Micro Coordination

A presentation about micro coordination, Location-aware mobile media and urban sociability, and Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment.

Transcript

1. MICRO COORDINATION PRESENTATION BY
2. LITERATURE Nobody sits at home and waits for the telephone to ring (Ling & Yttri) Location aware mobile media and urban sociability (Sutko & de Souza e Silva) Reconceptualizing collective action in the contemporary media environment (Bimber, Flanagin, & Stohl, )
3. NOBODY SITS AT HOME AND WAITS FOR THE TELEPHONE TO RING
4. TWO USES OF THE TERMINAL INSTRUMENTAL Security and coordination EXPRESSIVE Exchange of feelings and emotions
5. MICRO COORDINATION Basic Logistics: e.g. wife calling husband to ask him to stop and pick up milk at the store Softening of time: e.g. calling ahead from a traffic jam letting know you will be late. Progressively exact arrangement of a meeting: e.g. meeting at approximately time, while in transit call and confirm timing and location. + third call to locate each other if needed.
6. MICRO COORDINATION “It’s something that is needed – mundane maintenance of daily life.”
7. HYPER COORDINATION Adolescence “This is perhaps the only time in our lives when friends come fully to center stage, transcending all other relationships in immediate importance as they engage us on a daily basis around every aspect of living.” (Ling & Yttri)
8. HYPER COORDINATION Accessibility “Traditional telephony is passé – no one sits at home and waits…”
9. HYPER COORDINATION Expressive §  Emotional rather than task oriented e.g. chatting, jokes or haiku poems §  Ties the peer group together (common narrative) – extension of the group §  SMS allows for arranging “face” (asynchronous allows time to think) §  Control of group boundaries (slang -> group solidarity, homophones & abbreviations e.g. “CUL8R” as “see you later”) Expression of self §  Style and display: Physical appearance of the phone §  No “bricks” or “refrigerators” ! §  E.g. a phone in the belt looks tacky.
10. LOCATION-AWARE MOBILE MEDIA AND URBAN SOCIABILITY
11. OVERVIEW §  Proposes a classification for different types of locative mobile social networking interfaces (LMSN) §  Challenges the common assumptions that LMSN interfaces promote communication and sociability in public spaces
12. CLASSIFICATION OF LMSN §  The characteristics - Use location awareness (GPS) to display position (no need for self reporting. - Show location on map in real-time §  3 types: Friend based, location of strangers and location of groups (e.g. Citysense) §  They either allow users to find specific others in the city, or they promote awareness of the location of unknown masses.
13. CLASSIFICATION OF LMSN §  Eponymous Identifies users in space, by location and profile name – make them know to strangers or just selected friends E.g. Whrll, loopt §  Anonymous No user identification E.g. Citysense: Shows density-distribution (hot spots) of people in the city
14. CENTRAL TO THESE PLATFORMS: §  Act of coordination not communication §  Affects the way we might experience chance encounters §  Having access to others’ locations may change how we move through space and how we relate to others §  They primarily facilitate connections with known friends §  They lessen the potential for spontaneous new sociability with more diverse non-users
15. RECONCEPTUALIZING COLLECTIVE ACTION
16. OVERVIEW §  Collective action theory must be reconceptualized to accommodate new forms of collective action §  A communication processes involving crossing of boundaries between public and private life
17. WHAT IS COLLECTIVE ACTION? §  Actions taken by two or more people in the pursuit of a collective goal §  Results in shared outcome or “public good” §  Nonrival (amount is not reduced on consumption) §  Two central elements; the problem of free riding and the importance of formal organization
18. §  Discrete decision: participate in creating public good or taking advantage of it once made by others. §  Binary decision: Do I contribute or free-ride? FREE RIDING
19. §  Main obstacle in collective action: locating, contacting, coordinating and motivating private resources. §  Latent group: group with common interest in public good, but without organizational structure §  Latency entails privacy FORMAL ORGANIZATION I.E. COSTLY COMMUNICATION AND COORDINATION
20. EVOLUTION FROM TRADITIONAL COLLECTIVE ACTION MADE POSSIBLE BY NEW MEDIA §  “Battle in Seattle”, in which a far-flung network of groups «used e-mail, the Web, and chat rooms to engage in a largely self- organizing protest against the policies of the World Trade Organization. §  Posting information on a web page or weblog, contributing to discussion on an electronic bulletin board. §  Open source projects §  Spontaneously organized smart mobs (Rheingold, 2002) aimed at public goods
21. REFRAMING When an individual cross a boundary between private and public states, and when this boundary is crossed by two or more people in conjunction with a public good, collective action is said to have occurred
22. SCENARIOS ACCOMMODATED BY CONTEMPORARY MEDIA §  The ease of transforming private discourse to public discourse, without any specific dependence on central organization (e.g. private responses to an e-mail discussion which eventually becomes public) §  The absence of a central organization prompting people to share their email lists (transforming private domains into a public domain of collective action) §  The Web as a vehicle for crossing boundaries (information that are privately created may one day become useful publicly)
23. AND THAT’S ALL I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THAT