Virtual Communities
jmd – 2007
Notes are extracted from:
Stephens, Michael (2007). Recent Research on
Virtual Communities. Accessed: 25.04.07
http://webjunction.org/do/DisplayContent?id=11258
Defining Virtual Community


Howard Rheingold (1993):
“Social aggregators 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.” (p. 5).
Social Activity of VCs

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Goal of the community
Methods of creating the group
Evolution of the community

Based on Wenger’s Social Learning Theory
(1998)
Henri & Pudelko’s 4 Types of VCs

France Henri and Bétrice Pudelko (2003) presented
a concise, useful typology for virtual communities,
comprised of four distinct categories and
descriptions of the exchanges that occur within
them:

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Community of interest - Information exchange about a topic
Goal-oriented community of interest - Sharing of diverse
perspectives and production of objects commissioned by
the mandate.
Learner's community - Participation to the realization of a
collective educational project.
Community of practice - Professional practice development
through sharing knowledge among members of a
professional community
Community of Interest
Active Community of Interest Sites – many of these are goal oriented
Coalfield
Forum
Wearabl
e
Tags
NERAF
West
Forum
SNCWD
EBC
South
Forum
YouthNet
Facebook:
http://www.studentaffairs.com/vcs/2006entries/BallStat
eUniversity_wallaert_entry.ppt
There are so many tools to support the building of
virtual communities right now, and they all take time. It
takes time to talk with people, and then when you do
establish a larger network of contacts, these people in
turn expect you to "keep in touch".
Facebook can be attractive to those that want to
establish a network quickly on a specific topic of
interest. You can say it is based on the concept of
Communities of Interest. CoI are formed by members
from different background, that come together under a
common goal or interest. The CoI can be loosely
formed and temporary, and Facebook would support
these types of communities.
Learner’s Community
NMC Campus in Second Life and supporting blog http://sl.nmc.org/
Second Life is a 3D platform that supports unnumbered virtual communities.
Individual members have accounts and are represented by avatars (your virtual character)
These characters can be members of groups, can send IM to members of the groups,
can read the profiles provided by group members, can receive notices of group activities.
Community of Practice
The VC Debate: Are virtual communities
really and truly communities?


Baker & Ward (2002)
When the excitement of a common tie wears
off, users realize virtual communities “offer
thin communion without additional
geographic or physical linkages” (p. 221).
The Internet Enhances Community
 “The virtual community does not include
identification with place, but it does require
common ties and social interaction.” (p. 375)
 Wired communities are informed
 A new communication tool
 However: narrow communication usually on a
specific topic
Driskell & Lyon 2002
Simultaneous & Ongoing:
Driskell & Lyon’s Three Conclusions
Participation in online interaction
may:
Reduce community
Users’ time is devoted tosolitary
searches and browsing.
Create a weak replacement for
community
Users participate incommunities
defined only by specific interests
or topics
Reinforce community
Users find initial or supplemental
connections that lead to
community
Information Behavior in
Virtual Communities
No Flaming
No Spamming
No Phishing
Burnett (2002)


Gary Burnett, a professor at the University of
Florida, says, people who do not interact but
just read posts are known as lurkers. Those
invisible participants in the community, he
states, read what others have written "without
also writing themselves constitute significant
information-gathering activities." The
interactive behavior is more interesting.
Two types of behavior:


Hostile
Positive or Interactive
Hostile Interactive Behaviors
Type
Description
Flaming
Argumentative posts written purely
for the sake of insulting others
Trolling
Posts seeking toillicit flames, called
“flame-bait” by Tepper (1997)
Spamming
Posts regarded as unsolicited junk
mail
Cyber-rape
Posts of an unsolicited, unwelcome
and assaultive nature
Positive Interactive Behavior
Type
Description
Announcements
Posts written to share information
with members of the community
Queries or Specific Requests for
Posts requesting information,
Information
including:
a) Queries made by other
community members
b) Queries taken out of the
community
c) Queries presented to the
community
Directed Group Projects
Posts written to further a goal of
the community, such as the
creation of a FAQ (Frequently
Asked Questions file), a database
or project in the world outside the
community
Mynatt et al. (1998)


Strong sense of “place” as newer tools for
moving and communication emerge
Identified 5 affordances (support) of the
technologies that drive VCs
Affordances of Virtual Communities
Affordance
Description
Persistence
Continuous over time and use by
many
Periodicity
Sense of time and rhythm to
interactions
Boundaries
Multi-use areas: rooms, forums,
private areas
Engagement
Multiple ways to connect and
interact
Authoring
Users create content and space,
and recreate it as well
Persistance

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Can be measured
Ebb and flow of use
Chats may be rapid
Postings may be slower
Periodicity

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VCs have a sense of time unique to each
environment
E-mail response time may be longer than a
chat room
Participants know these rhythms
Boundaries

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VC space may have auditoriums, smaller
forums and private rooms.
Participants can move between them
Information does not transfer between areas,
must be carried
Engagement

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Number of participants (1 to 1, many)
Degree of participation
Style of interaction
Opportunity (scheduled, ad hoc)
Authoring



Participants create content and space
Avatars and signature files
Policies and norms are designed and created
(FAQs)
Future Research


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Wellman & Gulia’s Literature Review (1997)
included interviews and personal experiences
Anecdote should be replaced with evidence
Offered 7 questions to study VCs
7 Questions to Define VCs
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Are relationships on the Net narrow and specialized
or broadly based?
How does the Net affect people’s ability to sustain
weaker, less intimate, relationships and to develop
new ones?
What is the nature of support on the Net?
Are strong, intimate relationships possible online?
How does high involvement in online communities
affect participation in real world communities?
What levels of diversity are there in online
communities?
Are virtual communities truly communities?
Blogs & the Blosphere as VC

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Budding collaborative technologies such as
blogs (Blanchard, 2004) and wikis (Ciffolilli,
2003), Web sites created by multiple authors
in an encyclopedic format, offer new
cyberspaces to apply and test theories.
Blogs have many similarities to VCs
Potential to evolve into beneficial, selfsustaining communities
Lawley (2004)

5 approaches to studying blogs:

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study of the form itself
study of interactions between blogs and blog
authors
ethnographic studies of blog clusters and
communities
analysis of the content and style used in Web
logs
study of the use of Web logs as tools in specific
organizational contexts
Wikis as VC

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Wiki:Collaborative Web site
Ciffolilli (2003) examined retention of
members for the wikipedia
Determined wikis can succeed as sustainable
communities with a good balance of member
interaction and policy
Smart Mobs

Rheingold (2002) book Smart Mobs, ponders
where new technologies will take us. Smart
mobs, a recent off-shoot of interaction online,
are planned events created by those "who
are able to act in concert even if they don't
know each other" (p. xii) by using networked
devices such as cell phones, PDAs and
laptops and Internet.
References
Baker, P. M. A., & Ward, A. C. (2002). Bridging temporal and spatial
gaps: the role of information and communication technologies in
defining communities. Information, Communication & Society, 5(2),
207-224.
Blanchard, A. (2004). Blogs as Virtual Communities: Identifying a Sense
of Community in the Julie/Julia Project. Retrieved October 1, 2004,
from http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/blogs_as_virtual.html
Burnett, G. (2000). Information exchange in virtual communities: a
typology. Retrieved August 31, 2004, 2004, from
http://informationr.net/ir/5-4/paper82.html
Burnett, G. (2002). The Scattered members of an invisible republic:
virtual communities and Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics. The Library
Quarterly, 72(2), 155-178.
References
Burnett, G., Dickey, M. H., Kazmer, M., & Chudoba, K. (2003). Inscription
and interpretation of text: a cultural hermeneutic examination of virtual
community. Retrieved September 21, 2004, from
http://InformationR.net/ir/9-1/paper162.html
Ciffolilli, A. (2003). Phantom authority, self-selective recruitment and
retention of Members in virtual communities: the case of wikipedia.
Retrieved September 21, 2004, from
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/ciffolilli/index.html
Driskell, R. B., & Lyon, L. (2002). Are virtual communities true
communities? Examining the environments and elements of
community. City & Community, 1(4), 373-390.
Henri, F., & Pudelko, B. (2003). Understanding and analysing activity
and learning in virtual communities. Journal of Computer Assisted
Learning (19), 474-487.
References
Lawley, E. (2004). Blog research issues. Retrieved September 28, 2004,
from
http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/06/24/blog_research_iss
ues.php
Long, B., & Baecker, R. (1997). A Taxonomy of Internet Connection
Tools. Paper presented at the WebNet '97, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Mynatt, E., O'Day, V., Adler, A., & Ito, M. (1998). Networked
communities: Something old, something new, something borrowed...
Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative
Computing (7), 123-156.
References
Rheingold, H. (1993). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic
Frontier. New York: HarperPerennial.
Rheingold, H. (2002). Smart Mobs The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge: Perseus
Publishing.
Stephens, Michael (2007). Recent Research on Virtual Communities.
http://webjunction.org/do/DisplayContent?id=11258
Wellman, B., & Gulia, M. (1999). Net surfers don't ride alone: Virtual communities as
communities. Retrieved September 24, 2004, from
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/publications/netsurfers/netsurfers.pdf