Reflect (psych impact): In my experience of various forms of social media, there have been quite a few different classes of people. There are also mediums better suited for each class to express themselves. Largely, I see people who are communicating (subgroups for those who are communicating for self-expression versus communicating for tasks), people who are posturing, and people who are watching.
People who communicate may use many different mediums. Self-expression tends to be drawn towards formats which encourage (or at least do not penalize) lengthy submissions. Lengthy submissions also encourage an asynchronous method, so that longer posts may be read at leisure. Task-oriented communications are much more flexible, and may function well with synchronous methods for quick answers or asynchronous methods for non-urgent or lengthier requests / updates.
People who posture seem to prefer shorter, faster, “bursty” communications, where the greatest urgency is in being the first to respond, possibly posting multiple times before a response can be returned in turn. Asynchronous methods work for this, but seeking the dopamine hit of an immediate response favors platforms with immediate notifications or synchronous methods. A greater emphasis is also placed on displaying markers of ingroup belonging, the better to earn praise and recognition from fellow members of the ingroup and increase the sense of relatedness.
People who are watching are those who do not respond or post–the “lurkers” of any platform. It’s more difficult to get a read on these folks, because of their non-response. Some may be present to gather information, some may be present because of external factors, and some may be present for passive viewpoint reinforcement or validation. (Those actively seeking opposing viewpoints tend to need to initiate discourse to better understand and engage with the other, taking them out of the passive mode.)
I’m interested in the measurements performed in some of the studies I read–measuring salivary cortisol levels, for example. Something like dopamine levels would be much more difficult to study, I suspect… but doubtless somebody’s studied addictive qualities from a behavioral standpoint, if not a physiological one. What I’ve read so far seems to lean towards heavy use of surveys to get an insight into subject self-assessment, but I’d be quite interested in seeing a physiological assessment if that could also be figured out in a robust way. I suspect there’s also something to be said for including System 1 / System 2 thinking research in this, as well.
Reflect (identity): Well, first we would need to distinguish between being present in a group, versus belonging to a group. It’s also useful to note that each group’s participants will each have their own assessment of whether an individual “belongs” to the group or not.
But from my own perspective… my online networks have atrophied greatly over the years. Most of this is a result of lack of time to spend maintaining them due to the demands of work and offline life. In other cases, I have been excluded from groups because of heterodoxy. In other cases, I have excluded myself because of conflicts with my own concept of my identity.
I actively avoid online social platforms that prioritize shallow responses or reflexive posturing. These do not comport with my desire to project (or indeed, actively be) a persona that thinks things through and is open to seeing / empathizing with different points of view. This is also why some groups no longer welcome my presence: the pressure to identify with the ingroup and actively villainize the outgroup is something I resist, but this has become more and more prevalent in all online social groups that I have seen, save those rooted in offline socialization.
In some ways, I have over time defined myself not as a member of any online-only group, but in opposition to them. To me, an online communication is an initial or adjunct method which leads to or complements an offline relationship of some sort (be that friend, acquaintance, debate partner, etc.). If I did not consider an offline interaction to be possible, I would have no motivation to create or sustain an online interaction long-term. I want to learn more about individual people and how they see the world; I’m not very interested in ideological tests or ostentatious displays of ingroup belonging.
Reflect (community): I chose to join a set of forums devoted to Christianity. This particular religious community is one I have some length of experience with, having been raised as a Christian and continuing to identify with that religion’s core moral tenets for some time. However, my avoidance of shallow slogans led me into my first burst of heterodoxy, and my continued development as a person of alternate sexuality made me greatly unwelcome in that community (and within my own family). It is, therefore, rather uncomfortable to return.
I have observed many displays of ingroup belonging, much of which focus on Republican / MAGA identification within the US. There’s a great emphasis on seeing with your eyes and making immediate assumptions that “everybody” can understand unless they’re are deliberately approaching in bad faith. A prima facie reading of “evidence” is not always correct, however. This becomes frustrating to some group members, because any attempt to look beyond the surface is not group-sanctioned behavior, making anybody who engages in thoughtful reflection automatically a member of the outgroup.
This emphasis on ingroup / outgroup identification is also important to the site as a whole, as the site requires participants to identify as Christian or Non-Christian, and has separate codes of conduct for both categories. Similarly, the site makes assumptions for what definitions will be used–a status of “Married” is only permitted for a single male married to a single female, and same-sex marriages (including those recognized by some Christian denominations!) must use the status “Legal union (other)”. Participants in different categories are allowed or disallowed access to different sections of the site. In this way, an individual’s group identification becomes paramount, because it expressly limits what that individual can do or say.
I have also observed some participants who actively seek greater evidence or call upon different definitions or concepts provided from different sources. To an extent, these participants seem to hearken back to a time when older ideas held sway, and the markers that defined the ingroup were notably different. Because they do not display the markers of the current ingroup definition, these participants seem to exist in an uncomfortable between-state; neither accepted by the ingroup’s members, nor willing to accept membership in the outgroup instead. It is useful to note that such people exist, but it is also instructive to see the social pressures brought to bear upon them.
In an ideal setting, a group’s defining features might be narrowly set–a social group of conservatives might hold several religions, and a social group of Christians might hold several political viewpoints. In this ideal setting, the group’s narrow definition would act as common ground that brings members together, while other aspects of their identity could prompt conversation or exploration without threatening their membership in the main group. But as groups define themselves with more aspects, they become less tolerant of other viewpoints. It is no longer sufficient, for example, to identify as Christian; fealty to MAGA is required, as is the belief (among others) that the 2020 US presidential election was somehow “stolen.” Conversely, any sort of redistributive or recompensatory economic views are markers for the outgroup, and ingroup members may not hold these views while remaining members of the group in good standing.
In any social group, one of the greatest pressures is to conform, or at least to avoid “rocking the boat” by questioning or outright rejecting part of the group’s defining features. As these defining features grow to encompass more aspects of an individual’s identity, it becomes more socially threatening to express heterodox positions. This leads to more people choosing silence over expression, or moving to other topics where group identity is not being actively invoked or threatened in any way. Not only does this make the community as a whole less welcoming and more exclusionary, it also functions to reduce participation within the community itself, leaving only those who loudly police the group’s membership as they see fit.
Reflect (problem-solving): A social group (in any medium) needs at least some commonalities in order to cohere as a group and maintain relatedness for the group’s participants. However, healthy groups maintain a diversity of perspectives and beliefs within those commonalities; groups which become progressively more exclusionary by requiring more common attributes become susceptible to groupthink, becoming an echo chamber or even filter bubble for those within.
A healthy “senior cadre” of group participants would help to prevent or forestall this progression in several ways. First, they provide an example for other group members in how to tolerate different perspectives without being threatened in their core identity, how to discourse in an acceptable fashion, and how to push back against a more intolerant approach. Second, by themselves welcoming those differing views into the senior cadre, they reinforce the message that those with such views are normal and acceptable members of the group, even at the highest level. This makes the group more welcoming to those who hold those viewpoints as well. Third, by having multiple perspectives and participants involved in this senior cadre, it becomes more difficult for group participants to reasonably claim that the group is “ruled” by a few “elites.”
This is not unlike the concept of a group of moderators, but the focus is quite different. A moderator may be expected to perform a fair amount of administrative work, including arbitrating disputes to “moderate” the temperature of discussion or enforce a code of conduct. My concept of a senior cadre focuses less on the technical admin duties and more on ensuring a healthy group by being involved and modelling desired standards of behavior. Even reproof of group members can therefore be delivered less as a reprimand from above, and more as a correction from a senior peer.
The senior cadre therefore does not replace the role of moderators. If moderators are focused more on code of conduct, policing, and technical administration of the online environment, they may be re-titled as “administrators” or similar. It’s a different skill set from the senior cadre, but complementary in purpose, freeing the senior cadre to work as peers and role models within the group membership. To this end, it would also be useful for the senior cadre to have some understanding about how to maintain a healthy group and why it is important to cultivate differing points of view.
It’s also important for the senior cadre to understand that these differing points of view cannot extend to those who believe in excluding other members of the group for being “insufficiently committed” or anything similar. The difference between holding a difference of philosophy (acceptable) and advocating a forcible group takeover or ejection of other group members (unacceptable) can be surprisingly subtle in practice, and the cadre should be prepared to take measures to ensure that the group remains healthy in the long-term by addressing problematic members as quickly as possible, before attitudes metastasize and become embedded in a significant number of group participants.
Field Trip #1: Our first field trip was in Microsoft Teams. For me, this was pretty standard–my workplace uses Teams already, so I have video conference calls multiple times per week. Still, every group is somewhat different!
This is also, I would say, fairly similar to most other videoconferencing applications I’ve used through the years, including Discord, Skype, and Zoom. That is, you have your video and audio feeds, there’s a gallery view of talking heads, there’s the ability to screenshare (which is really just replicating your desktop video feed into the video stream, after all)… the software focused less on creating a social space or structure, and more on providing a toolset.
I say that, and yet obviously Teams is more than “just” a toolset. The ability to create “teams” within Teams (which are structured as a bulletin board) or group chats (structured as a chat room) clearly gestures at offering different ways to create and manage a social space. The videoconferencing features, however, are a toolset–there’s nothing specific like a game world or any skeuomorphic elements that make it anything more than a videoconference. And I’m okay with that. It’s sort of basic, but in a business-focused environment, I don’t really need anything more than that.
We’ll be back in Teams for our final virtual field trip as well, so until then!
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