Hamburger & Ben-Artzi, 2003). Thus, although there is a growing body of evidence on individual differences in Internet use (Amichai-Hamburger and Ben-Artzi, 2003; Hamburger & Ben-Artzi, 2000), little research has examined whether these findings generalize to this specific type of Internet activity: namely, blogging. To examine this gap in the literature,

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Guadagno, Okdie, and Eno (2008) investigated the relationship between gender, personality, and creating and maintaining a blog by using the Big Five factor model (McCrae & Costa, 1986) and gender to predict propensity to create and maintain a blog. The Big Five factor model of personality posits that individuals’ personalities may be broken down into five components: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness (McCrae & Costa, 1986). Neuroticism is positively correlated with emotional instability (anxious, insecure, and self-pitying) and negatively correlated with emotional stability (calm, security, and self-satisfying). Extraversion is positively correlated with being outgoing (sociable, fun-loving, and affectionate) and negatively correlated with being introverted (retiring, sober, and reserved). Openness is positively correlated with being imaginative, preferring variety, and being independent and negatively correlated with being down to earth, preferring routine, and a tendency to conform. Agreeableness is positively correlated with being soft-hearted, trusting, and helpful and negatively correlated with being ruthless, suspicious, and uncooperative. Finally, conscientiousness is positively correlated with being well-organized, careful, and self-disciplined, and negatively correlated with being disorganized, careless, and weak-willed. These five factors are considered to be temporally stable (Digman, 1989), independent of age, and not culturally determined (McCrae & Costa, 1997). To examine how these core dimensions predicted who would blog, Guadagno, Okdie, and Eno (2008) surveyed two samples of undergraduates – a group of advanced students in a classroom setting and a group on Introductory Psychology students in an online setting. The research examined how well participant’s gender and personality characteristics differentiated those who kept a blog from those who did not blog. Based on prior research findings (Hamburger & Ben-Artzi, 2000), the authors predicted that bloggers and non-bloggers, as well as males and females, would differ on some of

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the Big Five dimensions, particularly neuroticism. More specifically, highly neurotic women were expected to be more likely to maintain a blog than those low in neuroticism. Across two samples, researchers (Guadagno, Okdie, & Eno, 2008) asked participants to report their experiences with writing and reading blogs. Those who reported writing a blog also reported the following: number of blogs written, use of real name or screen name, and content of the blog written. Finally, participants provided demographic information and completed the Big Five Inventory-Short Form (Benet-Martinez & John, 1998). Twenty-five percent of participants in the first sample and 16 percent of participants in the second sample reported keeping a blog. Consistent with prior research (Lenhart & Fox, 2006), most blogs had a single author and contained information about personal experiences (e.g., about oneself, relationships, friends, families, daily experiences). When asked how they identified themselves, the majority of bloggers in these two samples reported using their real name as opposed to a screen name, thus making their blogs more identifiable. In terms of individual differences, results indicated that openness to new experience and neuroticism predicted blogging. Specifically, individuals high in openness to new experiences and individuals high in neuroticism were more likely to blog. Furthermore, after collapsing across the two samples, an examination of the data for gender differences indicated that neuroticism was a significant predictor of blogging for women, but not for men. These results are consistent with prior research on gender and personality differences in Internet usage (Amichai-Hamburger & Ben-Artzi, 2003), which also showed that women high in neuroticism had different Internet usage patterns than did men or women low in neuroticism. The results of the study (Guadagno, Okdie, & Eno, 2008) indicate that gender, openness to new experience, and neuroticism predict likelihood of maintaining a blog. Since blogging is a new form

of online self-expression, it stands to reason that creative individuals, such as those high in openness to new experience who are willing to try new things are more likely to blog. This also suggests that it may be the case that individuals who are high in openness to new experience are also likely to be the first to adopt new technology. Additionally, these results indicate that individuals high in neuroticism– characterized by anxiety, worry, emotional reactivity, and nervousness (John & Srivastava, 1999; McCrae & Costa, 1986) – may use blogging to assuage loneliness or in an effort to reach out and form social connections. These findings were also moderated by gender. Specifically, women who were high in neuroticism were more likely to maintain a blog than were women low in neuroticism while there was no difference in blogging rates for men based on their level of neuroticism. Finally, results also replicate prior findings supporting the notion that bloggers disclose identifying, personal information in their blogs (Herring et al., 2005b; Huffaker & Calvert, 2005; Viegas, 2005). Other research on gender differences in blogging practices is also consistent with the prior work on gender differences in general Internet use. More specifically, this research indicated that in Britain – as in the US – women use blogs as a social outlet while men use blogs as an informational or opinion outlet (Pedersen & Macafee, 2007). Although men and women are equally represented in the blogosphere (Lenhart & Fox, 2006; Pedersen & Macafee, 2007), the content of their blogs vary. For instance, in a comparison of blogs written by depressed men and women, Clarke and van Amerom (2008) found that men’s posts tended to be focused more on news whereas women’s posts tended to be focused more on relationships. Herring, Krouper, Scheidt, and Wright (2004) reported that women are more likely to maintain a personal blog than are men. Finally, Pedersen and Macafee (2007) reported that women bloggers were more interested in the social aspects of blogging, such as the knowledge that others

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would share their experiences, whereas men were more interested in expressing opinions and reporting information. Overall, the results of the research on individual differences, such as gender and personality, suggest that these factors have a tremendous impact on who blogs and what he or she blogs about.

MOTIVATIONS FOR BLOGGING As reviewed above, there are notable gender and personality differences in blogging behavior. Individual differences are predictive of who blogs and what they blog about, but what motivates people to create a blog? Ethnographic studies on motivations for blogging in US samples have revealed that people blog for a number of reasons. Blogs allow users to update others on their whereabouts and activities. Blogs enable users to express their opinions with the intention of influencing others. Moreover, they can be used to seek feedback and the opinions of others. Some bloggers use their blogs in the writing process, affording them the opportunity to think through their thoughts in a public forum. Finally, some bloggers use their blogs as an outlet for relieving emotional tension (Nardi, Schiano, & Gumbrecht, 2004a; Nardi et al. 2004b; Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht, & Swartz, 2004c). These results are similar to survey results from data collected in a Korean sample indicating that participants reported maintaining their blog because it was entertaining and facilitated selfexpression (Jung, Youn, & McClung, 2007). Other survey data indicate that certain motivations to blog predict blogging behavior. For instance, one such study revealed that the desire for self-expression predicts frequency of blogging indicating that individuals with a high desire for self-expression post to their blogs more frequently than those with a low desire for self-expression (Huang, Shen, Lin, & Chang, 2007). Additionally, Baker and Moore (2008) surveyed MySpace users and reported that individuals who intended to blog

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were higher in psychological distress, self-blame, venting, were less socially integrated, and less satisfied with the number of online and offline friendships they had. These results were interpreted as suggesting that another motivation for blogging may be to relieve psychological distress. Overall, the results on the research on motivations for blogging indicate that individuals report a wide variety of reasons for engaging in this form of online expression and that self-expression appears to be one such consistent motivation.

FUTURE TRENDS There are several future directions that research on personal blogs could take especially given the relative paucity of studies on the topic. In the future, we recommend that research on the motivations for blogging and characteristics of bloggers should examine the interaction of these two areas of research. Specifically, future research should aim to examine whether men and women or individuals who vary on certain personality dimensions, such as the Big Five (McCrae & Costa, 1997), also vary in terms of their motivations for creating and maintaining a blog. For instance, it may be that self-expression is a more important motivation for blogging for individuals high in neuroticism than for individuals low in neuroticism. Or, it may be that individuals high in neuroticism experience greater relief from psychological distress from blogging. Along these same lines, it may be that relative to those low in openness to new experience, bloggers who are high in openness to new experience may blog to form new social connections or to influence others. Additionally, women may blog more for self-expression and to assuage negative emotions while men may blog more to disseminate and obtain factual information or news. Moreover, research on personality and Internet use suggests that there are other personality characteristics (Amichai-Hamburger, 2002) that may moderate motivations for blog-

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ging. For example, need for closure (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983), locus of control (Rotter, 1966, 1982), and risk taking (Levenson, 1990) may be useful in further differentiating bloggers from nonbloggers. Given that this is a relatively new area of research on online behavior, much remains to be discovered. As the software for blogging becomes easier to use, more novice Internet users may begin to create and maintain blogs. This potential change in blogging trends may have an impact on the demographics and personality characteristics of bloggers as well as the motivations for creating a personal blog. Therefore, we recommend future research examine Internet usage as a potential moderator for these aspects of blogging. Also, given that the majority of the research reported in this chapter reports on blogging in Englishspeaking countries, there is a strong need for more cross-cultural research on blogging. Specifically, it would be interesting to examine whether blogging practices are similar in cultures that are dissimilar to the United States and other Western cultures. We may find that countries with more collectivist views will show less emphasis on self-expression than Western countries with more individualistic views leading to differences in motivations for keeping and maintaining blogs. Moreover, future research should also examine whether the results reported in this chapter generalize to other forms of online expression, which are similar to blogs. With the growth of social networking sites (e.g., Facebook and MySpace), most of which incorporate blogging capabilities in their networking platforms, there will likely be a further shift in the make-up of the blogging population. That is, there may be significant demographic and motivational differences between individuals who blog using stand-alone blogging platforms (e.g., Blogger, Wordpress, or Typepad) and individuals who blog using services offered as perks on social networking sites. Individuals using social networking sites to manage their blogs are likely to be younger and have more identifying

information available to their readers via their associated social networking profiles – a feature not typically associated with other stand-alone blogging software. In addition, individuals who blog using social networking sites are likely to feel as though their blog readership is smaller, more intimate, and more connected owing to the nature of using a social networking site as a blogging platform. In other words, there is greater likelihood that individual’s using social networking sites to create and maintain blogs may have a greater sense of privacy thus making them more likely to use identifying information as well as engage in discussions of a personal nature in their personal blogs. Thus, the above distinction between the use of stand-alone versus blogging software embedded in other contexts may be a small but necessary disparity that should be addressed in future research likely leading to fruitful scientific gains. Additionally, future research should examine how these blogs with less anonymity are utilized to see if the patterns discussed in this review hold true when the users are more easily identified by readers and also feel a greater sense of privacy as well as a more intimate readership of their blogs. Other forms of online expression should also be examined. One such example is twitter.com, a website that facilitates communication among friends and family by allowing individuals to communicate via short messages posted in reverse chronological order that all answer the question: “what are you doing?” and is designed to allow individuals create blog entries from other forms of digital technology, such as cell phones. Once again these posts are more identifiable and users are likely to create more concise entries, which presumably can be accessed from any location. Future research should examine how these dynamics change the function of blogs and motivation for blogging. Finally, future scholars should examine the interplay between blog authors and blog readers. Current research on blogging takes a uni-

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directional approach to examining blogs in which the blogger is disseminating content to the reader. However, this is not typically the case. Most blogs allow users to comment on blog content, which the blog author can then read and respond to. This interplay between blog users and blog readers creates a bi-directional dynamic relationship that may change individual’s future motivations for creating and maintaining blogs as well as affect future blog content. Thus, the consideration of the interaction between blog authors and their readers may necessitate a shift in our current conception of the blogosphere. That is, moving away from a static approach and towards a dynamic one. Overall, as an Internet activity, blogging differs in noteworthy ways from other types of Internet use and this warrants further examination. These differences may make conducting future psychological research on blogging particularly beneficial. For example, the literature reviewed suggests that individuals treat blogs as private journals while providing identifiable information. Guadagno and colleagues (2008) found that bloggers are writing mostly about personal issues and that the majority of bloggers are using their real names, as opposed to screen names, on their blogs. And, this tendency is further exacerbated when individuals know members of their audience (Qian & Scott, 2007). Bloggers’ propensity to employ their real names in their blogs raises questions about changing trends in privacy online. Future research should examine the psychological consequences of this self-disclosing behavior and examine perceived anonymity of bloggers to determine their level of awareness about their own self-disclosure.

CONCLUSION This chapter presents an overview of the most recent research on blogging, focusing primarily on individual differences in likelihood of maintaining a personal blog and motivations for blogging.

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Overall, research indicates that most individuals use blogs in much the same way as other online resources (such as chat rooms, websites, bulletin boards, etc.). For instance, women utilize mostly the social aspects of blogging, while men tend to use blogs for information gathering and opinion dissemination (Pedersen & Macafee, 2007). Also, the studies reviewed indicate that individual differences, such as personality and gender, can predict, to a certain degree, whether individuals are likely to utilize specific services of the Internet (Hamburger & Ben-Artzi, 2000) and maintain a blog (Guadagno, Okdie, & Eno, 2008). Finally, the literature on motivations for blogging indicates that self-expression is one of the reasons why individuals blog but that there are other reasons as well (Nardi, Schiano, & Gumbrecht, 2004a; Nardi, et al. 2004b; Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht, & Swartz, 2004c; Huang, Shen, Lin, & Chang, 2007; Jung, Youn, & McClung, 2007). More generally, the research literature analyzed in this chapter suggests that individual differences may play a greater role than once thought in forms of online self-expression. More specifically, individual difference factors, such as personality and gender, may contribute to differences in likelihood to blog, motivation to blog, and blog content. It may be the case that the same factors that allow for differentiation of individuals in more classic self-expressive communication modalities (e.g., journaling) may also delineate individuals in new modes of online communication and selfexpression. However, these factors may manifest themselves differently over more contemporary methods of self-expression and communication. In the end, bloggers and blog readership appear to be steadily growing, making this area of online self-expression increasingly deserving of scientific study and inquiry.

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REFERENCES Amichai-Hamburger, Y. (2002). Internet and personality. Computers in Human Behavior, 18, 1–10. doi:10.1016/S0747-5632(01)00034-6 Amichai-Hamburger, Y., & Ben-Artzi, E. (2003). Loneliness and Internet use. Computers in Human Behavior, 19, 71–80. doi:10.1016/S07475632(02)00014-6 Amichai-Hamburger, Y., Wainapel, G., & Fox, S. (2002). On the Internet no one knows I’m an introvert: Extroversion, neuroticism, and Internet interaction. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 5, 125–128. doi:10.1089/109493102753770507 Baker, J. R., & Moore, S. M. (2008). Distress, coping, and blogging: Comparing new Myspace users by their intention to blog. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 11, 81–85. doi:10.1089/cpb.2007.9930 Bargh, J., & McKenna, K. (2004). The Internet and social life. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 573–590. doi:10.1146/annurev. psych.55.090902.141922 Benet-Martinez, V., & John, O. P. (1998). Los cinco grandes across cultures and ethnic groups: Multitrait multimethod analyses of the big five in Spanish and English. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 729–750. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.75.3.729 Clarke, J., & van Amerom, G. (2008). A comparison of blogs by depresssed men and women. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 29, 243–264. doi:10.1080/01612840701869403 Digman, J. M. (1989). Five robust trait dimensions: Development, stability, and utility. Journal of Personality, 57, 195–214. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.1989.tb00480.x Guadagno, R. E., Okdie, B. M., & Eno, C. (2008). Why do people blog? Personality predictors of blogging. Computers in Human Behavior, 24, 1993–2004. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2007.09.001

Hamburger, Y. A., & Ben-Artzi, E. (2000). Relationship between extraversion and neuroticism and the different uses of the Internet. Computers in Human Behavior, 16, 441–449. doi:10.1016/ S0747-5632(00)00017-0 Herring, S. C., Kouper, I., Paolillo, J. C., Scheidt, L. A., Tyworth, M., Welsch, P., et al. (2005a). Conversations in the blogosphere: An analysis ‘from the bottom up.’ In Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2005. HICSS’05 (pp. 1-11). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Press. Herring, S. C., Krouper, I., Scheidt, L. A., & Wright, E. L. (2004). Women and children last: The discursive construction of Weblogs. In L. Gurak, S. Antonijevic, L. Johnson, C. Ratliff, & J. Reyman (Eds.), Into the blogosphere: Rhetoric, community, and culture of Weblogs. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota. Retrieved July 30, 2008 from http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/ women_and_children.html Herring, S. C., Scheidt, L. A., Wright, E., & Bonus, S. (2005b). Weblogs as bridging genre. Information Technology & People, 18(2), 142–171. doi:10.1108/09593840510601513 Huang, C. Y., Shen, Y. Z., Lin, H. X., & Chang, S. H. (2007). Bloggers’ motivations and behaviors: A model. Journal of Advertising Research, 47, 472–484. doi:10.2501/S0021849907070493 Huffaker, D. A., & Calvert, S. L. (2005). Gender, identity, and language use in teenage blogs. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10(2). Retrieved December 9, 2006, from http://jcmc. indianca.edu/vol10/issue2/huffaker.html John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The big five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (2nd ed.) (pp. 102-138). New York: Guilford.

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Jung, T., Youn, H., & McClung, S. (2007). Motivations and self-presentation strategies on Korean-based ‘Cyworld’ Weblog format personal homepages. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 10, 24–31. doi:10.1089/cpb.2006.9996 Kruglanski, A. W., & Freund, T. (1983). The freezing and unfreezing of lay-inferences: Effects on impressional primacy, ethnic stereotyping, and numerical anchoring. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 448–468. doi:10.1016/00221031(83)90022-7 Lenhart, A., & Fox, S. (2006). Bloggers: A portrait of the Internet’s new storytellers. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved December 9, 2006, from http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/ PIP%20Bloggers%20Report%20July%2019%20 2006.pdf Levenson, M. R. (1990). Risk taking and personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 1073–1080. doi:10.1037/00223514.58.6.1073 McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. Jr. (1986). Clinical assessment can benefit from recent advances in personality psychology. The American Psychologist, 41, 1001–1003. doi:10.1037/0003066X.41.9.1001 McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1997). Personality trait structure as a human universal. The American Psychologist, 52, 509–516. doi:10.1037/0003066X.52.5.509 McKenna, K. Y. A., & Bargh, J. A. (2000). Plan 9 from cyberspace: The implications of the Internet for personality and social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4, 57–75. doi:10.1207/S15327957PSPR0401_6 Nardi, B., Schiano, D., & Gumbrecht, M. (2004a). Blogging as social activity, or, would you let 900 million people read your diary? In Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. New York: ACM Press.

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Nardi, B., Schiano, D., Gumbrecht, M., & Swartz, L. (2004c, December). Why we blog. Communications of the ACM,, 41–46. doi:10.1145/1035134.1035163 Nardi, B. A., Schiano, D. J., Gumbrecht, M., & Swartz, L. (2004b). “I’m blogging this”: A closer look at why people blog. Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Irvine. Pedersen, S., & Macafee, C. (2007). Gender differences in British blogging. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12, 1472–1492. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00382.x Qian, H., & Scott, C. R. (2007). Anonymity and self-disclosure on Weblogs. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12, 1428–1451. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00380.x Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs, 80 (Whole No. 609). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Rotter, J. B. (1982). The development and application of social learning theory. New York: Praeger. Sifry, D. (2007). The state of the live Web, April 2007. Retrieved July 30, 2008, from http://technorati.com/weblog/2007/04/328.html Trammell, K. D., Tarkowski, A., Hofmokl, J., & Sapp, A. M. (2006). Rzeczpospolita blogow [Republic of blog]: Examining Polish bloggers through content analysis. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11, 702–722. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00032.x Viegas, F. B. (2005). Bloggers’ expectations of privacy and accountability: An initial survey. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(3). Retrieved December 9, 2006, from http:// jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue3/viegas.html

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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Agreeableness: A personality trait on the Big Five personality inventory; individuals characterized as high on this trait tend to be soft-hearted, trusting, and helpful while individuals characterized as low on this trait tend to be ruthless, suspicious, and uncooperative. Big Five Factor Model: An inventory of personality traits comprised of five dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Blog: A regularly updated personal website which includes journal-like entries that appear in reverse chronological order. Blogosphere: An online world of conversation among bloggers via interconnected blogs using mechanisms such as blogrolls. Conscientiousness: A personality trait on the Big Five personality inventory; individuals characterized as high on this trait tend to be wellorganized, careful, and self-disciplined while individuals characterized as low on this trait tend to be disorganized, careless, and weak willed. Extraversion: A personality trait on the Big Five personality inventory; individuals characterized as high on this trait tend to be sociable, fun-loving, and affectionate while individuals

characterized as low on this trait tend to be retiring, sober, and reserved. Gender: The state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones). Individual Differences: The aspects of people’s personalities that make them fundamentally different from others (e.g., neuroticism, openness, extraversion, conscientiousness and agreeableness). Neuroticism: A personality trait on the Big Five personality inventory; individuals characterized as high on this trait tend to be emotionally unstable, anxious, insecure, and self-pitying while individuals characterized as low on this trait tend to be emotionally stable, calm, secure, and selfsatisfied. Openness to New Experience: A personality trait on the Big Five personality inventory; individuals characterized as high on this trait tend to be imaginative, independent, and prefer variety while individuals characterized as low on this trait tend to be down to earth, conforming, and prefer routine. Personality: A pattern of relatively enduring distinctive thoughts, emotions and behaviors that characterize the way an individual interacts with his or her environment.

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Chapter 27

Audience Replies to Character Blogs as Parasocial Relationships James D. Robinson University of Dayton, USA Robert R. Agne Auburn University, USA

ABSTRACT News anchors, talk show hosts, and soap opera characters often become objects of parasocial affection because of the nature of these program genres. This chapter explores the concept of parasocial interaction by focusing on audience replies to blog posts made on behalf of a TV character, Jessica Buchanan of ABC Television Network’s One Life to Live show. The authors employ communication accommodation theory to illuminate the concept and to identify specific communicative behaviors that occur during parasocial interaction. The chapter presents evidence of parasocial interaction within the blog replies and audience accommodation to the blog posts. Analysis suggests that parasocial interaction is the mediated manifestation of the relationship dimension inherent in television messages and used by audience members in much the same way it is used during face-to-face interaction.

INTRODUCTION It is estimated that in the U. S. 12 million adults “blog” or keep online journals and 57 million adults or 39% of all adult Internet users report reading blogs (Lenhart & Fox, 2006). A worldwide total of 175,000 new blogs are created every day, and the web search engine Technorati (2008) reports tracking 112.8 million blogs worldwide. Blogs are used as a vehicle for providing commentary to the DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch027

public. The critical differences in blogs and diaries are the opportunities for reaching a mass audience and the opportunity for that mass audience to respond to the commentary found within the blog. Because of the interactive nature of the blogs and blogging software, readers are able to add comments, links, pictures, video, or any other media format to the blog for the edification and entertainment of other denizens of the Internet. Popular television characters - such as, Dwight Schrute (The Office), Joe the Bartender (Grey’s Anatomy), and Jessica Buchanan (One Life to

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Live) - have blogs that allow audience members’ additional insight into the character’s identity and additional information about the story or plotline. These blogs are different from the blogs maintained by actors since they are written from the perspective of a fictional character. More importantly these character blogs allow audience members the perception that they can interact with the character – even though this interaction is parasocial. While audience members have always had some opportunity to interact, or more often, parasocially interact with characters through fan mail, the messages they send have not been readily available to scholars for study. Blog messages are more plentiful and easier to access, and provide communication scholars an invitation for studying parasocial interaction in depth. In this chapter we first address what is known about parasocial relationships between the audience and TV characters. We then introduce communication accommodation theory as a framework for identifying specific communicative behaviors that are likely to occur during parasocial interaction. An analysis of a TV character blog determines whether parasocial behaviors occur in blog replies and whether there is evidence of audiences accommodating the communicative behavior of the character. Finally we offer some suggestions for future research and future trends in this line of research.

BACKGROUND Parasocial Interaction The term parasocial interaction was used by Horton and Wohl (1956) to explain feelings of closeness audience members feel toward television characters. This closeness is believed to arise when TV characters behave in ways that resemble faceto-face interaction. This feeling of intimacy can be enhanced by production characteristics, such as the selection of shots and the format of the program. Bell (1991) suggests audience members may also

feel as if they are engaged in an interaction when the characters seem to be adapting their behavior to the anticipated reaction of the audience. An example may help illustrate this notion. Imagine a scene where a talk show host is performing a monologue. On a small scale, a pseudo-interaction sequence might look something like this: TV Host: Tells a bad joke. Audience: Groans, boos, or merely does not laugh. TV Host: Does a double take and makes a face. In this example the audience members may feel as if the character told them the joke and then responded to their reaction. (Note that this is not a real interaction and the audience is aware of that.) Such interaction may seem more dynamic than a simple monologue because the character appears to be reacting to the audience. Audience members are limited in their ability to reply or interact with their favorite TV characters. The audience member may “reply” by making commentary or talking back to the TV, laughing, or nodding their heads in agreement. Rather than sending fan mail, viewers may imitate face-to-face interaction. Again it is critical to acknowledge that the audience members understand that they are not actually interacting with the character. In a sense, the audience member is also acting like he or she is interacting with the character. More often, however, the audience member will do nothing more than think about the character’s message and generate a reply. These parasocial interactions only occur in the minds of audience members but are nonetheless similar in some ways to actual interactions. Since these faux interactions occur largely in the mind of the audience member, their responses to the character’s messages can be viewed as cognitive. Greenwald (1968) recognized that people are often influenced more by their thoughts or cognitive responses to a message than by the message itself. More importantly audience members often recall their cognitive responses

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more accurately than they can remember the actual messages. These cognitive responses, then, may be considered as the cognitive enactment of parasocial interaction. Audience replies to the blog posts of a TV character can be viewed as cognitive responses. In the cognitive response literature, the thought listing procedure is used by researchers to ascertain the thoughts of study participants. Applying this procedure researchers ask respondents to write down each individual thought that they go through while they are listening to a message (see Cacioppo, von Hippel, & Ernst, 1997 for an excellent overview of the technique). Audience replies to character blogs are similar to the thought listing procedure in that the replies identify the thoughts or issues of importance to them in response to the program and/or the character’s blog postings. It is not unreasonable to expect that audience members in a close parasocial relationship will respond differently from an audience member who is less involved with the character. Research investigating factors that increase the likelihood of parasocial interaction suggests audience members are more likely to report that they are in a parasocial relationship with a character when: •

•

•

A program presents a character in ways that resemble face-to-face interaction (Meyrowitz, 1986; Nordlund, 1978; Rubin, Perse, & Powell, 1985); The character engages in a conversational style of speaking and provides the audience an opportunity to respond (Rubin, Perse, & Powell, 1985); and Viewer involvement in a program is high (Rubin & Perse, 1987). Parasocial interaction is also more likely to occur with media personae that appear frequently on television (Levy, 1979).

Audience members are more likely to initiate face-to-face contact with characters when they

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report high levels of parasocial interaction (Gans, 1977; Horton & Wohl, 1956; McGuire & LeRoy, 1977). Talk show hosts, soap opera and TV shows characters, and news anchors have been most often examined as objects of parasocial affection because of the nature of those program genres. Meyrowitz (1994) investigated the impact of losing parasocial relationships on audience members by examining audience reactions to the deaths of celebrities, such as John Lennon and Elvis Presley. He found that such a loss is not unlike the loss of a close friend and characterized these relationships as being very warm and caring. Cohen (2004) and others have examined the impact of characters being lost to show cancellations or cast restructuring and found a correlation between levels of parasocial interaction and expected breakup distress. This is consistent with Koenig and Lessan (1985) who found that viewers reported feeling closer to a favorite TV personality than to mere acquaintances (but not as close as a good friend). Audience members report feeling sorry for characters, missing characters, looking forward to seeing characters, seeking out information about the characters, and desiring to meet them in person (Rubin, Perse, & Powell, 1985). While researchers have long suggested parasocial relationships can serve as a substitute for interpersonal relationships, the research has generally not supported this claim (Finn & Gorr, 1988; Rubin Perse, & Powell, 1985). Rather, there is little reason to believe that parasocial interaction can be predicted by social deficits, such as chronic loneliness (Ashe & McCutcheon, 2001; Perse & Rubin, 1989; Rubin, Perse, & Powell, 1985), neuroticism (Tsao, 1996), and low self-esteem (Tsao, 1996; Turner, 1993). In fact, people who have difficulty developing interpersonal relationships also often have trouble developing parasocial relationships (Cohen, 2004). These scholars have begun to suggest that parasocial relationships provide company for audience members (Isotalus, 1995) and are complementary to interpersonal

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relationships (Kanazawa, 2002, Perse & Rubin, 1990; Taso, 1996). Given the increasing acceptance among researchers that parasocial relationships should be examined in much the same way that interpersonal relationships are studied, it may behoove scholars to employ communication accommodation theory in their efforts. Horton and Wohl (1956) suggest as much: “The more a performer seems to adjust his performance to the supposed response of the audience, the more the audience tends to make the response anticipated.” Furthermore, the “simulacrum of conversational give and take may be called para-social interaction” (p. 215). Bell (1991) concurs and identifies accommodation theory as an excellent candidate for navigating the nexus between mass and interpersonal communication. They argue that audience perceptions of character accommodation – as manifest by the appearance of characters’ adjusting their communicative performance to expected audience responses – should increase the likelihood of parasocial interaction.

Communication Accommodation Theory Communication accommodation theory (Giles, 1973; Giles, Coupland, & Coupland, 1991) is an explanation of why people modify their communicative behavior to match the communicative behavior of others during face-to-face interaction. The theory is an extension of social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Tajfel, 1982) and suggests people behave in ways that will result in being seen as socially desirable. Proponents of social identity theory believe our conceptions of self are based on the social status ascribed to our membership groups. So from the perspective of social identity theory, an individual’s social status is determined by social status attributed by themselves and others to their social groups. Similarly, when an individual is evaluating the social status of someone else, the social status

of their group memberships plays a large role in determining that social calculus. Who we are is determined, in part, by the social groups that include and exclude us as members. Accommodation theory suggests that when we interact with socially desirable others we adapt our communicative behavior to more closely approximate their behavior. Through this process of imitation or convergence, we are trying to ingratiate ourselves to be socially desirable and be viewed by others as being a member of that socially desirable group. We hope that through accommodation, the high status individual will like us and invite us into his or her social group. Strategically speaking we adopt the behavior of the socially desirable individual to reduce the communicative differences between us. On the most basic level, this adaptation of communicative style and content may be little more than imitating the behavior and language of the individual we are trying to accommodate so that we are accepted and liked. Of course, more skilled social interlocutors are able to converge using far less obvious and far more sophisticated techniques. Borrowing a phrase, adopting the cadence or speech patterns of the other, employing similar literary references, or even adopting the same metaphorical world view are all ways of converging with a conversational partner. When we find ourselves interacting with someone less socially desirable, we maintain or increase communicative differences between us. In fact we behave in ways that signal to all that we are not like the person we are currently interacting. Behaving in ways that maintain our differences is called divergence; it is a strategy we use to maintain or increase the social distance between us. Giles, Coupland, and Coupland (1991) suggest that sometimes people accommodate or adjust their linguistic and their nonverbal behavior in face-to-face conversations as a conscious strategy to gain approval from or to influence the other communicant. At other times we accommodate

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without being consciously aware of our behavior change. Whether the convergence is mindful or not, a growing body of research suggests people are influenced by people who accommodate or imitate their language (Giles, Coupland, & Coupland, 1991; van Baaren, Holland, Steenaert, & van Knippenberg, 2003) or their gestures (Chartrand & Baragh, 1999; Mauer & Tindall, 1983). Research into the accommodation process has identified a number of behaviors including: being attentive (Ng, Liu, Weatherall, & Loong, 1997), offering compliments (Williams & Giles, 1996), head nodding, facial affect and smiling (Hale & Burgoon, 1984), pause lengths (Giles et al., 1987), posture (Condon & Ogston, 1967), self disclosure (Ehrlich & Graeven, 1971; Henwood, Giles, Coupland, & Coupland, 1993; Giles & Harwood, 1997), speech rate (Street, 1983), speech volume (Ryan, Hummert, & Boich, 1995), being supportive, (Ng et al., 1997), utterance length (Matarazzo et al., 1968; Giles et al., 1987), vocabulary (Giles, Mulac, Bradac, & Johnson, 1987), and vocal intensity (Natale, 1975; Welkowitz, Feldstein, Finkelstein, & Aylesworth, 1972). While it could be argued that all audience members’ responses to character blogs are parasocial interactions, other motivations, uses, or gratifications may also account for this behavior. If parasocial interaction is indeed motivated identification with or affinity toward the character, it is reasonable to expect audience replies to blog posts to prominently feature accommodation behavior. Accepting the premise that parasocial interaction should be studied in much the same way that interpersonal interaction should be studied, audience members should enact convergence behaviors when they reply to character blogs. In an effort to test these ideas, character blogs and the replies to those blog posts were examined. Since the previous research suggests daytime serials have been one of the most widely researched program genres within the parasocial interaction literature and because the nature of “soap operas” encourage the development of

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parasocial relationships, the subsequent analyses focus on audience replies to the blog posts of Jessica Buchanan. Jessica Buchanan has been a character on the daytime program One Life to Live since its beginning. Taking place in Llanview – a fictitious suburb of Philadelphia, One Life to Live was created by Agnes Nixon and premiered on ABC in July 1968. Jessica Buchanan suffers a multiple personality disorder. Jess’s second and quite distinct personality is Tess.

AN ANALYSIS OF AUDIENCE BLOG REPLIES All of the blog posts penned by the character Jessica Buchanan between October 15, 2007 and January 11, 2008 were analyzed. Jessica made 20 entries to her blog during that time and a total of 56 audience members responded by sending 117 replies. A content analysis of the blog posts and the audience replies yields several interesting findings. None of the blogging was done by Jessica’s other personality Tess. In two instances an audience member asked Jessica about the reappearance of Tess – most often in response to problems that Tess would remedy through violence. The typical blog post by Jessica was 75 words long – not including a heading and a date. These posts focus on her feelings about what has been happening within the plotline of the program. Jessica makes no mention of subplots or other characters unless they directly affect her somehow. In a sense, Jessica writes in her blog as if it were a journal or a diary that is being shared with the audience. There is no acknowledgement of the audience in her blog posts nor are there ever replies to questions or comments made by audience members. Examination of audience replies to the blog posts indicates great disparity in their communicative behavior. Of the 56 individuals posting replies, only 9 wrote more than one time to Jessica. That is to say 83.9% of the replies were written by people who only wrote one message to Jes-

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sica over the three month period. Four of those 9 audience members wrote between 2 and 4 messages to Jessica and the remaining five audience members replied to blog posts 9 or more times during the period. This disparity is both statistically significant and theoretically significant since it provides evidence that even among fans of the show motivated enough to reply to a blog post, there is a great deal of variation in the amount of character contact audience members desire. In fact only one of the 117 blog replies contains a request for actual interaction. The fan wrote: “email me – it’s the address above.” That same fan also wrote the only blog replies indicating they had actually seen the character on the street. On these two different occasions the audience member wrote: “I saw you on Friday and you looked great – cool shirt,” “I saw you today and you looked pretty cool,” and “I just wanted to tell you that. Ok?” This particular fan replied to blog posts on 9 different occasions and repeatedly tells Jessica, “I’m your biggest fan.” This last comment still brings to mind John Hinkley’s last words to John Lennon even 28 years after the fact. Audience members desiring contact are clearly interested in contact with Jessica and not the other audience members. Only three blog replies ask other audience members for information about a character or situation occurring on the soap. All three of these messages oriented toward other fans were written by individuals who only replied to one blog post during the entire period. Additionally, these requests for information from other fans only yielded one reply during the entire three month period. This seems to reduce the viability of the interactional starvation explanation for audience behavior. The audience comments suggest clear evidence of parasocial interaction. Those audience members replying frequently tend to reply in much the same way they would reply to a friend via e-mail or a letter. In addition, the audience members making multiple posts to the blog often offer sympathy (e.g., “I hope you…” “I think you’re better off…,”

and “Good for you Jess …”) or advice (e.g., “you should …,” “you’re better off if you …,” and “I think you can …”). It is also quite common for audience members to ask questions of Jessica – as though they were literally interacting (e.g., “Is Tess gone for good?” “What is the matter with Sarah lately?” “Why don’t you just tell the family the truth?” “Is Vicki gonna be found in Paris, Texas?”). Audience members also use the “xoxo” convention to extend hugs and kisses to the character in their e-mail. Thus there does appear to be some evidence that some, if not many, audience members are behaving in ways that are consistent with parasocial interaction. From the perspective of accommodation theory, fans should enact convergence behaviors or adopt behaviors consistent with Jessica’s behavior if they perceive a character to be highly socially desirable. Analysis of the blog replies provides evidence of characters engaging in accommodation behaviors in their replies to Jessica’s blog posts. For example, there is evidence that offering compliments constitutes convergence behavior (Williams & Giles, 1996) and can be found in the audience replies (e.g., “You pretending to be Jess is a great idea …,” “I love you guys …,” “Dressing her up as Jared was a stroke of genius…,” “Of course you’re fiercely protective of your twin and everyone else you love. That’s one of your best qualities…,” “You go girl …,” “Applauds Jessica...,” “You are a neat family …”). Self disclosure is another communicative behavior that has been associated with convergence and again can be found, although much less frequently, in the audience replies (Ehrlich & Graeven, 1971; Henwood, Giles, Coupland, & Coupland, 1993; Giles & Harwood, 1997). Responses that illustrate this say: for example, “Get a dog, I have two dogs…,” “I would miss him too …,” “I was heartbroken when you chose to be with Nash – I actually cried,” and “I seen a lot of snakes since I been (Sic) dating….” Other more common convergence behaviors found in audience replies include being attentive

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(Ng et al., 1997) and supportive (Ng et al., 1997). In nearly every blog reply, there is clearly some evidence of audience members expressing support for Jessica. This support includes informational support, such as telling Jessica things that are going on in the program as well as being empathetic and providing her emotional support. Examples of informational support include: “You might want to get that dizziness checked out …,” “There might be a slight chance you are pregnant…,” “I see romance between Antonio and the lady cop anyway …,” and “Please don’t let Dorian get Charlie, Vicki found him first and she deserves him a lot more than you know.” Examples of empathy and the provision of emotional social support are also very common in audience replies to Jessica: “You are right. You’ve been through hell & back. I can understand why you would be afraid to marry again. But Nash is not Antonio or Tico…,” “If I was in your shoes, I would miss him too,” “Jessica you’re doing the right thing for you, Bree and Nash …,” “Don’t feel guilty for hurting Antonio. Eventually he will understand that things are better this way. It wasn’t fair to you or Antonio living the lie of your marriage when you were in love with Nash. You were dying and you had to tell Antonio the truth once and for all. Eventually, he will move on and he can be happy with Jamie and whoever comes into his love life next…. Enjoy your new life and take it easy. Just because you’ve been released from the hospital doesn’t mean you’re invincible.” Other examples of convergence, including the borrowing of vocabulary from another person in conversation, can be found in the language used by audience members. For example, in one blog entry, Jessica refers to Jared Banks as a “snake.” In two of the nine replies to that post, the fans described Jared as being a snake and a third reply suggested Jessica throw Jared out on his “reptilian ass.” Obviously this type of language convergence is quite difficult to code unless the vocabulary is idiosyncratic, but it is clear from going through

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all of the blog replies that there is a great deal of mirroring of language and style in blog replies. We suggest parasocial interaction can be studied by examining the audience replies to character blogs. Certainly the analysis of blog posts is not the only way to study parasocial interaction, but it represents a relatively unobtrusive way for researchers to gain insight. In addition, communication accommodation theory appears to be useful for identifying specific behaviors that demonstrate convergence and divergence. Examining parasocial relationships in much the same way interpersonal relationships are studied should yield important insights into the potential uses and effects of the mass media. Perhaps more importantly, the use of accommodation theory may also help us better understand the differences and similarities between interpersonal and mass communication.

FUTURE TRENDS In the future, researchers will examine more closely convergence and divergence behaviors that occur in parasocial relationships. A growing body of research on the notion of parasocial breakups (e.g., the consequences of shows being taken off the air or characters being written out of shows) will undoubtedly help in this endeavor (Cohen, 2004). New studies that use attachment theory (Bowlby, 1973) may also shed some light on the ways audience members become involved in parasocial relationships. Borrowing from attachment theory, once again, points to the increased use of research on interpersonal communication and interpersonal relationships to understand parasocial interaction. It makes sense that the reasons children form attachments to their parents and that adults form attachments to other adults should also apply to the reasons they form attachments to mediated characters. Future researchers will undoubtedly begin focusing their efforts on explaining the commu-

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nicative processes that occur during parasocial interaction. We suggest the interactional view (Watzlawick, Beavin & Jackson, 1967) as a starting point for such efforts. This theoretical structure may identify the underlying mechanism for parasocial relationships as well as a mechanism for explaining how individuals can use the same media content and characters to fulfill their needs. The key axiom applicable here is that messages have both a content and relationship dimension. The content component is the message or the words within a message while the relationship component tells communicants how the content/ message should be interpreted. How the message should be interpreted is based on a number of factors – the most important being the nature of the relationship between the communicants. The relationship between communicants is believed to be the single most important contextual factor and can obviously alter the meaning of message content. If the interactional perspective is adapted to mediated communication, audience members establish relationships with all TV characters so that they can contextualize the messages they receive from television. Certainly not all relationships are particularly close – just as most of our interpersonal contact is not particularly intimate. Thus parasocial relationships are an example of close relationships between audience members and characters. These relationships are interesting because close relationships have idiosyncratic relational rules or rules that are specific to a particular relationship. That audience members’ can develop relationships – albeit parasocial relationships – with characters allows audience members to shape a message to better use the media for gratification. Future research also needs to compare the communicative behavior of fans writing to TV characters with those replying to blogs written actors. The teen actress Kristen Aldersen who plays Starr Manning on One Life to Live also has a blog. Kristen writes her blog not in character but instead as herself (a high school aged actress).

Audience members behave quite differently when replying to her blog, just as they behave differently to other TV characters (e.g., Kendall Hart-Slater of All My Children and Dr. Robin Scorpio of General Hospital). The ultimate value of such research may be the explication and clarification of the parasocial interaction concept. It seems less useful if it is a loss of touch with reality as it has been written about in the past. If parasocial interaction is more akin to being highly involved and a key determinant in the way audiences contextualize mediated messages, then this should become clear under careful scrutiny.

CONCLUSION A life-long fan of General Hospital, Mary Ann Gayonski (personal communication, September 13, 2008) summed up audience perceptions of parasocial interaction accurately when she said, “I feel like I know them.” “If I saw a character on the street I would want to talk with them about what is happening on the show.” “I don’t know that much about the actor, but I do know the character.” “It really is like knowing someone – it’s not the same as knowing someone – but it is like knowing someone.” “Lots of time I know what a character is going to do before they do it.” “They are not really friends but they do seem like friends sometimes.” This testimony reveals that audience members would treat characters as if they were friends or acquaintances – even though they recognize them for what they are in most cases – characters on a fictional program. As friends and acquaintances, audience members are likely to accommodate or converge given the affect they feel toward the character when given a chance to interact. If audience members feel that characters are “like friends,” they are likely to treat them as if they are friends – just as dog owners may treat their pets as if they have language skills they do not possess. Like using

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heuristics in the evaluation of information, these behavioral heuristics occur because it is easier to behave toward characters as if they were actually people. With the addition of an audience of other fans able to view character blog posts and replies to blog posts, it is again reasonable to expect some effort at accommodation to demonstrate their similarity with the character as well as some divergence behaviors to indicate to others that they indeed recognize the characters are not real. If audience members are behaving toward the other audience members, we would expect more divergence and less convergence to occur. This preliminary research certainly does not support that hypothesis. Very little audience-to-audience interaction can be observed within these blog posts and replies. Audience members appear to be writing to the characters with little regard for others “eavesdropping” into their conversation.

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Giles, H., & Harwood, J. (1997). Managing intergroup communication: Lifespan issues and consequences. In S. Eliasson & E. H. Jahr (Eds.), Language and its ecology: Essays in memory of Einar Haugen (pp. 105-130). New York: Elsevier/ North Holland.

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Matarazzo, J. D., Weins, A. N., Matarazzo, R. G., & Saslow, G. (1968). Speech and silence behavior in clinical psychotherapy and its laboratory correlates. In J. Schlier, H. Hunt, J. D. Matarazzo, & C. Savage (Eds.), Research in psychotherapy, Vol. 3 (pp. 347-394). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Mauer, R. E., & Tindall, J. H. (1983). Effects of postural congruence on client’s perceptions of counselor empathy. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 30, 158–163. doi:10.1037/00220167.30.2.158 McGuire, B., & LeRoy, D. J. (1977). Audience mail: Letters to the broadcaster. The Journal of Communication, 27(3), 79–85. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.1977.tb02129.x Meyrowitz, J. (1986). Television and interpersonal behavior: Codes of perception and response. In G. Gumpert & R. Cathcart (Eds.), Inter/media: Interpersonal communication in a media world (pp. 253-272). New York: Oxford University Press. Natale, M. (1975). Convergence of mean vocal intensity in dyadic communications as a function of social desirability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 790–804. doi:10.1037/00223514.32.5.790 Ng, S. H., Liu, J. H., Weatherall, A., & Loong, C. S. F. (1997). Younger adults, communication experiences and contact with elders and peers. Human Communication Research, 24, 82–108. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.1997.tb00588.x 311

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Rubin, A. M., Perse, E. M., & Powell, R. A. (1985). Loneliness, parasocial interaction and local television news viewing. Human Communication Research, 12(2), 155–180. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.1985.tb00071.x Ryan, E. B., Hummert, M. L., & Boich, L. H. (1995). Communication predicaments of aging: Patronizing behavior toward older adults. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 13, 144–166. doi:10.1177/0261927X95141008 Shepard, C. A., Giles, H., & Le Poire, B. A. (2001). Communication accommodation theory. In W. P. Robinson & H. Giles, The new handbook of language and social psychology (pp. 33-56). Bristol, UK: John Wiley & Sons. Street, R. L., Jr. (1983). Noncontent speech convergence in adult – child interactions. In R. N. Bostrom (Ed.), Communication yearbook (Vol. 7, pp. 369-395). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Tajfel, H. (Ed.). (1982). Social identity and intergroup relations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33-47). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Technorati. (2008). About us. Retrieved June 29, 2008, from http://technorati.com/about

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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Accommodation: The modifications in communicative behavior made by individuals during interaction. Accommodation may include changes to verbal, vocal and non-verbal behaviors. The process of accommodation may occur as an intentional communicative strategy or may occur without the conscious awareness of the individual; it is motivated by the desire to be liked. Accommodation can be manifest as convergence (adopting the communicative behavior of another) or divergence (behaving stylistically different from another to maintain our differences).

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Cognitive Response: Thoughts that occur while we are listening to someone talk are called cognitive responses. Cognitive response is not a synonym for decoding a message. “Decoding” refers to a completely separate process. In decoding, sound or visual stimuli are translated back into language. Once we have decoded the message, our idiosyncratic responses or thoughts to those messages are described as our cognitive responses. If we are very interested in the topic, our cognitive responses may be message relevant. Message relevant responses focus on counter-arguments or additional evidence supporting a particular position. If we are not interested in the topic, our cognitive responses may not be particularly message relevant (e.g., “I “I need to get gas on my way home”). In short, our cognitive responses are the things we think of while listening to the messages of others. Cognitive responses occur while reading, watching television, listening to the radio, or surfing the Internet. Communication Accommodation Theory: Proposed by Howard Giles, professor of communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to explain the adaptations people make in their communicative behavior during conversation. The theory assumes people adapt their communicative behaviors and message content in an effort to be perceived favorably by high social status individuals. When interacting with individuals of low social status, we are motivated to maintain our distance or be perceived as being different from the low status individuals. This theory is based on many of the same tenets as social identity theory. Convergence: When an individual imitates or adopts the communicative behaviors of another in conversation, we say they are converging or becoming more like the other communicatively. For example a person may accommodate the communicative behavior of another by talking louder or adopting an accent (vocal accommodation), by appropriating the language of another in conversation (verbal accommodation), or by

imitating kinesic or facial behaviors (nonverbal accommodation). These adaptations are efforts by a communicant to be viewed favorably by the high social status other during conversation. Divergence: When we communicate with someone we perceive to be socially unattractive, we diverge or behave in such a way that we will be viewed as being different from that person. Motivated by the desire to be seen as socially desirable, in the presence of an undesirable communicative partner, we fail to accommodate and actually behave in ways that will distance us from another. For example, if someone uses coarse language or slang, we might diverge by employing formal or more precise language. If they talk in a loud voice, we might talk in a quiet voice; and, if they wave their hands, we might maintain a more still communicative style. Parasocial Interaction: The term parasocial interaction is often used as a synonym for parasocial relationship. When the two terms are differentiated, parasocial interaction is used to describe the specific audience and/or character behaviors. One character winking at an audience and another giving a soliloquy are examples of parasocial interaction. Similarly audience members talking to their TV or generating verbal replies that go unexpressed are examples of parasocial action too. It is generally believed that the way a show is designed and shot contributes to the likelihood of audience members engaging in parasocial interaction and/or establishing parasocial relationships. Parasocial Relationship: The term parasocial relationship was first coined by Horton & Wohl (1956) to describe the pseudo-friendships that occur between audience members and TV characters and other media personae. The notion of relationship is used here to describe faux interpersonal relationships that typically share some commonalities with actual interpersonal relationships. For example, an audience member can feel affect toward a character, “know” or understand the character, or relate to a character as

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if the character was an actual acquaintance. These relationships can represent little more than the liking of a character; they can also extend into the realm of delusion. In such extreme cases, audience members may actually believe they have a relationship with the character. The term is often used to identify the similarities between interpersonal relationships and mediated relationships. Thought Listing Procedure: A social psychological procedure for cognitive response evaluation technique used by researchers to gather the cognitive responses of individuals. After exposing subjects to a message, the researcher asks subjects to list the thoughts that ran through their heads during message presentation. Each thought or cognitive response can then be examined to see whether respondent thoughts are consistent or inconsistent with the message and ultimately how effective a particular message may be.

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Web Logging or Blogging: Blogs are online diaries or journals used by their authors as vehicles for providing commentary. They are updated on a regular basis and tend to focus on the personal experiences of the author. The critical differences in blogs and diaries are the opportunities for reaching a mass audience and the opportunity for that mass audience to respond to the commentary found within the blog. Because of the interactive nature of the blogs and blogging, software readers are able to add comments, links, pictures, video, or any other media format to the blog for the edification and entertainment of other denizens of the Internet. Blogging, then, is the act of updating a blog or an online diary.

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Chapter 28

Situating Social Identity through Language Convergence in Online Groups Scott L. Crabill Oakland University, USA

ABSTRACT According to social identity theory, individuals create and maintain their social identity through group membership. During face-to-face interactions within a group, people assess various verbal and nonverbal cues to influence the perceptions of themselves by others. However, in the context of online communication these cues are not as readily available. A screen name can be viewed as part of an individual’s “social identity creation”: a message that members of online discussion boards interpret and react to while trying to situate themselves within the group. This chapter explores how language convergence can function as a cue that facilitates situating social identity within online in-groups. Results of a content analysis of 400 screen names suggest that the screen names of discussion board members serve as an organizing variable for participants to situate themselves socially within the context of online interaction.

INTRODUCTION In spite of original visions for the Internet, it has moved beyond the constraints of impersonal and task-oriented interactions. Scholarly research has acknowledged a trend in increasing interpersonal elements within computer-mediated communication (e.g., Pena-Shaff, Martin, & Gay, 2001; Spears, Lea, Corneliussen, Postmes, & Haar, 2002; Tanis & Postmes, 2003; Walther & Burgoon, 1992; Walther, DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-368-5.ch028

1992, 1993, 1994, 1996; Walther, Anderson, & Park, 1994; Walther & Tidwell, 1995). Within face-toface interactions, individuals rely upon nonverbal “cues” and interpersonal rules to guide interaction. However, computer-mediated communication (CMC) does not allow for immediate or visual assessment often relied upon to reduce uncertainty and form impressions in face-to-face settings. Yet, according to Walther and Tidwell (1995), “CMC is not bereft of the cues needed to make varied social judgments” (p. 372). The researchers contend that previous approaches limited the scope of cues to

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Situating Social Identity through Language Convergence in Online Groups

body language and tonality, failing to recognize cues that are inherent within CMC. Giles and Coupland (1991) define language convergence as a “strategy whereby individuals adapt to each other’s communicative behaviours in terms of a wide range of linguistic/prosodic/non-vocal features including speech rate, pausal phenomena and utterance length, phonological variants, smiling, gaze and so on” (p. 63). The present study explored how language convergence can function as a cue within computer-mediated communication that facilitates creating and situating social identity within online in-groups.

BACKGROUND The Internet is a truly powerful technology that enables numerous opportunities for identity construction. It allows us to think about our identity, and if desired, change ourselves to who we want to be (Chandler, 1998) and construct images of ourselves through various types of self disclosure. Research has argued that the Internet technology is limited to impersonal and task-oriented interactions. Referring to a “cues-filtered out model”, Kiesler, Siegel, and McGuire (1984) state: “In traditional forms of communication, head nods, smiles, eye contact, distance, tone of voice, and other nonverbal behavior give speakers and listeners information they can use to regulate, modify, and control exchanges” (p. 1125). Such a “reduced cues” perspective suggests that CMC lacks nonverbal cues necessary to substantiate interpersonal communication amongst CMC interactants (Connolly, Jessup, & Valacich, 1990; Hiltz, 1975, 1981; Hiltz, Johnson, & Agle, 1978; Hiltz, Johnson, & Turoff, 1986; Hiltz, Turoff, Johnson, 1989). Within this perspective, CMC is viewed as somewhat inadequate, with the capacity to harm and to keep people from “real” relationships (Thurlow, Lengel, & Tomic, 2004). This stands in contrast to the optimistic claims that the Internet can foster new relationships across social and

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geographical boundaries and create friendships and communities rooted in common interest and concerns (Thurlow et. al., 2004). Reactions to the “reduced cues” perspective lead to a diverse body of research exploring interpersonal relationships created, maintained, and utilized in cyberspace (Soukup, 2000). This research attempts to identify the social dimensions of interactions mediated through computers (Amaral & Monteiro, 2002; Braithwaite, Waldron, & Finn, 1999; Douglas & McGarty, 2001; Kleinman, 2000; Muramatsu & Ackerman, 1998; Pena-Shaff, Martin, & Gay, 2001; Ramirez, Walther, Burgoon, & Sunnafrank, 2002; Spears, Lea, Corneliussen, Postmes, & Haar, 2002; Tanis & Postmes, 2003; Tidwell & Walther, 2002; Walther & Burgoon, 1992; Walther, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996; Walther, Anderson, & Park, 1994; Walther & Tidwell, 1995). As such, it is apparent that communication on the Internet has moved beyond the constraints of impersonal and task-oriented interactions into interpersonal interactions. The cues by which individuals are assessed within CMC may vary. Zhou, Burgoon, Twitchell, Qin, and Nunamaker (2004), contend that we evaluate language choices and make attributions about another’s social status, background and education. Despite the surmounting research within this trend, there is a lack of known socially contextual cues within CMC interactions (Tanis & Postmes, 2003). According to Spears et. al. (2002), the exact nature of the interpersonal implications of CMC is still under debate and not well understood.

Situating Social Identity Our identity is in continuous flux from the time we are cognizant of social realities throughout the remainder of our lives (Hall, 1990). According to social identity theory it is these social realities that shape and form our social identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). It is through our membership into various social groups that we discover and experiment with social identities in the hope of

Situating Social Identity through Language Convergence in Online Groups

creating an image of ourselves that is acceptable to the social realities we are invested in (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Furthermore, it is assumed that we will strive to remain a member of a group and seek membership to new groups if the group of interest has some degree of positive influence on our social identity (Tajfel, 1978b). Research on impression management has concluded that a large portion of this process is conscious; individuals rely upon context to determine how they will represent themselves (Andrews & Kacmar, 2001; Berzonsky & Adams, 1999; Yoder, 2000). Within the context of CMC, Walther (1993) concluded that in a zero-history group experimental setting, “CMC users formed increasingly developed impressions over time, presumably from the decoding of text-based cues” (Walther, 1993, p. 393). Hence it is conceivable that individuals interpret text-based cues (such as a screen name) as a means of evaluating individuals within an interpersonal framework, enough so that they can make decisions/judgments about interactants. Minority status groups, such as white supremacists groups, tend to have higher in-group identification (Brown, 2000). People who have a high identification with the group tend to see both the in-group and the out-group as more homogenous than people who have a low identification with the group (Brown, 2000). Thus, the feeling of belonging to a group places one in a social category that defines who one is in terms of the defining characteristics of the category (Hogg, Terry, & White, 1995). As such, social identities have self-evaluative consequences (Hogg, 1996); since “white supremacists” views their ideology as superior, they will take the necessary steps to maintain that perception. In accordance with this tenet of social identity theory, any display or action that will tie group, in this case “white supremacists”, to their cause will result in greater identification with that group (Tajfel, 1978a). In short, individuals will know the intra-group communication thereby tying them to that social

identity. Subsequently, people who feel that they are “white supremacists” will exhibit the characteristics of “white supremacists”; they will strive to situate themselves as “white supremacist” and will know and utilize language patterns and symbols that pertain to the group. The current study explores the possibility that the construction of a pseudonym utilized as the screen name within a white supremacist discussion board can serve as a means of identifying with the group. In addition, an individual screen name can function as a marker of identity and this marker is germane to white supremacist group membership. There are a vast number of cyber communities that rely mostly upon CMC as a means of maintaining contact with one another and recruiting new members (Thurlow et. al., 2004). Among them, white supremacist groups have recognized the value of CMC as a means of substantiating and maintaining communities; in fact, CMC has become their primary means of surviving and expanding during the last decade (e.g., Bostdorff, 2004; Burris, Smith, & Strahm, 2000; Duffy, 2003; Preston, 2003). According to the Anti-Defamation League (2001): “The high-tech revolution that has altered our domestic, educational, and workplace routines and habits has brought the same informational and communications opportunities to the organized hate movement” (p. 2). As a result, the number of hate groups operating in the United States is steadily on the rise. Various watchdog organizations have noted a 78% increase in the number of hate groups and group chapters involved in racially prejudiced behavior between 2000 and 2006 (Media Awareness Network, 2000; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2008). According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) there are currently between 450-500 “hard core” hate sites and as many as 1,500 – 1,750 hates sites that are potentially problematic on the Internet. The discourse of white supremacy is abundant and easily accessible; in fact, white supremacy has had a long history in America and has maintained its ideologies throughout the course of this

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Situating Social Identity through Language Convergence in Online Groups

nation’s history (Blee, K. 2002; Ezekiel, R. S., 1996; Daniels, J., 1997; Dobratz & Shanks-Meile, 1997; Quarles, 1999). The Internet has availed white supremacists the ability to reach a much more focused audience than their predecessors ever imagined (Anti-Defamation League, 2001). Discussion boards have become an important tool for establishing and maintaining group identity and thus are a primary source for white supremacist discourse (e.g. Bostdorff, 2004; Burris, et. al., 2000; Duffy, 2003; Preston, 2003). In essence, these discussion boards function as a community resource center that allows those interested to gather information about local events or discuss ideas with those of similar dispositions. This has become just one of many ways that white supremacist group’s commune and share their identities with others for the purpose of grouping themselves. Hence, the Internet has provided a social space in which white supremacists have an opportunity to create a social identity within the context of CMC.

(2006), screen names perceived as selected and designed by their users offer more information related to situating social identity (and greater predictability) to others. The potential for screen names to vary, while not infinite, is substantial. With the ability to combine any number, letter, or symbol, the emergence of uniformity within a discussion board membership list would suggest convergence within their creation. Furthermore, a type of structure functions in their construction. Hence, the creation of a screen name is a process of self-identification, a message that members of online groups interpret and react to within their discussions. The current study aimed to explore whether screen names can serve as an organizing variable within participants’ attempts to situate themselves socially in the context of discussion boards. Consequently, it was hypothesized that: H1: Screen names of an online white supremacist discussion board will contain cues to the social identity of the group.

Method A STUDY OF SOCIAL IDENTITY AND LANGUAGE CONVERGENCE IN ONLINE GROUPS An underlying assumption exists regarding the nonverbal cues exchanged and gathered in faceto-face settings which suggests that individuals treat most nonverbal behavior as intentional and designed to communicate information to others (for example, Allen & Atkinson, 1981; Buck & Van Lear, 2002; Manusov & Rodriguez, 1989; Richmond & McCroskey, 2004). In mediated contexts individuals may assume that the usernames utilized in cyberspace contain purposeful clues as to the personality or identity of the sender, which is a unique identifier since screen names cannot be duplicated within a specific discussion forum. Therefore, an individual’s perceptions of volition should influence the impact that username has on perceptions. According to Heisler and Crabill

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The flow for a typical content analysis was adapted from Nuendorf (2002) and used to guide data collection and analysis. Due to the nature of the study and the data, percentage frequencies of the variables were reported. The initial form of analysis of the data was to determine and report the frequency of the coded variables. Once the frequencies were determined, mean scores of each variable were compared using independent sample t tests with significance at p