Session 6:Online identity and interaction

An online identity is a social identity that an Internet user establishes in online communities and websites. Although some people prefer to use their real names online, most Internet users prefer to be anonymous, identifying themselves by means of pseudonyms, which reveal varying amounts of personally identifiable information.

The online identity used in our Ics691 class on http://www.blogger.com/ is mostly on the following major aspects: the user's posts, the user's personal profile, and the user's account. It includes some aspects include: the user's selected username (some use their real name, others make up a name). The online identities presented on www.bloger.com can be viewed as screenshot. There are many login accounts.

2) Write two informal use scenarios based on your observations of existing users.Scenario 1: We want to post what we read in our assignments.
The first step we need to login, or if we don't have an existing blogger, create one in http://www.blogger.com/create-blog.g The user will choose a blogger title. (Ics 691 social computing.), the blog address: http://yili-ics691socialcomputing.blogspot.com/ and the word verification: filling the word in the images. If it is accepted, you can choose a template for your blog. Of course, you can always edit the template. Then the system will generate a personnel profile according to what you entered. You can post whatever you want in your blog.

Scenario 2: We want to comment to other posts.
The first step we need to login. Then press the comment option. We will have a text editable window to write comments. Select a profile (I use Google account.) and press Post Comment. After entering the word verification, your comments are post successfully.

Online interaction brings the possibility of mass interaction. Steve Whittaker, Loren Terveen, Will Hill and Lynn Cherny explore the demographics, conversational strategies and the interactivity of mass interaction by Usenet. They extend the common ground model into online mass interactions. Common ground is a key principle of face-to-face conversation, and refers to the fact that participants must establish a degree of mutual knowledge for their conversational contributions to be understood. To establish a common ground in huge set of conversational participants with potentially diverse, a strategy of moderation is employed and all interactions are filtered by a small set of moderators who are knowledgeable about the goals and history of the interactions. The mass interactions are explored in three areas:
(a) demographics - size, familiarity and moderation;
(b) conversation strategies - FAQ production, message length, and cross-posting;
(c) interactivity - the extent of conversational threading.

Whittaker etc analysis the affects of demographics and conversation strategies on interactivities. They predict that FAQ production decreased cross-posting and greater message length should all increase interactivity. They try to test their predictions in Usenet. I am very impressed that most of their predictions are disconfirmed. They find that shorter messages actually promoted interactivity although they predict that great message length should increase interactivity. It surprised me very much that they can always find a reason to explain all of these disconfirmed predictions.

Judith Donath introduced the signal theory for online identity. personal identity is not just on what you enter in the profiles, which are perceivable features, but also on the actions that indicate the presence of hidden qualities. Signaling theory models the relationship between signals and qualities. He point out that assessment signals is inherently reliable, because producing the signal requires possessing the indicated quality. The conventional signals are not inherently reliable. The self-descriptions in online profiles are mostly conventional signals. The stronger ties bring reliability to the profile, and a large set of weaker ties expands the scale and scope of the network. To increase the trust and reliability, several methods have been used. One is to increase the amount of knowledge about the others. Also costs may discourage deception but not be high enough to guarantee honesty.

In our ics691 class, we know that all of us are students in university of Hawaii, Manoa. We form small groups and have high reliability. Each of us has different blog template. Some are very fashion and some may be a little plain. I believe that the one has longer post spends much more time than the one has short post.