Information as a Public Good and User-Generated Content

1
Information as a Public Good and User-Generated
Content
I203 Social and Organizational Issues of
Information
2
Administrative Fun

• Reminder Roundtables next Tuesday!
• Reading distributed today for Thursdays lecture
  (pdf will be posted to website today)

3
Agenda

• Overview of Exchange Processes
• Conceptualizing Information as the object of
  exchange user-generated information goods
• Contributing information and the problem of
  sharing information goods

4
Direct Exchange
5
Forms of Direct Social Exchange

• Reciprocal
• Negotiated

6
Indirect Exchange
7
Indirect Exchange Generalized Exchange and Gift
Economies
Collective/Public Good
8
What are public goods?

• Generally, goods that
• (1) when made available can be consumed by others
  at little (or perhaps no) marginal cost
  (non-rival goods or jointness of supply) and,
• (2) are non-excludable.
• Tragedy of the commons (Hardin 1968)

9
Non-Excludability and the free-rider problem

• Non-excludability creates the free-rider problem
• If free-riding is rampant, the collective good
  will not be produced

10
Game Theory approach to public goods the basic
prisoners dilemma framework
Person 1 (Cooperate)
Person 1 (Defect)
Win Win Win Lose
Lose Win Lose Lose
In a n-person collective action problem, we can
think of player 2 as n of participants
Person 2 (Cooperate)
Person 2 (Defect)
11
I guess I will never vote againunless of
course no one else is voting. Deepti
Chittamuru (fall 2007)
12
Information Goods are Public Goods (Kollock 1999,
Shapiro and Varian 1999)

• When distributed online, it is difficult to keep
  people from benefiting from information goods
• Free-riding in such a context may be normative
  behavior simply using the information provided
  by others.
• Cost of contribution is a central to
  understanding the production of information goods

13
Economics of Information Goods

• Some key features of many information goods
• Non-rival (high jointness of supply)
• Replicability (varies DRM vs. non-DRM)
• Low cost of production (relative to use value)

14
If we are tempted to free-ride, then why are
public information goods produced?

• A single information good can be a public good
• This has a huge impact on the production function
• Some individuals are willing to contribute to a
  public good even when the costs appear to
  outweigh the benefits (i.e., Coleman 1988,
  Piliavin 1990, Simmons 1992, etc)
• Altrusim, rational zealotry
• Other motivations (Kollock 1999)
• Anticipation of reciprocity
• Effect on personal reputation
• Sense of efficacy (making an impact)

15
Privileged Groups
"The fact that many digital public goods can be
provided by a single individual means that in
these cases there are no coordination costs to
bear and that there is no danger of being a
sucker, in the sense of contributing to a good
that requires the efforts of many, only to find
that too few have contributed ... -Peter
Kollock
16
Information Goods on the Internet The Issue of
Group Size

• Generally, smaller groups tend to have a better
  chance of producing a public good (Olson 1965)
• Why?
• More benefits for each person
• Larger impact of any single contribution
• Generally, lower costs of organization

17
Why free-riding is not necessarily a bad thing
(Rafaeli and Raban)
It is better for the group if many members
free ride than if they contribute negatively
(poor knowledge, unexamined sources, etc.).
Information sought tends to be unique. A
free-rider on a substantial portion of exchanges
may become an active contributor in a particular
question. Free-riders are virtually invisible
in online systems and tend to be ignored. They
are not perceived as free-riders.
Connectivity does not mean that everyone who is
connected actually has information to contribute.
Yet, these free-riders get a unique learning
opportunity and can feel part of the community,
generating community level positive effects
18
But what about VERY LARGE groups?
World of Music David Gleich, Matt Rasmussen,
Leonid Zhukov, and Kevin Lang http//www.stanford
.edu/dgleich/demos/worldofmusic/interact.html
19
2