User talk:CairnLouden

Annotated Bibliography
Harrell, D. F. & Chong-U, L. 2017. Reimagining The Avatar Dream: Modeling Social Identity in Digital Media. Communications of the ACM, 60 (7). Pp. 50-61. DOI: 10.1145/3098342.

Harrell & Chong-U (2017) investigate the means by which users self-represent themselves via online avatars in gaming and other platforms such as social media networks. The research intends to pinpoint ‘box-effects’—ie stereotypes, social biases, discrimination…—in both the preset categories in games allowing for avatar customisation, such as race, height and strength, as well as our own underlying box-effects that we use to represent our online identity. The methodology used combines the authors’ AIRvatar system with real-life participants to study individual choices in personalised attributes. As well as this, using Chimeria, the authors firstly built users’ social media personalities by using their musical preferences, and thusly affiliating the user with others with similar tastes. Secondly, they crafted an AI-system in which users had to ‘pretend to be something I’m not’ in order to convince a guard that they are worthy of entering a castle. This in-depth study of the potential of online identification covers a wide range of platforms and fits well with my groups chosen topic of ‘online identity’. The research is however limited in lack of prior, valid studies in the same field. The study also withholds some information on male users, suggesting inadequacy in results, considering the full disclosure of the female participants’ results. Harrell and Chong-U conclude by recommending further research on relationships between virtual identities and sociocultural identity phenomenon. I will be using this article in my collaborative essay as I feel it furthers my existing knowledge on online identities and digital media studies as a whole.

CairnLouden (discuss • contribs) 10:26, 28 March 2018 (UTC) (***originally posted on User Page and not discussion page. Apologies***)

Hey Cairn, I read and commented on yesterday, I think both are very similar. I found them both extremely interesting and think you have fantastic ideas. Also speaks of the same limitation, as she speaks of the research being more focused on women than men. Thus, maybe we could all help each other out with the essay, since all four of us are doing online identity? MTxPrincipessa18 (discuss • contribs) 16:06, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Hey, it's good to know we're on a similar path with this, I will make sure to also read the articles you mention. I think there are a lot of limitations in many of the articles I have read, and I think it would make sense for all of us to meet up and discuss these a bit more. Hopefully that way we ca work out the true scope of these limitations in context of studies in the topic of online identity. CairnLouden (discuss • contribs) 18:06, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I definitely agree, I think all of the articles will be great contributions to the collaborative essay MTxPrincipessa18 (discuss • contribs) 18:33, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Hey Cairn, saw you have done the what we spoke about today. Thanks, for doing the first draft, I have continued it by writing my part and linking it (somewhat) to yours. Also, on the comment part of our discussion page, I had highlighted where we've to upload the final draft tomorrow. Best of luck!

MTxPrincipessa18 (discuss • contribs) 19:32, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Hey MT! Hope you are well. I'm trying to stay on top of this so am getting things finalised now, I'm glad to see all of the group contributing. I will redraft my first draft in a few moments just to make sure it's as polished as possible. Hope you have a lovely week. CairnLouden (discuss • contribs) 10:24, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Hey Cairn, no problem at all, did you get it done? I've posted on the page my final bit, so we will just meet next week, all of us to transfer it onto our 'book' page. I'm glad it's all finally coming together.

MTxPrincipessa18 (discuss • contribs) 16:37, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Assignment 3 - Discussion
Hey, I wanted to reply to you for the third assignment. I believe this will be very useful as you spoke about the psychology aspect of social media, in your comment for my last assignment. Thus, I decided to do some research.

I read a research article by Nihan Özgüven and Burca Mucan, called THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERSONALITY TRAITS AND SOCIAL MEDIA USE.

The research by Özgüven and Mucan uses the participation of students aged between 18-25yo from the faculty of Economics and Administrative sciences at Dokuz Eylul Univeristy, Turkey. In total 580 questionnaires were distributed and 503 valid questionnaires were returned. Therefore, 87% return rate. Moreover, Özgüven and MMucan's research was to find out what influence social media have on people's personality traits.

By referencing (Goldberg, 1981) Özgüven and Mucan found "The factors that define personality are as follows...Neuroticism is defined as an individual's tendency to experience unpleasant emotions and expect bad hings to happen to them. Extraversion is defined as an individual's tendency to express himself/herself socially in an outgoing manner. Openness to experience is defined as the appreciation of alternative perspectives, intellectual curiosity, and the desire of artistic pleasure.Agreeableness is defined as a tendency to be reliable, sympathetic, and cooperative. Conscientiousness is defined as a tendency to plan ahead and be diligent and fair (Ross et al., 2009). The Big-Five had been in common us in exploratory research across diverse setting and cultures for almost a decade now (McCrae & Costa, 2004)."

Thus, to get the best results, Özgüven and Mucan wanted to get a broad aspect of the study, so asked students about their gender; income; and what stage of their degree they were at. From the 503 valid questionnaires, Özgüven found 54% were female, and 46% were- therefore male.

To add to this, Özgüven and Mucan found the most frequently visited website was Facebook (444/503), and Google coming second (396/503).

Özgüven and Mucan, also found the most common reason for usage of social media was passing time (363/503) and communication second (207/503).

The research found that there was "a positive but weak correlation between neuroticism" and the rest of the behavioural traits.

Likewise found that there was "a positive but weak correlation between life satisfaction and openness to experience" as well as life satisfaction and social media use.

In conclusion, results gained in this study revel that "personality traits play a vital role in determining the level of social media use. Conscientiousness, openness to experience and life satisfaction were found to be significant predictions of the amount of social media us, as were levels of income and education."

Social Behavior & Personality: an international journal 2013, Vol. 41 Issue 3, p517 12p.

MTxPrincipessa18 (discuss • contribs) 17:57, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi MT, I think looking into the detriment social media can have on mental health is very important when discussing this topic. I did some research on the how social media affects mental health, and I think many of the ideas I have come up with may link nicely with the concept of one’s own interpretation of ‘online identity’. Please also note that refinement and further research (mainly from an academic standpoint) would be needed to form a valid argument.

According to MedicalNewsToday, there is a growing trend in Facebook addiction. This stems from the ‘reinforcements’ we receive when someone ‘likes’ or comments on a Facebook post. ‘Behaviours that are constantly reinforced will be repeated so it becomes hard for a person who has developed this habit to simply stop.’ This ‘creeping’ addiction is now so common that a psychological scale has been designed to measure it: The Berge Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS).

Research has shown that those who suffer from anxiety or social insecurities are in fact more likely to use social media, despite it being a key cause of such conditions. This may therefore trap users in a loop in which escaping their mental health issues may be increasingly difficult. In your own breakdown of Özgüven and Mucan’s work, you note they found some correlation with Facebook usage and life satisfaction. I think we could build these ideas further using of our research and finding more possibly if we meet up to discuss further.

On top of this, Steven Stogatz (Cornell University) found that social media can also fog the distinction between ‘meaningful relationships’ in real life and ‘casual relationships’ online. He worries that if we focus too much time on these ‘casual relationships’, we weaken the important, real life ones. Although many of us don’t use Facebook for these ‘casual relationships’, Anxiety UK found that over half of the UK population say that social media has changed their behaviour, 51% saying it was a negative change. There are also many studies into so-called ‘Facebook depression’ which has become apparent in adolescents, where their obsession with social media has led them to demonstrate depressive symptoms. I feel this too could be an avenue we could think about.

I think we should get together sometime this week to discuss this further, the collaborative essay is due soon and I think we have a good start so far.

CairnLouden (discuss • contribs) 19:36, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I agree we would need to do further research on Özgüven and Mucan’s work. I think they both have done great survey research. However, I do agree we would need to do our own research to find out more about these behavioural traits.

My mind also kept ticking about why people feel so self-conscious, or depressed. Thus, I read a chapter from Cyberbullying: Approaches, Consequences and Interventions by Lucy R. Betts. The chapter is called ‘The consequences of cyber bullying’ (chapter five); and I particularly found part 5.1 called ‘Psychosocial Adjustment Consequences’ interesting and was saddened by it too. Betts states: “The term “psychosocial adjustment” encompasses a range of variables that impact on an individual’s well-being and social relationships. Broadly speaking, researchers have tended to examine the association between cyberbullying and young people’s mental well-being, self-esteem, and social relationships.” Therefore, I believe this would be a good fundamental base, for us to find out why people are getting psychological problems from social media.

Betts, L.R,. ‘Cyberbullying: Approaches, Consequences and Interventions’, 2016. Palgrave. MTxPrincipessa18 (discuss • contribs) 21:37, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm glad you've found something on this because I have been struggling to find worthwhile pieces myself.

I've found that most of the research done concerning the damaging effects of social media have been carried out on children or in the context of children/adolescents. It seems there is a large gap in the academia. I think researching this topic could be very worthwhile not only for this course but maybe further on in our university careers, as it truly seems that there is a gap waiting to be researched.

Also, I don't personally believe cyberbullying is the only issue on social media. Of course, it is a large issue when children (and adults) are online, however I think issues with depression/anxiety spawn from somewhere else. As a complete speculation, I believe that, like you mentioned previously, things like Instagram filters, the feeling of not being good-looking or liked enough, etc. may have a stronger effect on mental well-being.

Thanks for yet another great article. Hope you have a lovely weekend :)

CairnLouden (discuss • contribs) 19:04, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

I have to agree with you, it was quite difficult. However, I am going to try to examine this work further. I Moreover, I believe that I could find research that has been conducted in the UK, similar to the Turkish survey. We most certainly could work together to fill in the gap that you are referring to.

I hope you, too, have a wonderful weekend. MTxPrincipessa18 (discuss • contribs) 19:47, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

CairnLouden (discuss • contribs) 10:29, 28 March 2018 (UTC)


 * (***again, apologies: this was originally posted on my user site***)

Assignment 4
Wikibooks, offering the opportunity for diverse collaboration amongst a community of users, presents an excellent example of a digital commons. In this exercise I will be discussing my personal experience with the platform. As well as this, I will be discussing the notion of visibility in relation to the site, commenting on its collaborative nature as well as finishing with discussion of its potential for online emancipation.

The site offers its users what is essentially free reign to publish and edit knowledge, as part of a wider community. Throughout the whole process, edits and user activity are visible to others. This, for me, allowed for more thought to be put into engagements with other users, due to the prior knowledge that my comments and contributions are widely available to anyone. I also found this to be a downside of my experience, as often I felt my work was lacking, because I was aware of the work being produced by others, and thusly comparing my work to theirs. This added to the sense of shared knowledge though, as I was able to converse with users and take advice and recommendations on further reading etc.

The collaborative essay assignment allowed for the collaborative nature of the site to be truly witnessed. Although timetabling issues prevented our group from meeting particularly often, the website allowed for live discussion of our concerns for the essay, for group contributions to research and for a true sense of community to be established. The site certainly facilitates collaborative research; allowing for our group to truly come together.

I personally encountered a few issues when attempting to make edits on the site. Although help and tips were widely available, I found myself intimidated by the sheer volume of information on the site and found myself working much of it out on my own. I feel that the attendance to workshops would have helped me here, but I understand that strikes got in the way of this. This was when the true scale of Wikibooks intimidated me; I felt myself lost and unable to truly understand how to even navigate the website. This led to my wrongly posting the assignments on my ‘user’ page, as opposed to my ‘discussion’ page. I did find that the communication with my peers bettered my understanding of the site and of my general concerns around my work.

The online collaboration on Wikibooks presents a clear example of a digital commons. The information available on the platform is communally owned, and can be accessed by any member of the site. Information is shared to peers via the site, and this allows for collaborative research to be carried out efficiently and visibly, thus making it the perfect site for group projects at University. The site is regulated by its users, with content constantly edited and updated, and allows for comments so that there is space for communication between editors. This does fundamentally mean that the information posted is not owned by the user, but subsequently that the site represents the expanding horizons of knowledge, in a constant state of editing. Thusly, the site is an example of online emancipation as the user is free from the restraints of ownership, free to share information with a community of users. CairnLouden (discuss • contribs) 11:58, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Hey Cairn, would just like to reply to what you have written. I too believe that Wikibooks offers the opportunity for diverse collaboration, which emphasises the fact that it is a platform for digital commons. Moreover, I understand what you mean about comparing your work to others, but I don’t think you ever should. Through my experience on Wikibooks, I too did compare. However, when going on to different people’s pages and viewing their edits and comments, you soon see everyone has a different work/ writing method. For example, some may have hundreds of edits, but others may have less edits but more lengthy ones. In addition, I felt this part of Wikibooks was good as we could all have a more unique writing style than usual. Through this uniqueness, I think we all helped each other out, as we were able to share ideas and help them to grow, making it a sharing platform. It was through this, that we all helped each other with certain ideas; such as academics. I know I had read certain chapters/books and realised that they were better suited to a different online theme. So, I definitely agree with you! Likewise, when you speak of the collaborative essay assignment allowing for the “collaborative nature of the site”. I agree with that too, I too found it easier to speak to the rest of the group using this platform. It was an extremely useful tool to use for group work. It allowed us all to present our ideas and thoughts, which then accumulated to our final ‘collaborative essay’. I would say the only downfall of this, was it was a waiting game for people to reply, or even read your work within the group. To add to this, we all went through stages of being engaged within the collaborative page. Not saying this was an extremely bad thing, but when someone wanted the work done, others didn’t and the next day someone else would want to do it and the next person wouldn’t. However, this steps in the direction of freedom, that the platform allows. Also, along with the freedom, it certainly allowed for a community to be established. When I think of community, I think about everyone playing to their own strengths but helping the rest of the group. Thus, the full group who took part in the collaborative essay did play to their own strengths and help each other out. We all came together for the end result! During your fourth and final assignment, I found myself laughing when you said you posted the assignment on your ‘user page’, because I also did. At the beginning, when we were first presented with Wikibooks, I found it extremely hard; so, all your struggles are familiar to me. And, just to point this out, I posted my first assignment on Wikibooks; because I struggled that much. On the other hand, I feel like Wikibooks has certainly been a learning curve, and I look forward to working with it again (if we ever do). MTxPrincipessa18 (discuss • contribs) 13:37, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Comments
Hi ! Hope you are recovering from the collaborative essay! I find your recount really well written and thought out. I definitely relate to comparing my work to others since we had access to other people's contributions. I remember looking at someone who had over a page of fifty contributions and I felt the pressure to add more comments. I guess this is a good motivational tool in terms of the portfolio, but in the long-term, I don't know how useful this would be. Yes, it does help users so others collection of work and it does help to navigate the site but on a person level, it can have that pressuring effect.

When I was doing my recount of our collaborative essay, I remembered that although there was pretty much full freedom, there where limitations. For example, it is a policy on Wikibooks to not use copyrighted material, hense why we were told not to use anything that it's under digital commons. Also, you have to be respectful and not hateful and harassing, which although is pretty common sense, highlights how free speech on the website is limited and not entirely free.

Despite this, I found the collaborative element essential to Wikibooks so useful when we were working on the essay and even in the previous assignments since the comments people left often helped us to improve our work. It was pretty amazing how we achieved the collaboration without meeting face-to-face. It highlights how amazing technology is and how people from all around the world can collaborate and congregate information, leading to more in-depth topic pages.

I also found a lot of difficulties when it came to editing. I figured it out on my own by looking at other people's posts and what coding they used. It's interesting that most of the class (from what I've seen) have done this independently apart from maybe the odd post on the film and media facebook chat. I know that even when someone gave me advice on how to reference probably for the essay, I was so confused. Not everything can be explained easily when it's not information given in person, so maybe that's a key reason why people seemed to work editing out on their own?

Your summary at the end and your explanation of digital commons is very well explained and structured. It's a concept I struggled to explain in my own assessment so well done on defining your ideas so clearly here.

Overall, I think our group really pulled together, especially towards the end of the deadline. MT definitely helped me a lot in understanding the website and it was great that users from other groups commented on the discussion for the essay. I definitely feel a sense of community within the class and feel so happy to have had such a good group to work with. I am thoughtful, however, if anyone will stick to Wikibooks for information of future project planning in the future. I read up on some research by Wang (2016) and the study that was conducted showed that really only those that were most engaged with Wikibook tasks during a course kept using the site, probably due to their increased understanding to those that didn't engage much. The study also found that the community was only relevant during the assessment work. Afterward, students stopped replying to comments and never seem to visit back to their work on Wikibooks. It is sad in a sense that this feeling of community will probably die down as soon as everyone has done their last post. I thought this would be an interesting point to bring up. What are your thoughts?

Sorry for the essay of a comment, got to get those contributions! Thank you for all the support throughout the collaboration process and also through the Understanding Audiences group proposal!

(Reference: Wang, L. (2016). Employing Wikibook project in a linguistics course to promote peer teaching and learning. Education And Information Technologies, 21(2), 453-470. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10639-014-9332-x)

--Stirsb00027 (discuss • contribs) 07:52, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK: DISCUSSION, ENGAGEMENT, CONTRIBS

 * Engagement on discussion pages of this standard attain the following grade descriptor for contribs. Whereas not all of the elements here will be directly relevant to your particular response to the brief, this will give you a clearer idea of how the grade you have been given relates to the standards and quality expected of work at this level:
 * Very Poor. Often, contributions of this standard are quite brief, are structured poorly and are not spell-checked. They are often irrelevant, and offer little engagement with the concerns of the module or the assignment brief. Contributions of this grade may have been subject to admin warnings or take-down notices for copyright infringement. The wiki markup formatting will be of a very poor standard and as a result it will be difficult for the reader or fellow collaborators to engage with the discussion.

Students should be engaging at least once a day, for the duration of the project. The following points illustrate how this engagement is evaluated.


 * This was clearly not the case here – only 3 days registered as having logged a contrib, 2 entries of which are meaningful (with a contrib 5000+, but this is draft work and another at 2,400+ which is cut and pasted from your wiki exercise and you can’t really be marked for the same work twice). There are a couple of other entries at 1000+, but these are largely repetition of other entries. When you did engage, these seemed to be genuine contributions in terms of moving the project forward, however, this really was a case of too little, too late. 9 contribs logged for the total period which lasted for weeks is simply not enough.

Evidence from contribs to both editing and discussion of content (i.e. volume and breadth of editorial activity as evidenced through ‘contribs’). These are primarily considered for quality rather than quantity, but as a broad guideline: o	Each item on a contribs list that are 3000+ characters are deemed “considerable” o	Each item on a contribs list that are 2000+ characters are deemed “significant” o	Each item on a contribs list that are 1000+ characters are deemed “substantial” o	Items on a contribs list that are <1000 characters are important, and are considered in the round when evaluating contribs as a whole because of their aggregate value


 * See above comment.

•	Engagement with and learning from the community on Discussion Pages o	Evidence of peer-assisted learning and collaboration o	Evidence of reading, sharing, and application of research to the essay o	Evidence of peer-review of others’ work


 * There is some in evidence, however, these are constituted by only a handful of small contribs.

•	Reflexive, creative and well-managed use of Discussion Pages o	Clear delegation of tasks o	Clearly labelled sections and subsections o	Contributions are all signed


 * Again, see above comment.

•	Civility. Your conduct is a key component of any collaboration, especially in the context of an online knowledge-building community. Please respect others, as well as observe the rules for civility on wiki projects. All contribs are moderated.


 * Too little evidence to make a meaningful assessment.

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 13:27, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Instructor Feedback on Wiki Exercise Portfolio
Posts and comments on other people’s work, of this standard, roughly corresponds to the following grade descriptor. Depending on where your actual mark is in relation to the making criteria as outlined in the relevant documentation, it should give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses within the achieved grade band overall:


 * Satisfactory. Among other things, satisfactory entries may try to relate an idea from the module to an original example, but might not be very convincing. They may waste space on synopsis or description, rather than making a point. They may have spelling or grammatical errors and typos. They might not demonstrate more than a single quick pass at the assignment, informed only by lecture and/or cursory reading. They may suggest reading but not thinking (or indeed the reverse). The wiki markup formatting will need some work.


 * This work is at the lower end of this grade band, so there’s clearly room for improvement here. I think in order to engage with the wiki exercises a bit more, it might be useful for you to look at the Grade Descriptors and (especially for this, perhaps, the Understanding) criteria in the module handbook to get more of an idea of how to hit those targets.


 * Making more use of the wiki functionality and markup would have gone a long way to improving fluidity and functionality of posts. The pages (especially your user page) are quite unorganised, and this is easily fixed through simple markup workarounds and formatting. I suspect that, if you become more familiar and proficient with the platform, that this would make a considerable difference.


 * Re: responses to other people’s posts – these are fairly good, if a little brief and they are few in number. Remember that the comments are "worth" as much as posts themselves. The reason for this is not only to help encourage discussion (a key element of wiki collaboration!) but also to get you to reflect upon your own work. This can all, of course be used to fuel ideas that might form part of your project work.

General:
 * Reading and research: some evidence of critical engagement with set materials; more evidence needed of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material


 * Argument and analysis: some problems here in that your work tends to be on the descriptive sides, rather than fully articulated analysis. More evidence needed of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position) as well as that of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections).


 * Presentation: see above on use of wiki markup and organisational skills. Your user page especially needs sorting out.

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 11:26, 9 May 2018 (UTC)