Computer-Mediated Communication

Coye Cheshire April 22, 2023//

Computer-Mediated Communication

Introduction to Collective Action and Public Goods

Today Preparing for Assn2: Project research!

Short wrap-up of reputation discussion

Introduction to collective action and public goods

04/22/23 Computer-Mediated Communication 2


Another side of reputation…

Internet markets also have significant advantages in establishing reputations … any information that is gleaned can be near costlessly tallied on a continuing basis … [and] that information can be near costlessly transmitted to millions of potential customers.

— Resnick et al. 2006, p. 80

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The CMC and ‘Offline’ Reputation Link: Emergent Reputation Systems and Identity

As designers, what can we learn from all of this? What kind of community do you have (or are you trying to foster)?

When and Why to use Pos/Neg/Mixed/Hybrid Reputation Systems?

What behavior(s) do you want to encourage, reward, punish?

Consider the “unintended consequences” of implicit information

Just because you build a system to be interpreted a certain way doesn’t mean that the user will agree…



Core Concepts

Collective Action

Public Goods

Free-Rider Problem

04/22/23 Computer-Mediated Communication 7Collective ActionCollective Action

04/22/23 Computer-Mediated Communication 8Collective ActionCollective Action


Key Characteristics of Public Goods

Non-Excludability

Non-Rival Goods (Jointness of Supply)


The Tragedy of the “Commons”


Cornucopia of the Commons?

(Bricklin 2001)


“Public Good”


The Free-Rider ProblemIndividual interests tend to

make non-contribution tempting, especially if other people will do the work.

In collective action, we can view this as an n-person prisoner’s dilemma

…but more on that later

Privileged Groups as Solution



Selective Incentives as Solution

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vr/112286997/


Free-Riding and the Logic of Collective Action

“If all individuals refrained from doing A, every individual as a member of the community would derive a certain advantage. But now if all individuals less one continue refraining from doing A, the community loss is very slight, whereas the one individual doing A makes a personal gain far greater than the loss that he incurs as a member of the community.”

(Pareto 1935, vol. 3, sect. 1496, pp. 946-7)


“I guess I will never vote again…unless of course no one else is voting.” – Deepti Chittamuru (2007)


Life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” (Hobbes 1651)

“The Leviathan”


But is Self-Interest Always Negative?



Collective Action and the Hobbesian “War of All Against All”

Under what conditions will cooperation emerge in a world of egoists without central authority?


Collective Action and Group Size

Smaller groups tend to have a better chance of producing a public good (Olson 1965)

Why?

More benefits for each personLarger impact of any single contributionGenerally, lower costs of organization


But what about REALLY big groups?

Analyzing and Visualizing the Semantic Coverage of Wikipedia and Its Authors (Holloway, Bozicevic and Borner 2005)

http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0512085

http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0512085


Self-Interest in Small versus Large Groups


Considering the “Free-Rider Problem” in Online Systems of Collective Action

Communality and Discretionary Databases

“Second-Order” Communality

Documents

Computer-Mediated Communication