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Strength of ties in a mobile community under conditions of
anonymity
Herbert Eng, IGS-IMI (New Media)
Furtherance in typifying dimensions of discursive anonymity in mobile youth culture
Research into new anonymous social networks
Whisper: US$200M Secret: US$50M Yik Yak: US$150-300M
Exploring discursive anonymity’s effect on the amplitude of strong and weak
ties in a community
Getting better data leveraging multiple (hopefully) communities
How to improveExternal validity ↑ Error Margin ↓
Lengthen data collection from one-time snapshots to
longitudinal field experiments
Improving size of analysis
Move away from artificial, laboratory settings
Goals
• Demonstrate viability of a crowdsourced way of obtaining social science data through civic mediaimplementations
• any form of communication that strengthens the social bonds within a community or creates a strong sense of civic engagement
• Establish some baseline social research in the area of mobile social applications featuring anonymous sharing
• Develop social insights: gossip being a necessary mechanism to maintain social bonds
• Reinvigorate civic participation (Resnick 2011)
Purpose
• Investigate effects of various conditions of discursive anonymity
• Identity condition (Anonymity vs. Pseudonymity)
• Group Authentication: Present vs. Absent
• Dependent Variables• Self-disclosure
• Social cohesion– Bonding social capital (strong ties)
– Bridging social capital (weak ties)
Research Questions
• RQ1: How do pseudonymous contexts significantly differ from anonymous contexts in terms of self-disclosure and social capital accrued?
• RQ2: How do partially-authenticated accounts significantly differ from non-authenticated accounts in terms of self-disclosure and social capital accrued?
• RQ3: How does collective engagement in conversational gossip improve social cohesion within a community?
2 x 2 Full Factorial
A B
C D
RQ1: Identity Representation
Anonymous Pseudonymous
RQ2: Authentication
Present
Absent
Identity Representation
Copresence
Sense of Belonging
Self-disclosureBridging Social CapitalBonding Social Capital
Authentication
Copresence
Sense of Belonging
Self-disclosureBridging Social CapitalBonding Social Capital
Qualitative Content Analysis
• Latent content meaning giving an indication of the level of:
• self-disclosure
• appealing towards strong ties (bonding social capital)
• appealing towards weak ties (bridging social capital)
• sense of belonging to school
• copresence felt
• Inductive approach • organic closeness to the intentionality of the source
material
Community Scale Project
• Data collection application disguised as a social app will be built, launched and marketed to gain strong traction from local and overseas schools, colleges and universities
• Each confession post will allow students to judge whether a confession is True or False
Fessup Design Philosophy
• Unrestricted broadcast• Instrumental: Ability to do so
• Psychological: Pressure of repercussions
• Pseudonyms• Allow persistent reputation building
• Behavioral control mechanism
• Distinguishable from each other (as opposed to the collective anon)
• Authentication• Homophily effects – activating positive feelings through
controlled disclosure of some shared attribute
How to regulate behavior in anonymous conversations?
• Self control mechanism: reputation associated with a pseudonym• Community moderation: other users get to outright accept and reject posts (as opposed to upvotes and downvotes)
fessup.sg/prototype
B) Pseudonymous + Authenticated
C) Anonymous + Unauthenticated
A) Anonymous + Authenticated
True/False responses (you can only choose one!)
Methodology: Longitudinal Field Experiment
• Focus on how the conditions are manipulated based on the natural behavior of participants on Fessup
• users who most frequently post anonymously but are authenticated -> condition A
• users who most frequently post pseudonymouslywithout being authenticated -> condition D
• After a three month period, a questionnaire will be released within the app
Variables at a glance
• Independent Variables• Anonymity: Anonymous vs. Pseudonymous• Authentication: Present vs. Absent
• Dependent Variables• Collective Behavior: Frequency of resharing for posts as population ensemble• Individual Behavior: Frequency of posting• Individual Behavior: Frequency of resharing• Individual Behavior: Frequency of commenting• Self-disclosure• Bridging social capital• Bonding social capital
• Mediators/Moderators• Sense of belonging to school• Copresence
• Control Variables• Age
Timeline2015 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
Development Open Beta Launch Analytics Development
Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Alpha Questionnaire Analyses, Adjustments to model, Thesis writing Beta QuestionnaireThesis writing, Analytics dev
2016 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
1st Questionnaire Analyses, Adjustments to model, Thesis writing 2nd Questionnaire
Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Thesis writing
Thesis Chapters
• 1. The Evolution of Internet Pseudonymity
• 2. Mobile communities
• 3. Gossip and the strength of ties
• 4. Fessup design philosophy
• 5. Fessup and a longitudinal field experiment
• 6. Discussion of results and further insights
Thesis Chapters
• 1. The Evolution of Internet Pseudonymity• The original pseudonymity experiment was the Internet itself and online social
spaces present today, whether of a channel in a massively multiplayer online game or a discussion forum, could be said to have evolved from early iterantssuch as IRC. This chapter attempts to lay out the history of persona representation in the Internet Chatroom.
• 2. Mobile communities• Research on mobile cultures have seen significant contribution. This chapter
discusses the contributions most significant to the current research.
• 3. Gossip and the strength of ties• An attempt to connect gossip from an evolutionary perspective with the
amplitude of social cohesion in an community, within the context of always-on and ever copresent mobile-connected communities.
• 4. Fessup design philosophy • The various social scientific insights that serve as guidance in designing Fessup
• 5. Fessup and a longitudinal field experiment• A year long social experiment with four rounds of data collection• Corroborated with results from a qualitative content analysis
• 6. Discussion of results and further insights