{"534651":{"#nid":"534651","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Georgia Tech Research Finds Fan Communities Are Reshaping the Social Web for the Better","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EModern fan groups predate the Internet by more than half a century (think Star Trek conventions), and their shared interests include everything from science fiction to knitting. But replicating the connections fans make in person in a digital space has proved difficult. Instead, groups with special interests are often forced onto Facebook and other social media with a one-size-fits-all approach to interacting online.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn a new study, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have found one group of fan fiction writers that has created a successful online community, which might serve as a model to help make the future social web markedly different from today\u2019s landscape.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBy adopting a user-centric approach to design, this community has created a rarity on the web, a \u201cdigital commons\u201d without advertising where harassment is almost nonexistent, and a large installed audience enjoys a culture of genuine diversity.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe study, from Georgia Tech and University of Colorado-Boulder, is based on the website \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/archiveofourown.org\/\u0022\u003EArchive of Our Own\u003C\/a\u003E (AO3), an 840,000 member community of fan fiction or \u201cfanfic\u201d writers who post and share user-generated content. The site was launched in 2008 and boasts nearly 2 million story posts to date. Its web traffic outpaces such heavyweights as CareerBuilder\u0026nbsp;and FoxSports, among others, ranking number 418 in U.S. web metrics, according to alexa\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/alexa.com\/\u0022\u003E.\u003C\/a\u003Ecom.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cAO3\u2019s success demonstrates how beneficial it is to have a technology\u2019s users as part of its development team,\u201d said Casey Fiesler, lead researcher on the study while a Ph.D. candidate at Georgia Tech, and now assistant professor at University of Colorado-Boulder.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThis is particularly striking when users are mostly women, who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. Because there was no existing technology that reflected their values, they built their own and it has been massively successful.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EA small team of coders, coordinators and designers from the ranks of AO3 members took input from users and coupled it with the guiding values of the fan fiction community \u0026shy;\u0026shy;\u2013 which are accessibility and inclusivity \u2013 to create the basic structure of AO3. After more than eight years, this structure remains largely unchanged.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDuring interviews with users and developers, researchers discovered that AO3\u2019s intentional design approach, which baked the ethos of the community right into the website, accounts for much of the site\u2019s organic growth and success.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhat makes the rise of this online platform exceptional is that it was built primarily by its fans, some of whom started with little or no programming experience,\u201d said Amy Bruckman, a professor of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech and author on the study\u003Cstrong\u003E.\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EShe added, \u201cFanfic writers, mostly women, who felt exploited or that other platforms weren\u2019t meeting their needs, started this open source project and invited the larger community of fanfic writers to provide input. AO3 is a case study in building a digital commons around a group of users and addressing nuanced technical issues in order to successfully engage the community.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOne of the technical issues AO3 faced early on, tag structure, has since become a favorite feature and essential to the website\u2019s success. Designers did not limit what or how many tags can be used with published stories, but rather created an open-ended system. AO3 \u201ctag wranglers,\u201d member volunteers, manually combine tags submitted by users (such as \u201cmermaid,\u201d \u201cmerman,\u201d and \u201cmerfolk\u201d) into one meta tag (\u201cmerpeople\u201d), allowing for a robust search of multiple terms.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThis level of control allows users to find a wide cross section of relevant content, something that is often not possible on other platforms beyond giant search engines, according to the research. Fiesler notes that the tag system also gives writers more control over how to describe their work, and this contributes to the inclusiveness and diversity of the community.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut like any online space, there are competing values among users. Anonymity, like elsewhere on the web, can allow for more openness and sharing, but it can also invite harassment. To limit this, the AO3 site allows users to post comments anonymously, but it also allows users to turn off incoming anonymous comments so they do not have to see them. The site also prohibits the intentional \u201couting\u201d (revealing real identities) of users, does not offer tier accounts and never collects personal data. All of this means the AO3 community can enjoy a high degree of privacy while respecting the rights of all of its users.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAlthough AO3 makes every effort to limit harassment, it does not censor or restrict content on the site, unless it is illegal. However, to ensure readers know they are reading content \u201cat their own risk,\u201d warning labels are required on mature content that is posted.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnother concern among users is how to preserve the entirety of the archive while also respecting users\u2019 rights to erase their own work. AO3 again turned to its members for a solution. For writers wanting to remove their fiction, the site gives them the option to \u201corphan\u201d their work. This removes their pseudonym or name from the work, but allows the content to remain in the community.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cOther sites would do well to understand their users as well as AO3 does in order to achieve long-term goals and address some of the emerging issues on the social web, such as those involving harassment, privacy, security and sustainability,\u201d says Fiesler, the lead researcher.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe research, \u201c\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/cfiesler.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/02\/chi2016_ao3_fiesler.pdf\u0022\u003EAn Archive of Their Own: A Case Study of Feminist HCI and Values in Design\u003C\/a\u003E,\u201d co-authored by Fiesler, Bruckman and Shannon Morrison (a former visiting undergraduate at Georgia Tech), will be presented at CHI 2016, the Association for Computing Machinery\u2019s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, taking place May 7-12 in San Jose, Calif. The conference is the largest gathering of human-computer interaction researchers worldwide, with more than 2,000 authors in this year\u2019s technical program.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/em\u003E\u003Cem\u003EResearch was funded by NSF IIS Award #1216347. The views expressed are those of the researchers and do not necessarily represent those of the National Science Foundation.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EIn a new study, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have found that one successful online community could serve as a model to help make the future social web a safer, more inclusive space.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"In a new study, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have found that one successful online community could serve as a model to help make the future social web a safer, more inclusive space."}],"uid":"27592","created_gmt":"2016-05-09 11:44:28","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:21:39","author":"Joshua Preston","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2016-05-09T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2016-05-09T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"534751":{"id":"534751","type":"image","title":"Casey Fiesler and Amy Bruckman","body":null,"created":"1462910400","gmt_created":"2016-05-10 20:00:00","changed":"1475895319","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:55:19","alt":"Casey Fiesler and Amy Bruckman","file":{"fid":"88795","name":"casey_and_amy_web.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/casey_and_amy_web_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/casey_and_amy_web_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":303960,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/casey_and_amy_web_0.jpg?itok=jIvrK4BP"}},"534561":{"id":"534561","type":"image","title":"CHI 2016 - Web Culture Research, Archive of Our Own","body":null,"created":"1462892400","gmt_created":"2016-05-10 15:00:00","changed":"1475895319","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:55:19","alt":"CHI 2016 - Web Culture Research, Archive of Our Own","file":{"fid":"88787","name":"a03_merpeople_screenshot.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/a03_merpeople_screenshot.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/a03_merpeople_screenshot.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":359271,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/a03_merpeople_screenshot.jpg?itok=oWFSJRdG"}}},"media_ids":["534751","534561"],"groups":[{"id":"1299","name":"GVU Center"}],"categories":[{"id":"143","name":"Digital Media and Entertainment"}],"keywords":[{"id":"167543","name":"social media"},{"id":"172017","name":"web culture"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"}],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"71881","name":"Science and Technology"},{"id":"71901","name":"Society and Culture"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jpreston@cc.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJoshua Preston\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECollege of Computing, GVU Center\u003Cbr \/\u003E678.231.0787\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jpreston@cc.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}