Experiments in Mapping an Online Community

Posted on February 14, 2012 by

I’m having an ethical issue surrounding the access to the database of ABC Pool – I would like to use this data to map the community/network to prove the theories my qualitative data suggest. The issue is having access to identifiable data: I have not received permission from every member of Pool to do so. My process is to de-identify the data immediately, only work with that rinsed data, and to offer findings in an aggregated form.  I am a responsible researcher that would not exploit this data in any way, however this is why ethics have been established – to protect those being examined or researched. If a Pool user knew their data (as minimal as it is with name, email address, and location) was going to be accessed by researchers at a later date, would they have signed up to Pool in the first place? Because of that, it’s just not right to pull this data without the users knowing.

After completing a draft ethics application, my supervisors asked me to think of alternative ways of finding the answers I seek – they all agree it would be very tricky for an ethics board to approve this research method (I’m starting to gnerate new ways to create a network without accessing the raw data).

After looking at the minimal amount of data I have access to as a researcher within the “admin” view of Drupal 6, I started to wonder if there are real life scenarios that might reflect how to map a network of users. Scramble crossings may provide a suitable solution – an organised chaos that seems to work for many users, multiple times on any day:

The following is what I observed while conducting this experiment of the scramble crossing on cnr of George and Druitt sts Sydney:

  • There are two states: one of activity and one of non-activity
  • People approach on their way to somewhere and wait until given direction to move forward
  • There are multiple moments of interaction between individuals as they cross the road
  • The moment of interaction is when established norms are acted out – noone says anything but every individual passes without issue (most times)

So how to map it?

Perhaps the observations could provide an answer on how to map Pool. In that case, it would make sense to observe and collect data:

  • When there is high activity (contributions for a project)
  • Sample individuals and follow there movements (perhaps 50 users within one project)
  • Gather a sample of enough instances (count comments or remixes)
  • Produce an outcome that indicates broader trends
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Behind the Scenes at ABC Radio National: Co-creative feature making

Posted on January 20, 2012 by

Recently, I was lucky enough to find myself sitting in a production session for the upcoming ABC Radio National program to be broadcast on 360documentaries, New Beginnings. New Beginnings is a project housed within ABC Pool and is the latest co-creative production asking for contributions that express “your stories, your experiences and your emotions when you’ve gone through a new beginning” (Williams 2011). A co-creative project is one that incorporates the expertise of ABC staff with the expertise and  participation of the audience, most times ABC Pool members within this type of arrangement. I was in the studio to observe the recording process of a contribution made by one ABC Pool member, Sam. She submitted Trying to Please, her story of a new life beginning after her relationship failed and she moved to “the big smoke”, Sydney.

The production process of a co-creative radio feature is lengthy and very labour intensive. Most times, it involves a call out through ABC Pool, on-air promotion on the Radio National network, creative contributions from ABC Pool members, and curation and selection of those contributions for potential broadcast by the radio producer. The process then requires the recording of those selections, their compilation within a 53 minute feature, mixing, mastering, and finally broadcast. This blog post and video is captured during a recording of one contribution.

Broadly speaking, what I found interesting was how the session was easy-going and almost flat in hierarchy; that is an open creative approach to the production with very little ego to manage between traditional positions within the studio environment (producer/engineer/talent). Mike Williams, the producer, has a fresh and open approach to making radio features and displayed qualities consistent with a co-creative producer – a producer that has a clear and concise understanding of the programming requirements of the ABC but is open to direction from participants (Sam).  What I observed was clear direction from Mike to Sam that guided her performance in a way that will position this smaller production session within the larger feature.

That clear direction is also present within the production of all ABC radio features – it is what makes them so successful. However within this piece, what I also observed was the reciprocation of emotional and creative input from Sam to Mike. As this was Sam’s story, she was able to convey the emotion she was going through within the piece to Mike. In turn, Mike was able to direct Sam on how best to perform that emotion:

This video was shot just after Sam had given her first read of the script. To my understanding it sounded amazing and I could instantly hear her work broadcast on Radio National. However to Mike’s ear, who had the bigger picture and editing process in mind, he needed words said in a particular way, pauses at certain intervals, and words with inflections and emotions. The video above demonstrates the point when the participant realises that what they thought was acceptable for the ABC is in fact not. Although Sam’s performance was very good, there is still a gap between what is broadcasting quality for the ABC, and what ABC Pool users perceive to be acceptable. The position Mike is fulfilling here is the facilitator that aids in bridging this creative gap.

At the time of writing, this production is still in the compilation stage.

Posted in ABC, CCi, PhD Research | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

‘Clicks’ within Communities

Posted on November 4, 2011 by
Surfer Dude

Original photo by Bill Grollz published under CC BY NC (http://www.flickr.com/photos/xxfrogger/3711662240/)

[Just to be clear, the use of the word 'click' instead of 'clique' is intentional in this piece.]

I have recently undergone a sea change: from the big smoke to a small-ish coastal town on the southern NSW coastline. The population is around 2000 and could easily be considered a “community” given the usual definitions of a small group of individuals. My lifestyle change provides an opportunity for ‘real-world’ research, or maybe little ‘r’ research, to coincide with my online community studies. Do the same theories that constitute an online community ring true for an offline community? Much scholarly literature suggest similarities between the on and offline environments (Bonniface 2006; Hebdige 1979; Papadakis 2003; Tönnies 1963) and as such I see an opportunity to test theses theories in my own day-to-day adventures.

Unlike my online worlds, I have moved to this space with no recommendations, no allies, no friends, and basically no idea on how to ‘live’ within this new world. I was starting completely green. The first few months were primarily an observation period to learn the language and how people act within this space. Some of my observations:

  • The language is very relaxed and sincere between people
  • There are clear age groups – 15-21, 22 – 28, 30 – 40, 41 and over
  • Economic groups are obvious – the locals who have inhabited the space for generations and the rich Sydney folk who have recently moved here
  • Most of the women wear exercise outfits, everywhere
  • Most of the guy look like surfers
  • Young families are very prominent
  • You do say hello when you pass someone in the street
  • You don’t have loud parties without inviting your neighbours

These characteristics are small parts of what can be bundled into the term “local”. Often the first question a local asks is: “You local?” A positive response is almost like being accepted into a secret conversation that follows. Your geography seems to be the first fork in the flowchart – if you tick yes to the first question then proceed to: “in Austi?”. Yes again. Continue…

A small talk conversation seems to build social capital between myself and other ‘locals’. Even though I don’t fit into any of the above categories perfectly, I seem to fit the definition of a “local”. Interestingly enough, and depending on the success of my first contact, the next interaction with the same person can be surprisingly different. If the first encounter was positive, the next seems to develop from that. If not, the next meeting could be uncomfortable for all with awkward interlocking gazes and half acknowledging waves. So what is the difference between the first interaction and the subsequent meetings?

I suggest the level of “localness” is dependant upon the positive satisfaction of emergent community characteristics. I often hear the term “clicky” in regards to locals: “I don’t really talk to them because they are clicky”. A clicky group has a very high level of entry with specific requirements or characteristics. For example, a clicky group may be a certain profession, or of a certain economic success, or have a particular sporting inclination. If the individuals share this common interest, they are welcomed in with open arms to share their knowledge and I guess entertain the existing members. However, these inner cliques are still part of a greater community of participants.

So as I stood waiting for the train this morning, watching the local un-stripped police officer inspect last night’s crime seen (someone tagged a wall – OMG) while locals stood around saying “yeah they’re idiots”, I was reminded of what being local means. I too have found my ‘click’ within my new environment in some musicians and dancers that also made the sea-change transition from Sydney. And although we are all nice people, we too are I guess “clicky”. We all belong to the local Austi community for various reasons, yet we hold a tighter bond in a smaller group because we share specific ideals that other Austi locals don’t. I would argue this phenomenon exists within online communities but is often identified as “super-users” or as more vocal members. Perhaps there are other groups within online communities masquerading as super-users that take all the light (squeaky wheels) when the more important conversations are happening within a more quite room. This observation is useful to bring back to the online environment.

Posted in Community Manager, Research | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

From Fringe to Formalisation – Creative Institutional Practices within ABC Pool

Posted on October 18, 2011 by

Spent today writing and developing an argument around the fringe to formalisation transition within the production of cultural artifacts. Essentially it is addressing collaborative practices between an institutional online community as a project is produced for broadcast on the ABC (See Ariadne project).

Here’s the abstract:

From Fringe to Formalisation: Creative Production Models within the Institutional Online Community ABC Pool

Jonathon Hutchinson, PhD Student Queensland University of Technology

The role assumed by institutions which directly develop and support online communities has emerged as a crucial factor in the development of self-governance models for online communities engaging in collaborative practices. Commonly, online communities reject top-down governance models in favour of a meritocracy that positions users in authoritative positions because of their online performance. Recent scholarly research into online communities documented their activities and governance models as flat or horizontal (Malaby 2009), even where the community platforms are being developed or supported by commercial institutions. Malaby states in Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life that Linden Labs’ in-house developers borrowed from the hacker ethos to create a platform that provides a legitimate basis for self-governance: “While inheriting from them a faith in technology, a rejection of top-down control, an imagining of people as individual performers, and a faith in the legitimacy of emergent effects, the descendents have added the aspiration to architect entire, open-ended systems” (p 33).

Questions of authority and power emerge when institutional, top-down governance models intersect with online community meritocracy not only in day-to-day communicative activities, but also while engaging in creative production. My research into the creative online community ABC Pool (abc.net.au/pool) indicates that the early stages of creative production of content by Pool users occur within an informal arrangement, but that creative outcomes are not completely realised until the creative artifacts of these processes begin to align with institutional agendas and requirements. This paper will examine processes of creative content production by users of Pool, tracking how early user-driven ideas for creative projects are being aligned with ABC interests through a process of community self-governance which takes into account what the community understands to be the interests and agendas of the ABC as a cultural institution. I will analyse the creative content production against the broadcast outcomes of ABC Pool through the data collected as part of my participant observation during the past year and a half.

Posted in CCi, Research, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , ,

The One Right Way – How to Write a Social Science Journal Article

Posted on September 29, 2011 by

I’ve been head-butting the desk trying to write a social science article for 2 months now and still haven’t perfected it. I have discovered I write in the abstract and often my actors are absent. My style results in being non-rigorous and at times vacuous. So I have returned to some literature on how to write, specifically:

BECKER, H. 1986. Writing for Social Scientists, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

Becker’s book is helping find that academic voice I am searching for within my writing, so I thought it is worth sharing his skill set. At this stage I am interesting in actually finding out what it is I am trying to say and how to organise this into a logical argument. The third chapter of Writing for Social Scientists is titled “One Right Way” and gives an inside account on how to approach those first few steps of writing an article, thesis or book within the social sciences.

According to Becker, the first step is to produce an outline of the paper you are working on to indicate what the paper might become. But don’t write the introduction! When the paper is finished, Becker suggests taking the last paragraph that sums up the entire theory of the paper and use that as the intro for the reader (“How can you introduce something you haven’t written yet?”: P 50). The introduction outlines the map for the reader to connect all of the parts into the overall structure.

Employ a stream of consciousness writing exercise to understand what it is you are trying to say. Mine is as follows:

“The stakeholders within an institutional online community have secret codes and languages that are only accessible to those on the “in”. I argue an ethnographer has a better chance of accessing these knowledges after outlining the assemblage of the community  and recognising the technological artifacts, human, and non-human actors that enable knowledge transfer. The ethnographer is better informed after working as a community manager.”

Next, write a draft paper that captures the idea of what you are wanting to say. The paper doesn’t need too much attention to detail but more so concentrates on getting your ideas down on paper – regardless of order or importance.

From the draft, organise the structure of the piece. Take a moment to highlight the fragments of the piece and identify how they range from general to particular. The fragments need to be arranged in an order that “at least seem to move logically from point to point in what a reader would recognize as a reasonable argument” (P: 60). Becker’s suggested method:

  1. Do the easy things first – arrange your articles etc
  2. From the draft write your ideas on file cards and place into piles of ideas that seem to go together
  3. Group them together
  4. Give the groups a general name
  5. Start to arrange them into a logical order

After performing this exercise, I had 9 categories: The rationale, ABC Pool, The Ethnographer, The Community Manager, Expertise, Knowledge and Negotiation, Boundary Objects, Assemblage, Language Communication and Dialect. I also found I had two left over topics relating to the insider/outsider concept:

Concepts and Groups

If only I could find an Ace in all these...

Lastly, Becker suggests if you can’t find the One Right Way for your writing, talk about why you can’t as that may be as interesting and informative as the writing itself. Just as an ethnographer might discuss the troubles of gaining access to the social group they are researching, so too can a writer as they highlight the problems surrounding why you began to write in the first place.

With a kind of structure in place, I embark on the next step of writing followed by editing. This time for sure!

Posted in Research, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Ethnography, Assemblage, Poolies

Posted on July 15, 2011 by

Berlin 3

"Berlin 3" Image by Finland from ABC Pool, CC BY NC

In preparation for the upcoming CCI Symposium engaging in “Socio-Cultural Research and Australia’s Policy Challenges,” I have revisited some methodology literature. I am participating in the Media Ethnography workshop (appropriate given the position of my research) and have been reading other descriptive ethnography works including Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life by Thomas Malaby. In particular, The Assemblage of Play by T.L. Taylor, has sparked some thought on how I approach my research project of ABC Pool as an ethnographer.

My first interest is the definition of assemblage that seeks to capture all the actors within, for me, the ABC Pool institutional online community. “The notion of assemblage is one way to help us understand the range of actors (system, technologies, player, body, community, company, legal structures, etc.), concepts, practices, and relations” (p 332) within any moment of the online community. This strikes me as a particularly useful way of identifying and describing all the actors involved within an online community. Examining the assemblage of these actors provides a way of defining and explaining the complex set of relationships that occur between the human and non-human actors. Within the assemblage, the overlapping of the agents provides interesting areas for research and dynamic exploration, for example how the design and implementation of functionality of the Pool website impacts upon the members of the community. A design example such as this may begin to describe, what Taylor refers to within game culture as “the interrelations between (to name just a few) technological systems and software (including the imagined player embedded in them), the material world (including our bodies at the keyboard), the online space of the game (if any), game genre, and its histories, the social worlds that infuse the game and situate us outside of it, the emergent practices of communities, our interior lives, personal histories, and aesthetic experience, institutional structures that shape the game and our activity as players, legal structures, and indeed the broader culture around us with its conceptual frames and tropes” (p 332). From Taylor’s definition, the researcher can identify broader themes of how communities or networks are constructed not just in terms of socio or technologically determined ways, but specifically their structures within institutions.

The second appealing concept within assemblage defines how ethnographers approaching the study of networks engage in “found objects in everyday life” (p 333) within the field. Found objects work in conjunction with grounded theory concepts to allow the research project to reveal the actors engaging within the space, what practices occur, and any “meaning systems” (p 333). This is not un-similar to Bruno Latour‘s Actor Network Theory (ANT) (I just found this quaint YouTube video describing ANT) in how the researcher uses “placeholders” while following their actors to obtain the language being used within the field of research. Taylor furthers the idea of found objects by introducing the notion of boundary objects, described as something that accommodates local needs, yet is transferrable through a common identity. Boundary objects is useful for examining in-world objects and understanding “ the ways provisional agreements, or at the minimum imagined communities, form around specific artifacts simultaneous to the varying understandings and practices with the object” (p 333). This approach highlights the actors involved in what might seem to be simple everyday activities, by exposing their agency and underlying meaning systems.

If we return to the ABC Pool example and the implications of design on the members of the community, the assemblage of boundary objects reveals two significant observations. Not only does the design process include the “imagined uses” of the technology/platform as per the developers, but also the technological and authority affordances included within those developer’s programming decisions and authorative language. The “decision” brings with it a history of language competencies (see Malaby), along with an understanding of the complex legal structures and editorial policies of the ABC. It may also suggest a tendency to rely on products or systems that have precedence within the institution.

The design example is but one demonstration that highlights something other than the socio-techno relationships within an institutional online community. Interesting areas are emerging within my research project by approaching ABC Pool and analysing the assemblage of actors, found objects, and boundary objects. During the analysis of this one example, I have discovered several other overlapping areas, specifically around language use, decision-making, and the formalisation process within the institution. I am particularly interested in how institutions use practical technologies and representational strategies to rationalise, discipline and control the emerging practices of the online community. I am exploring the similarities between Linden Labs and the ABC institution.

Latour, B 2005, Reassembling the Social, Oxford University Press, New York.

Malaby, TM 2009, Making Virtual Worlds, Linden Lab and Second Life, Cornell University Press, New York.

Taylor, TL 2009, ‘The Assemblage of Play’, Games and Culture, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 331-9.

Posted in ABC, CCi, PhD Research | Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Is This Thing On? Ethnographic Interview Techniques for PhD Research

Posted on June 16, 2011 by

Talbot Duckmanton at golf outside broadcast

Original image by ABC Open Archives, Published under CC BY NC

Armed with my constructed grounded theory outlining who the stakeholders are within institutional online communities and how they negotiate their interests, I am preparing to embark on interview grandness! I have a swag of literature under my belt to support any of my claims, but do the participants in my research project agree with my emerging theories? I’ve produced many a documentary before and been in countless productions of recorded questions and answers between interviewer/interviewee, however this research interview process strikes me as slightly different. I guess there are similar fundamentals like needing to ask open ended questions as opposed to “yes” or “no”statements, and directing the conversation flow to answer the core of my research concepts. But is there anything else I should be considering when I actually perform these interviews for a PhD research project? The following draws on four interview techniques (two specifically using ethnographic interview techniques including Stimulated Recall Interviews) to describe the methods I will be testing during my first round of interviews.

As a launching pad, I’ve turned to my principal supervisor Axel Bruns‘s article/interview “Share, Share Widely. Technologies for Distributed Creativity” for some tips and tricks on how to practically conduct a research interview. In this interview, Trebor Scholz asks a question perfectly moulded around his research enabling Bruns to respond with his knowledge on “weblogs”. The further you read through the piece, the more you can see Scholz is listening to Bruns and constructing some questions around his responses – clearly not reading from a scripted list of questions. Other questions are more direct addressing the issues Scholz wishes to explore. Most secondary question are personal and ask for Bruns’s interpretation, that is “How do you explain/feel/expect…” for example.

A better example from Bruns’s publications is his article Citizen Journalism and Everyday Life: A Case Study of Germany’s myHeimat.de in which he analyses myHeimat.de through interviews with the founding members and staff of the project (much like I will be doing with the founding members of ABC Pool). During the article, Bruns contextualises the interviewees responses by establishing the lay of the land (citizen journalism, UGC), and then uses the responses of the interviewees to describe the project, any challenges they have had, and any wider impacts the website initiated. In this format, Bruns is telling the story of myHeimat.de through the responses of the interviewees in a kind of half interviewer/half interviewee format.

Hammersley & Atkinson (1995) refer to the interview as a “structured conversation” (p 15) where the testing of an hypothesis occurs within any ethnographic research method. By interviewing the ‘subjects’ of the research project, there is a duality to the recollection of events occurring – the researcher’s questioning and therefore interpretation of the events and the interviewees recollection of the events. The interview also “aids our assessment of the validity of the information provided by an account” by understanding the “context in which they occur” (ibid: 107). The issue that most ethnographers face, however, within the interview process is reflexivity within the recollection of those events that may influence the production of data (I would argue the interview is a way to test the constructed grounded theory that has emerged from the already analysed data sets). The ethnographic interview is also a structured interview by both the interviewer and the interviewee, and in that the ethnographer doesn’t have pre-determined answers but more broad areas for enquiry (refer to my statement on documentary interviews) that is coordinated with the interviewee.

In my last example I draw on, I look towards the musical world of jazz and the ethnographic interview method utilising Stimulated Recall Interviews (SRI). SRI is a fascinating technique that enables researchers “to understand what signals interactants understand as important, what they try to convey to others, and how they choose from various options to act upon the information they receive in interactions” (Dempsey 2010: 349). The type of non-language communication experienced in the musical “jam” has similarities to online communities in that the participants are not talking face-to-face with each other. The participants are more communicating through understanding signals that they perceive to be important and thereby conditioning their actions. What I also like about this technique is the use of real recordings of the environment with the interviewee performing some task. By showing the interviewee the situation, they are able to explain the context of what is really occurring, blow by blow, or by recalling the moment they produce an action.

For this round of interviews with ABC Pool staff, I will take a directed approach with an open mind to allowing the informants to collaboratively construct the conversation with me. I will also engage in SRI techniques to assist in memory recall of specific issues or actions within Pool.

References:

Bruns, A 2010, ‘Citizen Journalism and Everyday Life: A Case Study of Germany’s myHeimat.de’, in B Franklin & G Redden (eds), Journalists, Sources, and Credibility: New Perspectives, Routledge, London.

Dempsey, NP 2010, ‘Stimulated Recall Interviews in Ethnography’, Qual Social, vol. 33, pp. 349-67.

Hammersley, M & Atkinson, P 1995, Ethnography Principles in Practice, Routledge, London.

Posted in Interviews, PhD Research, Research | Tagged , , ,