Journal Club
All kinds of social media and networked culture theory – Journal Club – 25/03/2011
Mar 28th
After recently joining the LiSC Friday afternoon research group and eating all the cake for the past few weeks I was invited to give a talk in relation to my PhD project and give some theoretical/critical insight into the development of online social networking practices and related networked socio-economic trends. I guess this contributed some degree of an interdisciplinary flavour, since I come from a cultural studies/media studies background. My PhD is focussed on how forms of subjectivity (embodied in connecting, producing, performing, playing, communicating, tagging, uploading, ‘poking’, and ‘liking’ in the social media platform Facebook) may be being governed, conditioned, structured, captured and modulated through the technological architecture of such sites, representing a critique of wider developments to highly mediated, networked cultures in the context of global capitalism. I have been collaborating with members of LiSC to develop an application to collect data from Facebook users for my study, which is how I came to be involved in the research group.
I began my talk by discussing some of the recent work on online social media, and it was interesting to see a number of apparent crossovers here. I gave a brief discussion about the historical development of capitalism then attempted to map out three key areas which I feel are important for critically understanding networked technology and practices: Identity, Power and Labour. I delved into a broad range of critical theory and philosophy, in particular Gilles Deleuze’s work on ‘control societies’, the ‘dividual’ self, ‘de-territorialisation’ and ‘assemblages’, as well issues of ‘affective/immaterial labour’ and ‘networked ontology’ (which really warranted more time to explain in fine detail but hopefully the group found the overview of these concepts in someway interesting and/or useful). These core issues make up the body of my literature review and provide the historical, cultural and critical background from which my study will emerge; as this process is far from complete, my talk painted a vague picture of the theoretical environment in this area, perhaps opening avenues for future research.
I think I will reward everyone for sitting through that session with some assortment of cake and nibbles for next week…
Online social tools for Higher Education – Journal Club 4.3.2011
Mar 7th
John Murray came along to our session on Friday to discuss some ongoing research that he is conducting on developing social tools for Higher Education. We probably shouldn’t give away the specifics of what he’s doing just now, but there were some points that came up that are relevant to all applications that aim to improve student participation and engagement using online social tools.
One issue that we kept coming back to was that of anonymity – whether or not contributions from students to any social network-based education tool should be done under their own name, or anonymised. I am by no means an expert on the role of anonymity in contributions to online communities, but there has been a great deal written in this area. See this blog for example, and this Journal Article.
Another issue that came up was that we need to carefully consider the incentives that students have to participate in non-compulsory facets of the Higher Education experience. In this respect, we discussed this very interesting work (and this) which uses game-based feedback to inspire student motivation and engagement.
We’re looking forward to seeing how this project develops as it touches on some issues that are of real importance to some of the other work we are doing at LiSC.
Interestingly, last weeks graphical feedback seems to have prompted a huge upsurge in cake buying. We had a total of 5 cakes at the meeting – of which we ate only one. If anyone can suggest a nice solution for organising our ad-hoc cake buying it would be much appreciated.
People and Animals and Computers (and stuff) – Journal club 18.2.2011
Feb 22nd
The number of people turning up at our weekly Journal Club sessions is increasing far quicker than the number of cakes (see figure 1 for a rough estimation). However, its great to be able to get people from across many disciplines in the University together to talk about computers and stuff. This week we had Nelly Lakestani from the dept of Psychology over to talk to us about her work in the field of animal welfare.
Recently, people have become more interested in where their food comes from. Indeed, we have explored this issue ourselves in a workshop paper last year. Nelly discussed with us how the consumer focus on where meat comes from has implications on animal welfare – especially in terms of getting information to people about welfare standards. Indeed, Nelly described a survey, recently carried out by the European Comission (link), which found that people from every member state are interested in knowing more about the welfare of the animals that they end up eating. We feel that there is a role for technology in helping people find this information. Nelly is also interested in game-based education for animal welfare and introduced us to a very interesting (disturbing) game developed to teach Finnish Abbatoir workers how to humanely slaughter animals. We’ll stick the link up to that work asap!
Martin Thayne, a Lecturer in the School of Media, and whose research interests are very much in the domain of social media, also came along to his first Journal Club meeting. We look forward to seeing more of martyn over the coming months as our research interests are quite closely aligned.
Journal Club 04.02.2011 – Facebook Usage, ENACT
Feb 7th
This week our discussion focused on social media regarding topics such as; motivation, structure and impacts of usage. The discussion of Facebook usage was in aid of the ENACT project which aims to study usage of social networking sites in order to improve the uptake of computerised cognitive behavioural therapy. The initial review paper (Students’ and teachers’ use of Facebook) gave a brief overview of current research into Facebook usage in an educational setting concerning topics such as student Facebook usage, profile information disclosure and students’ attitudes towards Facebook.
Interestingly Facebook usage was found to have a detrimental effect on users that were high consumers of information. One suggestion we had to combat this effect was to track the Facebook usage of users in order to determine those users who were consuming large amounts. Using this information it would then be possible to prompt the user into producing and incorporating themselves within their social network.
In the Older adults’ perceptions paper it was unsurprising to discover that this age group associated technology with distrust and therefore preferred to offer emotional support to other users with more established mediums such as face to face and telephones. Although the paper did highlight the fact that there are older users out there providing drawing from their own experiences in order to support to others.
Amazingly cakes were oversupplied this week, there may have to be a national cull in times to come.
Reviewed Papers
[pdf] Social Network Activity and Social Well-Being
[pdf] College students’ social networking experiences on Facebook
[pdf] Students’ and teachers’ use of Facebook
[pdf] Older adults’ perceptions and experiences of online social support
Journal Club 28.01.2010 – Data.Gov.UK
Jan 31st
With the release of new transparent data from data.gov.uk we at LiSC were buzzing with new research ideas. The new open data website allows members of the public to search open data sets released by the Government in order to generate new and interesting applications to aid the general public. ’Oh the endless combinations of government data and Google map overlays’ we hear you cry, sadly it looks like this may not be a distinct possibility. After trawling through the reams and reams of spreadsheets we found that a lot of data had simply not been collected and other datasets failed to provide sufficient granularity offering only a sweeping stereotypical view of a generalised area. Therefore we proposed that the open data sets need to be standardised in order to show statistics at national, regional, council and area/district level.
One of the key points raised in the Journal club meeting was that not all of the data sets were of poor quality. Good examples of rich data sets were those about NHS funding and treatment which was split into regional, Primary Care Trust and clinic level areas. With this finer granularity available it may be possible to analyse the NHS data and provide a more accurate assumption based on the released data.
The most important issue that came to light was that data sets are not readily available in on-line API formats and are currently hindered by the masses of spreadsheets that need to be downloaded and hosted in order to be worked into a usable and highly available format. If this data gathering process is maintained fragmentation will occur, inevitably leading to outdated or misrepresented data sets being used as the basis of public information. Therefore the data.gov.uk website needs to host ‘live’ API’s with which developers can interact with.
Unfortunately some cakes are still at large due to the failure of being captured before the meeting, please if you have any information of their whereabouts contact a member of LiSC as soon as possible.
Useless fact: ‘Liverpool City Council issued 580 Dog Fouling Fixed Penalty Notices (Apr 08 – Mar 09) resulting in £14,950 worth of fines’ (data.gov.uk) – Its interesting to know what Liverpool City Council focuses its attention on, isn’t it?
Journal Club 21.1.2011 – User-Centred Design and Sherlock Holmes
Jan 27th
With many of our research projects employing HCI research methods, we had a light discussion on one of HCI’s core concepts: user-centred design. To stimulate discussion we took a look at the interesting paper, ‘Pastiche scenarios: Fiction as a resource for user centred design’ by Blythe & Wright (2006), available from here.
The paper looks at an alternative method to build an understanding of target users of systems in the tasks they do and the scenarios that bring about the need for these tasks. The proposed method is the creative use of well-known fictional characters, such as Sherlock Holmes or Bridget Jones, in creating personas and scenarios over the standard ‘static’ methods of rolling out some basic statistics such as demographics and job title. This approach can make the process of UCD a lot more fun and lead to an enriched understanding of the users needs, desires and cultural issues. In particular, their use could be helpful for the types of studies we do here at LiSC that involve real people in real environments instead of tightly controlled lab studies.
Examples of our projects that could benefit from the use of pistache scenarios are ENACT and Electro-Magnates, both of which will involve a diverse range of pariticpants touching upon sensitive aspects of their well-being and lifestyles.
A new cake made its debut appearance, the Sticky Toffee with butterscotch cream, it sure gave the Carrot and Walnut cake a run for its money.
Journal Club 7.1.2011 – Persuasive discussions
Jan 12th
We held the first journal club meeting of the new year in our shiny new office on the third floor of the MHT building, overlooking the bypass, a McDonalds and some train tracks. We got together to discuss persuasive technology. We have a number of projects that loosely fall into this field so it was good to talk through some stuff that we have recently been thinking about.
The main paper under discussion was by Consolvo et al (2009) and was presented at CHI that year. Available here We all had quite a lot to say about this paper and I think the general consensus was that while there were some interesting points included about incorporating theoretical approaches in design, that the evaluation (as appears to be the norm in this field) left a lot to be desired.
We also had a quick look at the UK governments interesting recent ‘nudge unit’ document and considered how it relates to this topic.
Rather shockingly, no cakes were harmed in the making of this blog post.
Friday 16th July – Technology, Exercise and Health
Jul 19th
This week we had a great discussion based around the idea of using technology to help motivate people to increase the amount of exercise they take on a daily basis. Richard Keegan from the Universitys Department of Sport, Coaching & Exercise Science came along to contribute his expertise on the topic. There appear to be a large number of online games, mobile phone apps and social networking tools that already attempt to address these issues. However, it is a field in whcih technology has the potential to make real, lasting impacts in peoples lives. We are hoping to collaborate with Richard in designing some tools for this specific purpose in the near future.
Appropriately enough, considering we were discussing topics such as dietary behaviour, obesity and diabetes, we had some delicious sugar coated cream buns to go with our coffee.
Journal Club 30th April – HCI for sustainability
May 3rd
This Friday’s meeting followed on from the heated debate at the sustainable HCI sessions and papers at CHI 2010. The two main papers we discussed were based on the future of sustainable HCI available here and the design of eco-feedback technology available here. During our discussion of sustainable HCI and energy consumption the general sentiment was that sustainable HCI largely ignores the literature of environmental psychology with its decades of underpinning knowledge in researching pro-environmental behaviour. Conversely, the environmental psychology literature completely ignores the body of sustainable HCI research which in itself raises questions of how valid other relevant disciplines perceive HCI. We felt that a collaboration of tried and tested HCI design methodologies and environmental psychology could provide more robust experimental studies. This could potentially lead towards a definitive research answer in the effectiveness of using technology to encourage positive eco-behaviour.
Several other poignant questions were raised, for instance does HCI create new technologies simply because we like new designs or ‘objects’ to covet – therefore negating the whole concept of sustainable HCI? Also, how can we begin to change deep seated consumer attitudes in the craving for and consumption of new technologies? Could it be said that we as consumers ‘want to want’ new devices and turn a blind eye to the ‘from shelf to landfill’ cycle in a short space of time? Sustainable HCI has made inroads researching the material design of technologies, see here, and how we may be able to address the perceived value of technologial devices through re-use and heirloom status concepts. It could be argued that this research is more of a visionary idea in tackling obsolescence and not practical in its application.
We felt that sustainable HCI may also be seen as an island of research with findings only having a short life cycle with no inter-disciplinary re-use. The discussion suggested that collaboration between the ergonomics, engineering, sociology and psychology disciplines could benefit the ‘sustainability’ of sustainable HCI.
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Journal Club 26th March – I got the Blues(tooth)
Mar 29th
Last fridays session was devoted to discussing the potential uses of bluetooth device scanning for the understanding of individual and group behaviour. The catalyst for discussion was this blog post by Fabien Girardin. We felt that this post was very useful for understanding both the state of the art in the scanning technology itself and also getting a picture of what has already been done in terms of using the information gathered from such scans for useful purposes. It appears that the technology has already been successfully applied to tracking footfall and traffic in a city centre, and for implementing the dynamic display of personally relevant information on public displays.
Discussion moved towards the ethical implications of using such scanning technology – and parallels were made to early research on peoples awareness and perception of CCTV cameras.