Participation and disagreement on-line

by William Buist on March 30, 2009

One of the issues with any forum, be that a blog or some other means of collaborative writing is how to interpret apparent disengagement.

As an example, Ecademy is a social networking site, which maintains a number of clubs (groups) each with their own forum and also has some general areas for blogging type activity.

I lead a number of groups on Ecademy, including BlackStar, the life members club and a group called The Debating Society. In all of these clubs only 1 in 10 members participate, but the research shows that this is typical. One issue that arises is when there are polarised discussions. Often a lone voice arguing against a few vocal people appears to be in a significant minority when the reality is far harder to judge.

Silent people are not truly silent, because they leave trails of data behind them when they view a page. If you capture this data then you know the page has been viewed and if you capture arrival time and leaving time you could even surmise if it has been read.

Is silence agreement? - does the failure to post mean that you agree with the previous post? - of course not.

From a societal web point of view there's a danger of others misinterpreting a lack of comment as a lack of engagement. Societies work as well for those that speak up as those that don't, but we haven't yet got that clarity on-line.

  • http://www.shopcreator.com/mall/blueoysterpd/ Peter Jones
    Thoughtful as ever William, thanks for this. Would you agree that (a) the degree of engagement online, even if just reading, is far higher than when "pulling" articles of interest than offline, where engagement through unresearched "push" marketing is 1 in 100 ? Interested to know if anyone has yet profiled or nicknamed the profile of web browsers and responders ? We already have "lurkers". Some contributors might be described as "ranters", commenting on anything pretty much anywhere. I have specialist interests which I comment on, so could perhaps be described as a "pavlov", I respond to the usual "bells and whistles". Then there are "gossips" who pass on bad news, or shock horror stories, and "stirrers", who start erroneous stories in the first place. Loving your stuff, please keep it coming ! PJ.
  • http://www.shopcreator.com/mall/blueoysterpd/ Peter Jones
    Whoops typo! "higher than when" should read "higher when"
  • http://www.shopcreator.com/mall/blueoysterpd/ Peter Jones
    Thanks William, very thought provoking.

    Can you comment on the extent to which all on-line viewers have gone a stage further than most of us receiving junk mail, where we bin it once we have "understood the headline". Certainly the success of "Direct Marketing" is of the order of 1 in 100, as I understand it.

    Secondly, are there yet any well defined categories of online response ? We already have "lurkers", for example. We might also identify "ranters", who are angry about everything and everyone. My own profile might be "pavlovian", I respond to those headlines which grab my attention and hit my hot switches. Equally perhaps we can say there are "gossips", who pass on bad news gleefully, and "stirrers" who deliberately cause confusion and misinformation.

    Another tranche might be the "star-struck" and the "fame-seekers", who would fit well together. Can Roger Hamilton apply his wealth dynamics model to the online community in it's response profiles ?

    Look forward to further posts on this subject, keep it coming !!"
  • Peter Jones
    Thanks William, very thought provoking. Can you comment on the extent to which all on-line viewers have gone a stage further than most of us receiving junk mail, where we bin it once we have "understood the headline". Certainly the success of "Direct Marketing" is of the order of 1 in 100, as I understand it. Secondly, are there yet any well defined categories of online response ? We already have "lurkers", for example. We might also identify "ranters", who are angry about everything and everyone. My own profile might be "pavlovian", I respond to those headlines which grab my attention and hit my hot switches. Equally perhaps we can say there are "gossips", who pass on bad news gleefully, and "stirrers" who deliberately cause confusion and misinformation. Another tranche might be the "star-struck" and the "fame-seekers", who would fit well together. Can Roger Hamilton apply his wealth dynamics model to the online community in it's response profiles ? Look forward to further posts on this subject, keep it coming !!"
  • http://www.abelard-uk.com William Buist
    Excellent thoughts Peter.

    You are right that 'old' Direct Marketing, where an idea or service is pushed onto an audience without much thought about fit had a response rate of 1% or less. We are in a situation today though were we can get much better at targeting the message to the audience, and if the message is well targeted much higher response rates can be achieved. I guess the question becomes whether this is actually Direct Marketing or more personalised marketing. It certainly changes the rules.

    Both Oracle and Salesforce are now integrating Societal Web interactions with their CRM systems - these changes are going mainstream.

    Your terms : Lurkers; Ranters; Pavlovians; Gossips; Stirrers; Star Struck; Fame Seekers and so on has set me thinking. I'm working on some thoughts about reading styles (I’ll publish those thoughts here soon) and I'll think further about that and your comments here. Thank you.

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