Abstract
In this paper, we describe an installation, iConfess, used to explore the question of disclosure in a physical space, when conditions for remaining anonymous are provided. The iConfess booth, a physical space where one could confess a secret, was tried at a large Student Faire. The paper reports on our findings on its use. The principle was simple: people could confess any secret in the privacy of the booth, on an anonymous site, using a tablet. After a period of time, confessions were handwritten on homemade cardboards and hung in the vicinity of the booth for everyone to see. In order to collect data on how it felt to reveal a secret in this way, we have offered to visitors a possibility to answer a questionnaire after the act of confession. 49 people did, a majority of them students (34), but also some others (15). In addition to the questionnaire, both participant and passive observations were made during the Faire. We have found that people enjoy revealing secrets, and reading those from others, although one participant still wondered just how anonymous the set up was. Attempts to connect people who confessed face-to-face during a social event, using a glow-in-the-dark bracelet, symbolizing that they have confessed, was not a success.
Chapter PDF
References
Benedetti, J.M.: Embroidered confessions: an interactive quilt of the secrets of strangers. In: Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition, pp. 313–314. ACM (2011)
Culén, A.L., Gasparini, A.: Situated Techno-Cools: factors that contribute to making technology cool and the study case of iPad in education. Psychology Journal 10(2), 117–139 (2012)
Culén, A.L., Mainsah, H.N., Finken, S.: Design Practice in Human Computer Interaction Design Education. In: The Seventh International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions, pp. 300–306. ThinkMind (2014)
Gasparini, A., Castro, R., Risvik, L., Heggelund, A.: iConfess at dagen@ifi (2013), http://folk.uio.no/andrega/iConfess/
Jiang, L.C., Bazarova, N.N., Hancock, J.T.: From Perception to Behavior Disclosure Reciprocity and the Intensification of Intimacy in Computer-Mediated Communication. Communication Research 40(1), 125–143 (2013)
Johnson, D.G., Miller, K.: Anonymity, pseudonymity, or inescapable identity on the net (abstract). SIGCAS Comput. Soc. 28(2), 37–38 (1998)
Joinson, A.N., Paine, C.B.: Self-disclosure, privacy and the Internet. The Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology, 2374252 (2007)
Kaplan, A.M., Haenlein, M.: Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons 53(1), 59–68 (2010)
Kelly, A.E., McKillop, K.J.: Consequences of revealing personal secrets. Psychological Bulletin 120(3), 450–465 (1996)
Leong, T.W., Brynskov, M.: CO2nfession: engaging with values through urban conversations. In: Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Australian Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group: Design: Open 24/7, pp. 209–216. ACM (2009)
Lindström, K., Ståhl, Å.: Threads - a Mobile Sewing Circle: Making Private Matters Public in Temporary Assemblies. In: Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference, pp. 121–130. ACM (2010)
Ono, Y.: Imagine Peace Tower. Imagine Peace Tower (1996), http://www.IMAGINEPEACETOWER.com/
Tanner, A.L., Jefferson, S., Skelton, G.: Revealing the Unseen in Social Networking Sites: Is Your Metadata Protected? International Journal 2(4) (2013)
Taylor, A.: How Guy Fawkes Inadvertently Created the Word “Guy”. Slate (2013), http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/11/05/guy_fawkes_day_how_the_word_guy_became_popular.html
Warren, F.: Postsecret: Confessions On Life Death And God by Frank Warren. William Morrow (October 6, 2009)
Emotion, disclosure and health. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC (1995)
Whisper - Share Secrets, Express Yourself, Meet New People, http://whisper.sh/
Where the truth lives. Where the truth lives, http://blog.whisper.sh/
PostSecret. PostSecret, http://postsecret.com
6 art installations by Candy Chang that make the viewer part of the piece | TED Blog, http://blog.ted.com/2012/09/04/6-art-installations-by-candy-chang-that-make-the-viewer-part-of-the-piece/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Culén, A.L., Finken, S., Gasparini, A. (2014). iCONFESS. In: Meiselwitz, G. (eds) Social Computing and Social Media. SCSM 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8531. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07632-4_41
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07632-4_41
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-07631-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-07632-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)