G2 Leading Class Discussion

Wednesday, April 22, 2009/4/29

We choose classroom A102 for the class meeting. Since our topics are concerned about media, especially one for YouTube, the media hardware in A102 can help to demonstrate videos and “wake up” some of our classmates.

The first essay is written by Patricia G. Lange
Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube

The essay takes YouTube for example to explore personal boundary in sharing website. Media sharing website not only shares but also reflects relationship between people, and in the essay we can see how can the two similar terms “publicly private” and “privately public” to be differentiate from each other.

Discussion Question:
What would you do if people misinterpret your online work? Will you delete their comments, tell them your original thought or doing something else?

Response:
G1 thinks it depends on in which way people misinterpret their works. If the things criticized are not so important, then they might simply ignore.

G3’s opinion differs. Some of them ignore, but some thinks responding will be a better interaction so as to preserve one’s own idea.

G4 suggests to fight back if they feel insulted by the commentators’ words. They think everyone has his own thought, but if the attitude is too mean, they will delete those messages with evidence.

G5 will delete the comment directly for this is their own blogs. The blog owners can have their will to administrate things happened inclusive of their territory.

The second essay is written by Lee K. Farquhar and Robert Meeds
Types of Fantasy Sports Users and Their Motivations

There are over 15 million people in online fantasy sports. Applying a uses and gratifications (U&G) research, we use "Q-methodolody," a quantitative means for developing typologies of people, to examine types of online fantasy sports users (FSUs) and their motivations.

Five types of players emerged, with casual players, skilled players, and isolationist thrill-killers, being the three most common types. Differences among types of users were prmarily associated with two motivations-arousal and surveillance-while entertainment, escape, and social interaction motivations were judged to be less important. The minimal importance of social interaction to fantasy sports users in this study was unexpected, based on previous research, and implies that not all online communities build or maintain relationships.

Response:
Group 1 thought that surveillance and social interaction are the motivations of Mr. X because he cares about statistics and he talks a lot and discusses with his friends.

Group 3 thought that entertainment and social interaction are the motivations because he not only enjoys the feeling of playing games but also talks a lot about Fantasy sports in the real world.

Group 4 thought surveillance is the motivation because he cares about statistics and check them every morning. He also did a lot of talking with others about FS, so social interaction is one of the motivations too. Entertainment is possible, too.

Group 5 thought it's surveillance and arousal.
We thought social interaction, surveillance and arousal are the motications that motivated Mr. X's engagement in Fantasy Sports