Online Community Management Research Articles

Open Design Communities: A bibliometric analysis of community-based management

Online collaboration growing significantly in the development of open-source hardware and software has led to a surge of research interest. However, no comprehensive bibliometric review has investigated the management of digital communities in these ecosystems. In this study, academic contributions to the field of online community management in open-source hardware and software were mapped, highlighting influential research streams and trends. A bibliometric review was conducted based on a keyword search analysis of research databases (IEEExplore, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Web of Science), with a sample comprising an overall 399 papers. The study identifies the most impactful articles in the field, maps the diverse streams of research on online collaboration and community management, visualizes focus areas and trends, and pinpoints areas for further investigation. These findings will support future research within this rapidly evolving domain.

Adopting Artificial Intelligence in a Decision Support System – Learnings from Comment Moderation Systems

Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) comprise components for decision-making in an organization. While traditional Decision Support Systems (DSS) rely on sophistically designed decision models, this approach has its limitations when it comes to making decisions based on large amounts of unstructured data. In this paper, we present the case of online community management, where moderators need to decide if user content (i.e., comments) can be published. We have implemented a moderation platform that utilizes Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) to support moderators in their decision-making. From the development process and adoption of our platform, which were carried out as a Design Science Research (DSR) project, we have derived six design principles that assist in designing ML-based DSS. Our results imply that an ML-based DSS should be implemented using an open, customizable system, where decisions are made transparent and interpretable to users. Users need special onboarding and should always have the possibility to overrule the system.

Online Food Purchase Behavior: COVID-19 and Community Group Effect

Online food community purchases contributed to urban residents’ food security during the COVID-19 pandemic in Shanghai. The influence of the outbreak on the purchasing behavior of an online food community was examined. An innovative e-commerce model describes how the online community purchases facilitate integration of local food and agri-product resources, and provide consumers, especially residents of densely populated agglomerations, with convenient short-distance distribution. The survey data collected from 1168 residents show that the lockdown severity and food security concerns increased the frequency of residents’ online food purchases. Heterogeneity analysis indicated that the Omicron outbreak effected the online food purchases of those born before the 1990s, males, the less educated, and low-income earners through a community group effect. The internet provides a convenient means of disseminating information, promoting access to local foods, and assuring food access during public health emergencies. Purchasing food online can be further enhanced through standardized management of online communities.

Perceived challenges affecting user engagement in online community: an analysis of interrelationships and interaction

PurposeWith gaining popularity, online communities are increasing. It is leading to the data and information overflow. So, there are some challenges like cyber frauds, cyberbullying, etc. while engaging with online communities. Not only this, anonymity of the participants, stress and racism are also big challenges in online communities' interaction. Online harassers' attack tactics have changed over time. In addition, there are challenges like quality of discussion, inequality in participation of the users, etc. may scale online communities towards incitement and activism. Therefore, this study will try to analyse these challenges for overall benefit of the society.Design/methodology/approachThe underlying fuzzy set theory is employed to handle the fuzziness of users' perceptions since the attributes are expressed in linguistic preferences. Through exhaustive literature review, the authors have identified 15 challenges. These challenges are further categorised as cause and effect by using DEMATEL (Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory) approach.FindingsLack of strategic planning and uninspired discussions between users has emerged as a major challenge in cause category. This study further demonstrates how individual challenge can be managed and developed to navigate the online communities to maintain a healthy environment in society.Research limitations/implicationsResults are based on limited dataset. Therefore, findings cannot be generalised for all online communities.Originality/valueThe research findings offer a suitable direction to policymakers to formulate and design policies, laws and regulations to increase user engagement in the online community. The study is beneficial to firms and researchers in understanding the factors influencing effective management of online communities.

Exploring the mediating role of utilitarian value and hedonic value in the formation of oppositional loyalty in online communities

AbstractOur research expands the scope of the research on oppositional loyalty from brands to online communities. Online communities allow members to freely express their opinions and promote the occurrence of oppositional loyalty behaviours towards the communities. Oppositional loyalty is defined in this article that, for the purpose of strengthening the market position of their preferred community, members of the online community may express negative views or even show oppositional behaviour towards adversarial communities. In view of social capital theory, the study examines the effect of hedonic value and utilitarian value on oppositional loyalty in online communities. The results show that only hedonic value significantly affects oppositional loyalty; hedonic value mediates the effect of the three dimensions of social capital (network ties, identification, and common language) on oppositional loyalty. The study identifies that community type moderates the impact of social capital (identification and common language) on hedonic value but does not moderate the effect of social capital on utilitarian value. Finally, we find that members' oppositional loyalty towards their community can promote their community participation. This research provides recommendations for online community managers to manage and benefit from members' oppositional loyalty.

Impact of Social Support and Reciprocity on Consumer Well-Being in Virtual Medical Communities.

This study pursues a better understanding of consumer well-being in online medical cosmetics communities by investigating the antecedents of well-being and moderating influence of community norms. A total valid sample of 484 respondents was collected from 2 popular medical cosmetics discussion platforms. A partial least squares analysis was used to validate the research model. Emotional support, informational support, and sense of belonging were important predictors of well-being. Among these 3 antecedents, emotional support showed the strongest influence on consumer well-being. Sense of belonging was significantly and positively influenced by emotional support and reciprocity, and hence plays a pivotal role in mediating the effects of emotional support and reciprocity on well-being. However, informational support does not appear to significantly influence sense of belonging. Members' compliance with community norms positively moderates the influence of sense of belonging on well-being. This study contributes to the literature on realizing members' social behaviors specifically in virtual medical cosmetics communities and provides insights for the management of online communities.

Online community management

Online community management

Signaling the Intent to Change Online Communities: A Case From a Reddit Gaming Community

This study builds on existing research about churn and community movement, examining if language use on Reddit can be used to determine if people signal their intent to relocate to a new community before they actually do so. Using a computational and semantic approach, we studied the subreddits for the game series Fallout at the time Fallout 76 ( FO76) was released to see if the users of the Fallout 4 ( FO4) subreddit signaled how they would react to the new subreddit. The main difference we found was that those who stay in the FO4 subreddit or use both subreddits on average post more often and create longer posts than those who move to the FO76 subreddit or leave. This adds further evidence to support theories about community as communication, and we suggest this finding can help online community managers identify which users may be about to leave the community, aiding retention and the overall health of the community.

An online home for the homeless: A content analysis of the subreddit r/homeless

There is currently a little observational work exploring homeless peoples’ digital networking behaviors, with previous research relying on limited self-report data. This study fills this gap through a qualitative thematic analysis of the public subreddit r/homeless. We analyzed the 30 most commented posts on the subreddit from each month of 2019, examining a total of 360 posts. We find that r/homeless contributions primarily center around (a) commentary on social issues, (b) communication of needs and concerns, (c) offering of care and support, and (d) online community management and engagement, suggesting that homeless individuals not only leverage the r/homeless subreddit to gain support and information, but to generate discourse around larger societal issues. Evidence of both bridging and bonding ties was present on the subreddit, with bonding ties being especially valued and sought after by homeless users, contributing to the growing literature on the relationship between social capital, social media, and homelessness.

Space Planning for Online Community

Several years of consulting with online community hosts and managers have highlighted a variety of issues that recur across many online community development efforts. We summarize those issues in eight points that have functioned as useful guidelines to working with online communities, particularly within a corporate context. These recommendations focus on the location and purpose of the community, the monitoring of social activity within the space, the provision of feedback to participants and the organization and maintenance of the space. While this collection is particularly focused on issues relevant to community organizers closely involved in starting, maintaining or growing online communities, its principles are generally applicable for analyzing and understanding the dynamics within a variety of communities.

Formulating the dynamics of an online community and identifying the influential members using the animal flocking model

• The concept of animal flock movement is used to formulate the community’s dynamics. • We propose a ratio-based method to describe the movement trajectory of a community. • We propose a novel influencer identification procedure, RemovalTest. • The identified influencers have concrete impact on changes of discussion direction. To provide effective decision support for online community management, this study proposes new methods for formulating community dynamics and identifying influential members through the animal flocking model. We considered the online community as an animal flock, where members of the community are individual animals. The change in the direction of community discussions is analogous to the migration of an animal flock, although this occurs in virtual rather than physical space. To accurately formulate the community dynamics, we established a virtual space by using the ratios of articles in various categories as coordinates. In addition, the influence of members was defined according to their ability to change the direction of community discussions in the virtual space. On the basis of this concept, a novel algorithm was developed to identify the influential members. The evaluation results showed that the influential members identified using conventional measurements of influence often have no substantial impact on changes of the discussion direction. By contrast, the method proposed in this study clearly marked the influential members in the community. In addition, the results also demonstrated that the virtual space construction method can appropriately formulate community dynamics.

What Catches Your Attention? An Empirical Study of Attention Patterns in Community Forums

Online community managers work towards building and managing communities around a given brand or topic. A risk imposed on such managers is that their community may die out and its utility diminish to users. Understanding what drives attention to content and the dynamics of discussions in a given community informs the community manager and/or host with the factors that are associated with attention. In this paper we gain insights into the idiosyncrasies that individual community forums exhibit in their attention patterns and how the factors that impact activity differ. We glean such insights by using logistic regression models for identifying seed posts and explore the effectiveness of a range of features. Our findings show that the discussion behaviour of different communities is clearly impacted by different factors.

From Virtual Strangers to IRL Friends

Accounts of the social experience within livestreaming channels vary widely, from the frenetic "crowdroar" offered in some channels to the close-knit, "participatory communities" within others. What kinds of livestreaming communities enable the types of meaningful conversation and connection that support relationship development, and how? In this paper, we explore how personal relationships develop within Twitch, a popular livestreaming service. Interviews with 21 pairs who met initially within Twitch channels illustrate how interactions originating in Twitch's text-based, pseudonymous chat environment can evolve into close relationships, marked by substantial trust and support. Consistent with Walther's hyperpersonal model, these environments facilitate self-disclosure and conversation by reducing physical cues and emphasizing common ground, while frequent, low-stakes interaction allow relationships to deepen over time. Our findings also highlight boundaries of the hyperpersonal model. As group size increases, participants leverage affordances for elevated visibility to spark interactions; as relationships deepen, they incorporate complementary media channels to increase intimacy. Often, relationships become so deep through purely computer-mediated channels that face-to-face meetings become yet another step in a continuum of relationship development. Findings from a survey of 1,367 members of Twitch communities demonstrate how the suitability of these spaces as venues for relational interaction decreases as communities increase in size. Together, these findings illustrate vividly how hyperpersonal interaction functions in the context of real online communities. We consider implications for the design and management of online communities, including their potential for supporting "strong bridges," relationships which combine the benefits of strong ties and network bridges.

Factors Influencing Doctors' Participation in the Provision of Medical Services Through Crowdsourced Health Care Information Websites: Elaboration-Likelihood Perspective Study.

BackgroundWeb-based crowdsourcing promotes the goals achieved effectively by gaining solutions from public groups via the internet, and it has gained extensive attention in both business and academia. As a new mode of sourcing, crowdsourcing has been proven to improve efficiency, quality, and diversity of tasks. However, little attention has been given to crowdsourcing in the health sector.ObjectiveCrowdsourced health care information websites enable patients to post their questions in the question pool, which is accessible to all doctors, and the patients wait for doctors to respond to their questions. Since the sustainable development of crowdsourced health care information websites depends on the participation of the doctors, we aimed to investigate the factors influencing doctors’ participation in providing health care information in these websites from the perspective of the elaboration-likelihood model.MethodsWe collected 1524 questions with complete patient-doctor interaction processes from an online health community in China to test all the hypotheses. We divided the doctors into 2 groups based on the sequence of the answers: (1) doctor who answered the patient’s question first and (2) the doctors who answered that question after the doctor who answered first. All analyses were conducted using the ordinary least squares method.ResultsFirst, the ability of the doctor who first answered the health-related question was found to positively influence the participation of the following doctors who answered after the first doctor responded to the question (βoffline1=.177, P<.001; βoffline2=.063, P=.048; βonline=.418, P<.001). Second, the reward that the patient offered for the best answer showed a positive effect on doctors’ participation (β=.019, P<.001). Third, the question’s complexity was found to positively moderate the relationships between the ability of the first doctor who answered and the participation of the following doctors (β=.186, P=.05) and to mitigate the effect between the reward and the participation of the following doctors (β=–.003, P=.10).ConclusionsThis study has both theoretical and practical contributions. Online health community managers can build effective incentive mechanisms to encourage highly competent doctors to participate in the provision of medical services in crowdsourced health care information websites and they can increase the reward incentives for each question to increase the participation of the doctors.

Can Badges Foster a More Welcoming Culture on Q&amp;A Boards?

Thriving online communities rely on a steady stream of newcomers to contribute new content. However, retaining newcomers has proven challenging. In this paper, we measure the success of an intervention used by Stack Exchange question-answering communities to create a more welcoming environment for newcomers. That intervention consisted in highlighting contributions by new users with a special indicator. We hypothesize that Stack Exchange's new policy would reduce negative reactions to new users and, ultimately, increase new user retention. We leverage causal modeling to assess the introduction of the so-called “new contributor indicator”, and we find it did not counter user retention decline in the short- and long-terms. However, our results indicate it did reduce unwelcoming reactions towards newcomers in the short-term. Our work has practical implications for online community managers aiming to improve their onboarding processes.

How do group performances affect users’ contributions in online communities? A cross-level moderation model

ABSTRACT Online community managers are seeking effective ways to encourage users to exhibit prosocial behaviors that help sustain the growth and effectiveness of online communities. One tactic is to set up small groups to build relationships and facilitate communications. In addition to social norms formed and shared among all community users, individuals are also subjected to potential influence from peers with whom they directly communicated within the group. This study integrated social exchange theory with group influence theory to investigate how the influences of reputation and reciprocity on users’ contributions were modified under two categories of group influences, i.e., informational and normative influence. Based on a longitudinal observation of over 3,000 members from 72 subgroups in an online community, we developed a cross-level moderation model to enrich our understanding of users’ contribution behavior with the influence of group performances. This study provides guidelines for online community administrators to create and foster effective communities for knowledge contribution and exchange.

Change by default: Exploring the effects of a sudden influx of newcomers on the discourse of r/TwoXChromosomes

Sudden influxes of new contributors to online communities can cause apprehension and resentment among existing members, potentially leading to the displacement of existing members by newcomers. We analyze the impact of a sudden influx of new contributors to r/TwoXChromosomes, an online community in which the experiences and perspectives of female-identified individuals are discussed. Though we find evidence of a small displacement effect, other factors, such as the passage of time and the 2016 U.S. presidential election, have far larger impacts on the retention of existing contributors. We also find that after the influx, discussion topics shifted temporarily toward general statements about women and men, followed by a lasting shift away from appearance-related topics toward topics relating to motherhood. In sum, the evidence suggests that in this particular case, fears of displacement by a sudden influx of newcomers are exaggerated, and that technology designers, users, and online community managers should consider the impact of a wider variety of factors when considering how to maintain cohesive online communities.

The more the better? Exploring the effects of reviewer social networks on online reviews

ABSTRACTConventional wisdom suggests that firms leverage key influencers (e.g. individuals with high centrality) in online communities to stimulate buzz. Using a large panel dataset including 1,569,264 online Yelp reviews and the ego-network of 366,715 individual reviewers over a nine-year period, this study examines the effects of number of ties and network density on the volume and valence of online reviews. In contrast with the general belief that key influencers always generate positive buzz, the findings show that they can adversely affect future review valence. Specifically, reviewers with many connections on Yelp can reduce the positivity of reviews of the same business in the next period. This finding has implications for marketing practice in online community management and social media intervention.

User recognition mechanism and user contribution behavior in enterprise-hosted online product innovation communities

PurposeThis paper aims to conceptualize two patterns of user recognition mechanisms and two kinds of user contribution behavior in enterprise-hosted online product innovation community and explain their relationships between user recognition mechanisms and user contribution behavior of online product innovation community.Design/methodology/approachA Chinese enterprise-hosted online innovation community and an American enterprise-hosted online innovation community are selected as research objects. Four Logit models are developed and some hypotheses are supposed from the perspective of prosocial behavior theory. Objective user data with three months from two online product innovation communities are collected to test with Logit regression analysis.FindingsFindings show that there are obvious correlations between user recognition mechanisms and user contribution behavior, and there is also an obvious difference in community user activity level between the quantity-based user recognition mechanism community and the quality-based user recognition mechanism community. More specifically, in the online product innovation community with quantity-based recognition mechanism, both variables of peer recognition and community image motivation significantly affect user proactive contribution behavior. In the online product innovation community with quality-based recognition mechanism, the variable of peer recognition significantly affects both user proactive contribution behavior and user responsive contribution behavior; the variable of community image motivation significantly affects both user proactive contribution behavior and user responsive contribution behavior.Practical implicationsAlthough it is voluntary, online user voluntary contribution behavior still need to be presented, recognized and affirmed by community. For enterprise-hosted online community managers, they should pay more attention to design the reasonable online community user recognition mechanism with the coexistence of quantity and quality.Originality/valueThe theoretical contribution in this study is to enrich the existing research theme about enterprise-hosted online product innovation community. First, it conceptualizes two patterns of user recognition mechanisms. Second, it regards the variable of user contribution behavior as the co-existence of proactive contribution and responsive contribution. Third, from the perspective of prosocial behavior theory, it is an important supplement to explain the mechanism of user contribution behavior in enterprise-hosted online product innovation community. Fourth, it deepens the overall understanding of the relationship between user recognition mechanism and user contribution behavior. This study provides theoretical guidance for enterprises how to design reasonable and efficient online product innovation community platform. The theoretical contribution in this study is to enrich the existing research theme about enterprise-hosted online product innovation community. First, it conceptualizes two patterns of user recognition mechanisms. Second, it regards the variable of user contribution behavior as the co-existence of proactive contribution and responsive contribution. Third, from the perspective of prosocial behavior theory, it is an important supplement to explain the mechanism of user contribution behavior in enterprise-hosted online product innovation community. Fourth, it deepens the overall understanding of the relationship between user recognition mechanism and user contribution behavior. This study provides theoretical guidance for enterprises how to design reasonable and efficient online product innovation community platform.

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.