Online Communities



[pic] [pic]

COMM 620: Online Communities and Networks

[pic]

Meeting:

1:00-3:50 Monday, ASC 223

Instructor:

Professor Janet Fulk, 324E ASC, 740-0941

Introduction:

Online communities have arisen across a diverse array of arenas, For example, in the health field there are forums for preventive health and support groups centered on specific maladies and challenges. Social worlds such as MySpace, Facebook and Orkut, and dating sites support social network creation and maintenance. Political communities support dialog and collective action. Gaming communities coalesce around games, from console-based to massive multiplayer online role plays. Commercial ventures also support online communities, such as chat rooms for movies, groups centered on specific retail toys and robots, and brand communities. Mobile technology also creates new and interesting opportunities for community-building. Online commnities are also converging across these boundaries, with communities offering many different applications, such as social networking on health sites. The applications to date only hint at the potential for creative use of the Internet and mobile technology for networking people and building culture.

Key questions often heard in relation to such ventures is how online communities may or may not change the contemporary sense of community and how such changes are affecting our social, political and economic lives. In turn, we can ask how such communities are being changed by and also drive changes to communication and networking technologies. Theory and research to address these core questions is a critical need. Academic research and theory also are needed to help users, technology providers, regulators and community leaders to make informed decisions about the increasingly important social, cultural, political and economic phenomenon of online communication and communities. Just a few of the many relevant topics include privacy issues, regulation, hacking, vandalism, ID theft, and questions such as why do people open spam, what difference does sound make in an online environment, how does design affect user satisfaction and retention, the role of open platforms in supporting user involvement in shaping community infrastructure, and how do users react to different forms of technology when they access their online community.

In approaching the emergent field of study in online communities, this course will rely on a handful of common threads:

• What are and how do we make distinctions between notions of the real and the virtual?

• What are the dynamics of online communities and in what ways do they manage change?

• How do attachment, belonging, and connectivity manifest in online communities?

• In what ways for do online communities create a local/global connection?

• What is the relationship between new technologies, new media, and online community?

• How do you research online communities?

Course Assignments

• Pairs of student participants will be responsible leadership of each different topic in the course. Leadership involves more detailed reading and investigation of the particular topic and preparation of a summary overview of key research themes on that topic.

• Each student participant will bring to class testable hypotheses directly related to the readings for the week.

• Each student participant will be responsible for preparing a written summary of the key ideas in several of the readings throughout the semester.

• Each student will prepare a final research paper or external research proposal

Evaluation

Topic Leadership 30%

Written Article Summaries 20%

Final Research Paper 50%

Seminar Participation and Hypotheses 10%

[pic]

Topic Schedule

|Date |Topic/readings |

|1/12 |Introduction |

| |Guest: Tom Boellstorff |

|1/19 |University Holiday |

| |Basic Psychological Issues |

|1/26 |Motivation |

| |Guest: Pamela Hinds |

|2/2 |Identity Sandi |

|2/9 |Power and Influence Fan |

|2/16 |University Holiday |

| |Types of Online Communities |

|2/23 |Open source Joanna |

|3/2 |Health Jingbo |

|3/9 |Social Networking Shaun, June |

| |Guest: Joe Walther |

|3/16 |Spring Recess |

|3/23 |Gaming Susana |

| |Guest: Dmitri Williams |

|3/30 |Corporate/Brands Phil, Lily |

|4/6 |Blogs (June) |

|4/13 |Mobile |

|4/20 |Students’ Choice TBD |

|4/27 |Student Paper Presentations |

Note: the 4/20 class will be developed based on common student interests. Topics could include specialty applications such as online communities in education, or theory related issues such as online communities and globalization. We will discuss ideas for this class during the semester and compile a reading list.

Reading List

Introduction and Virtual Worlds: Second Life

Boellstorff, T. (2008) Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton University Press. Ch. 5 “Personhood”, Ch. 7 “Community”, and Ch. 8 “Political Economy”.

Motivation

Ardichvili, A., Page, V., & Wentling, T. (2003). Motivation and barriers to participation in virtual knowledge-sharing communities of practice. Journal of Knowledge Management, 7(1), 64-77.

Bimber, B., Flanagin, A.J., & Stohl, C. (2005). Reconceptualizing collective action in the contemporary media environment. Communication Theory, 15(4), 365-388.

Ling, K., Beenen, G., et al. (2005). Using social psychology to motivate contributions to online communities. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(4), article 10.

Available at:

Rafaeli, S., & Ariel, Y. (2008). Online motivational factors: Incentives for participation and contribution in Wikipedia. In A. Barak (Ed.), Psychological aspects of cyberspace: Theory, research, applications (pp. 243-267). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wasko, M.M., & Faraj, S. (2005). Why should I share? Examining social capital and knowledge contribution in electronics of practice. MIS Quarterly, 29(1), 35-57.

Identity

Ren, Y. Q., R. Kraut, & S. Kiesler (2007). Applying common identity and bond theory to design of online communities. Organization Studies, 28(3): 377-408.

Abrams, D., Hogg, M., Hinkle, S. & Otten, S. (2005). The social identity perspective on small groups. In M.S. Poole & A.B. Hollingshead. (Eds.), Theories of small groups: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 99-137). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc.

Utz, S. 2003 Social identification and interpersonal attraction in MUDs.

Swiss Journal of Psychology, 62(2): 91–101

Kleinman, S. S. (2000). Social identification in a computer-mediated group for women in science and engineering. Science Communication, 21(4): 344-366.

Bagozzi, R. P. and U. M. Dholakia (2006). Open Source Software User Communities: A Study of Participation in Linux User Groups. Management Science, 52(7): 1099-1115.

Power and Influence

Walker, J. (2002). Links and power: The political economy of linking on the web. ACM Hypertext conference, Baltimore.

Spears, R., T. Postmes, et al. (2002). When are net effects gross products? The power of influence and the influence of power in computer-mediated communication. Journal of Social Issues, 91(17).

Campbell, H. (2007). "Who's Got the Power? Religious Authority and the Internet." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(3).

Available at:

Honeycutt, C. (2005). Hazing as a process of boundary maintenance in an online community. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication,10(2).

Available at:

Fleming, L. and D. M. Waguespack (2007). Brokerage, Boundary Spanning, and Leadership in Open Innovation Communities. Organization Science, 18(2),165-180.

Shah, D. V., J. C. Cho, et al. (2005). Information and expression in a digital age - Modeling Internet effects on civic participation. Communication Research 32(5), 531-565.

Open Source Communities

Grewal, R., Lilien, G. L., & Mallapragada, G. (2006). Location, Location, Location: How Network Embeddedness Affects Project Success in Open Source Systems. Management Science, 52(7), 1043-1056.

Lakhani, K. R., & von Hippel, E. (2003). How open source software works: 'Free' user-to-user assistance. Research Policy, 32(6), 923-943.

Lee, G. K., & Cole, R. E. (2003). From a firm-based to a community-based model of knowledge creation: The case of the Linux Kernel development. Organization Science, 14(6), 633-649.

Raymond, E. S. (1998). The cathedral and the bazaar. First Monday, 3(3), at

**von Hippel, E. (2005). Open Source Software Projects as "User Innovation Networks". In J. Feller, B. Fitzgerald, S. A. Hissam & K. R. Lakhani (Eds.), Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software (pp. 267-278). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

**Weber, S. (2004). Explaining open source: Macro-organization. In The success of open source (pp. 157-189). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Health Online Communities

Demiris, G. (2006). The diffusion of virtual communities in health care: Concepts and challenges. Patient Education and Counseling, 62, 178-188.

Eysenbach, G., Powell, J, Englesakis, M, Rizo, C., & Stern, A. (2004). Health related virtual communities and electronic support groups: Systematic review of the effects of online peer to peer interactions. British Medical Journal, 328.

**Kral, G. (2006). Online communities for mutual help: Fears, fiction and facts. In Murero, M., & Rice, R. E., The Internet and health care: Theory, research and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. (Chapter 11)

**Leimeister, J. M., & Krcmar, H. (2006). Designing and implementing virtual patient support communities: A German case study. In Murero, M., & Rice, R. E., The Internet and health care: Theory, research and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. (Chapter 13)

Maloney-Krichmar, D., & Preece, J. (2005). A multilevel analysis of sociability, usability, and community dynamics in an online health community. ACM Transaction on Computer-Human Interaction, 12(2), 201-232.

Social Networking

Donath, J. (2007). Signals in social supernets. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 231-251.

Available at:

Ellison, N.B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook “friends:” Social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), 1143-1168.

Humphreys, L. (2007). Mobile social networks and social practice: A case study of Dodgeball. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 341-360.

Available at:

Tufekci, Z. (2008). Grooming, gossip, Facebook and MySpace. Information, Communication and Society, 11(4), 544-564.

Walther, J.B., Van Der Heide, B., Kim, S.Y., Westerman, D., & Tom Tong, S. (2008). The role of friends’ appearance and behavior on evaluations of individuals on Facebook: Are we known by the company we keep? Human Communication Research, 34(1), 28-49.

Gaming

Boellstorff, T. (2008). Community. Coming of Age in Second Life (pp. 179-201). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Note: you read this for the speaker on the first day of class.

Consalvo, M. (2007). Gaining advantage: How videogame players define and negotiate cheating. Cheating (pp. 83-106). Cambridge: MIT Press.

Note: this reading is being removed from the reading list.

Williams, D., Ducheneaut, N., Xiong, L., Zhang, Y., Yee, N. & Nickell, E. (2006). From tree house to barracks: The social life of guilds in World of Warcraft. Games & Culture, 1(4), p. 338-361.

Steinkuehler, C. & D. Williams (2006). Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as 'Third Places.' Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(4).

Yee, N., & Bailenson, J. (2007). The Proteus effect: The effect of transformed self-representation on behavior. Human Communication Research, 33(3), 271-190.

Lessig, L. (2006). Four puzzles from cyberspace. Chapter 2 in: Code – Version 2.0. New York: Basic Books. Available at:

Online Communities from the Corporate Perspective

Dholakia, U. M. (2006). How customer self-determination influences relational marketing outcomes: Evidence from longitudinal field studies. Journal of Marketing Research, 43(1), 12.

Dholakia, U. M., Bagozzi, R. P., & Pearo, L. K. (2004). A social influence model of consumer participation in network- and small-group-based virtual communities. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 21(3), 23.

Hall, H., & Graham, D. (2004). Creation and recreation: motivating collaboration to generate knowledge capital in online communities. International Journal of Information Management, 24, 235-246.

Leitch, S., & Richardson, N. (2003). Corporate branding in the new economy. European Journal of Marketing, 37(7/8), 15.

**Muniz, A.M, & O'Guinn, T. C. (2001). Brand community. Journal of Consumer Research, 27, 412-432.

Stuart, H., & Jones, C. (2004). Corporate branding in marketspace. Corporate Reputation Review, 7(1), 10.

Blog Community

Adamic, L. A., & Glance, N. (2005). The political blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. election: divided they blog. Paper presented at the International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Chicago.

Bar-Ilan, J. (2005). Information hub blogs. Journal of Information Science, 31(4), 297-307.

Miura, A., & Yamashita, K. (2007). Psychological and Social Influences on Blog Writing: An Online Survey of Blog Authors in Japan. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), 1452-1471.

Reese, S. D., Rutigliano, L., Hyun, K., & Jeong, J. (2007). Mapping the blogosphere. Journalism, 8(3), 235-261.

Schmidt, J. (2007). Blogging Practices: An Analytical Framework. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), 1409-1427.

Mobility

Kortuem, G. and Segall, Z. (2003). Wearable Communities: Augmenting Social Networks with Wearable Computers. Pervasive Computing. 3. 71-78.

Oksman, V. and Turtiainen, J. (2004). Mobile Communication as a Social Stage. New Media and Society. 6(3). 319-339.

Sheller, M. and Urry, S. (2003). Mobile Transformations of Public and Private Life. Theory, Culture and Society. 20(3). 107-125.

Leopoldina, F. (2002). The Mobile Telephone: Towards New Categories and Social Relations. Information, Communication and Society. 5(4). 513-519.

Rheingold, H. (2002). Smart Mobs. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.

Chs. 2: Technologies of Cooperation and Ch. 7: Smart Mobs

Fortunati, L. (2002). The Mobile Phone: Towards new categories and social relations. Information, Communication & Society 5 (4), 513-528

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download