The Influence of Self-Organized, Social Text Signals on Readers’ Behavior: Collective Intelligence or Unchecked Imitation?

• In Event: Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: Multimedia Design Choices That Improve Learning

Abstract

A study was designed to determine if social text signals influence readers, and if so, to quantify this influence. Participants read a text with social text signals such that the signals were visible in only half of the text sections. If readers are influenced by social signals then they should agree with them more when they are visible than when they are not; only independent judgement would be operating in the latter case. This study suggests that social text signals do influence readers in a manner similar to traditional ‘authorial’ text signals. The strength of this influence on individual behaviour was not overly strong and permitted a balance between imitation and independent judgement.

Author

• Andrew F. Chiarella, Athabasca University