Rui Jian (rj79): Brown
For our blog assignment, Rui and I read entries done in two usenet social networks: Both groups came up as results of keywords "relationship, advice." The first thread involved a female asking advices on how to get her boyfriend to settle with only her. In two threads, a shy male sought tips on interpreting female behaviors and values. We analyzed 20 responses in total.
According to Brainwaite et al, online social groups show 5 major types of support: information, tangible assistance, esteem support, network support and emotional support. Informational support, “includes messages that conveyed instructions, including advice, referrals to experts, situation appraisal, and teaching. Messages coded as information support appeared to reduce uncertainty or help make life more predictable for the message recipient.” (Braithwaite, 133)
Tangible assistance includes concrete, physical actions the sender offers to take, in support of the recipient (such as performing a direct task, performing an indirect task, loaning, active participation and expressing willingness). Esteem support concentrates on validating sense of self-worth. Network support “involves messages that appeared to broaden the recipient's social network, by connecting him or her to others with similar interests or situations, including access, presence, and companions”(Braithwaite, 135). Emotional support includes relationship, physical affection, confidntiality, sympathy, empathy and prayer. In addition to 5 factors mentioned in Brainwaite, we included humor.
Results::
While there were average of 1.2 social support messages per turn in the research led by Brainwaite, we found 2.35 types per turn. The addition of humor could have affected the change, because we found humor in the majority of responses.
Our results without humor as a factor::
The major differences between our result and Braithwaite’s are informational support (58% vs 31%), emotional support (15% vs 40%), and tangible assistance (0% vs 3%)
The discrepancy is probably due to the fact that the data of our analysis are gathered from relationship and shyness support groups while Braithwaite gathered data from disability support group. People need more information (advice, experience, analysis of situation, etc) to overcome shyness and relationship problem. Since many people with disability are depressed, they need much more emotional support cheer them up. Also, people with disabilities need more physical actions to help them (tangible assistance).
Rui and I showed an over 88% inter-rater reliability which implies a high accuracy in coding. A small disagreement in coding occurred, because we had different opinions on inferred esteem support and emotional support. It was challenging to pick up the tone of bloggers' voices because most messages were brief and lacked social cues usually available in FtF settings.
Our result demonstrates how CMC can help foster support among individuals who normally would not enroll for giving or receiving help. In chapter 10, Wallace argues that because of high number of anonymous traffic, online space will not foster supportive environment. However, entries from GetOverHim and alt.support.shyness suggest otherwise. Wallace fails to address how usenet initiates relationships among empathetic users with similar interests. Although there are numerous users, individuals of specific interests seek groups with related goals. For example, messages posted in alt.support.shy group imply how members themselves often struggled with self-image and shyness in social situations.
The four factors identified by Walther and Boyd identified also help explain why people contribute online. Anonymity reduces social anxieties and provide senses of safety for shy individuals, so they can talk about personal matters and seek help more freely.“….How can you tell a girl is interested?” (alt.support.shyness) For GetOverHim, an aggressive female can reach out without worrying aboutsocial stigma. Another factor social distance refers to the distance between people in different social groups. In CMC, social distance barrier is somewhat fluid. Thus a wide range of people with diverse knowledge online. CMC provides users with sense of control, because the interactions arehighly manageable, letting users to compose and read at their own convenience. Around the clock availability of support also attracts users. Somewhere in the world somebody is awake when you are, no matter what time it is.
http://groups.google.com/group/GetOverHim/browse_thread/thread/99910fc8cac8f3ea
3 comments:
Your blog post was very interesting and was well laid out. The pie graphs with your results were very cool and unique. I was a little confused on how in such a serious topic there could be 14 different messages with humor. My assumption is that more of the jokes came from the Males page. You should check over the messages and see if any one "expressing willingness" to help because you showed that no one did. All in all very good post though.
Brilliant job! I am impressed by your graphs. It's expressive. Also, I think the idea of adding "humor" as a factor is really good. Because from my personaly experience , most people tend to express their sense of humor during online communication, and they always do better online than in really FtF. But when when they are providing advices , less people will choose this way for better expressing their support.
I think that the two of you chose a unique topic to search for social support. Although advice on relationships is a common area of social support, I liked how you referred to a specific dynamic in relationships, an aggressive female and shy male. I think that this example only goes to further prove how there is an attraction to online social support especially for those people who are shy in face to face interactions. It was interesting to see how your results varied from the Braithwaite study, but seemed to be due to the analysis of a very different type of social support. The use of pie charts was very helpful because I was able to see how all of the individual results had implications as a whole. Visual tools, such as these, allow one to come to conclusions about results with greater ease.
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