COLLABORATIVE SCIENCE ACROSS THE GLOBE: THE INFLUENCE OF MOTIVATION AND CULTURE ON VOLUNTEERS IN THE UNITED STATES, INDIA, AND COSTA RICA.

Reliance on volunteer participation for collaborative scientific projects has become extremely popular in the past decade. Cutting across disciplines, locations, and participation practices, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world are now involved in these studies, and are advancing tasks that scientists cannot accomplish alone. Although existing projects have demonstrated the value of involving volunteers to collect data, few projects have been successful in maintaining volunteer involvement over long periods of time. Therefore, it is important to understand the unique motivations of volunteers and their effect on participation practices, so that effective partnerships between volunteers and scientists can be established. This study provides a first look into the relationship between motivation and culture in the context of ecology-focused collaborative scientific projects around the world. Projects in three distinct cultures - the United States, India, and Costa Rica - were examined by triangulating qualitative and quantitative methods followed by a cross-cultural comparison. The findings reveal a temporal process of participation that is highly dependent on motivation and culture. Initial participation stems in most cases from self-directed motivations. However, as time progresses, the motivational process becomes more complex and includes both self-directed motivations and collaborative motivations. In addition, motivation is strongly modulated by local cultural norms, expectations, and practices. Collaborative and scientific cultures also have an impact throughout the course of the volunteers' participation. This research provides theoretical and practical contributions: its findings extend current understanding of theories of motivation by showing the connection between culture and motivation, and demonstrate how cultural effects lie at the core of motivation and participation practices in volunteer-based collaborative scientific projects. These findings will also inform scientists, project leaders, educators, administrators, and designers on ways to entice and maintain long-term volunteer participation in collaborative scientific projects that are situated in different cultures

INTERMITTENT PARTICIPATION: HOW SOCIABILITY AND USABILITY SHAPE MEDIATED MOBILE INTERACTION

Mobile devices are common communication tools, which deeply affect social engagement practices. Smart-mobile devices move beyond voice and textual communication: they enable ubiquitous online connectivity, and bring changes to mediated social interaction. In this paper we bring the results of a study of the meditated social practices of students who use smart mobile devices on a university campus and beyond it. While the common premise is that smart mobile devices enable continuous collaborative interaction, our study shows this interaction is limited than previously believed. Two distinct factors were found to affect mobile interaction: sociability and usability. While sociability entices users to engage in continuous mobile-mediated interaction, usability issues encumber the full embracement of mobile-social applications. The tension between the two creates a new form of interaction - intermittent participation - in which users are constantly attuned to absorb notifications and updates, but rarely respond to them, unless a response is absolutely necessary

Global modeling of aerosol dynamics: Model description, evaluation, and interactions between sulfate and nonsulfate aerosols

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95258/1/jgrd12001.pd

Are You Looking At Me? - Social Media and Privacy Literacy

Information privacy has received significant attention in past years. The shift from physical to online interaction entails a change in privacy paradigms. Yet, most of the attention has been directed at forms of self-identifying information (e.g. health records and financial information); less attention has been given to privacy concerns resulting from the information provided voluntarily by users during online social interaction. This paper suggests privacy literacy - an educational framework that will be used to enhance users' awareness to privacy issues that are intertwined in online exposure

Understanding large scale online environments with qualitative methods

Large scale online environments, in which there are hundreds of thousands, and often millions of links, present an emerging phenomenon where millions of people come together online to share and consume information. The resulting massive amounts of data have been a fertile ground for quantitative researchers. Qualitative studies of these environments are less common, suggesting that the scale and the constant change of these environments pose considerable challenges for qualitative researchers. We present an exploratory study into the challenges and opportunities experienced by researchers conducting qualitative research in large scale online environments, and a meta-analysis of papers from the ACM Digital Library that reveals how few published research studies use qualitative methods to investigate large-scale online environments. We discuss practical and theoretical issues arising from the unique stance of qualitative researchers in these environments.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Motivations Affecting Initial and Long-Term Participation in Citizen Science Projects in Three Countries

Reliance on volunteer participation for citizen science has become extremely popular. Cutting across disciplines, locations, and participation practices, hundreds of thousands of volunteers throughout the world are helping scientists accomplish tasks they could not otherwise perform. Although existing projects have demonstrated the value of involving volunteers in data collection, relatively few projects have been successful in maintaining volunteers' continued involvement over long periods of time. Therefore, it is important to understand the temporal nature of volunteers' motivations and their effect on participation practices, so that effective partnerships between volunteers and scientists can be established. This paper presents case studies of longitudinal participation practices in citizen science in three countries -- the United States, India, and Costa Rica. The findings reveal a temporal process of participation, in which initial participation stems in most cases from self-directed motivations, such as personal interest. In contrast, long-term participation is more complex and includes both self-directed motivations and collaborative motivations.publishedye