COMP6044   Just another ECS Blogs weblog

I have now focused the areas of my research to question how the Web has had an impact on ‘Gender’ (Sociology) and ‘Crime’ (Criminology) in respect of identity. I want to observe the two approaches of these disciplines, making comparisons to gain a fuller understanding of how identity is defined and important to academic discussion.

Over Easter I looked at some general textbooks from both disciplines, including:

Giddens, A, ‘Sociology: Introductory Readings,’ (Polity Press, Cambridge, 1997)

Giddens, A, ‘Sociology,’ (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2006)

Morrison, W, ‘Theoretical Criminology,’ (Cavendish Publishing, London, 1995)

Maguire, M, Morgan, R. and Reiner, R, ‘The Oxford Handbook of Criminology,’ (OUP, Oxford, 2007)

From these textbooks I centred my Sociology reading on the theories behind ‘Gender’ and for Criminology I did the same, looking at the role of identity in crime. I hope by examining the theory behind my research questions in the offline World, I can build on them to better understand how the Web may have impacted on these areas.

No discourse on social theory of social groups would be complete without mentioning Mark Granovetter who did some fascinating network analysis and published his findings displaying the presence of weak ties, structural holes in organisations. Structural holes in particular explain how someone can become an unelected leader of a group if they hold a position in which they are the main conduit for which information can flow between separate parts of groups or between groups.

I have been reading ‘Theories of Communication Networks’, Noshir Contractor and Peter Monge (2003) a more complex book that references fundamentals from sociology, psychology, maths and computer science, that describes and help the reader understand complex communication networks involving large groups of people. It has become more and more apparent during my reading that it is increasingly difficult to look at a subject from just two disciplines, in my case, sociology and psychology. Some fundamentals from other subjects like maths, computer science, or philosophy are necessary so as not to have a one sided, or in this case two dimensional, view, thus highlighting the multi-disciplinary nature of web science topics. For the IDR though I have found ample material in ‘Theories of Communication Networks’ from sociology and psychology to describe groups and the communication mechanisms within them:

There are 2 branches of theories as to how groups internal behaviour can be modelled. These are:

• homophily theories – where individuals select others to communicate with who are similar to themselves.
• contagion theories – are based on the assumption that exposure to networks (groups) increase the likelihood that individuals are influenced by others and will then develop beliefs, attitudes and assumptions similar to those of others in their network.

These two theories are very useful for describing how groups form, and how individuals in groups are influenced.

Crowd psychology is one of the subclasses of social psychology, and social science books are interested in this aspect of psychology as it concerns how sudden and large scale social changers can be brought about because of large groups of people. There are a lot of interesting theories put forward over the past century about how large groups of people (crowds) behave,  by psychologists such as those by Carl Jung who coined the term ‘Collective Unconscious” that described a shared, universal psychic system identical in all individuals. Many people since Jung then have expanded this concept, such as blogger and researcher Kevin Kelly, who describes many Internet groups starting to exhibit a ‘Hive mind’. Sigmund Freud also has a theory known as his ‘Crowd behaviour theory’ that describes that people who are in a crowd act differently towards people than those who are thinking individually.

One of the most interesting and often challenged theory of modern day sociology is the theory of cognitive limit for the maximum number of people in a person can have a inter-personal relationship. In 1992, Dunbar published a theory that the neocortex size of the brain was a constraint on group size in primates. Dunbar predicted that human cognitive limit for relationships was 150 based on the size of the human neocortex. This is known as the Dunbar Number and is now widely referenced and cited, despite how Dunbar based his observations on primates other than humans along with information about human network sizes in less developed countries. Dunbar’s methodology appears to have observed that tribal village sizes, military units, company sizes average around 150. In light of this perhaps humans have hard wired limits in their brains, limiting the number of individuals they can have interpersonal relationships with – and similarly the number of groups they can participate actively in. Thus even the most highly social individuals, or those with strong psychological desires such as goal theories or homeostatic drives to participate in groups, will only be able to network effectively with fixed amount of people. Thus social and psychological desires for group participation come up against physical hard limits if Dunbar’s Number theory based on neocortex size is correct. It shows how social research on primate groups, along with some statistical and network analysis, can lead to interesting extrapolations of the limitations of human mind, and the limitations of relationships within a social group.

Recent study is mainly focusing on the 4^th version of Sociology by Giddens and also linking the economic aspect to think about the impacts of the Web in globalization; and then moving on to the part of business models which is influenced by the Web.

To understand the society, firstly we should put the eyes on the broader range of areas. Throughout the world, the multinational company became a phenomenon after World War II, and strongly promoted the process of economic globalization. Nowadays, multinational companies are considered as the core of economic globalization. Through the bridge multinational companies offered, markets and trades are linked closely between different countries. Trading information are transferring frequently from one country to another breaking the barriers of time and spaces.

However, in this globalization trend, the participants are just involving the companies or a small part of people who are conducting this business. For most people, maybe they can use the cup made in thousands miles away from their hometown, however, they have not opportunities to participate this amazing project until the Web came out. Because the main members of the society have engaged in the information global sharing activity, the globalization has been infiltrated into people’s daily lives. The Web is the main force to push and accelerate the process of globalization. The information explosion covers every detail of the lives across the world. People have the channels to obtain and publish information about what they like, what they want, what they are doing and so on. The information is mass but has intangible value inside. At that movement, BBS became a huge container to gather people of like interests. Usually, one BBS is organized by subjects, such as music, food, feeling, education and so on. Members of this BBS will around those subjects to leave their comments and reviews. For wisdom marketers, they know that better understanding of their customers is one of the best ways to gain competitive advantages. Therefore, through those BBSs, they can refine the contents and pick up the useful part for their business. (Of course, there are some issues about online fake information or advertisements, but at this stage we just assumed the number of them is quite few which can be ignored.) Unfortunately, at most situations this kind of job is heave, especially when operated manually. But the platform that presents the people’s interests throughout the world and the way to find out valuable ideas about the business and market is worth firmly.  The Web provides a creative platform to gather information generated all over the world, which is valuable for the economic globally. Google’s success can be explained by this information aggregated. They provide the accurate search results for people based on the search key words, while putting the related advertisements on the same web page. This business model helps Google gain high profit. However, this kind way of putting advertisements based on the search engines is relatively passive for the potential customers, as it needs people to search firstly and then see the related information. Therefore, the issue put in front of us is that which way will be better to get information accurately and directly and how to build a positive business model.

To be continued…

After looking at the some of the core principles on both sociology and politics it seemed a good idea to explore some of the latest research that is looking at how these two disciplines are affecting the Web and vice-versa. Research from the Oxford Internet Institution (OII) is a leading research group looking how the ‘internet’ is affecting a range of areas. One research group is looking at the effect of e-government.

Some of the most interesting work has come from Helen Margetts, who has been looking at e-government and its integration into society, and possible cultural barriers that are being faced. Looking at some of the figures collated by Helen has given some indication of the use of e-government and related services in the London Area. The stats look at the type of people and other demographics. Interestingly, Helen found that although Gender or Race did not play a role in who was using e-government services, Age, social class, and education attainment was extremely influential. For example, people who only obtained GCSE’s were 47% likely to use the services, where as people with A-levels or above were 85% likely.

The OII also has conducted research which further explores the cultural barriers to e-government discussed the 4 myths of Technology and discussed possible reasons to why the government has developed a negative attitude to ICT. Broken down into Supply side barriers (i.e. the Government) and demand side barriers (i.e. the individual) the research suggests that the lack of e-government is a combination of the two sides. This comes from a mix of reasons, from the government’s bad experiences in the past with technology, overrunning projects and close mindedness. Also looking at supply side barrier such as social exclusion, where Rich and Poor are part of the digital divide. What is also introduced is the terms e-Elite and e-underclass, where the e-underclass would be more likely to trust or rely on e-government.

An interesting argument is one suggesting that the formality of e-government Websites could deter individuals away from using them. However in countries such as Holland e-government websites stress the fun factor.

What has been recognised from this research is that cultural barriers do exists, however they’re may be possible solutions to help overcome them, for instance providing incentives for staff to recognise the potential benefits of electronic media, trying to reduce the mindset of technology capricious employees. For citizens, providing incentives, financial and educational may increase the use of such services, and also lighten the attitude of the Websites providing a more informal approach.

Personal Space

(Source: “The Environment and Social Behavior: Privacy, Personal Space, Territory, Crowding by I. Altman)

Personal Space refers to the distance that we maintain from other people, in order to feel secure and not threatened. It ensures that we are reaching a satisfactory level of privacy. A definition given by Goffman describes it as “the space surrounding an individual where within which an entering other causes the individual to feel encroaced upon, leading him to show displeasure and sometimes to withdraw.” Basic attributes of personal space are the following:

a. It is an ‘invisible’ boundary between ourself and other people.

b. It is carried everywhere a person goes.

c. In different situations the boundary of personal space is different, so the process of regulating it is a dynamic one.

d. If someone crosses the boundary of our personal space, we often feel threatened and stressed.

Edward Hall, an anthropologist, proposed the theory of proxemics, a theory that refers to the way people use space, in terms of communicating with others. He proposed 4 different spatial zones:

Intimate distance (0-6 inches – close phase, 6-18 inches – far phase);  “wrestling, comforting and protecting” distance

Personal distance (1.5-4 feet); intimate relationships

Social distance (4-12 feet); business and general social contact occur

Public distance (12-25 feet); formal occasions or public speaches

Furthermore, Hall observed that there are cultural differences in the use of space for communicating. He examined how different cultures treat personal space.

Personal space does exist online, but with a different form; people have their own virtual personal space, where they want to be able to maintain a certain distance from others, but at the same time interact with them. They log on to social networking sites to communicate with their friends, maintain their personal blogs or web sites etc. However Hall’s theory does not exist online, as there is no physical contact among people online.

Us and Them

(Source: “Thinking Sociologically” by Z. Bauman)

This chapter begins with an extremely interesting comparison between the number of people who influence our lives and the way we live and the people we actually know. There are uncountable multitudes that influence directly the way we live and we do not notice them, but there are also multitudes that put constraints to the way we live (e.g. pollution). If we now compare the number of people we know with these multitudes, we will realise that the difference is huge and that the people we know are very few.

The author separates people from his social intercourse into 3 groups:

a. People that we meet quite often and we have an intimate relationship with.

b. People that we meet on occasion (e.g. we meet our professors in the classroom for a lecture). The relationships we maintain with these people are called functional, as meeting these people serves a specific purpose of an activity. We are not interested in learning more things about these people, outside the function that they perform in our lives and we expect from them to do the same (e.g. we do not ask about the hobbies of our doctor). If they did actually ask more about ourselves, we would consider this as an intrusion of our privacy, says the author. It is a case of breaching an unwritten rule about the terms of our relationship, which is only an exchange of a particular service.

c. People that we hardly meet at all. We know their existence, but as they are not a direct part of our every day lives we do not pay particular attention to them.

As far as the second case is concerned (people we meet on occasion), I would add that this is not always how the things are. People do not always consider that being asked more personal questions is an intrusion of their privacy. For instance, if a person goes to the doctor for his annual checkup and the doctor asks him something personal (e.g. How’s your family doing?) it may not be considered by the patient that his privacy was breached. Instead he could go on and answer the question and perhaps make the same question to the doctor. This discussion may start, because people are interested into one another, or simply it may be a way to break the ice. And definitely the way people feel about being asked questions from people the meet on occasion, is affected by their cultural background (as Hall previously pointed out).

This post builds on what was discovered in last blog, and will be last using material from Social Psychology 5^th edition, S. Brehm. It was a worthy texbook that contained plenty of background theory on groups but I have exhausted all material relevant to my review. I would like to thank Cathy Pope for taking the time to comment on my posts as it helped me perceive my reading and work from another point of view, and refocused me to task at hand. Reading the comments on others work helped me understand the nature of the IDR assignment, and its starting to make a lot more sense.

This is a longer post than usual as I wont be blogging over next week. If you only have time for quick read, you can skip right on down to the end to a nice paragraph titled “summary and conclusions” which sums up the blog posting and has some evaluation. For all others with time and some interest you will gain more by reading the whole blog posting.

On to main part of my reading for this week:

Joining a group and group development: Newcomers usually go through a period of assimilation and model their behaviour on established members, while the group accommodates the newcomer. Bruce Tuckman (1965, 1977) proposed five stages of group development:

1. Forming – group members orient themselves towards the group.

2. Storming – members try to influence the group according to their needs.

3. Norming – members try to reconcile the conflicts produced by storming.

4. Performing – members perform and maximise group’s performance

5. Adjourning – members disengage from the group.

Other theories of group development do exist however. Connie Gersick (1988, 1994) observed that groups tend to operate in series of starts and stops rather than through uniform stages. Perhaps online groups could help provide primary research material to revisit group development theories as the cost of recording group activities and developments is lower than in offline groups, and theories of Tuckman or Gersick could be given more authority or challenged.

According to Forsyth 1990, all groups can be described in terms of three components: roles, norms and cohesiveness. Robert Bales, 1958 proposed two fundamental roles that have yet to be disproved. An instrumental role is one that helps a group achieve its tasks, and an expressive role gives emotional support and keeps moral high. Roles can be formal or informal and the same person can fill each role, however roles that are ambiguous or cause conflict can lead to stress and loss of productivity.

In online groups there are often a number of different formal roles, that could be those of users, administrators and moderators. Although the title of each may imply a different role, keeping Roberts Bales idea of fundamental roles in mind it can be argued that membership doesn’t define the role. Moderators, administrators or users can each perform instrumental or expressive roles, or a combination of the two, within a group. (My own social categorisation here is open to comments – perhaps others see different roles in online groups other than my simple ‘mods, admins and users’, if you do have a different view please leave a comment at end.)

Norms establish rules and code of conduct group members should conform to. Rules can be informal or formal.

Cohesiveness refers to the forces on a group that push its members closer together. They can be internal such as group pride, number and intensity of interaction or external such as an unusual environment or threats from other groups. Cohesiveness and group performance are causally related and either can influence the other. Positive norms can improve cohesiveness and lead to increased group performance, however negative norms coupled with high cohesiveness can lead to decreased group performance. Both offline and online groups should strive to promote positive norms and improved cohesiveness if better group performance is to be realised.

In prior blog postings it was noted that a group was two or more persons perceived as related because of their interactions over time, membership within a social category or a shared fate. Using that definition, we know that humans perceive and sort objects in the world around them into groups. The process of people sorting each other into groups is known as social categorization. People often use their perceived groupings to make inferences about all group members. This is one of the formative causes for stereotyping. People tend to overestimate the differences between groups and underestimated the differences within groups.

The groups that a person identifies with are called ingroups, and a group outside of these are called outgroups. The consequence of perceiving the world as “us” and “them” leads to the phenomenon of the outgroup homogeneity effect. This effect describes how perceivers assume greater similarity between members of outgroups than between members their own groups, to the extent that members of outgroups are perceived as homogenous. One of the reasons for this is that people do not often notice subtle differences in outgroups as there is little contact with them. The media plays a big role in how we categorize social groups and people learn stereotypes through group norms, role models and their peers.

Culture can play a part in ingroup – outgroup distinctions. People from collectivist cultures often perceive ingroup homogeneity more strongly than those from individualistic cultures. Online groups are not limited by geographical boundaries and can have large numbers of members from both collectivist cultures and individual. An open question could ask how this situation affects group dynamics where some group members perceive homogeneity and others value the differences? It may be the case that endurance of online groups with members of different cultures depends heavily on conformity and rules, as otherwise different perceptions would affect cohesion and group performance adversely.

Summary and conclusions

I particularly liked the terminology of ingroups and outgroups and the definitions from the book I read last week. It put into words things myself and probably others perceive and know but never give it a name. If you have ever read or seen, Lord of the Flies or even the popular American series ‘Lost’, or at very least supported a football club, you will be familiar with the idea of “us” and “them”. Now you know it is about ingroups and outgroups, the reasons behind this categorisation, and that probably everyone makes social categorisations everyday.

Currently reading: Internet Politics – Andrew Chadwick

Brief overview of what has been read:

This week’s blog is a continuation of looking at Andrew Chadwick’s Internet Politics book. Last week I looked at Chadwick’s description on Conceptual tools, with this week focusing in more detail regarding E-democracy.

What will be discussed is how the Web has played a role in enhancing community cohesion, political deliberation, and participation, i.e. E-Democracy. What will be looked at is community networks, development of online political communities, and uses of online mechanisms to involve citizens.

Knowledge gained and relevance to issue:

To start with let’s looks at some theoretical foundations of E-democracy, the UK Hansard society takes the view that it is:

“The concept of e-democracy is associated with efforts to broaden political participation by enabling citizens to connect with one another and with their representatives via new information and communication technologies.”

From this, two major conceptual offshoots have formed from the many attempts to enhance political participation, the Social Capital, and the Public Sphere.
The Social capital, defined by Robert Putnam as: “the features of social organisations such as networks, norms, and trust that facilitate co-ordination and co-operation for mutual benefit”. This assumes that all groups, political or social enhance overall levels of political awareness. It is also argued that increased participation between civic associations increases the level of trust amongst citizens. Furthermore for such communities to occur, it is assumed that contributions will be reciprocated at a later stage, without this, communities would not exist.

The Public Sphere, another influential approach to understanding the role of communications in encouraging citizen’s engagement. Jurgen Habermas’s concept of Public Sphere suggested that since the early-modern capitalistic age, the new forms of communication and media has given cultural enlightenment, allowing for information to be much more freely disseminated. This level of media has allowed citizens to form political opinions. Lincoln Dahlberg used the Habermasian theory to form 6 main conditions that e-democracy schemes must try to fulfil if they are to genuinely create deliberative public spheres.
To begin with, there must be Autonomy from the state, and economic power. This means that discourse must be from citizens concerns not that of the media or corporations. Furthermore, situations or concerns must be reasons, not asserted. Another key condition is participants must reflect on their own cultural values, interests and other personal views, and also take note of the larger social context. This then implies that participants must see an argument from all viewpoints, being respectful and listening to each other. To be able to view all sides of the argument, all information and knowledge must be learned, which leads to the next consideration. Finally, all participants must be treated equally, and entitled to participate in deliberation.

Community Networks
Community networks, first appeared in the 1970’s, with relatively small numbers. But with the cost of electronic goods, during the 1990’s they began to grow tremendously. Bruce Tonn defines a Community network as:

“A Computer based system or set of systems designed to meet the social and economic needs of a spatially-defined community of individuals.”

Three main features which could be argued that are needed to form a Community network are: a high speed network, offered free of charge or at a subsidised rate, some are of centrality for the technology, i.e. servers, and thirdly, an emphasis on providing content specific to the local community.

Although modern community networks are more technologically advanced than their ancestors, they still rely on the basic principle that for people to shape the production of information about their local community, the must be willing to volunteer. Relating back to Social Capital, almost all community networking projects have been inspired by the idea that virtual community can improve geographical communities by creating new social ties and reciprocal trust.

One view is why ‘join’ citizens together who already happen to live in the same neighbourhood, instead why not encourage ‘real’ interaction. However many of the proponents of community networks come from a background in urban planning and are therefore acutely aware of the history of attempts to generate community through the physical world. It is suggested that contemporary life erodes the possibility form such ‘real’ interaction, driving the need for web based community networks. Tom Petrich suggests 5 areas of contemporary life which forms these constraints. Work-related constraints, where working hours play a large role. Another constraint is consumerism, where time is spent on goods and services, i.e. Playstation, Cinema rather than interacting. There are also social capital constraints, where local social networks are insufficient to create communities. Delving more towards the individual, there are personal constraints, confidence and skills are issues when meeting in the real world. Finally there are the constraints due to the real world, i.e. no meeting places.

Although there are hundreds of virtual communities, to begin with there was a total lack of state led virtual communities. However, central and local governments have slowly started to experiment with online forums, which have specific interest groups. A space for deliberation that are relatively unconstrained by corporate and state influence, inspired by the need for increasing citizen deliberation have opened up, some believe (Grossman) showing the true potential of the web in bringing about true participatory democracy.

Political Influence
The influence of such community networks and other forms of e-democracy has introduced the web in-to a rich set of projects, from this two broad models have been defined, Consultative and Deliberative models.

A consultative approach stresses the communication of the citizen’s opinion to the government. It is assumed that information is a resource which can be used to provide better policy and administration. Furthermore, governments can seek voters opinion from such information. A good example of use of such a model is the U.S. Federal governments e-rule making program. This was designed to allow citizens to air their opinion on specific agency rules that are being developed.
The deliberative model takes a different view on communication between the government and citizens, where a more complex multi-directional interactivity occurs. These models are thinner on the ground than their consultative counterparts.

From what has been discussed it can be seen that the impact that the Web has had on Communities, political deliberation is indeed significant. The use of the Web is a way to allow people to maintain social ties or extend them where possible. Furthermore, political interests have now started to be transferred online; furthermore the views which are being given in an online world are now transferred to an offline world.

The question of is the Web increasing Social Capital, allowing for more opportunity for public political participation? Chadwick argues that it is doing both, communities of interest tend towards being homogeneous echo chambers. However, what needs to be remembered is that individuals have more than one interest, and this creates the problem that the e-democracy is creating more complex communities, deliberation and political participation.

This week’s reading was focused on politics. The books that I have used are Introduction to Politics, by Garner et al and An Introduction to Politics, State and Society by James McAuley. I have organized my reading so far, so as to approach e-democracy from different angles. While in my previous posts there was an approach through society, groups and even individuals, for my first post on Politics I have chosen to have a look on the concept of State. Although the role of the State in e-democracy is potentially smaller than in ordinary politics (where it is overwhelming), it is not of less importance.

Two of the concepts that are associated with the State are power and authority. While both are used for similar purposes, that is to control behaviours, power uses coercion while authority uses consent. Power and authority are evident on the Web: due to the Web’s decentralised structure, power has been distributed possibly in a more even way than in other areas. Furthermore, authority has often been an easier (or the only) way to influence behaviours in online communities.

There are various theories that have been developed to interpret the distribution of power within a society. The pluralist theory suggest that society is composed of various groups, each with its own interests and government just act according to the balance of power of these groups, which means that all groups are represented relatively to their power within society. The exact opposite is elitism, where power is considered to be concentrated to the hands of powerful elites. Of course, the distribution of power in a society may be somewhere between pluralism and elitism. Marxist theory is similar to the elitist, with bourgeoisie being the ruling class and the proletariat being the dominated one. It is different however, in claiming that true power exists only in the economic sphere of society, and that an egalitarian society can only be established through a communist revolution.

Since measuring political power in a society can be difficult, an analysis according to each of these theories can give different results. The same is probably true for the Web, and particularly e-democracy. A pluralist could argue that the Web by default allows all groups to pursue their interests and prevents one seizing disproportionate power. However, an elitist could argue, that those having access to the Web are a de facto elite, as the digital divide suggests and also, that in some groups some individuals are more influential than others. Another possibility is that the Web could provide some groups with a lower barrier to entry, and so allowing more groups to share power (Interestingly, the existence of barriers to entry in the political system is a matter of debate between pluralists and elitists).

In a study of e-democracy, it is obviously necessary to identify what is Democracy. Since the word has acquired a positive connotation, even dictatorships have been self-proclaimed as such. So a more clear definition is needed. As the word’s etymology suggests, democracy is a political system where the people have the political power. This implies some kind of equality of political power. This was vague enough for Lively (1975) to come up with seven different possibilities. While all  have this characteristic,  three of them are not considered truly democratic, because there is no accountability of the rulers towards the ruled. The remaining four are versions of democracy, with half being cases of representative democracy and the others of direct democracy. The difference is the involvement of individuals in the decision-making process, with more involvement in the case of direct democracy.

It has been often suggested that the Web could allow a more direct version of democracy to feasible. Since the Web significantly lowers the communication costs, as can be seen for example in social networking sites, larger groups/networks can operate more efficiently. But it can be argued that lack of time is not the only reason that direct democracy has been rarely chosen. A study of relevant examples, for example classical Athens, could demonstrate the quality requirements that such a system would have to meet in order to succeed. Populism and ‘mob rule’ have been identified as disadvantages of such systems.

While the classical theory of democracy emphasises participation of citizens, the elitist theory claims that democracy and elitism aren’t mutually exclusive and that “elites sometimes can protect democracy from the authoritarian values of the masses”. According to elitism, participation is not that important. But, declining participation in elections and increasing political apathy are some of the reasons that e-democracy has been considered as an alternative. Furthermore, elitist theory has been criticised as undemocratic because of the accountability issue, and since modern democracies have elitist aspects, one could go so far as to call them “imperfect democracies”.

A development of the classical democracy is the deliberative democracy, which was mainly influenced by the ideas of J. Habermas. In addition to participation, it emphasises public discussion of matters and claims that this leads to “more rational and legitimate decision making”. It seems possible that this model could ameliorate the problems of direct democracy mentioned above, since it has been criticised on the basis that sufficient deliberation takes time. If this is true, then technologies that could help large scale real-time deliberation are needed. The Web is not any more just about information, but also about knowledge; this could prove crucial to successful implementation of such a process for decision making. Another criticism of this model has been that “it exaggerates the level of consensus that can be reached through deliberation”. With the possibility of being wrong or just too optimistic, I would suggest that agents could help break such stalemates, perhaps using game theory techniques and utilising the Semantic Web.

However, as most web scientists know (and of course sociologists), viewing social change that is caused by technology in a deterministic and linear way is wrong and can often lead to embarrassing predictions. While some ideas seem fantastic in theory, in practice they sometimes fail. Could e-democracy be such an example?

If we are to believe the elitist and Marxist theories of power distribution within society, the powerful elites are not necessarily in favour of such changes and are possibly able to prevent them. They would certainly be able to do so if the Web didn’t have such a decentralised and global structure (thanks to Tim Berners-Lee’s and others’ efforts). So, some aspects of e-democracy (for example online activism) cannot be influenced, regulated or stopped by a government. Making sure that global forces are controlled by democratic means, often called cosmopolitan democracy, could be a way to maintain the status quo, or even improve it. It would be too optimistic to assume that the Web could never be controlled by non democratic entities, it is almost like saying the Web can only be used for good.

However, for some other aspects of e-democracy, such as e-voting, the role of governments is crucial. If governments are influenced by elites, their priorities and choices in how the State will use e-democracy will be dictated by them. So the quality of an e-democracy paradigm will generally be proportionate to the quality of democracy in the State that sponsored it.

I have already read about the concept of freedom, but since the post has grown too long, I will incorporate it in next week’s post. I plan to continue next week by reading about state institutions, bureaucracy and governance, parties and elections and if there is time about civil society.

This week I took the initiative to start reading a book that is not a textbook and is written by Irwin Altman, a social psychologist in the 70s. The book is called “The Environment and Social Behavior: Privacy, Personal Space, Territory, Crowding”.

In the first chapters of the book, Altman focuses on privacy. Below are some of the main points that he makes:

1. Privacy is an interpersonal boundary-control process, which paces and regulates interaction with others.

2. Privacy can be divided into desired and achieved privacy. Desired privacy refers to the ideal level of interaction with others; how much interaction we desire at a specific moment. Achieved privacy refers to the actual degree of contact that we achieve with others. If achieved privacy is less or more than the desired one a state of imbalance exists; otherwise if the two are equal to one another then an optimum state of privacy exists.

3. As a result of the above one may realise that privacy is an optimising process; the optimum state of privacy is the ideal.

4. Privacy is also a dialectic process. As Altman states “privacy is an interplay of opposing forces – that is, different balances of opening and closing the self to others.” In other words, desired privacy is something relative; sometimes we want to be in the company of others, but other times we want to be left alone.

5. Privacy is an input and output process. Regulating privacy takes place by looking at what comes in and what goes out while interacting with others.

6. Privacy may refer to a variety of social units (individuals, groups of people, families, nations etc.) and their interactions between them.

7. Finally, it is a dynamic process. Privacy boundaries may change over time and in order to analyse privacy it needs to be under continuous observation.

Later on, the author refers to the mechanisms that people use, in order to implement desired levels of privacy. These mechanisms include verbal behaviour (e.g. “keep out!”), nonverbal use of the body, environmental behaviours (e.g. personal space, territory, clothing for approachability) and culturally defined norms and practices (different cultures may have different customs to regulate between public and private).

I would like to point out that things have changed significantly since the ’70s the time when this book was written. The evolution of technology and the birth of the Web have provoked new privacy concerns, which are much more complex than the ones that existed in the ’70s. Apart from our lives our offline, our lives continue online; in the online world the situation regarding privacy is very different than in the offline world. Online there is no physical contact between people and anyone can gain access over someone else’s information. As a result, making use of the above mentioned mechanisms is rather difficult. Apart from that, private information can be available online and stored indefinitely and can be accessed by people at any moment, so none of these mechanisms can be applied in this case.

I have almost finished my reading of the book “Social Psychology”, 5^th edition, S. Brehm et al and I will review material from other texts in psychology, and sociology. Mainly the textbooks already identified in the initial blog posting.

One of my aims for this week was to review some of the outputs of groups. After careful reading I decided that best approach is to review group processes and their affect on outcomes, rather than focus on outcomes. Two of main exercises that groups are engaged in are decision making and brainstorming. Decision making in groups often suffers from phenomenon known as groupthink. Groupthink describes polarization and bias in group decision making. Researchers found that group discussion usually exaggerates the initial leanings of a group. Group polarization is when group members simply find about other people’s opinions. It is an example of social comparison, when individuals forming a view of social reality by comparing themselves with others. They then distinguish themselves within the group by adopting more extreme position of the group norm. Social categorisation also plays part in groupthink. People want to be part of ingroup, distinguish their own group, and so they stay away from arguments or taking a stance that would leave them in a position of being viewed as part of an outgroup.

Creative ideas are second outputs of a group I will discuss. Group members who interact face to face actually produce fewer creative ideas when brainstorming than nominal groups (several individuals working alone). Computers making use of the network of the Internet offer promising improvements to group brainstorming. They combine freedom of being alone at a PC with the stimulation of new ideas over the Internet. Some recent studies of online groups have shown that in many cases online groups are even better at brainstorming than nominal groups.

In regards to projects, groups are even more prone to feeling entrapped by previous commitments and are less likely to withhold investments from failing projects. One other phenomena which I found very interesting was the resource dilemma. This describes when larger groups are more likely to exhibit selfish behaviour in a situation with limited resources than smaller groups. This occurs partly because in a larger group establishing norms of co-operation are less likely, people are less committed to each other and perceive that their actions have less impact. Do online groups suffer as much from resource dilemma than offline groups? Arguably less so and many have even referred to the Internet as the “Copying Machine” for digital artefacts. I had some difficulty finding cases of resource dilemma in online groups and it would be an interesting exercise for any Web Sicentist to find examples of this and document them. Scarcity of digital material or resources on Internet isn’t usually an issue. Bits are easily copied and easily reproduced, much to the angst of rightsholders who have problems with the “copy and share” mentality of filesharing groups. I may come to look at online and offline groups who engage in file sharing as this seems to be a highly debated and hot topic at moment, especially as Digital Economy Bill has several proposals to tackle groups and individuals engaged in this activity.