Tuesday, November 21, 2006

My Presentation

Here's a little post so that you all can comment about my presentation.

A few things I'm thinking about and would love feedback on:
-Should I use a confederate as person B in the experiment? I have many hesitations, but I know there would be benefits too.
-Should I use some kind of task for their conversation? Would an introduction/biographical task work?
Or is there anything else important I didn't cover?

Thanks!

3 Comments:

At 10:18 PM, Blogger Nicole said...

Kate, I think you did a good job on the presentation, and I think your topic is very interesting. Finding out how people use thefacebook and other online methods to find information about others is going to be very important int he future, because I am sure the phenomenon will only grow. I think a confederate would be good to use because a participant might get confused and mess up, which could screw with your results. I also think having them do a task is a good idea, because they will probably not be as suspicious as they would be if you were just to show one of them a facebook profile. Overall, good job, and congratulations on your engagement.

 
At 5:26 PM, Blogger Barrett Amos said...

Kate,

As Alex said, I think you picked a very relevant example. We are all better off for having been able to stalk his profile on a large projector screen in front of the entire class. Examples aside, you gave a solid, clear, and coherent presentation. Nice job!

I have been going back and forth on the confederate issue. On one hand I believe that using a confederate would make your study a lot more controllable and you might be able to see any effects of asymmetric information more clearly. At the same time, a confederate’s Facebook profile may give away too much information (i.e. the confederate is taking all advanced comm and info sci classes and is interested in digital deception) that makes the profile look oddly suspicious. If, instead, you used a new fake profile you would have a fair amount of work to do to in order to get it into a “believable” state – i.e. have a reasonable number of friends and photos.

On the other hand, there is a danger when using two unacquainted individuals as well. Most Cornell students are linked to each other over Facebook by only one or two degrees of separation. Seeing a profile with friends and activities in common, even if the individuals themselves are unacquainted, may give the subjects a bias before they even look at any of the other asymmetric information.

So, I don’t know what to tell you. I see dangers and advantages in both cases and wish you the best of luck with your decision. Let us know how the research turns out next semester!

 
At 3:38 PM, Blogger Jenna said...

Sorry it's a little late, but I still want to comment on your presentation (and offer my congratulations!). I think your approach to the presentation was optimal for your audience (us). You immediately had our attention because you included Alex's profile, and you only used a few slides to convey your topic, which kept it simple. I don't think anyone else in the class is studying asymetrical communication, so you held intrigue. In regards to your topic, you presented very succinctly and I think you did a great job.
On the questions you asked of us:
1. I've been reading everyone's thoughts and concerns, and I actually think that while it may be more difficult to control and harder to decipher differences, NOT using the confederate allows more flexibility in your results. An especially good point is that the likely confederate is an upper level communcation major studying digital deception. I think it will be very interesting to see how your experiment pans out (whether you use the confederate or not).
I liked your idea for a "get-to-know-you" task. I think that breaks the ice and lets people understand what kind of conversation you're intending to elicit from them to study.
Overall, really great job and congrats again!

 

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