Alexander Halavais

A genealogy of badges: Inherited meaning and monstrous moral hybrids

The use of badges on the web, particularly on community sites, has become very popular, and these badges are becoming both more easily carried from one site to another and more valuable in the process. But badges are not new; the metaphor of the online badge draws on centuries of use in the offline world. And the use of badges online has the potential of bringing with it the echo of these earlier uses and the values that they were imbued with. This article explores online badges, drawing on their history and the ethical framework presented by Jane Jacobs in ‘Systems of Survival’ to suggest some ways of ensuring that badges are used effectively online.

The Chronicles of Me: Understanding Blogging as a Religious Practice

Abstract Blogs represent an especially interesting site of online religious communication. Analysis of the content of 200 blogs with mentions of topics related to Christianity, as well as interviews of a subset of these bloggers, suggests that blogs provide an integrative experience for the faithful, not a “third place,” but a melding of the personal and the communal, the sacred and the profane. Religious bloggers operate outside the realm of the conventional nuclear church as they connect and link to mainstream news sites, other nonreligious blogs, and online collaborative knowledge networks such as Wikipedia. By chronicling how they experience faith in their everyday lives, these bloggers aim to communicate not only to their communities and to a wider public but also to themselves. This view of blogging as a contemplative religious experience differs from the popular characterization of blogging as a trivial activity.

Do dugg diggers digg diligently

The commenting patterns of a sample of 6,468 users on Digg.com demonstrate that feedback from other users affects participation in three ways. First, the more explicit feedback a user receives, in the form of moderation votes on their comment or responses to their comment, the sooner they contribute again. Second, commenters generally become more able to generate feedback as they become more experienced contributors to the site. Third, there are some common features of comments that receive more feedback, and the feedback system reinforces these standards. By making the process of community feedback relatively accessible and measurable, Digg provides an opportunity to observe the process of socialization into a community and inculcation of community standards.

Bigger sociological imaginations: framing big social data theory and methods

Making effective use of big social data requires us to frame that work in useful ways, ways that draw connections between new methods and a long history of social methods and theories. In particular, the key questions of big social data – those of relating observations of features at scale to practical outcomes for individuals and groups – are core sociological questions. We need to develop a new, bigger sociological imagination that allows us to incorporate big social data rather than reinventing the wheel. That requires careful mining of our methodological and theoretical history, along with a reexamination of the ways in which we collect and use our data.

News, Race, and the Status Quo: The Case of Emmett Louis Till

Using inductive and deductive framing analysis, the authors examine how 4 newspapers covered a key event sparking the civil rights movement—the 1955 murder of Emmett Till—in an effort to gauge how the press covers events that are part of larger social ferment. The Daily Sentinel-Star (Grenada, Mississippi), Greenwood Commonwealth (Mississippi), Chicago Tribune, and Chicago Defender varied in intensity of coverage, use of sources, and attention to crime news and, as a result, framed the story differently. The African American Defender defended Emmett Tills reputation, focused on larger issues of civil rights, and provided a clear argument for social reform. The 3 mainstream dailies defined the case primarily as one in which the victim invited his own death; they provided little or no support for reform. In this case, an advocate press seemed better able to give voice to those who challenged an entrenched status quo. By examining initial coverage of the Till case, we can better understand the news reporting traditions and devices that shaped (and continue to shape) narratives about the struggle for racial equality and justice.

Social science: Open up online research

Social media hold a treasure trove of information. But the secretive methods of ethics review boards are hindering their analysis, says Alexander Halavais.

Tweeting Badges: User Motivations for Displaying Achievement in Publicly Networked Environments

Badge systems, a common mechanism for gamification on social media platforms, provide a way for users to present their knowledge or experience to others. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of why social media users publicize their achievements in the form of online badges. Five motivational factors for badge display in public networked environments are distinguished-self-efficacy, social incentives, networked support, passing time, and inattentive sharing-and it is suggested that different badge types are associated with different motivations. System developers are advised to consider these components in their designs, applying the elements most appropriate to the communities they serve. Comparing user motivations associated with badges shared across boundaries provides a better understanding of how online badges relate to the larger social media ecosystem.

Weblogs and Collaborative Web Publishing as Learning Spaces

Weblogs have received a great deal of public attention recently, accompanied by a certain degree of hyperbole. Software designed to maintain weblogs is little more than a simplified content management system. The excitement surrounding weblogs has less to do with flexible systems that ease the process of web publishing, and—like many technologies that allow for virtual interaction—more to do with the cultural practices that have evolved using these technologies as a foundation. As with any other educational technology, the success of weblogs and other web publishing technologies in an educational setting depends heavily on the specifics of their implementation and use. The following pages explore the exciting potential of weblogs and related tools for student-centered education, provide some indication of how they might be used most effectively to meet the needs of learners, and discuss the inevitable difficulties of engaging the kinds of radically open and democratic education that collaborative web publishing engenders within existing institutional spaces. The assessment of such approaches remains guardedly optimistic, and it is hoped that readers will actively contribute to refining these technologies to allow for more effective and rewarding future learning environments.

Related organizations

This is a new Computers & Society feature, in which we provide reports and descriptions about professional and advocacy organizations that have goals in common with SIGCAS. If you are a member of an organization that fits this description, or know individuals or colleagues who are members of different groups, please consider contributing a piece to this section.

Twitter as the people’s microphone: Emergence of authorities during protest tweeting

Introduction: Cyberactivism 2.0: Studying Cyberactivism a Decade into the Participatory Web Martha McCaughey 1. Trust and Internet Activism: From Email to Social Networks Laura J. Gurak 2. Dark Days: Understanding the Historical Context and the Visual Rhetorics of the SOPA/PIPA Blackout John Logie 3. The Harry Potter Alliance: Sociotechnical Contexts of Digitally Mediated Activism Jennifer Terrell 4. Dangerous Places: Social Media at the Convergence of Peoples, Labor, and Environmental Movements Richard Widick 5. The Arab Spring and Its Social Media Audiences: English and Arabic Twitter Users and Their Networks Axel Bruns, Tim Highfield, and Jean Burgess 6. Twitter as the Peoples Microphone: Emergence of Authorities during Protest Tweeting Alexander Halavais and Maria Garrido 7. From Crisis Pregnancy Centers to TeenBreaks.com: Anti-Abortion Activisms Use of Cloaked Websites Jessie Daniels 8. Art Interrupting Business, Business Interrupting Art: Re(de)fining the Interface Between Business and Society Constance Kampf 9. Cyberactivism of the Radical Right in Europe and the USA: What, Who, and Why? Manuela Caiani and Rossella Borri 10. Young Chinese Workers, Contentious Politics, and Cyberactivism in the Global Factory Dorothy Kidd 11. Women Activists of Occupy Wall Street: Consciousness-Raising and Connective Action in Hybrid Social Movements Megan Boler and Christina Nitsou 12. Emergent Social Movements in Online Media and States of Crisis: Analyzing the Potential for Resistance and Repression Online Lee Salter