Socio-Technical Systems Under Stress
Brian C. Keegan, Ph.D.Research Associate, Harvard Business School & HBX
December 3, 2014
Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
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I am a…
computational social scientist who
uses network analysis methods to study
socio-technical systems under stress
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I am a…
computational social scientist who
uses network analysis methods to study
socio-technical systems under stress
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pressure or tension exerted on a
material object4
a state of mental or emotional strain
resulting from adverse circumstances5
allostasis:maintaining stability through change
McEwin & Wingfield, 20106
allostatic load:capacity to hand demands of routine tasks
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allostatic overload:task demands exceed capacity for change
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Barro, 20059
10Sornette & Crane, 2008
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unstable stable
beliefs
goals
motivations
interactions
organizations
roles
resources
rules
tasks
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“An unusual routine is a recurrent
interaction pattern in which a system
allows a process, which creates and
reinforces, through dysfunctional
feedback, unintended outcomes.”
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“An unusual routine is a recurrent
interaction pattern in which a system
allows a process, which creates and
reinforces, through dysfunctional
feedback, unintended outcomes.”
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functional
dysfunctional
beliefs
goals
motivations
interactions
organizations
roles
resources
rules
tasks
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unstable stable
functional
dysfunctional
good
slow
bad
fast
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unstable stable
functional
dysfunctional19
unstable stable
functional
dysfunctional
Wikipedia
4chan
News Comments
Second Life MOOCs
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What happens to these socio-technical
systems under stress?
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unstable stable
functional
dysfunctional
Wikipedia
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unstable stable
functional
dysfunctional
Wikipedia
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unstable stable
functional
dysfunctional24
How do socio-technical systems
change under stress?25
And if they are overloaded, how do
they recover or fail?
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Post-mortem revisions have sudden onset,
large magnitude, and temporary duration
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Most users making these changes are “new”
editors, but “old” editors return on death date
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Wide differentiation in contribution patterns
across users making post-mortem revisions
unstable stable
functional
dysfunctional34
Recruiting expertise across domains to
support transition and recovery work
Wikipedia
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Audience members are mutually aware of
each other’s attention to a media event
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Information sharing optimal under conditions
of low feedback and high parallelism
Dennis & Valacich, 1999; Dennis, Fuller, & Valachich, 2008
More shared attention
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Shared attention to media events leads to
less interpersonal behavior39
Shared attention exaggerates already
concentrated communicative behavior
Retweet in-degreeReply in-degree
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These disruptions in large-scale behavior
are significant but temporary
unstable stable
functional
dysfunctional42
Temporary support for exuberant parallelism
and concentrated attention
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Snopee
Snoper
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Persistence of belief in misinformation
despite de-biasing interventionsNyhan & Reifler, 2010; Garrrett, 2011; Ecker, Lewandowsky, & Tang, 2010
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Embarrassment and conformity should
make friends’ fact checks more effectiveFoster 2004; DiFonzo & Bordia, 2007; Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004; Garrett, et al., 2013
733 snoping events
51 snoping events
267 snoping events
422 snoping events
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Mentioned After Not Mentioned After
Follower 2.9% 97.1%
Friend 12.0% 88.0%
Stranger 4.2% 95.8%
χ2 = 21.05; df = 1; p < .001
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Snopes by friends create 3x more replies by
the snopee than other relationship types
Challenging snopes
Follower 73.9%
Friend 65.8%
Stranger 85.0%
χ2 = 11.39; df = 1; p < .001
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Most stranger snopes are challenges, but
fewer snopes from friends are challenges
unstable stable
functional
dysfunctional53
Social ties can be used as a check on
dysfunctional sensemaking
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Recruiting expertise across domains
to support transition work
Employ social ties used for
sensemaking to regulate behavior
Support for temporary exuberance
and synchronized attention
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New media have capability for supporting
large-scale synchronous activity
Barro, 200556
Selecting on dependent variable by
analyzing systems that can recover
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Ability to accommodate temporary
changes to media characteristics
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Adapting theories of allostasis to
socio-technical settings and processes
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Stressors, mediators, reactions,
recovery, acclimation, dependence
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Ethics of engineering disruptions for
behavioral change
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Non-equilibrium communities important
feature in emerging HCI domains
Thank you!
www.brianckeegan.com
@bkeegan
github.com/brianckeegan
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CMU HCII for invitation
Co-authors: Jed Brubaker (UC Irvine), Yu-Ru Lin (Pitt), Drew Margolin (Cornell), Ancsa Hannak (NEU), Ingmar Weber (QCRI),
David Lazer (NEU), Darren Gergle (NU), Noshir Contractor (NU)
CSCW DC 2012, iConference DC 2012, DSST Workshop 2013, Berkman Cooperation Reading Group