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[edit] A Typology of Virtual Communities: A Multi-Disciplinary Foundation for Future Research

Despite the growing popularity of virtual communities, there is no consensus among researchers regarding the appropriate definition or types of virtual communities. In this paper, a virtual community is defined as an aggregation of individuals or business partners who interact around a shared interest, where the interaction is at least partially supported and/or mediated by technology and guided by some protocols or norms. The central objective of developing this typology was to develop a classification system that would be useful to researchers from various disciplinary perspectives such that the classification system might be used as a foundation for theory construction. The proposed typology serves its intended purposes and is evaluated against criteria put forth by Hunt (1991). The proposed typology uses establishment type and relationship orientation as the key categorization variables, reconciling problems posed by other researchers who attempt to use attributes as categorization variables. It is simple, pragmatic for practitioners and useful for researchers seeking to develop an understanding of the virtual community phenomenon.

[edit] Online Communities: Design, Theory, and Practice

Introduction to the special thematic section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication brings together nine articles that provide a rich composite of the current research in online communities. The articles cover a range of topics, methodologies, theories and practices. Indirectly they all speak to design since they aim to extend our understanding of the field. The variety shown in these articles illustrates how broad the definition is of this rapidly growing field known as 'online communities.

[edit] Evaluation of a Systematic Design for a Virtual Patient Community

Virtual Communities (VCs) offer ubiquitous access to information and exchange possibilities for people in similar situations, which is especially valuable for patients with chronic / life-threatening diseases. However, it is seldom considered possible to create VCs systematically. This article describes the evaluation of the design elements and factors that contributed to the success of the VC krebsgemeinschaft.de (a VC for cancer patients in the German-speaking internet), by assessing user acceptance and usage. Additionally, the existence of trust (a constituent element of working VCs) in krebsgemeinschaft.de is addressed. Based on these criteria, we empirically verify the chosen design components and generate insights into the systematic development and operation of VCs in general and VCs for patients in the German healthcare system in particular.

[edit] Procedures for Analyses of Online Communities

This article details a set of procedures for the analysis and interpretation of the content and structure of online networks and communities. These novel methods allow for the analysis of online chat, including parsing the data into separate and interrelated files to determine individual, group and organizational patterns. An illustrative example of an educational online community in Active Worlds Educational Universe (AWEDU) is provided that uses three-dimensional virtual worlds for student interaction. Findings from semantic network analysis procedures reveal elements of the online interaction that would otherwise be difficult to extract given the great amount of textual data produced in such communities. The case study allows for qualitative and quantitative analyses. The limitations of the procedures are discussed along with planned developments and their social implications.

[edit] Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online

Understanding the attraction of virtual communities is crucial to organizations that want to tap into their enormous information potential. Existing literature theorizes that people join virtual communities to exchange information and/or social support. Theories of broader Internet use have indicated both entertainment and searching for friendship as motivational forces. This exploratory study empirically examines the importance of these reasons in assessing why people come to virtual communities by directly asking virtual community members why they joined. The responses to the open-ended question “Why did you join?” were categorized based upon the reasons suggested in the literature. Across 27 communities in 5 different broad types, 569 different reasons from 399 people indicated that most sought either friendship or exchange of information, and a markedly lower percent sought social support or recreation. The reasons were significantly dependent on the grouping of the communities into types. In all the community types information exchange was the most popular reason for joining. Thereafter, however, the reason varied depending on community type. Social support was the second most popular reason for members in communities with health/wellness and professional/occupational topics, but friendship was the second most popular reason among members in communities dealing with personal interests/hobbies, pets, or recreation. These findings suggest that virtual community managers should emphasize not only the content but also encourage the friendship and social support aspects as well if they wish to increase the success of their virtual community.

[edit] Community Group Participation: Psychosocial Benefits for Women with Breast Cancer

This study examines the psychosocial benefits of Internet community group participation for women with breast cancer. A longitudinal content analysis of more than 33,200 postings from an online breast cancer bulletin board, and thematic analysis of the "life stories" of 100 women randomly selected from the bulletin board, was conducted. Psychosocial benefits included: receiving/giving information; receiving/giving social support; affect toward the discussion board, optimism toward breast cancer, increased skill or ability to cope with the disease, improved mood, decreased psychological distress, and strategies to manage stress. Over time, a positive shift was shown in women's affect toward the breast cancer and online community, and a positive correlation was found between amount of participation and psychosocial well-being.

[edit] Predicting Continued Participation in Newsgroups

Turnover in online communities is very high, with most people who initially post a message to an online community never contributing again. In this paper, we test whether the responses that newcomers receive to their first posts influence the extent to which they continue to participate. The data come from initial posts made by 2,777 newcomers to six public newsgroups. We coded the content and valence of the initial post and its first response, if it received one, to see if these factors influenced newcomers' likelihood of posting again. Approximately 61% of newcomers received a reply to their initial post, and those who got a reply were 12% more likely to post to the community again; their probability of posting again increased from 44% to 56%. They were more likely to receive a response if they asked a question or wrote a longer post. Surprisingly, the quality of the response they received—its emotional tone and whether it answered a newcomer's question—did not influence the likelihood of the newcomer's posting again.

[edit] The Top 5 Reasons For Lurking: Improving Community Experiences For Everyone

Even in busy online communities usually only a small fraction of members post messages. Why do so many people prefer not to contribute publicly? From an online survey that generated 1188 responses from posters and lurkers from 375 MSN bulletin board communities, 219 lurkers spoke out about their reasons for not posting. While lurkers did not participate publicly, they did seek answers to questions. However, lurkers’ satisfaction with their community experience was lower than those who post. Data from 19 checkbox items and over 490 open-ended responses were analyzed.
From this analysis the main reasons why lurkers lurk were concerned with: not needing to post; needing to find out more about the group before participating; thinking that they were being helpful by not posting; not being able to make the software work (i.e., poor usability); and not liking the group dynamics or the community was a poor fit for them. Two key conclusions can be drawn from this analysis. First, there are many reasons why people lurk in online discussion communities. Second, and most important, most lurkers are not selfish free-riders. From these findings it is clear that there are many ways to improve online community experiences for both posters and lurkers. Some solutions require improved software and better tools, but moderation and better interaction support will produce dramatic improvements.

[edit] De-lurking in virtual communities: a social communication network approach to measuring the effects of social and cultural capital

The asymmetry of activity in virtual communities is of great interest. While participation in the activities of virtual communities is crucial for a community's survival and development, many people prefer lurking, that is passive attention over active participation. Often, lurkers are the vast majority. There could be many reasons for lurking. Lurking can be measured and perhaps affected by both dispositional and situational variables. This project investigates social and cultural capital, situational antecedents of lurking and de-lurking. We propose a novel way of measuring such capital, lurking, and de-lurking. We try to figure out what are the triggers to active participation. We try to answer this by mathematically defining a social communication network of activities in authenticated discussion forums. Authenticated discussion forums provide exact log information about every participant's activities and allow us to identify lurkers that become first time posters. The proposed social communication network approach (SCN) is an extension of the traditional social network methodology to include, beyond human actors, discussion topics (e.g. Usenet newsgroups threads) and subjects of discussions (e.g. Usenet groups) as well. In addition, the social communication network approach distinguishes between READ and POST link types. These indicate active participation on the part of the human actor. We attempt to validate this model by examining the SCN using data collected in a sample of 82 online forums. By analyzing a graph structure of the network at moments of initial postings we verify several hypotheses about causes of de-lurking and provide some directions towards measuring active participation in virtual communities.

  • Rafaeli, S. Ravid, G. Soroka, V. Center for the Study of the Inf. Soc., Haifa Univ., Israel; This paper appears in: System Sciences, 2004. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Publication Date: 5-8 Jan. 2004 On page(s): 10 pp.- ISSN: ISBN: 0-7695-2056-1 INSPEC Accession Number: 8883471 Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/HICSS.2004.1265478 Posted online: 2004-02-26 10:51:03.0
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