their characteristics Methods of Analysis • Quantitative and Qualitative • Examples Two Case Studies • Wiki-based community • Online gaming community Summary
that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace” (Rheingold, 1993). Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) is “the process by which people create, exchange, and perceive information using networked telecommunications systems (or non-networked computers) that facilitate encoding, transmitting, and decoding messages.” (December 1997) cyber societies cyber communities web groups virtual communities web communities virtual social networks e-communities
rules computer system Member Roles: Moderators and mediators guide discussions & serve as arbiters Professional commentators give opinions & guide discussions Provocateurs who provoke General Participants who contribute to discussions Lurkers who silently observe. Online Communities
No need to travel • Time lapse between messages allows for reflection • Participants have added time to read and compose answers • Questions can be asked without waiting for a “turn” • Allows all participants to have a voice without the need to fight for “airtime,” • The lack of visual cues provides participants with a more equal footing • Many to many interaction may enhance the communication • Answers to questions can be seen—and argued—by all • Discussion is potentially richer than in a face-to-face situation • Messages are archived centrally providing a database of interactions Disadvantages • Participants with poor writing skills may be at a disadvantage • Paralinguistic cues as to a speakers’ intention are not available • Time gaps within exchanges may affect the pace and rhythm of communications • Socially opaque; may not know which or how many people they may be addressing • Misunderstandings may be harder to overcome • Context and reference may be unclear and misunderstandings may occur
website • anyone-can-contribute • users also co-design the structure of a Wiki site • asynchronous distributed brainstorming • discuss and work on the document simultaneously • focus on both the process as well as the result of communication Disadvantages • can be highly unstructured because of multiple authors • no editorial function examines the contributions or guarantees quality or accuracy of its content • vandalism (and user error) Uses • developing shared ideas, values, or resources • project work and the joint development of project concepts • document production • discussion forums
(MMORPGs) • thousands of players simultaneously playing in an evolving virtual world • players are part of a persistent world which exists independent of the users • vast and varied in term of “geographical locations,” characters, items • internal sociability within the game • culture is formed within the MMORPG environment itself • virtual worlds represent the persistent social and material world • in-game and out-of-game communities (guilds, discussion forums) • a community, a society, and a culture • excitement depends on having personal relationships and being part of the community’s developing politics and projects • hard to play just a little (addictive!) • out-of-game communities: game space is no longer separate from real life
Textual Analysis Social Network Analysis RhNav renders the relations between single Pages from a Wiki site by analyzing how links were used and how long visitors stayed on a page. A page is represented by a box and the corresponding title, a link is displayed by a line between to page-boxes. If a link was used more often, the line gets shorter and thicker, bringing the two page- boxes closer together. 2006 http://www.rhizomenavigation.net
flows between people, groups, organizations, computers or other information/knowledge processing." " ! Ego-centered analysis - Focuses on the individual as opposed to the whole network ! Whole network analysis - The whole population of the network is surveyed and this facilitates conceptualization of the complete network
between actors, characterized by content, direction, and strength Connect a pair of actors by one or more relations The more relations in a tie, the more multiplex the tie is This is derived from the social attributes of both participants The size and heterogeneity of the social networks Measures who is central (powerful) or isolated in networks Roles are suggested by similarities in network members’ behavior The number of actual ties in a network compared to the total amount of ties that the network can theoretically support In order to be reachable, connections that can be traced from the source to the required actor must exist The number of actors that information has to pass through to connect one actor with another in the network Subsets of actors in a network, who are more closely tied to each other than to the other actors who are not part of the subset. Nodes Relations Ties Multiplexity Composition Range Centrality Roles Density Reachability Distance Cliques
(questionnaires) Social Network Analysis (SNA): measured centrality by counting the number of interaction partners per each individual in the form of discussion threads. Attitudes Towards Thinking and Learning Survey (ATTLS): 20 questions measure the extent to which a person is a “connected knower” (CK) or a “separate knower” (SK)
broken down into actions, and subdivided into operations" Human activity systems: tool mediation and object-orientedness" Collective mediation is about the community, which consists of two major components: rules and division of labor. An online community is an interdependent activity system" "
gaming and being social: " Communi+es based on brands " Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) " Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) " Combina+ons of mode and media " Aggregators " Mashups " Hybrids " Successful blending of online and real life " Online communi+es that spawn real life interac+on " Online communi+es that support real life interac+on " Online Iden+ty, Reputa+on, and Privacy
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