So I'm marking time while I wait for my topic approval, I thought I'd talk about why I picked my topic. And some other stuff.
Okay, apparently while I was lollygagging, it was approved. Here's the text of my sales pitch:
Topic: Misinformation in complex systems.
Focus: Pre-web forwarded email urban legends on the internet and their web 2.0 equivalents.
Major: Undecided. I'm having a bit of trouble with this at the moment, but I am most interested in computer science/software engineering, communications theory and marketing.
Why have I chosen this topic:
I believe it is under investigated. People have this nasty habit of believing that there is a solid barrier between life online and the real world. That things which occur in one, do not effect the other. One of my primary examples in this paper will be Craig Shergold, the subject of an email forward campaign that got out of hand during the early days of the internet. The email asked the recipient to send post cards to a sick child in Britain in an attempt to set a Guiness world record and to forward the email on to their friends. The email continued to spread long after Mr. Shergold set his record and recovered from his illness. As a consequence of this the British postal system has spent millions of dollars creating a special zip code just for him, as well as sorting more than a million post cards per year. Later the letter mutated and asked the recipient to send a post or business card to the Make-A-Wish foundation. They received so much mail that they actually were forced to move their home office. The Atlanta post office still has to receive and store letters sent to him. As you can see, a lot of unconnected persons sending an innocent email about helping a sick child have cost governments on two continents millions of dollars and has done substantial damage to a very worthy charity.
What interests me about it?
I'm interested from two perspectives. First, as a student of human nature, I find people's beliefs - especially erroneous beliefs - fascinating. We learn primarily from our own failures, and the failures of others. I also have far more experience with email forwards than I would care to. I seem to be a magnet for email forwards, and copy/pasted Facebook statuses. I've never forwarded them on, but I've always been very curious about the motivations of the people who did. In many cases, the story contains elements that are demonstrably false based on simple common sense, a very small amount of research should be enough to seal the story's fate. Yet the person who forwarded it will often consider it true, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
Additionally, there often does not seem to be clear motive to why these messages were sent in the first place. They are not scams, like the 419 scam - which is a mutation of the Spanish Prisoner, a con game so old that it goes back to before the colonization of America. They are not hoaxes for publicity's sake like the boy in the balloon. They typically bear a stronger resemblance to the pull can tabs for medical treatment legend that was prevalent in offices from the nineteen seventies onward. The original sender is seldom identified, and all traces of his identity often vanish from the medium within a few iterations of the message.
I'd also like to see what could be done to prevent situations like the Craig Shergold incident. Short of removing the forward button from the email clients of the people who send these messages and gluing the senders to the floor. Obviously I cannot do that. No matter satisfying it might be to fantasize about that.
I intend to pursue my research using the following:
* I want to build a profile of the average misinformation transmitter. I will accomplish this via a survey about online habits.
* I will also attempt to interview some of the principals involved in the Craig Shergold incident - Atlanta postal officials, and officers of the Make-A-Wish foundation.
* I want to look at common elements in this kind of message and attempt to discover if any particular element makes a given message more likely to be sent on.
* I want to study how a message moves from peer group to peer group on the internet and compare the late 1980s to the present day.
* In addition to my required sources. They will reference specific incidents and communications theory dealing with misinformation as well as transmission errors.
* As extra credit, I want to create a simulated message and investigate (via the groups I've surveyed) whether it would be propagated, and attempt to make an estimate of how large an audience the message would reach. I will do a presentation on the results of this experiment.
* I also solemnly promise to refrain from using adhesives of any kind to attach anyone to the floor or any other surface for any reason during the course of my research or while authoring my paper. No matter how much it might improve my final product.
What information do you think you might find?
I believe the average transmitter is male, between thirty-five and fifty-five years of age, has a bachelors degree and is employed in an office environment.
I suspect the messages themselves are a kind of modern fairy tale, they are an emotional statement designed to evoke compassion (sick child needs object), fear (of strangers, the very poor, the very rich, the sick, people not like us, etc) and other strong reactions. The cues (strong emotive language) that produce these emotions are often accentuated as the message gets corrupted as it is passed from person to person. Messages that don't have these elements, or where the corruption downplays them, tend not to get forwarded and die soon after.
Where do you think you might end up with this research?
The thing I'm most sure of is that there is no easy solution to this problem. Short of gluing people to the floor, which I obviously cannot condone. I believe that I will discover that people have a deep need for these kinds of messages. Much as people in earlier ages needed to believe in Robin Hood or Prester John.
I know my traditional strategy of saying "you're wrong" and showing evidence to back my position is ineffective. I suspect that even emphasizing skepticism, critical thinking and research skills at a much earlier age than education traditionally does would prove only moderately effective.
Despite my low expectations of finding a real solution to this issue, I am eager to study this topic and hope to have the opportunity to write about it.
My biggest concern is how I will format my surveys, what elements to include and what to exclude. I know I'll want basic demographic information. But particularly as to email/tweeting/status behaviors, I'm not sure exactly how to ask those questions. I'll have to give it some thought.
I have another rationale behind why I really like this topic. Jean Shepherd divided the world into Day People and Night People. I think that's an interesting topology, mine would be Kooks and Normals - with maybe some wiggle room between the two categories. Most of these forwards, at least the ones that I've seen were sent by reasonably well educated people, many had a college degree. They worked a steady job, and everyday ate their breakfast. But they send these messages on. Most of them could do a better job writing or summarizing the message, again, educated. Most felt strongly about the virtue of originality, and would sermonize on the topic if you gave them the chance. Yet they were forwarding. They also worried about all sorts of things that I considered odd, but never considered that those emails they sent might have some sort of consequence - that somebody might act on them. They always told me "what's the harm? it's just an email!"
To me, it seems like shouting in an avalanche zone. None of them could ever give me a good account of why they forwarded the emails out. To me, it seems almost ritualistic. Surreal. Like watching a "bank" in a village of cargo cultists. The villagers file in. They exchange leaves with the "teller" and they file back out again. But it's a false comparison, because the villagers may not know what banking is, but they know why they're doing that - they want to bring the cargo to their village and they think this ritual is an efficient means of doing so.
So, while I won't be using it on my actual paper, my real thesis is "Normal People: Weirder than Kooks." Because I study kooks too. I'll tell you that kooks tend to have a system, a set of rules and protocols for dealing with their beliefs, and the world that exists outside their skulls. Even if they don't believe in the reality of that world. They'll explain why they're wearing that tin foil hat or waving a pocket calculator over you or yelling at trees in baroque detail. Their answers may not make a great deal of sense, or even connect with reality at any point, but unlike my email forwarders, they have a reason behind their actions.
One piece of odd normal behavior I've seen, that I've never been able to understand is the fetishization of clothing. I'm not talking about whips and chains here, I'm talking about business clothing. There's a very weird set of rituals that have been built around button down shirts, slacks, and penny loafers. Ties. Shudder. I'll concede that I'm not a fan, but that's not why I think it's odd. Oddity: Nobody knows what "business casual" means, but whatever it is, it's different for men than for women.
Almost every job I've ever worked was business casual. Women at most of them wore T-shirts now and then - I'm not talking about casual Friday. In my early work experience that was an idea whose time had not yet come. Also, don't tell me they were wearing a "blouse" - I worked at HSN, and thus know more than I ever wanted to about woman's clothing. I spoke intelligently about bust measurements with women old enough to be my grandmother.
But let's look at what was in store for gents. Black pants, white colored button down shirt. A little color is okay if you want to occasionally wear a golf shirt - which is distinct from a t-shirt because it has a collar? Earth tones only though. Don't ask me. I can't explain it. Now, if you're over fifty, you can wear gray, and even have pinstripes.
Also, wearing inexpensive, durable, comfortable clothing on any day except for Friday brings down the company's stock prices. Even if we aren't publicly traded. Additionally, though we have gate, building and office security, a customer or investor might burst in like a ninja, rappelling down the side of the building, breaking open one of the bullet-proof, non-opening windows and catch us wearing something other than our salt and peppers.
If you allow casual clothing in your company, nobody can wear anything else. The idea that you might want to wear a "dressier" outfit apparently makes you overdressed. The penalties for being overdressed are apparently too horrible to imagine, because nobody would ever describe them to me. Additionally, if you don't have strict (but not so strict as to be an actual instruction, dress codes are supposed to be absorbed through osmosis) dress codes people will show up in their underwear or worse nude!
Besides, everyone knows you're more "professional" when you're dressed in at least business casual in the one hundred plus degree Florida sun. Nobody has ever cited evidence, but everybody knows. Nobody can describe what "professional" might mean in this context. Everyone knows. One intelligent co-worker of mine even suggested, of her own free will, that we be forced to wear uniforms! What could go wrong?
The most surreal interaction with dress codes I've ever had though was at my last real job. They pulled us from our desks in the middle of the shift to go hear this lady talk about how, though we had ritually practiced casual Friday for aeons untold, we would now have to wear a company button in order to wear jeans on Friday - and even that might be cut to once a month. There was also a great deal of singing, and some general praise about how generous our company was - there was even talk about "spirit". It was all very confusing.
I'll be honest, this spirit thing has always befuddled me. Back when I was in High School, I was told that I must have it and was forced to go to the gym to listen to vaguely rhythmic chants about it. They'd say "We have spirit, yes we do, we've got spirit how about you?" but all I could do was stare blankly, because I had no idea what they were talking about - just that I was forced to be there when I could have been planning that week's Gangbusters campaign or reading. It was even weirder in a professional context - it apparently isn't enough that I've taken your shilling, shown up most of the time, and turned in what you tell me is excellent work. I have to source a spirit and be thankful that you're letting me wear the clothing I prefer somewhat less often . . . if I wear your totem. A totem, that only my co-workers and supervisors will know about because I never see my customers?!?!
I'm not sure that I'm a kook, but I'm quite glad that I'm not normal. Those normal guys are really weird.
