1. Designing from Theory
Social Media – Dr. Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)
Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore
2. Introduction
We talked last week about cooperation, public goods, and possible
solutions for the ‘social fence’ and ‘social trap’ problems
Now it is time to focus more on ‘social fence’-type problems, i.e. how to
motivate contributions to a community, and specifically examine what could
work well in an online setting
We will assume here the perspective of a community manager and designer,
i.e. someone who has the power to change how an online community
functions with specific interventions that may have the desired effects, but
sometimes may also backfire
We will also introduce more concepts from social psychology, which will
provide a complementary perspective to that of last week’s readings
Finally we will ask whether it is possible to design online communities by
mining social science theory, and where design becomes more art than
science
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3. The truth about participation (1 of 2)
The age of web 2.0 has been heralded as
an aged of increased civic participation
contributions
steep decline
But many studies have confirmed that it is
only a small fraction of online users that
are active contributors
Because online resources are generally
short tail
non-depletable, free-riding is in most cases
not so much of a problem; also, the
existence of a more passive ‘audience’ can members
be a motivator for those who actually
10% 90%
contribute
But many online communities do suffer Online communities depend on a small
from lacking a critical mass of active number of top contributors (10% of
member base or less). If they leave, a
participants, so we need to ask how we community can fall apart. Most members
can increase motivations to contribute will contribute very little or nothing at all.
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4. First we need to list again the reasons why people contribute,
also taking into account factors that could inhibit contribution,
even when the desire to cooperate is present
Then we can ask how to reinforce cooperative behavior and
grow the number of valuable contributions
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5. What drives people to contribute to team efforts?
The following diagrams are based on the lit. review and findings in Ling et al, 2005 and Tedjamulia et al, 2005…
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6. Personal motivators ILLUSTRATIVE ONLY AND LIKELY
INCOMPLETE IN PARTS
If we attempt to synthesize the connections between various motivators as Design levers
discussed in the literature, we may come up with a diagram as below…
(see also following pages)
Need to Goal Learning
achieve difficulty (private reward)
Self-efficacy Contribution
Enjoyment
(intrinsic)
Individual
Uniqueness
goal
Note: every such attempt will be incomplete, but can be helpful in thinking about
interactions between motivations and how they may jointly lead to contributions
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7. Environmental motivators
ILLUSTRATIVE ONLY AND LIKELY
INCOMPLETE IN PARTS
Design levers
Common
Trust in group
bond
Common Attachment Usability
identity to group*
Group
size Group goal
Contribution
Relative
Importance
contribution
value of goal
Personal Goal
Responsibility commitment
Visibility
Uniqueness (identifiability)
*A ‘group’ here can refer to the entire community or a subgroup that a user selects or is assigned to
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8. Reinforcers Design levers
Social Demonstrating public recognition for individual or group efforts, listing
recognition top contributors, providing commendations or compliments, etc.
Providing feedback on an individual’s performance, as compared to an
Performance
individual or group target or to the performance of others in the
appraisal
community
Providing financial incentives, e.g., monetary prizes, often in the context of
Financial
contests where the best entries are eligible for a prize.
rewards
Caveat: such rewards can have a negative impact on intrinsic motivation and cooperation.
Providing in-kind rewards, such as items that will be useful to
In kind community members in producing higher quality content in the future
rewards (e.g., hardware or software).
Note: may be more acceptable to community (less divisive) than financial rewards.
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9. Practical advice on reinforcers
Reinforcers must be meaningful to members and fair, i.e. applied in
proportion to a member’s contribution
The sources of the reinforcement should be credible in the eyes of the
community (i.e. community manager, peers, senior members, or outside
parties that are respected by the community)
Reinforcers must be salient, i.e. clearly visible, transparent and recognizable
(e.g., badges that users can attach to their profiles, prizes awarded
according to well-defined criteria and announced publicly, etc.)
Reinforcers should be applied shortly after a contribution is made, in order
to be more effective. Also, their application should be relatively infrequent
and in any case should not be allowed to dominate over intrinsic
motivations to contribute
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10. Goals (1 of 2) Design levers
Individual commitment to a group goal will generally depend on the individual’s
Group goal commitment/attachment to the group, and the perceived relative importance of
his/her contribution
Individual goals may be more effective than group goals, as social loafing theory would
predict that individual goals would lead to greater commitment and satisfaction upon
Individual goal completion; however, empirical testing in online communities did not find support for
this hypothesis
Setting more challenging (individual or group) goals leads to greater motivation and
satisfaction upon completion. It probably also leads to greater learning, which can also
Goal difficulty
be a motivator for the provision of public goods according to the private-collective
model. But too high a goal may have the opposite effect
An individual’s commitment to a given goal may not be fully revealed and is not
Goal entirely controllable in any case. But asking for individuals to publicly commit to (self-
commitment selected or assigned) tasks could increase their motivation to complete them.
The more an individual perceives him/herself as someone with unique skills,
personality or other characteristics that may be valued by a community, the more
Uniqueness
he/she will be motivated to contribute towards a common goal. This likely also
increases the sense of self-efficacy in achieving any goal (group or individual).
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11. Goals (2 of 2) Design levers
Making individual contributions visible to the entire community (with every group or
individual achievement being traceable back to an identifiable member) boosts
Visibility
motivations to contribute and goal commitment. It is also a facilitator of social
recognition for one’s efforts.
When one knows that one’s contribution to a group goal is measurable and essential,
Relative one is more motivated to contribute. Contribution value can be artificially boosted,
contribution e.g., in funding campaigns, when a donor pledges to double the amount of money
value donated by individuals towards a cause. Best is when the contribution is meaningful to
both the individual and the group.
The more an individual perceives him/herself as someone with unique skills,
personality or other characteristics that may be valued by a community, the more
Uniqueness he/she will be motivated to contribute towards a common goal. This likely also
increases the sense of self-efficacy in achieving any goal (group or individual).
Reinforcing a sense of uniqueness is also a way of boosting individual perceptions of
the relative value of a contribution to a group, without having to increase the size or
difficulty of the contribution.
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12. The truth about participation (2 of 2)
The ability of online communities to
break across organizational
boundaries and tap into diverse talent
as well as find motivated contributors
wherever they may be is considered
one of their greatest strengths
But people’s limited attention spans
and changing priorities (with low
commitment to individual
communities and tasks) can be the
greatest challenge
It is essential then that communities
cultivate member bonds and a sense
of common identity so as to retain
top contributors, as well as take in
new members to make up for
attrition!
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13. Groups, bonds and common identity
The distinction between identity and bond refers to people’s different reasons
for being in a group, that is because they like the group as a whole – identity-
based attachment, or because they like the group as a whole – bond-based
attachment (Back1951, via Ren et al 2007)
Common bond Common identity
Tendency for smaller group Easier to maintain larger groups,
Group size
formation and cliques more open
less resistant to attrition (loyalty more resistant; group identity
Cohesion with people, not group) and less matters more than individual
welcoming to newcomers members; newcomers welcome
off-topic discussions discussions on topic, public;
Communication
and group/one-on-one off-topic may be banned
and content
communication
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14. Detailed view of group attachment
Source: Ren et al, 2007
design levers*
* Members may in time develop more bond-based or identity-based attachment, depending on the types of interactions, policies and roles in the community
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15. More thoughts on design… (1 of 2)
What kind of community are you trying to build and how
can you build identity-based and bond-based attachment?
Should you allow for off-topic discussions?
How much information should users be encouraged to
disclose about themselves?
How large do you want the community to become
(remember, larger is not always better, but providing for the
formation of subgroups can help make it more manageable)
Think about online
Which reinforcers would be more suitable for this platforms you know and
community? Consider applicability and appeal to users. why some people make
contributions. How would
How can you make contribution easier and thus more you increase their
appealing? Some users may want to contribute in small ways motivation to contribute?
while others may seek greater challenges.
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16. More thoughts on design… (2 of 2)
Is social science a useful source of inspiration and
guidance for the design of online platforms? YES!
Can this make design an exact science with provably
desirable outcomes? NO (this is anyway not the intent of
most of social science, and even if it were, translating
general findings into design guidelines is not
straightforward)
What makes this so difficult? It is mainly because any design
intervention can have multiple effects, which can cancel each
other out and even undermine the intentions of the designer Social science helps us
understand how people
Is design then doomed to be equal parts art and ‘engineering’ operate in social settings.
rather than science? PROBABLY This is valuable for the
analysis and design of social
Does this mean that the best approach is to learn by trial-and- media, but there are no
error? NO (insights from social science can be useful guides, surefire, one-size-fits-all
and help us understand cause and effect) recipes for success
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17. Credits and licensing
Front page photo by celinecelines (license: CC BY-NC-ND)
Team with laptops photo by friendly_terrorist (license: CC BY-NC-ND)
Music instruments photo by brad montgomery (license: CC BY)
Football photo by left-hand (license: CC BY)
Flash mob pillow fight photo by mattw1s0n (license: CC BY)
Phone receiver photo by bondidwhat (license: CC BY-NC-ND)
Original content in this presentation is licensed under the Creative Commons
Singapore Attribution 3.0 license unless stated otherwise (see above)
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