Constructed identity and social machines (original) (raw)

Current discussions of social machines rightly emphasise a human's role as a crucial part of a system rather than a user of a system. The human 'parts' are typically considered in terms of their aggregate outcomes and collective behaviours, but human participants are rarely all equal, even within a small system. We argue that due to the complex nature of online identity, understanding participants in a more granular way is crucial for social machine observation and design. We present the results of a study of the personas portrayed by participants in a social machine that produces creative media content, and discover that inconsistent or misleading representations of individuals do not necessarily undermine the system in which they are participating. We describe a preliminary framework for making sense of human participants in social machines, and the ongoing work that develops this further.