Social Contract

Description
The Social Contract exist online as well as in real life. It consists of the unwritten rules and norms that people follow. The rules sometimes differ between online contact and contact in real life. The rules may also differ between different cultures and countries.

Examples
A Facebook user has got a friend request from a friend of the past. The user accepts the friend request, since he does not want to upset the requester. If the two users had seen eachother in real life, they may not necessary have started to talk to eachother for the same reason. The user do not wish to put the other person in an unconfortable situation since he or she cannot be sure whether the other person recognizes him or her. For some reason, it is seems to be socially accepted to friend request someone but not necessary to make contact in real life.

Information Hunting online is considered as a normal and accepted behavior. When practice the same activity offline, it is often called stalking and is not socially accepted.

Pros and Cons
The Social Contract differs online from offline, since the environment differs. The unwritten rules are a part of the human behavior not something that is generated by mechanics. However, mechanics can modify the rules at some extent.

When an application has a Social Contract it can be considered "alive". The users themselves has developed the unwritten rules, and thus created some kind of atmosphere on the site. If the Social Contract is considered positive by most people, then the application might get more members. On the other hand, if the Social Contract is considered negative, the oppsite may occur.

Relations
Many mechanics may have consequenses on the Social Contract. When an application does not accept pictures with a certain content, some users may consider it very strange since the same kind of pictures is accepted in their offline Social Contract.

Contributors
Created by Malin Mattsson.