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"Online-Community"
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Building Member Attachment in Online Communities: Applying Theories of Group Identity and Interpersonal Bonds1,Building Member Attachment in Online Communities: Applying Theories of Group Identity and Interpersonal Bonds
Online communities are increasingly important to organizations and the general public, but there is little theoretically based research on what makes some online communities more successful than others. In this article, we apply theory from the field of social psychology to understand how online communities develop member attachment, an important dimension of community success. We implemented and empirically tested two sets of community features for building member attachment by strengthening either group identity or interpersonal bonds. To increase identity-based attachment, we gave members information about group activities and intergroup competition, and tools for group-level communication. To increase bond-based attachment, we gave members information about the activities of individual members and interpersonal similarity, and tools for interpersonal communication. Results from a six-month field experiment show that participants’ visit frequency and self-reported attachment increased in both conditions. Community features intended to foster identity-based attachment had stronger effects than features intended to foster bond-based attachment. Participants in the identity condition with access to group profiles and repeated exposure to their group’s activities visited their community twice as frequently as participants in other conditions. The new features also had stronger effects on newcomers than on old-timers. This research illustrates how theory from the social science literature can be applied to gain a more systematic understanding of online communities and how theory-inspired features can improve their success.
Journal Article
Special Section Introduction—Online Community as Space for Knowledge Flows
Online communities frequently create significant economic and relational value for community participants and beyond. It is widely accepted that the underlying source of such value is the collective flow of knowledge among community participants. We distinguish the conditions for flows of tacit and explicit knowledge in online communities and advance an unconventional theoretical conjecture: Online communities give rise to tacit knowledge flows between participants. The crucial condition for these flows is not the advent of novel, digital technology as often portrayed in the literature, but instead the technology’s domestication by humanity and the sociality it affords. This conjecture holds profound implications for theory and research in the study of management and organization, as well as their relation to information technology.
Journal Article
Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities
Word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing—firms' intentional influencing of consumer-to-consumer communications—is an increasingly important technique. Reviewing and synthesizing extant WOM theory, this article shows how marketers employing social media marketing methods face a situation of networked coproduction of narratives. It then presents a study of a marketing campaign in which mobile phones were seeded with prominent bloggers. Eighty-three blogs were followed for six months. The findings indicate that this network of communications offers four social media communication strategies—evaluation, embracing, endorsement, and explanation. Each is influenced by character narrative, communications forum, communal norms, and the nature of the marketing promotion. This new narrative model shows that communal WOM does not simply increase or amplify marketing messages; rather, marketing messages and meanings are systematically altered in the process of embedding them. The theory has definite, pragmatic implications for how marketers should plan, target, and leverage WOM and how scholars should understand WOM in a networked world.
Journal Article
Sharing Knowledge in Social Q&A Sites: The Unintended Consequences of Extrinsic Motivation
In order to motivate individuals to share their knowledge in online communities, the use of extrinsic rewards and goals is a typical approach. However, extrinsic motivation may have unintended consequences. Although past studies have examined the direct effect of extrinsic motivation on intrinsic motivation, no research to date has investigated how extrinsic motivation moderates the impact of intrinsic motivation on knowledge sharing, or how the effect of extrinsic motivation on intrinsic motivation is contingent upon whether a member is active or not. Drawing on attribution theory and theory of planned behavior, the study was conducted with data collected from a large social Q&A site consisting of multiple online communities with millions of registered users; the data were analyzed with moderated regression and structural equation modeling. Results show that the effect of enjoyment in helping others on attitude toward knowledge sharing is undermined by virtual organizational rewards, while the effect of knowledge self-efficacy on attitude toward knowledge sharing is undermined by reciprocity. The results also show that the effect of virtual organizational rewards on enjoyment in helping others is contingent upon whether members are active or not. Specifically, for active members, virtual organizational rewards undermine enjoyment in helping others; for inactive members, however, virtual organizational rewards increase enjoyment in helping others. These findings enrich the research on unintended consequences of extrinsic motivation specifically, and the theory of motivation in general. Additionally, these findings provide practical insights on how and when to use extrinsic rewards/goals to motivate individuals to share knowledge in social Q&A sites.
Journal Article
The “Loci” of Misinformation and Its Correction in Peer- and Expert-Led Online Communities for Mental Health: Content Analysis
Mental health problems are recognized as a pressing public health issue, and an increasing number of individuals are turning to online communities for mental health to search for information and support. Although these virtual platforms have the potential to provide emotional support and access to anecdotal experiences, they can also present users with large amounts of potentially inaccurate information. Despite the importance of this issue, limited research has been conducted, especially on the differences that might emerge due to the type of content moderation of online communities: peer-led or expert-led. We aim to fill this gap by examining the prevalence, the communicative context, and the persistence of mental health misinformation on Facebook online communities for mental health, with a focus on understanding the mechanisms that enable effective correction of inaccurate information and differences between expert-led and peer-led groups. We conducted a content analysis of 1534 statements (from 144 threads) in 2 Italian-speaking Facebook groups. The study found that an alarming number of comments (26.1%) contained medically inaccurate information. Furthermore, nearly 60% of the threads presented at least one misinformation statement without any correction attempt. Moderators were more likely to correct misinformation than members; however, they were not immune to posting content containing misinformation, which was an unexpected finding. Discussions about aspects of treatment (including side effects or treatment interruption) significantly increased the probability of encountering misinformation. Additionally, the study found that misinformation produced in the comments of a thread, rather than as the first post, had a lower probability of being corrected, particularly in peer-led communities. The high prevalence of misinformation in online communities, particularly when left uncorrected, underscores the importance of conducting additional research to identify effective mechanisms to prevent its spread. This is especially important given the study’s finding that misinformation tends to be more prevalent around specific “loci” of discussion that, once identified, can serve as a starting point to develop strategies for preventing and correcting misinformation within them.
Journal Article
Netnography
This is the first article to describe how broadening of the term netnography in qualitative research is leading to misperceptions and missed opportunities. The once accepted need for human presence in netnographic studies is giving way to nonparticipatory (passive) approaches, which claim to be naturalistic and bias-free. While this may be tenable in some environments, it also removes the opportunity for cocreation in online communities and social media spaces. By contrast, participatory (active) netnographers have an opportunity to conduct their research in a way that contributes value and a continuity of narrative to online spaces. This article examines the ways in which netnographies are being used and adapted across a spectrum of online involvement. It explores the ways in which netnographies conform to, or depart from, the unique set of analytic steps intended to provide qualitative rigor. It concludes by advocating for active netnography, one which requires a netnographic “slog” where researchers are prepared for the “blood, sweat, and tears” in order to reap rich benefits.
Journal Article
Engaging Voluntary Contributions in Online Communities
User contribution is critical to online communities but also difficult to sustain given its public goods nature. This paper studies the design of IT artifacts to motivate voluntary contributions in online communities. We propose a dynamic approach, which allows the effect of motivating mechanisms to change across users over time. We characterize the dynamics of user contributions using a hidden Markov model (HMM) with latent motivation states under the public goods framework. We focus on three motivating mechanisms on transitioning users between the latent states: reciprocity, peer recognition, and self-image. Based on Bayesian estimation of the model with user-level panel data, we identify three motivation states (low, medium, and high), and show that the motivating mechanisms, implemented through various IT artifacts, could work differently across states. Specifically, reciprocity is only effective to transition users from low to medium motivation state, whereas peer recognition can boost all users to higher states. And self-image shows no effect when a user is already in high motivation state, although it helps users in low and medium states move to the high state. Design simulations on our structural model provide additional insights into the consequences of changing specific IT artifacts. These findings offer implications for platform designers on how to motivate user contributions and build sustainable online communities.
Journal Article