A Couple of Notes on Information & Communication in the Digital Sphere #teamdividual - Technikakademie Studienstiftung & Max Weber-Programm

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# A Couple of Notes on Information & Communication in the Digital Sphere #teamdividual - Technikakademie Studienstiftung & Max Weber-Programm
### Conrad Borchers
### 2021-03-02

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## This Session

* (Commercial) Internet Platforms

* Digital Communication

* Additional Findings from Empirical Research

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## (Commercial) Internet Platforms

* Engagement Time Optimization

* Adaptive Content

* Specific to Social Platforms: The 1% rule, most users are lurkers (Van Mierlo, 2014)

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## Digital Communication

* Asynchronicity and Hyperpersonalization
	* Hyperpersonal model of communication and effects on social anxiety 
	(High & Caplan, 2009)

* Media Richness and Social Cooperation
	* Group cooperation tasks across media types (Bos et al., 2002)

* Frictionless Navigation of Social Conflict and Disagreement
	* User filtration and polarization (John & Dvir-Gvirsman)
	* Alternative standpoints on polarization:
		* Filter bubbles (Pariser, 2011)
		* Cognition (e.g. confirmation bias) in combination
		with social *and* technological filtering (Geschke, Lorenz, and Holtz, 2019)
	
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## Additional Findings from Empirical Research

* Elaboration likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)
	* There are prerequisites to elaboration

* Confirmation bias (Nickerson, 1998)
	* Weighing evidence is not easy

* Illusory Truth Effect (Fazio et al., 2015)
	* False claims can displace what we know

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## Additional Findings from Empirical Research

* Prominence-Interpretation Theory (Fogg, 2003):
	* A close investigation of the source does not come naturally
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* Fake news spread more effeciently (Vosoughi, Roy, and Aral, 2018)
	* Potentially due to strong emotional reactions connected to the nature of false claims

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## Questions and Group Reflection

Questions to reflect:

* How does information flow differently online than offline?

* What are differences in the way people interact online and offline?

* Which consequences arise?

* How can we address these consequences?

*Slides + References will be online: https://tinyurl.com/ygls7vfo*

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## References

Bos, N., Olson, J., Gergle, D., Olson, G., & Wright, Z. (2002, April). 
Effects of four computer-mediated communications channels on trust development. 
In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 135-140).

Fazio, L. K., Brashier, N. M., Payne, B. K., & Marsh, E. J. (2015). Knowledge does not protect 
against illusory truth. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(5), 993.

Fogg, B. J. (2003). Prominence-interpretation theory: Explaining how people assess credibility 
online. In CHI'03 extended abstracts on human factors in computing systems (pp. 722-723).

Geschke, D., Lorenz, J., & Holtz, P. (2019). The triple‐filter bubble: Using agent‐based modelling 
to test a meta‐theoretical framework for the emergence 
of filter bubbles and echo chambers. British Journal of Social Psychology, 58(1), 129-149.

High, A. C., & Caplan, S. E. (2009). Social anxiety and computer-mediated communication 
during initial interactions: Implications for the hyperpersonal perspective. 
Computers in Human Behavior, 25(2), 475-482.

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## References

John, N. A., & Dvir-Gvirsman, S. (2015). “I Don't Like You Any More”: Facebook Unfriending 
by Israelis During the Israel–Gaza Conflict of 2014. Journal of Communication, 65(6), 953-974.

Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of general psychology, 2(2), 175-220.

Pariser, E. (2011). The filter bubble: How the new personalized web is changing what we read and how we think. Penguin.

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In Communication and 
persuasion (pp. 1-24). Springer, New York, NY.

Van Mierlo, T. (2014). The 1% rule in four digital health social networks: 
an observational study. Journal of medical Internet research, 16(2), e33.

Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359(6380), 1146-1151.