[Journal article] Why We Engage: How Theories of Human Behavior Contribute to Our Understanding of Civic Engagement in a Digital Era

A social network diagram (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From the abstract

Eric Gordon –Berkman Center for Internet and Society; Emerson College

Jessica Baldwin-Philippi Emerson College

Martina Balestra –Cornell University

October 22, 2013

Berkman Center Research Publication No. 21

Abstract: 

As digital communication technologies have evolved over the past few decades, the convergence of network structure and accessibility with hardware and software advances has allowed individuals to interact in various, even contradictory, ways. They can explore, hide, reach out, evaluate, connect, negotiate, exchange, and coordinate to a greater degree than ever before. Furthermore, this has translated to an ever-increasing number of users interacting with information in unprecedented ways and, due to device portability, in totally new physical locations. Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare update each other simultaneously across application platforms with near-real time photos and impressions of places; mobile exercise applications allow users to track their own movements as well as view where others in their geographic vicinity went running; Yelp users can read selective reviews from social network friends and strangers in their community on a specific restaurant; and Facebook friends can see what their peers bought, listened to, and read – from anywhere they are able to access the Internet. Most of these apps update across platforms enabling both maximum reach across a user’s social group as well as a highly selective direction of information to a subset of their social network.Just as the rapidly evolving landscape of connectivity and communications technology is transforming the individual’s experience of the social sphere, what it means to participate in civic life is also changing, both in how people do it and how it is measured. Civic engagement includes all the ways in which individuals attend to the concerns of public life, how one learns about and participates in all of the issues and contexts beyond one’s immediate private or intimate sphere. New technologies and corresponding social practices, from social media to mobile reporting, are providing different ways to record, share, and amplify that attentiveness. Media objects or tools that impact civic life can be understood within two broad types: those designed specifically with the purpose of community engagement in mind (for instance, a digital game for local planning or an app to give feedback to city council) or generic tools that are subsequently appropriated for engaging a community (such as Twitter or Facebook’s role in the Arab Spring or London riots). Moreover, these tools can mediate any number of relationships between or among citizens, local organizations, or government institutions. Digitally mediated civic engagement runs the gamut of phenomena from organizing physical protests using social media (e.g., Occupy), to using digital tools to hack institutions (e.g., Anonymous), to using city-produced mobile applications to access and coproduce government services, to using digital platforms for deliberating. Rather than try to identify what civic media tools look like in the midst of such an array of possibilities (by focusing on in depth examples or case studies), going forward we will instead focus on how digital tools expand the context of civic life and motivations for engagement, and what participating in civic life looks like in a digital era.

We present this literature review as a means of exploring the intersection of theories of human behavior with the motivations for and benefits of engaging in civic life. We bring together literature from behavioral economics, sociology, psychology and communication studies to reveal how civic actors, institutions, and decision-making processes have been traditionally understood, and how emerging media tools and practices are forcing their reconsideration.

Full text of paper may be downloaded for free at the site

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The Risks We Dread: A Social Circle Account « Full Text Reports…

The Risks We Dread: A Social Circle Account 

From the summary at Full Text Reports

What makes some risks dreadful? We propose that people are particularly sensitive to threats that could kill the number of people that is similar to the size of a typical human social circle. Although there is some variability in reported sizes of social circles, active contact rarely seems to be maintained with more than about 100 people. The loss of this immediate social group may have had survival consequences in the past and still causes great distress to people today. Therefore we hypothesize that risks that threaten a much larger number of people (e.g., 1000) will not be dreaded more than those that threaten to kill “only” the number of people typical for social circles. We found support for this hypothesis in 9 experiments using different risk scenarios, measurements of fear, and samples from different countries. Fear of risks killing 100 people was higher than fear of risks killing 10 people, but there was no difference in fear of risks killing 100 or 1000 people (Experiments 1–4, 7–9). Also in support of the hypothesis, the median number of deaths that would cause maximum level of fear was 100 (Experiments 5 and 6). These results are not a consequence of lack of differentiation between the numbers 100 and 1000 (Experiments 7 and 8), and are different from the phenomenon of “psychophysical numbing” that occurs in the context of altruistic behavior towards members of other communities rather than in the context of threat to one’s own community (Experiment 9). We discuss several possible explanations of these findings. Our results stress the importance of considering social environments when studying people’s understanding of and reactions to risks.

 

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Private chats become the new suicide hotline on Facebook — VentureBeat

 

 

Author’s comment….

A few years back I was in a Yahoo chat room conversing with someone who suddenly started talking about his suicidal thoughts.
Very quickly I was able to get ahold of a suicide hotline number and pass it on to him. He thanked me and left the room.
To this day I think about him, wondering if he called, and if he is OK……

 

Private chats become the new suicide hotline on Facebook 

From the 15 December 2011 Forbes article

Facebook unveiled a suicide prevention tool to give users a direct link to online counselors, illustrating the social network’s efforts to expand its role in responding to crises.

With the feature, friends can report suspected suicidal behavior by clicking a button next to any piece of content on Facebook. Users select “suicidal content” under the harmful behavior menu, prompting Facebook to email a direct link to the distressed user for a private online chat with a crisis representative from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

The tool provides help to those who may not be comfortable picking up the phone or seeking other direct avenues for assistance.

The concerned friends, whose reporting of the behavior will be anonymous, will also receive a message that the issue is being addressed, according to Facebook, which will offer the tool for users in the U.S. and Canada.

The tool formalizes Facebook’s past assistance to users in times of distress. This summer, a Florida woman reportedly used Facebook to call for help after breaking her leg, and Facebook helped a Tennessee woman without a phone contact police after a robbery, illustrating the growing role social networks play in public safety.

In addition to these anecdotal uses, Facebook has been pursuing official ways the social network can help those in natural disasters and other crises….

…

The role Facebook played likely prompted the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, to explore how social media can help in federal efforts to help prepare and deal with such emergencies.

The HHS is developing a text message service that local authorities can broadcast to inform people during emergencies.

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Social Networks Promote Cooperation, Discourage Selfishness, So Nice Guys Can Finish First

 

 

Image via Wikipedia. This Image Is An Example Of A Blocking Cluster In A Social Network.

From the 16 November 2011 Medical News Today article

It turns out nice guys can finish first, and David Rand has the evidence to prove it.

Rand, a post-doctoral fellow in Harvard’s Department of Psychology and a Lecturer in Human Evolutionary Biology, is the lead author of a new paper, which found that dynamic, complex social networks encourage their members to be friendlier and more cooperative, with the possible payoff coming in an expanded social sphere, while selfish behavior can lead to an individual being shunned from the group and left – literally on their own.

As described this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the research is among the first such studies to examine social interaction as a fluid, ever-changing process. Previous studies of complex social networks largely used static snapshots of the groups to examine how members were or were not connected. This new approach, Rand said, is the closest scientists have yet come to describing the way the planet’s 6 billion inhabitants interact on a daily basis.

“What we are showing is the importance of the dynamic, flexible nature of real-world social networks,” Rand said. “Social networks are always shifting, and they’re not shifting in random ways. …..

Read the article

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New Study Shows Online Dependency Increasing, Tips on Reducing Online Dependency

From the 26 July 2011 Medical News Today article

If you are reading this right now, you’re online. It is estimated that there were 2.1 billion Internet users worldwide, but what would happen if suddenly we were all unplugged and offline, back to basics if you will?

In a new survey of 1,000 people, 53% said they felt upset when they were denied access to the Internet, and 40% said they felt lonely when they were unable to log on to the World Wide Web. Participants were questioned about their attitudes towards the Internet, and were asked to go without technology for 24 hours. That meant no Facebook, Twitter, emails and text messages.

After the 24 hours were up, some volunteers compared the experience to quitting smoking or drinking, and one even described it as “having my hand chopped off.”

Read the rest of the article, including suggestions on how to reduce your dependency on the Web.

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