by Christine Schantz, Derek Kan, Shreyas

New York Times recently won four Pulitzer prizes and one of the articles was about modern globalization practices of some of the best enterprises respected not just in America but the world over like Apple [1] and Walmart. The fact that this seemingly worrying trend is being observed in places like Apple, which just a few decades ago proudly boasted of being built and developed indigenously in America, brings to light some of the key factors of a globalized workplace and knowledge workers.

There is an overwhelming trend among most of the successful enterprises to move the supply chain abroad (Mirchandani, p.204). The general feeling is that this may be influenced by the need for cutting costs in the increasingly competitive market. On the contrary, according to the NYT article, the executives claim that this is not at all about jobs. According to an executive, “the speed and flexibility is breathtaking”. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

Beyond the supply chain and the flexibility of factories abroad, to accommodate the needs of transnational technology firms, education and standards of living are cited as being a secondary reason for why manufacturing in the US is languishing. Executives claim that the US does not have a population of workers with education they are looking for to fill positions as Engineers in their factories. The desired educational qualification for such a position is something between a high school diploma and bachelors degree in engineering but nothing more.

In comparison, China has the an engineering workforce that can be found and deployed with a very short period of time. In one instance Apple required approximately 8,700 industrial engineers and filled those positions within 15 days in the Chinese labor market. It was approximated that the same task would take up to 9 months in the US. Another large factor is the availability of workers and agreements of work practices. Beyond finding the labor force the question arises about how many US engineers would agree to move to on-site dormitories and to be on-call 24 hours in the day? In China this is commonplace.

Some people argue that earlier entrepreneurs and capitalists put the needs of the country also into account within their business decisions like setting up plants. But the executives counter this with the fact that moving such jobs outside is what helps them pay for innovation and not moving offshore would affect in losing much more jobs in the long run.

But maybe this above trend is only localized to the manufacturing industry. To examine in another light we also looked at the gaming industry and the transnational cultural issues embedded within them. [2]

South Korean game industry is expanding rapidly, however Yonhap News Agency claims that it will take a while before the games are ready to go overseas. Gordon Brown, who works for Korea’s largest localization company, Latis Global Communications, states this as an issue of localization. According to Sun this is a common issue in cross-cultural design and the term localization addresses the process of modifying and customizing products for different markets (Sun, 2012, p. 317). In this case, the article addresses how gaming cultures and icons differs from countries. First, Brown addresses storyboarding and language structure as the biggest issue of localization. Korean does not always include number or gender, and subjects are often dropped from sentences, complicating translation. Secondly, Brown mentions a more linguistic issue; Hearing that the game has a Korean name can be a challenge for people to adopt the game. Third, in Us, consoles are still dominated the market where online games in Korea take up 70 percent of the market compared to just 3 percent for console games. Finally, shutdown system in South Korea that prevents anyone below the age of 16 from accessing online games between the hours of midnight to 6 AM is a hurdle as well.

Finally Brown states, “As more people show interest in Korean games, more developers are showing interest in catering to international markets and they are paying more attention to localization”.

So, globalization have brought in not just issues of workforce and the relevant labor practices surrounding that but also it raises questions about transnational cultural practices prevalent in different places, different markets and different products. The question therefore facing us is how to embrace it, because globalization is here and we may need to adapt our principles and practices.

Working Bibliography

[1] : CHARLES DUHIGG and KEITH BRADSHER “How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work” [January 21, 2012 ]

[2] : CURTIS FILE “As Korean game industry expands, cultural hurdles are breached” [2013/04/09]

When Walter White, the main character in the AMC television series Breaking Bad[1]was about to go under general anesthesia, his wife – suspecting that he had lied about having two cell phones – told him that she had found his cell phone. Walter unintentionally revealed the truth when he responded, “Which one?”

This anecdote highlights how the character’s choices about how to manage his double-life often involve considerations about how he appropriates technology. These appropriations, however, are not essential reflections of what something like duplicity looks like in any technological system or interconnected community. Instead, there are context-specific patterns that characterize interpersonal interactions and social negotiations which are often unique to certain cultures. Horst and Miller’s ethnographic research in Jamaica demonstrates that keeping some people in one’s cell phone contact list unaware of the other identities which may be on that list does not necessitate acquiring a separate phone.

That privacy concerns map onto communication issues and are not independent of design is – hopefully at this point in the semester – almost self-evident. Other kinds of privacy concerns are evident in the example of the Pentium III in Nissenbaum’s IEEE Computer article. The article’s title, “How Computer Systems Embody Values,” assumes an affirmative answer to Langdon Winner’s article from the beginning of the semester: Artifacts have politics. Perhaps more telling is that even as (historically) recent as 2001, a philosophy professor still has to explain to professional computer engineers that values can become manifest in technology. Nevertheless, the appearance in such a journal is an encouraging indication that STS-related concerns are entering more technical discourses. As Judd Antin recently impressed upon us, the need to have such breadth – especially in the social sciences – in one’s skill set (in addition to one’s particular expertise) is critical in the job market.

Antin’s talk also threw up some interesting insights about the cultural appropriation of Facebook. It is certainly interesting and hardly surprising that a tool as ubiquitous as Facebook, with nearly a billion users worldwide would register dissimilarities in its use across the world. While the United States boasts the highest number of users in the world (almost a 170 million), Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Mexico all house more than 40 million members per country, just a quick example to demonstrate the deep inroads that Facebook has been able to make in different parts of the world.

Judd mentioned that “friending” patterns of users differed across the world. For instance, it’s common in some parts of the world, especially in the United States, to restrict your Facebook friends to people you know, ranging from close family and friends to mere acquaintances. On the other hand, it is not uncommon to see thousands of “friends” on people’s Facebook accounts in certain parts of South East Asia, where it is generally acceptable to add strangers. This actually resonates with the Horst and Miller article, where the idea of “link-up” in Jamaica essentially constitutes a bare-bones form of sociality that allows for a quick call to be made to explicitly ask for help/support/resources without any judgment, something that would be social suicide in the United States. In practice, the tool in question support similar functions around the world – choosing a number from your call log and then dialing it, or clicking on the “add friend” button on Facebook. However, the objectives, motivations, and affectivity informing these practices may greatly vary across individuals or communities, thus signaling crucial cultural disparities.

Of course, thinking about what “culture” itself means is important if we are to even begin to understand how a given technology will be appropriated by people with different values, and in different political, economic, and social environments (maybe we never can predict this completely). A rather slapdash, yet revealing quote by Vittorio Colao, the Chief Executive of the Vodafone Group, “Culture influences the lifestyle, and the lifestyle influences the way we communicate,” certainly sheds some light on the atypical means of interactions and negotiations that different populations may engage in with the same technology artifact. Their “culture” may also determine the protocol for its eventual use within a community. “If you don’t leave your phone on in a meeting in Italy, you are likely to miss the next one,” says Colao. But this behavior would probably not go down well in the United States, where such an interruption would be frowned upon. Another example is of the use of phones on trains in Japan, something that is considered far more egregious, according to some reports, than the use of mobile phones in a movie theatre (imagine that!). While the first step of registering such dissimilarities in technology use and appropriation is interesting yet relatively straightforward, a more complex analysis would likely dig deeper to try and understand exactly what cultural aspects may be informing use, practice and protocol. Even more tricky might be separating individual values from community culture.

Finally, it may be worthwhile to think about how the same technology artifact may actually have different value or meaning for different individuals or communities. For instance, when we think of the “digital divide” we assume that access to a computer or broadband or a mobile phone will suddenly provide access to “information”, “power”, “freedom” in a wholesome, unadulterated manner. Yet a mobile phone may now enable a polygamous husband to take more wives (and sometimes in the process divorce his current wife), something that his wife might have otherwise been able to monitor and prevent. Or as the Horst & Miller article points out, a mother may now be unable to restrict phone conversations between her son and her estranged husband, making her worry constantly. Can technology then, enable and indeed underpin certain damaging facets of different cultures? If so, how do designers balance the trade-offs and thus arrive at final design decisions?

[1] The series follows the character Walter White, – a brilliant, over-qualified high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with cancer – who undergoes chemotherapy and decides to begin manufacturing methamphetamine to keep his family financially sound.

[2] Here is the link to the Economist article that has Colao’s quote. http://www.economist.com/node/15172850

Earlier this year, the OLPC organization deployed instruction-less boxes of tablets to remote Ethiopian villages in an experimental attempt to see if illiterate children with no access to schooling or previous exposure to written words can learn to read on their own. Promising early observations show that kids are heavily engaged with the training software preinstalled on the machines, and within weeks they were able to spell words and recite songs. Within several months, kids were able to ‘hack’ the settings of the devices to personalize their desktop. “The fact they worked around it was clearly the kind of creativity, the kind of inquiry, the kind of discovery that we think is essential to learning,” said McNierney, OLPC’s CTO.

The idea of dropping off devices in rural villages outside the context of schools is a new and interesting paradigm that aims to bridge the digital divide of more than 100 million kids around the world who don’t have access to schools. Furthermore, this project has given rise to the optimistic notion that if digitally debilitated populations in rural areas of the developing world can adopt ICTs in a practical way, then this may reduce the socio-economic inequality gap of people in that area.

Although these observations are encouraging, it is still too early to claim that children can learn to read – and eventually teach themselves – through ICTs alone and without a formal structure of education that is mediated by teachers in classrooms. Furthermore, the attempt to bridge the digital divide lacks planning for sustainability factors such as: training, maintenance, and design to the local context. Also, it does not address how replacing the human component of teaching will affect the quality of education and sparseness of knowledge.

The experiment does not consider the criticality of training and maintenance work in environments where tablets or other ICT systems would be widely diffused requires activities not originally outlined in the OLPC Ethiopian project. In order to sustain and adapt ICTD systems over time, the design of a maintenance infrastructure should be central to the onset plan. Unfortunately, in many organizations this thought is secondary. “We study how communities embrace or adapt to new technologies, but less often how they organize to sustain, manage, repurpose, or simply live with what they have” (Jackson 274).

Their approach at evaluation speaks to a hard technological deterministic approach by failing to fully consider the social context where the tablets are used.  The potential for adoption is framed only in the view of the children’s participation and interests.  As Bijker shows from his research on the telephone, the diffusion and adoption of technology is influenced by its relevance to the different social groups affected by that technology (Bijker 1995).  There is no consideration for how the machines and what they are imparting to the children may affect the family or community dynamic.  This lessens the risk for successful adoption.  It also assumes the students themselves are one homogenous social group.   The “consequences of technology are the ends that users seek”, so to understand those consequences you must understand the user (Fischer 1992).  Users will adopt technology if they can use it to “pursue their characteristic ways of life” (Fischer 1992).  Has the software been tailored to not only provide applicable information for the student’s way of life?  Is it engaging them in a way that is sensitive to how they interpret the world?   A one size fits all product that does not reflect the ability to attain goals possible in their local society will surely fail to obtain acceptance after the initial novelty wears off.

The idea that technology can replace teachers seems naive and idealistic. “There are no technology shortcuts to good education. In a region that lacks or has limited educational resources and no or underperforming teachers, efforts to improve education should focus almost exclusively on better teachers and stronger administrations. IT, if used at all, should be targeted for certain, specific uses…” (Toyama 2011)

Technology may not be able to comprehend a person’s unique characteristic in the same way a human being can.  Therefore, it would not be able to properly analyze and determine what works for a particular student or how different some students learn. This is known as the social-technical gap and so far has proven very difficult to close.  It is quite audacious to consider a technological approach to education without teachers to help mitigate that gap. Teachers have something that computers never will: the ability to use compassion in their lessons. Teachers are also in a position to provide more comprehensive feedback to students which is critical for academic success.

Toyama discusses how technology can only supplement and enrich people-led education. Technology’s benefit to students depends on how committed teachers are to designing education approaches that take full advantage of laptops as well as the children’s need for ongoing guidance, encouragement, and their motivation to stay connected.

The approach by OLPC attributes too much agency to technology and ignores the social context that so heavily determines why and how a technology will be adopted.  To truly work towards closing the digital divide, the focus should be more about the quality of access than equality in access.

Citations:

Toyama, Kentaro. “There are no technology shortcuts to good education.”Educational Technology Debate, infoDev-UNESCO. Retrieved from http://edutechdebate. org/ict-in-schools/there-are-no-technology-shortcuts-to-good-education (2011).

Jackson, Steven J., Alex Pompe, and Gabriel Krieshok. “Repair worlds: maintenance, repair, and ICT for development in rural Namibia.” Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. ACM, 2012.

Bijker, W. (1995) “King of the Road: The Social Construction of the Safety Bicycle” In W. Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelites and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Fischer, C. (1992). America Calling: a social history of the telephone to 1940. Berkeley: University of California Press.

http://mashable.com/2012/10/29/tablets-ethiopian-children/

The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration popularized the term “digital divide” to describe the disparity in access to technology between the rich and the poor. (Warschauer, 2003) In her article, Hargittai argues that the “digital divide” has evolved into “digital inequality” that must consider “different aspects of the divide, focusing on such details as quality of equipment, autonomy of use, the presence of social support networks” and “experience and user skills.”  Hargittai suggests that it is this combination of things that propels some into a group of ICT “haves” and relegates others to a group of ICT “have-nots.”  The challenge with a gap determined by a complex collection of skills and experiences is that those at the bottom fall further and further behind, leading to “an increased gap among groups over time.” (Hargittai, p. 938)

Online job searches provides an interesting example of how technological progress can actually highlight challenges for those on the lower end of the gap.

There is an assumption that the shift of employment classifieds from print to online spaces makes it easier for the unemployed to find opportunities. (Lucas, 2012) However,  a recent report cites 28% of Americans are not online and low levels of digital literacy are starting to emerge as a major barrier to employment for some (US Dept of Commerce, 2011). Sharon Moore is one of many examples of someone whose lack of digital literacy got in the way of finding a good job.

Aiming to find a job that could offer reasonable stability and benefits, Sharon attempted to apply online for a state job. After starting the 26-page online application, the system timed her out and requested her to start over. She did not and described the experience as ‘daunting’ (Solman, 2012). Not only was Sharon required to provide an extensive amount of information online, she was required to do so at a certain pace. Sharon was shut out of a stable job opportunity, due in no small part to her digital illiteracy. It’s not just hard to get a job anymore. Online job recruitment systems have actually made it even more difficult for those with low digital literacy to simply get to the starting point to be considered for jobs at all.

The trouble with the digital divide, as Hargittai notes, is that while those on the low end of the gap see minimal increases year-over-year, those on the high end of the gap see accelerating returns (Hargittai, p. 938).  This widening inequality is apparent when contrasting the story of Sharon and her challenges to the high availability of training opportunities at top tier technology firms.  Judd Antin, for example, noted that he spent his early weeks at Facebook participating in a coding bootcamp that helped him strengthen his programming skills and learn more about Facebook’s technology stack.  While loosely relevant to his actual job, the experience was more about helping Judd (and Facebook employees at large) continue to build breadth and depth in areas of importance to the company. The value of this institutional support is significant, as Hargittai points out: “When faced with a difficulty, it makes a difference to have access to knowledgeable networks that help in finding a solution.” (Hargittai, p. 940) Such programs serve to further accelerate the sophistication of high end ICT users and stretch the gap between the haves and have-nots.

Addressing digital inequalities is a shared burden that requires contribution and collaboration from many sectors.  The good news is that programs to help transfer skills from those in technologically privileged positions to those lacking access, training or support have begun to emerge.  The national non-profit YearUp^[1] provides an interesting example of how those at the top of the gap can help those seeking to escape the bottom. YearUp provides a year of technology training to high-performing students from underserved areas directly after high school graduation that prepares them for internships and jobs at sponsoring corporations.  Corporations such as Salesforce, Google and PayPal help finance the program and, in turn, have direct access to a new source of students capable of filling ICT-focused roles upon graduation.  Once those students are placed, they can then take advantage of communities and training in these technology companies to further accelerate their growth.

YearUp’s model has succeeded for urban youth, but also demonstrates the complexity of digital inequality.  Sharon, who has divergent needs and is in a different employment stage, may require alternative solutions to accelerate her digital education.  It’s clear that digital inequality is an emerging problem that needs continued thought and attention. In particular, the evidence suggests these digital inequalities must be considered as an important dimension of larger social inequalities.

References

[1] Hargittai, Eszter. 2008. “The Digital Reproduction of Inequality.” Pp. 936–944 in Social Stratification, edited by David Grusky. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

[2] Robinson, Laura. 2009. “A Taste for the Necessary.” Information, Communication & Society 12(4):488–507.

[3] Warschauer, M. (2003). Demystifying the digital divide. Scientific American, 289, p. 42-47.

[4] Lucas, How Online Job Searches Worsen the Job Crisis. CBS Money Watch (October 8, 2012)

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-57527660/how-online-job-searches-worsen-the-job-crisis/

 [5] US Department of Commerce, Fact Sheet: Digital Literacy (May 13, 2011)

http://www.commerce.gov/news/fact-sheets/2011/05/13/fact-sheet-digital-literacy

[6] Solman, Is Applying for Jobs Online Not an Effective Way to Find Work?  (Sept 25, 2012)

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec12/makingsense_09-25.html

On Monday, March 25, the gay rights organization the Human Rights Campaign launched its campaign  to get people to change their social media profile pictures on to a pink and red version of their equal-sign logo, to show support for marriage equality. Within two days (according to the New Yorker), more than a million people were sporting the logo on their pages. This issue is the latest to be represented on social media by a change in profile picture: other examples include in Twitter users posting green icons to show solidarity with protesters in Iran in 2009 (http://helpiranelection.com/); late last year people used black dot icons to speak out against sexual violence in India and show support for the victim of a Delhi gang rape that made global news.

Changing your profile picture is for many people an easy way of making a political statement. But what does it mean to change your profile picture—and can it even be said to mean any single thing? Related to this, is it a meaningful political act?

On the first question, the answer seems to be an obvious “no.” Changes to profile pictures are undertaken for a variety of reasons and are understood by viewers in a highly contextual manner, dependent on the person viewing the image, specifically their relationship with and interpersonal knowledge of the poster.  An informal, convenience-sampled poll taken on (where else?) Facebook revealed almost as many interpretations as respondents. Selected responses: “I notice it and think, ‘Huh…good for them.’” “If the person is not already an outspoken individual who talks regularly about whatever political cause they change their profile pic to I assume they are lazy and riding the cause train du jour.” “I assume the pic means they want to throw support. Doesn’t mean they would actually go to bat for the cause or, you know, actually WORK for justice or liberation. Cause that would mean changing your life, not your profile picture.” “even if they aren’t actively involved in the issues, it’s still nice to see allies.” (Page not available for linking because of privacy settings.)

Conversely, some people who are very involved in a cause choose not to change their pictures: “I post about political things all the time and figure if you read my feed you’ll know what I’m passionate about, so I have not changed my profile pic for that reason.” With respect to the HRC logo in particular, many supporters of marriage equality are nonetheless reluctant to support actions visibly tied to HRC, citing their focus on the most privileged sectors of queer communities and ongoing marginalization of transgender people in the struggle for LGBTQ civil rights.

Significant disagreement exists on the second question: Is a social media gesture such as changing your profile picture a meaningful political act?

The case for yes

Changing a profile picture is quicker and easier than writing a petition or holding a physical protest and therefore, provides an opportunity for those who lack time to participate and engage in other ways. It may be small, but it nonetheless is participation in what  David Karpf describes as “the organizational layer of politics” (The MoveOn Effect,  p. 10), which plays an intermediary role between government elites and mass publics in defining civic beliefs and citizenship deals. Even though it is a small action and might be an initial step for someone that may not have been comfortable voicing their support, it lets motivated citizens increase their political voice and show their support to the cause. Like many other forms of online activism, this profile-picture activism also helps to diffuse information easily and brings awareness to a large population in a small period of time. The recent film Kony 2012, made by the nonprofit organization Invisible Children, which garnered tremendous attention from being widely shared on Facebook and Twitter, is an evidence  to this phenomena. A poll by The Guardian suggested that more than half of young adult Americans heard about Kony 2012 in the days following the video’s release.

Cindy Leonard, writing on the blog of the Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management, argues that social media gestures help in creating continuum of activism, i.e., from a passive activism of changing profile picture to an active form of organising offline political campaigns and work for a larger political change. Kony 2012 is an evidence of this continuum;  it sparked many offline campaigns and rallies in Washington causing several leaders from international institutions and the affected region come together and talk about what they can do do to stop Joseph Kony and his rebel army. On March 21, 2012, a resolution condemning Joseph Kony and his ruthless guerrilla group for a 26-year campaign of terror was put forward by US Senators Jim Inhofe and Chris Coons. Many supporters of the resolution credit the film and its popularity for bringing the issue to their attention.

The case for no

Social media initiatives do play a role in the diffusion of information. However, they do so and create news for only those who depend on social media websites for this information. But if we take a step back and look at the big picture, do people who really care for such causes depend on Facebook for gathering first-hand information?

This quote by Malcolm Gladwell in the 2010 New Yorker article succinctly summarizes the argument against social media gestures as effective political action: “Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice.” Although it could be the first step for a person, otherwise shy or unaware, to stand up for such a cause, the chances for this person participating in an act that creates larger social impact seem to be very slim. As Evgeny Morozov points out in “The Net Delusion,” commentators who dubbed Iran’s 2009 protest “the Twitter Revolution” were vastly overstating Twitter’s effect (p. 1-4).

Online activism that works must be substantial and related to the online realm: SOPA received severe online criticism to the extent that companies like Google, Boing Boing and Wikipedia shut their services down for a few hours. Although it did have an effect on three Senators who changed their position, it worked because it was backed by technology organizations for a cause predominantly in the internet domain—and they took the very serious action of taking their services offline, which is much more than a gesture. There are tasks that indeed cannot be accomplished in a pre-Internet age. There are certain powers and affordances that the Internet carries. However, the error in judgement that most people make, in cases where “high-risk” activism is warranted is when they perceive the Internet as an alternative to getting to the streets and protesting. All our energy should be spent on online activism if and only if it is the sole powerful means of doing so.

Coming back to the case in point, on March 30, 2013, Facebook reportedly saw a 120% increase in profile picture swaps compared to an average day in support of the viral Human Rights Campaign support to marriage equality. Although the mass changing of the profile picture may represent nationwide support to the cause, in the end, it seems highly unlikely as something the judges ruling the decision would use at all. Would a gay legal advocate like Mary Bonauto spend a decade plotting a careful strategy to advance gay marriage rights if she knew she could have just changed her Facebook profile picture today? In this Facebook era, it has become very important to see the distinction between hard work activism wherein there is a physical and mental investment of energy as opposed to one-click activism which renders nothing but only a false sense of pride and contentment.

In conclusion

Commentators and participants will likely continue to disagree about the effectiveness of social media gestures as political acts. One recent article noted that some senators are choosing Facebook and Tumblr as venues to announce their newfound support of gay marriages—and at least one has changed his profile picture to the red equals sign. Though the number of profile picture changes cannot be taken for changing a Supreme Court’s decision, it at least helps to amplify the revolution to the point so as to enter the mainstream consciousness. But is believing in this tactic a prime example of the Google Doctrine, ““the enthusiastic belief in the liberating power of technology accompanied by the irresistible urge to enlist Silicon Valley startups in the global fight for freedom” (The Net Delusion, p. xiii)?

Sources:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/03/painting-the-internet-pink.html

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-12-21/chandigarh/35952817_1_delhi-gangrape-city-student-dot

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/derrick-clifton/human-rights-campaign-same-sex-marriage_b_2973131.html

http://amaditalks.tumblr.com/post/46808360700/why-i-almost-defriended-everyone-who-had-an-hrc-logo-as

http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/04/hrc-you-still-have-problem.html

http://invisiblechildren.com/kony/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/apr/20/kony-2012-facts-numbers?newsfeed=true

http://bayercenter.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/in-defense-of-slacktivism/

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74355.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/us/maine-lawyer-credited-in-fight-for-gay-marriage.html?ref=californiasproposition8samesexmarriage

http://mashable.com/2013/03/26/senators-gay-marriage-facebook-tumblr/

In Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue, Benkler and Nissenbaum note how the internet has given birth to an era of decentralized collaboration “among large groups of individuals, sometimes in the order of tens or even hundreds of thousands.” These groups cooperate effectively to, “provide information, knowledge, or cultural goods.” In this blog entry, we briefly examine four case studies of peer production: 1) Mechanical Turk 2) Wikipedia 3) HealthTap 4) Khan Academy. We found it useful to conceptualize these collaborative communities along two axes: 1) the nature of the work and 2) motivation of the contributors. Drawing from Haythornwaite, we distinguish the nature of the work as “Lightweight” vs. “Heavyweight”; we characterize the motivation of contributors as market-driven vs. other more nuanced social/individual motivators. (1)

Amazon Mechanical Turk more or less defines Haythornwaite’s concept of “Lightweight” peer production. Turkers are relatively anonymous and independent contributors supporting the goals of a project organizer. The work of Turkers is highly modularized, and the job of coordination and delegation is at the level of the project organizer. Essentially, Turkers are not much more than ‘cogs in the wheel’. Their work is usually limited to tasks that slightly outstrip the ability of a computer, such as recognizing pornographic images.

In terms of the motivation, it is clear that Turkers are mostly market-driven actors. Turkers do not seem to care much whether they are adding contributing to overall societal welfare–so long as they are getting paid. Panos Ipeirotis, an NYU professor, noted as many as 40% of delegated tasks on MTurk are to help generate spam that can stay one step ahead of major mail client spam monitors (2)

Wikipedia, in contrast to MTurk, largely defines Haythornwaite’s concept of “Heavyweight” peer production.There is no centralized delegating authority on Wikipedia. Rather, nothing happens without consensus. In addition, its contributors must possess a great level of domain knowledge, procedural knowledge, and expertise in order to contribute effectively. Further, Wikipedians spend relatively greater amounts of time and energy to create their product than people on MTurk.

Wikipedians volunteer their time and knowledge for no direct monetary reward, so their reasons for contributing must necessarily be rooted in other, more nuanced motivations. The paper “What motivates Wikipedians?” lists several motivations that Wikipedians may have: Protective (eg. “By writing/editing in Wikipedia I feel less lonely.”),  Values (eg. “I feel it is important to help others.”), Social (eg. “People I’m close to want me to write/edit in Wikipedia.”), Understanding (eg. “Writing/editing in Wikipedia allows me to gain a new perspective on things.”), Enhancement (eg. “Writing/editing in Wikipedia makes me feel needed.”), Fun (eg. “Writing/editing in Wikipedia is fun.”), Ideology (eg. “I think information should be free.”) (3)

Healthtap is a peer produced source of medical information authored by doctors. Doctors publicly author articles and vote for consensus on articles relating to their area of medical expertise (4).  Like Wikipedia, the nature of the work is inherently heavyweight. Consensus is crucial, as misinformation is literally a matter of life and death. However, Healthap is lightweight insofar as its questions are modularized to the extent that they can be answered by a single doctor.

Like Wikipedia, doctors are not paid for their contributions. Yet unlike Wikipedia, it is not anonymous. Granted, Wikipedia is not completely anonymous either, but contributor identities are not mapped to their real identities. Therefore, the consequences for bungling one’s job on Wikipedia do not neccesarily translate to one’s livelihood in real life.  If a doctor errs on HealthTap, it can directly harm the doctor’s real life reputation. This hints at one of the reasons for doctors to contribute to HealthTap; doctors gain (or lose) reputation on the site, which translates into real world reputation and can help potential patients discover (or avoid) their practice.

Khan Academy (KA) is best known as an online educational platform. (5) Often overlooked is the fact that its mathematical exercises are the result of a peer production process. (6) Creating exercises is a unique combination of heavy and light weight peer production. On the one hand, work is delegated to contributors by an authoritative body that identifies exercises that are needed or requested by KA users. This type of workflow is characteristic of lightweight peer production, similar to that of MTurk.

At the same time, KA contributors must possess a high level of skill to successfully contribute to the site. KA contributors are not simply sorting through porn or writing spam messages. Rather, their work demands multi-faceted domain knowledge that is more characteristic of heavyweight peer production like one would find on Wikipedia. KA contributors must learn the programming framework used by KA to build exercises. And on top of that, they must also possess significant subject matter expertise and pedagogical know-how to create questions that possess pedagogical value.

In terms of motivation, KA contributors align more closely to the wikipedia model. That said, some contributors are motivated by contribution visibility. Interestingly, KA runs its exercise creation process via Github. Thus, even as contributors commit to KA’s repository, they also increase their activity visibility on Github as a whole. In the tech sector, a person’s Github activity is often used to signal technical skill. (7) Thus, some KA contributors might be taking the long view hoping to pad their resume in the hopes of eventually landing a job. With that said, it is certainly arguable that KA users are more socially minded than their spam-producing Turker counterparts.

These four examples illustrate how different types of peer production–lightweight and heavyweight–draw contributors across a spectrum of motives. The interaction between the nature of the work and the motivation of contributors creates fascinating dynamics in each instance. Any one of them merits further study, which may be helpful to keep in mind as we continue to work on our final papers.

(1) Haythornthwaite, C. (2009) Crowds and Communities: Light and Heavyweight Models of Peer Production. In Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society.

(2) http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2010/12/mechanical-turk-now-with-4092-spam.html

(3) “What Motivates Wikipedians?” http://pensivepuffin.com/dwmcphd/syllabi/info447_wi12/readings/wk02-IntroToWikipedia/nov.WikipediaMotivations.CACM.pdf

(4) https://www.healthtap.com/

(5) https://www.khanacademy.org/

(6) https://github.com/Khan/khan-exercises

(7) “Kristinas branch” – https://github.com/Khan/khan-exercises/pull/43449