ABSTRACT: In an online experiment, I apply theory from psychology and communications to find out whether group information management tasks are governed by the same communication processes as conversation. This paper describes results that replicate previous research, and expand our knowledge about audience design and packaging for future reuse when communication is mediated by a co-constructed artifact like a file-and-folder hierarchy. Results indicate that it is easier for information consumers to search for files in hierarchies created by information producers who imagine their intended audience to be someone similar to them, independent of whether the producer and consumer actually share common ground. This research helps us better understand packaging choices made by information producers, and the direct implications of those choices for other users of group information systems.

At a recent meeting at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in New York state, Daniel MacArthur from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, United Kingdom, brought into focus how fuzzy the line between journalist and scientist is becoming. In addition to reporting on genetic variation in a gene that is active in fast muscle fibers at The Biology of Genomes meeting, MacArthur wrote several on the spot blog posts covering advances discussed by the participants. Francis Collins also mentioned results on his new Web site.

A specialized Web-based news service, Genomeweb, complained. To attend CSHL meetings, reporters agree to obtain permission from a speaker before writing up any results. But MacArthur didn’t have to click that box when he registered and was free to report without getting any go-ahead. Several other participants were twittering, says CSHL meetings organizer David Stewart. “They weren’t held to the same standards” as the media, says Stewart.

The liveblogger in question, Daniel MacArthur, had this to say about it:

 However, I do want to emphasise the importance in general of conference organisers encouraging direct, crowd-sourced reporting of scientific data through online media. Science benefits from the open communication of data to the broadest possible audience (not only scientists, but also the wider community). Some conferences do benefit from sealing themselves off from the outside world, allowing freer exchange of ideas between participants – but meetings that are interested in increasing the impact of their presentations on the community as a whole would be well-served by actively embracing audience blogging.

It’s worth mentioning here that most of the dangers of live-blogging are (in my mind at least) generally over-stated. For instance, the risk of being scooped due to data posted on the web seems rather far-fetched given that most of the potential scoopers are already sitting in the audience watching the presentation. There is a fear that live-blogging distracts people from watching the seminar; I would argue in response that – given the number of people I see programming or working on their grant submission in genomics meetings – we should be grateful that live-bloggers are actually engaging directly with the material being presented.

I guess I just always figured presentations at conferences were public events, and therefore fair game for whoever wanted to post, tweet, or otherwise write about any data, results, conversations, experiences, etc. they found interesting. I’m not sure if the conferences I attend have a policy similar to that of CHSL, about asking for permission from the presenter before writing about their work. But I kindof doubt it, because the proceedings of these conferences (CHI, CSCW, GROUP, etc.) are considered to be archival publications, rather than preliminary results or works-in-progress. However, the conversations happening at the CSST workshop last week were… well, what? Public? Private? Blog-worthy? Newsworthy? Nobody asked us if we minded our comments being shared widely and “persistantly”. I wouldn’t have expected them to.

the note is titled, “Yours, Mine, and (Not) Ours: Social Influences on Group Information Repositories” and is about some results from my dissertation research. i interviewed users of CTools, a learning management system that also includes support for creating sites for sharing files with a group of people, similar to shared folders. i think the most important finding from this research was the subtle, pervasive and enduring influence that social factors had on the information structure of the CTools sites, despite the perception that such information repositories are for “storage”, and not social systems at all.

also: i’m still on the job market, and looking for a postdoc position, or a permanent position in an industry research organization.

i’ve spent much of the last week rewriting my research statement—or, as i’ve started thinking of it—my manifesto. i have presented my dissertation research several times now, and talked with a bunch of people about it; i feel like my story has become more clear and focused, the more i have talked through it. dissertating can be a very isolating experience, so i guess one thing i’ve learned through all this is even if you’re not quite sure what you’re talking about yet, it *really helps* to get out and tell your story anyway. you’ll be glad you did.

Group information repositories are systems for storing and organizing files in a central location all group members can access. The functionality and capabilities of these systems are essentially the same as the desktop metaphor of personal information management (PIM) systems. Using a case study of a group information repository, I argue that social factors affect the information structure of the repository, and how it grows and evolves over time. Users restrict their activies to files they “own,” are reluctant to delete files that might be useful to others, dislike the clutter that results, and can become demotivated if no one views files they uploaded.

Eric Meyer, Oxford Internet Institute, UK
The Role of e-Infrastructures in the Transformation of Research Practices and Outcomes

Theresa Dirndorfer Anderson, Creative Practices Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney, AUS
Research in action: taking an articulation approach to examine the roles of information technologies and human interaction in academic practice

Frank Lambert School of Library and Information Science, Kent State University
The social shaping of an online community information provider

Emilee Rader School of Information, University of Michigan
Group Information Repositories as Social Systems
[ my submission, and my slides ]

Ying Ding, SLIS, Indiana University
Modeling Social Tagging: Upper Tag Ontology (UTO)

Mike Tyworth, Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology and Steve Sawyer,  IST, Syracuse University
Social Informatics and the Social Analysis of Computing

Kristene Unsworth Information School, University of Washington
Information use, sharing and surveillance: the role of the citizen-informer in the war on terror

Ken Fleischmann College of Information Studies, University of Maryland
Social Analysis of Transparency in Virtual Worlds: Ethical Imperatives for Simulation Design

Inna Kouper, SLIS, Indiana University
The composite model of critical discourse analysis: Examining mutual shaping of people, information, and technology through discourse

Steven Paling, SLIS, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Toward a Theory of Technological Transformation in Artistic Genres

Keynote address: Mark Ackerman, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and School of Information University of Michigan

“For instance, several of our subjects used terms for sexual anatomy to refer successfully to some of the figures. Such messages, in addition to producing correct identifications of their referents, probably lead their recipients to draw inferences about their authors’ personal qualities. The part of these speaker goals, and how they are balanced with the need to be informative, are areas for future work.” (p523)

from  S. R. Fussell and R. M. Krauss (1989). Understanding friends and strangers: The effects of audience design on message comprehension. European Journal of Social Psychology, 19:509–525.

i am happy to report that i am no longer stuck! my experiment design is almost finished. i’ve ended up having to do some crazy complicated counterbalancing in the second half of the experiment. i barely have it straight in my own head, let alone writing it up so that somebody else can follow what i’m trying to do. that’s the next task to tackle! that plus getting my field study rolling and the looming CHI 2009 deadline should keep me sleep deprived at least until Friday…

oh! and my paper was accepted to the 4th Social Informatics SIG Research Symposium at ASIS&T 2008, which will take place on October 25 in Columbus, OH. it will be my first presentation of work that is part of my dissertation. yay!

i’m not sure if it is appropriate to blog about a paper you’ve just submitted to a conference, before reviewers have even had a chance to take a look at it. so, i’ll just say it is about how users choose tags in del.icio.us, and is a revision of the paper we submitted to CHI 2008 that was not accepted. which is just as well, i probably couldn’t have afforded to go to Florence, Italy for the conference anyway! CSCW will be in San Diego in November, and will hopefully be much more affordable.

we spent what felt like an inordinate proportion of our preparation time for this paper speculating on how reviewers might receive it. will they think it is an appropriate contribution for this conference? will they be able to understand our analyses (the evidence to support the claim we’re making)? have we cited all the appropriate people? for the first time ever, i felt like i was writing to the reviewers rather than to the general conference audience. i’m not sure if this means i finally “get it” and this is what all successful academics do, or that i’m still hurting over my last few rejections. perhaps since CSCW is a smaller conference than CHI, the reviewers really are representative of the conference audience.

but here’s a bigger question than “should you write to the reviewers”: is it really a contribution if the topic is appropriate, but the statistics are too complicated for the “average” conference attendee? what about the “average” reviewer? if people do not have the necessary statistical background how are they able to evaluate for themselves whether they believe the evidence presented in support of a paper’s findings? can such a paper be considered to have been “peer reviewed”? how does one judge whether the statistics are “too complicated”? does this mean the author should find a different venue, despite the good topical match with the conference? i guess we’ll find out on july 3rd.

one thing we did this year that i thought was pretty cool was a group of us all submitting to the same conference reviewed each other’s papers. not only did this mean we all got feedback before submitting, we also have been exposed to different types of submissions. of course, volunteering to review papers helps with this too, and i have already volunteered. but since this is a smaller conference than CHI and i’ve never reviewed for it before, they might not pick me. finding out which papers from our “CSCW paper exchange” are accepted will help all of us learn what is appropriate for this particular conference.

anyway. here is the document, including annotations in the margins indicating changes from the last version (yay, latex). off to ASIS&T tomorrow!