Jonas Heide Smiths notesblog» Persuasion

Radio er den nye radio

Jonas Heide Smith — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:31:39 +0000

Du siger brugergeneret indhold og kollaborativ filtrering. Men inderst inde ved du det godt: Den digitale udviklings væsentligste frembringelse er radio på din iPod.

Jeg elsker podcast. Jeg har elsket podcast siden jeg, i 2005, havde en lang daglig bustur gennem Sydney, hvor jeg klyngede mig til min lille iPod Shuffle.

Særligt interaktivt eller teknisk revolutionerende er det ikke. Ja, det er faktisk oftest ren shovel-ware, hvor eksisterende indhold blot klemmes ud gennem endnu en kanal. Men det løser et indlysende problem: Der produceres strålende radio, og du har aldrig tid til at lytte koncentreret lørdag kl. 13. Og samtidig passer det som fod i hose til en brugskontekst som de fleste af os lever med: Transport. Her duer hverken læsning eller video – på din cykel er radio the shit.

Interessant nok er det langt hen ad vejen de samme programmer, jeg hører i dag som for fem år siden. Og her kommer en kort intro til et par af de langtidsholdbare.

Mennesker og Medier (DR, P1). Lasse Jensen er utrættelig i sin løbende analyse af det danske medielandskab. Han er bedst, når han giver sig lov til at tale selv og mindst interessant, når han fortaber sig i journalistik-specifikke diskussioner som kun the gentlemen of the press vist kan interessere sig for.
Kommunikationscast (selvstændig produktion). Når man tænker på, at de hverken har budget eller forretningsplan, så er Katrine Thielke og Mikkel Westerkams ugentlige Kommunikationscast et lille mirakel. Selv hvis man ikke tager denne kontekst i betragtning er det pretty damn imponerende. Thilke og Westerkam dækker kommunikationsbranchen og omkringliggende herreder med både viden og humor. Og de gør det uge efter uge.
Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Movie Reviews (BBC, 5 Live). Jeg mindes, at den let elitære filmanmelder Kermode og hans mere prosaiske sidekick Mayo var endnu morsommere for nogle år siden, men de er stadig voldsomt underholdende. Kermodes holdninger er skarpslebne og leveres med overskud og energi. Når man har lyttet til de to herrer (og det kræver en indsats at hoppe med på deres mange indforståede temaer) virker mange P1-programmer pludselig som energiforladt plejehjemsradio.
Harddisken (DR, P1). På den ene side opfylder Harddisken et specifikt behov (danske teknologinyheder i radioen) ganske godt og tager sit tema fuldt ud seriøst. På den anden side har programmet periodevis været plaget af lange ufokuserede indslag som har syntes dikteret af formatet (programmet skal vare en time) snarere end indholdets relevans. Og så har der meget længe været kludder i filerne på iTunes, hvilket i kombination med iPhonen’s dårlige podcastunderstøttelse er ret belastende. Programmet jeg i princippet elsker – og som ofte er godt - men som af og til irriterer mig i praksis.
Skeptoid (selvstændig produktion, skeptoid.com). Brian Dunnings ugentlige angreb på pseudovidenskab, overtro og vandrehistorier. Her bliver man klogere, underholdt og til tider skræmt af hvor bizarre nogle menneskers verdensbilleder er.

Hvad hører du?

Lignende indlæg:

Jeg er megatræt af “dybe links”

Gode Ideer 1: Den Lange Hale (11/03/2009)

Den virale markedsførings eneste problem er dens kritikere (04/03/2010)

Print er det nye vinyl (30/08/2011)

Fri sex og nye medier (14/09/2009)

Del:

Strategisk kommunikation, dit navn er spil

Jonas Heide Smith — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:38:58 +0000

Playful Persuasion: The Rhetorical Potential of Advergames, en artikel om computerspil i markedsføringssammenhæng som jeg har skrevet sammen med Sine Nørholm Just, er nu udgivet i tidsskriftet Nordicom Review. Den kan hentes som PDF.

I artiklen præsenterer vi en analytisk model for advergames og applicerer den på udvalgte eksemplarer fra Toms Chokolade, Dansk Retursystem, og Danske Bank.

Artiklens abstract lyder:

The use of video games for advertising purposes is persuasive communication which directly involves the recipient in the construction of an argument. This form is becoming increasingly common, and the present article explores the phenomenon of game-based advertising. We begin by discussing the increased reliance on participatory and digital rhetoric. We then proceed to examine game-based persuasion in light of rhetorical theory, and we propose an analytical model for such games which is applied to three sample games. The analytical model takes into account the degree to which the game makes a self-contained argument, the degree to which the product or service is integrated into the game, and whether the game goal and learning goal overlap. Finally, we discuss perspectives for the integration of communication studies and game studies.

Lignende indlæg:

Thesis on advergaming (or whatever the term is)

Dissertation abstract beta (04/08/2006)

Video games – passion, practice & fresh perspectives workshop at ITU in August (14/06/2005)

Digra 2007 in Tokyo (23/04/2006)

I think that you think that I think (07/06/2006)

Del:

Unrestrained animosity

Jonas Heide Smith — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:14:11 +0000

I’ve just finished Richard Dawkins’ bestselling anti-religious The God Delusion. Entertaining for sure but in a sort of indulgent way since I pretty much found its premises about as hard to swallow as Italian ice cream on a sunny day. Having one’s own views intelligently and conveniently confirmed – hasn’t that sort of become the domain of podcasts these days?
Anyway, one interesting feature was the rhetorical effect of Dawkins’ outright anger. An example:

“I have described atonement, the central doctrine of Christianity, as vicious, sado-masochistic and repellent. We should also dismiss it as barking mad, but for its ubiquitous familiarity, which has dulled our objectivity.” (p253)

It is one of Dawkins’ points, of course, that religion deserves no particular respect and that its claims and concepts should be treated as critically as all other types of claims and concepts. Nevertheless, there is obviously spite here and while it can read as honesty it can also read as personal vendetta and thus, perhaps, seem dismissable out of hand to some. Anyway, it illustrates the interesting and complex rhetorical features of anger.

All in all, I recommend the book, but earlier work by Dawkins is more essential if you haven’t been there already.

BTW, the New York Times was somewhat sceptical while The Guardian‘s reviewer had a better time.

Lignende indlæg:

The triumphant return of… media studies

The reliability of the Zahavis (03/02/2005)

Games and gamers (28/06/2005)

Reverse rhetorics (10/01/2007)

The psychology of dough-nut salesmen (26/09/2006)

Del:

Reverse rhetorics

Jonas Heide Smith — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 08:39:49 +0000

I’ve become acutely interested in argumentation in preparation for the course on Digital Rhetorics (Danish course website) I’ll be teaching next semester. On that note, I found the following quote quite interesting:

One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn’t possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it. [emphasis added]

… not to say funny.

Lignende indlæg:

Unrestrained animosity

The psychology of dough-nut salesmen (26/09/2006)

The reliability of the Zahavis (03/02/2005)

Free as in free beer (12/07/2005)

Guess the source (27/01/2007)

Del:

Thesis on advergaming (or whatever the term is)

Jonas Heide Smith — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 16:30:58 +0000

This paper suggests advertisers should experiment with in-game advertising to gain skills that could become vital in the near future. It compiles, arranges and analyzes the existing body of academic and industry knowledge on advertising and product placement in computer game environments. The medium’s characteristics are compared to other channels’ in terms of their attractiveness to marketers, and the business environment is analyzed to offer recommendations on the relative advantages of in-game advertising. The paper also contains a brief historical review of in-game advertising, and descriptions of currently available and emerging advertising formats.

Download PDF and more

Lignende indlæg:

The triumphant return of… media studies

Reverse rhetorics (10/01/2007)

The psychology of dough-nut salesmen (26/09/2006)

If it’s a small thing: Lie through your teeth (30/09/2006)

The reliability of the Zahavis (03/02/2005)

Del:

If it’s a small thing: Lie through your teeth

Jonas Heide Smith — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 19:22:05 +0000

I was shopping for shoes recently. The salesman told me that the pair I was examining needed a special treatment before being used. I asked him if he could perform this treatment for me before I left the store, if I chose them. “Of course”, he said without flinching.

“OK then”, I said, “I’ll take them”.

We go the counter and he looks in the back room for the shoe treatment agent (or whatever it was). He comes back out with an apologetic look and says “sorry, we didn’t have the agent after all”. “No big deal”, I say and buy the shoes.

Then last week I went shopping for a washing machine (the horror!). The salesman gives us a wonderful performance, elegantly geared towards steering us towards the most expensive of his machines. The whole thing is a combination of personal anecdotes and daring signals of personal integrity (he went as far as to question whether we should by a new one at all – we might have our old one repaired – it would be more environment friendly – I thought he was brilliant). Anyway, before we made up our minds about which machine to get, I ask him if we can get the machine within one or two days. “Of course”, he says, “they’re all in stock”.

So we go home and think and having made up our minds I call the salesman and tell him we want the expensive model. He says: “Excellent choice. Let me just confirm that we can get it to you right away and get back to you”. He calls back in 10 minutes to inform me that delivery will unfortunately take eight days because the supplier is out of stock. “OK“, I say, “just get it to us as soon as possible”.

Here’s the principle: As long as the customer is contemplating a purchase, tell him that any small request can be met, even if it’s untrue or you simply have no idea. Once the customer has made his choice, informing him that the small auxiliary promises unfortunately cannot be kept is very unlikely to make him change his mind about the purchase itself.

Lignende indlæg:

The triumphant return of… media studies

Unrestrained animosity (27/02/2007)

The psychology of dough-nut salesmen (26/09/2006)

The reliability of the Zahavis (03/02/2005)

Reverse rhetorics (10/01/2007)

Del:

The psychology of dough-nut salesmen

Jonas Heide Smith — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 18:22:53 +0000

Sometimes – rarely – a book manages to forcefully alter the way you view your surroundings. For me, such books are almost always of the popular science variety. I recently, based on Thomas‘ sage advice, enjoyed Cialdini’s Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion in which the author entertainingly describes salesman’s (in the broadest sense) techniques to bend you to their will. I promise that this book will make you enjoy meeting salespeople more – even if understanding the principles (one of the interesting points of the book) does not make one immune to their dark powers.

I experienced the latter quite clearly in a recent trip to Tunesia. On our first day, a dough-nut salesman walked up to me and my 3-year old daughter offering his sugary wonders. I told him no thanks, but he was persistent and finally put a dough-nut in the hand of my daughter who promptly took a bite. He then asked for payment. To put it in terms suitable for this blog I instantly developed somewhat negative feelings towards our dough-nut friend. I told him that he had given away his dough-nut – and I didn’t pay him. He walked off and my daughter threw away the thing quite quickly. And at this point, the situation was: My daughter had had a bite of dough-nut and nobody had suffered any damage. So why did I still feel extremely annoyed: Because he had disregarded my clearly stated interest and used my daughter as part of the bargain, but also because he had made me violate the extremely strong reciprocity principle in human interaction. See Cialdini’s Chapter 2.

In a larger perspective the best of such books does the reader a great service by tying together phenomena that the brain formerly had to process individually. It collapses seemingly separate categories and thus makes room for more. They make you smart.

Lignende indlæg:

Reverse rhetorics

The reliability of the Zahavis (03/02/2005)

Unrestrained animosity (27/02/2007)

The triumphant return of… media studies (11/10/2005)

The Spam Wars take a new turn (09/05/2007)

Del:

The triumphant return of… media studies

Jonas Heide Smith — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 10:54:20 +0000

Okay, here’s an excerpt from a chapter I’m writing on the importance of how one chooses to conceptualize the “player”. I start (more or less) by pointing to the implications of various user/audience views in other fields. Here’s my draft take on the issue in media studies. Comments shall be welcome, here or by email.

Media studies: In search of the audience
“We need to look not at what media do to people, but what people do with media” wrote Blumler and Katz in 1974 [err, they didn't really, but I'm still searching for the exact quote]. This was a radical suggestion. Large parts of media studies had previously held it to be evident that the media products, or texts, contained the power to persuade the recipient or indeed significantly alter his or her behaviour. Largely this influence was seen as a function of the media content, for instance in terms of a manifest and explicit message (i.e. “Join the US army!”), more indirect manipulation (i.e. “US army life is attractive”), desensitisation or habituation (i.e. screen violence leading to violent behaviour), or subtle and sometimes wilful misrepresentation of the state of the world (i.e. women often portrayed as housewives, society portrayed as plagued by crime). Another, less generally influential, school of thought held media influence to be a question not of content but of far more opaque features of media form and the general media ecology. Proponents of this latter perspective are commonly subsumed under the heading “medium theory”. Vocal spokesman of medium theory, Marshall McLuhan even went as far as to describe media content as “like the juicy bit of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watch dog of the mind” (McLuhan, 1964) famously stressing that “The medium is the message” . The latter should be taken to mean that the medium itself, that is its characteristics and mode of production, is what matters in terms of the medium’s effects on the individual and on society.

But whether content or medium form was taken to be the influencing variable both general views implied that the audience were somehow being influenced by media, that the audience was a passive part of the communication process. Blumler and Katz, as part of what is generally known as the uses-and-gratification paradigm, represent an explicit opposition to the passive audience assumption. Here, media use is seen as purposeful. Individual audience members are seen as making choices about which media (or which genre etc.) best fits their needs and preferences. In this tradition, media users are often queried about the motivations for their media choice, a methodology which follows from the very assumption that media users are highly reflexive, conscious and rational in their media use. Reasonable objections to this research program are legion but here it will suffice to note that its transfer of power from the text to the media user shapes both methodology and the topics of investigation.

Another development further accentuated the importance of how the audience was conceptualized. The early 1980s saw the rise of a number of related approaches such as media ethnography, reception analysis and cultural studies drawing theoretical inspiration from semiotics, reader-response theory, poststructuralism and neo-Marxism. Though major differences exist, these approaches all stressed that the very act of media use was an act of non-trivial interpretive effort and that essentially the meaning-making process occurred at the user’s end of the communicative equation. The power of the text (or its producer) to imprint a certain meaning or behaviour in the user was seen as doubtful or at the very least only one side in the negotiation or struggle over meaning.

Multiple theoretical developments inspired this view, but a seminal formulation was that of sociologist Stuart Hall. In a 1980 essay (based on earlier work) Hall described communication as a process of encoding (the work of the sender) and decoding (the work of the recipient), stressing that a text is a carrier of a message which is conveyed through an arbitrary code . Different theorists saw the power to determine meaning as located in different positions on the spectrum between encoding and decoding. Hall himself merely stressed that encoding does not control decoding in any deterministic sense.

A moderate, and seminal, early empirical example of the approach was sociologist David Morley’s study of how the British current affairs program Nationwide was interpreted by its audience (Morley, 1980). Morley sought to understand “the degree of complementarity between the codes of the programme and the interpretive codes of various sociocultural groups… [and] the extent to which decodings take place within the limits of the preferred (or dominant) manner in which the message has been initially encoded.” (Morley, 1983: 106).
Others have been more inclined to emphasize the strong potential of the viewer to actually interpret media products in highly personal ways only indirectly related to the intentions of the sender.

Summing up on the history of audience research, Morley himself claims that:

The history of studies of the media audience can be seen as a series of oscillations between perspectives which have stressed the power of the text (or message) over its audiences and perspectives which have stresses the barriers “protecting” the audience from the potential effects of the message. (Morley, 1997)

A slightly different formulation of the development comes from Klaus Bruhn Jensen and Klaus Erik Rosengren, who find that audience research may be broadly characterized as either based in the humanities or the social sciences and that certain sub-developments (such as the general notion of the individual) cannot be said to oscillate (Jensen & Rosengren, 1990). They note that “…the notion of the individual presumably affected by the mass media has varied, from that of a passive recipient of powerful messages to that of a much more active and selective user of media content.” (209).

It is certainly true, as Morley claims, that paradigms represent different perspectives on the relative power of text, and recipient (and sender). But one might equally well stress that they differ as to their, explicit or implied, theory of the media user. For instance, to comment on the relationship between text and user interpretation or behaviour without empirically studying the latter is a strong assertion about the nature of the audience: In such a model the media user is a passive, almost mechanistic, entity reacting in an automatic fashion to media stimuli. Arguably, this was the view of early media research, later derogatorily labelled as the “hypodermic needle” or “magic bullet” approach to media effects. In the view of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, for instance, the mass media (as part of larger societal developments) worked directly on the consciousness of the audience which would soon come to reflect the mode of address brought about by the structure of the media business (the audience as mere statistics) (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1944/1972). Later work, such as that of Katz and Lazarsfeld (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955) which specifically spoke of “the part played by people”, still had at its core the idea of persuasion through media but differed in its idea of the audience. Here, people were not seen as atomized couch potatoes but rather as members of social networks which ultimately mediated mass media messages. People did not simply change their minds based on media content but relied partly on certain opinion leaders within their community as they formed their own opinions. This implied, of course, that opinion forming could not be studied in a social vacuum and that the natural level of analysis was the individual and its social network (rather than media institutions or the texts themselves). In the uses-and-gratifications paradigm, the user, as mentioned above, was seen as a highly rational individual choosing media and specific programs to suit her personal needs and capable of verbalizing the nature of the relationship between her needs and her media use. And in the various later semiotics-inspired perspectives the user was seen as performing demanding interpretations, often in the face of ambiguous or “poly-semic“ messages and sometimes in the face of threatening or problematic intended readings.

In this way, the differences between these paradigms may be seen as resulting from different conceptualizations of the user. Such a view, of course, implies a certain critique of the perspectives mentioned and their various proponents would perhaps object to this characterization arguing that they do not begin with a certain vision of the user, but rather end up with one based on their studies. Undoubtedly, that is a laudable scientific ideal and one which is not entirely incompatible with the account given above . But for a variety of discussions concerning media audiences it is difficult not to acknowledge that disagreements do not revolve around the quality of evidence or the validity of particular studies as much as they are functions of incompatible assumptions and theoretical perspectives operating at a much more fundamental level. For instance, the argument has been made that the academic debate concerning the relationship between video game violence and player aggression must mainly be understood as a fundamental disagreement about what part of the media-user equation affects the other (Egenfeldt-Nielsen & Smith, 2004). But the disagreement could equally be said to simply concern the user; one side believes that the user is highly and predictably influenced by stimuli (that users are essentially identical) whereas the other side believes that the user is an active part of the communication process with responses heavily influenced by sociocultural background, social networks and other aspects of the environment.
Summing up, the history of audience research within media studies may be thought of as a series of competing perspectives with different theories of the media user. These theories are only partly derived from data and they are partly a consequence of more fundamental world-views which shape research methodology and indeed the research questions themselves. This highlights the crucial importance of one’s “theory of the user” when conducting research into the relationship between a medium or artefact and its users.

Lignende indlæg:

Games and gamers

The reliability of the Zahavis (03/02/2005)

As we may watch (28/09/2006)

Sociology Master Thesis gets censored (09/10/2007)

The danger of effect studies (09/09/2005)

Del:

Tekster

Jonas Heide Smith — Sun, 08 May 2005 21:53:23 +0000

Smith, Jonas Heide (2011). W4 segmenterne. Kommunikationsforum, 15/12-2011.

Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon & Smith, Jonas Heide & Tosca, Susana (in press). Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction (2nd Edition). New York: Routledge. [Facebook page].

Smith, Jonas Heide (2011). Du står for enden af en vej: Computerspil og fantasy. Kritik #202. [ikke online, skriv hvis du vil læse]

Smith, Jonas Heide (2011). En forbløffende god bog om computerspil. Version2, 7/10-2011.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2010). Angry Birds er antiopskrift med absolut succes. Kommunikationsforum, 8/12-2010.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2010). Computerspil overtager dit liv. Politiken, 22/8-2010.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2010). Trusting the Avatar. Games and Culture, vol. 5, no. 3. [Draft version].

Smith, Jonas Heide (2009). Nekrolog: Websitet er dødt…. Nettet leve!. Politiken, 2/5-2009.

Just, Sine Nørholm & Smith, Jonas Heide (2009). Playful Persuasion: The Rhetorical Potential of Advergames. Nordicom Review, vol. 30, issue 2.

Drachen, A. & Heide Smith, J. (2008): Player Talk – The functions of communication in multi-player Role Playing Games – Players and Media. In ACM Computers in Entertainment (ACM Publishers), vol. 6, issue 3, 40 pp. (October 2008). DOI: 10.1145/1461999.1462008 PDF (post-print).

Tychsen, A. & Heide Smith, J.: Game format effects on communication in multi-player games. In proceedings of FUTURE PLAY 2008 (Toronto, Canada), ACM publishers, 113-120. DOI: 10.1145/1496984.1497003 PDF (pre-print).

Tychsen, A.; Heide Smith, J.; Hitchens, M. & Tosca, S. (2006): Communication in Multi-Player Role Playing Games – The Effect of Medium. In Proceedings of Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment (TIDSE) 2006 Conference (Darmstadt, Germany), Springer Publishers, LNCS vol. 3942, 277-288. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-89454-4_31 PDF (post-print)

Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon & Smith, Jonas Heide & Tosca, Susana (2008). Understanding Video Games. New York: Routledge.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2008). Tragedies of the Ludic Commons. Game Studies.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2007). Book Review: Persuasive Games – The Expressive Power of Videogames. Game Research.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2007). Facebook: Vi er blevet hypersociale. Politiken, 18/11-2007.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2007). No Medium is an Island: An essay on the video game and its cultural neighborhood. Game Research (August 2007).

Smith, Jonas Heide (2007). Who Governs the Gamers. In: J. Patrick Williams & Jonas Heide Smith (eds.) (2007). The Players’ Realm: Studies on the Culture of Video Games and Gaming. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. [Book details]

J. Patrick Williams & Jonas Heide Smith (eds.) (2007). The Players’ Realm: Studies on the Culture of Video Games and Gaming. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. [Book details]

Smith, Jonas Heide (2006). Plans and Purposes: How Videogame Goals Shape Player Behaviour. PhD dissertation, Center for Computer Games Research, IT University of Copenhagen.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2006). The games economists play – implications of economic game theory for the study of computer games. Game Studies, vol 6, issue 1.

Tychsen, Anders & Smith, Jonas Heide & Hitchens, Michael & Tosca, Susana (2006). Communication in Multi-Player Role Playing Games – The Effect of Medium. Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment (Lecture Notes in Computer Science). Berlin: Springer Verlag. (If you don’t have Springer access, try this version).

Smith, Jonas Heide (2005). Computerspil skaber vold – ligesom børn kommer med storkene, ikke?. Politiken, 4/9-2005.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2005). The Aesthetics of Antagonism . Paper presented at the Aesthetics of Play conference, Bergen University, Bergen, Norway. October 14-15, 2005.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2005). Rammer for en handling – Computerspillets designhistorie i grove træk. In: Walther, Bo Kampmann & Jessen, Carsten (eds.). Spillets Verden, DPU Press. [Kladde-version]

Smith, Jonas Heide (2005). Agreeing to disagree – pre-game interaction and the issue of community. Paper presented at the Entertainment Computing – ICEC 2005: 4th International Conference, Sanda, Japan, September 19-21, 2005.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2005). The Problem of Other Players – In-game Collaboration as Collective Action. Paper presented at the Changing Views: Worlds in Play conference (DIGRA), Vancouver June.

Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon & Smith, Jonas Heide (2004). Playing With Fire – How do Computer Games Influence the Player? NORDICOM (see NORDICOM page)

Smith, Jonas Heide (2004). Playing dirty – understanding conflicts in multiplayer games. Paper presented at the 5th annual conference of The Association of Internet Researchers.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2004). Book review: History for Coffee Tables – Van Burnham’s Supercade. Game Research (January 2004).

Smith, Jonas Heide (2004). Does gameplay have politics?. Game Research (April 2004)

Smith, Jonas Heide (2003). Computerspillet mod nye horisonter. Information (kronik). [Også publiceret på Kommunikationsforum].

Smith, Jonas Heide (2003). Pli på nettet. Politiken (kronik), 7-2-2003.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2003). Book review: Form trouble – Markus Friedl’s Online Game Interactivity Theory. Game Research.

Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon & Smith, Jonas Heide (2003). Forskningsnotat om computerspil og skadelighed. Notat til Medierådet for Børn og Unge. [Svensk version, PDF: Datorspel och skadlighet].

Smith, Jonas Heide (2003). Kunsten at skabe venlige brugere. COMUNICARE no. 3, september 2003, Center for Kommunikation, Handelshøjskolen i København.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2003). Avatars you can trust – A survey on the issue of trust and communication in MMORPGs. Game Research.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2003). Book review: Bits of Context – The New Media Reader. Game Research.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2002). Bogomtale: From Chance to Choice. Politologiske Studier, vol. 5, no. 15.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2002). Computer Game Research 101 – A Brief Introduction to the Literature. Game Research. [Japanese version]

Smith, Jonas Heide (2002). The Road not Taken – The How’s and Why’s of Interactive Fiction. Game Research.

Smith, Jonas Heide & Walther, Bo Kampmann (2002). Det er de andre mediers skyld!. SAMSON, juli 2002.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2002). The Architectures of Trust – Supporting Cooperation in the Computer-Supported Community. MA Thesis, Dept. of Film and Media studies, University of Copenhagen.[1.9MB, read introduction here]

Smith, Jonas Heide (2001). Den sociale Maskine – perspektiver på computerunderstøttede fællesskaber. Politologiske Studier, vol. 4, no. 4.

Smith, Jonas Heide (2000). Dragen på loftet – om rammerne for interaktiv fiktion / The Dragon in the Attic. SAMSON, juli 2000.

Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon & Smith, Jonas Heide (2000). Den digitale Leg – om børn og computerspil Hans Reitzels Forlag, København. [Bogen kan hentes gratis i PDF-format]

Smith, Jonas Heide (2000). Når læseren får magten / The Empowered Reader. SENTURA, no. 8.

Smith. Jonas Heide (2000). Tekst, tegn og 3D-shootere. SAMSON, april 2000.

Smith. Jonas Heide (2000). Klik her for at fortsætte. Inquirer, marts 2000.

Smith. Jonas Heide (1999). Mediernes lette tilstand. SAMSON, december 1999.

Smith. Jonas Heide (1999). Det glemte Medie / The Forgotten Medium. SAMSON, april 1999.

Smith. Jonas Heide (1998). Det teknologiske B-hold. SAMSON, august 1998

Various columns for Game Research: – Cry Freedom – What Women Want – Stories From the Sandbox

Diverse artikler i Dagbladet Information, bl.a.: – Leg for milliarder – Sku’ det være kunst? – Digitale Designdrømme – Computerspillet der ville være videnskab – Nettets magthavere – Drømmen om de tænkende maskiner – Ved en fildelers død – Test dig selv: Er du en regnemaskine? – Sociobiologi i modvind

Diverse artikler i instituttidsskriftet Inquirer, bl.a.: – Nye medier i Århus – Mediesociologiske nedslag

Lignende indlæg:

Our video game text book gets an extra life

Playing with fire? (05/01/2005)

Paper on role-playing game communication out (21/11/2006)

Videogame doctors (04/03/2005)

Oh, the media… (19/05/2005)

Del:

The reliability of the Zahavis

Jonas Heide Smith — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Carrying on my interest in trust and signaling, I just finished reading Amotz and Avishag Zahavi’s “The Handicap Principle“.
Briefly, the handicap principle is the idea that to send a trustworthy signal one sometimes has to accept a handicap. Taking on this handicap proves to the receiver of the signal that the transmitted statement is true.
For instance, in order to convince a skeptical observer that you’re a world-class swimmer you may have to get wet. You could choose to just say it (“Seriously, I am a world-class swimmer”). But that signal would not be reliable.
Similarly, the Zahavis argue that the male peacock lugs around his beautiful tail (handicapping himself since he is more easily spotted, less agile etc.) in order to reliably signal to the female that he is made of strong genetic material. He could have “told” her in other ways, but the tail is an unfakable signal.

There’s a decent intro to the theory of honest signaling here.

Now, Geoffrey Miller, reviewing the book for Evolution and Human Behaviour said it well:

“Depending on your viewpoint, they [the Zahavis] act like (1) dangerous hyper-adaptationists even more extreme than Steven Jay Gould?s worst caricatures of Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett, weaving just-so stories out of thin air, (2) harmlessly entertaining, pseudo-scientific fabulists in the tradition of Sigmund Freud and Margaret Mead, (3) classical Victorian natural historians (somehow displaced to contemporary Tel-Aviv University) using the same hypothetico-deductive methods as Darwin himself, or (4) ardent, creative biologists who, whatever one?s qualms about their methods and examples, deliver a revitalizing shock to animal communication theory, sexual selection theory, kinship theory, reciprocal altruism theory, and evolutionary psychology. “

Miller adds, as I would have done from the comfort of my layman’s armchair: “I favor this last judgment“.

Anyway, many aspects of the book are fascinating (as are the author’s regular jibes at colleagues who spend too much time arguing against the “obvious” using fancy mathematical models and too little time in the real world).
But two sections struck me as particularly interesting. My limited understanding of evolutionary biology had it that there are essentially two complementary explanations of cooperation among animals (discounting group selection theories that are frowned upon).
The first is kin selection (and the related idea of inclusive fitness). Here, the idea is that individuals should behave altruistically to the extent that other individuals share their genes (or to the extent that other individuals are likely to share your genes). And what-do-you-know? Parents often care about their offspring.

The second is reciprocal altruism. Here, the individual is expected to be altruistic to the extent that he or she expects this altruism to be reciprocated in the future. So, a vampire bat should share its meal with another bat if it believes that this other bat will reciprocate the favor. And Hallejujah! This seems to be the case.

I was somewhat surprised to see that the Zahavis consider both theories to be flawed. Kin selection, the Zahavis argue, is really just group selection among relatives. It may be true that an individual “would like” to increase its inclusive fitness, but wouldn’t it just be much better if your brother did the work instead of you? So, kin selection is vulnerable to social parasitism (the bane of group selection theories).
Reciprocal altruism, on the other hand, seeks to explain something which does not really warrant such fancy models, the Zahavis feel. Many individuals gain prestige by performing altruistic acts, which increasestheir standing in the hierarchy, which increases their reproductive success. Altruism, then, is a signal of superiority – look!, I can share my food, that’s how strong a bird I am (marry me!).

Very interesting even if I don’t entirely know what to think.

Lignende indlæg:

The triumphant return of… media studies

The power of expectations (22/11/2004)

Communication: The act of asssuring a listener that the speaker would be harsh to other people (04/10/2006)

Like Hell I lost, I was trying to feed the mushroom creatures! (13/06/2006)

The psychology of dough-nut salesmen (26/09/2006)

Del: