Strength of ties in a mobile community under conditions of

anonymity

Herbert Eng, IGS-IMI (New Media)

Assoc. Prof Patrick Williams (Sociology) Asst. Prof Chew Lock Yue (Social Physics)

Asst. Prof Kenneth Feinstein (Media Philosophy)

Furtherance in typifying dimensions of discursive anonymity in mobile youth culture

Research into new anonymous social networks

Whisper: US$200M Secret: US$50M

Exploring discursive anonymity’s effect on the amplitude of strong and weak

ties in a community

Getting better data leveraging multiple (hopefully) communities

How to improveExternal validity ↑ Error Margin ↓

Lengthen data collection from one-time snapshots to

longitudinal field experiments

Improving size of analysis

Move away from artificial, laboratory settings

Goals

• Demonstrate viability of a crowdsourced way of obtaining social science data through civic mediaimplementations

• any form of communication that strengthens the social bonds within a community or creates a strong sense of civic engagement

• Establish some baseline social research in the area of mobile social applications featuring anonymous sharing

• Develop social insights: gossip being a necessary mechanism to maintain social bonds

• Reinvigorate civic participation (Resnick 2011)

Purpose

• Investigate effects of various conditions of discursive anonymity

• Identity condition (Anonymity vs. Pseudonymity)

• Group Authentication: Present vs. Absent

• Dependent Variables• Self-disclosure

• Social cohesion– Bonding social capital (strong ties)

– Bridging social capital (weak ties)

Research Questions

• RQ1: Do pseudonymous contexts significantly differ from anonymous contexts in terms of self-disclosure and social capital accrued?

• RQ2: Do partially-authenticated accounts significantly differ from non-authenticated accounts in terms of the social capital accrued?

• RQ3: Does collective engagement in conversational gossip improve social cohesion within a community?

2 x 2 Full Factorial

A B

C D

RQ1: Identity Representation

Anonymous Pseudonymous

RQ2: Authentication

Present

Absent

Identity Representation

Copresence

Sense of Belonging

Self-disclosureBridging Social CapitalBonding Social Capital

Authentication

Copresence

Sense of Belonging

Self-disclosureBridging Social CapitalBonding Social Capital

Community Scale Project

• Data collection application disguised as a social app will be built, launched and marketed to gain strong traction from local and overseas schools, colleges and universities

• Each confession post will allow students to judge whether a confession is True or False

Fessup Design Philosophy

• Unrestricted broadcast• Instrumental: Ability to do so

• Psychological: Pressure of repercussions

• Pseudonyms• Allow persistent reputation building

• Behavioral control mechanism

• Distinguishable from each other (as opposed to the collective anon)

• Authentication• Homophily effects – activating positive feelings through

controlled disclosure of some shared attribute

How to regulate behavior in anonymous conversations?

• Self control mechanism: reputation associated with a pseudonym• Community moderation: other users get to outright accept and reject posts (as opposed to upvotes and downvotes)

fessup.sg/prototype

B) Pseudonymous + Authenticated

C) Anonymous + Unauthenticated

A) Anonymous + Authenticated

True/False responses (you can only choose one!)

Methodology: Longitudinal Field Experiment

• Focus on how the conditions are manipulated based on the natural behavior of participants on Fessup

• users who most frequently post anonymously but are authenticated -> condition A

• users who most frequently post pseudonymouslywithout being authenticated -> condition D

• After a three month period, a questionnaire will be released within the app

Variables at a glance

• Independent Variables• Anonymity: Anonymous vs. Pseudonymous• Authentication: Present vs. Absent

• Dependent Variables• Collective Behavior: Frequency of resharing for posts as population ensemble• Individual Behavior: Frequency of posting• Individual Behavior: Frequency of resharing• Individual Behavior: Frequency of commenting• Self-disclosure• Bridging social capital• Bonding social capital

• Mediators/Moderators• Sense of belonging to school• Copresence

• Control Variables• Age

TimelineNov Dec

Development

2015 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun

Launch Growing traction Growing traction, Analytics devAlpha

Questionnaire

Analyses, Adjustments to

model

Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Beta Questionnaire

Analyses, Adjustments to model, Thesis

writing

Reading in conjunction with classesThesis writing, Analytics dev

2016 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun

1st Questionnaire Analyses, Adjustments to model, Thesis writing2nd

Questionnaire

Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Thesis writing

Thesis Chapters

• 1. The Evolution of Internet Pseudonymity

• 2. Mobile communities

• 3. Gossip and the strength of ties

• 4. Fessup design philosophy

• 5. Fessup and a longitudinal field experiment

• 6. Discussion of results and further insights

Thesis Chapters

• 1. The Evolution of Internet Pseudonymity• The original pseudonymity experiment was the Internet itself and online social

spaces present today, whether of a channel in a massively multiplayer online game or a discussion forum, could be said to have evolved from early iterantssuch as IRC. This chapter attempts to lay out the history of persona representation in the Internet Chatroom.

• 2. Mobile communities• Research on mobile cultures have seen significant contribution. This chapter

discusses the contributions most significant to the current research.

• 3. Gossip and the strength of ties• An attempt to connect gossip from an evolutionary perspective with the

amplitude of social cohesion in an community, within the context of always-on and ever copresent mobile-connected communities.

• 4. Fessup design philosophy • The various social scientific insights that serve as guidance in designing Fessup

• 5. Fessup and a longitudinal field experiment• A year long social experiment with four rounds of data collection

• 6. Discussion of results and further insights