Vilma Lehtinen

Indebtedness and reciprocity in local online exchange

Many existing and emerging online systems allow people to share content and coordinate the exchange of goods and favors in local geographic settings. We present a qualitative case study of user experiences concerning exchange and reciprocity in local online exchange. Findings from eleven in-depth interviews (containing forty-nine separate exchange experiences) reveal an aversion to indebtedness and several user behaviors that lessen these negative feelings: (1) offering small tokens of appreciation to exchange partners, (2) understanding and accepting the indirect nature of generalized exchange, (3) managing expectations by framing offers and requests carefully, (4) minimizing efforts needed in exchange processes, and (5) bartering and exchanging for a third party. The paper contributes to our understanding of emergent behaviors and norms in local online exchange systems. We discuss design implications from these empirical insights that can help alleviate the discomfort of indebtedness and better encourage and sustain participation in systems of indirect reciprocity.

Designing for presenters at public walk-up-and-use displays

Interactive walk-up-and-use displays are spreading in a variety of settings where stand presentation situations are common. We contribute by characterizing a presentation situation and investigating specific design implications for presenters in this situation. We also introduce interface system that utilizes physics-modeled spherical content widgets for information browsing. The system includes dedicated features we developed to support presenters in content production and visualization. To investigate stand presentations and their support, we organized a field trial at an exhibition, collecting observational data from video analysis, interviews with presenters, and questionnaires from the audience and presenters. The field study confirms the importance of the presentation use case for public walk-up-and-use screens and points to dedicated design implications for simultaneous support for presenters and visitors, management of presentation territories, and personalization.

Media Choice and Identity Work: A Case Study of Information Communication Technology Use in a Peer Community

Abstract Purpose This study analyses how media choices can be used in the construction of social identity. Approach We approach the topic through the analytical lens of identity work. We present a case study of a community of IT students during their first year of studies, including participant observation, focus groups, and surveys. We focus on what community means to the individuals located within a specific social context. This allows us to examine ICT use and adoption holistically as a key aspect of community formation and identity maintenance. Findings We depict everyday interactions in which the choice of an older information communication technology, Internet Relay Chat, serves participants in their quest for social belongingness in their community and in distinguishing the community positively from other social groups. This chapter describes how identity work is accomplished by adopting and valuing shared, social views about users versus non-users, including: (1) emphasizing the skills and efforts needed for using Internet Relay Chat (IRC), (2) undermining the use of other technologies, and (3) deploying and referencing IRC jargon and “insider humor” within the broader community. Originality/value of paper By examining online and offline social interactions in a defined community over time, we expose the process of identity work in a holistic manner. Our analysis emphasizes the underlying process where media choices can be harnessed to fulfill the need to identify with groups and feel affirmed in one’s claims to both personal and social identity.

Threading and conversation in co-located chats

We observe that co-located chats can support conversations.In these cases, 65% of messages were part of a thread, i.e. focused on a topic.We identify patterns of interaction in chats, and conclude those are conversations.Messages are followed more by a similar type of responses, showing state robustness.Moderation of the messages should take into account these patterns. Events create a new kind of setting for the computer-mediated chat, characterized by physically co-located participants. We set out to investigate the features of chat messages in this particular kind of environment, assessing the amount of threading, defined in terms of message content contributing to one topic, and conversation, based on patterns in informational and emotional functions of subsequent messages. We observe that our cases are characterized with a high level of threading, even while the application did not technically support it. Furthermore, we observe patterns that demonstrate these threads were conversations, based on the types of responses in each thread. Based on our findings, we propose that technical tools for public event-based chats can support conversations and suggest that better tools for this should be developed.

Mediated Community from an Intergroup Perspective: A Literature Review

The ways people organize themselves as communities shift along with the digitalization of social interaction. We review studies on mediated community to analyze which aspects of social interaction are considered to characterize community today. We elaborate on their scientific positioning, or as termed by Doise [14], levels of explanation from the intra-individual to the societal level. Noticing that viewing mediated community as an intergroup phenomenon has been marginal, we propose a research agenda that addresses mediated community explicitly from an intergroup perspective. To extend knowledge of how communities are formed and maintained in digitalized, networked settings, we encourage future research to better integrate this perspective, by focusing on (1) the ways in which outgroups contribute to a sense of community (2) the interaction that occurs on the borders of communities, and (3) the ways in which intergroup relations delineate the symbolic construction of communities.