Online Collaborative Communities Research Articles

Mediatized governance in environmental disasters: self-organizing community rescue through collaborative online documents

The frequency of risks and disasters in contemporary society has created new challenges for rescue governance. Through content analysis and participant observation, this study examined the development of an online collaborative and self-organizing community during the 2021 rainstorm rescue effort in Zhengzhou, China. The study shows that this community provided and optimized major public goods and services, adapted rescue resources to victim needs, facilitated streamlined information transfer, protected privacy, and connected a multitude of actors. The findings illustrate the significance of a new mode of mediatized governance that emphasizes the continuous process of reconciling conflicting interests and encouraging joint action among multiple actors, thereby realizing a flexible and efficient rescue that could not have been achieved by a top-down government-led administration.

Towards a Value Co-Creation Process in Collaborative Environments for TVET Education

The appearance of the COVID disruption has proved the need for rapid innovations in education, with new value proposition(s) able to capture the new activities involving value co-creation in the education service systems. This paper introduces a conceptual framework for skills building in collaborative TVET online communities that integrates the Collaborative Knowledge Sharing Environment (CKSEnv), an ontology-based collaborative development of knowledge-intensive services, as a possible main driver for value co-creation amongst actors in the after-pandemic TVET education. CKSEnv’s usability and usefulness in achieving its goals is evaluated. Quantitative and qualitative data collected through interviews have revealed respondents’ interest in topics such as the sustainability, usefulness, usability, value co-creation, and technical functionality of the proposed development. Both the utility and simplicity proved to have the most significant impact on CKSEnv adoption and usage. A new service design artifact is created, the smart service model canvas in the TVET online communities, to explain the new value co-creation process, which is able to fill gaps in describing the role of ICT in supporting the TVET training cycle. This research may ground further explorations related to the development of TVET online communities, while the CKSEnv is still in the evaluation stage. The practical implications of this study express the need for new value co-creation processes with specific activities that use technology-driven innovations, able to establish such newly created value, through smart educational services.

The Effect of Community Managers on Online Idea Crowdsourcing Activities

In this study, we investigate whether and to what extent community managers in online collaborative communities can stimulate community activities through their engagement. Using a novel data set of 22 large online idea crowdsourcing campaigns, we find that moderate but steady manager activities are adequate to enhance community participation. Moreover, we show that appreciation, motivation, and intellectual stimulation by community managers are positively associated with community participation but that the effectiveness of these communication strategies depends on the form of participation managers wish to encourage. Finally, the data reveal that community manager activities requiring more effort, such as media file uploads vs. simple written comments, have a stronger effect on community participation.

Asynchronous Discussions to Enhance Online Communities of Inquiry in the Saudi Higher ‎Education Context

This paper aimed to examine the efficiency of web-based asynchronous discussions in establishing and sustaining online collaborative learning communities in the Saudi higher educational context, by adopting the Community of Inquiry (Garrison et al., 1999) framework as a guiding model. The implementation involved setting up online asynchronous discussions in the Blackboard Learning Management System for a fourth-year undergraduate Education course over 20 days. By using a mixed methodology approach, the results revealed that within the Saudi university context, social presence patterns changed over time, with an overall increase in their levels. This increase attributed to three main factors: the instructors’ effective participation; peers’ active contribution; and the student’s desire to receive higher marks. However, the levels of students’ cognitive presence did not show adequate growth, which is assigned mainly to an inadequate teaching presence. The study also explored the relationships between the three factors and concluded that in order for students to achieve their goals via online learning communities, time is an important consideration.

Building an Online Collaborative Learning Community of Pre-service Teachers of EFL

The current study employed the qualitative approach and explored pre-service teachers’ experiences through initial teacher education and perspectives on becoming an English-as-a-foreign-language teacher. In particular, it examined the influence of both participation in a community of practice and group discussions on their early professional development. An online journal forum was created where eight pre-service teachers from two universities recorded and shared their thoughts, difficulties, and challenges in their initial teacher education over two semesters. They also gave comments and feedbacks to one another online. Participation in an online collaborative community of practice enabled them to negotiate their membership in the community through shared inquiries across grades and beyond universities. While the membership negotiation of some members was still ongoing at the end of the project, others learned to become more responsible and full members in their own respective ways. Over the course of the study, the online community also became a space of safety and trust; a legitimate space for like-minded individuals was provided to discuss teaching and develop their expertise.

Kamusal söylemde olumlu benlik temsili: İnkâr stratejilerinin eleştirel söylem analizine Ekşi Sözlük’ten örnekler

In today's society, racial and ethnic biases / concerns can be shown in a variety of ways. Members of the majority group primarily shape public discourse by expressing their ethnic perspectives in various ways. They may show, hide, and/or deny negative feelings against minorities, immigrants, refugees, and/or the others. In this regard, the present study attempts to examine and explore denial of unfavorable ethnic attitudes, biases, and worries voiced in public discourse regarding Turkey's Armenian minority. Within the framework of the study, I will investigate what kind of denial strategies may be found in the posts (comments) under the headings "Ermenilerden özür diliyorum" [I apologize to Armenians] and "Hepimiz Ermeniyiz" [We are all Armenians] posted on Ekşi Sözlük "Sour Dictionary" (one of the largest collaborative online communities in Turkey) between 2007-2008 years, shortly after the assassination of Hrant Dink (a journalist and member of the Armenian minority group living in Turkey) in 2007. Accordingly, I will discuss the sample entries within the scope of Critical Discourse Analysis and Teun van Dijk's denial strategies, which aim to show how ideology and ideological processes reveal themselves as linguistic systems. Then I will present my analysis of the most frequently used denial strategies observed in these entries. I will examine the denial methods used in the text and determine how racial or ethnic biases and concerns (at the macro level) are expressed in the text through word choice, sentence structure, hierarchy, and context (micro level). In this way, we will be able to see macro-level goals in the text through micro-level structures.

When to Signal? Contingencies for Career-Motivated Contributions in Online Collaboration Communities

Online collaboration communities are increasingly taking on new roles beyond knowledge creation and exchange, especially the role of a skill-signaling channel for career-motivated community members. This paper examines the contingency effects of job-market conditions for career-motivated knowledge contributions in online collaboration communities. From the data of individual-level activities in a computer programming-related online Q&A community (Stack Overflow), merged with job-market data for software developers, we find robust evidence of a positive association between community members’ career motivations and their knowledge contributions. More importantly, we find that this positive relationship is strengthened by job-market conditions: the number of vacancies in the job market, the expected salaries from these jobs, and the transparency in the flow of career-related information between the community and external recruiters. We contribute to the motivation literature in online collaboration communities by identifying and substantiating the role of contextual factors in mobilizing members’ career motivation. Our study thus offers novel insight into how career motivation can be effectively utilized to motivate contributors in these communities. Our findings also point to a possible paradigm change by characterizing online collaboration communities as emerging institutions for career motivation and skill signaling.

Abstract PO-105: Improving cancer care through inclusive clinical trials: An online collaborative community to improve representation in cancer clinical trials

Abstract Background: Diverse enrollment in clinical trials is a challenge for study sponsors, sites and patients. Non-Caucasians are underrepresented in cancer clinical trials relative to the burden of cancer they experience (1). Clinical trial participation disparities indicate inequities in current treatment options, impede advancements in medical research and drug development and perpetuate inequities in care to tomorrow's patients. Patients, providers, community leaders and researchers must work together to ensure all populations are included in clinical trials in order to produce comprehensive safety and efficacy profiles for potentially life-saving treatments. In a survey by LUNGevity, industry sposors reported having metrics for diversity and inclusion as well as a commitment to expanding site selection to include more minority-servicing sites with trusted community insights and engagement practices (2). A variety of independent resources exists to guide stakeholders and increase the representation in clincal trials; however, there is no common repository for accessing resources, reviewing opportunities for improvment and learning how to implement best practices. A dedicated platform helps researchers and patients answer common questions, such as: 1. Where are clinical trial sites with diverse patient populations? 2. How can community influence research? 3. How can sites, sponsors, CROs and patient advocates address barriers to participation? Methods: The National Minority Quality Forum (NMQF), through its Diverse Cancer Communities Working group, partnered with Medidata's Social Innovation Lab to build a virtual "Collaborative Community" - a moderated, web-based platform to share resources, best practices, and to crowd source solutions for inclusive clinical trial development. The pilot (July 2021) links to NMQF's Lung Cancer Index (3) to help stakeholders visualize lung cancer Medicare claims and other data in the United States by patient demographics and geography, with an overlay of clinical trial sites to help stakeholders find the best collaborators. Results: 20 stakeholders participating in the platform each with roles in clinical trial operations representative of sponsors, CROs, sites and patient advocacy. The pilot is evaluating engagement engagement metrics, including actie views, content sharing, discussion frequency and user-reported impact. Conclusions: Participating stakeholders from multiple areas of clinical development contribute to building capacity and experience within and across organizations that deliver representative clinical trials. Citation Format: Erin Fenske Williams, Mary Stober Murray, Victoria Rollins, Anupama Santhosh, Jeanne Regnante. Improving cancer care through inclusive clinical trials: An online collaborative community to improve representation in cancer clinical trials [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Virtual Conference: 14th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2021 Oct 6-8. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2022;31(1 Suppl):Abstract nr PO-105.

Commonshare: A New Approach to Social Reputation for Online Collaborative Communities

Reputation systems are a popular feature of web-based platforms for ensuring that their users abide by platform rules and regulations and are incentivized to demonstrate honest, trustworthy conduct. Accrual of “reputation” in these platforms, most prominently those in the e-commerce domain, is motivated by self-interested goals such as acquiring an advantage over competing platform users. Therefore, in community-oriented platforms, where the goals are to foster collaboration and cooperation among community members, such reputation systems are inappropriate and indeed contrary to the intended ethos of the community and actions of its members. In this article, we argue for a new form of reputation system that encourages cooperation rather than competition, derived from conceptualizing platform communities as a networked assemblage of users and their created content. In doing so, we use techniques from social network analysis to conceive a form of reputation that represents members’ community involvement over a period of time rather than a sum of direct ratings from other members. We describe the design and implementation of our reputation system prototype called “commonshare” and preliminary results of its use within a Digital Social Innovation platform. Further, we discuss its potential to generate insight into other networked communities for their administrators and encourage cooperation between their users.

Global Food-source Identifier (GFI): Collaborative virtual research environment and shared data catalogue for the foodborne outbreak investigation international community

The source of a foodborne disease outbreak (FBO) is often difficult to identify, especially in the early phase where interventions would be most efficient. In addition, data on FBOs are mostly scattered in different formats either in national databases and reports or within pathogen-specific or regional reporting networks, both of which are often only accessible to a selected number of individuals.Here, we developed an international, open, shared and searchable data catalogue of past FBOs – the Global Food-source Identifier (GFI). GFI was developed with two objectives: a) to create a collaborative online community of FBO investigators, encouraging the international sharing of data in a harmonized, detailed and comparable manner and b) to support foodborne outbreak investigation worldwide by providing access to detailed records of past outbreaks, which can convey valuable insight into potential ‘risk foods’ of a detected pathogen. GFI is hosted within a Virtual Research Environment (VRE), which offers additional features to facilitate the collaboration between the outbreak investigators. These features allow document exchange, communication and data visualization and analysis between the VRE members.Based on scientific literature on foodborne outbreaks and discussions within a working group, we selected a total of 46 attributes characterising the outbreak records to be included in the catalogue, aggregated under the four overarching categories causative agent, epidata, food source and report details. Detailed descriptions of the attributes in the catalogue and instructions for harmonized data reporting are available on a wiki page in the VRE. At the time of writing and public launch of GFI, the data catalogue was populated with records of 102 FBOs occurred in Denmark over a period of 12 years (2005–2016) and covering the most frequent pathogens and a broad range of typing methods.The VRE features that enable data analysis, document sharing and communication between members were applied for the graphical representation of the records available in GFI, and for the sharing of results and script files within the VRE. The descriptive analysis included the relationship between the most frequent causative agents and outbreak food sources. Such results can support a risk-based food sampling strategy in the very beginning of a foodborne outbreak investigation.The Global Food-source Identifier is a data catalogue specifically designed to host an international collection of FBO records reported in a detailed and harmonized manner. It is implemented in a virtual research environment that offers key features to facilitate and enhance the global collaboration and data sharing among FBO investigators. Once in active use by the international food safety community, we envisage that GFI will contribute to the success of FBO investigations worldwide.

Relating Wikipedia article quality to edit behavior and link structure

Currently, the relation between edit behavior, link structure, and article quality is not well-understood in our community, notwithstanding that this relationship may facilitate editing processes and content quality on Wikipedia. To shed light on this complex relation, we classify article edits and perform an in-depth analysis of editing sequences for 4941 articles. Additionally, we build a network of internal Wikipedia hyperlinks between articles. Using this data, we compute parsimonious metrics to quantify editing and linking behavior. Our analysis unveils that conflicted articles differ substantially from others in almost all metrics, while we also detect slight trends for high-quality articles. With our network analysis we find evidence indicating that controversial and edit war articles frequently span structural holes in the Wikipedia network. Finally, in a prediction experiment we demonstrate the usefulness of edit behavior patterns and network properties in predicting conflict and article quality. With our work, we assist online collaboration communities, especially Wikipedia, in long-term improvement of content quality by offering valuable insights about the interplay of article quality, controversies and edit wars, editing behavior, and network properties via sequence-based edit and network-based article metrics.

Forming a Collaborative Community of Practice of EFL Teachers through Self-study Research

The current study is a self-reflective autoethnographic research study, which aims to explore how two in-service English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in Japan built a collaborative and mutually supportive community of practice, and how they shared and re-constructed their expertise through interacting with each other. Prior to the study, both of the participating teachers from different teaching contexts shared a similar struggle: a lack of collegiality and a quest for creativity. An online journal forum was created where they recorded their thoughts, difficulties and challenges in their everyday teaching practice for one year. They also gave comments and feedback to each other online. As a result, participation in an online collaborative community of practice enabled them to reflect on and adjust their teaching practices. In particular, the role of collegiality in sharing teaching strategies impacted the teaching of English as a foreign language in diverse contexts, both public and private schools. It also had an impact on teaching different language skills (oral communication for one participant and reading and translation for the other) and the use of students' native language as assistance. By taking on the role of a diagonal mentor, they also found a way to make their professional voices heard.

Crowdsourced Innovation: How Community Managers Affect Crowd Activities

In this study, we investigate whether and to what extent community managers in online collaborative communities can stimulate crowd activities through their engagement. Using a novel data set of 22 large online idea crowdsourcing campaigns, we find that active engagement of community managers positively affects crowd activities in an inverted U-shaped manner. Moreover, we evidence that intellectual stimulation by managers increases community participation, while individual consideration of users has no impact on user activities. Finally, the data reveal that community manager activities that require more effort, such as media file uploads instead of simple written comments, have a larger effect on crowd participation.

“Wikipedia does NOT tolerate your babbling!”: Impoliteness-induced conflict (resolution) in a polylogal collaborative online community of practice

Impoliteness (and responding to it) is salient in various emerging cooperative, polylogal online communities of practice. Investigating Wikipedians' negotiations quantitatively and qualitatively, the researchers analyzed discussions in 120 highly controversial Wikipedia talk pages across four general topical categories to explore impoliteness strategies, their responses, and participation patterns characterizing conflict creation, escalation, and resolution in Wikipedians' polylogues. Both macro-analysis (i.e. number of participants, conflicts, turns across conflicts, and discoursal roles) and micro-analysis (impoliteness strategies and responses to them) along with pertinent frameworks (e.g. taxonomies of impoliteness strategies, defensive strategies, and participant response options and patterns) were utilized in analyzing the data. Findings emphasized the existence of impoliteness phenomena, the prevalence of on-record impoliteness strategies rather than off-record strategies, dominance of the defensive strategy of offering an explanation, as well as a tendency among all the participants (i.e. initiators, recipients, and witnesses) to resolve conflicts. The findings are discussed in light of the asynchronous, task-oriented, interaction-focused, polylogal, natively digital and highly-policed nature of the platform's communications. Offering a revised model of online conflict (resolution) interaction patterns, this research sheds new light on the communicative behaviors, norms and strategies of Wikipedians, as a distinct online community of practice with implications for technology-mediated incivility.

An Agent-Based Model of an Online Collaboration Community by using Fuzzy Logic

Abstract Manufacturing companies increasingly use online collaboration communities to generate ideas and solutions. This paper suggests a modeling approach for such an online community. It analyzes the task solving behavior and the evolution of its average commitment level. Communities are influenced by many attributes such as individual demands, skills, and activities of members. Due to this heterogeneity the modeling of such a system is not a simple task. The agent-based model helps to predict system behavior and proposes measures for online community management. Agent-based models help to analyze theories and perspectives regarding social systems. In this study, we design the dynamics of a conceptual online collaboration community by combining the agent-based modeling technique with fuzzy logic. We model an interesting phenomenon in an online community from a dynamic perspective.

Fostering design-oriented collective reflection among preservice teachers through principle-based knowledge building activities

Teacher's reflective capacity is an important means for teachers' growth in professionalism. This design-based research investigated the effects of knowledge building (KB) principles on pre-service teachers' reflective capacity in two intervention cycles. Particularly, the two principles of “community knowledge, collective responsibility” and “symmetric knowledge advancement” were highlighted. Participants include 25 pre-service teachers who practiced their micro-teaching during two intervention cycles. Data include: (1) records of online activities; (2) content of online feedback in the form of lesson design ideas; and (3) two open-ended surveys. Findings based on the first intervention cycle revealed that guided by the first KB principle, the participants were able to progressively work more cohesively as an online collaborative community, and extend their reflective concerns about teaching to learning. However, there was no significant improvement in terms of the quality of feed-backed lesson design ideas. To address this issue, the second principle was added in the second design cycle. Moreover, using survey as a reflection tool, an attempt to extend the investigation from pre-service teachers' reflection on teaching concerns to reflection on technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) was taken into consideration in the second intervention iteration. As a result, the quality of the feed-backed lesson design ideas was significantly improved, indicating a sign of pre-service teachers' enhanced design fluency. In addition, the participants' design knowledge was also improved as evidenced in their deepening their reflection from basic, to more integrated, TPACK knowledge. Implications regarding principle-based, design-oriented knowledge building activities to foster reflective thinking for teacher preparation are discussed.

News coverage, digital activism, and geographical saliency: A case study of refugee camps and volunteered geographical information.

The last several decades have witnessed a shift in the way in which news is delivered and consumed by users. With the growth and advancements in mobile technologies, the Internet, and Web 2.0 technologies users are not only consumers of news, but also producers of online content. This has resulted in a novel and highly participatory cyber-physical news awareness ecosystem that fosters digital activism, in which volunteers contribute content to online communities. While studies have examined the various components of this news awareness ecosystem, little is still known about how news media coverage (and in particular digital media) impacts digital activism. In order to address this challenge and develop a greater understanding of it, this paper focuses on a specific form of digital activism, that of the production of digital geographical content through crowdsourcing efforts. Using refugee camps from around the world as a case study, we examine the relationship between news coverage (via Google news), search trends (via Google trends) and user edit contribution patterns in OpenStreetMap, a prominent geospatial data crowdsourcing platform. In addition, we compare and contrast these patterns with user edit patterns in Wikipedia, a well-known non-geospatial crowdsourcing platform. Using Google news and Google trends to derive a measure of thematic public awareness, our findings indicate that digital activism bursts tend to take place during periods of sustained build-up of public awareness deficit or surplus. These findings are in line with two prominent mass communication theories: agenda setting and corrective action, and suggest the emergence of a novel stimulus-awareness-activism framework in today’s participatory digital age. Moreover, these findings further complement existing research examining the motivational factors that drive users to contribute to online collaborative communities. This paper brings us one step closer to understanding the underlying mechanisms that drive digital activism in particular in the geospatial domain.

The life cycle of contributors in collaborative online communities -the case of OpenStreetMap

ABSTRACTOver the last two decades, online communities have become ubiquitous, with millions of people accessing collaborative project websites every day. Among them, the OpenStreetMap project (OSM) has been very successful in collecting/offering volunteered geographic information (VGI). Very different behaviours are observed among OSM participants, which translate into large differences of lifespan, contribution levels (e.g. Nielsen’s 90–9-1 rule) and attitudes towards innovations (e.g. Diffusion of innovation theory or DoIT). So far, the literature has defined phases in the life cycle of contributors only based on the nature of their contributions (e.g. role of participants and edits characteristics). Our study identifies the different phases of their life cycle from a temporal perspective and assesses how these phases relate to the volume and the frequency of the contributions from participants. Survival analyses were performed using both a complementary cumulative distribution function and a Kaplan-Meier estimator to plot survival and hazard curves. The analyses were broken down according to Nielsen and DoIT contributors’ categories to highlight potential explanatory variables. This paper shows that two contribution processes combine with three major participation stages to form six phases in contributors’ life cycle. The volume of edits provided on each active day is driven by the two contribution processes, illustrating the evolution of contributors’ motivation over time. Since contributors’ lifespan is a universal metric, our results may also apply to other collaborative online communities.

Creative exploration using topic-based bisociative networks

Bisociative knowledge discovery is an approach that combines elements from two or more ‘incompatible’ domains to generate creative solutions and insight. Inspired by Koestler’s notion of bisociation, in this paper we propose a computational framework for the discovery of new connections between domains to promote creative discovery and inspiration in design. Specifically, we propose using topic models on a large collection of unstructured text ideas from multiple domains to discover creative sources of inspiration. We use these topics to generate a Bisociative Information Network – a graph that captures conceptual similarity between ideas – that helps designers find creative links within that network. Using a dataset of thousands of ideas from OpenIDEO, an online collaborative community, our results show usefulness of representing conceptual bridges through collections of words (topics) in finding cross-domain inspiration. We show that the discovered links between domains, whether presented on their own or via ideas they inspired, are perceived to be more novel and can also be used as creative stimuli for new idea generation.

News Coverage, Digital Activism, and Geographical Saliency: A Case Study of Refugee Camps and Volunteered Geographical Information

The last several decades have witnessed a shift in the way in which news is delivered and consumed by users. With the growth and advancements in mobile technologies, the Internet, and Web 2.0 technologies users are not only consumers of news, but also producers of online content. This has resulted in a novel and highly participatory cyber-physical news awareness ecosystem that fosters digital activism, in which volunteers contribute content to online communities. While studies have examined the various components of this news awareness ecosystem, little is still known about how news media coverage (and in particular digital media) impacts digital activism. In order to address this challenge and develop a greater understanding of it, this paper focuses on a specific form of digital activism, that of the production of digital geographical content through crowdsourcing efforts. Using refugee camps from around the world as a case study, we examine the relationship between news coverage (via Google news), search trends (via Google trends) and user edit contribution patterns in OpenStreetMap, a prominent geospatial data crowdsourcing platform. In addition, we compare and contrast these patterns with user edit patterns in Wikipedia, a well-known non-geospatial crowdsourcing platform. Using Google news and Google trends to derive a measure of thematic public awareness, our findings indicate that digital activism bursts tend to take place during periods of sustained build-up of public awareness deficit or surplus. These findings are in line with two prominent mass communication theories: agenda setting and corrective action, and suggest the emergence of a novel stimulus-awareness-activism framework in today’s participatory digital age. Moreover, these findings further complement existing research examining the motivational factors that drive users to contribute to online collaborative communities. This paper brings us one step closer to understanding the underlying mechanisms that drive digital activism in particular in the geospatial domain.