SASE 2005: Abstracts Network X

Abstracts Presidential Choice Sessions

Shay David
Trevor Pinch

Six Degrees of Reputation: Knowledge Production in Online Review and Recommendation Systems We can identify six different reputable markers that surround e-commerce sites that offer books or other knowledge items for sale. At the first level, people write books and try sell them. At the second level, editors write editorial book reviews trying to influence buyers to buy a specific book. At a third level, lay readers write free-form book reviews that are ostensibly non-commercial in nature. At a forth level other readers rate those reviews on a usefulness scale. At a fifth level (in some cases) buyers and sellers rate the transactions that they perform, and at the sixth level they rate each other based on such transactions. This nested-system of markers without any further complication already begs questions about the way that knowledge is produced in the digital age, but if this is not enough, recent events suggest that this system is far more convoluted and that the boundaries between the reputable markers identified above are permeable, if not in some cases nonexistent. Recently, a technical fault on the Canadian division of Amazon.com revealed the identities of several thousand of its 'anonymous' reviewers, and alarming discoveries were made. It was established that a large number of authors had gotten glowing testimonials from friends, husbands, wives, colleagues or paid professionals. A few had even "reviewed" their own books, and unsurprisingly some have unfairly slurred the competition. In a different but somewhat similar case, we have discovered a case where "readers' reviews" were copied to the review section of a competitor's book. We have also obtained anecdotal information that many such reviews are in fact posted by publishing company personnel. This paper reports initial findings from a study of these online economies of reputation that investigates online review plagiarism on a leading ecommerce site. It explores the ways in which the collapse of the barriers between authors and readers affect the ways that informational artifacts are being produced, and exchanged. We report on techniqu es that are employed by artists, editors, and readers to ensure they promote their agendas. We suggest a framework for discussing the changes of the categories of authorship, creativity, expertise, and reputation that are being re-negotiated in this multi-tier digital reputation economy.

Robert Evans (Cardiff University)
E-Mail address: EvansRJ1@Cardiff.ac.uk
Can You Count Experience? The Role of Econometrics, Expertise and Judgment in the Production and Use of Economic Forecasts

This paper essentially argues that economic models are as difficult to use as they are to build. Focusing on the activities of a UK research group and the production of their monthly investment newsletter it reveals the hidden work and complex social and professional networks needed to support both routine data collection and the judgments needed to turn data into plausible forecasts. Although the routine work of collecting data and updating the model requires high levels of skills it is not enough to produce a credible forecast. Forecasting, even using a sophisticated model, involves making reasonable judgments about a wide range of actors, institutions and events. In order to make such judgments, a person has to be socially fluent in the norms and cultures not just of the economic communities but a wide range other communities as well. This is what professional life of economist, with its combination of research, contacts with other economists, and interactions with clients and other groups provides. It is the distillation of these, through the economic model, that produces the forecast and, simultaneously, the economist's expertise and credibility.