Qaiku | #someme | Minna Isomursu: Social media in user research: immersion, privacy and contribution

Research Professor at VTT, Oulu.

aharju commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

Our guest from Oulu is warning us: The Winter is comming!!!

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

Again, please write questions for the panel here.

juhak commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

themes: immersion, privacy and contribution

juhak commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

That was the joke part. Now the presentation starts :-)

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

Her research context is building concepts, prototypes and gadgets. Her talk is about using social media for doing this kind of research.

juhak commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

Minna does: user needs, service design, user research,... This will be a presentation about how she has used social media in her research.

And yes! She will have cases!

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

We just learned that @juhak is a very demanding organizer!

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

It was apparently difficult to come up with a title that's academic enough and interesting - @juhak was SO demanding! Great Juha!

troppone commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

I like Minna Isomursu's approach here: telling stories
Storytelling can be counted as a method for collecting research empiria as well, in social media too.

aharju commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

Social media as a way to "blend into user communities". In Jaakko's terms: "abusing social media".

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

I think Minna used her story creating skills for that story :)

juhak commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@aharju agree!
@pe3 hmm, missed this a bit, you gotta explain the abuse later, pls.

troppone commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

traditional methods provided difficulties for "blending in"

juhak commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

Minna has done research for Nokia - oufcouse. BTW the discussion about Nokia dominance in Finnish research has started: in Vihreä Lanka

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@pe3 is blending in abusing? i agree that possibly, but not all the time. explain.

juhak commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

I share Minna's feeling how difficult it is to "blend in" when doing research on teenagers' media practices... been there with high school students last year.

aharju commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

using the existing practices of teenagers using the internet to come up with services

juhak commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@troppone @juhak: i think that was the word Jaakko used - but I might be wrong.

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

going to online communities is not an easy way to do research: takes time to learn the rules etc.

priio commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

ethical considerations: researchers adopted a practice of openness about their goals and status

juhak commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

I the case being described social media helped "users" to communicate their needs.

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

Studying the young users - "ethical committee", what's that? - this was one key topic in CSCW-2010, interesting that this comes up here too, @aharju, @juhak

troppone commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

"Ethical comittee - What is that?"

@juhak @troppone: you got Jaakko's point now?

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

in comparison to the usa, finland has very little ethical infrastructures controlling research, such as the ethical committee.

juhak commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

they used a greasemonkey script for asking questions about facebook status updates: "how interesting do you find this status update?"

juhak commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

there were privacy concerns for the people how have published the updates. the researchers did not view the screen of the user, but just accessed the actual update without id details.

juhak commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

...and the (possible) ethical problem was that users whose messages were used were not informed.

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@juhak Greasemonkey?

Prvivacy concerns with the friends who posted status updates (users themselves had given consent).

It's impossible to get consent or inform users in socially constructed content environment.

troppone commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

We don't have guidelines for how to deal with semi-private co-created material - like Facebook messages.

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

Because of privacy reasons they didn't store the names of the friends but just the status updates. But: doesn't the person make a big difference in how interesting the post is? Can you analyse the data without the social connections?

priio commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@troppone I think it's this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greasemo...

juhak commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

Interesting, that the ethics theme is actively coming up within research. Within business and also public services sector - despite at least a couple of decades of quality etc. projects dealing with visions & values - that point of view seems to lack or at least is vastly undervalued. It becomes visible in form of - both in business & public sector - aiming at cheaper and cheaper subcontracting / outsourcing procedures. A cheaper employee is the only thing that counts. - This all put together is quite a challenge when putting social media boosted / aided research in practice.

ConnectIrmeli commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@troppone: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fire...

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

I think we should take a step back and think about how exactly can information collected and published about users affect their lives - or can it! Not just talk about some abstract concept called research ethics.

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@troppone: Greasemonkey is a browser extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function. You can use Greasemonkey e.g. to implement solutions of augmented browsing.

jukkahuhtamaki commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

"Even though something is legal (for example re. Facebook) - it is necessarily not ethical when reflected toward research ethics criteria"

"I don't know any guidelines or solutions for new researchers utilizing social media - how to deal with these problems..."

ConnectIrmeli commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

It seems that researchers have an idea about implied user responsibility to control what they publish in social media.

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@jukkahuhtamaki @juhak @pe3 Thanks for the clarification, a new tool to me.

troppone commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@pe3 But ethics have to be thought also on general and abstract level, i think the contextual "rulebook" approach is not enough. Of course I agree that people should be in center there when thinking of ethics but academic research needs more discussion on research ethics also on meta level.

aharju commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

Some users don't want to be anonymized by researchers and research settings. More and more want to link their digital identity to the research.

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

"Not all users want to be protected by researchers." They might want to identify themselves as co-creators of certain products.

priio commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@aharju: true - I just think that these border cases should be opened up and deconstructed before we can do that.

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@aharju The "rulebook" approach indeed is not enough. Our ethics are based on our world views (philosophies, religious views, cultural traditions) - would this formulate the meta level which then could be cut into practically reflected "rules"

ConnectIrmeli commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

Limits between the subject and the researcher (co-researcher) blur. Yep, produsage.

troppone commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

Should users have more credit in publications for their contributios in research projects?

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

"If users are involved as co-researchers, why only the names of the researchers are in the publications?"

priio commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@pe3 @priio Wouldn't giving more credit to user contributors be an important motivating factor!?

ConnectIrmeli commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

Co-creation demands that academic practices are changed.

troppone commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

About the ethics, according to a recent study (http://www.uta.fi/heg/uutinen.php?item=49391- in Finnish) only half of the Finnish university teachers included ethical discussions (about values, norms, plagiarism and such) to their teaching.

aunant commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

And how about the current practice of professors putting their names first in publications and taking credit for the research being done?

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@aunant Ouch!

troppone commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

An example of book manuscript with several writers, who saw the project as a collaborative project and invented an acronym for the group. MIT press did not accept the "imaginary person" as an author.

Äh :( sometimes the world's a boring place.

jahapaula commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@aunant @troppone we are a practical engineering and soldier nation :-D

pe3 commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@pe3 this thing called reilu meininki....

jahapaula commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@aunant thanks for the link; quite alarming situation...

ConnectIrmeli commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

@jahapaula agree that the world is sometimes boring - suddenly I recollect Y.Engeström, cheating and "breaking free" - ping @aharju, @pe3, @juhak

troppone commented on posted to #someme 31.08.2010 (en)

#someme

pe3 said

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