Gordon Fletcher

Conflict and identity shape shifting in an online financial community

Abstract.  This paper challenges traditional explorations of online communities that have relied upon assumptions of trust and social cohesion. In the analysis presented here, conflict becomes more than just dysfunctional communication and provides an alternative set of unifying principles and rationales for understanding social interaction and identity shape shifting within an online community. A model is advanced that describes the systematic techniques of hostility and aggression in technologically enabled communities that take the form of contemporary tribalism. It is argued that this tribe‐like conflict embodies important rituals essential for maintaining and defining the contradictory social roles sometimes found in online environments. This research offers a critical interpretive perspective that focuses on the link between identity shape shifting behaviours and the power relations within an online financial community. The analysis reveals how conflict between positions of power can help to align the values and ideals of an online community. With this study we seek to motivate a re‐examination of the design and governance of online communities.

Sustainable virtual world ecosystems

This paper outlines an agenda for research that contributes to the development of sustainable virtual world ecosystems. It provides direction for understanding the social aspects of both trust and conflict. Trust is often referred to in research to examine the social interactions observed in virtual communities. It is an important theoretical factor affecting user intention to give and receive information. However, trust is a problematic construct, as it is based on culturally and historically specific assumptions about human association and social organization. Conflict and disagreement are usually viewed as undesirable behaviors in virtual worlds. The management of these behaviors is a difficult task in virtual environments where physical social controls are not available. Consequently, the moderation of participant behavior is seen as a challenge for virtual world creators, particularly as virtual world governance is likely to have a significant influence on member retention rates. A conflict-oriented research agenda provides a useful vehicle for interpreting the simultaneous pressures for both collaboration and competition in virtual worlds. Conflict is an integral structural element of the social interrelations found in both physical and virtual worlds. In this context, both agreement and disagreement are necessary to maintain the intricate social networks necessary for sustainable virtual world ecosystems.

The social supply chain and the future high street

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how independent social and commercial activities have developed in response to the perceived decline in the UK High Street and in response to the challenges of increasing digital retailing opportunities. This examination is undertaken through the lens of the social supply chain as a means to understanding, suggesting and expanding on current research regarding retailing and the UK High Street. The authors reveal some of the challenges being posed by the changing patterns of growth and consumption in cities and couple these with shifting supply chain trends. Design/methodology/approach – A case study approach is used to explore the rapid advances and influence of digital technologies on businesses operating on the primary business street of suburban centre, towns or cities (described in the UK collectively as the “high street”). The research is conducted through the analytical lens of the social supply chain. Findings – Theoretically extending the “social” ...

The social construction of electronic space

Abstract Computer‐mediated communication is a phenomenon of post‐industrial society. As a consequence of the interactivity and persistent textual nature of this form of communication, new spaces of sociality are constructed which can be analysed and interpreted with the epistemologies and methodologies utilised in understanding more conventional places. This approach reveals that electronic spaces are constructions firmly tied to the cultural and social experiences of ‘real‐world’ existences. Electronic identities, then, are built from this wide base of experience and ‘real‐world’ identity rather than, as is sometimes claimed, begun afresh. These connections to understood material culture and the prevalence of the typed word in electronic spaces permits a digital archaeology, inspired by material culture studies, which is both revealing of the users of these spaces as well as the wider social constructions of post‐industrial society.

Reframing Online Shopping Through Innovative and Organic User-Oriented Design

The structure and form of the Web is defined by specific design elements; its protocols, the scope of acceptable file formats and the capability of clients. These elements are intentionally minimal constraints but nonetheless structure what can be achieved “through” the Web. With the increasingly standardised abilities of Web clients and wider application of accessible design principles increasingly emphasis shifts from the problem of creating and developing monolithic software systems towards concern for the integration and configuration of existing systems to meet specific social and cultural needs. The free availability of, for example, open source content management systems and blogging applications has increased the ability for individuals and closely geographically constrained highly specialised interest groups to more rapidly represent and express themselves through the Web. Importantly, the abilities provided by pre-built existing systems enables greater focus on reflecting and capturing the peculiar cultural sentiments of special interests.

Academic Referencing of Internet-Based Resources.

The rapid growth of the Internet has outstripped conventions for citing material from that source. Distinguishing material as a [computer file] does not provide sufficient information about the platform necessary for reading it. The URL provides useful information, but augmenting it with other details such as author and date not only provides a more meaningful citation, its similarity to conventional bibliographical notation lends a greater degree of legitimacy in academic discourse. The article considers information derivable from the URL, and HTML documents (including non-displayed source text), in order to derive bibliography and in-line text citations for various kinds of material. The conventions proposed are also applicable to Gopher, FTP, Usenet News, journals distributed by listservers, and email.

Creatively prototyping the future high street

Abstract This paper gives a voice to a range of community and individual stakeholders who would not generally be heard in the conventional town planning process. We present a methodological technique, described as creative prototyping, that has at its heart, the capability to enable full stakeholder inclusivity into the future imagining of the smart city. Actively involving these individuals and community representatives in the research process enables deeper understanding of how technology and people can interact productively to create smart cities that are socially inclusive while still being commercially relevant. The research data for this paper are drawn from the findings of a workshop conducted by the authors that utilised Science Fiction Prototyping and Lego Serious Play. This research activity was driven by questions focusing upon the current complex interplay and tensions of technology and the UK’s physical high street. We first explore these issues theoretically in previous literature and then drawn upon this review to analyse the outcomes of the workshop. Three themes emerge from this analysis that have operational and strategic relevance to the development of future high streets; the importance of ever present but invisible technology, the forefronting of people in the smart city and the need for wide-ranging stakeholder input and participation into planning. The findings also illustrate that not all future imaginings of the retail high street are immediately practical or realistically applicable. However, in examining the many issues facing the current high street and in negotiating the multiplicity of voices with their competing demands and expectations, we offer the conclusion that the future smart city must become a place of truly shared sociality – rather than just mere proximity, customised convenience or a concentration point for multiple forms of entertainment.

Human choice and computers : an ever more intimate relationship

Since 1974, the Human Choice and Computers (HCC) conference series has firmly remained at the cutting edge of innovative thinking about the interface between the social and technology. This introductory chapter to the proceedings of the 12th Human Choice and Computers conference points out that what has set HCC conferences apart is the critical perspective that is its hallmark. HCC12 continues this tradition.

The Polysemy of Human–Computer Interaction

This chapter provides exemplars of the influence of digital artifacts upon cultural experiences. We argue that the associations between people and artifacts, and specifically digital artifacts, is an increasingly dense, interwoven, and pivotal aspect of everyday cultural experience. Artifacts themselves resist any stability of meaning by being continuously disassembled and reassembled into newly meaningful assemblages. Digital artifacts extend this complexity by accelerating and extending cultural relationships both temporally and geographically, resulting in a wider range of potential and actual relationships in an expansive number of contexts. Through the connections that digital artifacts hold to people, there is a continuously fluid polysemous multivocality that incorporates the multiple and expansive parameters of power, meaning, and cultural knowledge. The human ability to alter and repurpose artifacts to suit immediate and shifting needs prevents any innate definitional quality from making a “table” a table or a “blog” a blog. Purpose and meaning of an artifact is continuously defined and then redefined between individuals and across time, beyond the reach of the original designers or manufacturers.

Book Review: Consumption and Material Culture in Contemporary Japan:

ated culturohistorical shifts (the 1960s versus the 1990s), geosocial location (France versus Australia), or a mixture of both. In sum, this is a very valuable reference work and essential for anyone interested in the articulation of taste with the key sociological variables of age, class, education and gender in the Australian context. It maps out the terrain with great clarity, and should allow others to explore further with confidence.