Common Ground and Trust in CMC

Much analysis has already taken place in the low-cues CMC environment, particularly about how any sort of relationship can form in such a medium, but more study needs yet to be done on how language itself plays a role in establishing those relationships. As a small amount of trust and familiarity is gained in any medium, language changes drastically and in a variety of ways, and that very language change may prompt more trust to be extended. Barrett and I are researching common ground and trust in a CMC environment, preferably IM. We aim to see if a difference exists in language use when a subject has a minimal level of trust for another and when they don’t, and we predict that the difference between the two conditions is simply common ground.We have two potential ideas for the experiment. First, we could hint or overtly state to a subject that the other either should or should not be trusted, giving them a legitimate reason why. If both parties are working to get to know each other, for example, each will extend a certain amount of trust. If a seed of doubt has been planted that the other’s objective may be different or even contrary to the subject’s, they may act differently – more guarded? – toward the other. Alternately, we could set up two conditions. In one condition, two students meet briefly in person before being escorted to separate CMC rooms to talk online. The common ground: they’re both students, they’re both participants, and they both are probably doing the experiment for the same reason…credit. This is immediately established and a small amount of trust is extended. The other condition is where one person is led alone into a CMC conversation with someone they haven’t met, either a confederate or another subject. At the outset, they’re unsure if the other is a fellow student subject, a confederate experimenter, or even some unknown third party. Without the original condition’s common ground, no trust is initially extended. Language used between the two conditions may change drastically. One possible change in language (though this is far from a working hypothesis) is that explicit signaling may become implicit as trust is gained. For example, in a non-trust condition, a subject may say “Shall we begin?” or “So we’re supposed to get to know each other,” both signals for the conversation to proceed that trusting individuals probably aren’t as likely to use. This is only one example of how language may vary between the two conditions, and many more will be considered before a hypothesis is decided upon and an experiment designed.

Barrett Amos
Sam Warren

Influence of Gender and Topic on Language

Our group is interested in examining gender roles in online communication.
We will study the differences between communication between same-sex
pairs and opposite-sex pairs, and between male and female language use.

Hypothesis: The occurrence of idioms specific to computer mediated
communication in CMC settings is correlated with the gender of the
communication participants and the 'seriousness' of the topic of
conversation.

We are researching the different use of Language between men and women
when using the computer as the communication medium. We feel that people
tend to deviate in their language use when interacting with others via the
internet. For example, when people speak with friends and peers over the
internet, there tends to be more grammatical errors and increased use of
"Internet-isms", such as emoticons and abbreviations, in the message.
Through getting a group of people to interact via a chat room or through
AIM, we will try to understand if our hypothesis holds and what factors
will affect it. Similarly, we will be analyzing how gender affects the
type of language use over the internet. In order to get unbiased results,
we will pick a specific topic and have our participants engage in online
discourse. This will help us understand if gender is analogous to specific
types of language use. Also, to reaffirm our hypothesis, we will use two
discussion topics to see if the seriousness of a discussion alters the
amount of internet-isms used and if it deviates between genders.

Danny Duran
Henry Mason
Sarah Perkins
Greg Vixama

Topic

Our group is interested in examining the way that online communication
affects the way that people can misrepresent themselves with meeting and
getting to know/trying to date people online.  Dating websites or simply
online forums or social networks such as MYSPACE, where you don't see the
person or even initially hear their voice can give people a chance to be
deceiving.  They can give descriptions of themselves that they think
people want to hear, not truly accurate descriptions.  We want to find
ways to investigate the accuracy of people's descriptions of themselves
and the type of people they are looking for.
  Furthermore, we want to evaluate the success rate of being matched up
with someone of those people who represent themselves accurately as
opposed to those who do not.  We plan to talk with people who have done
this process both sucessfully and non-sucessfully.
 We plan to do this not only by evaluating people who have used this form
of communication to actually meet someone, but also by individually
using such a means of technology and seeing if we personally have a
desire or an urge to misrepresent ourselves and in what way.  Depending
on the exact form of internet communication we are using, we will see
how often opportunities to deceive will come up.

Influence of Signals in CMC

Our group will be examining the impact of language in regards to artificial intelligence. More specifically, we aim to discover which aspects of language in CMC have the effect of creating a conversation that most closely resembles human interaction. A number of sources of artificial intelligence, ranging from Turing test software to AOL instant messaging bots will be researched in order to determine which method of communication will be most feasible for our project requirements. Additionally, our group is interested in creating a unique AI program, which will have limited conversation abilities. We can use this program to customize responses in order to better manipulate which linguistic cues we use for lab testing.

Our research hopes to measure the affect of CMC-conceived signals in portraying believable computer mediated human interaction. We believe that partakers of computer mediated communication have grown accustom to distinct medium-based signals which they expect to receive when interacting online. Using rudimentary artificial intelligence—as described above—our subjects would interact with a computer “bot” via synchronous chat. By controlling the presence of these signals, we are attempting to better replicate a human interaction. Variables available to manipulate include CMC-conceived acronyms, emoticons, or linguistic characteristics—such as Clark’s track 2 signals and adjacency pairs.

We hope to recruit subjects into a laboratory setting and have them interact with a pre-programmed computer bot and discuss a specific subject (to be determined). We will adjust the presence and/or frequency of CMC-conceived signals displayed between sessions. In some interactions, all conventional CMC signals will be absent. After the session, the subject will fill out a questionnaire that will rate his experience. Details still need to be finalized, such as technical limitations, control variables, and number of variables to test.

Erik Skantze
Leo Baghdassarian
Brendan Gilbert
Natalia Sturtz-Verastegui

I'm with Dupe and Mark......

Objectives

Our group is interested in examining the way that online communication
affects the way that people can misrepresent themselves with meeting and
getting to know/trying to date people online. Dating websites or simply
online forums or social networks such as MYSPACE, where you don't see the
person or even initially hear their voice can give people a chance to be
deceiving. They can give descriptions of themselves that they think
people want to hear, not truly accurate descriptions. We want to find
ways to investigate the accuracy of people's descriptions of themselves
and the type of people they are looking for.
Furthermore, we want to evaluate the success rate of being matched up
with someone of those people who represent themselves accurately as
opposed to those who do not. We plan to talk with people who have done
this process both sucessfully and non-sucessfully.
We plan to do this not only by evaluating people who have used this form
of communication to actually meet someone, but also by individually
using such a means of technology and seeing if we personally have a
desire or an urge to misrepresent ourselves and in what way. Depending
on the exact form of internet communication we are using, we will see
how often opportunities to deceive will come up.

Research in Second Life

Research in Second Life

Our group is interested in doing research in Second Life, with a focus on

how gender issues affect communication.  Second Life is most definitely a

form of CMC, but unlike AIM or e-mail, there is a visual element

integrated right into the medium.  One of the things we would like to find

out is whether the appearance of another party’s “avatar,” or virtual

representation, affects how we communicate with them.  Alternatively, how

does the appearance of our own avatar affect how we communicate with

others?

To collect data, we intend to pre-construct Second Life avatars for use by

experimental subjects.  These subjects will use these avatars (either by

choosing them or being assigned them) and sign onto Second Life, where

they will be asked to hold a conversation with another experimental

subject who has also either been assigned or allowed to choose one of our

pre-built avatars.  In order to quantify our research, we will first

record and store chat transcripts from the Second Life conversations of

all of our research participants.  In addition to this, we will have

participants complete a post-experiment survey asking them to give their

impressions of various aspects of the experiment.

For the details of the experiment design, we see two options:

Intersubject comparison: We would randomly assign participants to either

control or experimental group. The control group would have an avatar of

their gender, the experimental group would be the opposite gender. We

could see if people interact different if they are taking on the identity

of the opposite gender by comparing the results of the two groups.

Intrasubject comparison: Each subject would briefly interact being one

gender, then stop, be assigned an avatar of the other gender and interact

as that gender. Thus, we would have data for both same as self and

opposite to self for each subject. This would test within each subject if

each person acts differently (language wise), as compared to the

Intersubject design where we are looking for differences between subjects.

Both designs are valid and depending on the statistician you talk to one's

better than the other.  We are still deciding which to choose.

We have already taken a look at some of the relevant aspects of Second

Life, including options for customizing avatars and what gestures

(nodding, shaking one’s head, etc.) are available to be used within the

world.

Anshu Agarwal

Grace Pusavat

Nicholas Fajt

Rodney Eng

Due Date Correction

The due date for this week's group postings is Wednesday night. Thank you, Rodney, for pointing this out.

This week's assignment is a group post (one post per group). Work with your group to post a summary description of your group’s project. You should describe what your group is interested in, and how you plan on examining it. Same approximate length as usual. You should post this week's assignment on the blog. The postings are due Tuesday by midnight, and you'll also need to post 2 comments by Thursday, as usual. You should submit your comments individually, not as a group. Good luck.
P.S. Some examples are posted on Blackboard, towards the end of the topic list in Course Documents.