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3 online community & social networks
This document provides an overview of lecture 3 which covers online communities and social networks. It discusses: - The topics to be covered this week including online communities, social networking platforms like Facebook, and growing thriving online communities. - Instructions for students regarding class representatives, blog assignments, and setting up online profiles for participation. Groups will be allocated to start thinking of online community ideas. - Key aspects of online communities including their virtual nature, examples like Facebook and Wikipedia, and how they break barriers of time and space compared to offline interactions.
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3 online community & social networks
- 1. Lecture 3 Online community& social networks
- 2. This week (Week2) • Tuesday (day 4): – Online Communities & Social Networking • Wednesday (day 5): – Diving deeper into Facebook • Thursday (day 6): – More on online community & social networking – Growing & Thriving Online Communities 2
- 3. Getting things done –Class rep – Blog assignment1 is out and need to be submitted by Friday 12:00pm – All accounts set up including blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn accounts, & wiki page (complete profiles!)----More participation is required – Group will be allocated this week - start thinking of viable online community ideas 3
- 4. COMP113: Social Media& Online Communities 4
- 5. Online Communities • Anyvirtual space where people come together with others to converse, exchange info or other resources, learn, play, or just be with each other • Examples – Yahoo! – Wikipedia – Facebook… • Breaking barriers of time, space, and scale that limit offline interactions..
- 6. Online Communities Finding oneor growing one of your own So what is the best way to Reveal your passion • Search • Share • Engage • Create meaning Turn your passion into a community COMP113: Social Media & Online Communities 6
- 7. Membership life cyclefor Online community COMP113: Social Media & Online Communities 7
- 8. Membership life cyclefor Online community COMP113: Social Media & Online Communities 8
- 9. 1. Peripheral Lurkers (i.e. Lurker) • Do not participate, engage or contribute • Passively consume without adding anything to a community • Why do they do it? Harvesting information, stalking, see Facebook robbery • Are they detectable? Does it matter? • Identity not persistent • Like newbies outside communities inner life/core activity • Lack of trust • Estimates of 90% of a given online community are lurkers COMP113: Social Media & Online Communities 9
- 10. 2. Inbound (i.e.Novice) Newbies New user, invested in the community, on his way to full participation • Require assistance • Rejuvenate communities with fresh blood – fresh perspectives • Renewing interest of regulars • Minimal or no relationships with others • Trying on community for size and may not share common interests, have time etc. COMP113: Social Media & Online Communities 10
- 11. 3. Insider (i.e. Regular) Newbies Committed participator Member of the community • Mainstay of communities and constitute a majority of community membership (typically) • Comfortably and actively participate in community life. • Have established relationships (ties) with numerous others • Therefore true community builders –bread and butter • Activity shapes core community standards, practices and values • You want these guys and you want them to be busy COMP113: Social Media & Online Communities 11
- 12. 4. Boundary (i.e. Regular) Newbies A member brokering interactions and encouraging/sustaining participation • Are regulars who time, energy and skill to take on formal and active roles. • They may no many regulars and are respected for their skills • Assist newbies settling in • Provide advice about inner workings of the community • Serve in voluntary capacity as technie, moderator or administrator COMP113: Social Media & Online Communities 12
- 13. 5. Outbound (i.e. Elder) Newbies • On his way to leaving the community, perhaps to another community due to a particular change in the community or personal choice • Long-term regulars or leaders grown weary of day-to-day demands of their position. • Moved away from the centre to the periphery of the community • Still active and they are respected for their cultural knowledge and insider lore. • Like other long term residents they are teachers and storytellers give place sense of history, depth and soul. • May serve community by assisting newbies, regulars and leaders and informal archivists and historians COMP113: Social Media & Online Communities 13
- 14. COMP113: Social Media& Online Communities 14
- 15. Participation Inequality Social Platforms – the 1% rule • 90% of users are lurkers • 9% of users contribute sometimes • 1% of users actively participate and are responsible for almost all the action COMP113: Social Media & Online Communities 15
- 16. Why do usersparticipate in virtual communities? • Anticipated Reciprocity • Increased recognition • Sense of efficacy COMP113: Social Media & Online Communities 16
- 17. Why do usersparticipate in virtual communities? Other elements which can motivate users to become active in online communities: • Connections within the community • Emotional Safety • Common emotional connection • Altruism COMP113: Social Media & Online Communities 17
- 18. Takeaways 1. Take stepsto finding out your community member motivations. 2. Learn how to fulfil that need. COMP113: Social Media & Online Communities 18
- 19. Online community theoretical stuff • Also referred to as “virtual communities” • Based on computer-mediated communication • Key folk: Rheingold, Jones, Wellman, boyd, … • Interesting elements: – Social networks – Social capital – Ties – Friends – Dunbar number
- 20.
- 21. What is socialcapital? “… the processes between people which establish networks, norms and social trust and facilitate co-ordination and co- operation for mutual benefit.” –Eva Cox (1992)
- 22. Strength of ties •Grew out of social capital research (Granovetter) • Differentiated along four criteria: – Time – Emotional intensity – Mutual confidence (trust) – Reciprocity • Types: Bonding (strong), bridging (weak), & latent ties
- 23. Close associate Strong vs.weak ties Distant associate Weak tie Strong tie YOU Amazing new connection
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- 27. Let’s test theDunbar number! 1. Go to your Facebook profile 2. Find out how many “friends” you have 3. Write it on the white board in a column 4. Work out the average for the class 5. How does it compare to the Dunbar #? 27
- 28. We want agrowing and thriving community! next week
- 29.
Editor's Notes
- #2 Why people participate in online communities :
- #5 A snapshot of modern life.
- #9 Similar to Kim => Lave and Wenger: Peripheral (i.e. Lurker) – An outside, unstructured participationInbound (i.e. Novice) – Newcomer is invested in the community and heading towards full participationInsider (i.e. Regular) – Full committed community participantBoundary (i.e. Leader) – A leader, sustains membership participation and brokers interactionsOutbound (i.e. Elder) – Process of leaving the community due to new relationships, new positions, new outlooks
- #19 http://blogs.communitiesrus.in/communities/2010/07/03/top-7-reasons-why-people-join-a-user-group-community/
- #21 http://www.fmsasg.com/SocialNetworkAnalysis/
- #22 Social capital can be defined as:Social capital is a way of describing the accumulation and transferal of ‘goodwill,’ a way of conceptualizing the emotional and social bonds that are created when people engage in horizontal relationships relationships between equals that are characterized by their reciprocal and cooperative nature. It is also useful in that it does not presuppose a physical connection in order for an exchange of social capital to take place. Social capital is not a new concept – Putnam’s seminal work, ‘Bowling Alone’ found examples of social capital in places like bowling alleys and knitting circles.
- #23 So what are strong and weak ties? The theoretical conceptualization of ties grew out of social capital works, as questions arose as to whether a perceived decline in social capital and subsequent communal strength represented an actual decline, or merely a shift of focus from the strong, emotionally involved, long-term ties of social capital bonds towards other types of social engagement. Whilst we still don’t have an answer to that question of shifting social capital, the question has opened up for investigation the different ties people form with each other. Social ties, as you can probably deduce from the label, are the ties people develop with others by communicating over time in a social setting. Strong and weak social ties can be differentiated from each other using four criteria: [LIST]As you might notice looking at this list, there is a strong link back to the criteria of both community formation and social capital. They’re all ways of dealing with the same issues. Under this criteria, strong ties are developed and maintained over time, through reciprocal exchange of emotional intensity. In other words, people you trust to share secrets and who in turn trust their secrets to you. These confidences may be context specific for example, a strong tie at work may be different in nature and form to a strong tie in your family. But the structure of the network must involve this high level of intensity over an extended duration. In contrast, weak ties are ties that are formed and maintained through less frequent communication with a lower emotional intensity. There is no expectation of shared confidences in a weak tie. Some of the earliest work to do with social ties looked at the weak ties that helped maintain cordial professional relations.
- #24 But in terms of social networks and virtual communities, are weak ties important? Or is it only the strong ties that make a virtual community? This question has been approached in a number of ways, in a range of contrasts. The first major studies looked at how CMCs (Computer Mediated Communications) helped facilitate weak ties in large corporations through the use of things like intra-office email which supplemented the day-to-day low-intensity exchanges. Research also demonstrated that weak tie networks are larger and more heterogenous than networks which maintain predominantly strong ties. These weak-tie networks require less of individual participants in terms of time, effort, and investment to be maintained, and so each individual can have more weak ties than strong. It’s kind of like dividing up a finite resource. You have time to maintain either five strong ties, or ten weak. The same research also demonstrated however that these larger weak-tie networks were also more prone to interpersonal clashes, and require more explicit rules and enforcement of those rules, in order to maintain network cohesion. But what about networks and communities which demonstrate both strong and weak ties simultaneously? As the video noted, we need both strong and weak ties in a dynamic social system – strong ties know you, they know your secrets and needs, and that is good. But the weak tie can bring novelty, a wider social connection, a different branch of the rhizomic social network into contact. It is the balance of strong and weak ties both for their contribution to your social network, your sense of individual and social identity, and the time you have to contribute back into (or return capital into) the social network which is more difficult to untangle. These are questions internet community researchers are currently grappling with in both theoretical and observational studies. Some common themes emerging from current research show that self-identified virtual communities (communities where participants report the characteristics of a strong community, such as trust, reciprocity and endurance/long term commitment) are a mixture of both strong and weak ties. Internet community researchers such as Wellman talk about this mix of strong and weak ties as bonding and bridging links. Bonding occurs within small social networks, forming strong, enduring ties between individuals. Bridging ties, the weak ties, link these smaller networks to other small strong networks to form larger community and social network structures. This observational evidence supports theoretical ideas that both strong AND weak ties together are vital in forming and maintaining online communities. [map it out on the board?] Strong and weak tie theory, with its support through social capital and network theory, gives us an excellent macro-level view of communities in flux. But it is certainly not the only useful perspective when exploring issues of community. The last approach I want to look at together comes at community from the other direction, from the perspective of the virtualized identity, the individualized node, and considered how the processes of language and communication feed into community and how that sense of belonging in turn shapes the individual.
- #27 http://www.3news.co.nz/Brain-can-only-handle-200-friends---research/tabid/372/articleID/214342/Default.aspx