Ren and fellow AoIRs, I conducted a study of the use of a newsgroup in a company during a large scale change that was threatening to employees' identity and found that participation on the newsgroup, on-line and off-line lurking all had a cathartic effect, ie. They reduced people's willingness to resist change. There were even textual rituals enacted on the newsgroup at the highest peaks in tension during the change process, which consisted in people posting blank messages at rates over 100 messages a day. Without posting the whole paper, I'll share with you a quote from one of my informants: [O]ne of the functions of the [Newsgroup] was that independently of bringing people closer, of helping them develop, of the role it played, it was a very powerful instrument that was favorable to the company in the sense of being the escape valve for a lot of stuff [...] It was a very useful escape valve that the company did not value. I'm currently working on writing this up, but I'll be happy to share it once it's done. Hope this contributes to the discussion, Joao Joao Vieira da Cunha MIT / Sloan -----Original Message----- From: air-l-admin@aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin@aoir.org] On Behalf Of Ren Reynolds Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 9:46 AM To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: RE: [Air-l] howard dean, social movements and clay shirky I've been meaning to post about the same thing, the assertion in the piece that found most _interesting_ was this: "We know well from past attempts to use social software to organize groups for political change that it is hard, very hard, because participation in online communities often provides a sense of satisfaction that actually dampens a willingness to interact with the real world." Is there data to back this up ? I would imagine that it would depend on the community that was created. Certainly some research on Virtual World communities seems to indicate that membership of the community is empowering and can make people more politically active. So does any one here have the data to share the 'we know well' assertion ? Ren www.renreynolds.com terranova.blogs.com -----Original Message----- From: air-l-admin@aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin@aoir.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Marshall Sent: 29 January 2004 02:46 To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] howard dean, social movements and clay shirky I don't know if people saw Weinberger's response to Shirky. Weiberger wrote "small peices loosely joined" and is Dean's web campaign person. http://www.corante.com/loose/archives/001636.html The arguement seems to be the old one. The Net leads to fantasy, or online satisfaction, rather than real world action (Shirky) vs. the Net challenges everything and is a new public space going to forge new social alliances [social software](Weinberger). At the moment this seems to a matter of assertion. Weinberger asserts the Dean campaign would be nowhere without the Web and it has allowed the raising of funds etc. It would be nice if we could actually get beyond these kinds of dichotemies even if it was just to ask "what kinds of offline social interaction is furthered by the Internet, and which is not?" It may be that established powers are not yet threatened by the net, they can use it better etc. It may simply be that people forget that the Net is embedded within a society which has very specific conflicts and dominances and is thus not simply going to escape those dominances, who are as good at colonising new spaces as ever. However it might be worth asking if there some aspect of power - what Michael Mann calls 'interstitial power', which is invisible to the dominancies and thus able to be organised through the net? Or is it simply that we old folks, have not yet got into the habit of integrating online life with offline? Is the perception of the gap the problem, both ways....? Oh well, nothing useful i guess.. jon UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER ======================================================================== This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views the University of Technology Sydney. Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects. ======================================================================== _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l