2012年10月21日星期日

Groups in Social Networks

What’s group? It is an important concept proposed by Professor Rosanna last class.According to my understanding,it is a circle that is consists of some people who have same interests, same preferences, same topics or same target.But after the class on Tuesday, I have more deep cognition that, psychology group is just any number of people who interact with each other even though they do not share the same ideas. Sometimes the group may last a short period of time and after that the group members become unrelated with each other. That sounds a bit ridiculous.But it is true.
             
                    groups of Facebook

In terms of groups in the Internet, there are many kinds of existing forms. Some are based on the friendship or for the purpose of making friends so the members in these groups might be also good friends in real life. For example, the friend groups in Facebook or Twitter.

Although Facebook has occupied the unshakable position in the field of social network, more and more users started to complain about the information without pertinence. In a social network, you accept the information from all the friends, and at the same time all your friends could also receive the information you distributed. Even though some benefits could be brought from the large amount of information and users, it is restricted to mine and share the deep interests of the users. Meanwhile, some personalized social network which is based on the interest has begun to attract people's attention. For example, the DOUBAN group, it can gather the people who have the same interest to a clique, so called XIAOZHAN. In this relatively private circle, the users could have a in-depth discussion about the subject of interest, and make friends with similar preferences so that they could obtain the new knowledge and obtain the help of experts. These groups may be established for the purpose of sharing the same interest and preferences. Their hobby can involve different field such as music, movie, sport and travel.



Douban xiaozu


The similar representative example might be the social networking websites, named circle launched by Google. The CIRCLE put forward such idea: school, work, friends and family and they are holy and pure in different environment. So we can communicate with different people different things. But Twitter and Facebook has destroyed"context" in social network. This may limit the development of online social networks. The rapid development of Google+ and various new social networks points to a clear direction - more special-interest social networks. Social networks have changed gradually from the mass spread forms to the personalized acquaintance circle mode. When people are tired of the shallow level information exchanging in the popular social networks; when people began to feel frustrated since they could not met friends of the same abilities and interests after a moment, people might give up part of the popular social networks and return to more personalized groups in internet.



Groups of Google+


Recently, the emergence of a new trend in social network services is to search for nearby people - those users may wish to meet people. This kind of discovery mechanism implements the function through some service based on geographical location.For example, the sign-in application of Foursquare, automatically found people nearby with the same interests in Sonar and Momo, and the group chat services in Wechat. Today, the smart phones are bringing about a new network: social found services rather than social network services.



Foursquare

References:
[2]Wikipedia;
[4]Social Network Analysis: A Handbook; John Scott


2012年10月1日星期一

Three Levels of Cognition in Social Networks


Pofessor Rosanna has given the concepts about three levels of cognition in social network last class and explaint it. Three levels of concepts are Cognition, Metacognition and Epistemic Cognition respectively.

According to various concepts about cognition introduced in the lecture,how can technology facilitate user experience and cognitive processing in a social network? The answer may be a matter of opinion. Because Different people, different views.
Cognition:
When we come across new things,it would process in cognitive stage.For example,if you see some interesting pictures on your Facebook or Twitter.It is just a Sensory memory that you would retain Immediate stimulus and it usually lasts about one or two seconds in the environment . But as we know, first impressions mean everything when it comes to attracting the users.Try to imagine when the users enter a website, the first thing comes into their eyes might be the Home Page. So if the social network owners or the managers of the web platform can design the Home page more Particularly Charming, the number of the users may increase. Also, in order to aid your users in learning your application, the welcome webpage should be added and beautified.
Some attractive website pages show below:

[5]
Metacognition:
Metacognition is something that can help you review the content easily or make convinence for other users. [1]It refers to a level of thinking that involves active control over the process of thinking that is used in learning situations. Planning the way to approach a learning task, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating the progress towards the completion of a task: these are skills that are metacognitive in their nature.[1]What's more, metacognition could make people retain information in short-term memory and then turn onto long-term memory even semantic memory in the end. For example,some website allow users to add some features or labels on to a social webpage to facilitate other peoples experience at a metacognitive level.                    
   Recommendation on Douban
                    
                           
                                                Rating and Comments at App Store

Epistemic Cognition:
Epistemic Cognition, just as Professor Rosanna presented on the class, is something that individuals reflect on the limits of knowing, the certainty of knowing, and criteria of knowing. [4]It is the skills for understanding the limits of knowing and the nature of problems that can be addressed by the thinker[4]. Mencius(孟子) once declared, to make the letter book is better than no book.(尽信书不如无书) In short,when people learn more knowledge, they could manage knowledge systematically then doubt and justify what they have learnt through thinking .It is a process of correction and producing new knowledge. We should not fully believe what others and all books have said. Those who follow the source and authority of knowledge are lack of independent thinking ability.

Recently, Anti-Japanese protests erupted in a lot of cities in China afer a group of Japanese rightists landed on the Diaoyu Island. With no doubt, it is worthy of praise to express patriotism. But we appeal to a small minority of extremists could express patriotism rationally and peacefully without irrational or violent behavior. These destructive behaviors are something lack of epistemic virtue and responsibility and would cause the loss of property belonging to Chinese compatriots. Fortunately, many people are rational and condemn these violent manners through posting some photo of the rioters on social network ,such as Facebook and Weibo.
                              
So it is important to make good use of three levels of cognition in social networks.

References:
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition
[2]Lay epistemictheory in social-cognitivepsychology,AW Kruglanski - Psychological Inquiry, 1990 - Taylor & Francis
[3]www.douban.com
[4]http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/recordDetail?accno=ED257858

[5]http://sensisoft.com/