Post on 20-Dec-2015
transcript
Coye Cheshire & Andrew Fiore April 18, 2023//
Computer-Mediated Communication
The Nature of Community
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Today
Community, Boundaries and Symbols
Defining and Justifying Problems (part 1)
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The ‘Myths’ of Community
Simplicity and F2F“…the anatomy of social life at the micro-level is more intricate, and no less revealing, than among … the macro-level”
Egalitarianism“…community generates multitudinous means of making evaluative distinctions among its members, means of differentiating among them…”
Inevitable Conformity“suggests that the outward spread of cultural influences from the centre will make communities … less like their former selves…[this assumes that] people are somehow passive in relation to culture: they receive it, transmit it, but do not create it.”
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Symbolic Meaning (and variation) within Communities
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Symbols are effective because they are
imprecise. … They are, therefore, ideal
media through which people can speak a
‘common’ language, behave in apparently
similar ways, participate in the ‘same’
rituals, pray to the ‘same’ gods, wear
similar clothes, and so forth, without
subordinating themselves to a tyranny of
orthodoxy. Individuality and commonality
are thus reconcilable.
“
”
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Community Boundaries and Symbols
“Symbols do not so much express meaning as give us the capacity to make meaning.”
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Community Boundaries and Symbols
Public face(symbolically simple)
Private face(symbolically complex) “ ”
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Some questions to consider
Examples of communities in CMC and the use of symbols?
How does the community define its boundaries? If there have been times when those boundaries were violated, how did members respond?
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Defining and Justifying Problems (Part 1)
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What makes a good research problem?
Research Questions for Theoretical Development
Research Questions for Practical Application
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How Research is Supposed to Work
Problem Method Data CollectionSupport or Reject
Hypotheses
How Research Really Works…
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Defining Problems What is an example research
problem?
“an interrogative sentence or statement that asks: What relation exists between two or more concepts?”
What is an example design problem?
“an interrogative sentence or statement that asks: What elements of a given system affect (or might affect) the behavior(s) of users, and in what specific ways?”
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Characteristics of good problems
1) Should state the concepts to be related clearly and unambiguously
2) Should be testable (or constructible)– even if you don’t test it or build it!
(robertnlee.com)