This week on the podcast, Catherine White, graduate student at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, where she is researching productive participatory discussion, talks about her thesis on the Noisy Idiot Dilemma. White explains the dilemma — how to foster productive online conversation when certain speakers exhibit noisy, unproductive, or unhelpful behavior — and discusses her research on various online forums, weblog comments, effects of humor, anonymity, and empathy online, and characteristics of elastic, oily conversation.
Related Readings
- The Noisy Idiot Dilemma: How To Make Participatory Online Conversation Easier , first two chapters of White’s thesis
- White’s Ignite NYC presentation on the Noisy Idiot Dilemma
- White’s ITP thesis presentation
Do check out the interview, and consider subscribing to the show on iTunes. Past guests have included Clay Shirky on cognitive surplus, Nick Carr on what the internet is doing to our brains, Gina Trapani and Anil Dash on crowdsourcing, James Grimmelman on online harassment and the Google Books case, Michael Geist on ACTA, Tom Hazlett on spectrum reform, and Tyler Cowen on just about everything.
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.