Brian Whitworth

A Cognitive Three-Process Model of Computer-Mediated Group Interaction

Current theories imply text-based computer networks are socially barren, but computer-mediated interaction (CMI) research contradicts this. A cognitive perspective suggests individuals in groups construct cognitions regarding the task (purpose), other people (relationships), and the group (identity), and these drive the interaction. Three core psychological process follow: resolving task information, relating to others and representing the group. This gives three types of influence: informational, personal and normative, and three group purposes: task resolution, interpersonal relationships and group unity. Group unity occurs when group members represent a common identity. The traditional communication threads of message content and sender context therefore require a third - behavioural position. Many-to-many exchange of member positions allows the group position to be transmitted to the group. A picture emerges of three parallel processes overlapping in behaviour, although CMI allows them to be isolated and investigated. This model extends most theories of computer-mediated group interaction. It implies there is no “best” type of group interaction support, because there is no best process. The groupware challenge is to offer the flexibility to support all three processes in combination.

Generating agreement in computer-mediated groups

Agreement is an important social outcome often poorly handled by computer-mediated groups, presumably because the computer cannot transmit the necessary rich information. A recently proposed cognitive model suggests richness is not the key to social agreement and that group agreement can be generated by the exchange of anonymous, lean text information across a computer network. This experiment investigates this theory. Self-chosen groups of 5 completed three answer rounds on limited choice problems while exchanging a few characters of position information. These asynchronous, anonymous computer-mediated groups generated agreement without any rich information exchange. The key software design criteria for enacting agreement is proposed to be not richness but dynamic many-to-many linkage. The resulting “electronic voting” may be as different from traditional voting as e-mail is from traditional mail. It may also imply a new generation of groupware that recognizes social influence.

The web of system performance

Because information system performance is multidimensional, specialist theories of performance dimensions must be integrated into a model of system design.

Expanding the Criteria for Evaluating Socio-Technical Software

This paper compares two evaluation criterion frameworks for sociotechnical software. Research on the technology acceptance model (TAM) confirms that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are relevant criteria for users evaluating organizational software. However, information technology has changed considerably since TAMs 1989 inception, so an upgraded evaluation framework may apply. The web of system performance (WOSP) model suggests eight evaluation criteria, based on a systems theory definition of performance. This paper compares WOSP and TAM criterion frameworks in a performance evaluation experiment using the analytic hierarchy process method. Subjects who used both TAM and WOSP criteria preferred the WOSP criteria, were more satisfied with its decision outcomes, and found the WOSP evaluation more accurate and complete. As sociotechnical software becomes more complex, users may need (or prefer) more comprehensive evaluation criterion frameworks.

Distributed access control for social networks

Access control is the process by which access to information is granted to users for certain actions based on their identity. Traditional access control models that map every system resource directly to every system user work for organizations with thousands of users but struggle for social network sites like Facebook with millions of users. The problems faced are firstly the technical complexity of mapping millions of users to billions of resources and secondly the social need of users to own the items they post and to control their access, so access policies beyond just public/private are needed. And finally, that if ordinary users are to manage their own access control, they need software support. This paper argues that only distributed access control can meet these challenges and proposes a model based on the socio-technical design paradigm: first define the social requirements then design a technical solution to fulfill them.

Politeness as a Social Software Requirement

If politeness makes society a nicer place to be, by lubricating the interaction of its human parts, then the same is important for online society. As the Internet becomes more social, software can mediate social interactions, serve as a social agent or act as a personal assistant, but to succeed in these roles it must learn a new skill - politeness. This article proposes politeness as the distinguishing mark of a new generation of community software based on the benefits of social synergy rather than technical efficiency. Conversely, selfish software is currently a widespread problem as politeness is a software design “blind spot†. An informational definition of politeness as the giving of choice suggests social software should be: 1. Respectful, 2. Transparent, 3. Helpful, and 4. Personal and 5. Responsive. For the Internet to realize its social as well as technical potential, software must be not only useful and usable but also polite.

Towards a theory of online social rights

Legitimacy, defined as fairness plus public good, is a proposed necessary online and physical community requirement As Fukuyama notes, legitimate societies tend to prosper, while others ignore legitimacy at their peril Online communities are social-technical systems (STS), built upon social requirements as well as technical ones like bandwidth As technical problems are increasingly solved, social problems like spam rise in relevance If software can do almost anything in cyberspace, there is still the challenge of what should it do? Guidelines are needed We suggest that online communities could decide information rights as communities decide physical action rights, by a legitimacy analysis This requires a framework to specify social rights in information terms To bridge the social-technical gap, between what communities want and technology does, rights must be translated into information terms Our framework has four elements: information actors (people, groups, agents), information objects (persona, containers, items, comments, mail, votes), information methods (create, delete, edit, view, move, display, transfer and delegate), and the information context The conclusions apply to any social-technical community, and we apply the framework to the case of Wikipedia.

Some Implications of Comparing Brain and Computer Processing

Like a computer, the human brain inputs, processes, stores and outputs information. Yet the brain evolved along different design principles from those of the Von Neumann architecture that lies behind most computers in operation today. A comparison of human and computer information processing styles suggests basic differences in: 1. Control (Central vs. Distributed), 2. Input (Sequential vs. Parallel), 3. Output (Exclusive vs. Overlaid), 4. Storage (by Address vs. by Content), 5. Initiation (Input vs. Process driven) and 6. Self Processing (Low vs. High). The conclusion is that the brain is a different type of information processor, not an inferior one. This suggests replacing technological utopianism with socio-technical progress, where computers plus people form more powerful systems than either alone. For this to occur, the computer must change its role from clever actor to simple assistant.

Access control taxonomy for social networks

Social networks are online platforms where users form relationships with others by sharing resources. Access control for these social networks is different from other systems as it fulfills the social requirements of community as well as the technical requirements of the system. This paper presents a classification of access control models for social networks based on lattice taxonomy where axes represent the properties of the models. The proposed taxonomy has eight axes representing: requestor identity, mapping authority, resource control, relationship management, credential distribution, access control decisions, rights delegation and transparency. Analysis of existing models using this taxonomy highlights the tradeoffs between user control, state distribution and social needs. The taxonomy reveals that various interesting features of social networks have not been implemented yet and there is a gap between the social requirements and access control features of social networks.

Channel E-mail: A Sociotechnical Response to Spam

Spam wastes Internet processing, bandwidth, and storage. Like many other sociotechnical problems computing today faces, its not solvable by purely technical approaches like filters or social responses like passing laws. Channel e-mail offers a solution that can enable social as well as technical communication efficiency.