07 Faster and Faster

The power of collective action lies within the organization and coordination of groups. With the introduction of technology as a social tool, groups have been able to assemble more quickly, contributing to the efficiency and effectiveness of the desired outcome.

These social tools have allowed weak groups to organize quickly and quietly against strong groups, doing so for very little cost. Social tools allow people to fight back against political repression by limiting the power of the government to stop them, by spreading the word quickly to all relevant people, and by showing the rest of the world what’s going on.

Prior to the internet, consumers had little opportunity to affect change in corporations that mistreated them. Now, the internet has enabled the formation of large movements of people, which, as a collective, can affect real change.

Communications over sites such as Facebook have decreased the obstacles to participation in demonstrations/reform efforts/protests, etc.Communication between and coordination of (politically) active people has become less obstructed due to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

(From Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, Chapter 7: Faster and Faster)

Here are some comments that were discussed in class:

Due to the frequency of social tools being used for collective action, the government is starting to figure out the power of the forms of communication, and are subsequently experimenting with solutions in order to maintain control (as Zeke said in the comment below, an example would be when Egypt shut down the internet, blocking communications).

Other examples of crackdowns on online reactions that were discussed in class were: an artist in China that was kidnapped and abducted by the government and the filtering of words such as 'protest' (if the word protest was mentioned a number of times via telephone, the calls would drop).

Also, just to show the influence that facebook has, (in combination with recent events in Egypt):

A couple names their baby............FACEBOOK

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/21/baby-named-facebook-egypt_n_825934.html

Thanks for the comments, and keep checking back =)

01 Village finding a phone

Summary:    8-12 sentences:

Ivanna lost her phone and the person who found it wouldn’t give it back so her friend Evan made the story viral.  The support rallied by Evan, over the loss of the phone resulted in mass public interest that when conjoined affected the outcome of the situation showing the power that groups possess.

The attention that becomes possible with mass Internet access creates the opportunity for individuals to communicate, broadcast issues, receive support, and thus change situations that they would not otherwise be able to alone. Evan utilized internet social media tools to rally support and create a kind of movement, that was rare, difficult to manage, full of experts, and almost impossible to create 5 or 10 years ago.

Human organization is highly complex and critical to group formation and collaboration within societies, but technology now allows easier access to organization and raises important ethical questions related to access and power. With new technology we are able to form groups easier, which thus provides different forms of motivation for individuals contributing to society.

The introduction of the internet, as it currently exists, along with cell phones, e-mail, and other forms of communication allow people to more easily organize themselves and accomplish collective action, without the institutional structure that was once needed to manage organizations. People are now capable of group action with out the need for traditional institutions to bring social change.

Comments:

In class we discussed why and how is this new.  Below are  related concepts from social science that came up during that conversation:

• social capital
• transaction costs
• emotion and helping behavior
• helping and altruism
• social support

Comment from FB post:

I posted a link to this post on FB.  A good friend of mind sent me an email with the following comment.  He raises a really interesting point:   does the phone example raise an important problem-- that the collective action made possible by internet community often gets directed towards trivial ends while far more important ends go wanting,

"Hey Ted,

I saw your post on FB about your students collective action projects and I thought their posts were interesting.  I have not read the book so I can’t comment in detail but a few things strike me.  There are interesting side effects of low cost social activism, the degradation of propinquity as a barrier to message spread and the absence a gate keepers in information sorting.

 For better or worse, there has been a fundamental change in what is important and or worthy of activism.  In this case there is a collective action event aimed at getting someone’s phone back.

 Is that a worthy cause? 

Is that the best use of participants agency, or is it just popular and of the moment?   Why does a phone merit such action while incidents of child abuse, starvation and murder go unacknowledged.  Clearly that is an oversimplification but there seems to be a lack of perspective in the digital world.  In this day and age a story of lost phone or a burning Koran somewhere is Florida can go viral and become the center of a large online movement.  In the first case a phone is returned but in the second people die.  In both cases the viral stories are trivial outside the world of social media.  A girl had her phone stolen, as I am sure 1000 people do every day and a guy burned a book in his tiny 14 person church.

  Perhaps this should be called the Charlie Sheen effect.  The unimportant takes center stage while real events are all but ignored.  Social media and its dependency on novelty and simplicity has, perhaps, warped the perspectives of participants because social media has no inherent perspective.  Maybe it was the barriers to collective action that signaled when a collective action event was truly important. We don’t tend to do trivial things when they are hard.  Now a lost phone and the collapse of the Berlin wall might get equal time."

Thanks Deven!

Connections to current events in the world:

• Egypt:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Egyptian_revolution#Role_of_social_media
• Ushahidi:  http://www.ushahidi.com/

Links:

The cognitive surplus:  http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_will_change_the_world.html

Several of the ideas that we discussed in class started to connect with Shirky's new book.  Above is a TED talk that summarizes some of those ideas.

Day 02: Here comes everybody

Today we discuss Clay Shirky's ideas from "Here Comes Everbody".   The diagram above represents a general diagram of how social outcomes are explained in the sociology and more generally in social sciences.   Known as the "Coleman boat" it suggests that explanations of (4) social outcomes need to model more than how the social context changed, but also what social actors are like, how they interact and the actions they take.

Shirky's book provides lots of examples of how changes in social technology enabled changes in the potential for collective action among ordinary people.   In this class, we use these types of examples to increase our understanding of how each stage in the model contributes to our understanding of how and why social change or other social outcomes occur.

The topic of "group processes" is primarily concerned with the development of theories and models of parts (2) and (3).  In this class we will motivate our desire to learn more about particular theories at the "micro level" because of our desire to understand events and outcomes at the "macro" level (1,4).

Spreadsheet for Shirky Book Work
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArdK55LJYgKQdHd6c1lZcHNDTHVkbTAtZTBiTE1VTFE&hl=en

Day 01: Intro to Course

Welcome to Group Processes; Soc 419/519.  Stuffz 4 2dai:

1. Discuss Syllabus, Structure of Class
1. Primary goals
1. Connect theories of group processes to social world
2. Contribute new, valuable insights and info
3. Keep learning
2. Evaluation
1. Iz game?
2. Yes.
2. Look at Day1 Survey form
1. edit
2. Ur questions
3. Chris Anderson: How web video powers global innovation
1. Watch
2. Discuss
3. Connections to goals of course
4. http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_anderson_how_web_video_powers_global_innovation.html
4. Jane McGonigal talk on "Gaming can make a better world"
1. Watch
2. Discuss
3. Connection to evaluation and goals of course
4. http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html
5. Upcoming
1. Complete form
2. Read "Here Comes Everybody"  for Day 02
3. Plan group writing / editing / construction task for weekend. 
4. Read 
1. Long Tail for Day 03
2. Free 04
3. Power of Networks for Day 05
4. NodeXL for day 06
1. Get the picture?

Link to Survey is here [fill it out today]:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dG5lTXZ2dWhaVGlCejVUV2ZYUjNXSnc6MQ

Group Processes 2011 FAQ

Ask and answer any course related questions in the comments of this post.

Spring 2011 Group Processes

“The intended effects of new technology are nothing compared to the unintended effects… the Internet is an accident. . . . Nobody planned it. If we had planned it, they wouldn’t have let us do it… if somebody had showed up in 1960 and said ‘this is what we’re going to do: it’s going to do everything and it’s going to put pornography in your daughter’s bedroom…’ it wouldn’t have been allowed. - William Gibson

Overview
In recent years, social change has been driven by the intended and unintended effects of technologies that make it easier for people to “do things together”. Email made communication easier. Cell phones made coordination with friends easier. Web pages made distribution of materials easier. Blogs . . . . Wikis. . . . Social network sites. . . These technological innovations are inherently social. They are altering, and will alter, the lives of individuals, the dynamics of group, the fates of organizations, the development of cultures, and the course of history. This course studies social change by combining research on group processes with contemporary examples from around the world and the depths of ‘cyberspace’. This course provides a general framework, specific concepts, and a think tank for articulating new connections between social science and social change in contemporary life. We will place special emphasis on an international and cross cultural perspective, highlighting similarities and differences between North America and South-East Asia. Through their own digital media creations students will play an active role in the public, trans-national discussion of the nature and trajectory of these changes.

Books to buy

Additional readings and other materials that are available online or will be linked in the course outline.

• Shirky, Clay. 2008. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. New York: The Penguin Press. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/offering/list/-/1594201536/all
• Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Connected World.  Derek Hansen (Author), Ben Shneiderman (Author), Marc A. Smith (Author)  http://www.amazon.com/Analyzing-Social-Media-Networks-NodeXL/dp/0123822297
• The Long Tail, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.   Chris Anderson http://www.amazon.com/Long-Tail-Revised-Updated-Business/dp/1401309666/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b
• Free: How Today's Smartest Businesses Profit by Giving Something for Nothing, Chris Anderson  http://www.amazon.com/Free-Smartest-Businesses-Something-Nothing/dp/140131032X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

Three of these books are packed together at Amazon  for like 30 bucks:
http://www.amazon.com/Free-Smartest-Businesses-Something-Nothing/dp/140131032X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

This book is free online:

• Benkler, Yochai. 2006. The Wealth of Networks. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Networks-Production-Transforms-Markets/dp/0300110561
• Free netbook version: http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ohio/docDetail.action?docID=10170022

This book is optional but very helpful for doing research

• Fielding, Lee and Blank. 2008. The Sage Handbook of Online Research Methods. London: Sage. http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Online-Research-Methods/dp/1412922933/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249491799&sr=1-1
• Note: this book is very expensive and it is recent so used copies are rare. But it is a really good methodological resource for doing research using data from online systems. If the cost seems too prohibitive now perhaps you can split a copy with another student.

Stats on the OU Sociology and Anthropology Facebook Page

Several interesting patterns to note for our departmental FB page.

1. Growth has been slow and mostly steady.
2. The gender break down is 60% women (similar to our majors?)
3. Countries with fans are surprisingly wide ranging.

If the site continues to grow and see more usage we will have access to a wider variety of descriptive statistics. Any other observations?