The first part of my research is about understanding how people are talking politics right now. This will require a combination of examining existing artifacts—Twitter streams and the archived posts from two WebLab forums—and a inquiry built around new conversations. This summary will detail the plan for the conversation experiment.

Some inspirational music from Leonard Cohen: “Democracy“

“Lunch With Other” Experiment

Inspired by an activity suggested by Elizabeth Lesser—in which two polar opposites sit down over a public lunch with the intent of being curious, conversational, and authentic—I propose to explore the strategies and language used when two people engage in a discussion. This experiment will include four parts: a screening survey, a series of 1:1 conversations, pre- and post-conversation mood assessment, and follow-up interviews with participants.

Screening Survey

There are two key reasons for this initial survey. First, I can include a much larger participant group (in theory) than I’ll be working with during the later stages of this inquiry. This may permit some generalizations I won’t be able to get through the conversations I’ll analyze. Second, this serves as my primary means of slotting respondents into pair-able conversations.

The survey will include questions about:

• Self-declared affinity to political labels (e.g., “Conservative”)
• Indication of support for specific political issues (e.g., “How much do you support expansion of I-69?”)
• A short description of current personal politics
• A short description of a key political influence leading to current political philosophy

Since this initial survey is meant to help filter respondents for inclusion in the later stages, the questions here will have to reflect the dimensions being examined in those conversations (see below).

Recruiting for participation in this project will likely target local online forums (MoB Talk, Bloomington Online, local Twitter, and possibly the Herald-Times online comments) to focus on accessible participants who can easily be observed and interviewed. Because one key dimension for this work will be the effect of computer mediation, recruitment outside of Indiana is important, too. General social media, established political forums, and blog posts will spread interest in this initial survey across a wider demographic.

1:1 Conversations

From the participant group from the initial survey, a few dozen people will be invited to join the second phase of this study. Selection will specifically look for pairs of people showing polarized ideology and support of single issues. This will filter out moderate politics to allow me to focus on extremes during the conversations.

There are a number of possible dimensions to explore with each pairing:

• Affinity to ideological labels (liberal, moderate, conservative)
• Spectrum of support for a single issue
• Scope of single issues (local, regional, national, global)
• Age of participants (18-29, 30-44, 45-64, 65+)
• Locality (Indiana, Not Indiana)
• Mediation of discourse (face-to-face or computer mediated)
• Prior knowledge of Other’s affinity (i.e., does a liberal know she is talking to a conservative?)
• Deception (i.e., misinform people about the other person’s ideology)
• Purpose of the conversation (political issue, non-political topic, seeking understanding)
• Preparatory information (i.e., talk around a particular news article)

My initial strategy will look to capture information about eight kinds of conversations across three key variants: ideology, mediation, and purpose.

Each participant in this phase of the study will be asked to have four conversations over a span of a few weeks. In two of the conversations, they will be matched with someone considered a polar opposite, by virtue of ideology and perhaps other factors, such as stance on a key issue or age. In the other two conversations, they will talk with someone who is similar. Their conversations will either be primed—we’ll provide some article to discuss and ask them to match a picture with their presumed ideology and stance on the issue—or the pair will be simply asked to get to know one another. Future iterations of this study could delve further the nuances of presumption and the nature of the task.

The start of each paired session will be recorded, with a transcript used for content analysis. Conversations can last longer—I want to allow them to reach comfortable closure—but I’m most interested in comparing the first thirty minutes of discourse. For those in primed conversations, an article about the topic of conversation will be sent to them in advance.

Mood Assessment

Due to the desire to assess mood and preserve as pristine the initial stages of discourse, participants will be separated prior to their conversation. As part of the paired conversations, a short survey will be administered to each participant—at the start and immediately following the discussion—to gauge each person’s mood and the perceived mood of their partner. Mood will be determined by selecting among eight faces, arranged in a circle, representing possible expressions and avoiding issues with semantic interpretation of terminology.

Those in primed conversations will also be asked to select from four possible descriptions of the politics of their partner, guessing which one is accurate. The options will derive from the mix of ideology and support of the single issue being discussed. This will be repeated at the conclusion of the conversation as well.

Follow-up Interviews

After the conversation and survey data has been analyzed, specific participants may be invited to individual or group interviews to explain their strategic decisions during the discussions and provide more insight into their own political philosophies and activities. The purpose of this part of the inquiry would be to clarify and deepen the understanding of key findings from the previous data.

Expectations

The findings from the survey will be most useful in trying to answer three important questions:

1. How strongly are single issues aligned with political labels?—My assumption is that, in our current political landscape, positions are defined by the affinity to a label, rather than contributing to a flexible definition of that label (e.g., conservatives oppose gun control).
2. What common influences lead to shared political views?—I expect to find some words, ideas and experiences expressed by participants will show strong associations with descriptions of one’s personal politics. This also includes finding links between political descriptions and labels.

I would love to add a third question, looking at potential shifts between political background and current politics, but I think that is a rabbit hole better answered by existing research that points to family as a key factor in social learning. That said, I do expect to find some examples of a negative experience leading to a political shift.

Analysis of the conversations will look for differences in the eight types of conversations (primed and not primed, similar and different ideologies, face-2-face and computer mediation) to see if any conclusions can be made about the effect these dimensions have on discourse. In particular, I’m asking:

1. What distinguishes polarized from kindred discourse?—I expect to see more aggressive and defensive language, a quicker declaration of position, and less willingness to change in discussions between polarized individuals than kindred ones.
2. What distinguishes computer-mediate discourse from face-to-face conversation?—My hypothesis is that the mediation has much less impact on political discourse strategies and language than polarized participants, but people will prove to be bolder and more task-oriented through the computer than in person.
3. What impact does focused purpose have on political discourse?—The conversations that prepare by reading a specific article to act as a catalyst for their exchange will be less diverse in the topics they discuss and less empathic in how they converse.
4. How is discourse affected by knowing the politics of your partner?—If polarization is the dominant factor, then being accurate in guessing the ideology and single-issue position of the other person will not dictate discourse strategy as much as which politics you assign. I expect that the conversations that aren’t primed will be more exploratory and adaptive than those where the participants are asked to assign a political view to their partners.

At this level, the expectations for polarized discourse will be tempered with the awkwardness of personal exchange between two strangers. The characteristics of the exchange won’t rise to the level of systemic polarization, as described by conflict theorists Dean Pruitt and Jeffrey Rubin. However, I expect that some of the seeds of systemic conflict will be observable, such as increased sarcasm, more generalizations, and diversity of tactics to prolong engagement.

The end outcome of this inquiry will be the ability to articulate some of the dynamics of political discourse, as they relate to the political labels, advance preparation, and relational language. Understanding these factors may help guide development of a framework for the design and critique of political forums.

TED launched a new forum to help spread ideas

The new social media craze is Q&A. Quora, launched in 2009 and opened to the public last summer, is collection of questions and answers created and managed by its community. It joined a field that already included Yahoo Answers and Answers.com. Although TED Questions isn’t quite the same structure, it will overlap the knowledge management domain by trying to become an online authority for specific topics.

My impression of Quora is poor, partly because of the expectations I had going in to my first use. According to a report from Experian Hitwise, the people who have flocked to the site are college-educated or ready-to-graduate young professionals. While any early community is going to be dominated by a particular demographic as it grows, Quora gives off a needy job search kind of vibe. My rejection of the service, though, comes from not allowing its use to grow organically. Rather than being an open community of Q&A, Quora is heavily moderated to accept only certain kinds of questions (e.g., no survey inquiries).

Presumably, TED Questions is also curated from above—much like the TED and TEDx events themselves—by virtue of the video archives that will be catalysts for discussion. It remains to be seen if, like Quora, the site will remove posts over wording. Conversations will take three forms (Questions, Ideas, and Debates) and have the option to be tied to up to 10 video talks. The posts will also include an important setting. As TED describes its service:

We believe that conversations, like talks, benefit from time constraints. So just as TEDTalks are limited to 18 minutes or less, TED Conversations are set to last one day, one week or one month. When you start a conversation, you also decide when it will end; afterward, you can summarize the discussion with a closing statement.

This is key. Ad-hoc communities who come together knowing when they will disperse are more likely to be meaningfully engaged while they are together. This was definitely true for Web Lab’s Small Group Dialogue forums a decade ago.

Since each discussion includes participation by the thought leaders who have taken the stage, there is a level of expertise around each topic that is enticing. That can be a double-edged sword. As with Quora’s high-profile question-askers, access to someone like game designer Jane McGonigal is a big draw to get participants involved. If the resulting conversation evolves into an online press conference—with people deferring to the expert—it becomes less valuable as a discussion forum than as a supplement to the video talks.

The timing of this works out well for our local TED initiative. Bloomington will host a series of TEDx talks on May 14, 2011 around the theme of “Wisdom of Play.” (Apply to attend the main event at Buskirk-Chumley.) The lineup features a mix of locals and national speakers, many with ties to Bloomington and Indiana University. We will also be running events around the mainstage conversation, including some simulcast sites that Saturday and an unconference activity—”Playing With Wisdom”—on Sunday, to process the content in the previous day’s talks. With TED Questions, there is a potential to better connect our event with the rest of the TED community and give people a destination for continuing conversation.

One of the side-effects of a recurring competition, however, is rivalry. For the past two years, in particular, the feel of the final round presentations and aftermath has shifted. The focus on “winning” something fosters behavior (killer on-site work sessions, project comparisons) that seem more destructive than constructive. I speak from experience on this, having successfully participated in this track in 2005.

Last week, I wrote to the co-chairs for the SDC—Mike Glaser (Drexel University) and Stephen Brewster (University of Glasgow)—to ask them to consider a couple small but critical changes to the format. I was idealistic enough to send it, but practical enough to realize it doesn’t stand much chance of changing the 2010 event. However, I thought the ideas were worth posting, perhaps for some discussion leading up to reforms for 2011.

What About Winning?
There is no doubt that winning the SDC had some positive effect. It opened some doors for our team, including enhanced stature in our program. More importantly, it validated the insane amount of work we put into the project after it was accepted to CHI. We even overcame a faulty projector and answered some tough questions to sell our fringe interpretation of the design challenge.

However, the more final sessions I see, the less important that victory becomes. The process is somewhat arbitrary, and the evaluation format changes as frequently as the judges. The more experienced I become, the easier it is to see holes in everyone’s designs that make it difficult to truly rate one above all others. Four years later, I feel more lucky than good.

The big question is, what is to be gained by ranking the top projects in some order? I’m arguing: “Nothing.”

A Chance to Experience
The beauty of this event is the opportunity for students to be challenged with a real-world problem and apply their developing skills to address it. It is framed as a competition to make it attractive for entrants, but competing is not the main value. By participating, students get a taste of academic publication, poster talks, and (if fortunate enough to advance) a chance to present in a CHI session. This is great sample experience of what successful academics strive to do.

What is unrealistic—and as it is turning out, counterproductive—is the ranked judging of the presentations, something that wouldn’t occur in later professional work in industry or academia. I believe the competition would generate a significantly more constructive atmosphere with two simple changes:

1. Eliminate the project judging and ranked order of the final presentations.
2. Replace one of the final four team presentations with an open panel to discuss the design challenge.

These changes should have three important effects.

First, the focus of the presentations moves from strategies for “winning” to ones built for innovation and sharing. Full paper presenters do this when approaching their long talks. This shift also takes the pressure off of inexperienced speakers. Most of our finalists (myself included) spent a good chunk of their time at CHI iterating and practicing their talk, sacrificing the normal activities of the conference, such as attending sessions. That may be the wrong way to make use of an expensive week of professional networking.

Second, eliminating ranking will de-emphasizes the specifics of “a” solution and finds strengths in many solutions. The final panel can mix professional experience (judges) with practical experience (students who did the work) and allow us collectively to learn from each other.

Finally, the changes allow the session to be more about community. Even those teams not selected to present would be able to contribute to a discussion about their experiences and process. The discussion that arises from the panel Q&A would certainly focus on interpretation of the design challenge and the methodology to support it, rather than the strengths and weaknesses of a few select concepts. The final beat will be about collaboration and shared experiences, not celebration and sour grapes.

If a ranked order is mandated for reasons I cannot see, then allow it to occur when the presenters are announced after the poster session, based on the paper, visuals and oral defense of each project. If awards are necessary at all, perhaps they could mimic those of the full CHI conference (best paper, best poster) and leave presentation out of consideration.

I would love to see the SDC feature three teams selected to present a range of high-quality solutions to stimulate discussion. Then, everyone wins.

We offer a look at some recent studies on use of the Internet by kids as well as a personal inventory of how techie our own boys have become.

Carter has a Facebook Profile

Children are at the vanguard
In an article on how parents monitor their kids’ use of social networks, author Mike Sachoff reports that one in four pre-teens are already account holders on MySpace, Facebook or Bebo. The lower limit for membership in those social networks is 13 or 14 years old.

Last June, Garlik—an online identity manager based in the UK who is also responsible for the QDOS identity ranking—commissioned the teen virtual world Dubit to survey 1000 UK children between ages 8 and 15. They supplemented this survey information with market research from 1030 UK parents. According to the findings, there are 750,000 underage members of the three large social networks, or about 23% of all UK children in that age range.

“Children are at the vanguard of the social networking phenomenon, using sites such as Facebook and Bebo in the same way other generations used the telephone.”
Tom Ilube, Garlik CEO

Their caretakers responded to that behavior. About a quarter of parents secretly log into their kid’s account to check online activity. A similar percentage admit to creating a second account for the purpose of spying on their children. Other findings from the commercial study include:

• 58% of parents claim they are more diligent now than they were a year ago
• 89% of parents have talked with their kids about the dangers posed by social networking sites
• Two-thirds of kids post personal information on their profile page, including current school and cell phone number
• 26% of kids aged 8-15 have strangers as friends
• 20% of kids have met strangers they previously only knew online

The Pew Internet and American Life project offers an additional longitudinal perspective on the growth of young kids online, as well as how parents participate in that exploration. A report released in April 2007 showed 55% of teens had a profile page and two-thirds of them restricted access to their information in some way. While the Garlik findings probably need better context to avoid coming off as fear mongering, safety is just one of the issues parent currently face raising kids in the Age of Web 2.0. Academic fraud, consumerism and cyberbullying are other areas of concern that confront parents as their introduce the next generation to technology.

Any dystopian fears about exposing kids to tech are countered by the more optimistic focus on benefits. Our (Western) world is so immersed in computers and mobile devices that not having early access to the Internet and Wiimotes may disadvantage children later in life. The creative and expressive tools available through computer, the ease of exploration, and the extended communities formed around niche topics of interest can help overcome limited resources or restricted educational policies in local schools.

An inventory of our kids’ technology
Our sons have a computer—a hand-me-down that only recently gave our eight-year-old Internet access. It sits in the main room of our house, in between the kitchen and Amy’s computer. The screens are visible, and we try to make consumption of the Web a social activity.

We have encountered two notable obstacles in this setup. The first is volume. Carter spends a lot of time on the Bionicle site, which features many movies with background music. He likes it loud. Our parents, regrettably speaking through us, don’t. Out come the earbuds, which addresses the noise but brings up a new issue of connectedness and shared experience.

The second obstacle is clicking on links. Many kids sites are self-contained webs within a larger web, with many clear warnings when you are about to leave the protection of their site. Facebook, YouTube and pretty much anything with site advertising offers no such indicators. We discuss the things he sees and explain our concerns, urging him not to explore YouTube on his own. At the same time, we want to demonstrate the freedom the Internet currently provides and how to discriminate between degrees of truth in its content.

Some precautions are taken. I do have to shield some of the YouTube content I might enjoy from the boys’ eyes and (mostly) ears while working from the living room couch. After a late-night screening when it was first released, however, the family enjoyed multiple viewings of Dr. Horrible. Carter and Amy play PackRat, and Archie loves watching Carter build things on Scratch and the LEGO Digital Designer.

Carter has accounts on a few social networks. We set them up, with a little guidance from him, and restricted who can view them. I am a big proponent of transparency and the ability for sharing to enhance your life, so use of these tools is encouraged. I am less comfortable gambling my son’s identity on emerging properties of an open system. A balance needs to be struck. He is currently working on creating a blog, and we have turned YouTube into a personal gallery for family projects.

After almost two decades of avoiding computer games, we are back in the mainstream with a Wii and plans to add Spore in the fall. I became sold on the Wii because of (a) it’s use of haptics and natural motion for input, and (b) the social nature of the games. Wiis are the new charades for family game nights. Not all of the games on the Wii have been as social as I would like (ahem, LEGO Star Wars) nor have the collaborative ones all captured the boys’ interest (ahem, Rockband).

Archie likes Wii Fit

Spore offers a different set of benefits. It is soaked in opportunities to educate on evolution, group dynamics, cultural capital, ethics, geology, and communication. Although it isn’t a social game, the stories of the evolution of creatures and the pair-programming style our sons typically employ to play computer games make it a communal activity.

In addition to his year-round campaign for Santa to bring a superpower machine, he is also hoping for his own laptop and cell phone come Christmas time. At age 4, Archie has been exposed to technology earlier than his older brother and has been able to experience its benefits in more meaningful ways because of a peer guide. Like his brother, Archie is practicing to read by selecting shows to watch from the TiVo now showing menu.

What is your philosophy on technology use by children?
We would love to hear your thoughts on when and how to introduce children to technology. If you are a parent, what are your plans and limits for your own kids? For non-parents, what kinds of strategies might you employ to address the issues of early adoption while still reaping the benefits?

Parenting for Humanity will be discussing these issues on their radio show this Thursday, August 14th at noon Eastern. Hosts Amy Makice and Lisa Stroyan invite you to participate in that discussion during the show, or post comments here.