Readings on Identity Basics

• Wikipedia entries on social science aspects of identity, online identity, and digital identity
• Weinberger, D. (2004). There's No "I" in Identity
• Udell, J. (2004). Always-on identification
• Crawford, S. (2003). Who's in charge of who I am: Identity and law online (PDF).
• Dick Hardt's OSCON 2005 Keynote on Identity 2.0
• True Names (PDF), by Vernor Vinge

Readings on Online Identity

• boyd, d. (2007). "Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life." MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning - Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 119-142. Donath, J. (1999). Identity and Deception in the Online Community.
  • Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. "Introduction" (pp. 1-16) and "Performances" (pp. 17-76). Available through myCourses.
  • Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the Screen. Chapters 8-10, Available through MyCourses.

The Nym Wars

• Wikipedia Entry on Nymwars (for context)
• boyd, danah. (2011, August 4). "Real Names" Policies Are an Abuse of Power. apophenia.
• Marks, K. (2011, August 20). Google Plus must stop this Identity Theatre
• Swift, M. (2011, November 17). "Nymwars" debate over online identity explodes. San Jose Mercury News.
• York, J. C. (2011, July 29). A Case for Pseudonyms. Electronic Frontier Foundation.
• Zawinski, J. (2011, August 20). Nym Wars.

Readings on Technical Approaches to Managing Identity and Reputation

Identity Management

• OpenID and the Identity Systems of Yahoo, Google & MSN
• Kim Cameron's The Laws of Identity
• What Designers Can Learn From Facebook's Beacon: the collision of "fronts"
• What's Federated Identity Management?
• Understanding Social Identity Systems and Facebook Connect
• Pew Internet report on Digital Footprints
• Simon Willison Tech Talk on "The Implications of OpenID"

Reputation Systems

• Resnick, Paul, Zeckhauser, Richard, Friedman, Eric, and Kuwabara, Ko. Reputation Systems. Communications of the ACM, 43(12), December 2000, pages 45-48. (PDF)
• Bokardo, John. Social Design Patterns for Reputation Systems: An Interview with Yahoo's Bryce Glass, Part I and Part II. June 2008.
• Kirtland, Alex and Schiff, John. "On a Scale from 1 to 5." Boxes and Arrows, November 2008.

Readings on Community

• Tonnies, Ferdinand. (2001) Community and Civil Society. (Available via RIT's ebrary service; read book one, pages 17-91)
• Dunbar, R. I. M. (1993). Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (4): 681-735.
• Putam, Robert D. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. (Preface and Chapters 1, 8, 9 are all available in PDF via myCourses, or in hard copy from me upon request)
• Oldenburg, Ray. (1999) The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. 2nd edition. New York: Marlowe & Company. (Preface and Chapters 1-3 are all available in PDF via myCourses, or in hard copy from me in class upon request)

Readings on Online Community

• Ackerman, M., Huysman, M., Carroll, J. M., Wellman, B., DeMichelis, G., and Wulf, V. 2004. Communities and technologies: an approach to foster social capital?. In Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (Chicago, Illinois, USA, November 06 - 10, 2004). CSCW '04. ACM, New York, NY, 406-408.
• Allen, C. 2004. "The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes."
• Allen, C. 2005. "Dunbar & World of Warcraft."
• Ducheneaut, N., Moore, R. J., and Nickell, E. 2007. Virtual "Third Places": A Case Study of Sociability in Massively Multiplayer Games. Comput. Supported Coop. Work 16, 1-2 (Apr. 2007), 129-166
• Kollock, P., and Smith, M. 1999. "Introduction: Communities in Cyberspace." Pp. 3-25 in Communities in Cyberspace, edited by Marc Smith and Peter Kollock. London: Routledge Press, 1999.
• Shirky, C. 2003. A group is its own worst enemy.
• Shirky, C. 2002. Communities, Audience, and Scale.
• Shirky, C. 2004. "Two on the Monkey-Mind."

Videos on Online Community Case Studies

Please watch these videos before class so that we can discuss them:

• Interview with Clay Shirky on privacy/identity issues
• 23C3 Talk by Joi Ito on WoW

Readings on Designing for Community

• Bartle, Richard. Designing Virtual Worlds, pages 204-239 (available in myCourses in PDF format)
• Kim, Amy Jo. Community Building on the Web. Chapter 1.
• Interview with Derek Powazek on Design for Community
• Audio Interview with Derek Powazek
• Preece, Jenny. Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability. Chapters 5 & 6, both on myCourses

Readings on Cooperation and Competition

• Smith Jonas Heide. 2006. "The Games Economists Play - Implications of Economic Game Theory for the Study of Computer Games." Game Studies, Volume 6, issue 6
• Smith Jonas Heide. 2007. "Tragedies of the ludic commons - understanding cooperation in multiplayer games." Game Studies, Volume 7, issue 7
• Wilkinson, D and Huberman, B. 2007. "Assessing the Value of Cooperation in Wikipedia." First Monday, volume 12, number 4 (April 2007)
• Viégas, F. B., Wattenberg, M., and Dave, K. 2004. Studying cooperation and conflict between authors with history flow visualizations. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Vienna, Austria, April 24 - 29, 2004). CHI '04. ACM, New York, NY, 575-582. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/985692.985765

The history flow tool described in the last paper can be found here: http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/

Readings on Politics and Money Online

• ABC Radio National (Australia): Background Briefing, 27 August 2006, Loot: real money in virtual worlds (audio or transcript available)
• Burke, Timothy. (2004) Play of State: Sovereignty and Governance in MMOGs
• Ted Castronova's seminal paper on real money transfer online: Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier
• Dibbell, Julian: The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer (watch the associated short video, as well)
• Felten, Ed: Chinese Gold Farmers: Work or Fun?
• Lastowka, Greg, and Hunter, Dan. (2004) The Laws of the Virtual Worlds
• Malaby, Thomas. (2006). Control and Contingency Online
• Noveck, Beth. (2008) Wiki-Government

Readings on Bad Behavior Online

• What The Hell Are 4chan, ED, Something Awful, And "b"?
• The Trolls Among Us
• Julian Dibbell: A Rape in Cyberspace
• Julian Dibbell: Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World
• Julian Dibbell: The Assclown Offensive: How to Enrage the Church of Scientology