Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 395–400
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Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh
Structuring the discourse on social networks for learning: Case studies on blogs and microblogs Aline M. Marques a, Rafael Krejci a, Sean W.M. Siqueira a,⇑, Mariano Pimentel a, Maria Helena L.B. Braz b a b
Department of Applied Informatics (DIA), Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), Av. Pasteur, 458, Urca, 22290-240 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil ICIST/Technical Institute of Lisbon (IST), Technical University of Lisbon, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
a r t i c l e
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Article history: Available online 1 April 2012 Keywords: Online social networks Blog Microblog Collaborative learning Communication Message structuring
a b s t r a c t Nowadays social networks have a prominent function in human communication. In addition, their use in the context of formal learning can contribute to increase student’s interactions. These interactions can be better supported with the right structure for the messages. This paper presents an investigation on the structure of messages on blogs and microblogs, two different categories of social networks. Usually, blogs are author-based (also called content-based or push-based) social networks while microblogs are readerbased (also called contact-based or pull-based) social networks. This categorization of social networks is explained and some characteristics of messages’ structuring on such social networks are described. Structuring messages is investigated in both categories of social networks in case studies on a collaborative learning context. The results show the importance of using both categories of social networks in learning activities and also provide interesting results on message structuring. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Online social networks have attracted thousands of users, which have integrated the networks into their lives and in their daily activities. There are different strategies guiding the development and maintenance of such networks, which vary as they incorporate new information and communication tools, such as mobile connectivity, blogging and multimedia content sharing. Boyd and Ellison (2008) provided an overview of the literature related to online social networks, which were defined as: ‘‘webbased services that allow individuals to: (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.’’ Therefore, besides providing information about the users through their profiles, there is the articulation of the users throughout their connections. The main contribution of online social networks is to enable users to articulate while making visible their social networks. The display of connections is important in the online social networks as it allows users to navigate through the connections, exploring the contacts’ profiles. In order to provide such interactions among users, online social networks offer mechanisms for users to communicate with their contacts. It can be through private messaging (similar to webmail), ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +55 21 2530 8051; fax: +55 21 3873 6400. E-mail address:
[email protected] (S.W.M. Siqueira). 0747-5632/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.03.001
instant messaging, discussion forum or blogging. The communication tools and the structuring of messages are important as they can lead on more (or less) interactions among the users and they also influence the type and value of such interactions. The structuring of discourse in communication tools represents the possible relationships among messages. As illustrated in Fig. 1, the best known ways for structuring messages are (Gerosa, Pimentel, Fuks, & Lucena, 2005): Linear Organization of messages (List structure), Hierarchical Organization (Tree structure) and Net Organization (Graph structure). The List structure is a particular case of Tree structure, which in turn is a particular case of the Graph structure – each of these structures is used depending on the communication activity one wishes to establish through the use of the system. List-structured tools lead to a Linear Organization of messages: a discussion is established in a sequence in which messages are listed according to some perspective such as posting date, author’s name or message title. There is no explicit relationship among the messages. The Linear Organization is typically used in e-mail and discussion list tools. Tree-structured tools lead to a Hierarchical Organization: each message is associated with a single father-message (the sender chooses a message to reply to), and thus each message contains ramifications that may result in a divergent discussion. The Hierarchical Organization is typically used in discussion forum tools. Graph-structured tools lead to a Net Organization: multiple relationships may be established in each message. This structure has the potential for convergence of the discussion (Pimentel, Fuks, & Lucena, 2008).
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Linear Organization List Structure Sequential Discussion
Hierarchical Organization Tree Structure Divergent Discussion
Net Organization Graph Structure Convergent Discussion
Fig. 1. Message structuring in communication tools (Gerosa et al., 2005).
Collaborative learning activities require communication mechanisms, which are based on some kind of discourse structuring. The interactions on these activities are important for the learning. As online social networks have been used for collaborative learning, in this work the structuring of discourse is investigated in blogs and microblogs. Cases studies exploring message structuring in collaborative learning on blogs and microblogs are analyzed. The characteristics of author-based social networks is described in Section 2, in which blogs are categorized as such kind of networks. The characteristics of reader-based social networks are presented in Section 3 that also categorizes microblogs according to these characteristics. Blogs and microblogs are discussed according to messages’ structuring, respectively in Sections 4 and 5. Section 6 describes some results related to learning. Finally, Section 7 presents some final remarks.
2. Author-based social networks and blogs In this paper, author-based social networks are characterized as online social networks whose focus is on the author, his/her profile and messages. Therefore, user interactions are published as a notice board, just like traditional blogs that are classified as authorbased social networks and are the most representative element of this class. The author is the center of the news production and therefore his/her publications are on his/her profile or mural. This is also called Information Pull, as the reader (or consumer) has to take the initiative to get the information (Hermans, 1998). It is necessary for the consumer (reader) to go for the information and retrieve it from where it is. According to Franklin and Zdonik (1998), ‘‘the traditional pull approach requires that users know a priori where and when to look for data or that they spend an inordinate amount of time polling known sites for updates and/or hunting on the network for relevant sites.’’ A blog is a Web page to which the author sends messages called ‘‘posts’’. The posts are usually listed in chronological order, with the most recent messages displayed first. Posts are sent to the blog by one or more authors, and readers may be able to leave comments for each post. As the Internet becomes more social, it is necessary to consider how people communicate through the web, how they exchange ideas and knowledge. The blog is still a very used communication tool. Several studies highlight the blog as an important means of communication, where participants can express their opinions, share their knowledge, disseminate information, make their work visible and discuss
and exchange ideas. Some researchers have investigated the potential of the blog for the democratization of information in a journalistic context: the blog has been considered a relevant medium for the production and dissemination of content, and for the participation and expression of opinion and criticism from readers (Higgins, Reeves, & Byrd, 2004; Schiano, Nardi, Gumbrecht, & Swartz, 2004). Some studies highlight blogs as relevant systems in the context of education, as they promote dialog and the exchange of ideas, enable debate situations, promote collaboration and motivate student participation through interactions among teacher-andstudents, among students-and-students of the same class, and among students of different classes, grades and schools (Shaohui & Lihua, 2008; Xu, 2008). Through blogs, participants communicate and form virtual communities based on similar interests which strongly influence the way they relate, act and make decisions (Agarwal, Liu, Tang, & Yu, 2008; Herring et al., 2005). Participants communicate by reading posts and commenting on each other’s blogs. Bloggers are encouraged to post new content when they realize that readers read and comment on their posts (Nardi, Schiano, & Gumbrecht, 2004). Comments made by visitors, besides being considered a form of communication and information exchange, also promote social ties and form bonds among participants (Recuero, 2008). The use of blogs has also been investigated as a means to favor the internal communication among employees in a company to promote collaboration, knowledge exchange and socialization (Efimova & Grudin, 2007; Yardi, Golder, & Brzozowski, 2009). In a Blog, messages are structured as a Star Graph, represented in Fig. 2, where the central vertex of the graph represents the post provided by the blog’s author, and the leaves represent the comments issued by its readers. This structure leads to a centralized organization of messages: all comment-messages are associated with a single post-message, resulting in a focused discussion. In typical blogs, two common relationships are available: Oneto-All (posting) and All-to-One (comments-to-post). When posting a message, the author (one) is publishing a content to the readers (all). On the other hand, when commenting a post, the readers (all) are sending a message to the author (one). These are the common communication relationships, as usually the author wants to establish a communication with the readers and the readers want to establish a communication with the author. A possible All-to-All relationship in Blogs is through the Inter-Blogs Link Mechanism, which allows authors to add to their blogs a list of references to other blogs (Blogroll): generally, these other blogs are those with related issues or that have similar interests, or friends’ blogs. The All-to-All relationship is set by reading and commenting on each other’s blogs. The links among blogs characterize a communication distributed among multiple blogs, which can follow several different paths, and involve and connect several scattered participants (Efimova & Moor, 2005). Some authors emphasize that the essence of blog communication is the establishment of links among blogs (Efimova & Moor, 2005; Recuero, 2008).
Centralized Organization Star-Graph Structure Focused Discussion
Fig. 2. Message structuring in blog.
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3. Reader-based social networks and microblogs In this paper, reader-based social networks are characterized as online social networks whose focus is on the reader, his/her profile and all the messages from related users (authors) and channels. Therefore, user’s interactions are published on the own user’s notice board and on all the others who are related to him/her (or want to receive his/her information). The reader is the center of the news consumption and therefore all publications related to him/her are on his/her board, profile or mural. It is also called Information Push, as the author (or supplier) delivers the information to the reader (or consumer) (Hermans, 1998). Rather than requiring users to explicitly request (i.e., ‘‘pull’’) the information that they need, data can be sent to users without having them specifically asked for it (Franklin & Zdonik, 1998). Push transfers control from the users to the data providers, raising the potential that users receive irrelevant data while not receiving the information they need. Microblogging, the act of broadcasting short, real-time messages has been embraced world-wide and is the most representative case of reader-based social networks. Several studies highlight microblogs as an increasingly popular and socially acceptable means of information exchange (Grace, Zhao, & Boyd, 2010). The content of these messages goes about one’s activities, opinions and status, varying from sharing life activities and accomplishments with friends, relatives and co-workers; sharing news and opinions with interested readers; and seeking knowledge and expertise in other public messages (Java, Song, Finin, & Tseng, 2007; Zhao & Rosson, 2009). The psychological aspects on microbloging are also investigated (APA Policy, 2008; Bonetta, 2009; Xiaomeng & Yue, 2010). Some works focus on microblogging as a learning tool (Ebner & Schiefner, 2008; Grosseck & Holotescu, 2009; Skiba, 2008; Ullrich et al., 2008). As the term microblog suggest, it is a smaller version of weblogs enriched with features for social networking (Böhringer, 2009). Users can post short messages into their public microblog, subscribe to other member’s postings by adding them to their personal network and their messages are displayed in chronological order on the user’s start page. Therefore, it is straightforward the same relationships of blogs are also considered for microblogs, in which there is the posting (One-to-All) and messages-to-post (All-toOne). However, the reader-based approach provides a distributed organization of messages instead of a centralized one: the posts are distributed to all the ones that subscribed to that channel. On the other hand, the messages to a post (comments) usually are published on the board (profile or mural) of the sender of the message and on the board of the sender of the post. Therefore, virtual communities are formed based on participants’ similar interests or contacts. They communicate by reading posts and commenting on each other’s messages within their network and on their own page (board, profile or mural).
4. Structuring messages in blogs: comment, reply and quote Some blogs have established mechanisms that allow the All-toAll relationship: through comments on another comment (replies to a comment) and through quotes to other comments (quotation). Blogs allow readers to comment a post, but usually readers start communicating among themselves through comments. If that occurs in the Linear Organization, then the result is going to be confusing. Some blog tools enable authors and readers to discuss among themselves through the mechanism to reply to comments. Participants, including readers and authors, can discuss with each other. Each participant can choose a message to reply and thus send a reply-to-comment. This type of communication (with the
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reply mechanism explicitly implemented or not) characterizes the All-to-All relationship in the blog, as anyone can respond to any message. The ability to respond to comments (explicitly implemented) allows the structuring of related comments and leads to the Hierarchical Organization of comments. However, the problem with the use of this mechanism is that it modifies the typical blog conversation centered on the author and enables the occurrence of divergent discussions such as those typically established in discussion forum tools. Another possible common All-to-All relationship in blogs is the quotation, in which a reader can quote the comment of other readers, creating a Net Organization. This mechanism enables the occurrence of a convergent discussion. Therefore, it was decided to conduct an explanatory case study with the objective of investigating the influence of quote and reply (to comment) functionalities through blogging. Blogs were used in collaborative learning scenarios with a group of 26 undergraduate freshman students from the Information Systems course of the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The educational dynamics were designed to promote the use of the interaction functionalities by the students in order to post information about the project and to comment the messages received from the colleagues (readers). A blog tool was configured with reply and quote functionalities that were enabled or disabled in each stage. There were eight stages with different combinations of available functionalities as it is shown in Table1 where it is possible to see that the common comment functionality (comment-to-post) was always available to the students as this is the most used and well known interaction tool. To be able to study the use of replyto-comment and quote, the stages were designed in order that the availability of these functionalities varied in each two stages of the dynamic. In the first week of a duo, the authors should post the development of the project and receive comments from the readers (and provide comments to the other students’ projects), while in the next week there were answers to the comments and discussions. Blog’s records (logs), questionnaires and interviews were used to understand the use of these functionalities in this case study. Table 1 summarizes some results. In the total, 290 common comments were sent, 38 reply-tocomment and five quotations. The quote functionality was available in stages 1, 2, 7 and 8, but it was used only in the first two stages. The functionality reply-to-comment was available in stages 3, 4, 7 and 8, but only the authors used it (i.e., no reader used it). As opposed to the expectative, the quote functionality was hardly used; the reply-to-comment was fairly used; while the common comment was used less than expected. The reply-to-comment was used by the blog authors as they should answer the comments from the colleagues. They considered the use of reply-to-comment natural: ‘‘I used reply in the last posts. Before that I was using a common comment (comment-to-post) and only latter I noticed that reply would be more specific for each comment’’; ‘‘I liked to use the reply-to-comment because it appears right after the person’s comment (. . .) I would be talking with the person just like a chat’’. Some students did not use reply-to-comment in situations that it could be used. According to the interview, it happened because using this functionality would be laborious, which shows the functionality could not be adequate to all situations. Most of the situations in which quote was used, it should be reply-to-comment: ‘‘I used the quotation just like a reply-to-post’’, ‘‘Quote is a faster answer to several comments’’. There was also a situation where quote was used to edit the own comment. These examples show the participants did not understand how to use quote. In addition, according to the interviews, students reported they did not notice the quote functionality, which shows a usability problem. There is also a lack of practice on using the
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Table 1 The use of quote and reply-to-comment versus comment in the blogs. Stages
Available functionality Common comment
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
U U U U U U U U
Use frequency Reply to comment
U U U U
Quote
U U U U
Total
Common comment
Reply to comment
Quote
Readers
Authors
Readers
Authors
Readers
Authors
48 36 25 27 27 24 23 26
4 11 4 8 8 9 5 5
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5a 3a 11 7 1a 0 6 5
1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
236
54
0
38
1
4
a
The functionality ‘‘reply-to-comment’’ was not available in stages 1, 2 and 5, but, after the customization of the blogs with this functionality, some authors-students went to the previous stages and rewrote the comments using this functionality.
functionality or lack of understanding, both are related to cultural aspects. These results show the need for training the users in message structuring that they are not usual in most of the available blog tools.
5. Structuring messages in microblogs: post, reply and quote In reader-based social networks, the user receives information regarding to their connections in his/her page, thus having up to date information in his/her own place. The most common organization of the messages in this kind of networks is the linear one. The messages are organized according to the date/time order just like in blogs, characterizing the linear order. Some microblogs (e.g., Twitter1) provide the possibility of replying messages, but usually a reply message appears according to the date it was posted, i.e., reply messages are considered just like the other messages and are organized in the same flow in the linear order. This sequence of messages makes the connections between the related messages confusing as it is difficult to understand the message flow. In some cases (e.g., Facebook’s2 news feed), the messages are grouped into the posts and related comments to the posts. Then, the posts are organized in a linear order and the related comments are also organized in a linear order (in the group of messages related to the post). It makes related messages (posts and related messages) easier to understand, but the relationships between the comments can still be confusing. In order to investigate the use of linear, hierarchical and net organizations in microblogs, youflow was developed. Youflow is a microblog system in which it is possible to choose a message structuring approach and therefore different kinds of messages’ interactions, such as posting, replying and quoting. A case study using youflow in a learning activity with 15 undergraduate freshman students from the Information Systems course of the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, allowed analyzing how people structure those messages. The case study was organized into three different moments and the students were organized into three groups (A, B and C). In each moment, each group had a different message organization available but the same discussion theme as the other groups in order to have in all dynamic steps an experimental group and a control one. So there were nine stages (three stages in each moment). In the first moment, first stage, group A had the Linear Organization; in the second stage, group B had the Hierarchical Organization; in the third stage, group C had the Net Organization. In the 1 2
http://www.twitter.com. http://www.facebook.com.
second moment, in the fourth stage, group A had the Hierarchical Organization; in the fifth stage, group B had the Net Organization; in the sixth stage, group C had the Linear Organization. In the third moment, in the seventh stage, group A had the Net Organization; in the eighth stage, group B had the Linear Organization; and, finally, in the ninth stage, group C had the Hierarchical Organization. Therefore, it was possible to investigate the different message organization in all groups without having the sequence of the organization influencing the results. No student used the quote functionality (available at the Net Organization). The educational dynamics were designed to encourage messaging among the students of the same group. Youflow’s records (logs), questionnaires and interviews were used to understand the use of post, reply and quote functionalities in this case study. Through application records it was possible to get the number of posts, comments-to-post, replies-to-comments and quotes; it was also possible to get information on these numbers according to users, groups and stages. In addition, logs allowed understanding possible problems on the use of the tool, such as time for posting a comment or different log sections. The questionnaires and interviews allowed understanding the students’ point of view and feelings regarding to the use of the tool in the learning activities. Table 2 summarizes some results. In the total, 112 messages were registered in the environment, of which 99 are postings, 13 are replies and 0 are quotations. It is possible to notice that for each group there was a decrease in the number of messages in each moment (Group A: 23, 23, 13; Group B: 8, 7, 4; Group C: 18, 11, 4), which is not related to the message structuring approach, but to the number of participants (Group A: 6, 5, 5; Group B: 6, 6, 5; Group C: 5, 5, 4), time to develop the activity (Stage 1: 25 min; Stage 2: 25 min; Stage 3: 20 min), and class time (the activity spent more time than expected to be prepared in the class and the students had to stay after the class time to finish the activity). The amount of replies-to-comment and quotes was below the expectation. The quote functionality was not used and the replyto-comment was used only 13 times. However, it is interesting to notice that the number of common comment from the readers (equivalent to comment-to-post) was high in the first moment, but dropped in the last moments. The first stage, whose participants of group A had only the Linear Organization, has more comments-to-post than even posts (it is the only case like that, the second and third stages, in which groups B and C started their activities, but had respectively the hierarchical and the Net Organizations, did not have the same characteristic). Some possible reasons for the low interactivity through replyto-comment and quotes can be captured from the questionnaires: ‘‘I had some problems with youflow’s user interface that confused
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A.M. Marques et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 395–400 Table 2 The use of quote and reply-to-comment versus comment in the microblog. Stages
Available functionality Common comment
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
U U U U U U U U U
Use frequency Reply to comment
U U U U U U
Quote
U U U
Total
me sometimes’’, ‘‘it was really difficult to use the graph (structure)’’, ‘‘I couldn’t quote a message from other people or even reply messages’’, ‘‘I think the reply-to-comment should be more noticeable as it made the discussion confuse’’. Therefore, it seems that the use of different functionalities that were enabled and disabled by the same students in different moments made the use of the microblog youflow confusing. Some usability problems were also identified and they motivated the students not to use quotations. Finally, the lack of practice on using microblogs and such different message structures provide a possible cultural reason for so few uses of replies and no use of quotes. 6. Results on learning through the use of blogs and microblogs This research was conducted making use of a multiple exploratory case study (Yin, 2009) based on two contexts: blog and microblog. On both case studies, questionnaires with open and closed questions were distributed, as online forms, at the end of the established activities. Also, some interviews and applications logs were used for data convergence. Blogs supported the interaction and collaboration among students. Through postings, the students showed their work and sent comments in order to contribute to their colleagues’ work. According to the students: ‘‘receiving and making constructive critics in such a way that my friends can help me and I can help others was what I liked most in using blogs in the class’’, ‘‘everybody could have some contact with my work and give opinions, then it helped to join more the students’’, ‘‘it (using blogs) helped to socialize with other students and motivate doing a better and better work’’. Using blogs also improved students’ participation on the learning activities: ‘‘It was very effective and helped the students being more participative in the activities’’, ‘‘solving the exercises in a dynamic way, in my home, and being able to follow the feedbacks from other students, is very practical and that was what I liked the most’’, ‘‘we open the blogs regularly, so it is easy and comfortable to be updated about the activities’’. Finally, using blogs also improved learning the subject: ‘‘it contributes in the learning process as each student helps others with tips, new ideas, and constructive critics about other students’ works’’, ‘‘it provided some freedom for developing the works and asking about the tasks and even getting some explanation about a post’’, ‘‘looking the different perspectives on the answers, you’ve got a group of ideas and answers, which helps on learning’’, ‘‘I could see different ways for solving the same problem, and that contributed a lot for my learning’’. In the case of microblogs and according to the questionnaires, 63% of the students thought that using microblogs on the class was good or excellent, while 82% claimed that it improves learning.
Common comment
Reply to comment
Quote
Readers
Authors
Readers
Authors
Readers
Authors
14 0 4 3 2 2 0 0 0
9 5 13 14 5 9 11 4 4
0 0 0 3 0 0 1 0 0
0 3 1 3 1 0 1 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
25
74
4
9
0
0
Students liked using microblogs, as 82% reported that posting about the subjects of the class was good. Some students provided more feedback about the experience: ‘‘I liked (using microblogs in learning activities); it encourages good interaction and searching for the content’’, ‘‘using microblog helps on improving students’ interaction, contributing for increasing participation of everybody, making the activity pleasant’’, ‘‘I think it is good for exchanging information about the subject’’, ‘‘it is interesting because takes everybody out of inertia’’.
7. Final remarks This work described the characteristics of author-based social networks and how blogs can be considered such kind of online social networks. Then, messages structuring in blogs were discussed as well as how it provides communication capacities and interactions among the contacts of this network. It was possible to notice that there were difficulties on dealing with the structure of the messages. This work also described the characteristics of reader-based social networks and how microblogs can be considered such kind of online social networks. Then, message structuring in microbloging were discussed as well as how it provides communication capabilities and interactions among the contacts of this network. Again, it was possible to notice the difficulties on dealing with reply and quotation. In both experiments students were motivated by the use of blogs and microblogs and stated that their usage had contributed to their learning. As future work, it is important to investigate if (and how) different learning scenarios and dynamics can influence the discourse structuring and vice-versa. Training students on the different structures of messages as well as on the tools to be used can be interesting to understand if usability and cultural aspects really impact on using quotes and replies-to-comments. Finally, it is also suggested a comparison on author-based and reader-based approaches in order to verify if they influence on the messages (quantity and quality) throughout the different structures. Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank the students that participated in the exploratory study. This work was partially supported by FAPERJ (through Grants E-26/170028/2008 INC&T Program – Project: Brazilian Institute of Research on Web Science, and E-26/101.509/ 2010 – BBP/Bursary Representation and contextualized retrieval of learning content), CNPQ (Project: 557.128/2009-9, INCT on Web Science) and by FCT Portugal, through funds of ICIST.
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