Participation In Online Communities Research Articles

Seekers, Providers, Welcomers, and Storytellers: Modeling Social Roles in Online Health Communities.

Participants in online communities often enact different roles when participating in their communities. For example, some in cancer support communities specialize in providing disease-related information or socializing new members. This work clusters the behavioral patterns of users of a cancer support community into specific functional roles. Based on a series of quantitative and qualitative evaluations, this research identified eleven roles that members occupy, such as welcomer and story sharer. We investigated role dynamics, including how roles change over members' lifecycles, and how roles predict long-term participation in the community. We found that members frequently change roles over their history, from ones that seek resources to ones offering help, while the distribution of roles is stable over the community's history. Adopting certain roles early on predicts members' continued participation in the community. Our methodology will be useful for facilitating better use of members' skills and interests in support of community-building efforts.

보육교사와 유치원교사의 온라인 커뮤니티 참여활동에 대한 네트노그라피 연구

보육교사와 유치원교사의 온라인 커뮤니티 참여활동에 대한 네트노그라피 연구

Health and fitness online communities and product behaviour

PurposeThis paper aims to determine the impact of online community participation on attitudes and product-related behaviour in the health and fitness sector.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data are collected from 221 users of the social medium Instagram, members of the self-proclaimed health and fitness community (#fitfam). Data are analysed with structural equation modelling.FindingsThe study shows that online community identification and engagement significantly increase health environment sensitivity, resulting in heightened engagement in physical fitness and healthy product choices.Social implicationsGiven the difficulty to remain engaged in pro-health behaviour and the growing impact of social media on young adults’ lives, these findings are encouraging. They show that online health and fitness communities provide a supportive environment in which consumers can identify and freely engage and a fertile ground to the development of health sensitivity and product-related behaviour.Originality/valueThe study advances knowledge on the role of social media and online communities in promoting health and fitness product behaviours and attitudes.

Out of the Shadows, into the Dark: Ethnoracial Dissonance and Identity Formation among Afro-Latinxs

A 2016 Pew report reported that 24 percent of Hispanics identify as Afro-Latinxs, but researchers know very little about the significance of Afro-Latinx identity and how it develops. Using survey data administered to 94 self-identified Afro-Latinxs and in-depth interviews with selected survey respondents, the authors examine the socialization experiences that shape their identity formation. The authors illustrate that Afro-Latinx identity formation rarely occurred as a result of racial affirmation from families (as observed for other Black-identified groups in the United States). In the context of their families, Afro-Latinxs report the normalization of colorism and consistently negative appraisals of “black” racialized features (skin, hair, and facial features), silence about race and racism, and the encouragement of Latinx ethnicity contrasted with the stigmatization of blackness. Afro-Latinxs’ early racial socialization is marked by ethnoracial dissonance: a feeling of disidentification with, and from, racial schemas made available to them. Most respondents report that this dissonance is punctuated in secondary school and rarely reconciled through familial experiences. However, college experiences and participation in online communities ultimately exposed them to the history of the African diaspora, introduced them to the term Afro-Latinx, and offered alternative constructions of blackness that led them to adopt an Afro-Latinx identity.

The influence of defendant body size and defendant gender on mock juror decision-making

These studies were designed to extend the limited psycho-legal literature on weight bias in juror decision-making. Methods: In two studies, students (N = 208) and online community participants (N =...

A Participation Architecture to Support User Peripheral Participation in a Hybrid FOSS Community

Participation by product users is critical to success in free, open-source software (FOSS) software communities as they originate and develop valuable ideas for product innovation that are unlikely to originate from the core software development community. Users tend to be involved at the periphery of FOSS communities, suggesting new product ideas, highlighting problems with user documentation, or explaining when the product design fails to fit with the needs of their local user application domain. As an increasing number of FOSS projects employ a hybrid participation model that combines volunteer effort with paid software development effort or product support, it can be difficult for non-developer users to participate in product innovation. In colocated organizations, it is theorized that peripheral participants learn how to engage with the practices and cultural identity of a community through a sociocultural apprenticeship known as legitimate peripheral participation. But we have little literature that explores how legitimate peripheral participation is enabled in online communities. The research study presented in this article explores how participation by peripheral users in a hybrid FOSS project is afforded by participation architecture channels and community mechanisms that mediate two forms of engagement: a “cognitive apprenticeship” that introduces participants to situated domain activity, such as the community processes involved in product innovation, and a “social apprenticeship” by which participants become enculturated in the system of meanings, values, norms, and behaviors that govern community/participant identity. We identified five stages of community innovation, analyzing sociotechnical affordances of the online participation architecture that enable peripheral participants to internalize the meanings of community practice and to develop a social identity within the FOSS community. Our contribution to theory is provided by the substantive explanation of the cognitive and social translations that enable legitimate peripheral participation in online communities, mediated by sociotechnical access channels and mechanisms that afford two contrasting forms of opportunities for action: those resulting from interactions between a goal-oriented actor and the technology platform features or channels of participation, and those associated with the social structures, roles, and relationships underpinning community interactions. Neither of these is sufficient without the other. Our contribution to practice is provided by an explanation of how four distinct categories of affordance provide these cognitive and social apprenticeship benefits, allowing participation architecture designers to cater to all forms of peripheral user participation. We conclude that the technical affordances of a typical FOSS community participation architecture are insufficient to mediate peripheral participation by nontechnical users. Meaningful participation is mediated by interactions between boundary spanners who play knowledge-brokering and organizational bridging roles. The combination of technical and social affordances enables peripheral participants to acquire an interior view of community practices and social culture and in turn to introduce new ideas, new values, and new rationales to produce a generative dance of innovation that percolates through the community.

Netnographic Slog

Active, participatory netnography, in contrast to passive netnography, is essential if researchers are to gain rich rewards from the rigorous collection of qualitative data. However, researchers should be aware of the ‘netnographic slog’; “the blood, sweat and tears” associated with eliciting quality data and encouraging active participation in online communities. This article examines the – Supporting Nutrition for Australian Childcare (SNAC) – online community of practice, established to support healthy eating practices in early childhood education and care settings. To ensure research rigour, Kozinets’ netnographic steps were employed. Garnering member participation in this online community was a slog; most community content was contributed by few members, although accessed by many. The success (and failure) of the creative elicitation strategies implemented by the researchers to promote participation are discussed, and examples provided that could be used by other netnographers in online communities. A key consideration, however, appears to be the waning success of web-based discussion boards as an effective platform. Future netnographers should carefully consider the effort required to attract new community members and encourage participation. While SNAC is a unique resource, presenting an ideal platform to launch further initiatives, other more effective social media platforms that can support healthy eating in this key setting should be considered. If participatory netnography is to be successful, budding netnographers must be prepared to invest the blood, sweat and tears required to nurture emerging communities of practice.

Active Community Participation and Crowdworking Turnover: A Longitudinal Model and Empirical Test of Three Mechanisms

Crowdworkers, such as Mturk workers, face challenging work conditions, including low pay and unfair treatment. To overcome a lack of means to share information with other workers, they often self-organize in independent online communities, for example, TurkerNation. Although prior research has explored both the crowdwork and online community contexts, it has largely ignored crowdworkers’ dual-context roles. This research provides evidence for the dual-context phenomenon. We propose three theory-driven mechanisms―embeddedness, cross-influence, and moderated heuristics―that, together with the conventional model and the sequential-update mechanism, explained up to 72% of key behavioral outcomes in both contexts. Moreover, crowdworkers’ active participation in online communities had a persistent mitigating effect on their desires to quit working in the crowdworking environment. These findings add to a richer understanding of crowdworkers’ integrated and evolving psychology within the dual-context environment. From a managerial perspective, our findings suggest that crowdwork platforms can better retain their workers by facilitating―and actively engaging with―their discussions in an embedded online community.

Investigating the Impact of Greek EFL Teachers Participation in Online Communities of Practice as a Means of Professional Development

This paper examines EFL teachers participation in online Communities of Practice (CoPs) and its impact on their professional development. The study focuses on 50 EFL teachers who became members of CoPs using an online platform named 2gather developed by the University of Athens in the context of a national in-service professional development project in Greece. Founded on the theory of situated learning, CoPs have been defined as groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis (Wenger et al., 2002). The study involved monitoring the development of four CoPs and teachers patterns of participation using a mixed-methods approach which combined quantitative data and qualitative research of collective case studies (Dornyei, 2007) of different groups of teachers. A comparison of teachers exposure to meaningful professional development (Franke et al., 2001) activities before and after their participation in the CoPs was carried out. In addition, results suggest the existence of statistically significant associations between the teachers participation in online CoPs and perceived benefit and change of their beliefs and/or practices. They also highlight the specific conditions that have supported their reflection, their reported reconstruction of beliefs and practices and the reported effectiveness of their training experience in relation to their teaching practice. The findings contribute to furthering our understanding of effective implementation of online CoPs in the context of continuing professional development.

The Association Between Increased Levels of Patient Engagement With an Internet Support Group and Improved Mental Health Outcomes at 6-Month Follow-Up: Post-Hoc Analyses From a Randomized Controlled Trial.

BackgroundWe recently reported that depressed and anxious primary care patients randomized to a moderated internet support group (ISG) plus computerized cognitive behavioral therapy (cCBT) did not experience improvements in depression and anxiety over cCBT alone at 6-month follow-up.ObjectiveThe 1% rule posits that 1% of participants in online communities generate approximately 90% of new user-created content. The aims of this study were to apply the 1% rule to categorize patient engagement with the ISG and identify whether any patient subgroups benefitted from ISG use.MethodsWe categorized the 302 patients randomized to the ISG as: superusers (3/302, 1.0%), top contributors (30/302, 9.9%), contributors (108/302, 35.8%), observers (87/302, 28.8%) and those who never logged in (74/302, 24.5%). We then applied linear mixed models to examine associations between engagement and 6-month changes in health-related quality of life (HRQoL; Short Form Health Survey Mental Health Component, SF-12 MCS) and depression and anxiety symptoms (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System, PROMIS).ResultsAt baseline, participant mean age was 42.6 years, 81.1% (245/302) were female, and mean Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7), and SF-12 MCS scores were 13.4, 12.6, and 31.7, respectively. Of the 75.5% (228/302) who logged in, 61.8 % (141/228) created ≥1 post (median 1, interquartile range, IQR 0-5); superusers created 42.3 % (630/1488) of posts (median 246, IQR 78-306), top contributors created 34.6% (515/1488; median 11, IQR 10-18), and contributors created 23.1 % (343/1488; median 3, IQR 1-5). Compared to participants who never logged in, the combined superuser + top contributor subgroup (n=33) reported 6-month improvements in anxiety (PROMIS: –11.6 vs –7.8; P=.04) and HRQoL (SF-12 MCS: 16.1 vs 10.1; P=.01) but not in depression. No other subgroup reported significant symptom improvements.ConclusionsPatient engagement with the ISG was more broadly distributed than predicted by the 1% rule. The 11% of participants with the highest engagement levels reported significant improvements in anxiety and HRQoL.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT01482806; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01482806 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/708Bjlge9).

Embodied Spaces, Cosmopolitanism and Corporeal Diversity

Drawing on my experiences caring for my disabled son and views from the parenting/disability blogosphere, this article illustrates a second-person phenomenology of disability. Parents’ lived experiences of disability and the embodied knowledge they acquire through intimate acts of caregiving provide important insights into the diversity of human embodiment and the Othering practices that foreclose our capacity to connect with and understand others. This article shows that the act and experience of caregiving opens new possibilities for engaging with the world and others. Through their participation in online communities, parents come together around their shared moral orientation to making the world more inclusive of human difference, generating cosmopolitan spaces of care.

Cultural Effects on Use of Online Social Media for Health-Related Information Acquisition and Sharing in Taiwan

ABSTRACTThe aims of this study were to use the technology acceptance model to examine how the cultural characteristics of social media users in Taiwan affect their use of social media for acquiring and sharing health-related information and to examine how their use of online social media benefits their social relationships and health self-efficacy. The research model in this quantitative cross-sectional study was tested with data collected from 321 active Facebook users in Taiwan. All three cultural characteristics/dimensions considered in the research model (masculinity, collectivism, and uncertainty avoidance) significantly affected the perceived usefulness and the perceived ease of using the online social media platform. However, masculinity had a significant positive effect on perceived usefulness but not on perceived ease of use. These results imply that technology tools for people in high masculinity cultures should be designed to maximize the effectiveness of the technology for achieving goals rather than to maximize the ease of using the technology. On the other hand, the use of online social media for acquiring and sharing health-related information significantly affected the social relationships of users but not their health self-efficacy. The results of this study imply that participants in online communities share health-related information not only to enhance their health but also to form strong social connections. This study proposes a new construct of technology acceptance, acquisition, and sharing of health-related information and investigates its effects on social relationships and health self-efficacy.

Understanding the Dimensions of Identities and Its Impact Upon Member’s Participation in an Online Community of Practice

Aim/Purpose: The study aims to explore the dimensions of identities in relation to an online community of practice (CoP) and how the dimensions of identities influence the way teachers behave on their online CoP. Background: One of the emerging approaches for teachers’ professional development is through a form of community of practice, through which teachers learn through collaboration and active learning. In line with the progression in technology, online communities of practice have been widely accepted as one of the possible approaches for teacher professional development that can enhance the opportunity for collaboration. Even though online CoPs provide a better platform for collaboration and sharing best practices among teachers, some issues lead to a failure of any online CoPs. Day, Sammons, Stobart, Kington, & Gu (2007) stress the importance of understanding the aspects of identities and their impact on how teachers perform and commit to any activities and that an understanding of teachers’ identities is central to any analysis of teachers’ effectiveness, work, and lives. Previous research, however, studied the aspects of identities in the perspectives of the development of their identities as teachers in the context of their daily interaction with significant others in face-to-face mode. However, there has been very little research that has focused on teachers’ identities in relation to their participation in online communities. The extent to which their identities influenced the way they interact, engage, and contribute to their online CoP is still debatable, although it was profoundly stated that identities play a great role in shaping teachers’ behavior in their offline CoPs. Taking this into account, this study aims to identify the dimensions of identities in an online CoP setting and how these identities influence their capacity to involve themselves in online sharing through communities of practice (CoPs). Methodology: This research employed a case study approach which involved 16 teachers from six high performing secondary schools. The selection of the participants was made through purposive sampling. Data was generated through in-depth one-to-one interviews. Data analysis was conducted using thematic analysis through which the emerging themes were carefully identified. Contribution: The study has successfully identified the dimensions of identities in relation to teachers’ participation in an online CoP, which adds to the current body of literature. The result of the study also illustrates how these dimensions of identities interrelated to each other that led to the teachers’ level of participation in an online CoP. Having an in-depth understanding about identities also would provide a better understanding of why the members reacted the way they did and, and how the dimension of identities plays a role in this. Findings: The result of the analysis indicates four main dimensions of identities, i.e., personal identities, professional identities, learner identities and member of the community’s identities. These dimensions were found to influence each other. Overall, there are seven factors seen as ‘immediate’ causes leading to the final outcome (participation in online CoPs), i.e., beliefs in the benefits of informal sharing activities, perceived importance of online sharing activities, perceived role in community, willingness to initiate discussions, willingness to respond, acceptance towards others’ comments, and beliefs in the benefits of online communities. Personal identities affected not only their jobs as teachers but also influenced their commitment towards their participation in the online CoPs in this project. Their prior knowledge and experience influenced teachers’ perceived competency in using online sharing applications. Their prior experience also impacted the way they perceived the benefits of online activities (teachers’ identities as learners) and their attitudes towards them. The findings indicate that different individuals had different sharing preferences, and the differences were partly driven by how they conceived of professional development as well as how they perceived themselves professionally. Recommendations for Practitioners: This study also indicates that to ensure the success of any online professional development for teachers, it is essential to take into consideration the aspect of endorsement by senior management, e.g., principals or coordinators from a district or state level. It is also critical for stakeholders to understand the working culture of teachers and their conception of professional development to ensure any new policies is in line with teachers’ identities. Recommendation for Researchers: The analysis in this study was developed by exploring the reasons behind the teacher’s behaviors. In the future, it will be more meaningful for new researchers to consider the dimensions of identities when they develop any online CoP. Future Research: This study was conducted using a qualitative approach. The emerging dimensions of identities can be used by future researchers as a basis to do quantitative research that covers a larger sample size, through which a generalization can be made. A causal network that was developed in this study can be tested using inferential statistics.

Beautiful and Damned. Combined Effect of Content Quality and Social Ties on User Engagement

User participation in online communities is driven by the intertwinement of the social network structure with the crowd-generated content that flows along its links. These aspects are rarely explored jointly and at scale. By looking at how users generate and access pictures of varying beauty on Flickr, we investigate how the production of quality impacts the dynamics of online social systems. We develop a deep learning computer vision model to score images according to their aesthetic value and we validate its output through crowdsourcing. By applying it to over 15B Flickr photos, we study for the first time how image beauty is distributed over a large-scale social system. Beautiful images are evenly distributed in the network, although only a small core of people get social recognition for them. To study the impact of exposure to quality on user engagement, we set up matching experiments aimed at detecting causality from observational data. Exposure to beauty is double-edged: following people who produce high-quality content increases one's probability of uploading better photos; however, an excessive imbalance between the quality generated by a user and the user's neighbors leads to a decline in engagement. Our analysis has practical implications for improving link recommender systems.

Digital Media, Participatory Politics, and Positive Youth Development.

Research on the social implications of adolescent technology use often focuses on identifying and preventing risk. However, adolescence is also a time of rapidly expanding capacities, expectations of autonomy, and identity exploration. In this article, we highlight findings from research in the field of youth civic development, which point to the importance of youth civic engagement during adolescence for later adult civic engagement as well as for promoting positive developmental outcomes. Researchers suggest that certain forms of Internet use (such as information seeking, social network site use, media production, and participation in online communities) promote civic engagement and that digital tools play an important role in youth empowerment efforts. In this article, we suggest a need for greater attention to efforts to promote digital media competencies among adolescents and for greater coordination of research on adolescent risk and adolescent autonomy and empowerment related to Internet use.

From active participation to engagement in online communities: Analysing the mediating role of trust and commitment

The advent of new media and the internet has brought social media to the fore of all brand communications. Marketers are looking at leveraging social media and all its capabilities to their advantage so as to build and manage customer relationships while also co-creating brand experiences. Online communities are one of the most preferred choices of marketers, from among all the tools and features that social media offers. The present study aims to understand how user’s active participation in online communities is instrumental in influencing their engagement with the community. The above relationship is tested on a sample of 203 respondents, using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), where trust and commitment are explored as mediators. While trust is found to partially mediate the relationship between active participation and engagement, commitment acts as a full mediator. The influence of personal characteristics (membership duration, gender) is also explored as an ancillary outcome to the study.

Online community management as social network design: testing for the signature of management activities in online communities

Online communities are used across several fields of human activities, as environments for large-scale collaboration. Most successful ones employ professionals, sometimes called “community managers” or “moderators”, for tasks including onboarding new participants, mediating conflict, and policing unwanted behaviour. Network scientists routinely model interaction across participants in online communities as social networks. We interpret the activity of community managers as (social) network design: they take action oriented at shaping the network of interactions in a way conducive to their community’s goals. It follows that, if such action is successful, we should be able to detect its signature in the network itself.Growing networks where links are allocated by a preferential attachment mechanism are known to converge to networks displaying a power law degree distribution. Growth and preferential attachment are both reasonable first-approximation assumptions to describe interaction networks in online communities. Our main hypothesis is that managed online communities are characterised by in-degree distributions that deviate from the power law form; such deviation constitutes the signature of successful community management. Our secondary hypothesis is that said deviation happens in a predictable way, once community management practices are accounted for. If true, these hypotheses would give us a simple test for the effectiveness of community management practices.We investigate the issue using (1) empirical data on three small online communities and (2) a computer model that simulates a widely used community management activity called onboarding. We find that onboarding produces in-degree distributions that systematically deviate from power law behaviour for low-values of the in-degree; we then explore the implications and possible applications of the finding.

Profiles of engagement in online communities of citizen science participation

Citizen participation in online communities of scientific investigations has recently become more popular. Enhancing the engagement of citizens within these communities is a focus of attention for researchers and practitioners who want to amplify the impact on learning, science and society. This study investigates the relationship between engagement factors and behaviour patterns in an online community that requires high levels of citizen participation. While other studies explore engagement in communities where citizens contribute data, the current research investigates a community to support citizens in facilitating their own scientific investigations. Data were collected from log files and questionnaires, and multiple measures of engagement were examined: engagement metrics, roles, motivation, attitude, satisfaction and belonging to the community. The results allowed comparison of the engagement levels among different types of citizen participation communities and categorised members in engagement profiles, according to their behaviour patterns. Findings indicate a need for differing design approaches based on the type of citizen participation community and individual engagement profiles.

Claiming someone else's pain: A grounded theory analysis of online community participants experiences of Munchausen by Internet

Munchausen by Internet (MbI) became increasingly visible in 2016 after several high-profile cases were reported in the media. It has not however received significant research interest. What is known about MbI is dependent on a series of case studies by Feldman (2000). The present study seeks to add a new perspective on MbI by analyzing the experiences of respondents with an intimate knowledge of the condition. Posts from 12 online communities by 556 respondents discussing MbI were collected, amounting to approximately 91,300 words. These were analyzed using grounded theory. The findings show that MbI perpetrators appear to advantage themselves by occupying 'ideal victim' personae. Despite this supposed sinister premeditation and the resultant emotional distress caused, an unexpected proportion of respondents were sympathetic towards the MbI perpetrators. However, the presence or possible presence of MbI eroded trust amongst participants and led to more reserved participation to prevent being duped or labelled as MbI perpetrators themselves. Both these strategies undermine the therapeutic benefits of online communities by restricting opportunities to confer normality and cultivate interpersonal support. There are no definitive clues available to identify the behavior and no deterrents to discourage it. New innovative methods are needed to tackle MbI and several tentative suggestions are made including a text classifier, reverse photo search filter and a more onerous membership screening processes.

Online support for transgender people: an analysis of forums and social networks.

Transgender people face a range of personal and social conflicts that strongly influence their well-being. In many cases, the Internet can become the main resource in terms of finding support. The aim of this study was to understand how transgender people give and receive help online. Between 2013 and 2015, 122 online community conversations were collected on Italian forums and Facebook groups involving transgender people, and online interviews were conducted with 16 users of these communities. A qualitative content analysis was conducted by using the software package, NVivo10. The main categories that emerged were: motivations to join an online community, online help, differences between online and offline interactions, status, conflicts and professional help. Results indicate that participation in online communities often derives from the users' need for help. This help can be given by peers who have had similar experiences, and by professionals who participate in the discussions as moderator. The need to test one's own identity, to compare oneself with others and to share one's personal experiences made online communities at risk of exposing users to invalidation and transphobic messages. Administrators and moderators try to ensure the safety of users, and suggest that they ask for professional help offline and/or online when over-specific medical advice was sought. This study confirms that transgender people might find benefit from an online platform of help and support and might minimise distance problems, increase financial convenience and foster disinhibition.