Archive for May 15th, 2008

Online Video Discussion and Social Context Cues


Seesmic seems to be gaining more and more ground in the realm of online video discussion these days, and as I mentioned previously I’ve begun to look into these developments with interest. Significantly Seesmic’s entrance to the market is occurring not only on the main site, but through the introduction of video commenting as well.

Through the use of a Wordpress plugin, bloggers and web masters can now avail their readers to video commenting functionality in addition to that of text.  The tool is unobtrusively located beneath the text comment field.  When clicked, the tool spawns, replacing the text field and enabling the commenter to use their web camera to record their comment. When this process is complete their message appears in ascending chronological order along side the text comments.

To my knowledge, TechCrunch was the very first site to capitalise on this innovation, however there seems to be some disagreement on its value, with many people viewing the introduction as at best a flashy ploy for attention, or at worst an addition to the ever-growing sources of information overload.

Initially I fell into the camp of individuals who really didn’t see much value in the development, however over the last few days I’ve begun to question this stance.  Just this morning in fact, during my ongoing reading of  “Opensource: Technology and Policy” I had an epiphany:

Perhaps video commenting can facilitate far more civilised discussions than text commenting - particularly in terms of tempering disagreements.  Let me elaborate on that.

As Deek and McHugh discuss in Open Source (pg. 176 - 177):

“It has long been contended that computer-mediated groups tend to exhibit “more uninhibited behaviour - using strong and inflammatory expressions in interpersonal interaction” (Siegel et al., 1986, p. 157). Sproul and Kiesler (1986) attributed the tendency toward “more extreme, more impulsive, and less socially differentiated” (p. 1496) behaviour than in a face to-face context, as due to the lack of adequate social context cues in information-poor media.”

This could be interpreted to suggest that the greater the absence of a human presence, the greater the possibility of uncivilised behaviour.  It would seem logical to suggest then that the introduction of a greater human presence might have the opposite effect - more civilised behaviour and a greater adherence to social norms.

For example, two years ago I facilitated a web conference between local Australian students and their counterparts in Japan.  In the session that followed the social norms and graces inherent to Japanese culture were clearly present.  Students bowed to one another at the beginning of the session and then again at the end.  Throughout the event they appeared to be quite in-tune to one another’s non-verbal communication signals, pausing when someone else wanted to speak, and acknowledging their contributions to the discussion.

In the context of Seesmic, and indeed online video discussion in general, despite its asynchronous nature my theory is that the visual human element would go a long way to introducing “social context cues” to a traditionally text-oriented sphere of activity.

These social cues might also help minimise the confusion that arises from the misinterpretation of meaning that can occur with text in the form of spelling or grammatical errors, or lack of clarity.

Furthermore, unlike text commenting, in which it is all too easy to quickly fire off an ill considered uninhibited remark, the incorporation of video requires a bit of preparation - both technical and mental - and as such might serve to further temper the delivery of the message, particularly during heated exchanges.

Having said that, all this is purely speculative at this stage.  This is all the more reason to pursue adequate exploration of online video discussion within a group context.  You cannot replicate the complexities of social-context cues as an individual. If you’re interested in participating in this research please let me know.

In the meantime I’ll continue to explore the main Seesmic site as well as monitor the interaction that is taking place on blogs like TechCrunch and The Inquisitr, which have introduced the Seesmic video commenting plugin.

References:

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

digital media, web communication 3 Comments