Can You Control Internet Collaboration?

Can you control Internet collaboration?

The example of Evan’s use of the Internet to encourage the return of the cell phone is unique.  As I read this example it was interesting to see the power of his blog and the unexpected response from the Internet community.  Yet, it was also a bit alarming.   Thankfully this was example ended well for the Evan, but what about Sasha? I am by no means condoning her actions.  However, the website provided personal information about Sasha and could have easily led to a more severe outcome in which the citizens reading Evan’s blog took matters into their own hands. 

Is this story unique?  The scale and people involved this Internet event is unique to my experience, but the story is not.   Last spring it was time for my high school reunion.  The organizers of the reunion decided to reach out to our classmates through Facebook.   They found most of the graduates in our class through Facebook connections.  The reunion team sent out Facebook email, encouraged our class to become fans of the reunion, and so forth.  It was nice to see people I had forgotten about among my friends until, someone posted .., “I am not going to pay $50 to go to a dinner that Sally is in charge of ... she had no taste in high school I doubt she has taste now.”   Hopefully, the person accidentally posted that statement publicly (rather than privately), but the outcome was devastating for the reunion.   Sally and all of her supporters were outraged by the insult and made their own responses.   Then supporters of the poster spoke on behalf of the poster and so on.   My response was I “de-friended” everyone and did not attend the reunion.   The reunion that had 150 confirmed attendees (based on the Facebook site) had an appalling 45 attendees on the day of the reunion.  Why, because no one wanted to be back in high school again and the Facebook post forced us to remember why we were glad to be out of high school.

So how do you control the Internet and all of the postings?  You cannot.  The example from Flickr demonstrates there are sites that can unite people without too much intervention.  What the people do with that information is up to the individuals and Flickr does not try to control the outcome.

The challenge comes when companies  (or individuals) try to harness the organic nature of the Internet to serve their own purpose and to eventually move from sharing to collaboration to collective action (Shirky, p49).  Can we create a “group identity” that will ultimately inspire cooperation and that will lead towards a collective action?  Shirky states this requires a change in behavior of all participants.   This is much more challenging than it appears – especially when participants do not have to confront one another face to face.    I teach online courses requiring collaboration to produce a brochure.  My students HATE this assignment.  I get more complaints about this assignment than any other assignment in all of my classes.   This summer I tried to change the behavior of my students to ensure a better outcome for the collaborative project.  I had students post on a blackboard discussion the hours they usually work on blackboard to enable me to group them according to their work habits.  Then students had to watch videos about collaborating on the Internet (basically internet etiquette) and had to be reminded often their group members are people with lives beyond sitting at the computer and to be patient.  This semester the student feedback was better but they still strongly dislike the assignment.   I hold onto the assignment despite the horrid student reviews on principle.  This is the collaboration of the future.   More and more companies are trying to avoid the expense of travel and lost production by scheduling virtual meetings rather than expecting individuals to work on projects in the same room.

Moving from sharing to collaborating to collective action is still a challenge and to suggest people willingly move toward collective action virtually is optimistic.  Evan’s followers were working virtually towards the procurement of the telephone.  They were protected by the anonymity of the Internet and were able to back out of the situation at any moment.   When individuals are forced into a collective action (via the Internet) it is my experience that the individuals are resistant and are more comfortable with meeting face to face so that they may read body language and “work more efficiently”.  However, I suspect with the ease of organizing groups on the internet, the ease of collective action is only a matter of time.