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Poggenpoel, Shadley (Shadley Carl). "Online golfing communities." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/50408.
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Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2005.AENGLISH ABSTRACT: With the advent of the internet a few years ago many online communities have been formed from traditional communities. The ability of a traditional community to transform into an online community depends on the type of interaction that is required by that particular community. Based on the arguments of various critics of the online community, this study will focus on the feasibility of transforming the golfing fraternity from a traditional to an online community. The study project therefore proposes to understand online communities as a subset within the general concept of community. It will be determined if the golfing community that currently falls into the traditional framework is open to create itself into a modern online community. The characteristics of traditional communities include bonding, sharing of information and other items of common interest which is similar for online communities. It is within this objective that the characteristics of online communities and the relationship between traditional and modern communities will be discussed. The first phase was to develop a questionnaire based on desirability and expectations of an online golfing community and for the purposes of this study, the research population comprised of the registered golf members of golf clubs in the Western Province Golf Union (WPGU) in the Western Cape. Furthermore there is within the Western Cape golfing community, possibly scope for a universal understanding of this community as a whole. Golfing communities can be defined through their unique characteristics. Golf communities are traditional communities that have evolved over time. Since modern communities are no longer constrained by geography the question arises whether, golf which has all the characteristics of a traditional community would be able to migrate to a modern online community. From the empirical study it became evident that the current golf community is open to using the internet to gain information on golf. The potential for the success of an online golfing community especially an interactive one in the future is great as the survey results show that the current membership are open to the idea of an online community.FRIKAANSE OPSOMMING:
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Met die koms van die internet 'n paar jaar gelede, is baie aanlyn gemeenskappe vanaf tradisionele gemeenskappe ontwikkel. Die vermoe van tradisionele gemeenskappe om na aanlyn gemeenskappe te verander, is afhanklik van die tipe interaksie wat in daardie spesifieke gemeenskap benodig word. In die lig van 'n literatuurstudie oor die verskillende standpunte oor aanlyn gemeenskappe, is 'n ondersoek gedoen na die aanneemlikheid van die verandering van 'n tradisionele gemeenskap, naamlik die gholf gemeenskap, na 'n aanlyn gemeenskap. Die studie het daarom ten doel om aanlyn gemeenskappe te ondersoek as 'n sub-afdeling van die algemene gemeenskap konsep. Deel van die ondersoek behels die openheid van die gholf gemeenskap, 'n tipiese tradisionele gemeenskap, om 'n moderne virtuele gemeenskap te vorm. Die samestelling van 'n tradisionele gemeenskap beskik oor soortgelyke eienskappe as die van 'n aanlyn gemeenskap soos verbondenheid, die deel van inligting en ander items van gemeenskaplike belang. Dit is die doelwit van hierdie studie om die eienskappe van die aanlyn gemeenskap en die verwantskap tussen tradisionele en aanlyn gemeenskap te bespreek. Die eerste fase, was die ontwikkeling van 'n vraelys met klem op die wenslikheid en behoeftes van 'n aanlyn gholf gemeenskap. Die populasie vir die studie was lede van die Westelike Provinsie Gholf Vereniging (WPGU) in die Wes Kaap. Die data wat ontgin is uit die navorsing van die WPGU kan ook moontlik bydra tot 'n verstaan van die universele gholf gemeenskap in Suid Afrika. Gholf gemeenskappe kan gedefinieer word deur hulle unieke eienskappe. Hulle is tradisionele gemeenskappe wat ontwikkel het deur die jare. Sedert moderne gemeenskappe nie langer geografies beperk is nie moet die vraag gestel word of 'n tradisionele gholf gemeenskap tot 'n moderne aanlyn gemeenskap kan ontwikkel? Uit die literatuurstudie het die duidelik geword dat die huidige gholf gemeenskap oop is vir die gebruik van die internet om inligting oor gholf in te win. In die lig van huidige lede se aanvaarding van aanlyn gemeenskappe lyk die potensiaal en moontlikheid vir die sukses van 'n aanlyn gholf gemeenskap in die toekoms belowend.
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Donker, Hilko, and Michael Fleck. "Evaluation von Online-Communities." Saechsische Landesbibliothek- Staats- und Universitaetsbibliothek Dresden, 2014. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa-155614.
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Eine Online-Community oder auch virtuelle Gemeinschaft ist ein Bereich im Internet, in der Personen sich zu bestimmten Themen treffen, sich unterhalten, sich selbst darstellen oder um zu konsumieren. Der Erfolg einer Online-Community ist durch die Usability des User Interfaces einer Online-Community nicht angemessen zu beschreiben. Daher wird in diesem Beitrag analysiert, welche weiteren Faktoren neben der Usability bei der Evaluation von Online-Communities berücksichtigt werden müssen. Online-Communities unterstützen kooperatives Verhalten, wie die Kommunikation zwischen Teilnehmern und das Arbeiten in Gruppen. Daher spielen soziale Eigenschaften der Anwendung eine zentrale Rolle. Hierzu wird das Konzept der Sociability eingeführt und es werden Kriterien abgeleitet, die bei der Bewertung von Online-Communities berücksichtigt werden sollten. Neben Usability und Sociability werden Eigenschaften der Online-Communities bewertet, die den Nutzer bei der Anwendung sowohl stimulieren als auch ihn dabei unterstützen, sich mit der Gemeinschaft zu identifizieren und ihm helfen, sich innerhalb der Umgebung seiner gewünschten Identität angemessen auszudrücken.
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Donker, Hilko, and Michael Fleck. "Evaluation von Online-Communities." Technische Universität Dresden, 2005. https://tud.qucosa.de/id/qucosa%3A28390.
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Eine Online-Community oder auch virtuelle Gemeinschaft ist ein Bereich im Internet, in der Personen sich zu bestimmten Themen treffen, sich unterhalten, sich selbst darstellen oder um zu konsumieren. Der Erfolg einer Online-Community ist durch die Usability des User Interfaces einer Online-Community nicht angemessen zu beschreiben. Daher wird in diesem Beitrag analysiert, welche weiteren Faktoren neben der Usability bei der Evaluation von Online-Communities berücksichtigt werden müssen. Online-Communities unterstützen kooperatives Verhalten, wie die Kommunikation zwischen Teilnehmern und das Arbeiten in Gruppen. Daher spielen soziale Eigenschaften der Anwendung eine zentrale Rolle. Hierzu wird das Konzept der Sociability eingeführt und es werden Kriterien abgeleitet, die bei der Bewertung von Online-Communities berücksichtigt werden sollten. Neben Usability und Sociability werden Eigenschaften der Online-Communities bewertet, die den Nutzer bei der Anwendung sowohl stimulieren als auch ihn dabei unterstützen, sich mit der Gemeinschaft zu identifizieren und ihm helfen, sich innerhalb der Umgebung seiner gewünschten Identität angemessen auszudrücken.
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Wagner, Sarina. "Online-Communities als Marketinginstrument." [Ilmenau] [Univ.-Bibliothek], 2009. http://d-nb.info/996272518/34.
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Irani, Danesh. "Preventing abuse of online communities." Diss., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/44895.
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Online communities are growing at a phenomenal rate and with the large number of users these communities contain, attackers are drawn to exploit these users. Denial of information (DoI) attacks and information leakage attacks are two popular attacks that target users on online communities. These information based attacks are linked by their opposing views on low-quality information. On the one hand denial of information attacks which primarily use low-quality information (such as spam and phishing) are a nuisance for information consumers. On the other hand information leakage attacks, which use inadvertently leaked information, are less effective when low-quality information is used, and thus leakage of low-quality information is prefered by private information producers.
In this dissertation, I introduce techniques for preventing abuse against these attacks in online communities using meta-model classification and information unification approaches, respectively. The meta-model classification approach involves classifying the ``connected payload" associated with the information and using the classification result for the determination. This approach allows for detection of DoI attacks in emerging domains where the amount of information may be constrained. My information unification approach allows for modeling and mitigating information leakage attacks. Unifying information across domains followed by a quantificiation of the information leaked, provides one of the first studies on users' susceptibality to information leakage attacks. Further, the modeling introduced allows me to quantify the reduced threat of information leakage attacks after applying information cloaking.
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Persson, Hannes, and Christian Toft. "Support usability in online communities." Thesis, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Institutionen för arbetsvetenskap och medieteknik, 2003. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-2570.
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This thesis will divide the concept of member feedback in online communities into three types, namely conversational-, behavioural feedback and content analysis. During this thesis we will argue for the advantages with user involvement in design and how the three types of feedback listed above together with members could be introduced into the design process. We argue that by combining traditional methods such as personas and focus groups with the different kinds of feedback in the design and evaluation process supports usability in online communities.Denna uppsats kommer att dela på konceptet medlems-feedback i online communities i tre olika typer, nämligen feedback genom konversation, beteende och community innehåll. Vi kommer att argumentera för fördelarna med att involvera användarna i design processen och hur de tre olika typerna av feedback kan användas i denna process. Genom att kombinera traditionella metoder som tex. personas och fokus grupper med dessa typer av feedback kan ett användbarhets mål uppnås.
Hannes Persson 0702-229542 Christian Toft 070-7981770
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Smith, Matthew Scott. "Social Capital in Online Communities." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2011. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2730.
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Social capital is the value of the relationships we create and maintain within our social networks to gain access to and mobilize needed resources (e.g., jobs, moral support). Quantifying, and subsequently leveraging, social capital are challenging problems in the social sciences. Most work so far has focused on analyses from static surveys of limited numbers of participants. The explosion of online social media means that it is now possible to collect rich data about people's connections and interactions, in a completely ubiquitous, non-intrusive manner. Such dynamic social data opens the door to the more accurate measuring and tracking of social capital. Similarly, online data is replete with additional personal data, such as topics discussed in blogs or hobbies listed in personal profiles, that is difficult to obtain through standard surveys. Such information can be used to discover similarities, or implicit affinities, among individuals, which in turn leads to finer measures of social capital, including the often useful distinction between bonding and bridging social capital. In this work, we exploit these opportunities and propose a computational framework for quantifying and leveraging social capital in online communities. In addition to being dynamic and formalizing the notion of implicit affinities, our framework significantly extends current social network analysis research by modeling access and mobilization of resources, the essence of social capital. The main contributions of our framework include 1) hybrid networks that provide a way for potential and realized social capital to be distinguished; 2) the decoupling of bonding and bridging social capital, a formulation previously overlooked which coincides with empirical evidence; 3) the unification of multiple views on social capital, in particular, the seamless integration of resources. We demonstrate the broad applicability of our framework through a number of representative, real-world case studies to test relevant social science hypotheses. Assuming that the extraction of implicit affinities may be useful for community building, we built a large social network of blogs from an active, tech-oriented segment of the Blogosphere, using cross-references among blogs. We then used topic modeling techniques to extract an implicit affinity network based on the content of the blogs, and showed that potential sub-communities could be formed through increased bonding. A widespread assumption in sociology is that bonding is more likely than bridging in social networks. In other words, people are more likely to seek out others who are like them than attempt to link to those they share little or nothing with. We wanted to test that hypothesis, particularly in the context of online communities. Using Twitter, we created an experiment where hand-crafted accounts would tweet at regular intervals and use varied following strategies, including following only those with maximum affinity, following only those with no affinity, following random users, etc. Using the number of follow-backs as a surrogate for social capital, we showed that the assumed physical social behavior is also prevalent online, p < 0.01. There is much interest in computational social science to compare physical and cyber behaviors, test existing hypotheses on a large scale and design novel experiments. The advent of social media is also impacting public health, with growing evidence that some global health issues (e.g., H1N1 outbreak) may be discovered and tracked more efficiently by monitoring the content of social exchanges (e.g., blogs, tweets). In collaboration with colleagues from Health Sciences, we wanted to test whether broadly applicable health topics were discussed on Twitter, and to design and guide the process of discovering such themes. We gathered a large number of tweets over several regions of the United States over a one-month period, and analyzed their content using topic modeling techniques. We found that while clearly not a mainstream topic, health concerns were non-negligible on Twitter. By further focusing on tobacco, we discovered several subtopics related to tobacco (e.g., tobacco use promotion, addiction recovery), which indicate that analysis of the Twitter social network may help researchers better understand how Twitter promotes both positive and negative health behaviors. Finally, in collaboration with colleagues from Linguistics, we wanted to quantify the effect of social capital on second language acquisition in study abroad. Using questionnaire data collected from about 200 study abroad participants, we found that students participating in bridging relationships had significantly higher levels of language improvement than their counterparts, F(1,201) = 12.53, p < .0001.
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Couraud, Jason R. "Risk Perception in Online Communities." DigitalCommons@USU, 2014. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/3898.
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Online communities have become a part of everyday life for many people. The members of the communities use them to keep in touch with family and friends, do business, look for jobs, play games, and more, both savory and unsavory. The ease of sharing personal information comes with the subsequent risk of having that information exposed publically or even stolen. The purpose of this study was to explore how much awareness of the risks affects a person’s decision to post personal information to an online community.
Chapter I introduces the concepts and issues that will be investigated by this paper. Chapter II is a review of the literature on risk. Chapter III explains the model that was developed and used determine the relationships between risk perception, attitude, fear, and information revelation. Chapter IV explains the methods used to gather the data and what data was gathered. Chapter V contains the analysis of the data collected. Chapter VI contains the conclusion drawn from the data, implications for the research, and directions for future research.
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Fernando, Champika. "Online learning webs : designing support structures for online communities." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/95602.
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Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2014.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 71-72).
This thesis explores how we can design online learning communities to better support connections to the people and resources beginners need when learning to program. I describe and analyze the design and implementation of the Scripts Workshop, a learning environment that supports members of the Scratch online community who are stuck on a programming problem in a Scratch project. The Scripts Workshop considers the People, Activities and Spaces needed to support these users in getting un-stuck. I conclude by describing a set of design principles for building learning webs within online communities, derived from the Scripts Workshop experiment.
by Champika Fernando.
S.M.
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Del, Grosso Michael. "Design and implementation of online communities." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Springfield, Va. : Naval Postgraduate School ; Available from National Technical Information Service, 2001. http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA397008.
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Thesis (M.S. in Computer Science)--Naval Postgraduate School, Sept. 2001.Thesis advisor(s): Darken, Rudolph. "September 2001." Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-62). Also Available online.
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Bontempo, Melissa A. "Online communities : possibilities for museum education /." Connect to resource, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1160068576.
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Greenspun, Philip. "Architecture and implementation of online communities." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79970.
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Zacharia, Giorgos 1974. "Collaborative reputation mechanisms for online communities." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9379.
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Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-80).
The members of electronic communities are often unrelated to each other, they may have never met and have no information on each other's reputation. This kind of information is vital in Electronic Commerce interactions, where the potential counterpart's reputation can be a significant factor in the negotiation strategy. I will investigate two complementary reputation mechanisms that rely on collaborative rating and personalized evaluation of the various ratings assigned to each user. While these reputation mechanisms are developed in the context of electronic commerce, I believe that they may have applicability in other types of electronic communities such as chatrooms, newsgroups, mailing lists etc.
by Giorgos Zacharia.
S.M.
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Tye, Edwin. "Forecasting user roles in online communities." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2015. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/378942/.
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Dessart, Laurence. "Consumer engagement in online brand communities." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6638/.
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This thesis advances the concept of consumer engagement as a valid approach to the conceptualisation and measurement of Online Brand Community (OBC) participation. Against the background of rapid technological advances affecting the way consumers interact online, this thesis posits that past representations of OBC participation fail to adequately capture OBC participation. It further argues that consumer engagement offers a new analytical lens, which is more responsive to the interactive, social and multidimensional nature of OBCs. The thesis conceptualises consumer engagement in OBC as an affective, cognitive and behavioural phenomenon whereby a consumer is engaged both with the other members of the OBC and with the focal brand. It then identifies antecedents and outcomes of consumer engagement in English-speaking OBC. The measurement and conceptual model are tested using data from OBC participants. In particular, two original scales of consumer engagement are developed. The conceptual model is tested using structural equation modelling techniques, and the results largely support the research hypotheses. The results show that online interaction propensity, attitude toward OBC participation and product involvement positively relate to OBC engagement, and that online brand engagement is positively related to product involvement and OBC engagement. Online brand engagement shows positive correlations with brand trust, commitment and loyalty. Group invariance is largely achieved using data from French OBCs, which contribute to validating the English sample results. Overall, the thesis conceptually and empirically contributes to the burgeoning literature on consumer engagement in OBC and enhances our understanding of OBC participation. The study provides an improved, more online-relevant conceptualisation and measurement of consumer engagement and identifies its key individual drivers and relational outcomes. These findings also provide strategic implications for the community of OBC practitioners.
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Smedberg, Åsa. "Online communities and learning for health : the use of online health communities and online expertise for people with established bad habits /." Kista : Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (together with KTH), Stockholm University, 2008. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-8127.
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Hur, Jung Won. "Understanding teacher participation in online communities why do teachers want to participate in online communities of teachers? /." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2007. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3278232.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Instructional Systems Technology, 2007.Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-09, Section: A, page: 3812. Adviser: Thomas A. Brush. Title from dissertation home page (viewed May 8, 2008).
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Isaksson, Jonna, and Stephanie Xavier. "Online communities : segments and buying behaviour profiles." Thesis, Högskolan i Borås, Institutionen Handels- och IT-högskolan, 2009. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hb:diva-19481.
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The concept of communities and the interaction between people are not new concepts. People have always gathered around common conditions shared by those in the group such as shared emotions, interests, beliefs and needs. It is however the way we interact, with whom we interact, and when and where these meetings take place which has changed. This has been a direct result of the development of the internet and exacerbated with the move to the second phase of internet development. This second phase of internet development provides users with real-time functionality enabling interaction with global users in a virtual environment. This interaction is termed online social networking and takes place in online communities.Online communities present opportunities for marketers as they give rise to a virtually unlimited number of different consumers, structured around finer consumption and marketing interests. Research indicates that online community users are market-oriented and therefore online communities provide a meaningful medium of exchange for these users. The challenge for companies today has been trying to develop ways to capitalise on this trend and raise their competitive advantage. However, in order to effectively understand these users, an understanding of their characteristics is fundamental to the development of any tailored marketing campaign. This thesis therefore aims to shed an insight into a segmentation model designed for online communities - firstly by empirically testing it and secondly, by enriching the data with a typology of online buying behaviour characterised by psychographic and behaviour variables. Therefore the research question posed is “Can online community users be classified by their online buying behaviours so that they are useful to marketers?”.The empirical data was gathered quantitatively through an online questionnaire designed to classify the respondents into meaningful segments and clusters. The report reflects a social constructionist methodology where the results have been interpreted and given meaning. The report is based on the segmentation models presented by Kozinets’ ‘virtual communities of consumption’ and Barnes et al. typology on online buying behaviour. This report combines the two models in order to enrich the segmentation model presented by Kozinets’ with attributes of online buying behaviour in order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of online community users. The results indicated that the four online user profiles defined in Kozinets’ model did not show differences in their online purchasing behaviour. Rather all online community users could be categorised by Barnes et al’s three clusters of online buying behaviour.
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Ruetsch, Diego. "Community Management Marketing in unabhängigen Online-Communities /." St. Gallen, 2007. http://www.biblio.unisg.ch/org/biblio/edoc.nsf/wwwDisplayIdentifier/01653518002/$FILE/01653518002.pdf.
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Arvidsson, Martin, Johan Bäckman, and Jim Johansen. "Online-communities : hur ser communityanvändare på mIRC?" Thesis, University West, Department of Informatics and Mathematics, 2004. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hv:diva-512.
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Larsson, Katarina. "Online communities : En studie av Lunarstorms framgång." Thesis, Växjö University, School of Mathematics and Systems Engineering, 2005. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:vxu:diva-358.
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Communities är ett hett ämne som idag ständigt diskuteras i media. Människor blir mer och mer benägna att interagera online och mängden med online communities ökar i takt med detta. I Sverige finns en community som heter Lunarstorm som har blivit ett fenomen som inte har skådats någon annanstans. Med sina 1,3 miljoner användare är det absolut störst i Sverige idag. Jag har i min uppsats tagit fram ett antal faktorer ur litteraturen som är avgörande för ett online communities framgång. Jag har även gjort en empirisk studie av företaget Lunarstorm och webbplatsen Lunarstorm. Jag har sedan i analysen använt mig av framgångsfaktorerna för att kunna dra slutsatser om hur Lunarstorm har kunnat bli ett sådant fenomen. Det som har framkommit av undersökningarna är att det framför allt är tre faktorer som har givit Lunarstorm den plats i rampljuset som det har idag, nätverkseffekter, att vara först, att de har skapat ett helt koncept och inte bara är en webbplats.
Online communities are today widely discussed in media and a very popular subject. People all around the world are more and more willing to interact online and the number of online communities are rising with this. Today we have a community in Sweden that is called Lunarstorm, this has become a phenomen not seen anywhere else. Whit its 1,3 million users, it is the absolut biggest in Sweden today. I have in my essay found a number of factors in the litteratur that are essential for an online communities succes. I have also done an empirical study on Lunarstorm as a company and Lunarstorm as a webbsite. I have then in my analys part applyed my success factors on Lunarstorm, to be able to make conclusions about why Lunarstorm have become such a success. What I can see from my researches there is especially three things that makes Lunarstorm speciell, and that is networkeffects, to be the first one and the entire koncept of Lunarstorm.
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Röning, Nadia. "Special interest communities : Design for online growth." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för informationsteknologi, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-332710.
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Special interest online communities refer to groups of people who share a concern orpassion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly,with some of the interaction being technology mediated. The Uppsala UniversityACM-W Student Chapter is an online community, run by a student group, thatpromotes gender equality in Computer Science and Information Technology atUppsala University. This thesis investigates what makes a website an online community by determininghow community building works and how it could be used productively. The UppsalaUniversity ACM-W Student Chapter's ambition is to be a successful onlinecommunity and attract both short-time members and long-time members to engagein their organization. It should also be easy to keep international contact with similarchapters through the website. Hence an evaluation of the chapters website(uu.acm.org) was conducted for this thesis, involving interviewing members of thechapter. The focus of the evaluation was to investigate how well the UU ACM-Wchapter's current website support community engagement, but also how the websitecan be redesigned to better support community engagement. Results from the evaluation showed some functionality problems with the website andthat the way the chapter support communication and collaboration could beimproved. Based on the results, concrete design proposals were introduced to thechapter's members in order to evaluate if they could be useful for improving thewebsite. Furthermore, ideas on how to establish a strong online platform that mightcontribute to online growth for special interest communities, such as the UppsalaUniversity ACM-W Student Chapter, were given. In conclusion, the selected approach was suitable for the stage the chapter was in, andthe method described in this thesis is one tool for helping other small-scale onlinecommunities to better understand their organization and to help them narrow downtheir organization's administrative load into design solutions that ease theiradministrative tasks.
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Palm, Sofia, and Rasmus Lundborg. "The Customer Experience in Online Product Communities." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för ekonomi, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-16064.
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Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur kundens upplevelse formas i kontexten online product community, utifrån ett multidimensionellt perspektiv på kundupplevelsen. Metod: Med bakgrund mot studiens syfte var det passande att använda en kvalitativ metod. Detta fenomen studerades genom en flerfallsstudie som den övergripande undersökningsdesignen. Semi-strukturerade intervjuer har genomförts med respondenter från tre olika online product communities. Materialet har sedan analyserat genom en abduktiv analysmetod som är inspirerad av grounded theory. Resultat & slutsats: Studien visar att kundupplevelsen för medlemmar i online product communities främst formas av den pragmatiska dimensionen, innehåll och funktionalitet är därmed centralt. Resultatet tyder även på att det finns två grupper av användare i dessa communities. Den ena gruppen är mer passiv och pragmatiskt inriktad medan den andra är mer aktiv och nöjesinriktad. Förslag till vidare forskning: Då denna studie bygger på intervjuer med medlemmar i online product communities som både kan ses som aktiva och passiva medlemmar kan det vara av intresse att i framtiden studera hur de mest aktiva medlemmar upplever att delta i denna kontext, då det är denna kärna som genererar det största innehållet. Uppsatsens bidrag: Denna studie sammanför den tidigare forskningen om kundupplevelse och senare forskning om kundupplevelse i online communities för att skapa en förklarande modell. Modellen beskriver vilka dimension som formar kundupplevelsen i denna kontext och testas sedan i tre case. Studien bidrar till en ökad förståelse för skillnaden mellan pragmatiska och mer nöjesinriktade användare. Nyckelord: Customer experience, experiental marketing, online product communities.Purpose of Study: The aim of this study is to examine how the customer experience is shaped in the context online product community, based on a multi-dimensional perspective on customer experience. Method: Due to the purpose of the study qualitative methods were chosen. This phenomenon was studied by a multi-case study as the overall study design. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with respondents from three different online product communities. The material was then analyzed by an abductive method of analysis which is inspired by grounded theory. Results & conclusion: The study shows that the customer experience for members of online product communities primarily is shaped by the pragmatic dimension, content and functionality is thus essential. The results also suggest that there are two groups of users in these communities. One of the groups is more passive and pragmatic, while the other one is more active and entertainment-oriented. Suggestions for further research: Since this study is based on interviews with members of online product communities which can be seen as active and passive members it may be of interest in future research to study the most active members experiences in this context, because it is this core group that generates the largest content. Contribution of the thesis: This study brings together previous research on customer experience and recent research on customer experience in online communities to create an explanatory model. The model describes the dimensions that shape the customer experience in this context and is then tested in three cases. The study contributes to a better understanding of the difference between pragmatic and more entertainment-oriented users. Key Words: Customer experience, experiental marketing, online product communities.
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Tan, Flora M. Eng Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Algorithmically supported moderation in children's online communities." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113097.
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Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2017.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 61-64).
The moderation of harassment and cyberbullying on online platforms has become a heavily publicized issue in the past few years. Popular websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube employ human moderators to moderate user-generated con- tent. In this thesis, we propose an automated approach to the moderation of online conversational text authored by children on the Scratch website, a drag-and-drop programming interface and online community. We develop a corpus of children's comments annotated for inappropriate material, the first of its kind. To produce the corpus of data, we introduce a comment moderation website that allows for the review and label of comments. The web-tool acts as a data-pipeline, designed to keep the machine learning models up to date with new forms of inappropriate content and to reduce the need for maintaining a blacklist of profane words. Finally, we apply natural language processing and machine learning techniques towards detecting inappropriate content from the Scratch website, achieving an F1-score of 73%.
by Flora Tan.
M. Eng.
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Harkin, Lydia Jo. "Exploring visitors experiences of online cancer communities." Thesis, University of Central Lancashire, 2016. http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/16646/.
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Background There will be approximately four million people living with cancer in the United Kingdom (UK) by 2030. The National Health Service faces a major challenge meeting the support needs of this growing population, who commonly report feeling isolated and lacking social support. Approximately 45 million adults in the UK use the internet, and online communities might be a culturally relevant way to connect people affected by cancer, allowing them to support one another. However, internet communication is fraught with challenges such as misleading or untrustworthy information. We have a limited understanding of how people experience these communities and whether they can provide meaningful support for people affected by cancer. Aims To explore and understand the experiences and interactions of people affected by cancer who visit online cancer communities. Methods This was a qualitative study involving 23 people who had visited online cancer communities. Participants were affected by a range of cancers and were a combination of cancer survivors and families members. Semi-structured interviews elicited participants’ experiences, preferences and perceived consequences of using online communities. Data analysis was guided by principles of Constructivist Grounded Theory. Findings Participants used communities to ‘navigate’ the challenges they faced with cancer. This navigation produced three categories of experience in online communities. Firstly, advice from fellow community members set participants on a ‘journey to become informed’. Secondly, participants were cast into a ‘journey to recreate identity’ as they connected and formed friendships online. Thirdly, participants discovered a ‘journey through different online worlds’ to the most relevant and often hidden social communities. Conclusions This was the first qualitative in-depth study exploring how contemporary online cancer communities are used by people affected by cancer. Online communities offered multifaceted opportunities to support the cancer experience, and they may promote self-management in cancer care. These findings can inform and improve the delivery of existing online communities.
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Eaglesham, Susan L. "Online Support Groups: Extending Communities of Concern." Diss., Virginia Tech, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/30376.
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Using survey data from 75 participants in computer self-help groups, variables were identified which theoretically indicate that computer self- help groups function similarly to face-to-face self-help groups. This exploratory research provided demographic information which allows users of computer self-help groups to be more clearly described. The findings of this study indicated that computer group users perceived similar benefits of use to people in traditional self-help groups. Study participants also perceived certain benefits from computer group use not found in traditional face-to-face groups. Among these were the convenience of use, anonymity, and the benefits of writing as a way to connect to others. The findings indicated that computer groups provided a unique context in which new beliefs and ideas about problems can be constructed. The findings were interpreted to indicate that there are certain risks involved in computer group use of which mental health professionals and potential users need to be cognizant. Finally, several areas for possible future study are discussed.Ph. D.
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Ashouri, Rad Armin. "Three Essays on Dynamics of Online Communities." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/71641.
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Essay #1: Reconstructing Online Behavior through Effort Minimization
Data from online interactions increasingly informs our understanding of fundamental patterns of human behavior as well as commercial and social enterprises. However, this data is often limited to traces of users' interactions with digital objects (e.g. votes, likes, shares) and does not include potentially relevant data on what people actually observe online. Estimating what users see could therefore enhance understanding and prediction in a variety of problems. We propose a method to reconstruct online behavior based on data available in many practical settings. The method infers a user's most likely browsing trajectory assuming that people minimize effort exertion in online browsing. We apply this method to data from a social news website to distinguish between items not observed by a user and those observed but not liked. This distinction allows us to obtain significant improvements in prediction and inference in comparison with multiple alternatives across a collaborative filtering and a regression validation problem.
Essay #2: Measuring Individual differences: A Big Data Approach
The amount of behavioral and attitudinal data we generate every day has grown significantly. This era of Big Data has enormous potential to help psychologists and social scientists understand human behavior. Online interactions may not always signify a deep illustration of individuals' beliefs, yet large-scale data on individuals interacting with a variety of contents on specific topics can approximate individuals' attitudes toward those topics. We propose a novel automated method to measure individuals' attitudes empirically and implicitly using their digital footprints on social media platforms. The method evaluates content orientation and individuals' attitudes on dimensions (i.e. subjects) to explain individual-content ratings in social media, optimizing a pre-defined cost function. By applying this method to data from a social news website, we observed a significant test-retest correlation and substantial agreement in inter-rater reliability testing.
Essay #3: Social Media and User Activity: An Opinion-Based Study
An increasing fraction of social communications is conducted online, where physical constraints no longer structure interactions. This has significantly widened the circle of people with whom one can interact and has increased exposure to diverse opinions. Yet individuals may act and respond differently when faced with opinions far removed from their own, and in an online community such actions could activate important mechanisms in the system that form the future of the outlet. Studying such mechanisms can help us understand the social behaviors of communities in general and individuals in particular. It can also assist social media outlets with their platform design. We propose models that capture the changes in individuals' activities in social media caused by interacting with a variety of opinions. Estimating the parameters of the models using data available from a social news website (Balatarin) as a case study, we extracted mechanisms affecting the communities on this platform. We studied the effect of these mechanisms on the future formation and the lifecycle of the platform using an agent-based simulation model. Having examined the effect of biased communities on the social media, the results imply that individuals increase their online activity as a result of interacting with contents closely aligned to their own opinion.Ph. D.
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Benigni, Matthew Curran. "Detection and Analysis of Online Extremist Communities." Research Showcase @ CMU, 2017. http://repository.cmu.edu/dissertations/949.
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Online social networks have become a powerful venue for political activism. In many cases large, insular online communities form that have been shown to be powerful diffusion mechanisms of both misinformation and propaganda. In some cases these groups users advocate actions or policies that could be construed as extreme along nearly any distribution of opinion, and are thus called Online Extremist Communities (OECs). Although these communities appear increasingly common, little is known about how these groups form or the methods used to influence them. The work in this thesis provides researchers a methodological framework to study these groups by answering three critical research questions: How can we detect large dynamic online activist or extremist communities? What automated tools are used to build, isolate, and influence these communities? What methods can be used to gain novel insight into large online activist or extremist communities? These group members social ties can be inferred based on the various affordances offered by OSNs for group curation. By developing heterogeneous, annotated graph representations of user behavior I can efficiently extract online activist discussion cores using an ensemble of unsupervised machine learning methods. I call this technique Ensemble Agreement Clustering. Through manual inspection, these discussion cores can then often be used as training data to detect the larger community. I present a novel supervised learning algorithm called Multiplex Vertex Classification for network bipartition on heterogeneous, annotated graphs. This methodological pipeline has also proven useful for social botnet detection, and a study of large, complex social botnets used for propaganda dissemination is provided as well. Throughout this thesis I provide Twitter case studies including communities focused on the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the ongoing Syrian Revolution, the Euromaidan Movement in Ukraine, as well as the alt-Right.
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Holgerson, Jason L. "Collaborative online communities for increased MILSATCOM performance." Thesis, Monterey, California : Naval Postgraduate School, 2009. http://edocs.nps.edu/npspubs/scholarly/theses/2009/Sep/09Sep%5FHolgerson.pdf.
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Thesis (M.S. in System Engineering Management)--Naval Postgraduate School, September 2009.Thesis Advisor(s): Osmundson, John. "September 2009." Description based on title screen as viewed on November 9, 2009. Author(s) subject terms: Operational Availability, Net-centric Warfare, Communities, Online, Web 2.0, Sustainment, Military SATCOM, NMT. Includes bibliographical references (p. 79). Also available in print.
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Kempny, Christian, Monique Janneck, and Henning Staar. "“With A Little Help From My (Online?) Friends” – A Comparison of Support Seeking, Receiving and Providing Support in Online and Offline Communities." Saechsische Landesbibliothek- Staats- und Universitaetsbibliothek Dresden, 2018. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa-229297.
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Social networking services (SNS) like Facebook are used by an increasing number of people worldwide for social exchange. Given the amount of time that is spent on these online services, they are likely to have an impact on how individuals interact with each other. On this note, anecdotal examples emphasize both positive (i.e., expanding or strengthening relationships) and negative effects (i.e., bullying, feelings of disconnectedness). To shed more light on this issue, scholars from various disciplines have started to investigate the significance of social networking services on interpersonal relationships and on how individuals might experience benefits on the one hand, or face challenges through the use of online services on the other hand [1, 2]. One research interest that has gained significant attention in recent years is the analysis of effects that social networks may have on the quantity and quality of interpersonal online social support in different contexts. [... from the introduction]
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Kempny, Christian, Monique Janneck, and Henning Staar. "“With A Little Help From My (Online?) Friends” – A Comparison of Support Seeking, Receiving and Providing Support in Online and Offline Communities." TUDpress, 2017. https://tud.qucosa.de/id/qucosa%3A30564.
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Social networking services (SNS) like Facebook are used by an increasing number of people worldwide for social exchange. Given the amount of time that is spent on these online services, they are likely to have an impact on how individuals interact with each other. On this note, anecdotal examples emphasize both positive (i.e., expanding or strengthening relationships) and negative effects (i.e., bullying, feelings of disconnectedness). To shed more light on this issue, scholars from various disciplines have started to investigate the significance of social networking services on interpersonal relationships and on how individuals might experience benefits on the one hand, or face challenges through the use of online services on the other hand [1, 2]. One research interest that has gained significant attention in recent years is the analysis of effects that social networks may have on the quantity and quality of interpersonal online social support in different contexts. [... from the introduction]
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Lawrence, Allan Michael, and Franziska Günther. "How to ensure sustainability within online communities? Raising the problem from the point of view of the Erasmus Plus project “European Social Entrepreneurs”." Saechsische Landesbibliothek- Staats- und Universitaetsbibliothek Dresden, 2018. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa-214885.
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Caples, Robert Kelly. "The role of social presence in online communities." College Park, Md. : University of Maryland, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1903/3768.
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Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2006.Thesis research directed by: Human Development. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.
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Piper, Monica. "E2F Communities : Connecting the Online and Offline Worlds." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kommunikation, medier och it, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-17387.
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This paper will discuss hybrid communities that connect users online with the intention of facilitating offline interaction. These electronic-to-face (e2f) communities provide social benefits to members through the unique interaction of their online and offline components. They offer members the opportunity to pursue new offline experiences, increase social capital and develop weak-tie relationships. To develop an environment that encourages members to participate online and offline, the physical design of e2f systems should include functionality that encourages a sense of community, trust and generalized reciprocity. Following a set of e2f development guidelines proposed by the author, a new e2f system called Mix It Up was created. It aims to provide the social benefits of an increased social circle by enabling users to connect online with the purpose of meeting people to organize and enjoy activity-driven offline experiences. By engaging in an online community, members can be exposed to new offline opportunities that are not currently available in their limited offline social realms. Utilizing user research, this community was evaluated in reference to suggested conceptual points of departure for the creation of e2f communities.
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Schmidt, Marcus. "Sites of Knowledge : Knowledge Processes in Online Communities." Thesis, Örebro universitet, Institutionen för humaniora, utbildnings- och samhällsvetenskap, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-51304.
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The aim of this study is to examine knowledge processes in online spaces. It focuses on threeparticular cases: the Bonfireside Chat podcast, the community around the computer game Europa Universalis 4, and the Supernatural fandom. By applying the frameworks of Wenger’s (1998) communities of practice and Hall’s (1980) modes of reading, it examines how these spaces and their communities engage with their respective media artifacts. It concludes thatthese processes display high levels of complexity and literacy, and that a deeper understanding of such processes is useful in developing future educational efforts, online as well as offline.
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Hew, Khe Foon. "Knowledge sharing among professionals in three online communities." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2006. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3229599.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Instructional Systems Technology, 2006."Title from dissertation home page (viewed July 5, 2007)." Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-08, Section: A, page: 2947. Adviser: Thomas A. Brush.
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Benson, Caroline, and Martin Hedrén. "Online Brand Communities - a Route to Brand Loyalty?" Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för ekonomi och teknik (SET), 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-23231.
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Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if the use of online brandcommunities helps sporting goods brands in building brand loyalty. Frame of Reference: The frame of reference begins with a presentation of brands leading upto brand equity and subsequently brand loyalty. The second part of thissection begins with a presentation regarding marketing communication,the promotional mix and online communities. Finally, brand loyalty andonline community is merged together into a presentation of brandloyalty in online brand communities. Method: The purpose is examined through comparing secondary data withquantitative collected data about community members’ purchasingbehaviour prior and after joining a sporting goods brand community. Empirical Framework: In this part the results of the online questionnaire is presented. Conclusion: The survey concludes that sporting goods brands' online brandcommunities have a positive impact and suggestions on further researchare presented.
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Etzrodt, Katrin, Rebecca Renatus, and Franziska Uhlmann. "Informationsbezogene Mediennutzung Jugendlicher und Senioren in (Online-)Communities." Saechsische Landesbibliothek- Staats- und Universitaetsbibliothek Dresden, 2014. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa-154052.
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Die Grenzen zwischen digitalen und klassischen Informationsangeboten verschmelzen zunehmend und gleichzeitig werden mobile und nternetfähige
Endgeräte zum täglichen Begleiter für alle möglichen Fragen und Themen.
Jüngere Altersgruppen haben digitale Medien und mobile Endgeräte bereits fest in ihren Alltag integriert, aber auch in den älteren Generationen steigt der Anteil der Nutzer zunehmend. Durch die steigende Alltagsrelevanz und die ständige zeit- aber auch ortsunabhängige Verfügbarkeit neuer Medien verändern sich Informationsumgebungen. Eine nicht zu unterschätzende Rolle spielen dabei Online-Communities, in denen Informationen nicht nur bereitgestellt, sondern auch geteilt, bewertet und kommentiert werden können. Doch die Vielfalt möglicher Zugänge und Quellen wird auf unterschiedliche Weise genutzt. Der Zugang zu verschiedenen digitalen Quellen, die zwar nicht ausschließlich, dennoch auch durch Atersunterschiede bedingt werden.
Es wird die Frage gestellt wie sich das Informationsverhalten verschiedener Altersgruppen unter den aktuellen medialen Bedingungen darstellt.
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Chiu, Eugene 1979. "A context-based rating system for online communities." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/87211.
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Thesis (M.Eng. and S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 61).
by Eugene Chiu.
M.Eng.and S.B.
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Botha, Leendert W. "Modeling online social networks using Quasi-clique communities." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/17859.
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Thesis (MSc)--Stellenbosch University, 2011ENGLISH ABSTRACT: With billions of current internet users interacting through social networks, the need has arisen to analyze the structure of these networks. Many authors have proposed random graph models for social networks in an attempt to understand and reproduce the dynamics that govern social network development. This thesis proposes a random graph model that generates social networks using a community-based approach, in which users’ affiliations to communities are explicitly modeled and then translated into a social network. Our approach explicitly models the tendency of communities to overlap, and also proposes a method for determining the probability of two users being connected based on their levels of commitment to the communities they both belong to. Previous community-based models do not incorporate community overlap, and assume mutual members of any community are automatically connected. We provide a method for fitting our model to real-world social networks and demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in reproducing real-world social network characteristics by investigating its fit on two data sets of current online social networks. The results verify that our proposed model is promising: it is the first community-based model that can accurately reproduce a variety of important social network characteristics, namely average separation, clustering, degree distribution, transitivity and network densification, simultaneously.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Met biljoene huidige internet-gebruikers wat deesdae met behulp van aanlyn sosiale netwerke kommunikeer, het die analise van hierdie netwerke in die navorsingsgemeenskap toegeneem. Navorsers het al verskeie toevalsgrafiekmodelle vir sosiale netwerke voorgestel in ’n poging om die dinamika van die ontwikkeling van dié netwerke beter te verstaan en te dupliseer. In hierdie tesis word ’n nuwe toevalsgrafiekmodel vir sosiale netwerke voorgestel wat ’n gemeenskapsgebaseerde benadering volg, deurdat gebruikers se verbintenisse aan gemeenskappe eksplisiet gemodelleer word, en dié gemeenskapsmodel dan in ’n sosiale netwerk omskep word. Ons metode modelleer uitdruklik die geneigdheid van gemeenskappe om te oorvleuel, en verskaf ’n metode waardeur die waarskynlikheid van vriendskap tussen twee gebruikers bepaal kan word, op grond van hulle toewyding aan hulle wedersydse gemeenskappe. Vorige modelle inkorporeer nie gemeenskapsoorvleueling nie, en aanvaar ook dat alle lede van dieselfde gemeenskap vriende sal wees. Ons verskaf ’n metode om ons model se parameters te pas op sosiale netwerk datastelle en vertoon die vermoë van ons model om eienskappe van sosiale netwerke te dupliseer. Die resultate van ons model lyk belowend: dit is die eerste gemeenskapsgebaseerde model wat gelyktydig ’n belangrike verskeidenheid van sosiale netwerk eienskappe, naamlik gemiddelde skeidingsafstand, samedromming, graadverdeling, transitiwiteit en netwerksverdigting, akkuraat kan weerspieël.
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Majewski, Grzegorz. "Online knowledge sharing in virtual communities of practice." Thesis, University of the West of Scotland, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.557267.
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Knowledge Management (KM) techniques and tools have been utilized by organizations from diverse sections of the Economy to achieve numerous goals such as: competitive advantage, increased innovativeness and global project management. One of the techniques of KM that has gained prominence as a very useful knowledge sharing tool is Virtual Communities of Practice. It originated from work on situated learning. In order to utilize it in a proper way it is necessary to take into account human, psychological, social and technological factors. The purpose of this research is to investigate the factors that influence participants of VCoP while they play two distinct roles: knowledge provider and knowledge receiver. This is a gap in knowledge as there is a shortage of studies that analyse these two roles in VCoPs. Most of the research in this area focus on the knowledge provider role, with few studies considering the knowledge receiver role. Both roles are present only in a few studies and even so they are not the main topics of those researches and thus these roles are not fully recognized by the authors. This leads to the research problem of how to evaluate knowledge sharing activities performed by the participants of VCoPs while they play these two distinct roles: knowledge provider and knowledge receiver. In order to address this research problem it was necessary to identify and analyse the underlying constructs and how they interact with each other. The process of identifying these constructs and their relationships was supported by existing literature and models formulated by other researchers. In 2 particular and substantial to this research were three models formulated by: Chiu et al. 2006, Lin et al 2009 and Jiacheng et al 2010. The research built relationships between the identified constructs in order to develop a research model. The constructs of the research model were operationalized into appropriate questionnaire items and interview questions. Data was collected using a validated questionnaire and interviews with key members of two VCoPs. The first study was performed with Laurea Labs in Finland and focused on knowledge intensive processes, while the second study with a group in Second Life investigated online knowledge sharing in an immersive virtual environment. In order to evaluate the research model, collected data was analysed. The tools used were Principal Components Analysis, Correlation Analysis and Multiregression Analysis. It was utilized to evaluate the conceptual model. The contribution to knowledge of this study is the identification of the critical factors influencing online knowledge sharing in virtual communities of practice, the design of conceptual model for knowledge sharing that brings together the two distinct roles participants can play (knowledge provider and knowledge receiver), operationalisation of the factors into questionnaire items and interview questions as well as empirical research in two diverse environments (research lab and immersive virtual world). 3 The most significant relationships were between Knowledge Provision and Knowledge Reception on the one hand and Online Knowledge Sharing on the other as well as Perceived Benefits and Perception of Community. The nonsignificant relationships were dropped in the final model. Qualitative findings introduced Language and Innovation Capabilities as new constructs. Besides, further findings from correlation analysis have introduced new relationships termed as propositions on the model. The implications of the research include the difference in the way the receivers as opposed to givers of knowledge in VCoPs should be motivated to engage in knowledge sharing processes. Some of the motivatiors confirmed by this study are benefits, social ties and reciprocity.
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Liekovuori, Reetta. "Welcoming Online Communities : Social Sustainability of ESN Kalmar." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för organisation och entreprenörskap (OE), 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-74893.
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Erasmus Student Network (ESN) plays an important role in the integration process of international students who spend their study abroad period in a new country. ESN community in Kalmar in Sweden has Facebook groups for every semester which spread the hospitality through the local ESN members, also called as ‘hosts’, for the new members who can be called either ‘guests’, ‘tourists’, ‘exchange students’ or ‘freemovers’. The previous literature in tourism regarding social life online has emphasised the user-generated content on travel-related online communities on social media and ‘mobility turn’ that is an emerged topic in social sciences and has put social into travel and has thus forced researches to come up with new mobile methods to study online communities. Despite the fact that the word ‘social’ seems to be everywhere, social sustainability has been somewhat overlooked research area particularly in terms of online communities. This thesis project aims to fill this gap in the tourism literature and seeks to find out what social sustainability means in a context of online communities. Social sustainability forms the conceptual framework of the thesis and discusses the hosts and guests paradigm connecting it to online environments. The empirical material was collected by using qualitative methods including online survey distributed on ESN Kalmar Facebook groups and netnography concerning the ESN Kalmar online communities on Facebook. In addition to a theoretical contribution, the thesis project makes a methodological addition since netnography is still underutilised method among tourism scholars. These methods provided comprehensive data both from subjective and objective perspectives. The data was analysed by thematic analysis under the themes of social support, well-being and friendships, which were found to be connected to socially sustainable communities in the literature. The results found that online communities benefit from offline meetings that make the relationships between the community members stronger and thus create trust among the members. The role of the hosts and their local knowledge in the online community was proven vital in making guests to feel welcome, cared and supported during their study abroad period. However, the socially sustainable online community requires interaction and hospitality from both parties. Social sustainability of an online community can be disrupted if the community members are not cooperating and being open enough. Besides the local importance of the study in developing ESN Kalmar’s online community dynamics by emphasising the role of social sustainability, the results can be applied to discussions of internet behaviour in general. Also, the study provides help for communities where the roles between the hosts and guests are constantly “on move”.
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Hiscock, Philippa. "Risk analysis of user satisfaction in online communities." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2015. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/380664/.
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Kilgore, Whitney Kay. "Design of Informal Online Learning Communities in Education." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2016. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc862820/.
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The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Ed Tech Future Ready program has encouraged the use of open informal learning communities as professional learning opportunities for educators. This study categorizes 46 state Twitter chats by their moderation techniques and design. A purposive sample of Twitter chat designers participated in this phenomenological exploration that demonstrates how the designs of these informal learning spaces are aligned with the designers' pedagogical philosophies. Recommendations for supporting, growing, and sustaining similar learning communities are included.
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Walkup, Katie Lynn. "Constructing Health Narratives: Patient Feedback in Online Communities." Scholar Commons, 2017. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/6634.
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This project examines user-generated health narratives through corpus analysis of 246 reviews posted on Midwestern Hospital’s Yelp page. Understanding how different stakeholders act and interact within online health communities models a shift in new conceptions of health, and provides evidence of health ecologies’ ability to determine patient perceptions of care. Documents produced by users in these health communities represent health narratives comprised of a user’s health experience, that user’s treatment perceptions, and the community’s perceptions of the user’s experience. Author uses corpus methods to interpret user trace data and rhetorical moves embedded in health narratives. Findings suggest that users who interact with the Yelp community produce different health narratives than less engaged users. Understanding how different stakeholders act and interact within online health communities models a shift in new conceptions of health, and provides evidence of health ecologies’ ability to determine patient perceptions of care.
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Greenwood, Mark. "Text mining patient experiences from online health communities." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2015. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/87865/.
Full textAbstract:
Social media has had an impact on how patients experience healthcare. Through online channels, patients are sharing information and their experiences with potentially large audiences all over the world. While sharing in this way may offer immediate benefits to themselves and their readership (e.g. other patients) these unprompted, self-authored accounts of illness are also an important resource for healthcare researchers. They offer unprecedented insight into understanding patients’experience of illness. Work has been undertaken through qualitative analysis in order to explore this source of data and utilising the information expressed through these media. However, the manual nature of the analysis means that scope is limited to a small proportion of the hundreds of thousands of authors who are creating content. In our research, we aim to explore utilising text mining to support traditional qualitative analysis of this data. Text mining uses a number of processes in order to extract useful facts from text and analyse patterns within – the ultimate aim is to generate new knowledge by analysing textual data en mass. We developed QuTiP – a Text Mining framework which can enable large scale qualitative analyses of patient narratives shared over social media. In this thesis, we describe QuTiP and our application of the framework to analyse the accounts of patients living with chronic lung disease. As well as a qualitative analysis, we describe our approaches to automated information extraction, term recognition and text classification in order to automatically extract relevant information from blog post data. Within the QuTiP framework, these individual automated approaches can be brought together to support further analyses of large social media datasets.
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Arsal, Mustafa Kerem. "Governance in online communities of artistic cultural production." Thesis, Boston University, 2013. https://hdl.handle.net/2144/12047.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (D.B.A.)--Boston UniversityWhile scholars have brought much insight into the governance of online communities engaged in the production of goods with relatively established quality criteria, such as open source software, they paid less attention to the governance of online communities of artistic cultural production. In artistic cultural production, due to its drive for novelty and potential resistance to institutionalized norms, it is difficult to create agreements and shared routines among participants -particularly during initial emergence when participants are new to one another and new to their form of contributions. In this two-essay dissertation, I study arguably the largest online community of artistic production in Turkey, Sour Dictionary, and analyze the governance configurations during its initial emergence and ongoing growth. The first essay describes how coherence was achieved during the birth and early years of the Dictionary through the use of ambiguity in the two governance dimensions of vision and rules of production. I show that in this period, ambiguity was maintained in these dimensions not only to provide participants with the flexibility they needed for artistic expressions, but also to bring clarity to the recognition of participants' allegiances. The presence of a shared opposition among participants appears key to achieving coherence in an artistic community, and for such a community, ambiguity is an adaptive resource rather than something to eliminate as is often argued within an economic logic. The second essay follows a natural experiment where the founder's changing decisions on two other governance dimensions of quality assurance and member recruitment, along with his utilizations of IT for growth, resulted in different outcomes of coherence and popularity during the community's ongoing growth. As the founder switched the combination of his use of IT and member recruitment method from one that invited slow and incremental growth to one that brought sudden and massive growth, the community faced a variety of problems in both outcomes. I show that these problems arose as the founder responded to growth by implementing quality assurance methods that emphasized efficiency rather than flexibility, and thus failed to a
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Abedin, Behnam. "Social entrepreneurs value co-creation in online communities." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2022. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/231390/1/Behnam_Abedin_Thesis.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examined how and why social entrepreneurs in Australia use online communities for value co-creation. It specifically investigated social entrepreneurs' motivations to participate in online communities, the barriers that might inhibit them from participating in online communities, and the particular abilities that they need to have in order to participate in online communities. Moreover, this study explored value co-creation activities that social entrepreneurs perform in online communities to create value together for all parties involved and the positive outcomes for them as the result of their participation in online communities.
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Chiu, Wei-Yi. "The analysis of social capital in online social communities." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2011. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/46995/1/Wei-Yi_Chiu_Thesis.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
Social networks have proven to be an attractive avenue of investigation for researchers since humans are social creatures. Numerous literature have explored the term “social networks” from different perspectives and in diverse research fields. With the popularity of the Internet, social networking has taken on a new dimension. Online social communities therefore have become an emerging social avenue for people to communicate in today’s information age. People use online social communities to share their interests, maintain friendships, and extend their so-called circle of “friends”. Likewise, social capital, also known as human capital, is an important theory in sociology. Researchers usually utilise social capital theory when they investigate the topic relating to social networks. However, there is little literature that can provide an explicit and strong assertion in that research area due to the complexity of social capital.
This thesis therefore focuses on the issue related to providing a better understanding about the relationship between social capital and online social communities. To enhance the value within the scope of this analysis, an online survey was conducted to examine the effects of the dimensions of social capital: relational capital, structural capital, and cognitive capital, determining the intensity of using online social communities. The data were derived from a total of 350 self-selected respondents completing an online survey during the research period. The main results indicate that social capital exists in online social communities under normal circumstances.
Finally, this thesis also presents three contributions for both theory and practice in Chapter 5. The main results contribute to the understanding of connectivity in the interrelationships between individual social capital exchange within online social networks. Secondly, social trust was found to have a weak effect in influencing the intensity of individuals using online social communities. Third, the perpetual role of information sharing has an indirect influence on individual users participating in online social communities. This study also benefits online marketing consultants as marketers can not only gain consumer information easier from online social communities but also this understanding assists in designing effective communication within online social communities. The cross-sectional study, the reliability of Internet survey data, and sampling issues are the major three limitations in this research. The thesis provides a new research model and recommends that the mediating effects, privacy paradox, and social trust on online social communities should be further explored in future research.
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Hirtz, Janine Renee Marie. "Teacher professional development and communities of practice." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/2802.
Full textAbstract:
The larger research project seeks to examine the role of technology and factors that
influence its overall use and efficacy in supporting a community of teachers engaged in
professional development. This thesis examines factors that appear to influence teacher
participation in the online community of practice engaging in an overarching research project
conducted by Dr. Balcaen and a team from UBC O Faculty of Education and funded by the
Southern Alberta Professional Development Consortium (SAPDC). The two groups are
acting in partnership for supporting and sustaining communities of practice in social studies
in southern Alberta. SAPDC is allowing teachers release time to engage in the project while
TC² is providing professional development for the participant teachers to become proficient
at embedding TC² critical thinking tools into their classroom practices. Various technologies
are used during this study as part of the design of providing professional development for the
participants including supporting an online community presence. The guiding question for
this thesis is: In a blended approach of face-to-face and online supported professional
development for embedding critical thinking into the new social studies curriculum, what
significant factors appear to influence teacher participation in the online community of
practice during the first year of the project?
Overall results during the first year of this project show that various technologies
used during the project are valuable and effective in nurturing this community of practice by
enabling and promoting collaboration, communication, and the completion and delivery of
products to be used in teaching the new curriculum. I also examine negative factors that
appear to prevent some teachers’ technology use and online participation and collaboration
during this project. Findings show that there are several significant factors that influence
participation in the online community and while some participants are reluctant to engage or
enter the online environment, others have emerged as leaders and play a significant role in
building and sustaining the community of practice. These results provide critical information
about implementing and integrating an online component and using technology to sustain
communities of practice engaged in this form of teacher professional development.