Related link: http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2006/view/e_sess/7872
Only at ETech can I walk into a session and have the speaker tell me tons of things about myself that I didn't know before I walked in the door. This feeling is eerie, creepy and enlightening all at the same time and only someone as intense as Danah Boyd can take me there.
Danah's presentation on G/localization focused on the collision of global cultures with local cultures and the ugliness that ensues. Danah first started out by defining culture and what it means in the online space. Culture represents a set of values, norms and artifacts (shared language and expressions) that de-mark boundaries both in the real world and in online spaces. However, these boundaries are not just de-marked by languages and nation-states -- there are many cultural divides on the net. For instance, a motorcycle enthusiast web site will have a culture focused around motorcycles -- the expressions and lingo there will be drastically different from an arts and crafts website.
She went on to talk about popular sites like Flickr, MySpace and Craigslist and what common traits these sites share. The designers of these sites are passionate about their ideas and fanatical about listening to users and engaging the users to participate. Instead of ruling a site with an iron fist, these designers merely set the tone for the site. An integrated feedback loop that drives a quick upgrade cycle of the site is one of the keys to creating and maintaining organic growth of the site. The public personalities of the people who design these sites are represented in the sites themselves. You can see this when Flickr has problems: A personal and apologetic message lets the users know that a problem exists. The people who run the site are sad and concerned that the site is down -- the voice of a passionate human being posts these messages. Not some corporate drone who is merely doing their job.
Danah's points about embedded observation resonated with me, since they express many lose and unexpressed thoughts I have about my own projects. According to her, embedded observation is the process of site designers being part of the site the design. Being embedded in the culture they create allows an unprecedented understanding of the people and semantic workings of the site. Craig, the creator of the popular site Craigslist has an official "Customer Support" title -- this shows the dedicated focus on the customers of the site.
When sites embrace these concepts and empower their users to shape the community to their own tastes, a unique culture emerges from it. And this emergent culture is both beautiful and also the cause of many cultural conflicts when the emergent global culture on these sites collides with conflicting local cultures. The problem arises from varying local cultures from all over the world -- if you have users from many cultures, whose morality are you working with? For instance, clothing acceptable for women in western nations is drastically different from the acceptable clothing in many Islamic nations. Yet, these people with very differing viewpoints must somehow co-exist on one site without (proverbially) killing each other.
So, what can you do to prevent this from happening, or lessen the impact when it does happen? Dana suggests to diversify your staff to understand the local cultures participating in the site. For instance, when Google's Orkut was inundated with Brazilians speaking Portuguese, Google hired a person who spoke Portuguese who could help Google understand the emergent culture. Another key is to not control your users -- Friendster is the perfect bad example for what happens to an emergent culture when the site designers shut down people who don't act according to the site designers original intentions. Once Friendster started clamping down on fake accounts, discord rippled through the site and started tearing apart the community. Its best to enable and empower your users and to nudge them in the right direction -- never control them.
Danah further suggest that site designers need to allow users to personalize their online space and to culturalize it, which allows users to craft a space that is comfortable for them. These features combined with the power let users manage private/public spaces and also leaving the door open for opportunities of synchronicity reduces the chances for cultural collisions. The last thought that I think will really make a difference is to let users become cultural spokespersons for the site. A user who is part of the colliding culture and who represents the site can help settle cultural differences and diffuse tense situations. Of course, this concept requires that sites give up strict control over what official statements that are being made about a site. This is quite a leap for many corporations, but it likely to be one of the greatest tools for combatting cultural collisions. And sites like Flickr and Craigslist are probably already quite familiar with this concept.
This presentation provides tons of food for thought since the writable web opens up many cans of worms like these. Global vs local problems exist in many other asects of the net, yet Danah suggests some amazingly simple solutions for complex problems. I only wish that we could find some simple solutions for when various local laws start colliding on the net.
Do you have any other tips for how to avoid online cultural clashes?
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